Top Ten Mistakes of Microsoft Teams Administrators

So, we’re back to glimpse at what other issues Microsoft Groups administrators make when it will come to the platform. It’s as if I’ve in no way study Dale Carnegie’s “How to Earn Good friends and Affect People”…

In component 1 we coated:

• Ignoring safety
• Ignoring external consumers
• Disregarding SharePoint
• Ignoring Teams
• Ignoring compliance

Clearly it doesn’t quit there, so let us go by the other faults I see on a frequent basis when speaking with organisations and IT gurus.

Disregarding Equipment

Microsoft Groups is a significant beast. It’s a collaboration system, and app launcher, a messaging procedure, a communications device, and additional. But let us focus on the “communications tool”.

I’ve been performing in the Microsoft ecosystem for most of my career (there were periods of time used in the Unix/Linux, Cisco, Nortel, and even net style worlds), and have been employing Microsoft quick messaging instruments because Exchange Server 2000 (indeed, appear it up). A single of my earliest Microsoft certifications was on Dwell Communications Server, and given that then I kept up my certifications with Place of work Communications Server, Lync Server, and even Skype for Company Server. Throughout that time, it was only black & white – if you made use of these applications for telephony, then you essential certified headsets and gadgets – otherwise you would have complications.

Though applying non-accredited gadgets was an exception to the rule, these days with Microsoft Groups it seems to be the norm. And, as you’d assume – this generates complications. It produces problems for assembly individuals and callers who struggle to mentally filter out the echo from someone’s laptop computer microphone. It results in issues for men and women who have to tolerate hunting up someone’s nose or the aspect of their head as they use their notebook webcam.

And in the meeting room space, these are amplified exactly where assembly individuals battle to current, undertaking, or even link to the assembly when working with conference gear.

This is simply because picking out the suitable products involves a unique established of competencies from these that most IT experts poss. In simple fact, it is more the realm of the audio/visible specialist – however several of individuals have not automatically come together for the journey of Microsoft Teams.

Even if they do have those people competencies, is it reasonable that the similar person has the know-how and skills to configure Intune to regulate those products? When probable, it is not sensible as they are wholly unique abilities and individuality types.

Ignoring Utilization

Just one organisation I labored with was touted as a Microsoft circumstance analyze several yrs back, as they experienced 86% of staff members employing Microsoft Teams – what a gain! Everybody was in a position to pat on their own on the back again and rejoice this amazing deployment.

But there’s a stating: do not permit the reality get in the way of a fantastic story.

That 86% use was comprised largely of chat. In actuality, 94% of it was chat. Only 3% was voice/movie communications or conferences, and 3% was channel-based mostly communications. They had correctly rolled out Skype for Business.

A further situation research from a Microsoft companion reported a 400% raise in Microsoft Groups use owing to their task. Wow!!! On the other hand, what it didn’t point out that this was an upgrade from Skype for Organization. When you don’t have a preference – your usage quantities are efficiently pressured.

Talking with a few contacts I knew at the customer stated in the case study, their expertise with Microsoft Teams was woeful. They said they weren’t seriously trained (while it was provided, it was a blink-and-you will-skip-it method), people ended up employing it inconsistently, and some of the capabilities have been crippled.

But they experienced a 400% increase in utilization. What a acquire!

These are just a pair of illustrations that “usage” does not equal superior utilization.

Regrettably, a lot of persons really do not have the time, expertise, or desire to dig beneath the higher-degree figures offered in the Microsoft 365 admin middle or the Microsoft Teams Admin Middle. Most of the IT specialists I have spoken to do not even know about the Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics option in Electrical power BI, or the Productiveness Rating in the Microsoft 365 admin heart. And if they do know of them, prospects are the people who are liable for driving utilization (i.e. non-IT employees) do not know about the existence of, or have access to these instruments. And they most undoubtedly wouldn’t know that these tools really don’t give a whole tale!

