Does your business use Office 365? If yes, you have your own streaming service!

Microsoft wants to be a one-stop shop for all your business needs. With their ever-expanding catalogue of apps, it can be hard to keep track of all the tools you have access to as an Office 365 user. Microsoft Stream, a video storage, sharing and collaboration app, is one of their less well known, but very useful applications.

What is it?

Microsoft Stream is a video service where people in your organization can upload, create, view, and share videos. Think of it as a private version of YouTube.

Stream is integrated with Teams, SharePoint, and other Microsoft tools. For example, you can record Teams meetings and calls directly into Stream. From there, the platform will generate a searchable transcript your video. If you need to go back and find a piece of information mentioned in a 2-hour long call, you can just search the transcript. Once you find what you’re looking for, you can easily jump to that point in the video.

You can watch videos while following along with the automatically generated transcript on the right-hand side of the screen.

Videos on Stream can also have an interactive element. You can set surveys to appear at specified points throughout the video to keep your users engaged. For example, if you post a video with training content, you can put up periodic questions about that content to make sure the viewers are paying attention.

Keep your viewers engaged with questions and surveys

Videos on Stream can be organized into channels and you can add team members to different groups within your organization. You can create channels such as a training and onboarding. Team members can be added to different groups and videos could be shared within them. So for example, different departments and teams can be put into groups so relevant content can be shared with them.

Can’t I just use YouTube?

There isn’t an objective best practice for deciding between YouTube and Stream for internal videos. It mostly depends on what your needs are. If you’re looking for a free platform and you don’t have Office 365, or your videos do not contain confidential information, YouTube is an excellent choice. If, however, you already have Office 365 and are looking to share confidential information in your videos, Stream is the obvious choice. Obviously confidentiality and price aren’t the only two factors in making the decision on which platform to use and how to best utilize it. Contact the team at DDKinfotech for more information on how to use and implement video platforms for your business.