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  • 1.  Anyone use MS SharePoint/Groups/Teams to organize their core?

    Posted 29 days ago
    Hello friendly Core directors,

    I have a specific version of the perennial Core Info organization question: 

    Has anyone experienced, explored or implemented MS Teams/Groups/Sharepoint for their Core or in another context? What is/was your experience? We have very dispersive organization of files and communications. I loved the integration of Google tools at my previous institution and want to determine the value of the Microsoft tools for consolidating my Core information. Currently there are 3 of us, so we get along without a great structure, but a good solution would improve things and it's also a nice size for testing things with minimal risk.

    I really appreciate any experience or resources folks have to share!

    Things I've tried in the MS environment:
    • Great: Bookings provides a webpage for folks to make appointments directly on your calendar. I now have so many fewer emails for scheduling consultations and other non-instrument meetings. I still use email for training sessions since here isn't simple solution to connect my calendar with the microscope calendars in iLab.
    • Not great: MS Planner (similar to Trello, Asana, etc): I used it to keep track of maintenance things. Worked OK, but then everything I had in it disappeared last year when there was a system update and turns out it isn't backed up by the institution and MS said there was no way to recover it, so almost a year of information was lost. not great at cross-linking documents (for internal backup).
    Here are our current solutions:
    • Outlook email (terrible search, easy transfer of info to OneNote)
    • iLab project request
    • OneNote for notes (allows me to take paper notes attach the scan fast, emails dumped directly)
    • files saved on the University server (sharing within group always works, not accessible for emails on my phone or easily when traveling)
    • files saved in OneDrive (easy to attach to emails, sharing is inconsistent)
      • My biggest issue with OneDrive is if I have a staff member create a file, they can't just transfer ownership to me. I have to save a separate version then save it with them.
    • Maintenance records are an amalgamation of emails, OneNote notes, and files saved on the server. 
    Many thanks and have a great weekend!

    Wishing you peace and good health,
    Wendy


    -----------
    Wendy Salmon, MA  (she/her)
    Director, Hooker Imaging Core

    Dept. Cell Biology and Physiology, Univ. N. Carolina-Chapel Hill
    109 Mason Farm Rd, 236 Taylor Hall (shipping)
    CB 7545 (USPS)
    Chapel Hill, NC  27599-7545


  • 2.  RE: Anyone use MS SharePoint/Groups/Teams to organize their core?

    Posted 27 days ago
    Hi Wendy,

    I use Teams extensively with my group, but mostly in a project management capacity. My customers place their orders in iLab, and then we create a separate channel for each of our projects. (We have a “Team” dedicated to projects. All of the documents go into that channel, and each step of the experiment has a threaded conversation in that channel. We can record what goes well, what goes wrong, and leave notes for each other if more than one person is working on the project. I keep the data release summary there, make note of the disposition of samples and when it was billed (including iLab invoice number). Once it has been billed and the samples disposed of or returned, the channel is archived, but can be reactivated if necessary.

    We use Evernote for the actual experiment notes (I would like a different solution for that). All of my work stations have iPads that have the protocols on them, specific for each experiment, and my techs use the iPads to take pictures of everything along the way. Those pictures have helped us solve problems more than once. Once the project is done, the Evernotes are converted to .pdfs and attached to the Teams channel, just in case we lose Evernote.

    We release the data to to the customers using OneDrive, and it is a pain that my techs can’t transfer control of the folder to me. I definitely would like a solution for that.

    Our version of Teams is institutionally supported, so I hope everything is being backed up appropriately!

    Roxann


    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Anyone use MS SharePoint/Groups/Teams to organize their core?

    Posted 26 days ago

    Dear Wendy,

     

    We use MS Teams extensively in our Core and find it highly effective for organizing communications and resources. We have two primary Teams: one for internal staff and one for all our Core users.

     

    The Core Users Team includes user onboarding materials: guidelines, safety training, our policies, etc. and also lists a live instrument status dashboard. It's also where staff manage user training, providing pre-training reading, SOPs, videos, quizzes, and feedback surveys. Dedicated chat channels for instruments and labs facilitate real-time communication between staff and users about outages, updates, hardware changes and issues, and announcements about upcoming seminars/workshops/etc.. One challenge we've encountered is with some external users struggling to access Teams; in these cases, we share information via email as needed.

     

    The internal staff Team houses our unit's operational guidelines and notebooks, collaborative documents, and supports general staff communications, onboarding, and offboarding. For service requests spanning disciplines, we create project-specific Teams chats to streamline communication and project management.

     

    While iLab handles all service requests and project progress tracking, data sharing happens through SharePoint in many of our labs. Users have individual, secure folders in SharePoint, though upload times for large datasets can be a limitation.

     

    Overall, the system works well for us, and I'd be happy to discuss this further or provide a more detailed overview over a call if that would be helpful!

     

    Cheers

    Karolien




    Original Message


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