An introduction to Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams need no introduction as it has become an inseparable part of our work culture. meanwhile, Microsoft Teams governance and best practices play a major role in enhancing its performance.
Microsoft added Microsoft Teams to its robust Office 365 suite of services –describing it as a tool, you can use to collaborate with your team and external guests. Ever since Microsoft announced the plans on phasing out Skype for business, Teams started taking over its communication aspect and started paving its way to where Skype was positioned in the user acceptance level.
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Microsoft Teams governance and best practices
Creation Process
Creation Process is the first and foremost step for the Teams governance, is everybody able to create teams? not everyone in the organization can create teams. every time you create a new team in Teams, an office 365 group, planner and a SharePoint team site is created.
Naming Convention
Naming Convention, the name you choose for a newly created team impacts several aspects of Office 365. Creating a Team creates an email address for that team, so it’s important to stick to a similar naming convention. For Example: you have 2 teams, “Team Marketing” and “Teams Sales” the names should be descriptive and understandable clearly so that one can understand the purpose.
Using the consistent naming convention from the beginning of the Teams usage will be quite helpful for IT. It becomes difficult for IT team to change them later.
External access
External access, whether allowing the guest/external user with a team, I think you should allow an external user, if not they start using different communication methods to share the content. Like attaching files to emails and that’s something you are trying to avoid. If the Team is for internal purpose, I don’t think it needs to collaborate externally. The internal Teams probably contains confidential data that you don’t want it to be shared.
There could be a project, where people might need external collaboration. You want to enable external sharing. By defining policies around teams, you can allow external users.
Create Processes for Creating and Removing Teams
Create an approval process for making new Teams. This can be as simple as getting approval from a manager; it doesn’t have to be complex. it just makes sure that people aren’t creating new Teams every day. A short checklist can help employees decide whether creating a new Team is necessary
Likewise, for the purposes of data management and security, you should make sure there are processes for managing Teams. For most Teams, only employees who are strictly needed should be included. This protects potentially private and confidential data, while also making sure employees aren’t inundated with information that isn’t relevant to them.
Each Team should have a specific purpose so that data isn’t replicated, and employees aren’t confused about which Team they should be posting in.
Control Options
MS Teams provides conversation options such as memes, gifs, and emoji. If you want a more professional atmosphere and that employees are finding this a distraction, you can regulate or remove them. However, do note that some people do find that these types of communication options can ease corporate communication, making it easier for team members to interact with each other as though they are in person.
Using General Channel
The General channel is created by default when you create the team. Below are some purposes for this channel:
- Use it for sharing an overview of teams wants to achieve or purpose, and who is this team for?
- Use it l for announcements
- Use it for new team member onboarding
- For new or single-purpose teams, it may be the only channel at the beginning as you decide how Teams can best support your goals.
You can’t remove, rename, or unfavorite the General channel. Channels appear in alphabetical order (with the General channel at the top). In teams with many channels, use Hide or Show to display the channels you use the most.
Setting up Moderations in Teams Channel
Team owners can turn on moderation for a channel to control who can start new posts and reply to posts in that channel. When you set up moderation, you can choose one or more team members to be moderators.
Protecting Content in Teams
- Public vs Private Teams
- Private channel
Public teams are available for everyone and can be joined without the team owner’s approval.
Private teams can only be joined if the team owner or moderator adds you. You can also turn off the discoverability so that people can only fin the team if it’s shared by an owner or member.
If the content is sensitive or confidential, you make the team private and owner have to select who needs an invite to the team and those that are invited should treat the content in confidential manner.
Using Private channel within the Teams
Private channel within a team is a focused space for collaboration. Owners or members of the private channel can only access the channel, anyone, including guests, can be added to the private channel.
You might use the private channel if you want to restrict the collaboration for group of people or facilitate the communication between group of people assigned to specific project, without having to create an additional team to manage.
For example, a private channel can be used in such scenarios:
- A group of people in a team want a focused space to collaborate without having to create a separate team.
- A subset of people in a team wants a private channel to discuss sensitive information, such as budgets or resourcing.
A lock icon indicates a private channel. Only members of private channels can see and participate in private channels that they are added to.
Office 365 Group expiration policy
For IT admins, it is suggested to set an Office 365 expiration policy at tenant level and finding the teams which are not in use for a long time and get rid of them.
Based on the recently rolled out activity-based Microsoft teams renewal feature, you can set an expiration policy based on the user activity. Unlike before, the expiration was only based on the time period you set.
Only team owners can decide whether to delete or renew the Teams. and can get the content back post Microsoft’s 30-day soft delete period.
These were some of the Microsoft Teams governance best practices that we practice. Let us know yours!
