You can start an audio or video call from a text chat, or:

1. Click Calls in the left menu
2. Click Contacts to find someone at Kent

View or add external/personal contacts into Teams

Even if you're not a member of a team, you can use the chat to have ongoing conversations.  

There are two ways to start a chat:

• Click the Chat icon in the left menu
• Click the pen and paper icon at the top of Teams, next to the search box

Once the Chat section is open, click New chat and add contacts as needed.

Re-name group chats

In the Recent chats list (in the left menu) it shows your recent individual and group chats. 

The name of the chat is a list of chat participants, truncated if too long. You might prefer to rename it based on the topic/theme instead:

1. Click one of the group chats so it opens in the right window 
2. To give the chat a useful name, click on the pencil icon next to the list of contact names, and give it a group name

View or add chat participants

To view the participants and add new ones, click the 'View and add participants' icon in the top right of the window.

Hide old chats

To tidy up your list of chats on the left, you can hide any that you don't need anymore. 

1. Click on the ellipses ... for the chat in the left menu
2. Choose Hide

• Teams webinar for staff (YouTube)
• Teams FAQs on SharePoint
• Instructor-led training on Teams from Microsoft 
• Microsoft Teams video training
• Teams guide (PDF)

Ask us a question

• Get in touch to ask for help or give us feedback