Consolidating Communications Channels
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So we at NTG have been thinking about this for a bit and are looking for some ideas. Right now we use a lot of different systems for our communications. We have Sharepoint, Exchange, Yammer, Lync, Skype, a traditional PBX (Asterisk) and more. The number of channels for communications are overwhelming and people cannot keep track of all of the different ways that people might be looking to reach them, leaving feedback, awaiting review, etc. It is just too much.
We really liked Yammer, but it seems that once you have more traffic it is impossible to find things that you need. It's great for casual announcements but not really useful for anything important because people have no idea that content is there and it rapidly disappears in a poorly organized "news feed."
Lync has proven to be useless. Buggy and unreliable. We've pretty much replaced that with Skype which is ad hoc and unmanaged but mostly works as advertised. That provides video conferencing, instant messaging, etc. It's rudimentary, but it works where Lync simply did not.
We are trying to consolidate systems to make it cleaner and easier to let people communicate. Don't want to load everything onto email. for example, but too many channels is just overwhelming and stuff gets missed. One person is looking at Yammer while another is posting to Sharepoint and they cross paths. We need to trim it down. We can't spend the whole day just looking at all of these channels.
The biggest challenges seem to be around providing transparency into projects and decision making and soliciting input, feedback and peer review on projects in a "pull" rather than "push" manner. We don't want an email blast of "please review this" for every little thing, but we want people to have a chance to do reviews when necessary. Wondering what ideas that people have for that kind of feedback loop. How do we enable that transparency and exposure without having too many channels and overloading people?
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At this point I think that part of the answer is dropping Lync and Yammer across the board and simply considering them to be failed experiments in our environment. Getting those cleaned up and out of the way will help, a little. At least to limit confusion.
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Using Sharepoint for feedback might be best, given the available options and not wanting to add a new system while knowing that Sharepoint is definitely not going away in our environment. Email and Sharepoint are the two "most stable" systems for us.
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It really is a major issue. As SAM says having too many drives everyone nuts and I think rather than try to post anywhere at all they just don't bother.
We now have a full time project manager which can bring things to one single point of contact on projects but still what's the best way to pass this information around so everyone can see it and comment. We really love to have the team involved on every project so that those without the experience can learn and those with can share what they know so that the client gets the best options available.
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Traditionally I thought that the Sharepoint system works pretty well. It's like a forum, posting each project as an individual thread worked moderately well. And keeps people in Sharepoint. You can subscribe to threads or add people to threads so that they see updates via email and don't need to watch it too closely.
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Unless we come up with something new, my gut feel is that Exchange + Skype + Sharepoint might be enough for all internal communications. Each piece isn't the most efficient, but it is only three pieces and covers the main bases without overwhelming us with different tools for different things. Only one of each, as a starting point.
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I think we need to streamline how we use SharePoint for this.
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@Minion-Queen said:
I think we need to streamline how we use SharePoint for this.
In the "client" site there is a discussion group that can be used. It's for nothing but discussion of client projects, needs, issues, etc.
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We use Lync for our PBX here but I know for a fact we're using a Lync server and not Office365. However, I remember when I was at NTG and Alex was too, he was talking about having Office365 Lync being used as a PBX. That could consolidate two systems to one. I guess I need to understand what you mean by communication channels. Communication internally? Communication between employees and clients?
Sharepoint would be a great place to have an internal page for announcements, etc. Then it becomes everyone's responsibility to monitor that intranet site (even though it's on Office365). Yammer should always be purely social. Basically, instead of trying this and that and everything, find what works and just stick with it.
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@thanksaj said:
We use Lync for our PBX here but I know for a fact we're using a Lync server and not Office365. However, I remember when I was at NTG and Alex was too, he was talking about having Office365 Lync being used as a PBX. That could consolidate two systems to one.
Problem there is that Lync is unstable and the reason that Skype is being used it because Lync is unreliable. It would be a great idea to consolidate the PBX and Lync but we need the reliability of Asterisk and Lync just can't pull that off. The Lync software is just so buggy. It freezes, crashes and goes offline constantly. Can't even use it reliably for IM let alone voice, video and if we hooked it to a SIP trunk we can just imagine the disaster.
