- [Instructor] Knowing some of the differences
between Office 365 Groups, Microsoft Teams,
SharePoint Online, and Yammer
is the beginning of what we need to know
about how we might collaborate in a particular organization.
In addition, how and where we collaborate
relies on designing an infrastructure
that unambiguously answers two specific questions.
First, if I look at a particular piece of communication,
a piece of work, a project, an interest,
what kind of collaborative group does that effort need?
And secondarily, the questions every user asks
as soon as we start to change our infrastructure,
"Where's my stuff?
Where do I put my files, and where do I find files?"
If you're involved in decision-making
around your organization's collaboration infrastructure,
there's a design process that you use
to help answer these questions.
Here's a high level overview of the process.
First, you identify your current collaborative teams,
both formal and informal.
Who's using SharePoint, who's using Teams,
who's using Yammer, who's using Office 365 Groups.
And then, which of these actually have active use,
which are the most active SharePoint team sites,
the most vital Yammer communities.
Focus on your users who are already collaborating,
because you can learn things from them
that are specific to your organization.
Document their use cases and their requirements
so that you can match them up
with the tools that are available,
and you'll have a design.
Now, many organizations have already done their own version
of this process.
And out of their work,
we see trends emerging for organizations
that are licensed for the enterprise version of Office 365
and so are using all of the pieces
of this collaboration stack.
This is what an infrastructure
using the Office 365 tools looks like.
We begin with Teams.
Teams are the hub of our work-life.
This is where we collaborate on work
and deliver on outcomes.
When I go to Teams, I find my work groups.
In some companies, those Teams might be organized
around departments or around geographies,
but more frequently Teams is organized around small groups
and the projects that they're working on.
My participation in a team is usually mandatory.
I'm assigned to a team based on my skills or my role,
and when the work of a team is done,
usually that team is done as well.
Next, we have SharePoint.
If you work directly in SharePoint,
you are probably in a group whose goal
is to communicate company-wide or with very large groups.
An example would be if we had an initiative in a sales group
to help every employee impact sales.
We might then set up a SharePoint communication site
to communicate that information.
The other type of work group
that will require SharePoint is a group
that works on document production
with specialized requirements.
An example might be the office of corporate counsel
that needs to have a particular way
to store and manage legal documents,
or the group in an organization
that's in charge of the policy manual.
Office 365 Groups are for short-lived or informal teams,
for ad hoc collaboration.
An Office 365 group might be our answer
to how are we going to support the group
that plans a company event?
In many organizations, almost every person
is allowed to create an Office 365 group,
even if those will be managed by IT.
And finally, Yammer.
Until recently, Yammer was most frequently used
as Teams and Office 365 Groups are used now,
for small working groups.
The new Yammer is designed for communities,
which could be small, but are often very large,
communities based on a common interest.
And unlike Teams, communities are not time limited,
because they're not focused directly on deliverables,
the work doesn't get done, and the community keeps ongoing.
Yammer communities are fluid,
and your participation in a community
is almost always voluntary.
You join the community while you're interested,
and you leave when you are no longer interested.
Yammer is also well-positioned
for organization-wide communications,
like CEO updates and all-staff meetings.
Whenever we are storing documents and sharing documents,
they will be stored in SharePoint.
SharePoint is the file storage for Office 365.
But unless you are one of the people
using SharePoint sites directly,
you may primarily access your files
from Microsoft Teams on the Teams File tab,
or the Files tab in Yammer,
or the Library in Office 365.
What about documents that aren't yet being shared
with any team, with any community, or group, or SharePoint?
OneDrive for Businesses
is where I will store my work-related files.
And while those files are private to me, I can share them.
If I want to share a file with two or three people
for a short period of time,
there's no reason for me to set up any community,
or group, or site to do that sharing.
I can simply share directly from OneDrive for Business,
which is of course also storage inside SharePoint.
If you store your files in this way, using SharePoint,
and OneDrive for Business,
that means that every single document that you create
is going to be backed up
without any additional effort on your part,
and it will be readily available to be shared with others
on your team, in your group, in SharePoint, in Yammer.