Office365 – Martinus Consulting

Fun, fun and fun with Office 365

I recently came across a great video called “The Importance of Fun in the Workplace”, by Holly Cummins, and was totally pleased (I had fun) to realize this is what we need as a statement also for working with Office 365!

We need to have fun to work with tools in the cloud!

The idea of allowing yourself, your team and your organization does not stop with enjoying the company around you and the time at the coffee corner. As nicely pointed out in Holly her talk, having fun is also about what tools you use and how.

So what is important is that we allow ourselves and the people we interact with to experience working with Office 365 as a fun adventure.

My idea how to support yourself on having more fun…

Find out “what’s in it for me“.

I can not say this enough.

Do see a new application or the complete platform as an opportunity and find out what needs you have that can be improved with using some of the available apps and features. Be happy with these improvements, even if they are small and notice how this improves your daily work.

And if it does not, look for better apps and features. Let go of the idea “I always have been doing it like this, so I should keep doing it in this way”, especially when you are switching from file management on a file server and your local device to working with files in the cloud and on a local synced OneDrive. Embrace the freedom of auto-discovery and search with Delve, your SharePoint personal dashboard, the News features and the Search option where ever you are!

Microsoft Graph is doing a great job presenting you your work on a lot of locations.

Also the recent section in your desktop apps and the ability to pin your important files. Build your favorites dashboard in Delve (documents) or the SharePoint app (Sites).

So allow yourself the time to discover and look around and feel free to use what you need.

Start step by step.

There is no need to start working with all the apps and features at once. As is pointed out on several other blogs already, Office 365 is like a Swiss army knife. A lot of features to solve a lot of problems.

Focus first on where can you gain most out of using new tools.

Get some etiquette- aka rules of the game

Having a lot of apps and features can also mean the things get chaotic. So instead of panicking, we best start deploying some rules of the game on how we work best within our organization with certain apps.

A great example is a recently released post “Everyday Etiquette in Microsoft Teams” by Matt Wade (AtBot / AvePoint). These etiquette rules of engagement will make working with Teams much more fun because they will avoid irritation moments by aligning everyone’s interaction where anyone gets what is expected.

Matt’s etiquette for Teams I would surely recommend as a starting point and template for other applications too. Adapt to your business needs if required for your fun!

Adapt, do not get desperate

If things are not going as you like, open your mouth and talk about it. Ask around for solutions and changes. Look around within Office 365 for better apps/solutions for your situation. The time you will invest will pay itself back by all the productivity improvements you encounter after your change.

Getting back your fun will improve your life and directly reflect the quality of your work in a positive way.

Be honest with yourself

A great friend, also a consultant, told me that he will only accept a job if he believes he will have fun doing it. And when it turns out the fun, for whatever reason, is being blocked by external factors, he steps out of the game.

Not everyone might be in the position to directly do it this way, anyhow we should strive to make our daily work, including working with Office 365 and all or some of it’s wonderful apps, a joyful – aka FUN – experience

Migration and Training

See for instance my posts Is it difficult to keep up with Office 365 continuous changes? , How to train internal users on Microsoft Teams and make them love it and Migration to Office365, to mention a few, and realize this is where the fun begins!

Fun should be part of the process and users should experience fun from the very beginning!

Have fun!

Office365 Apps Adoption

Answering to the question I recently came upon asking for a “Teams Adoption presentation” the following came to my mind…

In my experience it is essential that there is some kind of “Real life use case Demo” included next to any presentation and best including the audience in this.

The DIY factor is very important.

Presentations on programs are boring till people can start clicking and trying themselves.

The same way as I decide to keep using an app on my mobile phone after I tried and tested it. The presentation of the app in the online store is mostly also just highlighting the basics/purpose of the app. I do not need 30 slides before trying it out.

A workshop with minimum of slides and maximum of actual role playing on a use case speaks more then a thousand words, so to say.

Find some early adopters/eager test users and include them in your use cases.

Quote from an article on adoption on the Avepoint blog puts it nicely together I think:

“Match up ideal use cases to teams that have also expressed a desire to work faster and in new ways. Capture success stories like the ones above and share them with the broader organization to drive more effective and lasting adoption. Making the journey of user adoption is as much art as it is science, so be flexible.”

Last but not least, make it a corporate event with full support from Top Management!

And because I am a lot into the Teams app here a 30 min. showcase video Microsoft Teams: Basics and beyond – that has a good wrap up of features you can include in your Teams Demo/Workshop.

Curious how your adoption is going to look like 🙂

Migration to Office365

Hi, I am back with a short summary post on some thoughts regarding SharePoint migration from on-premise to Office365 (the cloud).

So here are some lessons and thoughts for you to consider:

You could make use of this moment and do a cleanup and do not just migrate everything.

Start fresh where possible with the new tools provided by Office 365 like modern site pages etc.
Then migrate only the data that is really still in use.
Keep the migration mostly to the data itself, less to the setup.

