Heavy push from my company to get us all in this intra-company social/communication platform.

Not sure how I feel about it other than noticing quite the smugness being put forth by HR and the millennials at our company.

Seems inherently a decent environment and tool for more transparent communication but also seems as though it leaves things open for a bunch of Facebook like time wasted conversions.

Thoughts?

Don't do it. Just leaves a trail for them to nail you with later.

Second for Slack, great product.

Slack is a great tool, IMO. It isn't really covering the same bases as e-mail for me. E-mail is more for things that either need easy to reference documentation, or for things where it may take the person some time to get back to me. Slack is more for quick questions or comments - more for the type of thing where you would typically go and ask the person real quick. The biggest issue with slack is that it leads to people sitting down and staring at their screen more instead of getting up, moving around and actually interacting with people face to face. Some people probably like that, some don't.

I work remotely and slack is super nice - I can't imagine having to send/receive email everytime a quick question came up.

What my wife tells me about the way Slack is used at her company is not all positive. There are chat groups composed of cliques that she says type furiously to each other gossiping. Says it's like high school.

I'm also told they have a channel to share funny gifs.

So, while having a more casual chat like interface can be helpful, if it's not well managed it can lead to immature gossip and time wasting.

It's usefulness probabaly depends on the type of work and the individual users.

Senator Cassius said:

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No opinion on Slack, but avoid Skype for Business. It's terrible.

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Good news for you: Skype Business I think is being decommissioned and killed as an application in like 2 or 3 years by Microsoft. It's replacement is MS Teams which is very similar to Slack.

My team started using MS Teams internally in lieu of email pretty much universally and I'm a huge fan of a format like that vs. email. Conversations are easier to follow, they have great integrated tools to track progress on projects and stuff and understand who is doing what and it's a great way to put everything in terms of documents and such in one place. As a team lead, I've found it immensely easier to stay organized using it to stay apprised of things and communicate things in an agile way vs. status meetings, email updates or whatever other traditional communications people use.

It really is a matter of time until everybody is using Slack or MS Teams maybe not in lieu of all email but a lot of email... once you get used to it, it is a massive communications time saver. Might as well start learning how to use it.

Love slack

We are moving to one of these platforms this year and I can't wait. But I'm also a productivity nerd always looking for the next best thing to improve my own time/task/workflow process.

It's going to be a painful change for my department though. Lots of older folks.

We installed Teams a year or so ago (key word here is installed, not implemented), and I'm struggling to see the benefits for us. I just checked, and I'm a member of 21 teams. Of those 20 I know the purpose of maybe six, and three of those were special projects that have been completed. We also use Skype, Sharepoint, and Chatter on top of email, Whatsapp, and text messages. I'd love to see how others use Teams, because our communications are extremely fragmented.

jh0400 said:

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We installed Teams a year or so ago (key word here is installed, not implemented), and I'm struggling to see the benefits for us. I just checked, and I'm a member of 21 teams. Of those 20 I know the purpose of maybe six, and three of those were special projects that have been completed. We also use Skype, Sharepoint, and Chatter on top of email, Whatsapp, and text messages. I'd love to see how others use Teams, because our communications are extremely fragmented.

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That is the challenge here and one my company will have to overcome. Large company with dozens of departments all doing their own platform will never lead to full adoption and efficiency. We have a dozen different OtS applications along with an uncountable number of homegrown systems used throughout the building to accomplish communication and collaboration. Unless you kill all of them and start over with a cohesive platform you won't truly ever get the full benefit here.

My only advantage is that my department is relatively small and cohesive enough that we can retire the variety of apps we use and at least get there at the department level by centralizing to one of these platforms and let the larger company figure it out on their own.

jh0400 said:

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We installed Teams a year or so ago (key word here is installed, not implemented), and I'm struggling to see the benefits for us. I just checked, and I'm a member of 21 teams. Of those 20 I know the purpose of maybe six, and three of those were special projects that have been completed. We also use Skype, Sharepoint, and Chatter on top of email, Whatsapp, and text messages. I'd love to see how others use Teams, because our communications are extremely fragmented.

