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Hybrid working: How the get the most out of Microsoft 365

With a return to the office in sight, the future of the workplace for many businesses will be a hybrid working model. Moving to a hybrid workplace can deliver the best of both worlds and has many benefits to productivity, employee wellbeing, and work-life balance.  To facilitate this transition, it will be important to get the most out of your current Microsoft 365 subscription. Microsoft has all the collaboration, communication and productivity tools necessary for a successful move to hybrid working. However, the breadth of Microsoft’s product offering can make it difficult to know how to best use each app to support the move.  Here, we have compiled a few tips on how to get the most out of Microsoft Apps as you move to a hybrid workplace. Your Microsoft 365 hybrid workplace SharePoint In a hybrid workplace, one of the most important considerations will be how to have a seamless work experience, no matter where you are working. SharePoint is a tool that allows access to all organisational files that can be edited and collaborated on no matter where you are located or what device is being used. This means that whether an employee is at home, in the office or on the train, they will be able to collaborate with their colleagues on shared documents. SharePoint is also a perfect tool as a repository of organisation wide data that can be accessed from anywhere. This may include templates, forms, procedures and business data. Having it all in a single place makes it easy for employees to find the documents they need, regardless of whether they are in the office or at home. Planner When working both remotely and in the office, it can be difficult to manage all tasks that need to be completed in a team. This is even more tricky if email is the primary tool of communication and planning, as it is easy to lose a request in a sea of emails. In Microsoft Planner you can create a plan, add individual tasks to the plan and assign these tasks to members of your team. Tasks can also be synced from emails so your team spends less time searching and more time doing. To help the move to hybrid working these plans can be accessed and completed on any device, anywhere. Microsoft Planner can also be integrated with Teams and all other Microsoft 365 applications to keep all communication, collaboration, and productivity in one place. Whiteboard One of the best methods for brainstorming and collaborating in meetings is a good old-fashioned whiteboard. With both hybrid and remote working this was more difficult, however with Microsoft Whiteboard, multiple users can collaborate on a virtual whiteboard from a variety of devices. The whiteboard can also be added to a Teams meeting to collaborate in real time with colleagues for brainstorming, project planning or to explain a concept. Yammer Yammer is an organisation-wide social platform built for enterprise communication. Yammer is easy to set up and fosters a culture of transparency, connection and open communication. With a move to a hybrid workplace model Yammer is a fantastic tool to stay up to date with what is happening within a company, both from a strategy and personal viewpoint. Yammer also offers employees the opportunity to ask questions to a wider company audience, increasing productivity and communication. Yammer also allows members of an organisation that would not normally interact a chance to meet those in other teams to make a business feel more connected. To make the move to a hybrid workplace seamless experience a business should make the most of their existing Microsoft 365 subscription. Hybrid working may not be possible for all businesses or industries, but for those that can work in the office and remotely there will be a myriad of benefits.  If you want to find out more on how to make the most out of your Microsoft 365 subscription, get in touch today.
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Yammer users

The lifecycle of Yammer users on your Office 365

As an O365 administrator, you can control your Yammer users on your Office 365. Find out how.
View case study >

Hybrid working: How the get the most out of Microsoft 365

With a return to the office in sight, the future of the workplace for many businesses will be a hybrid working model. Moving to a hybrid workplace can deliver the best of both worlds and has many benefits to productivity, employee wellbeing, and work-life balance. 

To facilitate this transition, it will be important to get the most out of your current Microsoft 365 subscription. Microsoft has all the collaboration, communication and productivity tools necessary for a successful move to hybrid working. However, the breadth of Microsoft’s product offering can make it difficult to know how to best use each app to support the move. 

Here, we have compiled a few tips on how to get the most out of Microsoft Apps as you move to a hybrid workplace.

Your Microsoft 365 hybrid workplace

SharePoint

In a hybrid workplace, one of the most important considerations will be how to have a seamless work experience, no matter where you are working. SharePoint is a tool that allows access to all organisational files that can be edited and collaborated on no matter where you are located or what device is being used. This means that whether an employee is at home, in the office or on the train, they will be able to collaborate with their colleagues on shared documents.

SharePoint is also a perfect tool as a repository of organisation wide data that can be accessed from anywhere. This may include templates, forms, procedures and business data. Having it all in a single place makes it easy for employees to find the documents they need, regardless of whether they are in the office or at home.

Planner

When working both remotely and in the office, it can be difficult to manage all tasks that need to be completed in a team. This is even more tricky if email is the primary tool of communication and planning, as it is easy to lose a request in a sea of emails. In Microsoft Planner you can create a plan, add individual tasks to the plan and assign these tasks to members of your team. Tasks can also be synced from emails so your team spends less time searching and more time doing. To help the move to hybrid working these plans can be accessed and completed on any device, anywhere. Microsoft Planner can also be integrated with Teams and all other Microsoft 365 applications to keep all communication, collaboration, and productivity in one place.

