I have seen the inner and outer loop analogies from Microsoft. I love Brad Grissom’s Where Work Gets Done modifying the original explanation and graphics. AvePoint has a good explanation of when to use what and Matt Wade has the Periodic Table of Office 365 (and a new beta version, too)
My acronym is TOYS. Teams, Outlook, Yammer and SharePoint (or Teams, Outlook, You = OneDrive and SharePoint). It works for remembering the choices and to highlight some of the differences. The best analogy I have is thinking through different examples from a company. If your company has Yammer, use Yammer as the Y.
Yammer this may already be where you share information freely with everyone in your company. It’s the Facebook for the enterprise. At Microsoft it’s where they talked about the Skype to Teams transition (we will get to why they dont use Teams in a minute).
Outlook is easy to understand because it’s the choice we have had and used the longest. Outlook is great for communicating externally, maybe for the first time, universally understood and for many where they spend the most time.
Microsoft Teams is the new kid on the block. It’s great for people you work with frequently. Avanade produced a video for employees to explain various Office 365 tools — it’s pretty good. Teams is a conversation based collaborative toolkit which can involve a lot of other choices in Office 365.
SharePoint is for many companies their intranet. It’s probably established like Outlook, has gone through different versions, looks and capabilities. It does a great job. MSW (Microsoft Web or MSWeb) is a good example.
MSW migrated to SharePoint online: https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/Karuana/migrating-to-sharepoint-online-how-micosoft-does-it
OneDrive if you are discussing sharing options (or not using Yammer and want something for the Y in TOYS) is personal cloud storage that starts with You. I like the idea of “H no more" if that’s your home drives for employees.
T (Microsoft Teams) — conversational-based workspace, O (Microsoft Outlook) — what most of us use for email, calendar and possibly to-do and contacts, Y (Yammer) — facebook for the enterprise, public and All Company communication by default, great for providing large communities space and quick ways to acknowledge you have seen and “like” something from a leader in the company (or for leaders to acknowledge you!). S (Microsoft SharePoint) — many companies equate this to their Intranet. It’s great for publishing information that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere.
