No Jitter On Air: Tips on Teams TrainingNo Jitter On Air: Tips on Teams Training

If your enterprise uses Office 365, you probably either love or hate the idea of allowing access to Microsoft's latest collaboration tool, Teams. Convenient as this ilk of team collaboration facilitator may be, it's but one more tool among others in the Microsoft collaboration portfolio, after all.

We take up this issue with Simona Millham, longtime Microsoft trainer for CBT Nuggets, in our latest No Jitter On Air podcast. Simona, who recently added a Teams course to her training portfolio, offered up her perspective on a few key points.

To be sure, Millham said, the biggest challenge for IT departments and end users right now is sorting out the overlapping functionality among Office 365 communications and collaboration tools and then figuring out which is best for a particular use. "How do they decide when to use Skype for Business or Teams to send an instant message? How do they decide to send an email or post something to Yammer or use Teams instead?"

This confusion will dissipate over time, but drawing a hard line will be helpful. "An organization needs to take a step back and have a good old look at the different parts of their business and how they are communicating ... [and figure out] at what point do they stick with Skype for Business or move to Teams, and also when do they stick with Yammer or move to Teams. Those are the pressing areas of overlap that need to be addressed from an organizational point of view," she said.

The same sort of challenge will pop up around some of the other Office apps, like SharePoint. What's the best organizational practice -- driving document sharing from within SharePoint directly, or as part of a Teams channel? IT should get ahead of any potential confusion by providing guidance on what to do about co-authoring and document storage, for example, Millham advised.

Guidance from IT is imperative on a couple of other counts, too, Millham said. "The trouble we would have is that if users are let loose they might end up giving themselves more work having to check different tools." Likewise for a crazy patchwork of channels, Millham added. IT should run a couple of pilot groups to see how the channel structure works and offer advice on this sooner rather than later.

Click on the player below to hear Millham's thoughts on how to onboard users quickly, the importance of keeping the "fun" stuff turned on in Teams, and good use cases.

Cautionary note: Millham is a self-professed "fan of all things Office 365," and to her, Teams is one of the "most exciting things to come of Office 365 in a while." Her enthusiasm could be contagious.

Learn more about Team Collaboration at Enterprise Connect 2018, March 12 to 15, in Orlando, Fla. Register now using the code NOJITTER to save an additional $200 off the Advance Rate or get a free Expo Plus pass.

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