O365 Groups-based Places - Yammer + Teams + Outlook Groups
We are working on several artifacts as we make sense of how to use the emerging 'O365 Groups as a Service'-based Places. 1) our enterprise's take on the O365 apps broken down into Places, Tools and Infrastructure 2) a table comparing Yammer, Outlook Groups and Teams 3) a colloquial description of why one might create a groups-based Place in Yammer vs Teams vs Outlook Would love thoughts and feedback
Office 365 Groups What to Use When Framework and Inforgraphic
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.Experiences "migrating" to an O365 Group
So, I am starting to "migrate" the particular team that I work for over to Groups (that means from our existing SharePoint site, existing Yammer group, existing mailboxes, etc). Wanted to share the general experience and reception so far, with PLUS / MINUS perception notes: PLUS - We are looking to use Group Conversations and shut down use of Yammer for our team discussions. So far users seem more apt to use the conversations because it is more like email, so probably a ding for use of Yammer In general we are going to guide Groups users away from using Yammer PLUS - We are using an automatic group membership (everyone that reports to my Manager) - which works perfectly! We have a revolving door of interns/temps as part of the team, and access to resources is no-brainer. MINUS - This will be our first Modern SharePoint site, and big negative is critical links removed from the UI. Menu - using "/_layouts/15/AreaNavigationSettings.aspx" to recreate our horizontal navigation. This accomplishes what we need, but I fear that it may eventually go away... Permissions - I understand group permission limitations, but our connected SP sites have to have additional viewers and contributors. Right now from the UI, can only apply permissions to Group Owners and Group Members. Using "/_layouts/15/user.aspx" to get around this for now, but again will future updates restrict this? MINUS - Document Migration - we have our own PowerShell scripts that we use to migrate content between sites. The scripts appear to only work run by a Group owner if the person running the script is a Group owner. We typically use a service account and set it as Site Collection Admin, run the move, then remove the service account. Here the service account still doenst have rights even after being made the SCA for a Group. We will definitely be doing most of this for our users since we don't want to put the tedious actions on them MINUS - Calendar - we use a SharePoint Team Site calendar - was able to easily open the SP Calendar in Outlook "Agenda View", copy entries, and paste them into the Group Calendar (in Outlook Agenda View), but they never synced back up, never appeared in the Group calendar, though I see them in my physical Outlook calendar Dont seem to be able to create just an entry (without actually inviting all attendees) MINUS - Group Navigation - switching between the different Groups workloads is still pitiful I've manually entered direct links to the different workloads in the Groups SharePoint Site, but users continually get "lost". They'll end up on the calendar which has no links whatsover (sometimes), the options are in different places in each workload. I know this has been brought up over and over, but its been months and months, if not over a year at this point, and doesnt seem this is getting any better at all. MINUS - Groups files - this is maybe just our opinion, but do not like the Groups Files automatically including email attachments in the default view. Often confusing, especially if things have been moved to the SharePoint files, you see duplicates, etc. PLUS - Groups app - easy access to everything, general consensus is much easier to find stuff from the app then from the web itself MINUS - Groups app notifications - marking conversation messages as read seems to be wonky, users are complaining because they have to physically leave the group a couple times before it tells them they have read all the messages. MINUS - Planner - Though there is excitement about what Planner can be, some negatives emerging - no Planner app, unsure of a way right now to move items from a SharePoint Action Items list to Planner (other than just manually reentering stuff). PLUS - OneNote, this has always been my favorite thing Microsoft has built, so glad to see it easier integrated into our group activities. We are migrating our running Staff Meeting Agenda (from Yammer note) to OneNote MINUS - UI - we have always used a custom enterprise mega menu throughout our SharePoint environment, for easy navigation, with no customization options, we lose this and will have to start teach our users to keep going to our Intranet homepage, then navigate where you want to go with the menu NEUTRAL - Dont care for the single column of the websites, we have traditionally used a custom responsive layout that has at least 2 columns of content. Everything just feels to big / too much whitespace. MINUS - SharePoint App, we have multiple document libraries, the Groups/SharePoint apps really only focus on the primay Shared Documents one. Overall, it seems like it will be a positive adoption, but there are several things that just miss the mark, at least for how our organization works.Office 365 Groups session recordings from Microsoft Ignite 2016
