General Consultant Discussion

@Wayne Schulz -

Thanks - those are all really good points. I have some follow up comments to your points:

1. Yes, very true. Most of us in 90 Minds are in smaller groups but even in my own company, I have designated an "owner" / admin of O365 and Teams. They handle most of the technical issues and deciding which functionality is on / off. There are several settings that you will want to review that control external collaborators. Do that before opening up your Teams to customers.

2. Yes - group chats are nice. Plus they allow for file sharing and screen sharing / on demand meetings. That's 90% of what people do together in groups. You might want to consider making them a permanent Team so you can add specific functionality via the "+" button that allows you to embed other applications (Microsoft and non-Microsoft).

3. Yes multiple Teams is awkward. Microsoft has a great feature request site and this is one of the most asked about items.

4. Speaking of which ... Security at the Channel level is in high demand and is coming soon (I mentioned it briefly). Soon you will be able to have a team and set security / access at the Channel level (instead of at the Team level). This will allow us to have an "External Customers" Team and individual Channels for each Customer under that Team. 

One gotcha here: for companies like ours who have been using Teams and have an individual Team for each customer currently, we are facing an ugly decision. There is nothing in the works to my knowledge that will allow you to convert a Team into a Channel. This is another area that I hope Microsoft focuses on improving. Converting Group Chats to Teams or Channels - or any combination of converting any of those to any other one. 

5. Yes - Wayne is correct. Deleting or even renaming Teams creates some odd situations because of the way it connects with both Office and Sharepoint. If I create a team called "Precision Tools" and then rename it to "Precision Toolworks", the Sharepoint folder is still set to the original name. As a tech person, I would think that would be super simple to resolve but ... apparently it's not. Microsoft knows this is a problem and hopefully are working on it.

6. I wasn't aware of this limitation. That is a real concern. We have avoided it because we are a Microsoft Gold Partner and we have a whole bunch of O365 licenses. I'm not sure this will help other companies but we currently give customers 1 Team login as part of their OnTrack Success Plan (3 logins if they are on our Premium Plan). You could charge a monthly fee to cover licenses for them as long as you can showcase the value of that real-time engagement with you / your people. 

There are a lot of tools out there that allow for customer collaboration. Basecamp and Slack are just a few.

I admit that I've drank the Microsoft kool-aid and am loving all the things that they do / are doing to create a streamlined, integrated Cloud platform. I think that is the big difference from using the individual "best of breed" applications. 

Microsoft is building all of their applications on top of Azure and Azure goes WAY BEYOND hosted servers (which is what most people think about when it comes to Azure). Azure is a set of shared functionality that sits on top of the cloud data storage and application services. I only know about a tiny fraction of it but it is going to change our world in the coming years. 

Big data / analysis
Predictive recommendations
Automation
Reporting
... and more!

It's going to be interesting for sure as this stuff unfolds.

​​​

@Wayne Schulz -

Thanks - those are all really good points. I have some follow up comments to your points:

1. Yes, very true. Most of us in 90 Minds are in smaller groups but even in my own company, I have designated an "owner" / admin of O365 and Teams. They handle most of the technical issues and deciding which functionality is on / off. There are several settings that you will want to review that control external collaborators. Do that before opening up your Teams to customers.

2. Yes - group chats are nice. Plus they allow for file sharing and screen sharing / on demand meetings. That's 90% of what people do together in groups. You might want to consider making them a permanent Team so you can add specific functionality via the "+" button that allows you to embed other applications (Microsoft and non-Microsoft).

3. Yes multiple Teams is awkward. Microsoft has a great feature request site and this is one of the most asked about items.

4. Speaking of which ... Security at the Channel level is in high demand and is coming soon (I mentioned it briefly). Soon you will be able to have a team and set security / access at the Channel level (instead of at the Team level). This will allow us to have an "External Customers" Team and individual Channels for each Customer under that Team. 

One gotcha here: for companies like ours who have been using Teams and have an individual Team for each customer currently, we are facing an ugly decision. There is nothing in the works to my knowledge that will allow you to convert a Team into a Channel. This is another area that I hope Microsoft focuses on improving. Converting Group Chats to Teams or Channels - or any combination of converting any of those to any other one. 

