Nov. 14, 2024 – Bo – Microsoft 365 Business Consultant
Microsoft Teams is now an indispensable platform in many organizations. Especially now that hybrid working is becoming more normal, it is essential to have a communication platform that goes beyond chatting or (video) calling. After all, with Teams you have one central place for all communication and there is space for storing documents. The real power of Teams? That’s in the ability to collaborate on documents, simultaneously and in real time. This makes collaboration not only more efficient, but also a lot easier!
In this blog I give you 5 practical tips to prevent proliferation in Microsoft Teams and bring back overview. This way you keep Teams manageable, information remains findable and you ensure that sensitive documents are only shared with the right people.
When Teams was introduced, employees enthusiastically started chatting, calling and creating teams. In many cases, there were no clear made about the use of of Teams, allowing anyone to freely create teams. The result? Within a short time, er large quantities ofden teams created and As a result, it became a chaotic chaos. Employees now have a plethora of teams in their environment that they don’t do anything with, and administrators sometimes don’t know where to start to clean it up.
Such a large number of teams seems especially irritating at first, but it also carries a number of risks:
Information is scattered: The freedom to create your own teams often leads to multiple teams with the same purpose. For example, there may be multiple HR teams containing different employees. This spreads information unnecessarily across multiple places, which hinders overview.
Employees struggle to find the right information: With all these separate sources of information, it becomes unnecessarily difficult to quickly find the right information. For example, where is the most recent version? And how do I avoid overlooking important documents?
Documents are shared with the wrong people: Without clear agreements on the use of teams, there is often little control over who is a member of a team. It can be difficult for users to see who has access, increasing the likelihood of documents being viewed by undesirables.
Tip #1: Make clear agreements about using Teams:
It is essential to make clear agreements with your team about how to use Microsoft Teams. When is a team created and when is a channel? Who becomes a member of the team and who is responsible for which part? What documents are stored and when do we collaborate with external parties?
These are important questions that need to be answered so that employees know how to use Teams appropriately. Once these agreements are in place? Through proper use of automation and adoption, you will ensure that they are adhered to.
Tip 2: Limit who can create Teams:
PowerShell allows you to easily restrict who can create Teams within your organization. This gives a specific group of people responsibility for maintaining oversight of existing and new Teams. This group is also responsible for initiating the creation process or approving new team requests.
We recommend always using an automated process for creating teams. You can read more about this process in Tip 4.
Tip 3: Make sure you have a good recordspolicy:
Creating a team is only one part of the Teams life cycle. It is equally important to think about what happens to an active team and when the team is closed again. This requires a clear retention policy, agreeing on how and when teams should be archived or deleted. What information should be retained and for how long? And which teams may be deleted immediately once they are no longer needed?
To prevent the responsibility for deleting or archiving a team from resting entirely with the team owner, you can already record these agreements when creating a team. For example, by team type.
Tip 4: Automate the creation of Teams:
Automating the creation of Teams offers several benefits. Not only does it relieve the burden on the IT department, but it also ensures that your organization enforces standardization. By creating standard templates for projects, departments and collaborations, you can guarantee that every team contains the same components. Think name conventions, retention settings, confidentiality and even standard documents.
An added benefit is that employees always know what to expect, and management for the IT department is greatly simplified.
Tip 5: Ensure adequate knowledge among employees:
Employees play a crucial role in the successful use of Teams. To ensure that Teams is used in the right way, employees must be well informed about both the standard functionalities and the specific organizational agreements. This can be done through training, but also through other means of communication, such as a newsletter.
To get the best results, it is recommended that these training sessions be repeated at least semi-annually or annually to keep everyone up to date with the latest developments and new features.
Do you also suffer from proliferation of teams within your organization and could use help solving this problem? We are here for you!
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