As SharePoint consultants, you probably expect that we use SharePoint a lot in our internal operations. That is a good assumption. We do! With a dispersed workforce, we rely on other solutions in the O365 suite, and since these are new-ish to some consumers, I thought I’d share some of the Rogue/hubley dirt with you today as we evolve our processes around the fancy integrated functionality. Here are our top five O365 solutions for making *our* work easier:
Skype for Business
We use Skype for internal meetings and client meetings (for O365 clients). At least 20 times a day, I’m hitting Skype for IMing, screen-shares, or calls. It continues to be a worthy feature for communication.
O365 Groups
This was our first toe-dip into O365’s integrated features–meaning that Groups combine Outlook, SharePoint, and One Note. We create O365 Groups for project collaboration. If you’re a client of ours, the resources dedicated to your implementation are in a Group with your name on it. And that’s not a bad thing! We use the SharePoint site for document management, Outlook for important project-related dates and deadlines, and OneNote for jotting meeting notes, ideas, and requirements.
Yammer
Yammer brings the “social workplace” to life. Yammer uses data points to connect team members where they overlap in interests, documents, expertise, etc. It is a handy way to create communities within an organization and share information outside of team silos. We are using Yammer more and more in our hubley implementations for clients as well.
Delve
We love Delve as a personal page for work. It can be updated by team members (you can limit the amount of customization), shows collaborators what you are working on, serves as a personal work hub. With powerful search functionality, Delve helps you find whatever work thing you’re looking for.
Teams
This is the coolest and perhaps my most favorite O365 feature to date. With Teams, we get the benefit of tons of functionality all collapsed into one app. We like to create a Team for each client, then “channels” for specific projects. Within channels, we often invoke a SharePoint document library, Planner for kanban-style task management, and a whiteboard for conceptualizing or creating line-level mock-ups. We are now using Teams for our hubley roadmap, where we organize development for our forward program subscribers.
Many clients of ours are overwhelmed by the vastness of O365 functionality, especially with integration that loops Outlook, SharePoint, and Skype all together and adds a dash of AI for surfacing most accessed documents and finding employees with the same interests/skills/initiatives. We recommend playing around with all the features listed here until you find the features that make work easier for your organization.
Thanks for reading!
