The top ten things as a Collaboration Manager that I learned at Microsoft Ignite 2016

As a Collaboration Manager for a medium sized UK business, I attended Ignite with the principle purpose to learn what was coming from Microsoft and how it would affect my users

Here are the top ten things that I learned from the conference:

1. I finally understood what all the fuss was about Office Groups - they'll be a genuine game changed for working teams to more easily get their work done, shared and found in search
   
2. An Office 365 Group created in Yammer will use Yammer as it's conversation space, but a Group created anywhere else will use Yammer
   
3. Delve is so integral to the Office 365 experience that I want to launch it within my company as soon as possible
   
   
4. The struggle for any company to create an Intranet 'out-of-the-box' should be greatly improved with the advent of 'News' in SharePoint team sites using the new modern pages functionality
   
5. We will be able to effectively lock down access to our Office 365 portal using Intune, domain joined machines and IP ranges - huge boon for security conscious companies
   
6. Modern pages and sites are mobile compliant (responsive) automatically and look fantastic
   
7. Cortana, using the Office Graph, will play a bigger role in organising your day, week and projects in the coming future
   
8. A lot of the really cool features require an E5 licence
9. Microsoft people are really passionate about their products and Microsoft and represent such a dramatic change in reputation, perspective and future than the Microsoft from the days of 'Old IT'
   
10. I'd like a job at Microsoft as a Product Manager!

Switching between Yammer and Outlook in Office 365 Groups is not possible

At the Microsoft Ignite 2016 conference, Adrienne Trudeau, Senior Product Manager for Yammer at Microsoft, confirmed that an Office 365 Group will not allow you to swap between Yammer and Outlook in the group

So how can I choose which one I have in my group?
This is thankfully really simple:

• If your group was initially created in Yammer, then it will come with a Yammer group, but not Outlook persistent conversation (it will still come with a distribution list)
  
• If you create  your group anywhere else in 365, including in the admin portal, then your group will be give an Outlook persistent conversation experience and no Yammer group

Office 365 Groups - Yammer or Outlook and how to select which one my group has

At the Microsoft Ignite 2016 conference, it was announced that Yammer would be coming to Office 365 Groups

This is big news and a real driver for social collaboration and chat.

Yammer or Outlook, not both
However, Office Groups, for the foreseeable future, will not have both Outlook and Yammer for tracking conversation within the group.

How can I choose which one I have in my group?
This is thankfully really simple:

• If your group was initially created in Yammer, then it will come with a Yammer group, but not Outlook persistent conversation (it will still come with a distribution list)
• If you create  your group anywhere else in 365, including in the admin portal, then your group will be give an Outlook persistent conversation experience and no Yammer group

Can I swap between them?
No, is the simple answer. Microsoft Product Management are aware of the need to be able to swap between the two services, or even have both, but  this is currently not available and only in their back-log.

If you do have a genuine need to change from Yammer to Outlook or vice-versa, then you will need to create a new group and migrate all content.

I'll write up a post in the future about when to use either Yammer or Outlook and outline some of the benefits of each approach.

When would you use OneDrive for Business over a SharePoint site?

OneDrive for Business is a focused destination for your personal files and for sharing and collaboration in small working teams

What are the benefits of OneDrive for Business?

• User centric control - it's my OneDrive and I can do what I want with it (subject to company global policy and configurations)
• It's browser based, so can be accessed from any computer or device anywhere in the world
• Uploading is as easy as drag and drop
• There are dedicated mobile apps and a desktop clients so that you can sync your content and take it offline

Who should use a OneDrive for Business?

• Anyone who creates or edits files in your orgnisation

What are the use cases where a OneDrive for Business is awesome?

• I'm flying somewhere or will be offline for a while, but with OneDrive I can still bring my files along with me
• I want to directly manage exactly who can access my files and what they can do with that access
• I want to store lots of files that only I can see and manage
• I want to make sure that if my laptop stops working or is stolen (or any device for that matter with OneDrive app installed) that I don't lose access to my data
• I want to store lots and lots of files
• I'd rather have my small team work on documents in one central place rather than manage versions across email

Why shouldn't I use a OneDrive for Business?

It's a personal working space, so if you're working on something with 10 or more people, on something sensitive that needs governance and centralisation or there's a demand for others to share control and accountability, the you need to look elsewhere. A OneDrive will do the above, as far as sharing and managing files will go, but there are improved and more effective methods for businesses, such as a SharePoint team site.

Microsoft Office 365 modern pages are not coming to Publishing Sites any time soon

Microsoft Ignite 2016
I recently attended the Microsoft 2016 Ignite conference and asked Dave Cohen, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, whether modern pages were coming to Publishing Sites and it was a categorical 'No, not yet, but it's a great idea'.

Justification
The justification given was that publishing sites are immensely more complicated than a standard team site and the decision was taken to bring new modern pages, and modern sites, to the team site template first.

Impact to a business
I'll have to be very clear with them that when this functionality hits our tenant later in 2016, that the content creation experiences between team templates and all other Office 365 SharePoint templates will be significantly different.

I've built an Enterprise Wiki with thousands of pages and my users would have loved this functionality.

Personal opinion
I can see why Microsoft have done this, and I'm sure they will get around to it, but for those using Publishing Sites it's a significant miss and one that will cause increased questioning and frustration from my business users.

I've also asked Dave Cohen, on Twitter, for more info.

Learn more about the new Intelligent Intranet and modern pages and sites over on the blogs.office.com site.

Modern sites and pages preview
A nice GIF showing off the new features from modern sites and pages (pinched from the Office blog).

Office 365 in a nutshell

Office 365 is a complete collaboration solution for small, medium and large enterprise businesses.

It offers:

• Email
• Document management
• Knowledge management
• Video sharing
• Instant messaging
• Voice
• Virtual meeting rooms
• Web based presentations
• Social messaging

Pricing is simple. All of the above is available for a single fee per user and either on a per month or per annum basis. The latter being cheaper. There are various levels of licence on offer for Office 365 to suit business needs and budget.

Mobility is included as standard and there are a suite of apps for iOS and Android. Everything is also accessible from any modern and updated browser on almost any device.

Security features are prominent and integral to the solution with the ability to add in additional capabilities from third-party vendors should you need.

The app-store has hundreds of functionality rich apps that further enhance the feature set of the Office 365 suite; many of which are free.

Set-up can be achieved in a very short period of time, but integration with existing systems, especially those using latest generation Microsoft software and licences will have a much easier time.

Cloud based solutions, like Office 365, allow rapid innovation, near real-time feedback and new opportunities (i.e. to fail quickly and often). Office 365 is now a 5 year old solution and is robust for the enterprise, but enjoys much faster innovation and improvement then traditional on-premise products.

In fact, Microsoft has said that their priorities are mobile first, cloud second and on-premise third.

Office 365 Journey blog

As a Collaboration Manager, with 3 years experience working with Office 365 and over 10 years with SharePoint, I've learned a great deal about the steps it takes to make Office 365 a success within an organisation. I'd like to share my successes, stories and challenges so that others can learn fast and hopefully skip some of the fails.

If you have any questions, or situations you'd like advice on, then please post a comment and I'd be happy to share my experiences on that topic.