How-To

How to get Microsoft 365 off the ground for your construction projects

How-To | March 27, 2023

It can be an intimidating experience trying to manage your projects in Microsoft 365. There are so many different approaches and tools it can make your head spin trying to find the best for your needs. And it can be difficult, almost impossible, to find the right company to work with that has construction and Microsoft technology knowledge to do it.

We have found that figuring out where to start is the greatest challenge for construction organizations looking to embrace Microsoft 365 for their projects.

Common questions construction organizations have about Microsoft 365

Some typical Microsoft 365 questions we get from construction teams include:

How do I write requirements?
What’s the best way to manage data? Folders vs. metadata?
How can I manage my contractors’ permissions? What if I don’t want them to have access at all?
What are the best tools to create, manage, schedule, report, and archive my projects?
How can I minimize the number of emails that fill up my inbox?
What are some of the tools and processes to improve project communication?
How can I deliver a super simple solution for all levels of technical aptitude?

Solving the above questions requires years of experience developing and delivering solutions specifically for the construction industry.

Lydon Solutions is a turnkey Microsoft 365 solutions provider laser-focused on the construction industry, from developing detailed requirements to implementing easy-to-use solutions. For over 14 years, we have been delivering award-winning solutions that have made our clients more productive and have saved millions of dollars.

Let us help you take the first step to take control of your projects. You can request a one-hour consultation here.

We also have our own construction management platform, Construction Viz, that can be implemented out of the box or tailored specifically to your business. You can request a demo here.

Microsoft 365 resources for construction teams

Below are a few blog articles that will help you get started using Microsoft 365 to manage your construction projects.

The Great Metadata Convergence with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive

How-To | February 16, 2023

Microsoft is unifying metadata handling between Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Here is what you need to know.

What is metadata?

First, let’s start with a definition. Metadata is “data that provides information about other data.” In the case of SharePoint, metadata can include using the term store or adding unique columns to lists and libraries. The advantage of metadata over folders is that you gain more robust search and reporting capabilities.

What’s the issue with folders?

Organizing by folders is popular because it builds on the familiar. File folders are similar to how we store paper documents in file cabinets. Folders also mirror a standard shared drive. So, users find this approach intuitive and easy.

One downside of folders is upkeep. Documents have to be moved from one folder to another to be re-classified. The organization scheme of several levels of folders can be confusing. Documents can get misfiled in incorrect or redundant folders over time.

Here’s an article that further explains the topic - 3 Ways to Organize Your Documents in SharePoint - Lydon Solutions

How does metadata currently work with Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint?

Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint are three applications in Microsoft 365 where you can effectively manage documents. Until recently, each application has its strengths and weaknesses regarding file organization:

The Teams application is great for collaborating and has a files tab in a channel where you can upload files into folders. However, you could not add metadata.
OneDrive has a local client that allows for working with files offline. It is also easy to use and navigate since it has an explorer-like view that we all know from a PC, but it also lacks metadata.
SharePoint is an enterprise content management system (ECMS) that provides the ultimate flexibility to use metadata and folders for lists and document libraries.

What has changed with metadata in Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint?

With this recent Microsoft 365 update, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint can share metadata, not just folders. If I add columns in the files tab of a Teams channel, those columns will appear in SharePoint and OneDrive. If I add columns in the SharePoint Documents library, they will be available in Teams and OneDrive. At this point, you cannot add columns (metadata) in OneDrive, but you can view them. Also, you can now create views in Teams using metadata linked to SharePoint, keeping both systems in sync. Let’s get into why this update is important.

Teams adding columns to a files tab for a channel

SharePoint adding columns in the Documents library

OneDrive viewing columns from a Documents library

What’s the big deal with this metadata change?

Metadata is critical to organizing files more consistently. Until now, metadata was only useful in SharePoint since you couldn’t add or view it in Teams or OneDrive. This update keeps all three applications in sync with both folders and metadata when you use the Documents library. You are not restricted to just using folders!

Also, you don’t need to manually sync the Documents library across Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint for this to work; Microsoft does this for you automatically. If you check out one of our recent posts, Microsoft 365 OneDrive and Teams for Your Construction PMIS (lydonsolutions.com), you will see how Microsoft has done this behind the scenes.

Great news, but there is a catch

Unfortunately, you currently cannot see the metadata if you are using the mobile apps for SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.