5. Yes - Wayne is correct. Deleting or even renaming Teams creates some odd situations because of the way it connects with both Office and Sharepoint. If I create a team called "Precision Tools" and then rename it to "Precision Toolworks", the Sharepoint folder is still set to the original name. As a tech person, I would think that would be super simple to resolve but ... apparently it's not. Microsoft knows this is a problem and hopefully are working on it.

6. I wasn't aware of this limitation. That is a real concern. We have avoided it because we are a Microsoft Gold Partner and we have a whole bunch of O365 licenses. I'm not sure this will help other companies but we currently give customers 1 Team login as part of their OnTrack Success Plan (3 logins if they are on our Premium Plan). You could charge a monthly fee to cover licenses for them as long as you can showcase the value of that real-time engagement with you / your people. 

There are a lot of tools out there that allow for customer collaboration. Basecamp and Slack are just a few.

I admit that I've drank the Microsoft kool-aid and am loving all the things that they do / are doing to create a streamlined, integrated Cloud platform. I think that is the big difference from using the individual "best of breed" applications. 

Microsoft is building all of their applications on top of Azure and Azure goes WAY BEYOND hosted servers (which is what most people think about when it comes to Azure). Azure is a set of shared functionality that sits on top of the cloud data storage and application services. I only know about a tiny fraction of it but it is going to change our world in the coming years. 

Big data / analysis
Predictive recommendations
Automation
Reporting
... and more!

It's going to be interesting for sure as this stuff unfolds.

​​​

@Wayne Schulz -

Thanks - those are all really good points. I have some follow up comments to your points:

1. Yes, very true. Most of us in 90 Minds are in smaller groups but even in my own company, I have designated an "owner" / admin of O365 and Teams. They handle most of the technical issues and deciding which functionality is on / off. There are several settings that you will want to review that control external collaborators. Do that before opening up your Teams to customers.

2. Yes - group chats are nice. Plus they allow for file sharing and screen sharing / on demand meetings. That's 90% of what people do together in groups. You might want to consider making them a permanent Team so you can add specific functionality via the "+" button that allows you to embed other applications (Microsoft and non-Microsoft).

3. Yes multiple Teams is awkward. Microsoft has a great feature request site and this is one of the most asked about items.

4. Speaking of which ... Security at the Channel level is in high demand and is coming soon (I mentioned it briefly). Soon you will be able to have a team and set security / access at the Channel level (instead of at the Team level). This will allow us to have an "External Customers" Team and individual Channels for each Customer under that Team. 

One gotcha here: for companies like ours who have been using Teams and have an individual Team for each customer currently, we are facing an ugly decision. There is nothing in the works to my knowledge that will allow you to convert a Team into a Channel. This is another area that I hope Microsoft focuses on improving. Converting Group Chats to Teams or Channels - or any combination of converting any of those to any other one. 

5. Yes - Wayne is correct. Deleting or even renaming Teams creates some odd situations because of the way it connects with both Office and Sharepoint. If I create a team called "Precision Tools" and then rename it to "Precision Toolworks", the Sharepoint folder is still set to the original name. As a tech person, I would think that would be super simple to resolve but ... apparently it's not. Microsoft knows this is a problem and hopefully are working on it.

6. I wasn't aware of this limitation. That is a real concern. We have avoided it because we are a Microsoft Gold Partner and we have a whole bunch of O365 licenses. I'm not sure this will help other companies but we currently give customers 1 Team login as part of their OnTrack Success Plan (3 logins if they are on our Premium Plan). You could charge a monthly fee to cover licenses for them as long as you can showcase the value of that real-time engagement with you / your people. 

There are a lot of tools out there that allow for customer collaboration. Basecamp and Slack are just a few.

I admit that I've drank the Microsoft kool-aid and am loving all the things that they do / are doing to create a streamlined, integrated Cloud platform. I think that is the big difference from using the individual "best of breed" applications. 

Microsoft is building all of their applications on top of Azure and Azure goes WAY BEYOND hosted servers (which is what most people think about when it comes to Azure). Azure is a set of shared functionality that sits on top of the cloud data storage and application services. I only know about a tiny fraction of it but it is going to change our world in the coming years. 

