Your organization has invested in Office 365. Great! Because it can have a significant positive impact on the organization and its employees with the main drivers often being benefits like increased productivity, flexibility, and collaboration. However, in order to realize these benefits, users must adopt the new technology. One of the first things your organization is looking for after having invested in O365 is therefore probably some understanding of how users are using the technology. This allows the organization to efficiently monitor its service, identify issues, plan support and training and report back on the investment to its management.

In this blogpost, a few methods of finding adoption and engagement information that are available out of the box are explained.

O365: Report center

It has been a few months that Microsoft came up with a new reporting portal, which provides you valuable insights into how the O365 services are being used. Do you want to have a general overview of the usage of different tools in the O365 stack? I suggest you take a look at the report centre. You’ll find specific reports that dig deeper into the use of individual applications, including reports for Exchange, Yammer, Skype for Business, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint.

In terms of general adoption, reports show how many users have been assigned a license and how many actively use the product. This is a key indicator for adoption and allows you to identify the need for additional end user training and communication. For each tool, you can assess whether active use should be further encouraged.

If you want to have a deeper understanding of how a specific tool is actively used, you can consult additional reports. Moreover, details at the user level are offered.

As regards communication, you can find details about the use of Exchange, Skype for Business and Yammer.

• The Exchange reports show how many users have sent, received or read emails and gives insight into the amount of storage that is used.
• The Skype for Business reports provide a consolidated view of Skype activity as well as with details about how many users leverage Skype to communicate with others through instant messaging and how many connect with others by participating or organizing video conferences.
• The Yammer reports provide helpful information about how your organization adopts Yammer as a form or communication including how many users post messages and how many consume content by liking or reading a message.

For each of these communication tools, you can also check through which devices the tool is accessed. If you notice the mobile application is not commonly used for example, additional training regarding this matter can be essential.

Concerning collaboration, reports provide information about how users are using OneDrive for Business and SharePoint for collaboration, both internal and external.

• OneDrive for Business reports show how users are using OneDrive to collaborate with others. Information is provided about how many users use OneDrive to share files and how many use it mostly for file storage.
• SharePoint reports show how SharePoint sites are being used to store and collaborate on files. Information is provided about when sites were last active, how many files are stored and how many files are viewed or edited on a specific site.

Auditing reports

The audit feature allows you to track which users have taken what actions on sites, content types, lists, libraries, list items, and library files of site collections. Although this might provide useful information for business requirements such as regulatory compliance and records management, the data might be too detailed for collecting adoption and engagement information. It can however provide you with a great deal of insight into the activities that are taking place withing your O365 environment.

SharePoint: Popularity trends and most popular items

If you want more insight into a specific site collection, site, libray, list or even an individual item in a library or list, you can check popularity trends or most popular items. This might be useful if you are sharing internal news through SharePoint and want to know how many users are actually reading the news articles for example. Additional training or communication might be necessary.

Popularity Trends shows usage event statistics for a site collection, a site, or an individual item in a library or list. A specific report shows historical usage information about the specific object, such as the number of views and unique users. Such a report can be used to identify usage trends and to determine times of high and low activity.

To see popularity trends for a site collection or site, go to site settings > site administration > popularity trends > usage report.

To see popularity trends for a specific item, go the the list or library where the item is stored, and click on “popularity trends” under the “files” tab.

Most Popular Items shows usage event statistics for all items in a library or list. Go to the library or list, click on “most popular items” under the tab “library” or “list”.

You will see a page where you can see how users have interacted with the content, for example which item has been viewed the most.

Good luck!

In our work life on the other hand, don’t we regularly have the feeling that it is hard to find the people or information we need? Or that we are trapped in e-mail and stuck in legacy systems and silos? Or that the company we work for is not adapting, which leaves us disengaged and less efficient than we could be? In contrast to the consumer web, the enterprise is often getting left behind, struggling to adapt to current changes in behavior and technology. However slowly, the behaviors we show on social media channels are also making their way to the enterprise, as companies are beginning to invest more in (social) enterprise collaboration initiatives. This is where Microsoft Office 365 comes into play.

More in particular, I would like to zoom in on Yammer, an enterprise social network. It is the family member of Office 365 that relies closest to the social media tools we have access to as a consumer. Yammer is not just a collaboration tool, but also a powerful way to change the organization’s culture to become more social. It can help to break down the barriers of silos.

Breaking down the barriers of silos

In any medium to large enterprise, people work in silos, be it functional, geographical, project or anything else based. Most of the time, employees only interact with people in their silo. As a consequence, an employee’s network often is extremely small compared to the number of people in the entire company. Wouldn’t it be a waste not to tap into all that wealth of knowledge and experience in order to help us do our job better? However, this would mean breaking down the barriers of silos. Don’t get me wrong, silos are built for many reasons and often valid business purposes. They provide structure that allows expertise in different areas for example.

So why would we want to break them down?  What does it enable for the business and how? No matter size, silos are unfavorable to an organization’s ability to succeed in today’s fast-paced and hypercompetitive world. Imagine if we could easily connect with people that have the knowledge and experience we are looking for to help us do our job better. The amount of time it takes for us to figure out a problem, research an idea or implement a project might get reduced by half. This also relates to the theory of the strength of weak ties. Social network research focusing on the link between tie strength and creativity has concluded that weak ties are beneficial. Strong ties, that are more common in a silo, lead to redundancy in ideas while weak ties lead to diversity in ideas. Weak ties act as bridges to people and information, which help us find subject matter experts and the answers and help we need.

