Get Attention by Using Mention on Microsoft Teams
Mention someone in Teams, what does that mean. Of courses when talking of mentioning someone in Microsoft Teams we're speaking of @mention. Knowing how to use the @mention feature will make it less likely that others will miss your messages.
One of the blessings and curses or Microsoft Teams is the fact that you can receive hundreds of messages a day. That being the case it can be all too easy to miss one of them. By using the @mention feature in MS Teams, you can ensure that only the person your messages is addressed to will receive a notification.
That's right by using @ symbol, followed by the person you wish to write the message to, even though all in the Team will be able to see the message, only the @mentioned person will receive a little bling sound, a red circle and possibly a "Toast" notification in the bottom right corner of their screen. (See tutorial: "How to manage notifications in Teams?" for more information.)
How to mention someone in Teams?
If you want to mention someone in Teams you first need to use the @ symbol then type the name of the person, team or channel that you want to mention. A notification will be sent to that person, channel or Team. This is what is called @mentioning.
Take a look at the following picture:
You can see that when you press the @ symbol the names of the people belonging to the team appear. Continue typing until the person you want to @mention, or notify, appears in the list.
After that, you can then press Enter or Tab on the keyboard to add that persons name in. You can also use the mouse to double-click on the persons name.
How to @mention someone using only the first name?
You may notice that when you @mention someone, Microsoft Teams enter's the persons entire name. For instance if I want to @mention Joshua Fortiscue, I would most likely want to just display the name Joshua.
This is because it would be really weird in everyday speech to call people by their full name. Imagine saying: "Hey Joshua Fortiscue, how was your weekend?" or "Mate Joshua Fortiscue, what's new?". This sounds really strange.
Hence, when you @mention someone and their name appears in full, like the picture below:
You can delete the last name of the person you are mentioning. For example, below you can see that Joshua Fortiscue has been entered. However, if I want to I can now delete the Fortiscue part of the name as you can see below:
So long as the name appears in purple, your work colleague will receive a notificaiton. Unfortunately, I haven't worked out a way to @mention by part of the first name. So if you want to @josh for example, you can't.
So there you have it! Now you know how to mention someone in Teams and know that they will receive a notification. This notification will appear on their screen on their PC, Mac or phone making it harder for them to miss the message you sent them.
Where to go from here?
Notifications can be useful, they can also be stressful. There has been much research on how to reduce notificaitons can help you reduce stress to benefit your mental health.
Our tutorial on how to manage notificaitons in Microsoft Teams might be just the Teams tutorial you need to help you get a grip on all those pings and blings.
Also, why not check out other Microsoft Teams training courses we offer, to make sure you and your team are getting the best out of this amazing bit of software.
If you want to know more about Teams then check the Teams page on the Microsoft website.