We have not rolled out Microsoft Teams yet, but we have started some pilots. In these first steps, we have learned a few lessons about how the tool lands in the organization in real life. Let us take a look at five of them.
1.Word of mouth from the early adopters works
Some of our users are quite savvy. They had found out about Teams, wanted to try it out and were very enthusiastic about it. And they talked about it to others. The result was that those others also started clamouring for Teams.
So: start with a small group of eager early adopters. Make sure they know it is a pilot, if you haven’t set up the configuration and the support system properly yet.
2.Innocent users don’t want yet another communication channel to check
When I introduce Teams to users who were not already interested in the new tool, the first reaction is usually something along the lines of: “I already have my phone messages and Outlook and Skype and SharePoint and Yammer. Are you telling me I have to keep an eye on yet another tool to stay up-to-date?”
So: explain that they can get a notification when something relevant happens in Teams. And teach everyone to @-mention the person who should answer the question or give them feedback. Keep reminding the users of this; ask the Team Owners to do so as well . And explain that Teams will replace Skype for Business.
3.The terminology confuses people
We have Microsoft Teams with a capital T for teams with a small t. And people when ask for a ‘team site’ for their team, we need to check if they are talking about a SharePoint team site or a Teams environment. Messy…
So: make sure you are talking about the same thing. And don’t call regular SharePoint sites ‘team sites’…
4.Links to files are often broken in conversations
You can start a conversation about a file stored in your Team. This will display the conversation directly in the context of that document. But I have seen quite a few cases where the link to the file was broken from the conversation. At this moment, there is no way to preserve the link if the file is renamed or moved the to another folder
So: explain how this works and that you need to post an updated link.
Conversation in the context of a document
5.The wiki in Teams is not practical for taking meeting notes
In one of our Teams, we tried to handle our meeting notes in the wiki that is a standard part of the Team. And we also started to write business scenarios in that wiki. It drove me crazy immediately, because I wanted to move around content in the first draft and it did not work the way I wanted… The wiki is quite rigid: the structure is fixed and you can’t just drag & drop sentences.
So: Use the wiki to “publish” info (About his team, finished use cases…). Do not use the wiki for taking notes or brainstorming.
The wiki in Teams