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@thanksaj said:
Sharepoint would be a great place to have an internal page for announcements, etc. Then it becomes everyone's responsibility to monitor that intranet site (even though it's on Office365).
You can subscribe to things too, which makes it far easier to use. You don't have to watch it all day, every day, to know when things are happening.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
We use Lync for our PBX here but I know for a fact we're using a Lync server and not Office365. However, I remember when I was at NTG and Alex was too, he was talking about having Office365 Lync being used as a PBX. That could consolidate two systems to one.
Problem there is that Lync is unstable and the reason that Skype is being used it because Lync is unreliable. It would be a great idea to consolidate the PBX and Lync but we need the reliability of Asterisk and Lync just can't pull that off. The Lync software is just so buggy. It freezes, crashes and goes offline constantly. Can't even use it reliably for IM let alone voice, video and if we hooked it to a SIP trunk we can just imagine the disaster.
Lync on Office365 is not stable. Lync in a non-hosted solution is EXTREMELY stable! We use it here with ZERO problems.
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@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
We use Lync for our PBX here but I know for a fact we're using a Lync server and not Office365. However, I remember when I was at NTG and Alex was too, he was talking about having Office365 Lync being used as a PBX. That could consolidate two systems to one.
Problem there is that Lync is unstable and the reason that Skype is being used it because Lync is unreliable. It would be a great idea to consolidate the PBX and Lync but we need the reliability of Asterisk and Lync just can't pull that off. The Lync software is just so buggy. It freezes, crashes and goes offline constantly. Can't even use it reliably for IM let alone voice, video and if we hooked it to a SIP trunk we can just imagine the disaster.
Lync on Office365 is not stable. Lync in a non-hosted solution is EXTREMELY stable! We use it here with ZERO problems.
And we're spread out just as much as NTG and also have quite a few more people.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Sharepoint would be a great place to have an internal page for announcements, etc. Then it becomes everyone's responsibility to monitor that intranet site (even though it's on Office365).
You can subscribe to things too, which makes it far easier to use. You don't have to watch it all day, every day, to know when things are happening.
Yup. I think Sharepoint is going to be your best solution.
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@thanksaj said:
Lync on Office365 is not stable. Lync in a non-hosted solution is EXTREMELY stable! We use it here with ZERO problems.
I've used it at a few massive companies and it wasn't stable there either. Always major issues. Office 365 behaves exactly as I've seen it in the enterprise space.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Lync on Office365 is not stable. Lync in a non-hosted solution is EXTREMELY stable! We use it here with ZERO problems.
I've used it at a few massive companies and it wasn't stable there either. Always major issues. Office 365 behaves exactly as I've seen it in the enterprise space.
The standard solution we roll out to our clients for phone systems is Lync, which then doubles as their internal IMing system, etc. It's stable with zero issues for tons of clients and us internally. McAfee had issues with their Lync but their whole network was buggy as hell, so it wasn't really Lync as much as their network.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Lync on Office365 is not stable. Lync in a non-hosted solution is EXTREMELY stable! We use it here with ZERO problems.
I've used it at a few massive companies and it wasn't stable there either. Always major issues. Office 365 behaves exactly as I've seen it in the enterprise space.
I've been talking with two different companies who use Lync on-site. One is a large international company and their exec staff swears by it, makes it easy to get a hold of people without having to call them and is perceived as more professional then SMS, the IT person I've been talking to hasn't mentioned any stability issues (although that's understandable). The second is a significantly smaller company who uses it for ad-hoc one off communications... they apparently have had nothing but problems with it.
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I had a meeting a few weeks ago with Microsoft people and they don't use Lync themselves because of stability issues. They use Skype as well.
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@Minion-Queen said:
I had a meeting a few weeks ago with Microsoft people and they don't use Lync themselves because of stability issues. They use Skype as well.
I thought Skype was going to be branded as the new Lync? http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/11/7192929/skype-for-business-lync-replacement Not sure if this is relevant or not.
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@coliver said:
@Minion-Queen said:
I had a meeting a few weeks ago with Microsoft people and they don't use Lync themselves because of stability issues. They use Skype as well.
I thought Skype was going to be branded as the new Lync? http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/11/7192929/skype-for-business-lync-replacement Not sure if this is relevant or not.
That's what I was told.
