Use Microsoft Teams to deliver your next deep dive training session

Originally published at adoptandembrace.com, August 7, 2018When you're rolling out Microsoft Office 365 in an organisation, you want to create awareness of what you can achieve with the new tools and services. Take full advantage of the platform and model the use of the tools in your delivery and engagement of training and user adoption activities.

Microsoft Teams and Deep Dive Training: The situation

Office 365 is often rolled out gradually by business unit. In fast-paced organisations that value every minute of spare time, you've got to find a way of doubling your efforts and repurposing your outputs. For this project, we are running sessions to give just enough information to get started on day one. Later, we then follow up with Microsoft Teams deep dive sessions run throughout the week. Those sessions take a closer look at the new tools and services, in the context of relevant productivity scenarios.

The needs

We needed to promote the Microsoft Teams deep dive training sessions so that people can attend in person and ask their questions. But we also recognised that some people are remote or have schedules that are so tight, they don't have time to leave their desk to attend. We needed to share the event live and online so people had the option to attend from wherever they were. At the end of the event, we also wanted a recording to share so people can consume the session in their own time.

What we used

The location for the deep-dive sessions was chosen for its size and accessibility. We are using a large screen and seating area known as The Bandstand. It has a large screen, a sound system and mic. It is next to an open plan workspace and large kitchen, so it is open to a walk-up audience too, much like Community Theatre sessions at conferences.

The Office Productivity project team have built a SharePoint Communications site as the place for self-help resources and on-going engagement and information for working using Microsoft 365. This site is promoted before, during and after the migration. Eventually, the existing intranet will be moved to SharePoint Online too....more on this in a future post.An 'All Organisation' Microsoft Team has been created. As individuals are migrated, they are added to the Microsoft Team and it is used as a place for discussion and feedback about the new Office Productivity tools and services....more on this in a future post.Lastly, we used a few more pieces of equipment to improve the experience for the online audience. A high-quality webcam (1080p) and a mic capable of picking up questions from the in-person audience.

What we did and why

We used the SharePoint Community site, adding an event for the deep-dive session. A separate page was created with a full session description and a link to this page was included in the event list on the site. This helps promote the use of the site. It also provides a reusable page to anchor the session description with a sidebar that references related self-help articles.Within the 'All Organisation' Microsoft Team, we scheduled a Teams meeting in the General channel. We also used it to book the event location/resource by adding it as a recipient. A link to the session description page was included in the meeting invite. This further promotes the use of the site and draws the attendees in to see other resources before and after the event. We recorded the Teams meeting, which in turn created a video in Microsoft Stream using Cloud Recording.A session promo was recorded on location, briefly talking about the purpose of the session, the session outline, and encouraging people to bring their questions and share their experiences. We also encouraged people to ask their questions early on in the meeting conversation thread in Microsoft Teams. The promo recording was uploaded to Microsoft Stream and posted in the 'All Org' Microsoft Team.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLNrHUNK574I set up for the presentation and joined the meeting in Microsoft Teams a couple of minutes before the session started, with the welcome slide displayed, desktop shared in the Teams meeting and the webcam live. You should join the online meeting early, to make sure the online audience sees some activity and that the session will start soon. I'm in favour of having the camera and mic turned on early too. It includes the online audience in the in-person banter before the start of the session. I was careful to start recording just before beginning the session.We ran through the deep-dive presentation and an online audience joined.I presented to an in-person audience, occasionally checking in and referencing the online audience.We took questions and comments; some members of the audience shared their experiences of the related Microsoft 365 tools so far.The presentation involved different personas, one who worked from a mobile. During this segment of the session, I joined the Microsoft Teams meeting and shared the screen of my mobile through Teams.Then I demonstrated and talked through the mobile apps and experience, while it was displayed on the screen to both the in-person audience and the online audience.[gallery ids="1297,1296,1295" type="slideshow"]At the end of the session, the recording was stopped and the wrap-up activities began.We answered the questions asked in the chat, which were replies to the conversation thread in Microsoft Teams. The replies were kept together in the same thread, so were easy to keep together with the other session activities.I wrote a follow-up post using a News page in the SharePoint Community site. I embedded the recording of the meeting within the page. While Microsoft Stream did create a transcript, it does struggle a little with the New Zealand accent. I listened through the recording and summarised some of the key topics, questions and comments from the video.Microsoft Stream videos can be shared using a link that jumps you to a specific time in the video. I created these links and hyperlinked the topics in the News page. Readers can click on the topic and jump to that time in the video.Lastly, we posted a link to the follow-up story, back into the conversation thread in the 'All Org' Microsoft Team, at mentioning the team to give everyone a notification.

Lessons Learned

• It still pays to promote the sessions using multiple methods during a Microsoft 365 rollout. People are busy and should be communicated with channels that they are familiar with checking. Don't neglect using emailed meeting invites, even if you have added everyone to the Microsoft Team. An optional meeting invite will at the very least place a tentative time in calendars. Or provide an ICS file to download the meeting invite. In this case, make use of the Events web part on a SharePoint Communications site. It provides a link to add the event to your calendar.
• Microsoft Teams provided the place for conversation before, during and after the session. The ongoing conversation enriches the session content.
• Using a Teams conversation and meeting, Microsoft Stream and a SharePoint News page is an effective way to cross-promote the use of all three products. It drives traffic to your Communications site and provides a place for ongoing conversation.
• Presenting to a live audience while using a Teams meeting increased the reach of the presentation and was easy to manage. Sharing the mobile screen from the Teams mobile app opened new possibilities for training and discussion about working from a mobile.
• Recording the presentation in Stream creates a useful video resource. Writing a news story provides a summary of the main points. Hyperlinking the points to the relevant position in the video create a lasting learning resource embedded in the context of the rest of the scenario.

We will continue to deliver in-person deep-dive sessions using Microsoft Teams to create lasting learning resources that people can engage with. By involving people from within the business, we hope others will relate to the user stories and examples given by the people they work with and improve their adoption of the new office productivity tools and services.