Also, this metadata feature is related to the SharePoint Documents library created when you create a new Team. To use other SharePoint libraries to manage metadata, you must manually link to that SharePoint site from Teams or OneDrive.

Take away

In summary, by making metadata available across Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, Microsoft has brought all three applications closer together for document management with fewer trade-offs. So, deciding where you want to manage your project documents is not an either-or application decision. You could start in Teams and use SharePoint or OneDrive at a later date based on the use case without having to give up search and reporting.

Microsoft 365 is a powerful platform for managing all aspects of your business and operations. Due to its scale and breadth, it can be a little intimidating. You can reach out to Lydon solutions for a free one-hour consultation where we can help you on the right path for your organization.

Keep Your Team in the Loop with the Microsoft Teams Bulletins App

How-To | February 2, 2023

It can be challenging notifying team members of upcoming events or keep them in the loop on project communication. Organizations using Microsoft 365 have many communication options, including email, Microsoft Teams chats, and even SharePoint pages. But which one is the easiest to use and most efficient communication tool?

The Bulletins app for Microsoft Teams is a relatively new app that can centralize this type of communication while keeping you in the Teams ecosystem. Read on to find out if the new Bulletins app for Microsoft Teams might be a good notification solution for your construction organization.

What is a Bulletins app for Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft has been releasing a bunch of free sample apps to inspire developers to adopt and extend the Power Platform ecosystem. These apps are usable out of the box or customizable to solve your unique needs.

Bulletin app in a Microsoft Teams channel

The Bulletin app is a notification-focused app that you can add to Teams chats or channels. Each bulletin can have a title, description, image, category, URL, and delivery date.

Notifications could occur from all project areas. The Bulletins app can be an excellent fit for construction teams since you can easily organize items by category, date, and featured status to make them easy to find. What's great about the Bulletin app is that it keeps these notifications centralized and easily manageable by Team. It's a one-stop shop for managing notifications.

How do I add the Bulletins app to Microsoft Teams?

If you frequently use Microsoft Teams as a communication and file storage platform, you have probably seen the option to add apps by clicking the three dots for "More added apps."

Clicking "more apps" from Microsoft Teams navigation

Installing the Bulletin app into a Microsoft Teams channel

To find out how to add the Bulletin app to your tenant, refer to this link: Bulletins sample app - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn.

Microsoft Teams adds two tabs when you install the Bulletin app: "Manage Bulletins" and "Bulletins." Here is a quick breakdown of how they work:

Manage Bulletins - The Manage Bulletins tab is where a designated communication lead would create bulletins. Once published, the bulletins can be seen in the Bulletin app by everyone that has access to it.

Adding a Bulletin via the Manage Bulletins tab

Bulletins - The Bulletins tab is where your team goes to see the latest bulletin. Bulletins can be bookmarked, sorted by category, and searched.

Bulletin home screen

How could I use Bulletins on my project?

A bulletin could have a variety of uses for a construction project. A few good examples of construction-specific bulletins with categories could be:

General -"Client will be onsite every Friday."
Systems - "System downtime from 1-2 PM."
H&S - "H&S training required for access to the exclusion zone."

You can also include bulletin details with a nice banner image and links to related information, such as a SharePoint site where you can provide more details.

The Bulletins app is cool, but…

Having a notification app is a great idea, and Microsoft has done all of the heavy lifting to make this app available for developers to extend it further. If you are not a developer or have a developer in-house that knows the Power Platform, there are a few limitations in the out-of-the-box app:

Cannot attach images. You can add URLs that can link to images but cannot embed images into the text field.
Isolated to a single team. You can install the Bulletins app for a team, and it will show on every channel for that team. However, you cannot install the Bulletins app across multiple teams.
Needs additional options. While Microsoft created this app to pique the developer community's interest, it would have been great if there were a few additional features. For example, configurable fields such as status, the ability to use the activity feed when a new notification gets added, and distribution groups.

In summary, the Bulletin app is an interesting approach to notifying team members. I recommend trying it, but I would caution implementing it if you do not have the IT support to modify the app for your specific use cases.

If you want to implement this Microsoft Teams app or any others from Microsoft and need IT support with the power platform or anything in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, Lydon Solutions is here to help. You can schedule a free one-hour consultation here.

Microsoft 365 OneDrive and Teams for Your Construction PMIS

How-To | January 16, 2023

A recent Microsoft 365 roadmap feature (ID #88912) could allow you to manage construction projects using only two Microsoft 365 applications. Check out this article to find out more.

