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Office 365 Groups Explained - New blog series

Steel Contributor

Hi everyone,

 

Noticed that Office 365 Groups are still a topic that starts a lot of discussions and often associated with those I hear things that are simply not true :)

So I decided to start a blog series to explain what they are from A-Z, here is what I am thinking:

 

The Office 365 Groups Complete Series:

The first blog is released and the second with a more in depth look at things coming next week. Let me know if you'd like me to dive into something in particular I will definitly be looking at your comments.

https://en.share-gate.com/blog/office-365-groups-explained

Office 365 Groups ExplainedOffice 365 Groups Explained

16 Replies

Thanks for sharing @Benjamin Niaulin!

I like the diagram, but would suggest some enhancements. To me the new SharePoint is about News, Files and Lists and so becomes quite simple to describe. There needs to be some Skype in their somewhere, maybe under meetings.

best response confirmed by David Leveille (Steel Contributor)
Solution
Hey Steven!
Skype is not integrated to Office 365 Groups, Microsoft Teams is and does provide Chat/Meeting functionality. The tech used is Skype, but not to the point to put it in there.

I put SharePoint under Site & File, meaning everything you mentioned above. The description also mentions that it gives you everything SharePoint Site Collection gives you. News aka Pages in a library, Lists, Document Libraries not for pages, etc... PowerApps, Flows and all kind of things that can be attached to SharePoint.
Kept it simple in the interest of being able to quick consuming it.

Just curious though, did something in the way I put SharePoint confuse you?

Will continue to work on it as things change, thanks for commenting!
Skype 4B can use a Group to send messages, view presence etc. I know it's a bit disconnected, but it's kind of awkward to draw an Office 365 picture without Skype on it.

The SharePoint description doesn't sound very enticing, "all the usual features" doesn't really get across the new site experience, modern pages, modern lists etc. I tell my users this is all new stuff, an exciting new service.

Excited about this series. Would potentially like to see a 6th option in the series around differences/limitations from the standalone versions of the tools. Though maybe that falls into your 5th bullet.

I put together a long list of my "real life findings" so far trying to consolidate from existing individual workloads into Office 365 groups. Example, (replacing a SharePoint calendar with a groups calendar is weird because notifications get sent for everything). Planner apparently has some pretty weak limitations in quantity of tasks (i think it is 250, but havent been able to confirm/deny), and that is a killer for many of our workgroups we are planning to transition.  Plus I wouldnt really call it full-fledged sharepoint, it is "dummified" a bit which is good and bad, alot of things we are trying to move in from existing sites don't quite line up, or you have to use special hidden links to accomplish basic site management tasks.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Groups/Experiences-quot-migrating-quot-to-an-O365-...

Fair point for SharePoint, will see if I can "sell it more". The point I want to bring across though is more what you get with an Office 365 Group.

Note that it is not an Office 365 Picture I am painting, but one that explains what you get when you create an Office 365 Group. And unfortunately, you don't get anything in Skype when you create a Group.

You do get an auto-updating contact list in S4B technically :)

Our users actually like that feature.
Hi Brent! Thanks for taking the time that is a really good idea!
Towards the end, I'll spend some time and gather all boundaries and limits for Groups and its individual products.
Thanks :)

Here's a group in my Skype App, I can use it as a DL, send a message to all etc.

 

Capture.PNG

 

Totally get what you mean Steven :)

It's just to me, that's accessing the Object in AAD that is the Group and doing a group chat. Skype doesn't create anything from my point of view. Same reason I wouldn't add Word for accessing the content stored somewhere in the Group.

Skype is definitely part of Office 365, but in this diagram I strictly wanted to show products that create something new that you should know about and will need to manage if your are an admin or Power User of some sort.

Again thanks, at the very least a good topic for a blog :D

Wow..!!

 

Very neat. Thanks for putting this together for people like us who has disabled groups in Org and waiting on some roadmaps (soft delete and retention) to be rolled out so that we can reinstate groups again.

High quality content as always Ben. keep up the good work.

I really like this, much needed. We are trying to down play Groups as a "thing " for users. Would recommend it not be shown as a cloud. Would rather see people icons or pictures at top, not circles. This is about Groups of people using common tools and data. There was another thread where someone talked about Places and Tools which is a good concept. In some ways a Group is a place to use Tools. 

 

Looking forward and appreciate the efforts,

 

Rob. 

Office 365 Groups are the single most changeable part of the entire service. I say this from the perspective of someone who has attempted to document the changing landscape of groups for the past two years in the "Office 365 for IT Pros" ebook. To give some insight into the degree of change, I believe that our first chapter on the topic occupied some 25 pages, which we thought was pretty decent coverage at that time. Now, chapter 9 has expanded to 82 pages, so it's a monster (we plan to split the chapter for the fourth edition of the book). 

 

If anyone would like to let us know about stuff that we need to cover that isn't already there, I'd be interested to know what you think... So that 82 pages becomes 100+ and we have a mini book all about Groups (and we haven't yet documented how Yammer uses Office 365 Groups because that feature is not yet available).

 

TR

Nice post and Blog, easy to read to. "Thumbs up"

 

Thanks for sharing this

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by David Leveille (Steel Contributor)
Solution
Hey Steven!
Skype is not integrated to Office 365 Groups, Microsoft Teams is and does provide Chat/Meeting functionality. The tech used is Skype, but not to the point to put it in there.

I put SharePoint under Site & File, meaning everything you mentioned above. The description also mentions that it gives you everything SharePoint Site Collection gives you. News aka Pages in a library, Lists, Document Libraries not for pages, etc... PowerApps, Flows and all kind of things that can be attached to SharePoint.
Kept it simple in the interest of being able to quick consuming it.

Just curious though, did something in the way I put SharePoint confuse you?

Will continue to work on it as things change, thanks for commenting!

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