Stream is Office 365’s video portal. Think of Stream like an internal YouTube. It supports multiple video file types and comes with channels, commenting, following, watch lists, permissions controls, closed captioning, and some basic metrics reporting. Premium-level subscriptions also include facial recognition and automatic speech-to-text transcription.
Stream acts as an excellent central place to upload and share enterprise video, which can be equally useful for small organizations and large, multinational ones. Stream is integrated with SharePoint Online pages, Yammer conversations, Microsoft Teams tabs, and you get a permission-controlled Stream portal with each Office 365 Group.
A few things Stream doesn’t yet support are external access (outside your organization), video playlists (either shared or personal), and, regardless of its name, live streaming. Stream should also not be mistaken for a learning management system; its feature set will generally not meet your LMS needs.
Stream will soon fully replace Office 365 Video, which is why you don’t see Video on this infographic. For that reason, it’s recommended to use only Stream moving forward. Microsoft states it will be performing the migration of videos from Office 365 Video to Stream in the background, though there is no published timeline nor details on how it plans to deal with duplicate content or portals with identical names.
Resources
- Introduction to Microsoft Stream [Matt Wade]
- Microsoft Stream documentation [Microsoft]
- Office 365 Video-to-Stream transition [Microsoft]
Similar applications
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Office 365 Video
Feedback
- Stream User Ideas [Microsoft]
- Stream on TechCommunity [Microsoft]
Author
- Matt Wade, Office Services MVP
