April 06, 2020 Automate Microsoft Teams Governance using TeamsHub by Cyclotron In this article we deep dive into the technical aspects to match theory to practice. Managing a complex environment such as Microsoft Teams can be challenging as well. We will cover some scenarios and provide a few features of TeamsHub that help mitigate it. We will list out a few real-world scenarios to automate Microsoft Teams governance. We will also demonstrate how TeamsHub by Cyclotron helps solve them. For our previous article on Microsoft Teams governance best practices – click here NOTE: The user interfaces have been slightly modified or masked to prevent plagiarism. Scenario 1 Complex Powershell Operations: In Microsoft Teams, an administrator is required to create and manage Teams’ governance through complex Powershell commands. Our solution to this problem is to provide a simplified solution and interface. We empower administrative capabilities for enhanced control. We believe in automating the workload and tasks in the background. No more Powershell commands. Say hello to automated Microsoft Teams governance. A beautifully designed interface collates all Teams together. It also provides other details such as members, owners, tags, public or private, etc. in a single pane of glass. We also provide the total number of teams as a quick reference to the sprawl in the environment. The image below shows the administrative interface available today to streamline manual tasks with various commands. In addition, we provide Site Provisioning. It allows you to automate Microsoft Team governance for site creation and management. This is achieved by Utilizing dynamic forms and external workflows. Defining naming policies based on custom attributes and by using templates. After the above setup, the following screen will show up for an end-user when requesting site creation. Scenario 2 General Governance: Microsoft Teams allows anyone to create a team and its associated SharePoint sites. Eventually, a multitude of Teams causes duplicate naming, inappropriately named teams and frustrated users. Consequently, this may also lead to orphaned teams and owners leading to information loss. We provide a user-friendly interface to automate Microsoft Teams governance, expiration policy, and guest access external users. Using our Governance settings, administrators can manage Teams’ creation and lifecycle using automated workflows. Other settings include managing guests, naming policies abased on standard blocked words and custom blocked words. In addition, we can set up expiration policies for each team via a set of rules and notifications such as Notifications to alert team owners on certain actions that need to be takenAlerts during the period of inactivity before Teams can be disposed or archived, Scenario 3 Teams Classification: Most of the time, finding the right information, content or people is a tedious operation. This is true for both administrators and end-users. Firstly, Administrators have a hard time finding the owner or members of a team. Secondly, if the team can be correctly classified by a label or tag for discoverability. TeamsHub by Cyclotron provides unified tagging and classification. This helps derive quick information and reduce overheads by updating multiple teams in one go. TeamsHub by Cyclotron, enables assigning of organization-specific classification. Administrators can publish organizational tags to appropriate groups whereas users can create and remove personal tags to their own groups. With this in mind, administrators can create Hubs – frequently used sites grouped by certain criteria. This helps in finding the right information quickly for end-users without having to search or find it. Manually adding and editing details per team is a tedious and time-consuming process – ask an administrator. Such updates include members, owners, description, and classification of Teams. So, we provide an easy to use a feature called Bulk Update to address this issue. Bulk Update provides administrators, editing capabilities across multiple teams in a single attempt. No more tedious processing and updating of details one by one. Scenario 4 Advanced Search and Reporting: Better search functionality leads to funnel information. This can be achieved by defining filters to get the desired result. The screen below shows the search functionality. Our Interactive Reporting allows administrators to gain smart insights. Actionable reports on various criteria such as metadata usage, team usage, or device and browser segmentation are available. Reports can also be exported to other formats such as Excel and JSON to integrate with third-party visualization tools. We provide native integration with PowerBI as well. Scenario 5 External Document Sharing, Data Protection, and Security: Collaboration involves external vendors and third-party contractors as well. With this intention, sharing documents with guest users requires some caution and inbuilt checks to prevent data leaks. We have automated robust supervision and document tracking for sharing confidential data with external parties. We provide best in class features of Office365 and Azure – Azure Information Protection, Data Loss Prevention and Information Rights Management. Additionally, we provide administrators a unified view of externally shared content. Our solution called Enhanced Security provides automatic provisioning of Information Rights Management (IRM) policies. Along with integrated Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies enables administrators to manage, track and revoke access for all externally shared documents in a single place. In summary, TeamsHub by Cyclotron provides a robust set of automated governance tools to help administrators manage Microsoft Teams efficiently. Using governance best practices as features in TeamsHub by Cyclotron, helps address some of the most pertinent issues. These are Teams sprawl, content sprawl, and security, as well as structure and permission models. In addition, we provide advanced Office 365 features such as IRM and DLP along with AIP About Cyclotron Cyclotron was proudly founded in San Francisco in 2014 with the sole intent of accelerating the success of our clients. We solve mission-critical business and technology challenges, through a proven network of industry-specific frameworks. We’re a trusted strategic partner to many innovative organizations in the financial, health and life sciences, public, retail, and technology sectors. Our solutions combined with your investment with us boosts productivity, enhances collaboration, and integrates intelligence across your entire enterprise.
