Guidance in training/raising awareness about Office 365 applications

[tested901]

Hello,

I am looking at raising awareness and increasing productivity by shifting from commonly used Office apps such as excel and word, to more effective ones for certain tasks such as Planner and Teams.

We currently have Office 365 for a lot of users, however apps such as SharePoint, Yammer, Planner, Teams etc are rarely used. There is an over dependence on word/excel/outlook for less efficient tasks

We are looking to raise awareness and show the benefits of using say Planner to increase productivity at work with hopes people will get familiar with the other apps and use them efficiently.

We are thinking of either training employees in the commonly used O365 apps using an external training source , or creating our own guidance through say SharePoint where FAQ's/Tips etc could be posted, Or trial Yammer as say a help forum.

I had found: 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-overview

Which was very useful so planned to roll out Teams whilst showing the integration of other apps such as Yammer and OneNote to it

Do you have any other ideas/tips/resources on providing effective yet engaging training and raising awareness of the less used O365 applications to employees to increase our productivity?

Thank you very much!

[#2]

Once resource you can also use is the FastTrack Productivity Library...take also a look at this: https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/partners/teamwork

[#3]

Hi @tested901. I recommend talk with a few leaders of business units and finding out some of the current projects they are working on. Listen to them describe the challenges they face. Once you have understood these real-world scenarios, create a proof of concept (POC) that combines some of the tools. Avoid overwhelming them with too much knowledge about features. Just show them the core features that will play a role in solving the problems in their scenarios.

Co-create the solution as you work on the POC together. Iterate till you find a solution that's comfortable for the business unit leader and their team members. 

If you follow this path, can I encourage you to share your progress here in this Driving Adoption community? It will benefit others. We may also be able to continue to provide advice as you iterate. 

[#4]

I would really try to focus on understanding what they are doing in Word and Excel and how they are doing it.  If you can get the source of that, then you can work with them on some training that is more about the task and less about the tool being used.  If you can provide training on certain tasks and desired outcomes, users will be more open to it.  I think people are all for doing things if they come easy - so any training that shows the process and focuses on that will be better received than training on tools.

[#5]

We will be training people just like you on how to drive adoption of Office 365 services in our Champion's program.  Once you are signed up we have a forum here where we will share our quick start plans and other tools.  I hope you sign up at https://aka.ms/O365Champions  

You can also watch my Ignite presentations that focus on the overall framework and some scenarios to help you think about how to prioritize improvements and onboard people.  At the end of the day though, understanding your business and thinking about improvements that don't focus on the tech but the user experience is the way to go!