Improving Microsoft Teams Governance with a provisioning solution

by | Oct 17, 2018 | Blog, Office 365 Governance, Provisioning

As announced at Ignite, Microsoft Teams is the fastest growing business app in Microsoft history.  Over 300,000 organisations now use Microsoft Teams as part of their Office 365 deployment.  There are however a number of challenges with the Microsoft Teams Governance.  As a result, there is a clear requirement for Microsoft Teams provisioning.  This is because organisations struggle with controlling who can create Teams.  Furthermore, how Microsoft Teams links to SharePoint Sites.

At ProvisionPoint we get asked regularly about the creation and management of Microsoft Teams.  Therefore, ProvisionPoint is happy share our vision for improved Microsoft Teams Governance with our first beta for Microsoft Teams provisioning.

Provisioning Microsoft Teams

ProvisionPoint 365 will support both options for how a new Team is created in Microsoft Teams.  First of all, an authorised user in ProvisionPoint 365 can choose to request a new Team in the same way they can request a SharePoint Site or Office 365 Group.

Microsoft Teams Provisioning

Importantly only members of Active Directory Security Groups defined within ProvisionPoint 365 will be able to request the Team.  As a result, administrators can easily restrict who can create a Microsoft Team.

An administrator will be able to define multiple types of Teams, each with their own configuration and settings.  Furthermore, users may be restricted to only requesting one type Team.

The second way a Team can be created in ProvisionPoint 365 will be through converting an existing Office 365 Group to a Microsoft Team.  This is achieved by an administrator enabling an Action in ProvisionPoint 365.  This action will allow an Owner of an Office 365 Group to convert it to a Microsoft Team.

Convert Office 365 Group to a Microsoft Team

Furthermore, there will be further granularity to define which Office 365 Groups can be converted to a Microsoft Team.

Configuring Microsoft Teams Provisioning

The Service Definition in ProvisionPoint 365 will be the key building block for Microsoft Team provisioning.  This is the same approach as used for SharePoint Sites and Office 365 Groups. However there will be settings specific to Microsoft Teams.

In ProvisionPoint 365 an Administrator will be able to configure a new Service Type of Microsoft Team.

Microsoft Team Template

Further to the usual ProvisionPoint 365 settings, there will be additional options related to how Microsoft Teams are provisioned and managed.  It will be possible to define any Channels to include when a new Team is created.  Furthermore, for each Channel created various setting can be defined.  This includes creating dynamic Initial Conversations.

Configuring Channels in Microsoft Teams

The name of each Channel created can either be defined within the Service Definition.  Otherwise it can be dynamic based on information the user provides when requesting the Team.

Within Microsoft Teams it is possible to change a number of settings once a Team has been created.  Therefore, in ProvisionPoint 365 those settings are available to an administrator to define for any Teams created from a Service Definition.

Microsoft Teams Settings

ProvisionPoint 365 will provide flexibility to an Administrator.  This is because they will be able to set different settings to be applied to different types of Teams.

Other Features

Provisioning of Microsoft Teams will also support existing ProvisionPoint 365 features, including

  • Adding an Approval Process before the Team is created
  • Notifications to Administrators or Business Owners when a Team is created
  • Full configuration of the Modern SharePoint Team Site created with the Team
  • Setting the Email Address of the Office 365 Group created with the Team
  • Capturing organisation specific meta data when a new Team is created.
  • Populating a Directory in SharePoint, including any meta data, for each Team which is created
  • Ongoing Actions including Deletion of a Team

Next Steps

This initial post is to give an understanding of how ProvisionPoint 365 can help organisations improve Microsoft Teams Governance.  We will certainly continue to evolve our vision for Microsoft Teams by engaging with our customers and the MVP community.  Please get in contact if you would like a demo of our Microsoft Teams provisioning capability or to join our beta programme.