Microsoft Teams is the company’s communication platform and information hub, and Microsoft is integrating all of its applications into it to make the application a one-stop shop. OneDrive is Microsoft’s “file share” solution. OneDrive is more of a windows explorer in the cloud where you can save files into folders and even take files offline without an internet connection.

Microsoft’s 365 roadmap feature 88912- OneDrive: Easily navigate to all your Teams files from OneDrive provides a huge benefit to file storage, essentially connecting OneDrive to your Teams files which are in turn connected to SharePoint document libraries.

In OneDrive mobile, you can see Teams that you have access to under Libraries

In OneDrive Online, you can see Teams you have access to under Quick access/Recent and More places.

This recent feature is special because Microsoft has seamlessly integrated OneDrive with SharePoint behind the scenes. Creating a new team in the Teams application adds an associated SharePoint site to store your Teams files by default. Think of SharePoint as your database for Teams. Before Microsoft implemented this new feature, you had to connect OneDrive to the Teams-specific document library in SharePoint manually.

With this new integration between Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, you can forgo having to link OneDrive to a SharePoint document library manually; Microsoft does this automatically for you. This makes file storage locations consistent between Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive.

Integration between Teams and OneDrive is excellent for construction projects

If you use Microsoft Office documents and PDFs as your primary data, you could deliver a project management information system (PMIS) by solely using only Teams and OneDrive:

You can use Teams to manage project team communication for office and field workers since Teams is available for desktop, online, and mobile.
Field workers could use the mobile OneDrive app if they need to go offline without an internet connection to view and add documents to the same Team locations that the rest of the teams use.
All your project files will reside in the same place in Teams and OneDrive (and SharePoint).

The above is a simple two-system solution that could get you up and running for your project in no time. Ultimately, you have one location for files which is a huge benefit for project teams.

From here, you could expand Teams to introduce forms, workflows, and reports using the Power Platform. You could also introduce SharePoint for more of an intranet-like experience and more document control.

While Microsoft 365 is an amazing platform for managing information for your projects, it can be a little overwhelming. Lydon Solutions is here to help. You can request a free one-hour consultation to get you on the right track.

What Microsoft 365 @mentions Mean for Construction Communications

How-To | January 6, 2023

@Mentions are frequently used on social media platforms to share content. You can type @ and select a username from a list of available users to notify them of your post. Mentions provide an efficient way to identify a user while writing so that you don't have to jump into another application, such as email, to notify them. Mentions are heavily used in most social media platforms, and rightly so, for their ease of use.

As with many social media innovations, @mentions have made their way to Microsoft 365. Read on to find out what mentions can do in Microsoft 365 for construction projects and where Microsoft might take this feature.

How @mentions work in Microsoft 365

Microsoft has added @mentions across Teams and Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. You can even add mentions to SharePoint lists and libraries. While this is great news for Microsoft 365 users, there are some differences and disconnects with mentions between Teams and the rest of the Microsoft 365 applications.

How mentions work in Teams

Teams is a modern application in Microsoft 365, so Microsoft seamlessly integrated @mentions across the application. You can mention a team member in a chat, and a notification will show in their activity feed. In the same chat, you can even use a mention to call on a bot which could add in an application or a workflow if needed.

You can mention a channel member, team, or channel in a channel post, which is handy if you want to notify everyone in a team or channel.

Unfortunately, mentions in Teams do not integrate with mentions in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and even SharePoint. Mentions are their own communication island in Teams unless you incorporate a custom Power Automate workflow or the Graph API to send mentions into Teams from the office apps.

How mentions work in Excel, Word, PowerPoint,Outlook, and SharePoint

To add a mention to Outlook just type @ and select the team member.

To add a mention to Excel, Word, or PowerPoint files online, click the comments button to insert an @mention into the document.

You can add mentions to SharePoint list and document library records by editing a record and scrolling down to the More Details section of the fly out panel:

Mentions made in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and SharePoint will show in the notifications bell of the person assigned for both the online and desktop versions of Outlook.

Once again, these mentions do not link to the mentions in Teams.

For more information, refer to these Microsoft support articles:

Use @mention in comments to tag someone for feedback (Excel, Word, and PowerPoint)
Use @mentions to get someone's attention (Microsoft Outlook)

What could be Microsoft's plan for mentions?

