The Nuts and Bolts of Teams, Groups and Conversation as-a-Service

The Nuts and Bolts
of Teams, Groups and
Conversation-as-a-Service
Christian Buckley
Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC
Office Servers & Services MVP

Christian Buckley
Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC
Office Servers & Services MVP
cbuck@collabtalk.com
www.buckleyplanet.com
@buckleyplanet

CollabTalk.com
CollabTalk provides research and technical marketing services,
focusing primarily on tools and trends in the enterprise collaboration,
social, and business intelligence ecosystem, allowing you to stay on
top of these changes -- and ahead of the game.
Our latest research project:
The State of Hybrid SharePoint
http://hybrid-sp.collabtalk.com/

Turn the Promises of the Digital Workplace to Reality by David Roe
http://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/turn-the-promises-of-the-digital-workplace-to-reality/
“In a recent CMSWire series of interviews
with digital workplace specialists, some
common elements and themes emerged.
One of the most consistent is the belief that
the best digital workplaces take a synergistic
approach to fulfilling the wants and needs of
people through processes and technologies.”

Sharon O'Dea, an independent digital strategy consultant, specializes in intranets, social
media and digital engagement. She defines the digital workplace as the place where work
gets done, connecting people through an ecosystem of tools so they can be productive,
informed and engaged, wherever they are.
“First, it’s a means of communication top-down, bottom-up and, increasingly, peer-to-
peer. Content in its myriad forms, from published pages to snippets of conversation, is the
lifeblood of the digital workplace and the digital workplace is what makes that content
accessible, findable and usable,” she told CMSWire.
The digital workplace should also provide a gate to an organization’s knowledge while at
the same time enabling organizations so that intellectual capital to be effectively captured
and shared with others as more of it is produced.
Thankfully, he continues:

In The Social Organization by
Bradley and McDonald (Gartner),
the authors talk about the components
of successful collaboration:
 Community
 Social
 Purpose

The Nuts and Bolts of Teams, Groups and Conversation as-a-Service

What is your
collaboration culture?

Scenario 1
 Meet Stephanie
 Web developer, millennial
 Personalization is important
 Lives on her mobile device
 Very collaborative, in constant contact with her
team, sharing ideas and discussing the state of
customer projects
 Values real-time interactions, having fun while
working, and is very passionate about her work

Scenario 2
 Meet Tasha
 Program Manager
 Responsible for several key business processes
 Has worked to develop several form and
workflow-based sites to help automate and
ensure that her team is compliant
 Her team includes a number of attorneys and
financial analysts, who prefer in-person meetings
 She spends a lot of time working in email, and
manages a number of vendors and parallel projects

Scenario 3
 Meet Hugo
 Customer Success Manager, business development
 Manages a number of projects and events with
large teams of external vendors and partners
 Very involved in the customer community
 Helps drive their partner and customer portals,
provides online and in-person product training
 Also manages his company’s social profiles,
interacts with customers and partners
wherever they congregate

 Real-time
 Team-based
 Persistent chat
 In-person
 Process-based
 Email
 Mix
 Community-based
 Social

The reality is that
most organizations
have all three
With differences
across your business
– or even within a
single team or
business unit

Outlook Groups
Skype for Business
Yammer
Microsoft Teams
SharePoint Social
ISV solutions
Image courtesy of Beezy.net

BUT IT SHOULD BE PART OF A PLAN

Office 365 Groups
↓
Microsoft Teams
↓
Bots, Connectors,
and Tabs

WHAT IS THE RIGHT USER EXPERIENCE?
Wants real-time
communication
Wants process
and structure
Wants community
and transparency

It
Depends.
What is the right solution for your org?

What is Conversation-as-a-Service?
 Bots
 Connectors
 Tabs
 The “Intelligent Enterprise”

What Bots Can Do
 Automate manual tasks
 Enhance a conversation thread
 Act as a personal assistant to find information and content
 Ability to answer natural language questions
 Run surveys
 Provide quick status updates on open projects and tasks, kick off workflows, etc
 Improve the user experience

Microsoft Teams includes two primary bots:
 Who-Bot is a quick reference tool for engaging with your team members.
 Users can enter real-language requests, such as “Who on my team has experience with
manufacturing technology” and the Who-Bot will reply with team member names and
contact details, based on profile data, content ownership, and use of keywords within
conversations.
 Leverages the Microsoft Graph to learn from your collaboration and communication
patterns, acting as the ultimate personal networker for your company.
 T-Bot is an assistant to help you get the most out of Microsoft Teams.
 Provides guidance on the growing set of features in Teams.
 Ask the T-Bot “How do I add a connector?” and it will provide the answer through the
relevant Help topic.

Security Concerns
 The current slate of bots act as “passive” controls within the system, which means
they are not actively “listening” to your content and conversations, and must be
activated or “invoked” to take action.
 Most users will not take the time to understand the security impacts of using a
selected bot. If a bot *can* be added, most corporate employees assume it has been
“vetted” by IT, and is safe for use.
 Security for bots is at the end user-level.
 Understanding what each bot does, and whether or not they send data outside of the
organization, should be part of your security planning.
 Enabling bots is currently an all-or-nothing decision – you can either allow users to
add bots, or turn off access to all bots for your organization.

Adding Connectors
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/connectors

What Connectors Can Do
 Push rich content to Microsoft Teams
 Connect to services like Trello, GitHub, Bing News, Twitter, etc.
 Receive notifications of team activities for each service / stay in sync
 Complete tasks within a channel

Teams are scrambling to find the right tools
and technologies to fit their cultural needs
What we know is that the traditional intranet
approach has failed to deliver what we need

BUT NOT
WITHOUT
CONTROL OR
GUIDANCE

 Enterprise collaboration requirements can be complex
 Your ultimate goal is to support the entire company
 However, different teams and business units often have
competing priorities
 In an attempt to satisfy everyone, the reality is that most
planning efforts fail to satisfy anyone

Focus on Key Business Problems
 Many transformative efforts fail because key users decide to “play with the
tools” rather than take the planning process seriously.
 The lack of goals and purpose quickly leads to low levels of engagement and
superficial usage. Without clear goals and engaged users, you’ll never gain a
clear assessment of the end results.
 Take it seriously. You will be using other people’s time to make your decisions
on how to move forward. Make good use of their time – and yours.

In my personal experience, what works is:
 Focus on specific business problems – and clear outcomes.
 Make governance and change management the priority.
 Test the various solutions – and understand how they will help or
hinder your collaboration culture.
 Look at your systems holistically, understanding both company-wide
and line of business needs – and the gaps between them.
 Be prepared to regularly iterate on your strategy.
 Organic growth through pilots is the most sustainable model for
successful enterprise collaboration.

Download the Whitepaper
The Nuts and Bolts
of Groups, Teams, and
Conversation-as-a-Service
By John White,
UnlimitedViz and tyGraph
http://promo.tyGraph.com/GTP

Christian Buckley
cbuck@collabtalk.com
@buckleyplanet
Thank you very much!

The Nuts and Bolts of Teams, Groups and Conversation as-a-Service

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