This is how you use your phone as a walkie-talkie with Teams

Microsoft has made the Walkie Talkie feature in Teams available to every user of the meeting app. What can you do with it and how does the function work?

With Walkie Talkie you can as Microsoft Teams-user literally use your phone or tablet as a walkie-talkie to, for example, consult with colleagues or ask for help. As with traditional walkie-talkies, you hold down a button to speak and release the button to listen. The advantage is that you don’t have to call in every time you want to ask a colleague something.

The feature in Teams was announced two years ago, but only officially launched in September 2020 for androiddevices. iPhones and iPads are now also supported.

That is how it works

Open the Teams app on your smartphone or tablet and choose . at the bottom of the navigation bar Walkie talkie† You may not see the feature yet: Microsoft is rolling it out gradually. In any case, make sure you have the latest version of the Teams app. You can also find the option by choosing in the navigation bar Lake†

Then you can connect to a channel. Where the walkie-talkies of the past did not require a communication network, you now need to be connected to a mobile network to be able to use the Walkie Talkie function in Teams. However, the advantage of this is that you are not bound to a certain maximum distance between yourself and your colleague.

Tap the right arrow next to Channel and select the channel you want to connect to. Confirm by tapping Make a connection and then you will receive all communication on the selected channel. Next to the name of the channel you can see how many people currently have the same connection.

If you want to speak for yourself, you can use the large button speak talk in the center of the screen. Some headsets and phones, including the Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro, even have a push-to-talk button. If you keep this pressed you can also communicate with colleagues.

Walkie-talkie functions are not yet often found in meeting and chat apps. In WhatsApp you can send and receive audio messages, but you cannot use the chat service as a walkie-talkie. Apple did release a walkie-talkie function for the Apple Watch in 2018. The watch has a push-to-talk button to keep in constant contact with friends, family or colleagues via FaceTime.