Ongoing Teams / M365 App feature updates - comms and training

[SimonCoston990]

Hi All, 

How does everyone tend to do the business change (communications and training) for the seemingly 'smaller' feature updates within Teams and the other apps, like the new 'tenant switching' setting, or the Polls in Teams Meetings for their organisation? 

At my current organisation, it doesn't seem appropriate to do a big style launch for some of the smaller features, so wondered what other channels / approaches people use.

Many thanks!

[#2]

At my previous organization, we used a Yammer Community to communicate these types of updates. This particular community was dedicated to M365 topics and administered by our team. This certainty didn't catch all users, but it had the highest following in the company, so we knew we were at least covering a big portion of users, including all of our champions who would help to further convey the messages. Generally we would create a unique post for each notable and applicable feature and usually included a link to a short video or article with more details (ideally content created by Microsoft). Each month we would consolidate all of these into a single "In Case You Missed It (ICYMI)" post with links to all of the individual posts.

[#3]

We do a weekly update email even if there are no "new" features. We share less frequently used features with users so they can get more efficient with a product. We keep it to just one item a week so as not to overwhelm the users...Of course EVERYONE reads ALL of their email. LOL.

[#4]

The community elements suggested are great - it provides a good place for your users to go and experience the talk of new features, etc. The weekly email is good to - the way users engage and learn will all be at their own levels.

I would think about leveraging a champion community too to build up excitement and really focus in on new features that are key use cases for your org. Not every new feature needs to find a way to every user - some people just won't need or care about every new thing and that is ok!

The champion communities I've seen that are passionate and excited to share with their responsible organizations they report into or work closest with - will organically share those new features in practice/use which is a very strong mechanism to use for feature updates.

Take for example the new (and I mean fresh as of yesterday new! 🙂 ) webinar feature of Teams. Champions leveraging webinars to provide training on feature Z is them leveraging a new feature (webinars) to demonstrate something new they are passionate about (PowerPoint Live).

It sets up a great additional funnel to get comms and training out from a trusted group to the organization.

These smaller features (polls, etc) shine best I think when showcased in real life use cases by communities like that in the organization. That way people see/experience it in action and can be excited to go and use it themselves.

/Josh

[#5]

@SimonCoston990 
My team created a SharePoint site that drives learning for the business and links out to various resources (Learning, Docs, etc.). It's a hub where everyone can find what they need without having to do a lot of searching around themselves. We have a New Features page where we highlight things as they roll out. As a member of TAP, notifying, educating, and involving folks within each release ring is a vital component to that participation and to eventual adoption and use by everyone. We've learned that we get a lot of ROI by providing New Feature information from a single reliable source of truth for our people, resulting in greater understanding and earlier more effective, willing adoption. As with anything, you get out of it, what you're willing to put into it.

[#6]

We had a self server SharePoint site, where we posted new "less significant" updates or known issues. The end-users, who want to stay connected, created alerts and decided how often (immediately, daily, or weekly) to receive the information.

This method prevents end-users from stating that they didn't see a communication. They were able to stay informed on their terms.

[#7]

I like the idea of a self-service SharePoint site for that kind of training.

[#8]

We have a Org Wide Team in our tenant called Connect with the CIO where we have a channel called M365 Updates. When new buttons, features, or apps are rolled out we post those new changes / updates there and they show up for everyone in our organization.

[#9]

Have done this at three different organisations including my current. We tie our Joiners process into adding ALL new employees into a set of Core Yammer Groups - so we know at the start everyone is there (they can of course leave) but once they can see useful content that they cant get anywhere else they usually stay.

[#10]

I'm exploring Communities to communicate to (and with) the organization about the Microsoft 365 program. I'm curious: how many people were in the community and how did you handle moderation? In theory, it looks promising. In practice, I'm wondering if it would be time-consuming to moderate and answer questions, or if people eventually started doing that themselves?

[#11]

Hi Amy, I personally monitor such a community counting 500 members. It takes me 10-15 minutes each morning I would say to check new messages, answer them and post a new tip 🙂