Office 365 Training

Microsoft 365 includes several productivity applications that are designed to cover collaboration needs at the organizational, departmental and team levels. Currently, the list of collaboration tools includes One Drive for Business, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Skype for Business, Outlook Online and Delve boards. The wide choice of tools is the source of ongoing debates about the purpose of each tool and their optimal application in real business life.

There are several approaches to defining the role of Microsoft 365 collaboration tools in an organization. Key aspects that influence the choice of a certain tool are particular communication needs, team size, project specifics, as well as employees’ preferences. According to the use case approach, each collaboration tool suits a particular collaboration scenario. SharePoint Online often serves as a platform for corporate intranets and portals the same way as SharePoint On-Premises does. At the same time, SharePoint Online comes not only with team sites but also with communication sites and hub sites (Microsoft 365 First Release customers will be able to try them out in the first half of 2018). Microsoft Teams enable collaboration channels for public or private communication, as well as voice and video conferences. Outlook Online hosts email-based collaboration. Yammer serves for communication with business users outside of an organization and enables forum-like enterprise-wide and team communication. Skype for Business supports instant messaging, VoIP, audio, video and web conferencing. As for Delve boards, they allow creating boards to group together and share related documents. Additionally, there are Microsoft 365 Groups that represent rather a technological capability within the suite than a tool apart. Microsoft 365 Groups allow creating separate collaboration spaces in other Microsoft 365 tools.

An Microsoft 365 Group can be organized in Outlook, SharePoint Online, Yammer, Microsoft Teams and other collaboration tools to diversify the native collaboration capabilities of these applications. For example, if a team collaborates in a Group in Yammer, its members automatically get a team calendar, a shared Outlook inbox, a SharePoint library, a SharePoint team site, a shared One Note notebook and Planner.