In case you could not join us last week at Microsoft Ignite 2016 in beautiful Atlanta, please find below a list of key Office 365 Groups sessions you might want to watch on a device near you! Topics ranges from overview, usage & adoption, administration, extensibility, roadmap and more. Please share at will with others via social media. Overview & use cases Discover Office 365 Groups - overview, what's new and roadmap Help your users collaborate better with Office 365 Groups Learn about Office 365 Groups and how to use them Use Office 365 Groups at schools and universities Learn what to use when: Office 365 Groups, SharePoint Team Sites, Yammer, and OneDrive for Business Ask us anything about Microsoft Office 365 Groups Communicate on your terms with Outlook, Yammer and Skype Learn how Microsoft IT governs SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups Administration Manage Office 365 Groups Explore the ultimate field guide to Microsoft Office 365 Groups Collaborate outside the firewall with Office 365 Groups Migrate DL to Microsoft Office 365 Groups Partner teams: SharePoint, Planner, Yammer Discover what's new and what's coming to the SharePoint Mobile and Intelligent Intranet Meet Planner - the new Microsoft Office 365 work management application Work smarter with Yammer and Office 365 Groups Connect your business critical applications to Outlook and GroupsO365 Groups Management Concerns
I have been getting quite a bit of flack for not releasing O365 Groups on my campus. While I would love to release Groups and its other apps, I have some concerns. 1. Naming policy still not in Azure AD. We are trying to avoid namespace issues. This is the number one reason why we have not implemented Groups. This is necessary for our environment. 2. Naming prefixes for apps like StaffHub(doesn't seem to work), Teams(can't find one), Exchange(Only applies in Outlook, not in admin console.) etc, all provide a different experience. 3. When deleting a Group, things still seem to hang around(SharePoint space). From what I have read other users have experienced this issue as well. 4. For existing Groups that maybe want to use StaffHub, where is the option to add it,? Tt would be awesome if it was like how you would add an existing group in Teams. 5. There doesn't seem to be any cmdlets for the group creation for StaffHub , Team, or Yammer. The cmdlets are only for licensing. 6. Retention policies. From what I have read groups are not a permanent space like SharePoint. With that being said, I could see many students using this. If this cuts in to our tenant space, it would be nice to set expirations on Group spaces. I would be interested in hearing what other folks are doing with O365 Group management and how they are addressing the above. I can see how many of these apps could benefit our users but I also want to be prepared.New Feature: All newly created Yammer groups will connect to Office 365 Groups
I saw below message in message center. New Feature: All newly created Yammer groups will connect to Office 365 Groups MC87864 Published On : December 6, 2016 Expires On : April 30, 2017 Beginning January 2017, when a new Yammer group is created, a corresponding Office 365 group will be created in Azure Active Directory, and Office 365 Group resources will be provisioned. This rollout is expected to be completed by the end of March 2017. We have already disbaled O365 Groups in our environment. If some one creates group in Yammer is it still going to create office365 group even though it is disabled?Office 365 Groups with IDN e-mail addresess
When the user starts creating new Office 365 Group (Microsoft Teams/Yammer) and he chooses international display name of this group in Yammer or Teams app, the group e-mail address is created in international IDN format. For example, we are in Czech and user choose "Žlutí koníci", it does not offer creating "zluti-konici@tenant" like that, but it create "xn--lutkonci-e2ad10n@tenant" which is not really usable address for external members and to write down and some clients does not support IDN yet. We can renemae the group, but users creating this and it starts broking naming convention. Is there some option to disable creating names and e-mail address in IDN format for Groups/Teams?New infographic: document circle of life
"Where should I store my files?" and "What's the difference between SharePoint and OneDrive?" If you get these questions a lot, this infographic could seriously help build a standard lifecycle for files and documents. Also applicable to Teams, Outlook Groups, and Yammer, since they use SharePoint in the background. Link below for full-size version. http://icsh.pt/DocCircleOfLife http://icsh.pt/DocCircleOfLife
