When it comes to SharePoint, there are usually at least 4 or 5 ways of getting the job done. While this is cool for variety, it is bewildering for people new to the technology.  How are you supposed to know which option to choose?

Let’s use communications as an example. We need to communicate to people. Ok cool – your options are :

• Teams Chat
• News Posts with Comments on
• Yammer
• Custom Lists

Which one do you choose?  Work backwards from what it is you need to achieve.  

Some questions might be :

Who do you need to communicate with? The whole company, just your team, or people outside your business?

If it’s the whole company, you could use Teams Chats, News Posts, Yammer or Lists.

If it’s external people, email will be the best bet. You can communicate via Teams and SharePoint in those instances, but it gets complicated with permissions and licensing.

Do you want people to be able to respond to the communication being sent out; ie: must they be able to reply, like or rate the content?

If yes, you can still use all the options.

If no, you can’t use Teams Chats or Yammer because anyone in that thread can reply. Then you could only use News Posts with comments off. Or a custom list with read rights.

Must they be able to add attachments?  

If yes, then you can’t use News Post commenting as there is no upload ability. The rest you could still use.

Do you need to categorize the communications to create views?

If yes, you can create metadata and views in Custom Lists to only show current or open communications.

You can also use metadata and filtered news web parts to on News Posts to categorise information.

How must the news be delivered to the people?

If you had categories of news, you could also use workflow to send certain information to certain people at certain times.

• Teams Chat – sent instantly, Teams notifies people that there are new conversations to look at
  
• News Posts – you can manually share the post once you’ve published it. But SharePoint also sends out an automated, weeky email called “SharePoint News You Might Have Missed”. It checks to see what the user has access to and what they have not read, then sends a personalised email of those articles.
  
• Yammer – like Teams, notifies people when something is posted.
  
• Custom Lists – you could either share an item manually once posted, or put a daily or weekly summary alert onto the list for new items to the people that need to see it.

Still too many choices?

If it’s still down to more than one option after all your questions, build one of each and see which one suits you better. There’s no hard and fast rule, do what makes you more comfortable, is the easiest to manage and looks the best for your scenario.

With communication specifically, we are huge fans of News Posts. It has a lot of flexibility and addresses multiple communication scenarios.

Before attempting any technology, understand your business. Know what you need to report or or manage. That will help you choose the most suitable tech to make it better.