Big data / analysis
Predictive recommendations
Automation
Reporting
... and more!

It's going to be interesting for sure as this stuff unfolds.

​​​

@Wayne Schulz -

Thanks - those are all really good points. I have some follow up comments to your points:

1. Yes, very true. Most of us in 90 Minds are in smaller groups but even in my own company, I have designated an "owner" / admin of O365 and Teams. They handle most of the technical issues and deciding which functionality is on / off. There are several settings that you will want to review that control external collaborators. Do that before opening up your Teams to customers.

2. Yes - group chats are nice. Plus they allow for file sharing and screen sharing / on demand meetings. That's 90% of what people do together in groups. You might want to consider making them a permanent Team so you can add specific functionality via the "+" button that allows you to embed other applications (Microsoft and non-Microsoft).

3. Yes multiple Teams is awkward. Microsoft has a great feature request site and this is one of the most asked about items.

4. Speaking of which ... Security at the Channel level is in high demand and is coming soon (I mentioned it briefly). Soon you will be able to have a team and set security / access at the Channel level (instead of at the Team level). This will allow us to have an "External Customers" Team and individual Channels for each Customer under that Team. 

One gotcha here: for companies like ours who have been using Teams and have an individual Team for each customer currently, we are facing an ugly decision. There is nothing in the works to my knowledge that will allow you to convert a Team into a Channel. This is another area that I hope Microsoft focuses on improving. Converting Group Chats to Teams or Channels - or any combination of converting any of those to any other one. 

5. Yes - Wayne is correct. Deleting or even renaming Teams creates some odd situations because of the way it connects with both Office and Sharepoint. If I create a team called "Precision Tools" and then rename it to "Precision Toolworks", the Sharepoint folder is still set to the original name. As a tech person, I would think that would be super simple to resolve but ... apparently it's not. Microsoft knows this is a problem and hopefully are working on it.

6. I wasn't aware of this limitation. That is a real concern. We have avoided it because we are a Microsoft Gold Partner and we have a whole bunch of O365 licenses. I'm not sure this will help other companies but we currently give customers 1 Team login as part of their OnTrack Success Plan (3 logins if they are on our Premium Plan). You could charge a monthly fee to cover licenses for them as long as you can showcase the value of that real-time engagement with you / your people. 

There are a lot of tools out there that allow for customer collaboration. Basecamp and Slack are just a few.

I admit that I've drank the Microsoft kool-aid and am loving all the things that they do / are doing to create a streamlined, integrated Cloud platform. I think that is the big difference from using the individual "best of breed" applications. 

Microsoft is building all of their applications on top of Azure and Azure goes WAY BEYOND hosted servers (which is what most people think about when it comes to Azure). Azure is a set of shared functionality that sits on top of the cloud data storage and application services. I only know about a tiny fraction of it but it is going to change our world in the coming years. 

Big data / analysis
Predictive recommendations
Automation
Reporting
... and more!

It's going to be interesting for sure as this stuff unfolds.

​​​

Thanks for all the great feedback. I always find it hard to determine how effective a presentation is when there is no feedback (visual or audio) so I appreciate it.

Please let me know if you have any specific questions. I didn't get down to the weeds as I wanted to focus more on the why you would want to use Teams and what your benefits will be (and your customers' benefits too).

Big picture: Microsoft is crushing it these days with the various cloud offerings.

I agree with @Wayne Schulz that Slack is probably better in several areas right now but Microsoft is coming up FAST on all fronts. I wouldn't bet against them.

For Dynamics, they did a release this month where the table of contents took over three minutes to read. Freaking phenomenal. 

@Wayne Schulz -

Thanks - those are all really good points. I have some follow up comments to your points:

1. Yes, very true. Most of us in 90 Minds are in smaller groups but even in my own company, I have designated an "owner" / admin of O365 and Teams. They handle most of the technical issues and deciding which functionality is on / off. There are several settings that you will want to review that control external collaborators. Do that before opening up your Teams to customers.

