Introducing Microsoft Teams

Introduction
Microsoft Teams was just announced as being released as Preview to customers.

Microsoft Teams is a continued promise by Microsoft to bring together best of breed capabilities from such solutions as Skype for Business Online, SharePoint Online, Office Online and Exchange Online together to deliver feature rich productivity applications that are not siloed.  Office 365 Groups was the first, now we have Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams introduces a new Persistent Chat solution that allows users to see chat discussions over time.  The chat discussions can be viewed over time between a group a people.  But it is much more than persistent chat.  Microsoft Teams will become a hub for teamwork.  Which quick integrated capabilities as Skype for Business Online, SharePoint Online and Office Online collaboration around content can initiated.  The team experience can also be customized as new tabs can be added to quickly access documents and other cloud services.

General Availability (GA) is set for CY 2017 Q1 with more features and capabilities being added after this.

Where does Microsoft Teams fit in the Overall Office 365 Picture
When you hear about Microsoft Teams you may immediately ask what about SharePoint Teams, Yammer, etc. and then ask when should I use Microsoft Teams.  I say the answer depends on what you are trying to accomplish and you should carefully look at how you end users work and what they are try to accomplish.  Each solution has its place in the enterprise.

• Microsoft Teams – Recommend using when you have a defined group of users who are specifically working on a specific project.  Good for small groups of people who need to collaboration in reach time with each other.
• Office 365 Groups – Recommend using when you have small groups of people who share conversations, group mailbox, files and content with each other, however they may not work in real-time with each other.
• Yammer – Recommend using Yammer for across the “company wide” type of conversations and collaboration and communication.  Communities can be cross business disciplines.
• SharePoint Online -  Recommend using when you have sharing and collaboration across an organization, or longer standing formal content management solutions.  Company intranets, repositories, applications, etc. are great for SharePoint Online.
• Skype for Business Online – Continue using it phone calls, instant message, web meeting, etc.  Skype for Business Online is available across the Office 365 service and is the “glue” for collaboration.

As you can see, all these solutions are still relevant with the introduction of Microsoft Teams.

Turning Microsoft Teams On
It is pretty easy to do.  In the Office 365 Admin console, just go to Settings >> Services & Add Ins >> Microsoft Teams.

Some Other FAQs

• Microsoft Teams is a Suite capability and is available through such plans as E1, E3 and E5.
• There are Office 365 Connectors which can be used to receive updates from third party tools and services
• There is a developer API preview available.
• Microsoft Teams is a cloud feature only, and not available on-premises.

References
Announcement - https://blogs.office.com/2016/11/02/introducing-microsoft-teams-the-chat-based-workspace-in-office-365/
Video - https://blogs.office.com/2016/11/02/take-an-in-depth-look-at-microsoft-teams-now-in-preview/
Developer Preview - https://dev.office.com/blogs/microsoft-teams-developer-preview

New Yammer Integration with Office 365 and SharePoint Online

Introduction

As many of you know Microsoft acquired a company called Yammer who provides a really powerful social platform that is highly utilized by businesses. SharePoint 2013 made some significant strides in providing some new OOB social capabilities such as the new community site template, micro-blogging, a complete facelift to MySite with SkyDrive Pro, improved sharing capabilities, etc. The addition of Yammer strengthens social solutions for Microsoft, not just for SharePoint.

As of today, Microsoft and Yammer are starting to unify the purchase process. For more information, read there:

• https://www.yammer.com/about/pricing/
• https://sites.yammer.com/o365/
• http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/yammer/default.aspx

However the objective of this blog is show you some of the recent updates that have occurred in June 2013 between Office 365, SharePoint Online and Yammer.

Up to this Point

Up this point there were some options to get Yammer hooked into SharePoint Online. These are solutions that people could do while they waited for some integration to be built between SharePoint and Yammer.

• SharePoint Sandbox Solution - First you had the ability to use some web parts that had been written on SharePoint 2010 as sandbox solutions. If you clicked on this link (http://success.yammer.com/integrations/sharepoint/) and scrolled down you will see a file you can download that was built for SharePoint Online. Basically deploy the WSP.
• Yammer Embed – This is an HTML / Javascript solution that can install basically into any type of web application to bring social into that application. It is easy enough to bring in this code into SharePoint Online to get it to work.

New Office 365 and Yammer Integration

What has been initially released is basic integration. In the roadmap (http://blogs.office.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2013/03/19/yammer-and-sharepoint-enterprise-social-roadmap-update.aspx) it was stated Basic Integration would be achieved by:

1. Global Navigation Integration
2. Yammer App for SharePoint

Well I am happy to say both are available, announcement - http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/06/10/make-yammer-your-default-social-network-in-office-365.aspx

Remember the reason why customers come to Office 365 is it is an evergreen service. Microsoft wants to continue to deliver new features and capabilities on a regular basis – this is just another example of that commitment.

Let’s walk through both of these.

Global Navigation Integration

What this solutions basically does is replace the Office 365 default “Newsfeed” link.

With a new link to “Yammer”.

What this effectively does is instead of driving a user to the SharePoint Online Newsfeeds page, the user will be driven to Yammer Newsfeeds instead. This was done to centralize group discussions so that end users do not get confused between SharePoint versus Yammer newsfeeds. This makes it very simple for end users.