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This is so true. For many on here they'd say I'm an old rigid type but I embrace new technology, software, etc. as much as anyone. However, over the last couple of decades, I've seen that for every item that enhances productivity there's another one that takes us back significantly. I've also been in meetings where someone in central admin said that instead of spending some money on the extras of a new software app to make it user friendly, they'd just require training classes for everyone (couple thousand people) - never taking into account the cost of labor was 100x the cost of the added software features.

jh0400 said:

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We installed Teams a year or so ago (key word here is installed, not implemented), and I'm struggling to see the benefits for us. I just checked, and I'm a member of 21 teams. Of those 20 I know the purpose of maybe six, and three of those were special projects that have been completed. We also use Skype, Sharepoint, and Chatter on top of email, Whatsapp, and text messages. I'd love to see how others use Teams, because our communications are extremely fragmented.

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Like I said earlier, Teams IS going to be Microsoft's Skype replacement in the matter of a couple of years so better get used to it.

It has chat applications and calling and meeting features already.

The key with Teams is basically complete adoption. The way we've chosen to use it is as a task tracker and desk book repository... like my team's new joiner checklist and training as well as desk books are on the site and that's how I track progress there. We also have daily, monthly and quarterly task managers on there as well as special projects managers. I put it on my team to keep those current. If I'm off the desk I can see what's happened during the day and have the name of the person responsible for the task that day. If a task is late, they can throw a status comment in on why and I know who and where to go for further information on it. I love the dashboard features off the task managers (the one I mentioned earlier) because it is super easy to understand what's going on with a task and communicate it up the chain. Personally, I was probably spending 5 hours a week just combing through communications, chasing open items and assigning tasks and such. After teams, I'd say I spend about an hour a week on that stuff... my team believes they are saving about the same amount of time too. All those meetings and side conversations and email time, time spent creating and updating dashboards etc. vs. just checking a box to say you are done with something and a program doing a lot of that for you really start to add up.

Email, Skype, Whatsapp, Sharepoint aren't doing all of that... MS Teams really combines all 4 of those apps into one and then some. It's incredibly convenient if working across multiple locations and absolutely defragments and simplifies communication.

ATM9000 said:

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jh0400 said:

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We installed Teams a year or so ago (key word here is installed, not implemented), and I'm struggling to see the benefits for us. I just checked, and I'm a member of 21 teams. Of those 20 I know the purpose of maybe six, and three of those were special projects that have been completed. We also use Skype, Sharepoint, and Chatter on top of email, Whatsapp, and text messages. I'd love to see how others use Teams, because our communications are extremely fragmented.

---

Like I said earlier, Teams IS going to be Microsoft's Skype replacement in the matter of a couple of years so better get used to it.

It has chat applications and calling and meeting features already.

The key with Teams is basically complete adoption. The way we've chosen to use it is as a task tracker and desk book repository... like my team's new joiner checklist and training as well as desk books are on the site and that's how I track progress there. We also have daily, monthly and quarterly task managers on there as well as special projects managers. I put it on my team to keep those current. If I'm off the desk I can see what's happened during the day and have the name of the person responsible for the task that day. If a task is late, they can throw a status comment in on why and I know who and where to go for further information on it. I love the dashboard features off the task managers (the one I mentioned earlier) because it is super easy to understand what's going on with a task and communicate it up the chain. Personally, I was probably spending 5 hours a week just combing through communications, chasing open items and assigning tasks and such. After teams, I'd say I spend about an hour a week on that stuff... my team believes they are saving about the same amount of time too. All those meetings and side conversations and email time, time spent creating and updating dashboards etc. vs. just checking a box to say you are done with something and a program doing a lot of that for you really start to add up.

Email, Skype, Whatsapp, Sharepoint aren't doing all of that... MS Teams really combines all 4 of those apps into one and then some. It's incredibly convenient if working across multiple locations and absolutely defragments and simplifies communication.

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Does Teams has (have?) project management built into it? We are about to buy one of these online collaborative PM tools and wondering if we need to hold off if Teams does the same thing?

Is that what Microsoft Flow does?

Our company is all in on Office365 and all the apps are being slowly introduced. We have access to Teams but it's formally still piloted at select branches. There is a lot to learn but can see it being slick once you figure it all out.

