The Irony of Change
While technology has evolved dramatically overtime, the approach to change management around implementing new technology, ironically, seems to have stayed relatively constant. In 1985, the Harvard Business Review published an https://hbr.org/1985/11/implementing-new-technology titled “Implementing New Technology.” Although the technology referenced in the article is outdated; the concepts surrounding the challenges of rolling out and driving adoption, as well as the strategies used to address these challenges strike a very similar chord as strategies used today—including taking on a marketing approach, like we discussed in a post last week. Here are some of the quotes that resonated with us the most from the article: “New technologies, no matter what their origin, confront managers with a distinct set of challenges” “Generally, when technology is rolled out, it is handed off between organizations, but the runners should have been running in parallel for a long time” “Think of implementation as an internal marketing, not selling, job…selling starts with a finished product; marketing, with research on user needs and preferences” “The organizational hills are full of managers who believe that an innovation’s technical superiority and strategic importance will guarantee acceptance” “An innovation needs a champion to nurture it, and any new technology capable of inspiring strong advocacy will also provoke opposition.” Implementation Paradox: “The higher the organizational level at which managers define a problem, the greater the probability of successful implementation. However, the closer the definition and solution of problems or needs are to end-users, the greater the probability of success” Sound familiar? Do you agree that the principles of change are relatively constant? Do the change management principles shared in the article still apply today?Connecting with people to drive adoption
Today, the move to the cloud is broadening how IT pro roles are perceived—providing more opportunities for you to participate directly in business decision making and strategy development. Many of you are likely involved in—or even directly responsible for—increasing Office 365 adoption to speed your company’s ROI and improve productivity. And if you’re like a lot of the IT pros I’ve talked with, you’ve recognized the need to develop or deepen a new set of skills that can help you succeed. The evolution of your role might require you to work more closely with users than you have in the past. So, your people skills—leadership, communication, relationship-building—take on increased importance in helping you: Engage users and overcome their reticence to technology change. Understand users’ needs, and then match those needs to Office 365 capabilities. Create an implementation plan to motivate and train users. For now, we’ll explore three ways you might engage users and overcome their reticence to technology change. In future posts, we’ll take a closer look at understanding and matching users’ needs to Office 365 capabilities and creating an implementation plan. Be sensitive to how stressful this can be for some users Anxiety about learning something new can galvanize into fear-avoidance behaviors that can make adoption even more challenging—for you and for your users. As Mott MacDonald Business Architect Simon Denton stated, “We’re in a time now where we can’t just expect people to use what we provide…Employees want to understand how a new product is relevant to them and their work, and how it will help them with their clients.” For https://blogs.office.com/2016/04/15/driving-successful-adoption-of-office-365-at-mott-macdonald/, the best approach to encourage Office 365 adoption was to use customized posters and email templates from http://fasttrack.office.com/, and by identifying and engaging its employees most interested in and enthusiastic about the new Office 365 capabilities as technology champions. These champions played critical role in communicating about the transition with colleagues across the organization. Putting more effort into promoting, supporting, and fostering adoption paid off for Mott MacDonald in the higher level of engagement employees demonstrated throughout the transition process. Consider exactly what users might be resisting The user reluctance you see could be about more than the technology change itself. Research has shown that in many cases, people are just as fearful about social change—how the relationships they’ve built within and across teams will be affected—as they are about adopting new technologies. However, you know that Office 365 will enable them to develop even closer relationships with co-workers because they’ll have tools at their fingertips that enable stronger collaboration. As Harold Groothedde, technology solutions director at https://msenterprise.global.ssl.fastly.net/wordpress/2017/03/Coats-Case-Study.pdf explains, with Office 365, “Employees can communicate with one another instantly, in any way that suits the need.” He adds that Coats has been able to “connect a workforce fragmented across many sites and time zones in a seamless way.” From email to video calls, the new collaboration channels at Coats allows employees to connect with each other directly and instantly—in a way that’s most comfortable for them. Show users how much better work is going to be Go beyond project schedules, deployment details, and training. Most of us are