Why #MicrosoftTeams Bests Other Chat Solutions Every Time
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Microsoft Teams may be a latecomer to the game of chat-based collaboration, but it also has the advantage of benefiting from Microsoft’s years of experience in optimizing software for the corporate environment.
Teams enables security controls and uses the power of Microsoft’s Office 365 platform to bring in tons of integrations and document collaboration capabilities in ways not yet offered via other solutions.
There are a variety of tiers (like the Teams level and channel level) which enable you to more easily manage security and structure conversations. Channel tab integration in Teams also offers tons of out-of-the-box options and can be customized to correspond with the channels themselves.
Microsoft provides automated retention and legal hold capabilities at the team and channel level, and now also allows the capability of manually archiving a Team. This is on top of the ability to easily use PowerShell to report on security and get information about your Teams and Teams members.
Though much can be accomplished via third party plugins with other tools like Slack, Teams generally ends up costing less and coming with more out of the box (including all the services and security of Office 365).
Teams enables security controls and uses the power of Microsoft’s Office 365 platform...in ways not yet offered in other solutions. Click To TweetIt is important to keep in mind that though such messaging solutions are in some ways easier to use, they also have many more options than traditional messaging solutions like Skype for Business.
Because of this, even tech-savvy employees can struggle to adopt chat-based software without proper planning or training. Developing proper governance policies, security strategies and processes—and then having the organization put its weight behind proper training—is vitally important when it comes to adoption.
In some cases, organizations find that their employees aren’t utilizing the new software. More often the case with Teams, utilization spins out of control before anyone can steer organizational processes towards even the slightest amount of structure.
Change management strategies can be great first steps for this process. These can include:
- Organizing pilot groups
- Discovering enthusiastic power users and adopters to promote the transition
- Setting up self-service training resources
These strategies can be implemented and enforced with tools like AvePoint’s Cloud Governance platform. This powerful tool can dynamically control the provisioning, security, lifecycle and policies for Teams and Groups in Office 365, all while making it even easier for users to provision and make changes to Groups and Teams.
Links, questionnaires or forms can enable each user to access the appropriate provisioning process for the collaboration space they need. Meanwhile, unique lifecycle, expiration, security, and naming policies can be controlled and enforced based on security groups, organization profiles or even individual users—all with no AD premium subscription required.
Free eBook: When to Use and How to Manage Microsoft Teams & Office 365 Groups
With AvePoint’s Cloud Governance platform, the Group Hub tool allows administrators, stakeholders and business users to sort, filter and interact with Groups and Teams from a simple pane of glass. This makes finding Teams that may already address their needs an extremely simple process. They can even access each of the applications of the Group/Team and navigate directly to Teams from the “card.”
It’s important to take your time and think things through to do them right the first time. Like with most things, the sooner you prepare and the more you plan, the smoother the transition will be. And now that Microsoft Teams is available as a free version up to 300 users, there is an even greater potential for adoption–and no reason not to give it a try.
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Hunter Willis has been in web development, SEO and Social Media marketing for over a decade, and entered the SharePoint space in 2016. Throughout his career he has developed internal collaboration sites, provided technical and strategic advice, and managed solutions for small to large organizations. In addition, Hunter has served as a strategy consultant for many companies and non-profits in the Richmond area.
