Forum Discussion
O365 Groups-based Places - Yammer + Teams + Outlook Groups
For the record, here's the comparison we use in the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook.
The facts are that Outlook Groups are enormously popular within Office 365 because a) much of the workload initially moved to the cloud was email, b) the integration into Outlook, which remains the single most important client for most office workers, and c) the ability to replace the old distribution list/public folder combination with a group (some nice migration utilities are also appearing to move PFs to groups, like QUADROtech's ADAM).
If your tenant comes from an Exchange background, Groups will find an easy path to success. Given the number of active mailboxes inside Office 365, fertile ground exists for Outlook Groups.
It will take time for Teams to catch on. They will fill a gap in the collaboration space that's been proven by Slack.
As to Yammer groups, I think that the integration with Office 365 Groups that delivers the shared identity and membership and enables access to SharePoint, Planner, etc. is a great step forward. The problem is that it's about two years too late... and the compliance and other issues that I pointed out haven't gone away.
Thanks. Great attachment!
Again, I think a difference in purview: you - many enterprise/all O365 users; me - my actual enterprise.
For instance, Outlook Groups have NOT been 'enormously successful' in my enterprise. Perhaps in some alternate universe they might have been but... In this actual universe we have had more Teams setup and more posts to Teams in a month than we've had in Outlook Groups in a year. I wouldn't at all be surprised if there is some similar bifurcation in the larger universe that will be observable across a broader sample of enterprises in, say, a year: some enterprises will continue to use Outlook Groups as the primary shared-task focused collaboration (with likely peripheral use of Teams) and others will have the reverse experience. I am not in ANY way trying to argue generally that Teams is better the Outlook Groups or vice versa. Just that one is likely to have a greater cultural appeal in some case than the other.
I completely agree re the lateness of the groupification of yammer (and we are BIG users of Yammer). Ah well...
- TonyRedmondDec 16, 2016MVP
Tenants who are/were big users of Yammer have often moved away from email as a primary mode for collaboration. It's unsurprising to hear that tenants in this category have not been successful with Outlook groups. On the other hand, Teams are brand-new and don't have an association with email, so it is equally unsurprising to hear that they are being used. The history of work within a company has a huge influence on how technology is used or accepted.