Forum Discussion
The Office 365 Groups Disconnect
It seems rather wierd to me a framework aimed to bridge the gap between s aset of tools has somewhat single handidly introduced it very own grand canyon with no way to cross. This canyon to me sits ...
Steve your missing the point on think. You said it wasn't a problem because people are used to it on mobile. Except it is more likely the groups of people using the different apps you referenced are not the same group of people. But in office 365 group they are the same group of people. You make a team, you get a group. That group will also show in outlook. Same files, same onenote, same planner (although technically they don't show tasks from each other right now that is already slated to change). The only thing not the same is the conversation.
It is very difficult to say to everyone, "okay for this group let's all use teams". When one of the members is in outlook and see the group and the files and the notbook. They just use the group, they send a message. Other team members are in outlook they see it and respond. Some members stick in Teams. They carry on there. The group is now split and maintaining two conversations.
The group is now disconnected. Maybe even temporarily but still disconnected.
Now let's take the user who has 10 different groups they are in. For all these groups they are outlook group based. Except for 1 it is team based. That user now has to break from outlook and go to teams to participate in 1/10 of there job duties. This is a productivity issue and a pain point for the worker to adopt which will likely cause less participation in the group.
The truth of the matter is MS could have handled this better. They could have keep 1:1 relationships across all products. Leaving the perfected tool to use up to each individual worker not at the team level.
The current situation the group creator decided where the group should be having there conversation. Then they have to try to endorse this, and try to get users to use tools they may not be comfortable with or even enjoy using.
Let's put this example to files. You can access the dane group files from Outlook, teams, yammer, sharepoint, office web apps, delve, sway, onenote, planner. This was the point of groups.
You truly have the choice of tools, no matter where you happen to be within the ecosystem you can participate with the group. But for to send a message/conversation you have to stop think to yourself "which app are people using for this". Then switch to that app to interact. This seems to be the complete opposite of what groups was introduced for. This is why I consider the one major disconnect of the system.
It is very difficult to say to everyone, "okay for this group let's all use teams". When one of the members is in outlook and see the group and the files and the notbook. They just use the group, they send a message. Other team members are in outlook they see it and respond. Some members stick in Teams. They carry on there. The group is now split and maintaining two conversations.
The group is now disconnected. Maybe even temporarily but still disconnected.
Now let's take the user who has 10 different groups they are in. For all these groups they are outlook group based. Except for 1 it is team based. That user now has to break from outlook and go to teams to participate in 1/10 of there job duties. This is a productivity issue and a pain point for the worker to adopt which will likely cause less participation in the group.
The truth of the matter is MS could have handled this better. They could have keep 1:1 relationships across all products. Leaving the perfected tool to use up to each individual worker not at the team level.
The current situation the group creator decided where the group should be having there conversation. Then they have to try to endorse this, and try to get users to use tools they may not be comfortable with or even enjoy using.
Let's put this example to files. You can access the dane group files from Outlook, teams, yammer, sharepoint, office web apps, delve, sway, onenote, planner. This was the point of groups.
You truly have the choice of tools, no matter where you happen to be within the ecosystem you can participate with the group. But for to send a message/conversation you have to stop think to yourself "which app are people using for this". Then switch to that app to interact. This seems to be the complete opposite of what groups was introduced for. This is why I consider the one major disconnect of the system.
Jeff Williams Just an additional point; Recently watched this from Christophe in Australia ignite. https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/Australia-2017/PROD225 - Here Christophe mentioned about the velocity is the differentiating factor of the conversation/chat piece on why it is split. This makes sense to a point, however I still don't see the Yammer/Groups Conversation pieces being separate.
- Ali Salih Yep, MS does present the argument that there are specific use cases for the different conversation methods and I understand the different apps were to fit different needs.
But for the sake of productivity and ease of use there should be a way to at the very least access the conversation from each app. Sharepoint gives us a way to jump to the conversation from its interface but it only work if it an Outlook group. If you group has chosen teams as the main method the conversation quick link in sharepoint is useless or if you use it will again split the conversation.
I agree the different tools are best suited for different situations. It is just difficult to sort of enforce that policy and then to keep the whole team apprised of everything if the conversation moves to utilize more than one of the main conversation tools.