working on almost twice the number of teams we were five years ago. Juggling more projects that involve more people can make it even more challenging for us to step out of our comfort zones. We become so totally focused on getting things done, that we just find what works and stick with it. That’s why it’s important to take the time to help users understand how Office 365 can make their work lives better. And how even small changes can have a big impact on their productivity. James McGlennon, EVP and CIO at https://blogs.office.com/2017/01/31/liberty-mutual-launches-an-it-transformation/, shared that Office 365 puts “business analytics tools in the hands of everyone, not just analysts and power users…to drive product innovation.” You might even find opportunities to reassure them about what won’t change. At Liberty Mutual, for example, day-to-day operations haven’t changed dramatically, but better collaboration across different business units has increased accessibility to more information and valuable insights—enabling employees to make better decisions. What’s next? The tips I’ve discussed here are just a few of the ways you can more effectively engage users to overcome their fear of technology change. Check out http://fasttrack.microsoft.com/ for resources, tools, and expert guidance to help you successfully drive adoption. And learn how other companies have successfully increased adoption by taking a look at our case study series about approaching adoption as a marketing campaign and outsourcing adoption. Also, be sure to download the introduction of the https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=843464 for end-to-end planning and implementation guidance.Help your users be successful with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 with training & tips in their inbox
As a steward for your business, you’re always looking for ways to help your users get more from the technology you provide to them. We’ve heard from admins that one way to achieve this is with product tips and training content that their users can quickly use. This content often is available at the https://support.office.com/office-training-center , but users must currently seek it out themselves—and too often, they don’t. Email for product tips and training is coming The new email content from Microsoft will include only tips and training relevant to products and services you have enabled for your users. Be assured that we will not send your users sales, marketing, or advertising messages. Here is an example of a training email. Phased rollout We recognize that smaller organizations are juggling different priorities and often their IT admins wear multiple hats. That’s why we’ll start by sending the email communications to subset of customers that have Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, and subscriptions in the US and Australia. If you are an administrator for an organization that is part of this rollout, you’ll receive a notification in the Message Center, as well as an email reminder seven days before the first training tips email is sent to your users. Please note that you will be notified by the message center before the first training email is sent to your users. All training emails will only be sent from MicrosoftOffice365@email2.office.com email address. Admin is in control As the administrator for your organization, you’re in control. You have the flexibility to unsubscribe from these emails at any time on behalf of your organization by switching the ‘End User Communications’ setting to Off in the admin center. You can always subscribe later by changing the setting to On. Follow these steps to unsubscribe your organization from the training emails: 1. Sign In to the admin center 2. Click on Show all from the left navigation bar 3. Click on Settings 4. Click on Services & add-ins 5. Click on End User Communications 6. Change the setting and click on Save If you leave the email messages enabled for your organization, individual users can still unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the Unsubscribe link in the email footer. Users can also visit the Security & privacy page of their https://portal.office.com/landing to unsubscribe. Preview the first training email and send it yourself Seven days before the first message is sent to users, global admins will be sent an email reminder with the opportunity to preview the content. This preview email will be sent only for the initial training content. If you prefer to send the training email yourself, just unsubscribe at the tenant level, then download a ready-to-send template from the preview email and send the first training email at your convenience. Give us feedback We’re always listening and learning from you. Please continue to provide feedback using the feedback button within the admin center.Email approval Button missing in Hybrid Scenario (Complete solution with troubleshooting)