Use is additional than figures. Use is experience. Utilization is fulfillment. Usage is achievement.

Ignoring Lifecycle

For lots of, the limited alternatives presented by Azure Active Directory all over Microsoft 365 Teams lifecycle is all they know. And boy are they constrained – only a one expiration policy can be produced, and it demands a top quality license to use it. That has often boggled my thoughts.

Likewise, Microsoft Groups offers an archival functionality for Teams, which if chosen will set the Workforce to go through-only and give you the choice to do the exact for the related SharePoint website.

But a Workforce is extra than just the Workforce and the SharePoint internet site. It’s Planner boards, Kinds, applications, attendees, Stream (traditional) video clips, Undertaking programs, and other people. And none of these treatment that you’ve archived a Crew – they retain going. Regretably, a prevalent apply I’ve observed in organisations when they want to delete a Staff, is basically to duplicate the data files out to a different SharePoint site for archival, and then delete the Group (as the retention guidelines ought to hold onto the messages).

What about the information in all the aforementioned applications and products and services I just stated? Or the webpages in the OneNote notebook in the web page? Or the items in the SharePoint lists? Or the web pages and news posts in the SharePoint website? The Significant problem with the lifecycle of Teams is that regrettably a great deal of the information is just not seen to directors, and the content material that is fairly obvious – is not effortless to archive/transfer/migrate/export, if at all.

But there’s beneficial enterprise facts, information, heritage, and context in all of them which is all-as well-usually misplaced.

Ignoring Integration

Microsoft Teams is from time to time referred to as a “meta working system”, and that goal is undoubtedly visible when you consider that you can incorporate applications, pop-out chats and application windows, and shortly be equipped to multi-process in it. I wouldn’t be astonished if at some issue in the close to upcoming we’ll see anything like a “Microsoft Groups terminal” exactly where you virtually boot into Microsoft Teams and nothing else.

To make this work, Microsoft Teams demands to integrate with numerous programs, and give obtain to many permissions. Want to include that 3rd-party bot? It wants to examine the attributes of everyone in your directory so it can find individuals you mention.

Want to add that visible diagramming application to enable convert your Excel spreadsheets into swim lane diagrams? It would like accessibility to your OneDrive.

And for just about every app is a Company Principal established in Azure Active Listing. And who’s watching that – the Teams admin? Do they even have the ideal admin role to clear up following the app has been taken off? Or to research via the audit log for gatherings wherever an application may possibly have go through also a lot info?

Even inside the indigenous Microsoft 365 system, a ton of the apps and expert services electricity features inside Microsoft Groups.

Disabled Planner mainly because you’re not all set to roll it out yet? Bye-bye Jobs in Teams.

Disabled OneDrive due to the fact you’re not all set to migrate off on-premises file shares? Bye-bye documents in chats.

Disabled Varieties simply because you believe folks don’t need it? Bye-bye polls in Teams conferences and channels.

The checklist goes on and on. For every motion or functionality in Microsoft Teams, there is about fifty percent a dozen issues that relate or integrate with it – so tread carefully.

Disregarding Consumer Working experience

This a person I’m likely to keep short and sweet (actually, rather bitter).

It is no solution that IT professionals are not followers of end-consumers. We make jokes like ID10T data files, classify the difficulty as being PEBKAC, or that the problem lies at Layer 8.

We cripple their skill to do issues because they can’t be dependable, they don’t know what they’re executing, and so on.

But here’s the matter: end consumers are the kinds who do the points, that enables the organisation we get the job done to exist, which in switch employs us.

We are here to provide and aid them. Their frustrations with technologies impacts their work. Their very poor expertise has a circulation-on influence, that indirectly impacts our capability to place meals on the desk. Their difficulties are our problems.

We need to do superior, and make guaranteed that they have the best expertise probable.

If we do the job to decrease the issues we make with Microsoft Groups, then maybe… just probably we have a prospect at globe peace.

 

 

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