Note that this does not remove the “Newsfeed” capability from SharePoint Online; it is still available. The SharePoint Online Newsfeed web part can still be added to pages to allow users to follow SharePoint Online sites, document and tags.

Here is an article on that fully explains how to configure it - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-sharepoint-online-enterprise-help/pick-your-enterprise-social-network-yammer-or-newsfeed-HA104037368.aspx. Note it does take some time for this change to fully complete. The article notes it could take 30 minutes for Yammer link to switch in. I personally saw it switch in pretty quick but it did take longer for it to show completely everywhere. It did complete.

New Yammer App for SharePoint

The second new solution available it the Yammer App for SharePoint which is using the new Apps model - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/store/yammer-app-for-sharepoint-WA104090116.aspx. The app is free and really easy to get added into SharePoint Online. Here is a quick article discussing the app - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-foundation-help/set-up-the-yammer-app-for-sharepoint-HA104079146.aspx.

Right now the app is initially focused on bringing Yammer groups into SharePoint Online to enable augment social collaboration in sites and on content.

Here are some quick steps on getting this set up.

There are numerous ways you can purchase and put rules around how apps will be purchased in your organization. That is not in scope for me right now for this blog. First I just went into SharePoint Online Administration >> Apps >> clicked Purchase Apps.

I was taken to the SharePoint App store. I searched for the Yammer App for SharePoint and was take to this page. I just clicked Add It.

Then I waited for the Yammer App for SharePoint to be added.

I was then given a confirmation of when it was completed.

After that you can do a lot of things around management of the App but again not in scope for this blog.

Next I went to a SharePoint Online site that I wanted to add the Yammer app to. There are tons of ways to add an App. I just went to Site Contents >> clicked Add An App button.

The Yammer App for SharePoint was returned.

I then added it. I was given a prompted to see if I trust it.

Once that is done the Yammer App for SharePoint is now available to this site.

If you click the Yammer App for SharePoint link on the Site Contents page you will be taken this screen which will provide a description of the app.

Next I create a page in my site to add the Yammer App for SharePoint too. I clicked on Add App in the ribbon and then select the Yammer Feed app.

Once that is done the Yammer Feed app is on the SharePoint Page and I need to configure it.

Note – if you have any errors associated to an IFrame and the web part not rendering, you probably have not set up trusted sites. Recommend you read this - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ragnarh/archive/2013/07/02/yammer-app-for-sharepoint-amp-office-365-tips-amp-tricks.aspx.

When I click sign in, this screen comes up where I put in my username and password for Yammer.

Once that is completed the Yammer Feed is ready to go. All you need to do is select what type of feed you want to show.

First I need to select the Network that the group is on.

For demonstration purposes, I pre-created a Yammer Group. Then I selected the Yammer Group I wanted to show by select the 7 digit ID for the Yammer Group.

Then the feed from the Yammer Group is displayed. Easy. If I were to take some more time, I could then start adding document libraries, calendars, HTML content, Excel Services, etc. to the screen creating a mash-up where Yammer enriches the collaboration experience.

On a side note, Yammer App for SharePoint is very exciting for me to see. I have written about this before; I find the SharePoint Apps model very exciting. Why? For years I have built custom SharePoint solutions. One of the biggest challenges I have seen is well-intended developers do is build great solutions however many of these solutions are not architected well. These custom solutions in many cases are too coupled to SharePoint and create agility challenges. SharePoint Apps alleviate this as you are forced to decouple. Apps can be brought into SharePoint quickly and do not have a major impact to the SharePoint environment itself; that is huge. These apps can continually be extended and it is easy to bring these changes in. This allows organizations to be truly agile with SharePoint.

Closing

I believe this level of integration is a good first step. The long-term objective to bring the Office 365 and Yammer closer together by providing even deeper integration between the two platforms so both can leverage one another.

Microsoft Purchases Yammer

Today we had a major announce for Office 365 and SharePoint which I am very excited about. Microsoft announced that we had reached a definitive agreement to buy Yammer, a leading provider of enterprise social networks.

• Press Release - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2012/Jun12/06-25MSYammerPR.aspx
• Kurt DelBene’s Blog - http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/06/25/microsoft-acquires-yammer-to-accelerate-enterprise-social-networking.aspx

Why am I excited about this?
I think we have a great partner portal and social computing solutions in SharePoint Online today; however the addition of Yammer makes our story even stronger and resilient. Yammer is a best-in-class enterprise social networking solution and Microsoft plans to utilize Yammer with SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics and Skype. Microsoft has stated they do not plan to disrupt Yammer’s current business and there will be focus to bring the Yammer services into the products I just mentioned.
It is my job to talk with customers about all of our Office 365 services and I had several customer conversations this year where having a solution like Yammer would have been very helpful.
With Yammer, you have a simple, clean, direct user experience where group workspaces and collaboration areas can be quickly created with tons of business social solutions such as profiles, organization charts, praise, question, messaging, feeds, announcements, member directories, expertise management, leaderboards, events, polls, shared group areas, content collaboration, and tons of additional solutions.