Whiteboard

One of the best methods for brainstorming and collaborating in meetings is a good old-fashioned whiteboard. With both hybrid and remote working this was more difficult, however with Microsoft Whiteboard, multiple users can collaborate on a virtual whiteboard from a variety of devices. The whiteboard can also be added to a Teams meeting to collaborate in real time with colleagues for brainstorming, project planning or to explain a concept.

Yammer

Yammer is an organisation-wide social platform built for enterprise communication. Yammer is easy to set up and fosters a culture of transparency, connection and open communication. With a move to a hybrid workplace model Yammer is a fantastic tool to stay up to date with what is happening within a company, both from a strategy and personal viewpoint. Yammer also offers employees the opportunity to ask questions to a wider company audience, increasing productivity and communication. Yammer also allows members of an organisation that would not normally interact a chance to meet those in other teams to make a business feel more connected.

To make the move to a hybrid workplace seamless experience a business should make the most of their existing Microsoft 365 subscription. Hybrid working may not be possible for all businesses or industries, but for those that can work in the office and remotely there will be a myriad of benefits. 

If you want to find out more on how to make the most out of your Microsoft 365 subscription, get in touch today.

Yammer users

The lifecycle of Yammer users on your Office 365

As an Office 365 administrator, you can activate and control the lifecycle of all of your yammer users on your tenant. You can control everything from the moment that user joins your company until the moment they leave you.

Yammer and Office 365 work side-by-side in many ingenious ways. The moment you create a user and give them their Office 365 log in credentials they can access your company Yammer. The moment you delete them from your system they are automatically deactivated / suspended from Yammer.  

You can also deactivate and reactivate office 365 users if you wish to. We will show you exactly what you can do below;

Creating a Yammer user

Yammer users are created as they log on, instead of being created with bulk updates or sync from Active Directory. Here, we will show you how this works;

The process follows these steps:

  1. The Office 365 admin creates a user in Office 365.

  2. The user logs on to Office 365 using the identity provider that is configured for the tenant.

  3. The user clicks the Yammer tile in the app launcher to go to your Yammer app

  4. A new Yammer user is created for the Office 365 user.


Want to know how to transform your business with Yammer?

Download our digital transformation e-book to discover how to utilise Yammer and Office 365 together in ingenious ways.


Deleting a Yammer user

If an employee leaves the company, you can delete the user from Office 365 as soon as you want to. When the user is deleted from Office 365, the corresponding user is deactivated (also known as suspended) in Yammer. Our advice for best practice is, this user should be removed from your system as soon as you can. 

The process follows these steps:

  1. A user is deleted from Office 365;

  2. The user deletion in Office 365 flows into Yammer, and the corresponding Yammer user is deactivated in Yammer. Specifically, the operation is equivalent of navigating to Yammer administration, choosing Remove Users, and then selecting Deactivate this user, as shown here:

  3. Users who are deactivated (or suspended) this way will show up in Yammer administration pages as being deactivated by System Administrator, as shown here:

  4. <p”id=last”>When you delete a user in Office 365, the user becomes inactive. After approximately 30 days, user data gets permanently deleted.
  5. Similarly, when a user is deactivated in Yammer, that user becomes inactive in Yammer. After approximately 90 days, deactivated users are permanently removed, but their Yammer messages are retained. For more information, see Remove users.

Restoring a Yammer user

An administrator can also restore a user in Office 365, and the user will be reactivated in Yammer. The following diagram shows how this works:

The process follows these steps:

  1. The Office 365 administrator can restore a deleted user in Office 365, as shown in the following screenshot:      

  2. This action flows into Yammer as well, and the previously deactivated user in Yammer is reactivated.

Should I use Yammer Directory Sync?

We recommend that Yammer customers switch to using this consistent experience between Office 365 and Yammer to manage the life cycle of all their users. It’s more convenient than managing users separately, and this is the long-term direction for Yammer as well. If you are currently using the Yammer Directory Sync tool, consider switching to managing users in Office 365. Once you switch to managing users in Office 365, turn off the Yammer Directory Sync tool.

NOTE:   You can only manage the life cycle of users from Office 365 if they are using their Office 365 credentials to access Yammer.

For more information about Yammer Directory Sync, see Plan for Yammer Directory Sync.

If you like this blog, you might like this one about removing external users from Sharepoint.

If you need any support with your SharePoint, we’re happy to walk you through it.

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