May 23, 2022 Microsoft Teams Adoption Strategies: Tips for IT Teams Introduction Creating an adoption plan is imperative for businesses that are spearheading digital transformation. Organizations taking the plunge to deploy Microsoft Teams must develop concrete adoption strategies for successful execution. It removes hurdles of transformation efforts and helps new users to commit to use it for long term. In this blog, we will share a few tips to ensure steady adoption after MS Teams deployment. Let’s start – 1. Security enhancements Organizations that deal with sensitive data must follow security best practices for MS Teams and configure governance settings to improve protection and privacy of data. Information leakage while external access is one the commonest mishaps that adds extra weightage to security considerations. Hence, external sharing must be configured with necessary security controls. Other than that, designing a better permission model can restrict user access to valuable content. Also, managing lifecycle of teams can reduce data loss significantly by improving content visibility. 2. Simplify Teams Using MS Teams with default configurations gives unnecessary freedom and control to all users including guests. You must customize Teams by enforcing certain governance policies for defining the way of work and processes to be operated. Additionally, you may want to redesign Teams interface to make it more intuitive. This will enable users to learn about Teams, eliminate confusions and perform simplest of the tasks faster. 3. Reporting and analytics MS Teams analytics as well as Productivity Score can be used to quantify user behavior and monitor platform usage. Performance metrics can help you gauge all communication and collaboration activities per user happened in a specified time. Using analytics and reporting, you can easily and quickly detect workplace trends, spot anomalies, and visualize scope of improvement. This helps in making data-driven decisions to improve user’s effectiveness and productivity. 4. Share time saving hacks with your users Educate your users about productivity hacks in so that they can save valuable time and make the most out of MS Teams. Some of them are keyboard shortcuts, quick navigation shortcuts, command box, bookmark messages, @mentions, poll, formatting and fun, manage or customize a team, record meetings, add guests, etc. Also, users can turn frequently used files into tabs which is a great time saving feature. 5. End user productivity features Productivity features in MS Teams help drive user focus as well as engagement. File sharing is an excellent capability of MS Teams where users can effectively collaborate in real-time and minimize duplication of efforts. Next, integrating apps and bots with Teams can increase user interaction with the platform and help organizations to quickly scale Teams adoption. Furthermore, users should be encouraged to create new channels for new topics of discussion in a team for a streamlined conversation. Also, ensure that every user downloads Teams app in their mobile device so that they can share files or attend meetings on the go. Wrapping up Before we close, here’s a piece of advice – do not surprise your users by introducing MS Teams abruptly a day. Let the transformation grip its root in a subtle way with effective change management in place. Secondly, like all new tools, Microsoft Teams users need training. Familiarize your users with Teams and teach them about its unique features, probably the ones that make it a standout from other collaboration tools. Last but not the least, you can always hire a trusted Microsoft partner to help you formulate the roadmap of technology adoption. We, at Cyclotron, can help you define a winning change management strategy and Office 365 adoption. We can guide you step by step through your adoption journey and help you build a smarter workforce through simplified and automated governance. If interested, drop us an email at sales@cyclotrongroup.com