Today the world of collaboration tools changes faster than ever. Vendors’ competition is so tough that the leaders keep rotating. Some tools face difficulties. For example, Huddle is in a turbulence zone due to the company’s financial challenges. Other tools alter to become more powerful. Just look at the newly born Stride – Atlassian’s answer to Slack. The tool absorbed features from other well-known Atlassian’s tools, such as a corporate messenger HipChat and project management tools, Jira and Trello.

But while different vendors compete, organizations still have to address their everyday collaboration needs. It’s quite logical to see companies choose collaboration tools that correlate with systems they already use. Say, if a company manages their projects in Jira, they will probably opt for Stride. At the same time, if a large company got used to managing collaboration on a corporate intranet, Microsoft Office 365 must be in their focus.

Companies opting for Microsoft Office 365 will have to face a challenge, though. With this powerful collaboration platform, they will need to master several collaboration tools, including SharePoint Online team and communication sites, Yammer, Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, as well as Office 365 Groups.

So let’s see how to select the most suitable tools if you decide to go with Office 365-based collaboration.

Launching the Office 365 collaboration: Dos

Here are 4 useful steps you can take to ensure the success of your Office 365 solution and foster employees’ productivity.

1. Define collaboration patterns

When Office 365 collaboration tools come to an organization, they should:

• Align with the corporate culture. For example, if a company sticks to the hierarchical organizational structure and communication is highly formalized, Microsoft Teams might not work as intended. The latter suppose an active and voluntary collaboration of members that treat each other as equals, which doesn’t fit in the hierarchy.
• Follow enterprise-wide collaboration habits. If an organization uses workflows actively, it will be nice to have them in a collaboration tool either. In this scenario, SharePoint Online is what you need.

2. Analyze teams

Two major aspects are the most important:

• Team size. If your organization has multiple small and medium-sized teams, Microsoft Teams will make a good fit for them. Additionally, every team can be offered a SharePoint site, which will be particularly handy if team members collaborate on documents heavily.
• Relationship within a team. In disintegrated teams, where each team member works on his/her own, it will be more reasonable to use a SharePoint Online team site. With this tool, team members will manage their formal collaboration and exchange knowledge conveniently.

3. Apply user-centric implementation

If you decide to implement an Office 365-based intranet, end users should participate actively. Users’ involvement is particularly important when the project includes migration from an on-premises collaboration solution to the cloud-based Office 365. Say, if employees got used to deeply customized SharePoint team sites, they might require the same customization level from their cloud sites. However, customization capabilities in Office 365 are limited. So instead of waiting for employees to grow mad, the intranet development team should explain possible customization options with end users and reach a compromise.

4. Find a competent intranet consultant

Finally, if you look for an external help to implement your intranet, be wise with choosing an intranet consultant. This should be an experienced team that understands all the opportunities of the Office 365 collaboration. Such a team can both implement the tools correctly and train employees to use the collaboration suit efficiently.

Launching the Office 365 collaboration: Don’ts

At the same time, there are several things to avoid while implementing an Office 365 intranet.

1. Don’t confuse one collaboration tool for another

As SharePoint and Office 365 consultants, we get a lot of questions about Office 365 and we often see how people confuse collaboration tools with similar names. The most confusing couple is Team Sites residing within SharePoint, and Teams, a shorter name for Microsoft Teams. While both tools belong to Office 365 and can be integrated, they also can work independently and hit different collaboration goals. The conclusion is simple: clear up the collaboration purpose of each tool before implementing it.

2. Don’t enable all the collaboration tools at once

Launching all the Office 365 collaboration tools at once can easily end up with a collaboration mess. Instead of that, try creating collaboration couples. For example, if employees work on content and documents heavily and prefer instant chatting, a SharePoint Online team site and Skype for Business will handle the challenge. If you have several teams that work remotely on a permanent basis, but still need to keep in touch and cowork, Microsoft Teams coupled with SharePoint Online will be the right solution.

3. Don’t try to win the collaboration race but follow your collaboration needs

Involved in the collaboration race, organizations hurry up to adopt the most advanced tools. But following the fashion and trying to catch up with all the latest updates can be exhausting and counterproductive. It’s always better to ensure a smooth adoption of new collaboration tools than to break your collaboration patterns sharply. Thus, if you have been running a SharePoint intranet for years, it will be reasonable to start with SharePoint Online in Office 365, then to introduce other tools, such as Yammer or Microsoft Teams.

4. Don’t launch Office 365 intranet without training end users

If you launch a new Office 365 intranet without a decent training, the risk of poor adoption will be very high. If employees have been using an on-premises SharePoint intranet for a while, Office 365 structure, logic and capabilities can be unclear for them. For example, handling Delve instead of familiar MySites and dealing with Office 365 Groups can cause difficulties. To avoid possible misunderstanding, it’s worth presenting various collaboration capabilities to employees beforehand. It’s also useful to organize regular training sessions to announce newly implemented features and get the users’ feedback on the intranet experience.

Stay pragmatic towards your Office 365 collaboration tools

An Office 365-based intranet can bring wide collaboration capabilities to organizations. However, companies should approach Office 365 collaboration tools pragmatically. You have to be sure that employees understand each tool and that the entire solution serves your business purposes. You also have to control how employees use different collaboration tools and follow their preferences even if they contradict the common trend. For example, if after several months your Microsoft Teams or Yammer stay idle while SharePoint Online sites are overloaded, be brave to disable the unused tools and take your time on extending and customizing active team sites.