Teams, Yammer and More
Internal Digital Communications with Microsoft 365
Microsoft Teams is extremely easy to begin to learn. But it is also extremely easy to make it complex and frustrating to work with. Because it doesn’t organize documents the way SharePoint does, even SharePoint users gravitate towards classic SharePoint rather than embracing Teams. This results in many organizations using Teams for chat and meetings with users managing files at their own discretion. More complexity. More frustration. Seeking more options.
Why Teams and Why Now?
MS Teams allows for a unified Internal Comms channel, this will also encourage more use of Sharepoint through Teams Integration. Teams can help reduce over cluttered inboxes which cause many important messages to be missed. In the end, Teams is meant to simplify the life of the organization by having fewer places to collaborate and share documents.
Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each platform:
Outlook – Email
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Pros
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Cons
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- Everyone knows how to use email (do they?)
- Same tool for both internal and external recipients
- Content can be threaded to retain context
- Tools and techniques have evolved over decades
- Accessible on mobile
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- Must be included in an email thread to have access to content
- Offboarding people may continue to receive because of “reply all”
- Sheer volume of emails requires advanced skills to manage
- The mobile experience is mixed (good for receiving/bad for sending)
- Security Risk – Easily spoofed by bad actors
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SharePoint
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Pros
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Cons
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- Rich options for content
- Can be mobile friendly
- Scales from small workgroups to large intranets
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- Reputation amongst employees (“I can’t find anything”)
- Content ROT
- Employees spending more time in Outlook or Teams
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Yammer
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Pros
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Cons
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- Familiar social user experience
- Questions can have designated answers
- Can view public groups without being a member
- Mobile friendly
- Can interact via email
- Employees can tune into groups/topics they find valuable
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- Business use case(s) may not be immediately apparent
- Employees (and employers) may associate Yammer with Facebook (good/bad)
- Tough adoption in some orgs.
- For Yammer to be useful, people need to use; For People to use it, Yammer needs to be useful
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Microsoft Teams
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Pros
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Cons
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- Guaranteed views/usage due to meetings
- Work out loud
- Mobile friendly
- Becoming one-stop-shop
- Less formal experience
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- Must be a member of the Team to see content
- “Another place to go”
- Can lead to interrupted work
- Not easy to mark posts/chats for follow up
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