Stream video portal is now available

If you weren't aware, Microsoft was working on a replacement for the Office 365 Video Portal. It's called Stream. And it launched to the public today on all education and enterprise tenants. I had to do some research on this topic anyway, so here's what I found.

Stream gives you a YouTube-like experience in Office 365, built-in and without having to purchase some expensive third-party tool.

The launch of Stream is important because 1) it's turned on by default and 2) you now have two video portals in your tenant for a while.

What comes with Stream?

Stream offers some improvements in usability (based on reading the documentation) and a couple new features, but not a whole lot.

It seems to me that it's more an under-the-hood upgrade with some rebranding. For example, they built the file storage process on Azure directly rather than SharePoint; plus they gave the service a name ("Stream") rather than a descriptor ("Video Portal").

(Note: no word on file size capability. It was 15 GB in the O365 Video Portal since that was based on SharePoint's limits. Maybe this will be bigger?)

Two cool new features are audio-to-text transcription and automatic facial recognition, but the current documentation says "(specific license required)" after the features, which makes me think that equals $$$. (I hope not...) Update: these features are included with E5 licenses (education and enterprise), which is nice. No love for E3, though.

Microsoft has a video overview they posted today that covers features. It's on YouTube (or, ya know, not Stream).

Most of the other features (on the user end) center around integration with other tools (e.g., SharePoint, Teams, others), which is kind of a bare minimum of expectations, if you ask me. But nice to see.

Notably, the most-requested feature I've heard asked about is not there (yet): external sharing. I know a lot of organizations will not recommend Stream internally until that happens. That's your call.

Stream is now an Office 365 Groups app

Be aware that if you're using Office 365 Groups, Stream is now one of the apps that comes with a new Group (which includes Outlook Groups, Yammer Feeds, and Teams Chats). [Source]

Examples:

1. If you create an Outlook Group, you get a Stream portal.
2. If you create a Stream portal/Group (yes, this phrasing is clunky), you get an Outlook Group (which can get a Teams Chat).
3. If you create a Teams Chat, you get a Stream portal.
4. etc.

Point is, you get Stream even if you don't want it. So that's a good reason to not disable Stream. It's part of Groups and disabling Groups is harder than you think.

How will the transition work?

Content in the Office 365 Video Portal will migrate to Stream automatically in the background. The process will start in July 2017 and continue over the rest of the year in a three-phase approach. They'll let you know through the Admin Center when your tenant is ready.

The migration appears to be pretty seamless, actually. You should review all the details on how that will work.

What should I do today, then?

It depends on the activity level in the O365 Video Portal, frankly.

If your organization has zero uploads to the O365 Video Portal (not uncommon, so don't roll your eyes!), I'd shut it down and respond to any questions about video with a "check out Stream".

If you've got content in the O365 Video Portal, I'd say let that behavior continue for current users of the system and promote Stream for new adopters. Prep the current Video Portal users that Stream is coming and to be on the lookout for a communication from their admin that the migration will occur. Otherwise, you run the risk of having two channels/portals for a team if they start using Stream thinking their Video Portal content will merge (it likely will not).

Regardless, this is about communication and communication is never foolproof or 100%, so try identifying your big users today and any teams that common sense would say might want to look into video in the future (like IT, training, or HR teams, for example).

That's just my two cents on it, though.

More questions?

1. You can follow Stream on Twitter: @MicrosoftStream.
2. You can join the Stream Space on the Microsoft Stream Community.
3. And the Stream team is holding an AMA at the Tech Community on June 29 at 9:00 am PDT. So bring your questions.

Disclaimer

I'm going by what's published currently, so if you notice an inaccuracy or any new information that conflicts with what I've included here, please comment and I'll update.