In my last blog post, I introduced our guide, The Essential Guide to Microsoft Teams End-User Engagement. In this post, I will highlight a few key points to consider for your Teams implementation.
Office 365 Groups
Providing a positive user experience is a vital building block for engagement. A negative experience in Microsoft Teams can have a lasting effect on some users. The foundational workloads such as Office 365 Groups, OneDrive, Skype, and SharePoint Online must be well situated before introducing Teams to users.
Solidify your plan for Teams by first addressing the approach for Office 365 Groups. When you create a team, on the backend you’re creating an Office 365 Group and the associated SharePoint document library and OneNote notebook, along with ties into other Office 365 cloud applications. However, group features and capabilities for your users depend upon where you drive group membership.
For example, if you remove a member from a team, they are removed from the Office 365 Group as well. Removal from the group immediately removes the team and channels from the Teams client. If you remove a person from a group using the Office 365 admin center, they will no longer have access to the other collaborative aspects such as SharePoint Online document library, Yammer group, or shared OneNote.
So ask yourself this question first: “What is our plan for Office 365 Groups?“ Answering this question upfront will establish the right foundation for Teams. This same question should be repeated for OneDrive for Business (personal storage) and SharePoint Online. Governance will be discussed later in this guide, but this starting question is vital to determine why you are doing this and how you will get there. After all, you can’t drive adoption and engagement if you can’t get out of the driveway.
Skype to Teams
As Skype migrates to Teams, a plan must be created that addresses co-existence in some cases, and transition in others. Define where your organization wants to go and how it will get there with a strategy and roadmap.
I recently co-presented a webinar with my colleague, Joel Oleson, where we discussed Teams implementation, migration, consolidation, extensibility, and how to promote successful user adoption. A recording of our Build Your Modern Workplace Hub with Microsoft Teams can be found here.