In pure cloud or pure on-premises environment email approval works fine without any error. But in Hybrid scenario it’s very difficult to make sure email approval works when users are in cross premise environment. If you look for Microsoft Doc or any other third-party document, you won’t find any proper document. Here I am sharing one full step including all kinds of troubleshooting. The key and only factor of working with email approval is TNEF (Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format). TNEF, also known as the Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format, Outlook Rich Text Format, or Exchange Rich Text Format, is a Microsoft-specific format for encapsulating MAPI message properties. All versions of Outlook fully support TNEF. Outlook on the web (formerly known as Outlook Web App) translates TNEF into MAPI and displays the formatted messages. Other email clients that don't support TNEF typically display TNEF formatted messages as plain text messages with Winmail.dat or Win.dat attachments. Step by step demonstration to resolve email approval issue: The email approval button was missing because you have disabled TNEF or TNEF is not enabled. To enable TNEF log into your exchange server and run two PowerShell command in your exchange management shell. Get-RemoteDomain | Select Name, DomainName, TNEF*, Trust*, AllowedOOF*, IsIn* [To check ] Get-RemoteDomain | Set-RemoteDomain -TNEFEnabled $true [To change] After you change the TNEF you will see Approval button reappeared in your outlook. But it will create you another problem. Your email will start getting Winmail.dat as attachment. To resolve the issue, you have to change the setting from your ECP. You are receiving Winmail.dat because you made the change only from exchange on premise side. You did not changed some from office 365 side. You have to make sure Rich text format is disabled or you can use HTML or plain text. Because not everyone can read or convert rich text format. Login to office 365 admin portal and navigate to exchange admin center (convert to classic exchange) Select mail flow Inside mail flow select remote domain Select Default one and make necessary changes (Screenshot-1) If you have only one create a new one for your custom domain Click plus and keep everything same except same option (Screenshot-2) In domain name place use *.contoso.com After everything setting properly sometimes you might see some approval might fail with a NDR message To resolve the issue, add all the on-premise system mailbox in office 365 as mail contact. First find system mailboxes from on premise using below command. Login to on premise exchange management shell and run below command Get-Mailbox -Arbitration | Fl Name, DisplayName Add them into office 365 as mail contact following below format. Format: SPTP:Email address removed Replace System mailbox value with the value you found from on premise Replace custom domain with your domain name. Example: SMTP:SystemMailbox{2CE344-31E-D-9D7-A7C7D7A0DAA}@contoso.com Give first name, last name, and display name whatever you want. Just make sure you add email address according to format. Go to Office 365 exchange admin center Go to recipient Go to contact Click add contactMicrosoft Teams, Office 365 Groups, SharePoint, Yammer… What Should I Use, and When?
Dux Raymond Sy and Blair Hainsworth presented this session at Ignite Austraila 2017. For today's fast-paced, mobile-driven, and globally dispersed workplace, Microsoft offers tons of great ways to effectively communicate and collaborate. But which tools are right for your organisation? Solutions like Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Groups, Yammer, Skype for Business, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow all offer something unique to your business. In this interactive session, you will gain practical guidance on finding the right tools to facilitate efficient communications and collaboration both inside and outside the walls of your organisation. We’ll also explain how to drive adoption and keep your chosen solution under control. Get ready to walk away with the ability to chart a productive and pragmatic collaboration approach that delivers immediate and lasting value to your modern workplace.Driving adoption just got easier with the launch of Microsoft Training Services
Today we announced the next steps in simplifying Office 365 training and adoption from the main stage of SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas. Microsoft Training Services will simplify training scenarios for our customers with out of the box solutions that can be implemented in SharePoint Online. Customers will have a choice of a streamlined webpart which delivers training content in a playlist format right to their own SharePoint Online site or the ability to deploy the full Toolkit for Teamwork experience which includes both training content, adoption guidance and Champion community best practices. Content will support a large set of the Office 365 workloads including SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Office applications and more. This set of capabilities will be in our next pilot phase in July, 2018. Learn more from the announcement post at https://aka.ms/SPC18-MTS To be added to the pilot waitlist or to learn more register at https://aka.ms/mtspilot.Tool for training needs analysis
I'm not sure if I'm in the right place to ask this... Part of my role is to drive adoption of O365 in our customer's organisations. I'm looking for a cloud-based tool to assess who needs training, which aspects of the suite they need training in and possibly even how best they like to learn (instructor-led, video, self-paced etc). Ideally the tool would give me a good idea of the digital literacy of each employee and where their strengths and weaknesses lie with each app (e.g Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint etc). Any help with this from the community would be greatly appreciated!
