Step 2: Review Microsoft 365 communication tools

Learn more about how Microsoft 365 tools and applications can help you create the right communication channels for the right audiences. Review communication tools and learn more about engagement options, maintenance requirements, analytics, and other details to help you decide which tool is best for your scenario and desired outcome.

Teams	SharePoint	Yammer	Outlook	Stream
Channels, teams, and live events	Intelligent intranet and knowledge management	Social networking and live events	Mail, calendar, tasks, and contacts	Intelligent video services
Communicate and collaborate across the organizations in teams and channels	Create durable content on sites and pages targeted to specific audiences	Use Yammer communities to create a dialogue with certain groups	Send mail and newsletters to specific audiences	Create groups and channels to target content to specific audiences
Add intranet resources, pages, and lists as tabs in teams channels	Use news posts to distribute news across Microsoft 365 apps	Post messages, interact, and search for conversations and key words	Get reply receipts and usage analytics to track correspondence	Use video to create engaging communication experiences
Review usage and engagement analytics to measure reach	Integrate web parts like Stream and Yammer to create a cohesive experience	Collect feedback and answer questions during live events	Access engagement analytics to learn about user behavior	Integrate video into SharePoint using the Stream web part

Teams: Video conferencing, chat, and live events

Set up, customize, and collaborate in teams and channels. Get work done using channel posts, chats, calls, and online meetings. Teams is a great place to target information to smaller or more specific teams in your organization. Integrate resources from SharePoint like pages, lists, and document libraries as tabs in Microsoft Teams. For example, you might have a team for your sales department with a channel for event announcements that includes resources from your Sales team site in SharePoint.

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Engagement options: - Post news and announcements to specific teams and channels - Use @mentions for names of people or the channel so get attention - Integrate popular SharePoint pages as tabs in Teams channels - Reach broad audiences using Teams live events - Communicate with up for 10,000 people at once in a team or channel - Integrate resources from SharePoint, conversations in Yammer, and news from across the organization using Viva Connections Set up and maintenance options: - Help manage channel content and context by adding chat moderators - Create a Teams template to standardize the way Teams are created across the organization - Set up secure collaboration for Teams that will allow guest or external users - Set up Viva Connections for Teams desktop Analytics: - Users can view analytics for teams and channels that they are part of - Access more in-depth analytics and reporting in the Teams admin center

SharePoint: Engage, learn, and collaborate

SharePoint is the center or your organization’s internal knowledge base, or intranet, and is composed of portals, sites, and pages. Many communication apps can be integrated with SharePoint to create dynamic experiences that can be easily viewed on a mobile or desktop device.

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Engagement options: - Share durable information with dozens or hundreds of people – or your entire organization using SharePoint communication or team sites - Share news in a visually compelling format on a site or email across the organization - Integrate other communication outlets like Yammer, Stream, and Twitter using web parts on SharePoint pages - Use SharePoint sites and pages to make recorded events, meetings, resources, and related contacts available to the rest of the organization - Use audience targeting on SharePoint sites, pages, lists, links, and web parts to help users find content - Bring intranet resources into Microsoft Teams desktop and the mobile app to help employees find resources and collaborate in the form of dashboard cards using Viva Connections Set up and maintenance options: - Setting up a home site for your organization is a good starting place since it will be the gateway to the rest of your organization, and enables you to customize global navigation in the SharePoint app bar - Set up Viva Connections for Teams desktop - Over time, manage and maintain SharePoint content and site settings for relevance and ensure users have the right access to content - Consider using SharePoint hub sites to create associations between related sites and content Analytics: - View usage data for your SharePoint site - View usage data for a SharePoint page or news post

Yammer: Social networking and live events

Build communities of interest, gather ideas, request feedback, and keep everyone moving forward with help from Yammer. Yammer slows you to create social network inside and outside of your organization. Conversations and highlights in Yammer can be integrated into SharePoint and Viva Connections.

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Engagement options: - Join and create a community in Yammer to bring people together - Create polls, praise, announcements, and questions in Yammer - Integrate Yammer into Microsoft Teams by adding a Yammer page to a Teams channel - Use a Yammer web part to integrate conversations and highlights into a relevant SharePoint site - Learn how to organize a live event in Yammer - Use the Yammer community app in Microsoft Teams Set up and maintenance options: - Enable people at your organization to [report concerns about Yammer conversations or replies]/yammer/manage-yammer-groups/configure-conversation-reporting.md) - Plan to engage new Yammer communities until the conversation picks up naturally over time Analytics: - View insights about questions and answers in Yammer - View insights about Yammer community or group activity - Determine how many people have seen a Yammer conversation

Outlook: Email and calendars

Outlook is a tried-and-true form of communication for many organizations. Email is still a popular form of communication (especially for broad and diverse audiences) and can be viewed on any device. Email is often used in combination with other communication tools to share news, event information, and organizational updates.

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Engagement options: - Reach an unlimited number of recipients - Use @mentions to get the attention of somebody in an email - Get more out of your email by sharing the same message in Microsoft Teams - Choose when the message by be received by scheduling email messages Set up and maintenance options: - Consider setting up Outlook message templates to standardize corporate communications - Create Microsoft 365 groups in Outlook to make reaching specific audiences more easily Analytics: - Add and request read receipts and delivery notifications - Create polls and view results in an email message

Stream: Securely upload, organize, and share videos

Microsoft Stream is video service where people in your organization can upload, view, and share videos securely. You can share recordings of meetings, presentations, training sessions, or other videos that aid your team's collaboration. Use Stream for live events, or embed Stream content in Microsoft Teams or SharePoint.

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Engagement options: - Share Stream videos in email, Teams channels and chats, or in Yammer - Use the Stream web part to embed a video in a SharePoint page or news post - Upload recordings from Teams meetings into Stream to organize and store content - Consider using Stream for live events when you need to reach large audiences and want to record the session to share with others Set up and maintenance options: - Stream uses Microsoft 365 groups and channels to make it easy to share and collaborate on content and manage access - There are video quotas and limitations depending on your organization’s license

Up next:

Step 3: Scope audience size and preferences

Step 4: Get started planning for your scenario