Email is still the preferred method of communication. With Teams, users can minimize emails by using chat with mentions. At some point, Microsoft could bridge the gap across all its Microsoft 365 applications so they can use a universal @mentions feature to notify users. An integrated @mentions approach could centralize the communication stream so that if I create a Teams chat, Microsoft 365 automatically sends off email notifications from Outlook. Or, if I was in Outlook, I could mention a person in an email, and that email would then show in a chat, team, or channel. No more bouncing around between mentions in Teams and the rest of Microsoft 365. No more trying to decide if I should use Teams or Outlook.

So how can mentions help me with construction communication?

As discussed above, mentions are still a fragmented solution across Microsoft 365, but @mentions can still be part of your communications strategy, depending on the stakeholders. For internal correspondence, you could use Teams chats and posts. For external communications, you could continue to use Outlook email. Also, until Microsoft delivers a mentions solution across Microsoft 365, you can leverage a Power Automate workflow to capture project-specific external emails and store them into teams and channel chats by referencing the mentions in the workflow.

Finally, if your team actively collaborates in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and SharePoint online, you might find it valuable to take advantage of @mentions to alert users when they are assigned to review an entry or a file. Check out this article for more information: New Notifications pane in Outlook helps you stay on task (office.com).

Learn how to use Microsoft 365 to manage your construction projects

If you need help implementing Microsoft 365 for your construction organization or you are just looking to implement a communication solution, you can request a free one-hour consultation with our Microsoft 365 specialists here.

If a turnkey Microsoft 365 construction PMIS solution might be a better fit, you can request a demo of Construction Viz here. Also, you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter to keep up with the latest Microsoft 365 news, tips and tricks, and Construction Viz; you can do so in the footer below.

Can Outlook’s new Share to Teams feature help your projects?

How-To | July 11, 2022

If you follow the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, you might have seen this feature: Share to Teams from Outlook (Feature ID: 80721) and wondered what it does.

According to Microsoft’s description:

"Share to Teams from Outlook allows you to send a copy of email messages or conversations, including attachments, into Teams chats and channels. Find the Share to Teams option in the Outlook ribbon or the action menu for an email. Share to Teams supports Outlook on the web, Outlook for Windows, and the new Outlook for Mac Preview."

It sounds interesting and might be good to have in your toolkit if you want to save important project emails directly from Outlook into your project Team sites. More and more construction organizations are using Teams, and any way to quickly bring emails into Teams is a big plus for managing communication.

So, we tried it out and wanted to provide our assessment. Overall, It's kinda cool, but…

Setting up the Share to Teams add-in for Outlook

First, the Share to Teams add-in for Outlook is not configurable. It can only be selectively disabled or enabled on a per-user basis using PowerShell. The steps to set up Share to Teams add in can be found here: Share to Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs.

Once the add-in is activated, a new button appears in Outlook labeled “Share to Teams.”

Sharing an email with Share to Teams

How it works is that you select an individual email you would like to show in Teams and click the Share to Teams button. A modal pop-up window is displayed with a few options:

You can select a person, group, or channel in Teams to share the email and choose whether or not to include the attachments.

If you choose a person or a group, the email will show in their Teams chat. If you select a channel, then the email will show in the Channel Posts tab.

And, if you added any attachments, both the email and the attachments are also added to the Files tab as separate files.

One by one, you can select your Outlook emails and then click Share to Teams and select the location to have them save over to a chat or a team. It works like a charm, but there are a couple of things to consider:

This is purely a way to copy Outlook emails into Teams. You cannot respond to these emails from Teams.
You cannot assign a folder to save the email or attachments so that they will always sit outside your File tab folder structure. You would then need to move them manually if required.
The files are assigned a SharePoint app account for both Modified By and Created By, so you have no audit trail of who posted the files.

Our wishlist for the Share to Teams Feature

What we would like to see in a future release would be:

Ability to share to a Team channel based on an Outlook email rule.
Ability to save attachments into Teams file folders automatically.
Ability to assign metadata, from SharePoint, to the emails so you can search and report on them.
Capturing the email From and To as well as the actual file Modified By and Created By.
Ability to respond to emails from Teams. You can share to Outlook from a Teams chat and then share to Teams from the Outlook email but after that initial exchange, no further actions can be taken on the message.

In summary, Share to Teams is a good idea but needs a little more time in the oven to be a significant time savings feature in Teams.

Do more with Microsoft 365 and SharePoint

If you need help setting up Microsoft 365 to manage your construction projects, you can check out this three-part blog article series or reach out to us directly for a free consultation.