Without a social network such as Yammer however, we have no way to communicate with all the people in your organization. An average employee often isn’t allowed to send mass emails for example, or the information that’s being shared must benefit everyone, not just people who share a similar interest. Yammer can create bridges to information that we otherwise might have never discovered. If someone has a question, the best response may come from an employee he or she would otherwise never ask the advice of. Moreover, the use of Yammer flattens the organization, so anyone can associate and socially respond equally well, be it a question posted by a manager or a junior.

Conclusion

The growth of social media platforms in our lives has significantly altered the way we interact with each other and has connected information and people across generations and geographies. In the same way, Yammer can help us to break down silos in a company and thus enable knowledge sharing across the organization to make employees connected and agile to adapt to change.

Sarah Geers

Business Consultant @ Spikes

Standing out of the crowd

Nowadays it is extremely difficult to grab people’s attention towards a certain subject. Whether this is during a speech or through a written document, if your first impression fails, do not hope for a second chance. Besides, the attention span of the average knowledge worker hardly lasts longer than the one of an intelligent jelly fish. Therefore, once you’ve got people’s attention, it is key to keep them interested in what you want to say. Of course, some preconditions must be met in order to make people listen to you. First of all, your message needs to be transferred in a structured way. Secondly, graphic visualisations have to make sure that your audience continues listening. How lucky we are that the technological evolution made it possible to go beyond the traditional blackboard or flipchart.

Anno 2015 people are so used to visual stimuli that it is very hard to stand out of the crowd. A lot of tools are marketed as being good at engaging the audience, but none of these succeed in doing this as good as Sway does. Microsoft well realized the fact that not everyone is endowed with a graphic design talent. Hence, the company came up with a tool that allows users to easily create and share content. Since Sway takes care of the look and feel of the presentation, people can keep calm and concentrate on what really matters, namely the content of the message they want to transfer.

Softer, better, faster & stronger

Sway is a web-based application and part of the Office Suite. By using Sway, you can quickly create and share visually attractive presentations in the cloud.  Moreover, Sway provides a seamless integration with multimedia files, like pictures, photos and music. This obviously leads to an enhanced user experience.

A desktop version of the application doesn’t exist yet. However, given the cloud-based and mobile-first world of today, this poses no problem. After all, here at Spikes we are convinced of the fact that Sway makes your message softer, better, faster & stronger. When this is relevant and how to get started? Let’s move on, so we can explain you the basic principles!

Softer
Sway is your best friend when it comes to supporting your storytelling. Uh, storywhat? Storytelling enables you to connect with your audience in a friendly and easy-going way. Instead of just delivering your key message, you try to engage with the people you are talking to. Your ultimate goal when it comes to storytelling is making your audience actually remember the things you said. Which is not an easy task – indeed. Luckily, Sway can help you a great deal along the way.

Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever! – Native American proverb

Better
If you ever googled Sway before – or even better: if you used it for a while – you might have noticed some similarities with PowerPoint already. Both applications are used to present content in a visually attractive to an audience in order to make it easier for them to understand your message. The difference however is the precise context in which either Sway or PowerPoint is used. PowerPoint definitely has the edge over Sway when it comes to formal presentations on a detailed subject. When a company wants to present its annual report during a shareholders meeting for instance, using PowerPoint might be the best option. Sway on the other hand is the right tool for presenting less formal content. Here you should think about organising a short ski with a few colleagues, a monthly newsletter that needs to be distributed in the company, et cetera. As you can see, numerous examples exist in which Sway can add more value to your message. Moreover, a Sway presentation looks good on any device, be it a laptop or a smartphone. Long story short: neither Sway nor PowerPoint are best suited in any case. But, depending on the specific situation you are in, Sway might be your best friend!

Faster
Everyone who ever created a PowerPoint presentation knows the struggle. It is very tempting to start focussing on small imperfections with regard to the layout of your presentation. Although you should definitely pay attention to the layout, esthetical nit-picking should not become the core activity when making a presentation. Nevertheless, a lot of people give in to that temptation. Sounds familiar, isn’t it? Sway doesn’t test your self-control any longer. Thanks to the library of templates you won’t feel the need to start designing on your own. Besides, there are only a few functionalities that let you design a Sway presentation. There’s little chance that you will lose your thread of thought because of transitions, animations and SmartArt. The absence of those bells and whistles makes it easier for you to concentrate on what really matters for you and your audience: the content of your presentation.

But what if there are a thousand miles separating you and your audience? No problem! Sharing content in the cloud might already sound familiar to you, since it makes sending overly attached e-mails no longer necessary. Sway definitely uses the power of the cloud, as it makes sharing presentations easy as pie. So Sway does not only make it easier to create your presentation, it is also possible to share it with a single click!

Stronger
Softer, better & faster, so far. These different aspects of Sway let users communicate their message in a more powerful way than ever before. It is almost like greeting new people: even though the intention is not bad at all, there is nothing worse than a weak handshake. Your content deserves to be that firm handshake that leaves a strong impression instead! Especially when people tend to have less time to absorb all those fragmented bits and pieces of information, it is key to stand out of the crowd.

Get started!

Among our colleagues PowerPoint has the upper hand as far as formal presentations, which contain a lot of technical details that need to be explained in a structured way, are concerned. The audience in this case may vary from important customers to a company’s shareholders. But as soon as the content gets more straightforward or informal, Sway is definitely worth a shot. In such a situation, do not hesitate to use Sway to tailor your message in a softer, better, faster & stronger way!

Interesting links:

• Getting Started with Sway
• Jeremy Hancock, a SharePoint Architect, posted in the O365 community (via Yammer) an intresting Sway about ‘The User experience of working with business documents in OneDrive for Business’