Avoid to much customization where possible with Office365.

In the cloud you best go much more with the flow of the Microsoft developments because you can not always choose for changes not to be applied and at some point they are pushed by Microsoft anyway.

Start with the basics like your intranet and hub pages, metadata and get your libraries and lists up and running again.

If you have complex workflows and InfoPath forms, reconsider them. Start with: the minimum we need is the maximum we get(start implementing). And work on from there in agile/scrum like sprints building with the new blocks provided by Office365.

The challenge in switching to Office365 is also in the user training.

Getting the users and yourself understand the dynamics of working in the Cloud, with constant changes, new features and access on all your devices is at least half of the success story.

Another challenge is Cloud performance.

You have to realize that with Office365 ALL YOUR DATA GOES OVER YOUR WEB ACCESS. This can really be an issue speaking from experience. Slow loading pages or lists is not uncommon and can make users irritated.

Also avoid putting to much time in creating your own manuals

Custom manuals get outdated before you know it. Go with the training documentation/videos provided on the web by Microsoft and the wonderful bloggers out there. Focus on a way users can easily find/go to this available and constantly updated information.

Hope this helps you plan your migration, enjoy and success!

Microsoft’s Information and feedback sites + special links for Microsoft Teams

This blog post will summarize some of the main sites provided by Microsoft towards end-users and administrators to find your way witin the Office 365 platform and its apps. This include the training and learning sites and feedback portals

So lets start the list. I included a dedicated section towards Microsoft Teams. My total vision on why Teams is the central future application I will do in a separate post but for now enough to say that Teams is combining several apps into a “persistent chat”-based central portal and gets an enormous focus from Microsoft and from the users and administrators community. The potential of this app is great and changing the way of working landscape.

Microsoft Teams

“We’ve seen the impact that teamwork has had on our world, but what if teams could achieve even more? What if they had the space to be themselves, to share ideas freely and organically across geographies and generations?”

Microsoft Teams website

Microsoft Teams Interactive Demo – “Jump in and experience how teams collaborate when people, conversations, and content – along with the tools teams need – live together in one place.”

Microsoft Teams video training – “Using a chat-centered workspace”

Microsoft Teams YouTube video channel – “Getting Started with Microsoft Teams”

Microsoft Teams Tech Community – “Collaborate, share and learn from experts.”

Microsoft Teams UserVoice (Feedback) – “How can we make Microsoft Teams better?”

Microsoft Teams Documentation

Microsoft Teams Guest Access setup

and more on this excellent post of Matt Wade

Office 365 for the end-user

Periodic Table of Office 365 (TIP!)

Office Help & Training

Office 365 Training Center – “Learn how to get things done with Office. Find tutorials for all skill levels: beginner to advanced.”

Office 365 basics – video training – “Take your Office skills to new heights by getting back to basics. Create, edit, save online, and more.”

Tips for Office – “Discover tips to work smarter and get more out of your Office apps in the Office Training Center.”

Develop your skills – “Build your knowledge of Office with thousands of expert-led courses from LinkedIn Learning.”

Office Quick Starts – “Get up and running quickly with the basic info you need to be productive right away.”

What’s new in Office 365 – “As an Office 365 subscriber, you regularly get new and improved Office features. Take a look below to see what’s available to you today.”

Office 365 small business – training – “Training for small businesses and anyone new to Office 365”

User Voice – Customer Feedback for Microsoft Office 365 – “We love hearing from our customers. If you have suggestions for how we can improve, please share them with us here or at one of the related sites listed on the right. While we can’t respond to every suggestion, we are committed to reading every post.”

Microsoft Tech Community – “Collaborate, share and learn from experts.”

Office 365 Roadmap – “The Office 365 Roadmap lists updates that are currently planned for applicable subscribers. Updates are at various stages from being in development to rolling-out to customers to being generally available for applicable customers world-wide.”

Microsoft Mechanics (YouTube) – Microsoft’s official new show to keep you up to date on our latest tech.”

GetStartedSharePoint (YouTube) – “SharePoint Online and Office 365 for enterprises as well as Office 365 for small businesses and professionals ”

Office 365 for Administrators and Power Users

TechNet – Office 365 for IT pros – “Office Tech Center”

FastTrack for Office 365 – “Make your rollout of Office 365 a success. Speed implementation, drive adoption, and help users get the most from the premier cloud productivity suite.”

Office Admin center – The Office 365 embedded admin portal

Office 365 small business – training – “Training for small businesses and anyone new to Office 365”

Office 365 is in the end a Do It Yourself platform. Meaning the end-user is encouraged to install, manage and use the available applications included in the platform, like the user is used to do on a personal smartphone. Either when using the corporate Office365 platform out of the box or with some or more customizations the applications interface and features are promoted by Microsoft towards the end-users interaction and so it is mandatory that the same user can find up to date information on these applications and features.

These links should give you a good starting point in finding your way around Office 365.

Enjoy!