Oak for Microsoft Teams – Oak Digital Workplace

Company news that finds your people, not the other way around

Bring company news into the flow of work with our Microsoft Teams Integration, helping employees stay informed without leaving the platform they use every day.

Each employee sees a personalised news feed built from your intranet content. Oak highlights the most relevant updates based on the news your communications team prioritises, alongside each employee's interests and engagement.

As a native Microsoft Teams app, Oak fits seamlessly into the Teams sidebar and uses your organisation's branding to provide a familiar, integrated experience.

✨We integrate with Microsoft 365! Read more about opening the digital doorway and bringing everything together in one place.

Admins/IT: Full setup instructions are available in the Setup & Configuration guide

How the news feed is personalised

When Smart Delivery is enabled, each employee sees a personalised news feed instead of the latest news in date order.

The feed is built using several factors:

Priority news comes first. Your communications team can promote important articles as Should Read or Must Read to ensure key updates are seen by the right people.
Relevant content is highlighted. Articles can be targeted using Topics, so employees are more likely to see news that matches their interests or role.
Employee engagement helps surface content. Articles that receive more views, likes, and comments are more likely to appear higher in the feed. Once someone has read an article, it moves down their feed to make room for newer or more relevant content.
Recent news is prioritised. Smart Delivery gives greater prominence to recent content, helping keep the feed fresh and up to date.

If Smart Delivery is toggled off, employees will see all news from across your intranet in reverse chronological order, with the newest articles appearing first.

Note: The Smart Delivery feed works within a rolling 90-day window. Content older than this has reduced relevance, so feeds naturally stay current without you having to do anything.

What employees can do

Read articles in Teams - Open and read full news articles directly within Microsoft Teams.
Open in your browser - If needed, employees can open an article in their browser to view the full intranet page.
React to news - Employees can react to articles, giving instant feedback on company updates.
Receive important notifications - Teams notifications alert employees when new Must Read or Should Read content is available, helping ensure important updates aren't missed.
Simple onboarding - First-time users see a welcome screen introducing the app. If the app hasn't been configured yet, they'll see a message explaining that setup is still in progress and who to contact for help.

Controlling who can access the app

You can choose whether to make the Oak app available to everyone in your organisation or deploy it to specific users or groups.

If you deploy the app to a limited audience, it's important to note that the app will still appear in the Microsoft Teams app store. This means other employees can find and install it themselves.

If an employee already has an Oak account that matches their Microsoft Teams work email address, they'll be able to sign in and access the app.

If you're planning a phased rollout, we recommend controlling access through your Microsoft Teams deployment policies by assigning the app to specific users or groups first, then expanding availability over time. Your IT team can also restrict self-service app installation to ensure users only gain access as part of the planned rollout. For more information on a phased rollout, skip to the final section of this guide.

Notifications

Employees automatically receive a Microsoft Teams notification to their Activity tab when new Must Read or Should Read content becomes available to them.

Notifications are sent based on the article's promotion start date, rather than its publish date. This allows you to publish content in advance and choose exactly when employees are notified. Set the promotion type and promotion dates on the article, and Oak will take care of the rest.

Note: Teams notifications are only sent for newly promoted articles. If you later update the promotion dates on an existing article, it won't send another notification. Instead, the article will move back to the top of employees' news feeds, making it visible again without sending a second notification.

Reporting

A Site Report Viewer will be able to view a breakdown of the Teams app activity within the Site Analytics (Actions > Manage > Site Analytics). Down the left-hand side of the reporting dashboard, you will see a new Channels section, including:

Content read in Teams - see how many employees are reading news directly within the Teams app
Visits to the intranet - track how many employees click Go to Content to open the full article or intranet in their browser

Comms Team - Getting Started

Beyond how Oak for Teams works, there's a few things to know for getting up and running; including switching on the feed, sending notifications through the promotions panel, targeting only the people you want, and running a small pilot launch before a wider launch.

Switching on the personalised feed

The Teams feed is powered by the Smart Delivery algorithm, creating a personalised feed for each user. To switch this on:

As a System Manager, go to the Actions button > Configure
Select Site Settings > Applications
Find Smart Delivery in the list and toggle it on. Click OK at the bottom to save the changes

Note: If the Smart Delivery feed is off, the notifications will not fire

Promoting Content

Notifications are triggered by Should Read and Must Read content. To set a promotion:

Create the news article and continue to the publication page (also known as the meta-data page)
Find the Promote section and click the drop-down arrow to reveal the promotion options
Choose Should Read for content you want near the top but where there is less urgency, or Must Read for content people genuinely need to see. Must Read always outranks Should Read, so use it sparingly
Use the + icon and the user picker to choose who the promotion applies to. To notify and promote to a specific group rather than everyone, add only the people or groups you want into the Promote section. Only those people will be promoted to, and only they will receive the notification
Click the highlighted date and time to set the Promote From and Promote Until period. The notification fires on the Promote From date
Publish the article. That completes the action; there is nothing else you need to set for the notification to send

Testing with a Pilot Group

A common question from comms teams is whether you can give the Teams app to just a small group of people first. You can run a pilot, and it is a sensible way to prove value before a wider launch, but it helps to understand exactly how it works.

How a pilot works

The app is installed by your IT / Teams administrator, not by comms. To pilot with a small group, ask IT to install the app for those specific people rather than rolling it out org-wide. As the comms owner, you may want to define the pilot group and brief IT; IT handles the actual install and deployment policy.

What to tell your stakeholders

Be upfront that a pilot is a phased rollout, not a hidden one. Three things are worth saying clearly:

IT can install the app for just your chosen pilot group to begin with.
The app stays searchable in the Teams App Store, so people outside the pilot can find it but they will not be able to add it themselves if you have the correct Microsoft Teams deployment policies and restrictions in place for users to install apps themselves.
If someone's work email matches their Oak account email, the app auto-links on sign-in. There is no way to hide Oak from those users once they open it.

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