For those of you on the O365 environment this link was sent to me by a buddy who worked at Microsoft and now sells their suite of products to businesses at another firm. There is also a funny video on YouTube somewhere by Microsoft that explains all the differences while also making fun of itself for seemingly having three apps that crossover and do the same

http://periodictableofoffice365.azureedge.net/#

YouBet said:

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ATM9000 said:

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jh0400 said:

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We installed Teams a year or so ago (key word here is installed, not implemented), and I'm struggling to see the benefits for us. I just checked, and I'm a member of 21 teams. Of those 20 I know the purpose of maybe six, and three of those were special projects that have been completed. We also use Skype, Sharepoint, and Chatter on top of email, Whatsapp, and text messages. I'd love to see how others use Teams, because our communications are extremely fragmented.

---

Like I said earlier, Teams IS going to be Microsoft's Skype replacement in the matter of a couple of years so better get used to it.

It has chat applications and calling and meeting features already.

The key with Teams is basically complete adoption. The way we've chosen to use it is as a task tracker and desk book repository... like my team's new joiner checklist and training as well as desk books are on the site and that's how I track progress there. We also have daily, monthly and quarterly task managers on there as well as special projects managers. I put it on my team to keep those current. If I'm off the desk I can see what's happened during the day and have the name of the person responsible for the task that day. If a task is late, they can throw a status comment in on why and I know who and where to go for further information on it. I love the dashboard features off the task managers (the one I mentioned earlier) because it is super easy to understand what's going on with a task and communicate it up the chain. Personally, I was probably spending 5 hours a week just combing through communications, chasing open items and assigning tasks and such. After teams, I'd say I spend about an hour a week on that stuff... my team believes they are saving about the same amount of time too. All those meetings and side conversations and email time, time spent creating and updating dashboards etc. vs. just checking a box to say you are done with something and a program doing a lot of that for you really start to add up.

Email, Skype, Whatsapp, Sharepoint aren't doing all of that... MS Teams really combines all 4 of those apps into one and then some. It's incredibly convenient if working across multiple locations and absolutely defragments and simplifies communication.

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Does Teams has (have?) project management built into it? We are about to buy one of these online collaborative PM tools and wondering if we need to hold off if Teams does the same thing?

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We use MS Planner within the App.

The guy who got us on Teams in my group is starting to get Flow implemented in our application right now which the team is pretty excited about.

Actually, I see now the application we are looking at will integrate with MS Teams so should be good.

Quote:

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We also use Skype, Sharepoint, and Chatter on top of email, Whatsapp, and text messages. I'd love to see how others use Teams, because our communications are extremely fragmented.

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Can't imagine why things are so fragmented when you use 6 different communication mechanisms.

Slack is great, you just need to figure out how to use it so it is great, and not add it to some list like the above and make things worse.

We of course use email, but that has its place and predominantly our communication mechanism with our customers. Internally, we are heavy Slack users. Anything from any other system where we need information, we push to Slack. We have a Slack #standup channel, where everyone submits their daily status. We have an automated slackbot that posts a message to that channel that looks like:



No status meetings, nobody is ever not aware of what someone is doing. If there are questions or clarifications about someone's status - they take it up with them. Much more efficient. We push everything into Slack, and it is our primary resident platform for our day to day.

I hate how I cannot change the volume of other people (boost or reduce, or even mute if I am in the same room as others on the same call) in Teams or Skype for business.

This **** was available 10-15 years ago in other chat programs.

Slack is the best of the messenger programs I've used. Wouldn't hurt to replace a few meaningless e-mails with it.

Does anyone use slack in Fed Gov?

in my experience with projects and government entities, I believe most are resistent to cloud/collaboration tools.

CapCity12thMan said:

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in my experience with projects and government entities, I believe most are resistent to cloud/collaboration tools.

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For obvious reasons they don't want data passing through servers they don't control.

yes my military unit uses it extensively, though obviously not for anything sensitive

bmks270 said:

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What my wife tells me about the way Slack is used at her company is not all positive. There are chat groups composed of cliques that she says type furiously to each other gossiping. Says it's like high school.

I'm also told they have a channel to share funny gifs.

So, while having a more casual chat like interface can be helpful, if it's not well managed it can lead to immature gossip and time wasting.

It's usefulness probabaly depends on the type of work and the individual users.

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10 days in and this is what I'm witnessing so far. And our company has 600 employees.

not surprised - something new/easy/fun...it should die down, but will still exist. Honestly not matter what the app, it's going to happen, so I wouldn't say this is a Slack problem.

If it is direct messaging that is part of the platform, but if people are just willy-nilly creating new channels you need to control that.