MVP Microsoft Ignite Spotlight – Managing Communication Channels in Teams

For Ignite this year, we asked a panel of our MVP Community real world experts to join us at Ignite and share what they felt were the most impactful, currently available, Teams features for IT pros and their users.

The on-demand session, Microsoft Teams Best Practices, Tips and Tricks from our experts, these MVPs presented 9 topics and demos in a 40-minute session. Many of you reached out saying you loved the session but wanted a deeper dive into the topic.

In this series we will hear from each of our presenters, as they will walk you through their demos and share tips, tricks, and resources so you can reproduce these experiences in your environment today.

Laurent Carlier- Managing Communication Channels in Teams

Laurent is an experienced Microsoft 365 consultant and has a unique combination of technical and functional expertise.

He works daily with worldwide clients in business and education sectors, helping them build, designing and implementing modern workplace & modern teaching with Microsoft Teams and many other Microsoft 365 tools, such as Microsoft Viva.

Covering all aspects from strategies to change management & IT governance, he is always advocating about the importance of human-first approach and the necessary but always forgotten bridges between IT staff, end users & stakeholders.

He loves sharing as a Microsoft MVP his dual expertise in adoption change management & technical governance and can be found presenting.

How can you see more clearly when choosing channels or teams?

Do you have a clear pattern of communication and collaboration within your organization? Do you have consistent practices in Microsoft Teams?

I always start my client interviews with these 2 questions and the answers I get are either hesitant or vague. And for good reason, Microsoft Teams, which has become the central point of communication and collaboration in many companies, has undergone tons of changes in the last year.

The possibilities to work together have greatly diversified and for many, the pandemic has been a forced march, more undergone than directed towards new working methods.

Often, I can only talk to IT people when I should be able to interview and discuss with management and digital champions. Because yes, I repeat it every day, Microsoft Teams deployment is not a technical project, it is above all a project centered on the human being within an organization that must change. Change management, which is often forgotten in digital projects, is the key to ensuring maximum adoption of the various tools.

So, what exactly are Microsoft Teams? What are the different possibilities a user has in terms of communication and collaboration?

Business Tenant

• Communicate in 1-1 chat with a colleague
• Collaborate in 1-1 chat with a colleague with file management in OneDrive
• Collaborate in 1-1 chat with a colleague with Loop for quick collaboration
• Communicate and collaborate in a group chat with multiple colleagues
• Collaborate in a group chat with a colleague with Loop for quick collaboration
• Communicate within a team with standard channels
• Communicate within a team with private channels: beware of abuse… Do I really need to create this type of channel?
• Communicate within a team with shared channels: beware of abuse… Do I really need to create this type of channel?
• Collaborate within a team with file management in SharePoint(s), depending on the channel type

Education tenant

The same points as above, with the addition of some specificities :

• Choose the right type of teams … Understand the typical architecture of a class team and the importance of the place of OneNote, education version
• Choose the right type of team … Understand the typical architecture of a PLC team
• Choose the right type of team … Understand the typical architecture of a staff team and the importance of One note’s place, education version

In short, there are a lot of questions to ask and we must add the specificities of the education tenants which are not well known but which are nevertheless important

• Understand that changing from one type of team to another is almost impossible
• Understand that only the PLC team type offers shared channels and not the class teams or the staff team
• Understand that Org Wide teams do not exist in the education tenants
• Understand that templates are not available directly in the TAC in the education tenants

In short, a real headache for many people who can’t figure out all the possibilities. That’s why I propose this decision tree which is divided into 2 parts:

What type of team? Org wide team VS public team VS Private team VS Class team VS PLC Team VS Staff Team

Which communication channel? Private channel VS Standard channel VS Shared channel VS Loop VS Group conversation

This decision tree helps me every day in discussions with Microsoft 365 users and I’m pretty sure it will help you too.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-community-blog/mvp-microsoft-ignite-spotlight-managing-communication-channels/ba-p/3657038 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-community-blog/mvp-microsoft-ignite-spotlight-managing-communication-channels/ba-p/3657038 2022-10-19 16:00:00Z