Microsoft Teams as a Modern Intranet

Editor's Notes

1. Thanks for being here today. I'm going to raise the premise that we can use Microsoft Teams as a modern Intranet, for the appropriately sized organization.
2. So what is an Intranet? Historically, this web based internal website served as the place you went to find "stuff" within the company. SharePoint has always been a leader in this space providing the Pages, lists and libraries, collaboration, enterprise search and access to user profiles.
3. So what does an Intranet do actually? Digging a little deeper, an Intranet helped us find out who worked with us, where we worked, what we were working on. It pointed us at our policies and procedures and it helped us find what we were looking for whether it was files, lists of information or people. It did these things really well. A good Intranet should tell us: Who's here? What's going on? How do we do things? What's everyone working on? Where to find stuff The list goes on
4. So let's talk about the Microsoft stack of tools most are using today. SharePoint for Teams, SharePoint for the Intranet and SharePoint for Search. We used Yammer for working out loud, Outlook for communicating with parties outside the organization (and frankly inside, blech), Skype for Business for chat and meetings and then you probably had a phone system and some 3rd Party LOB apps, such as for example, QuickBooks for accounting. By the way, I'm using the new Office icons in this deck. I'm still not sold on them actually but here they are.
5. So, on to the problems. Web based Intranets like SharePoint were great (and today frankly, SharePoint is even easier to use than ever) but we were still jumping between the Intranet and our Inbox. We were starting our day in Outlook and many of us preferred to work there because we didn't know better and it was the one common tool used universally internally and across organizations. Where SharePoint and others failed frankly was in working "out loud". Discussion boards in SharePoint were lame, everyone was constantly jumping back and forth between Outlook and SharePoint (and we often get requests from customers trying to link the two, particularly calendars). Finally, viewing SharePoint in a web page by pinching and zooming was just no fun.
6. And while I'm on another "I hate email rant", I wanted to take 30 seconds to talk about Inbox Zero because email is a big part of the problem here. We are using Outlook to try and connect people together through all these systems. We are always explaining what we are doing, asking and answering questions and delegating via email, out of context of where the team is actually working on and storing data. Those that know me know well, know that I'm on a quest for an empty inbox at the end of the day ... and most days I do actually accomplish this. It is easier than you think and Outlook is designed to support you. There are 5 actions to take with an email and none of them include leaving the email in the inbox. I'll walk you through all 5 now: 1. If an email involves doing something and it will only take 2-5 minutes, just do it now 2. If it is garbage, delete it 3. If you might need to refer to an email one day, Archive it. Search in Outlook and Exchange Online is fantastic these days. Trust it 4. If an email involves having a meeting or a conversation with someone, schedule it 5. If it is a task that needs doing by someone else, delegate it
7. So. Back on track. If we are an appropriately sized team and we want all of our tools and information in our pocket, let's talk about the possibility of using Microsoft Teams. Teams is the new "Hub for Work" where we work out loud and not from our inbox. Teams provides an awesome experience on every device and screen. Under the hood it is still using SharePoint for many things but Teams gives us the ability to pull together all the best tools, into the right teams and channels - For example, Planner for tasks, Chat for 1:1 and 1 to many conversations, PowerBI for reporting and then whatever other tabs/applications a team needs, including those by other companies such as Trello. Finally, it is allowing us to build our group memberships right and in a simplified manner. No more complicated, nested permissions or subsites. And recently Microsoft raised the user cap in teams to 5000! Side note: Built with "Electron". The Teams desktop app is just a 'wrapper' of the website app.
8. Teams for conversations and working out loud View my calendar View my projects View my working groups or departments Freemium - View my band(s), Condos, Family Number one ask is show my inbox
9. So at this point you might be asking yourself whether Teams would be the right fit for your organization? So here's a few things to keep in mind: 1. Microsoft only recently increased membership in a team from 2500 members to 5000. You never know, this might increase again in the future... 2. At itgroove, we are under 20 people so this was a no brainer. Every organization should carefully consider whether using Teams in this manner will add value or whether sticking to more traditional methods is a better fit - certainly in large organizations, the idea is that SharePoint would be your Intranet, Yammer would be the "pulse" of the company and Teams would be for inter-department communications and within projects
10. Remember this?
11. How about now? I'm suggesting that for a small to medium sized organization, we can use Teams to provide all the same and frankly better functionality as before ... leaving just the last pieces of the puzzle, that Accounting software or other LOB app. And ideally using Outlook much, much less.
