Microsoft Product Naming Conversion Madness

[Charles Haber]

So first there was sharepoint, with their Team Sites.  Then there was Office 365 Groups, which are also known as Outlook Groups.  These create hidden sharepoint sites.  Now there is Microsoft Teams which don't create Team sites but Group sites.  Yeesh, If I, as an IT professional can't keep it straight, how do you expect the regular users to?

Just a rant, no need for a reply!

[#2]

Charles these two diagrams might help:

• there is Office 365 Groups the service (Azure AD objects providing a single identity)
• there are apps that are leveraging the new Groups service: Outlook, SharePoint, Planner, Yammer, Teams, etc.
• whether you create a group in Outlook, Planner or Teams or soon Yammer each one will have ONE team site

[#3]

Nice illustration,gives a good understanding of the group concept -    I would like to use this in a presentation, if it is an Powerpoint, could you please share it - thx

[#4]

@Christophe Fiessinger has there been any official or unofficial discussion of clarifying the associated names, particularly Outlook Groups (which is the primary source of end-user confusion between 'Groups'-as-a-service and 'Groups' as an app)?

Clearly this has evolved what with something called a 'group' pre-existing in Yammer and something called 'team sites' (which had group-ish qualities) in SP.  I even get MS thinking in shipping a 'Groups' app as a step in the broader collaboration places thinking.  But here we are and the diagram above leads to a schematic like

Teams powered by O365 Groups service

Yammer Groups powered by the O365 Groups service

Outlook Groups powered by O365 Groups service

etc.

It seems like it would be helpful if MS was consistent about naming the 'Outlook Groups' thing -- either Outlook Groups or Groups in Outlook or some new name -- rather than the 'groups in Outlook' or 'Groups in Outlook' or 'Outlook Groups' or 'Outlook groups' etc. that appear in these forums and in the MS blog by MS peeople.