Instructional designers in professional contexts are frequently part of teams that include a number of stakeholders such as a project manager and various technical personnel. With the evolution of online learning and working, one or more team members are often operating at a distance, or virtually. A consequent challenge arises concerning how to communicate optimally with associates who are unseen, unheard, or unknown. The dual purposes of this study were to investigate instructional designers’ experiences with virtual team communication and relationship building through the lens of social presence theory, and to discern instructional designers’ thoughts about reliance on technology-mediated communication for sharing knowledge and accomplishing tasks in a virtual setting. The study was a qualitative heuristic inquiry with four instructional designers working in virtual teams. Such a study is a quest to expand understanding of a phenomenon by examining it through the experiences of others. Analysis through deep immersion with the data identified 14 practices within five themes that described participants’ actions and perceptions about working virtually: (a) following a process, (b) adapting to circumstances, (c) capitalizing on longevity, (d) embracing the basics and (e) transcending obstacles. The themes in combination with a creative synthesis of the data, implications from the study, and associated literature generated a model for virtual team communication. The FACET model is an acronym representing five recommended practices for instructional designers in virtual teams: Frequent contact, Acknowledging communication, Closing the loop, Establishing the culture, and Training the team.