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Knowledge Nugget: How to communicate to a wider audience

Office 365 Knowledge Nuggets

How to communicate to a wider audience in Microsoft Teams is the next instalment in the Office 365 team’s bitesize guidance series – Knowledge Nuggets. Read the article here.

The knowledge nuggets are designed to help you get to grips with the functions available within our different Office 365 products like Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint.

Email is increasingly becoming a tool of the past with Microsoft Teams offering a space to effectively communicate with your colleagues in a more efficient way.

To get the best out of engaging with a larger audience, you may want to consider:
◾Sharing the same message on multiple channels/teams – this is particularly useful if you have a number of different Microsoft Teams with different members of staff and you’d like to communicate the same message to each, reducing the need to copy and paste your message several times in different areas
◾Using tabs to pin useful information – it’s easy for messages to get lost in a conversation thread if the Microsoft Team is particularly active with a lot of discussions taking place, if you have some useful information (a document, a link to a website etc) to share with your colleagues then consider adding this to your Team as a tab
◾Replying to conversation threads – it’s important to understand what a conversation thread is and how to respond to one, replying to a thread will alert the person who started that discussion that you have replied to their post, if you do not reply to the thread direct your message may go unnoticed

Here’s a quick snapshot of what we’ve learned so far.

Most of those responding access Connects regularly, with 80% visiting the pages at least once a week.

The majority use Connects to find:

information
documents
people

We asked what people liked about Connects

We were able to identify the following recurring themes in the responses:

‘one-stop-shop’ for information
user friendly
easy to access
clear layout and navigation
good search engine

We asked what people disliked about Connects

There were recurring themes in the responses to this question too:

difficulties navigating the site
problems with the search engine
not being able to find things, like contact details or documents when not sure of its exact name
out of date information

We asked what people would like to see added to Connects?

We received lots of great suggestions for consideration with the most common being:

personalisation to allow the user to have most used items on display first
an up-to-date directory (names, job descriptions, responsibilities, team structure and contact details) allowing people to quickly and easily find the right person for the job/enquiry

What happens next?

We will identify ways that we can deliver an intranet that addresses the issues raised and adds value to the organisation. A key part of this will be re-examining the site’s navigation and structure. We will be running tests with colleagues and will be in touch with the 41% of you that said you’d be happy to help with testing.

“Like everyone, we faced unprecedented circumstances, however, our teaching and support staff used their skills, knowledge and experience to act, react and respond to the situation we found ourselves in.

– Caroline Amos, Head of Education

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