12. Now, before I show you our Teams based Intranet, I just want to take a moment to explain a little about itgroove for context of what you are about to see. We are 12 consultants spread across 2 locations - downtown Victoria (in a hockey arena, naturally) and in Brentwood Bay. We also have several contractors that work with us. We deliver Cloud solutions - whether that is helping a customer move to the cloud or assisting customers in getting more out of their Cloud investment by coaching and building on all the tools that exist there. We all work from whatever location we choose and through our diverse portfolio of clients and projects, we need to be in tune with each other all the time.
13. On to the stats... 98% of staff at itgroove love our Teams Intranet While 43% of our team believe this slide is completely unnecessary :)
14. So how do you start? Well, creating a Team is done in 5 clicks so that part is easy. What is more important is to try a skunkworks or pilot version first. Test it out with a small group of people so you can nail what you need in your Teams Intranet and get used to working out loud if you haven't experienced that already - decisions along the way are going to include membership, channels and the tabs and functionality within them. Finally, some policies will be in order such as what it might be used for, what it *shouldn't* be used for and perhaps what channels require following. Once you're happy, then go for it. Build it, advertise it and stick with it. When folks are sharing details via email that would be better served 'out loud', encourage them to move the conversation to the appropriate Teams Channel - and if one doesn't exist, that's an opportunity to create one. And here's a tip: did you know you can forward an email to a Channel? That's a quick and easy way to move a conversation into Teams.
15. So, what's in a name? Well, a lot actually... One of the key decisions you'll want to make is what to call your Teams based Intranet First off - don't call it "the Intranet", Portal or Policies. Avoid confusing your users with what this thing might do for you in when naming your team as its purpose may grow well grow Next, keep in mind that the underlying SharePoint site URL (because every Team has one) can't be changed once you've created it. So make sure you love the name. When picking a name for your Intranet Team, try to keep the name simple, fun, catchy and on brand. Speaking of names, let me tell you why Go is Good.
16. Go is easy to understand - it's the place you go to start your (work) day. Go is easy to type, short and sweet. In fact, if you really want to help your users, set up a DNS record so they can get there easily from wherever they might be. Ours for example is go.itgroove.ca which actually redirects to itgrooveservices.sharepoint.com/sites/go Go is easy to brand. You'll want to make a splash with this so you should plan on putting in a little effort marketing it inside your organization. Teams is awesome but it is also a significant change to how people work and will take some time getting used to it for some. Finally, as I touched on earlier, the name is flexible. Every organizations Go team will be different and the name doesn't really imply anything other than a destination to find and work with your stuff.
17. Now, before I give you the personal tour at itgroove, I'm assuming there may be questions about where and how SharePoint fits in here. So, I'll try and knock off a few of the big questions because SharePoint is still very much large and in charge: You will still be creating Team Sites - but more than likely you will be creating Microsoft Teams and by nature of that, the underlying Team Sites will be created. This goes for your departmental teams like IT, Finance, Marketing, etc. And, this also applies to Project Teams. You will very likely start creating Communication Sites. This will be for sharing news, policies, procedures and other traditional Intranet content. And you will soon discover that you will be linking these within your Teams just as much as you might find them in SharePoint or the SharePoint app. Finally, Your Intranet team is based on the new Groups Membership model and you'll need to embrace that for it to work. I.e. all of your Intranet users will have full edit permission to the SharePoint site. But remember, SharePoint is here to help you with all the support it had before. Version history, recycle bins and alerting are still very much there and able to help support you if you end up with a rogue team member.
18. So let's take a look at itgroove's Go Intranet in Teams