Office 365 Groups What to Use When Framework and Inforgraphic

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There's been plenty of buzz about which new Office 365 tools to use and in turn it's generated a lot of great content. We struggled with the same problem at AvePoint and decided to create a simple framework to help those in charge of collaboration pick the right combination of tools for their business processes. 

We've now converted that into a simple infographic and post as well and hope others can benefit from it too :) 

https://www.avepoint.com/blog/strategy-blog/how-to-use-office-365-groups/

What are some of the deciding factors your organizations are using to pick the right tool today? Would love to learn more from the community as well.

[#2]

This is really really really great! I like the phrase-ology for tempo. Ive been calling it "slow collaboration" versus "rapid collaboration".

I would like to see it referred to more than just "Outlook", it is a bit misleading.

Since it called dibs in my opinion, I think distinguishing it as Outlook Groups, or just Groups, would help the graphic. Otherwise, I am thinking that is just regular email.

[#3]

Nice work and very well explained when to use what :)

[#4]

Interesting that you consider Yammer to be formal, as quite often I see it used in a more informal or conversational way. I would worry that if Yammer became too formal, it would simply turn into the old school intranet home page with nothing but company news that no one reads on it.

Clear and concise guidance though, good stuff!

[#5]

I agree that Yammer being 100% only used for formal doesn't necessarily use the potential that Yammer can drive as a communication tool. As far as this infographic alignment, it does tend to fit better in the more formal category in my opinion. I have seen it mainly used as a mix of overall company formal groups and then smaller more ad-hoc groups but the all company solution more popular. Both scenarios for Yammer usage still lead under the great breakdown of tempo as "Any Tempo."

[#6]

Thank you for the feedback. I totally agree. Outlook/Exchange/Outlook Groups / etc. will take this back to the drawing board!

[#7]

This was a tricky one for us. We believe that Yammer has an ad-hoc structure in communication but you should almost always have a "professional" tone since Yammer casts such a wide net across your org (or even across multiple orgs). There is still some wiggle room to be a bit more "fun" with your Yammer posts though.

Before MS Teams we were much more casual in our smaller Yammer Groups  but as the platform took off we realized that more and more eyes were on this. We've since adopted a similar approach to social media with Yammer. 

"Would you be OK tweeting this? Posting this to Facebook or LinkedIn?"

[#8]

Hi David,

When we were building this out, we were looking at this from the stance of 'how do you want to represent yourself'. So when we were deciding where to place Yammer, we said "well if we're going a broadcast to the company, we would write out the initial post as formal in case a C-Level were to read". But the hope was then to drive a conversational tone in the responses. Yammer was a tricky one!

Great feedback!

[#9]

Maybe just my slant on things, but I put much more faith in C-level who understand that there is a time and place for formal, and that there is a time and place for more conversational as long as it is still within social constraints. Since Yammer is internal, I consider that conversational and have much more faith in those that talk like a human as opposed to some internal comms washed robot ;)

Save the formal for external facing if formal matches your culture. Don't be a robot to your employees :)

Cheers guys, good discussion.

[#10]

More and more I use the tool that connects me to the people I want to work with; all this old-style talk of "deciding", you have to go where the people are and use the channel / tool that the target audience/ group / team are using. And sometimes the answers is #slack!

[#11]

Hey Sheyam, this is perhaps the first explainer I've seen that I actually like. I think I agree with the position of Yammer in the formal tone, it kind of makes sense while not really being intuitive.

[#12]

Shyam, this is good stuff. I have been mulling over how to break down factors for our organization so I like that you have simplified it to 3 factors and like that you used tempo (I had urgency/time sensitivity). The only comment (my opinion) is similar to what others have mentioned I wouldn't put Yammer as a formal tone. I understand the thought process of why your team felt it should be formal I think for us it would fall more on the informal side of things. Either way, thanks for sharing this!

[#13]

Definitely agree. Culture and leadership play a big "outside factor" in many of these decisions. IT being a champion of those is definitely necessary today.