2. Yes - group chats are nice. Plus they allow for file sharing and screen sharing / on demand meetings. That's 90% of what people do together in groups. You might want to consider making them a permanent Team so you can add specific functionality via the "+" button that allows you to embed other applications (Microsoft and non-Microsoft).

3. Yes multiple Teams is awkward. Microsoft has a great feature request site and this is one of the most asked about items.

4. Speaking of which ... Security at the Channel level is in high demand and is coming soon (I mentioned it briefly). Soon you will be able to have a team and set security / access at the Channel level (instead of at the Team level). This will allow us to have an "External Customers" Team and individual Channels for each Customer under that Team. 

One gotcha here: for companies like ours who have been using Teams and have an individual Team for each customer currently, we are facing an ugly decision. There is nothing in the works to my knowledge that will allow you to convert a Team into a Channel. This is another area that I hope Microsoft focuses on improving. Converting Group Chats to Teams or Channels - or any combination of converting any of those to any other one. 

5. Yes - Wayne is correct. Deleting or even renaming Teams creates some odd situations because of the way it connects with both Office and Sharepoint. If I create a team called "Precision Tools" and then rename it to "Precision Toolworks", the Sharepoint folder is still set to the original name. As a tech person, I would think that would be super simple to resolve but ... apparently it's not. Microsoft knows this is a problem and hopefully are working on it.

6. I wasn't aware of this limitation. That is a real concern. We have avoided it because we are a Microsoft Gold Partner and we have a whole bunch of O365 licenses. I'm not sure this will help other companies but we currently give customers 1 Team login as part of their OnTrack Success Plan (3 logins if they are on our Premium Plan). You could charge a monthly fee to cover licenses for them as long as you can showcase the value of that real-time engagement with you / your people. 

There are a lot of tools out there that allow for customer collaboration. Basecamp and Slack are just a few.

I admit that I've drank the Microsoft kool-aid and am loving all the things that they do / are doing to create a streamlined, integrated Cloud platform. I think that is the big difference from using the individual "best of breed" applications. 

Microsoft is building all of their applications on top of Azure and Azure goes WAY BEYOND hosted servers (which is what most people think about when it comes to Azure). Azure is a set of shared functionality that sits on top of the cloud data storage and application services. I only know about a tiny fraction of it but it is going to change our world in the coming years. 

Big data / analysis
Predictive recommendations
Automation
Reporting
... and more!

It's going to be interesting for sure as this stuff unfolds.

​​​

Thanks for all the great feedback. I always find it hard to determine how effective a presentation is when there is no feedback (visual or audio) so I appreciate it.

Please let me know if you have any specific questions. I didn't get down to the weeds as I wanted to focus more on the why you would want to use Teams and what your benefits will be (and your customers' benefits too).

Big picture: Microsoft is crushing it these days with the various cloud offerings.

I agree with @Wayne Schulz that Slack is probably better in several areas right now but Microsoft is coming up FAST on all fronts. I wouldn't bet against them.

For Dynamics, they did a release this month where the table of contents took over three minutes to read. Freaking phenomenal. 

@Wayne Schulz -

Thanks - those are all really good points. I have some follow up comments to your points:

1. Yes, very true. Most of us in 90 Minds are in smaller groups but even in my own company, I have designated an "owner" / admin of O365 and Teams. They handle most of the technical issues and deciding which functionality is on / off. There are several settings that you will want to review that control external collaborators. Do that before opening up your Teams to customers.

2. Yes - group chats are nice. Plus they allow for file sharing and screen sharing / on demand meetings. That's 90% of what people do together in groups. You might want to consider making them a permanent Team so you can add specific functionality via the "+" button that allows you to embed other applications (Microsoft and non-Microsoft).

3. Yes multiple Teams is awkward. Microsoft has a great feature request site and this is one of the most asked about items.

4. Speaking of which ... Security at the Channel level is in high demand and is coming soon (I mentioned it briefly). Soon you will be able to have a team and set security / access at the Channel level (instead of at the Team level). This will allow us to have an "External Customers" Team and individual Channels for each Customer under that Team. 

One gotcha here: for companies like ours who have been using Teams and have an individual Team for each customer currently, we are facing an ugly decision. There is nothing in the works to my knowledge that will allow you to convert a Team into a Channel. This is another area that I hope Microsoft focuses on improving. Converting Group Chats to Teams or Channels - or any combination of converting any of those to any other one. 