March 20, 2020 Microsoft Teams adoption made easy using TeamsHub by Cyclotron In this article, we explore the best practices for Microsoft Teams. Using TeamsHub by Cyclotron makes this process faster, efficient and provides users with an engaging platform to enjoy collaborating with their co-workers Introduction Technology evolves and revolutionizes the future workplace in efficiency and productivity. However, people have been reluctant to embrace change and adapt to them quickly. Why do businesses face major IT failures after a successful implementation? Even cutting-edge technological solutions lack end-user adoption. Do people really fear to adopt new initiatives? The answer to this question is if that specific change can connect with user needs and wants. Also, businesses have not implemented best practices and simple communication. These two factors are critical for any initiative to be a success. Microsoft Teams adoption Microsoft Teams also has similar challenges for any organization. Adopting Microsoft Teams requires detailed planning, meticulous documentation as well as a good governance handbook. Microsoft has provided a quick start flipbook on adopting MS Teams. Microsoft’s site contains more detailed reading material. Drive faster adoption by making it simple, efficient and easy with TeamsHub by Cyclotron. So let us answer the question – “How do I help my business groups adopt Teams?” and how TeamsHub by Cyclotron can help. Firstly, by making governance rules applicable across Teams in a standardized and consistent manner. Secondly, by using the various features made available in TeamsHub by Cyclotron. Although IT professionals are important, it is the end-user adoption that makes or breaks a system roll-out. Here TeamsHub by Cyclotron scores over many other such products. By making it a single interface to collaborate across teams and also have employee engagement platform built-in. We specifically designed TeamsHub by Cyclotron around end-user adoption and engagement. Here we provide a single aggregated source of information across various digital streams. For example, corporate news and communications, recognitions and rewards as well as celebrating important milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries. To know more about TeamsHub by Cyclotron, please visit our site http://TeamsHub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo. About Cyclotron Cyclotron was proudly founded in San Francisco in 2014 with the sole intent of accelerating the success of our clients. We solve mission-critical business and technology challenges, through a proven network of industry-specific frameworks. We are a trusted strategic partner to many innovative organizations in the financial, health and life sciences, public, retail, and technology sectors. Our solutions combined with your investment with us boosts productivity, enhances collaboration, and integrates intelligence across your entire enterprise
March 11, 2020 Microsoft Teams Governance Best Practices Microsoft Teams governance best practices lead to better ROI and an engaged workforce that is productive and efficient. Introduction Firstly, we will explore how Microsoft Teams Governance best practices lead to better ROI and an engaged workforce that is productive and efficient. Governance is a dreaded word in the IT industry. People think this leads to a lack of freedom and lockdown. People regard the IT department as a blocker to productive work and the creator of unwanted processes. However, a lack of governance leads to a wild, wild west collaboration scenario resulting in terrible user experience and decreased engagement on the platform. Users become frustrated with too much governance. Consequently, this leads to a lack of freedom thus hampering creative uses and productive work. Common Governance Scenarios Let us explore some of the Governance problems specifically for Microsoft Teams Implement simple and easy governance by considering a few things before rolling out any application across the organization. Implement a few steps correctly go a long way to provide structure. Let us look at the few common scenarios in Microsoft Teams that cause chaos – Teams sprawl – First of all, creating too many teams results in confusion and chaos on each Team’s intent and collaboration purpose. Content sprawl – Secondly, wastage of time and effort occurs to find the right content if many versions of the same content exist across Teams.Thirdly, a bad user experience results due to incorrect features being enabled or disabled. Lastly, users avoid adopting the system if they are not coached, trained or communicated about the purpose and the various business problems that it intends to solve. Solve all of the above-stated scenarios and problems by addressing the following. However, before going for the big bang there should be a pilot group of early adopters to test the waters and provide feedback. Based on this feedback, iterate and improve to roll it out to alpha and beta users for further iterative improvements before doing the final big bang push across the organization. Best Practice: Roles and responsibilities Considered assigning roles and responsibilities properly as it determines a few points discussed further in the article. The right assignment of role goes a long way in maintaining order in the system. Assign important roles with responsibilities to people who are proactive, excited and enthused. Best Practice: Permissions Based on the roles, determine the permission model for your organization. This helps maintain the structure as the permissions determine who creates and maintains teams. For example – Create people who understand the system and can manage the responsibility as Team Owners, others remain Team Members. Best Practice: Structure Teams are organized by topics which in turn decides structure. It is the digital metaphor for an open office to encourage conversations, discussions and ad-hoc meetings and to share ideas and solve problems Remember to have standardized names that are easy to find and intuitive. Structure everything around topic or content. The content becomes a Team and a topic can become a channel Best Practice: Features Also, do not neglect many of the seemingly simple but effective features. Always enable features that can increase engagement and collaboration. The majority of users seldom use advanced and powerful features. Plan for advanced features, use cases or business problems you intend to solve if they are being rolled out early as well. Best Practice: Training Based on the roles and responsibilities along with a permission model created focused training sessions. Identify people who can be part of these group training sessions and have them engaged early on. Best Practice: Communication This is the most important aspect of any rollout or Governance model. Communicate early, always over-communicate than under, have engaging sessions during the training. Always gather feedback and improvise. You can find more information on Microsoft Team’s Governance article To know more about automating Microsoft Teams governance using our product – TeamsHub by Cyclotron, please click here
