How to Master Your #MicrosoftTeams Life Cycle Management

Post Date: 09/13/2018
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This is the second post in our “Microsoft Teams for Education Institutions” ebook series. You can read the others below:

There are a number of things that happen to a Teams Team throughout its lifecycle. Some can be small such as membership changes, while others can involve a complete change of ownership. And in the case where projects, committees, or virtual groups eventually disband – so too should the Team itself.

This becomes yet another challenge with using Teams – what happens when the Team no longer has reason to exist? Because a Team sits on top of Office 365 Groups there are now a number of artifacts left behind:

These artifacts could contain private information and cost money to continue to manage, backup and store.

The first thing that needs to be addressed is how to know when it’s time to shut down the Team. In many scenarios this will either happen manually or not at all – in that it will generally rely on a person to delete it themselves, ask IT to delete it, get prompted by IT or someone else as to whether it is still required. Otherwise, the Team will simply stay there until IT decides to perform a clean-up.

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This challenge can be addressed somewhat out-of-the-box using the “Expiration” feature inside of Azure Active Directory, which can be applied either selectively or to all groups.

Want to learn more about Teams life cycle management? Download our free eBook “Microsoft Teams for Education Institutions” for more insights and best practices.


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Loryan is a 20-year veteran of web and network technologies and 8-time Microsoft MVP. His articles on AvePoint and loryanstrant.com are fueled by his passion for helping people and organisations use technology the right way, enabling them to become more productive. You can follow him on Twitter @LoryanStrant.

View all posts by Loryan Strant
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