5. Yes - Wayne is correct. Deleting or even renaming Teams creates some odd situations because of the way it connects with both Office and Sharepoint. If I create a team called "Precision Tools" and then rename it to "Precision Toolworks", the Sharepoint folder is still set to the original name. As a tech person, I would think that would be super simple to resolve but ... apparently it's not. Microsoft knows this is a problem and hopefully are working on it.

6. I wasn't aware of this limitation. That is a real concern. We have avoided it because we are a Microsoft Gold Partner and we have a whole bunch of O365 licenses. I'm not sure this will help other companies but we currently give customers 1 Team login as part of their OnTrack Success Plan (3 logins if they are on our Premium Plan). You could charge a monthly fee to cover licenses for them as long as you can showcase the value of that real-time engagement with you / your people. 

There are a lot of tools out there that allow for customer collaboration. Basecamp and Slack are just a few.

I admit that I've drank the Microsoft kool-aid and am loving all the things that they do / are doing to create a streamlined, integrated Cloud platform. I think that is the big difference from using the individual "best of breed" applications. 

Microsoft is building all of their applications on top of Azure and Azure goes WAY BEYOND hosted servers (which is what most people think about when it comes to Azure). Azure is a set of shared functionality that sits on top of the cloud data storage and application services. I only know about a tiny fraction of it but it is going to change our world in the coming years. 

Big data / analysis
Predictive recommendations
Automation
Reporting
... and more!

It's going to be interesting for sure as this stuff unfolds.

​​​

Thanks Rhonda - I will do my best to address your points.

1. Are web pieces, like your On-track portal embedded?  Does it launch the full website when you click on it?

PW: You can make it launch a separate window with a link. We embed ours so everything is inside Teams. We call Teams the "OnTrack Collaboration Space" and encourage customers that is the place to go for relationship / partnership / CRM discussion. It's not the slickest name but works for now.

2. Are most of your on-demand videos and how to docs sitting behind the on-track portal?  or do you put some in Teams? (I can see why wouldn't given that user group issue.)

PW: Our videos are set up in tracks based on roles. Each role has a separate web page that lists out all the videos. Those pages can be sent out as links to customers. They are also embedded in the OnTrack Hub (that's what we call our custom web application that walks people through the stages and steps to onboard with CRM). 

So basically we try to cover all bases! :)

3. Do you use it to make customer documents (quotes, invoices) available for signing or paying?

PW: That's a great question. We are moving away from proposals to sales pages (web pages) that replace proposals and have a credit card authorization / EFT payment page. The current process is:

talk with customer -> determine needs -> send proposal -> get signed proposal back -> send invoices -> wait for payment (we require 100% upfront in most cases) -> schedule work.

The new process will be:

talk with customer -> Determine needs -> send them link to the packaged services -> they sign off and pay at the same time -> this automatically sets them up with a MSFT Teams Team and lets the primary consultant know that the project is a go

It should greatly accelerate the customer process and maximize our efficiency.

4. Do you keep internal documents IN Teams?  Or links to the docs where they live on a more hierarchical directory-type file server / sharepoint site?

PW: Teams acts like an overlay for Sharepoint so yes - all internal documents are in Teams. One of our early / continuing challenges is ... where are those files? The files in Teams are stored in the Files tab under specific channels. So ... if you don't watch out (we didn't), files could be everywhere. 

Our solution is we are mandating people put files only in certain Teams / Channels so we don't have to go to a hundred places to look for them. (FYI you can also do a search which does work nicely but I always forget about it)

5. is your integration with Dynamics CRM and Office 365 showing links to places in Teams, or perhaps vice versa? 

PW: Teams integration with D365 / CRM is limited right now but steadily improving. There are some integrations that MSFT likes to talk about but I scratch my head and wonder how practical they are. Why do I want to see a D365 opportunity within Teams? It's important to remember what Teams is meant to do. It's not going to replace our D365 - at least not yet - and people need to continue to go into CRM to manage specific tasks.

