Shared Channels: The Silver Lining

Where Things Stand

If you recall the hype and excitement around Shared Channels from Ignite21, you may have been surprised – like us – to see how the functionality has been implemented, particularly at the security level. In our previous post (see Shared Channels: Revolution or Missed Opportunity?), we underline a number of major adoption challenges including confusing user experience, lack of clarity around the impacts to guest users, and most fundamentally, the requirement for mutual trust between tenants.

At this point in time, there is no reason to believe the configuration of Azure AD B2B Direct Connect will fundamentally change, leaving many organizations feel like this is one ‘party’ to which they have no invitation. Unfortunately, we feel many security professionals will be pitted against the very real demand for this feature from end users within the organization – creating an adversarial relationship around a feature

The Silver Lining

Interestingly, while it was not the focus of early demos and previews from Microsoft, there is one very interesting use case for Shared Channels that does not require the need for external security decisions. In fact, it doesn’t even relate to collaboration with external organizations. Though counter-intuitive to its original premise, there is a very real use case for Shared Channels within an organization, for Communication, Collaboration and enhanced Knowledge Management!

There are countless examples where this may be useful, but a few to consider would be:

• Patterns and Practices, Communities of Practice, and Best Practices (topic-based)
• Q+A and Support Channels (topic-based, or function-based)

Rather than needing to create these as separate ‘communities’, traditionally entire Teams, we can now create these as re-usable channels and add them wherever we need – a much more flexible and modular approach.

It is important to note that some organizations are already using Yammer for some of these use cases, and we do not intend to imply this is a bad approach. Yammer has fantastic community-based functionality with its great Q+A features and much more. That being said, for organizations not ready or willing to introduce another tool into the mix, there is now an option available within Teams that can simplify information management, and streamline communication without adding considerable new layers of complexity.

Some benefits we see of this internal use case include:

• Access to useful information within the context of an existing Team, such as a project
• Reduced Teams proliferation
• Fewer Teams that must be made Public, or that require inviting huge swaths of the organization as users
• Single Source of Truth
• Better retention of knowledge and simpler knowledge management
• Better visibility and “findability” of important information

Examples

Looking for some practical examples of how this would actually work? Look no further for a few from our team:

Functional Ask Me Anything / Q+A

One scenario we really like is the ability for a department to host a forum for questions from the rest of the organization, and this conversation can be pinned in multiple places ensuring a single source of truth – almost like a Loop component!

e.g., Marketing AMA (Ask Me Anything) Shared Channel

Topic-Based Ask Me Anything / Q+A

The same scenario can apply to a topic-based community of practice or center of excellence for a particular topic, such as a Microsoft Teams!

e.g., MS Teams Champions Shared Channel

Patterns of Practice or Best Practices

Another great scenario is something like a Project Management Best Practices, added (ideally automatically via a Template) to every single Project Workspace, ensuring that everyone can benefit from the same Lessons Learned and Best Practices.

e.g., PMO Best Practices Shared Channel

Considerations

Certainly Shared Channels are not a silver bullet to every Teams challenge. As discussed in the previous post, there remain limitations and considerations to option to use Shared Channels, even internally. One of the major considerations for any organization is how to migrate towards their use. This presents a challenge as it is not currently possible to convert a regular channel to a shared channel, or vice versa. Therefore some planning is certainly required!

Conclusions

We love the idea of Shared Channels, and while it sounded great on paper and looked promising when we first saw it at Ignite, what we can now see is there is a significant security conversation at play, and many organizations will be unable to leverage this feature. That being said, there is a pretty fantastic secondary use of Shared Channels that brings immense benefits on its own. What do you think?