In this course, we take an introductory look at the productivity tools included within Microsoft 365. We go over the wide range of benefits each tool can provide and give examples of how and when to use each tool.
Learning Objectives
Have a greater understanding of each tool and be able to explain in detail what each tool can do and the situations in which it could be used.
Intended Audience
Users new to Microsoft 365.
Prerequisites
An understanding of general technical concepts.
Now more than ever with remote work becoming more and more standard it can be difficult to engage your workforce without being in an office. This is where tools like Yammer are becoming much more important to drive that engagement that is so difficult to recreate in a remote workspace. Yammer can best be described as a private social media platform for businesses.
It has features similar to that of Facebook or Twitter while being specific and private to an organization. Allowing users to access a news feed and post which is then accessible to anyone else within the organization that is on the platform. It is meant to enhance communication across your organization and drive engagement across your workforce and keep everyone informed with anything going on in the business’s day-to-day.
Due to the scope of Yammer, it can have a wide range of different uses. These uses can be something as simple as getting a quick answer to a question answered by another colleague or even as extensive as creating an internal community in the organization for different purposes or interests. Yammer is an amazing tool for driving employee engagement and communication specifically when you have a large group spread across multiple teams or even regions.
Since Yammer is all org wide someone in the production team can post updates about their work or achievements and someone from the marketing team can comment or respond to it. Yammer also integrate with Microsoft 365 allowing you to use things like groups and the tagging features to mention specific groups or people across your org. It even integrates directly into Teams for easy access.
Yammer even has the capabilities of creating live virtual events for your community to participate in live or watch it afterwards utilizing a tool known as Stream. Microsoft Stream is similar to Yammer in the sense that it is an online video hosting service site that allows users and organizations to upload and share videos securely across their organization. Like I mentioned early on in the course, If Yammer is the Facebook of Microsoft 365 than Stream is the YouTube.
Stream also syncs across Microsoft 365 and is has a wide range of tools to ensure accessible video content. Things like form integration, transcription services, and captions are all features available in stream alongside the similar sharing functionality that you are used to within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Lee has spent most of his professional career learning as much as he could about PC hardware and software while working as a PC technician with Microsoft. Once covid hit, he moved into a customer training role with the goal to get as many people prepared for remote work as possible using Microsoft 365. Being both Microsoft 365 certified and a self-proclaimed Microsoft Teams expert, Lee continues to expand his knowledge by working through the wide range of Microsoft certifications.