With Office 365, it's pretty nice. We routinely have important spreadsheets or word docs that are tabs within a particular Team. They are embedded so you can do on the fly editing right there in the Team without downloading or emailing those documents. I mentioned on the webinar that some of our larger customers have issues lists within Excel. We used to do a lot of sending files back and forth or playing "where's the link to that file?" games. Now that issue list is a tab under their Team. 

6. Do you use Teams for screen sharing with customers, too?  or just internally?

PW: Internal only. This is somewhat a result of we're used to Goto meeting and somewhat a result of goto meeting is a lot nicer. For now. I've forced most internal meetings to be done over Teams so as we become more familiar with it, I anticipate we will shift to using it for customers on a growing basis. 

Hopefully this helped!

Thanks for all the great feedback. I always find it hard to determine how effective a presentation is when there is no feedback (visual or audio) so I appreciate it.

Please let me know if you have any specific questions. I didn't get down to the weeds as I wanted to focus more on the why you would want to use Teams and what your benefits will be (and your customers' benefits too).

Big picture: Microsoft is crushing it these days with the various cloud offerings.

I agree with @Wayne Schulz that Slack is probably better in several areas right now but Microsoft is coming up FAST on all fronts. I wouldn't bet against them.

For Dynamics, they did a release this month where the table of contents took over three minutes to read. Freaking phenomenal. 

@Wayne Schulz -

Thanks - those are all really good points. I have some follow up comments to your points:

1. Yes, very true. Most of us in 90 Minds are in smaller groups but even in my own company, I have designated an "owner" / admin of O365 and Teams. They handle most of the technical issues and deciding which functionality is on / off. There are several settings that you will want to review that control external collaborators. Do that before opening up your Teams to customers.

2. Yes - group chats are nice. Plus they allow for file sharing and screen sharing / on demand meetings. That's 90% of what people do together in groups. You might want to consider making them a permanent Team so you can add specific functionality via the "+" button that allows you to embed other applications (Microsoft and non-Microsoft).

3. Yes multiple Teams is awkward. Microsoft has a great feature request site and this is one of the most asked about items.

4. Speaking of which ... Security at the Channel level is in high demand and is coming soon (I mentioned it briefly). Soon you will be able to have a team and set security / access at the Channel level (instead of at the Team level). This will allow us to have an "External Customers" Team and individual Channels for each Customer under that Team. 

One gotcha here: for companies like ours who have been using Teams and have an individual Team for each customer currently, we are facing an ugly decision. There is nothing in the works to my knowledge that will allow you to convert a Team into a Channel. This is another area that I hope Microsoft focuses on improving. Converting Group Chats to Teams or Channels - or any combination of converting any of those to any other one. 

5. Yes - Wayne is correct. Deleting or even renaming Teams creates some odd situations because of the way it connects with both Office and Sharepoint. If I create a team called "Precision Tools" and then rename it to "Precision Toolworks", the Sharepoint folder is still set to the original name. As a tech person, I would think that would be super simple to resolve but ... apparently it's not. Microsoft knows this is a problem and hopefully are working on it.

6. I wasn't aware of this limitation. That is a real concern. We have avoided it because we are a Microsoft Gold Partner and we have a whole bunch of O365 licenses. I'm not sure this will help other companies but we currently give customers 1 Team login as part of their OnTrack Success Plan (3 logins if they are on our Premium Plan). You could charge a monthly fee to cover licenses for them as long as you can showcase the value of that real-time engagement with you / your people. 

There are a lot of tools out there that allow for customer collaboration. Basecamp and Slack are just a few.

I admit that I've drank the Microsoft kool-aid and am loving all the things that they do / are doing to create a streamlined, integrated Cloud platform. I think that is the big difference from using the individual "best of breed" applications. 

Microsoft is building all of their applications on top of Azure and Azure goes WAY BEYOND hosted servers (which is what most people think about when it comes to Azure). Azure is a set of shared functionality that sits on top of the cloud data storage and application services. I only know about a tiny fraction of it but it is going to change our world in the coming years. 

Big data / analysis
Predictive recommendations
Automation
Reporting
... and more!

It's going to be interesting for sure as this stuff unfolds.

​​​