Instant Messaging with Microsoft Teams: Business Guide

Teams Messaging vs Email: When to Use Which

One of the most useful things Teams does for businesses is give conversations a home that isn't the email inbox. Teams messaging is better suited to fast-moving exchanges, questions, status updates and collaboration threads. Email remains appropriate for formal external communications, records that need to be filed, and situations where the recipient is outside your Teams environment.

The challenge for most businesses isn't choosing one over the other — it's building consistent internal habits so people know where to expect messages and where to send them. Teams works best when the whole organisation uses it, because a partially-adopted system just adds another inbox to check.

Chat: One-to-One and Group Conversations

The Chat section in Teams handles direct messages between individuals and small groups. Start a new chat by clicking the pencil icon and searching for a colleague's name. For groups, you can add multiple names at the start of a conversation and give the group a name to make it easy to find later.

Chat messages in Teams are persistent — they don't disappear after a session, and the full history is searchable. This is a practical advantage over platforms where conversations scroll away. Files shared in chat are stored in OneDrive and accessible long after the conversation.

Rich Text and Formatting

Teams chat supports formatted messages. Press Shift + Enter for a line break without sending, or expand the compose box using the format icon to access bold, italic, bullet lists, headers and code blocks. For longer or structured messages — like a project update or weekly summary — formatted messages are much clearer than a wall of plain text.

Reactions and Replies

Hover over any message to see the reaction bar (thumbs up, heart, laugh, etc.) or click Reply to start a thread within a chat. Threaded replies keep discussions organised, particularly in group chats where multiple topics come up in parallel.

Channels: Team-Level Conversations

Channels live inside Teams (teams in the organisational sense) and are visible to all members of that team. They're best suited to topic-based or project-based communication that the whole team should have access to, rather than direct person-to-person exchanges.

General and Custom Channels

Every Team has a General channel by default. Most businesses add custom channels for specific projects, departments or workstreams — for example, #sales-pipeline, #marketing-campaigns or #it-support. Channels reduce the need for large group chats where only some participants need to see every message.

Standard vs Private vs Shared Channels

Standard channels are visible to all members of the parent Team. Private channels are only visible to invited members — useful for a management team within a broader department team. Shared channels allow members from outside your organisation to participate without having a guest account in your tenant — useful for ongoing collaborations with clients or partner organisations.

@ Mentions

Use @ mentions to notify specific people or groups: @name to alert an individual, @channel to notify all channel members, or @team to notify everyone in the team. Overusing @channel and @team creates notification fatigue, so encourage staff to use individual mentions for most messages and save channel-level mentions for genuinely important announcements.

File Sharing in Teams Chat

Files shared in Teams chat are stored in the sender's OneDrive. Files shared in a channel are stored in SharePoint in the underlying Team site. In both cases, files are accessible to all participants and can be co-edited in real time using Office applications — no need to send attachments back and forth.

To share a file, click the attachment icon in the compose box, or drag and drop. You can also link to existing files from OneDrive or SharePoint without creating duplicates.

Search and History

The search bar at the top of Teams searches across messages, files and people. Search results include message content, not just sender names or file names. For businesses that have used Teams for several months or years, this becomes a genuinely useful knowledge base — particularly for finding decisions made in past project discussions.

Message history is kept indefinitely by default, though IT administrators can configure retention policies through Microsoft Purview compliance tools — relevant for businesses with data governance requirements.

Status and Availability

Teams displays each user's presence status (Available, Busy, Away, Do Not Disturb, Out of Office). Status updates automatically based on calendar events and activity. Users can set a custom status message for context — for example, “Working from home” or “Out until Thursday”. Do Not Disturb suppresses notifications and is useful during focused work periods.

Teams Messaging on Mobile

All chat and channel messaging functions are available in the Teams mobile app on iOS and Android. Push notifications ensure you don't miss messages when away from your desk. The mobile app is well-suited for quick responses and staying connected, though complex message formatting is easier on desktop.

For businesses looking to standardise on Teams for internal communication — including setting up channel structures, training staff on best practices, and integrating Teams with other business tools — AMVIA provides Microsoft 365 deployment support as part of our managed IT service.