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Microsoft Teams Services
Monitor, Analyze, & Resolve Problems with Teams
Whether you are considering Microsoft Teams adoption for your next cloud communications platform, or if you have already deployed Teams in your enterprise, you will need to invest in Microsoft Teams management tools. In this guide to Microsoft Teams Services, we walk through the top challenges with managing Teams, things to think about before deploying, the deployment roadmap, critical security & governance considerations, new features, and finally, troubleshooting and managing Microsoft Teams.
If you are looking for the best management and monitoring solution for Microsoft Teams, learn more about our industry-leading software: PowerSuite.
Top Microsoft Teams Challenges
Before Adopting Microsoft Teams...
You should take a look at how your organization operates, how the use of Teams will fit in, and if there is a true business need for adopting Teams. Here are the top questions to ask before adopting Teams:
For more detailed information, download our Teams Buyer’s Guide.
How Do You Deploy Microsoft Teams?
Deploying Microsoft Teams Services
Before COVID-19
Before the COVID-19 crisis, Microsoft Teams adoption and corresponding Microsoft Teams Services looked very similar to many applications moving from a traditional on-prem server environment to the cloud. Depending on the organization’s size and geographical locations, this five-step process could last anywhere from a few months to over a year.
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the Availability of Teams
This migration process consisted of several thoughtful steps, including:
Technical Readiness
The shift to the cloud changes the traffic bandwidth patterns between the clients and the Office 365 cloud, and you need to ensure that you have sufficiently prepared for these routing changes.
Teams and Channels
Your organization should carefully consider how to implement and configure Microsoft Teams. Decide who will set up your various teams and channels for maximum effectiveness. Determine which people or groups to include.
Security and Compliance
Microsoft Teams services uses a variety of security and compliance tools and protocols. Auditing and Reporting, Data Retention Policies, eDiscovery, and Legal hold all need to be set up and configured before a Microsoft Teams adoption.
Following our best practices will ensure that you’re well on your way to successful Microsoft Teams implementation. For more detailed information, visit our blog.
Managing Microsoft Teams Services Since COVID-19
COVID-19 has, without a doubt, changed the move from a “cloud-first” to a “cloud now” strategy for most organizations. Many companies using Skype for Business before the worldwide shutdown accelerated their Teams adoption. It seemed like a simple process on the surface. However, you will find that you have opened pandora’s box and created massive blind spots for your IT and security teams. These blind spots will start to manifest themselves when the “new normal” sets in and especially when folks slowly begin to return to their offices.
Network Traffic Shifts
In the move to Microsoft Teams Services, you will notice a significant change in traffic flows. You will no longer have internally managed traffic, but instead, traffic is unmanaged via the Internet. This move will impact proxy servers, PSTN Gateways, and your firewalls.
Video is the New Voice
Since March 2020, we have seen video modality traffic increase by over 500%. As users become more and more comfortable using video, these numbers are going to grow further. As users drift back into their offices, this increased bandwidth will run havoc on your office network. Have you engineered to anticipate it all?
Collaboration Security & Governance
Unlike Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams services provide users with a full collaboration platform. This is a vast improvement for users’ ability to collaborate while everyone is working from home. However, with no centralized management of the teams and channels, massive blind spots are created for your IT and security teams. These blind spots will make it essential for IT teams to invest in Microsoft Teams management tools at some stage in the deployment process.
For more detailed information on these many blind spots and security exposures, please visit our blog.
What are the key steps to pilot, roll-out, and operate Microsoft Teams at scale? Our second Teams eBook guides you on how to successfully deploy Teams and then discusses the on-going maintenance required.
To get more details and see additional resources to help you plan, deploy, and manage Microsoft Teams, check out our other free assets.
Data security is a growing concern for IT teams, as a user survey of popular cloud-based apps like Dropbox, Google, and iCloud reported that 40% list security of their information as the chief concern about using a cloud environment. Collaboration Security & Governance is all about managing risk across your organization’s workstream collaboration ecosystem. It covers security-related areas including: access and usage policies, user and channel management, and workflow automation.
Microsoft Teams provides easy access to vast amounts of information that can be easily discovered, which poses a huge data security concern for organizations. By proactively implementing Microsoft Teams management tools and collaboration security strategies, IT Teams can ensure consistent control of access to information, and proper handling of content in both single and multi-vendor environments.
To address Microsoft Teams security concerns, the platform offers customization options that allow end users to set their own security protocols to manage Microsoft Teams as well as a variety of ways to ensure that data stays safe. These features include:
“New-age” governance topics that are top of mind for many major enterprises using collab apps include:
Although Teams offers some capabilities, IT teams should be prepared to have a proactive approach. It’s important to anticipate governance needs and choose appropriate solutions to manage Microsoft Teams.
Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, with millions of employees working from home, Microsoft has been working hard to enable better remote work features for users. These features aim to make users feel more connected and include:
For more details about these new features, check out our webinar: ‘Uncovering the Hidden Gems in Microsoft Teams’.
At Microsoft Ignite 2021, Microsoft announced a number of new features that have already been added or will soon be added to Teams to create a more inclusive and connected workplace. These are the biggest feature announcements:
Enhanced Security for File Management
Security and data protection has been improved throughout the Teams ecosystem with new capabilities for Records Management and Communications Compliance. This will allow system-wide policies to be implemented across SharePoint, OneDrive, and other file sharing integrations.
Teams Connect
Teams Connect, which allows teams to integrate and collaborate with numerous external organizations, has been expanded. Users will soon be able to use a Teams personal account to invite specific external individuals into their team ecosystem while adhering to security & governance policies.
AI Capabilities with Dynamics 365
Microsoft announced that their Dynamics 365 platform now includes new integrations with Context IQ to enable AI-powered text-editing capabilities. Additional AI integrations are expected to be rolled out throughout the year.
Shared Channels
Microsoft Teams now allows users and team owners to share channels with other internal or external individuals, as well as different organizations. Organizations will be able to share channels with up to 50 organizations, making interorganizational collaboration more efficient, productive, and impactful.
Mesh Immersive Meetings
Microsoft has unveiled a new platform for 2D and 3D collaboration in a virtual world: Mesh. Mesh for Microsoft Teams will allow users to create customizable avatars and enter immersive spaces to interact, collaborate, and discuss.
Green Rooms for Webinars & Broadcasts
When hosting a Teams webinar or broadcast, users can now manage the meeting from a virtual green room from which hosts can view the meeting from a private call while simultaneously managing the chat, Q&A, and attendees.
New User Experience
Teams meetings now include improved user experience features ranging from the ability to mute notifications, pin video feeds, assign roles to attendees from the scheduling form, and view the order of participant raised hands.
For more detailed information and a full list of announcements, watch all of the Ignite sessions here.
PowerSuite is IT’s companion tool to orchestrate and deliver effective, reliable, and secure teamwork across multiple collaboration platforms, spanning both cloud and on-premises environments. Gain a simultaneous, panoramic view of all collaboration and communications platforms, expediting responses to service interruptions and threats.
Reduce time spent troubleshooting Microsoft Teams and improve end-user satisfaction by providing actionable and prescriptive guidance regarding various quality issues.
Use the power of crowd-sourced cloud intelligence to compare anonymized WSC and UC performance KPIs across multiple sites and between different users and platforms.
Track and accelerate usage for meetings, chats and calls ---visualize the full adoption profile of your entire enterprise.
Identify and track a customized and targeted set of Execs, VIPs or even conference rooms so that IT can stay ahead of any potential issues.
AI/ML analyzes platform data to create a centralized hub to view problems and insights to help prioritize troubleshooting Microsoft Teams and identify system anomalies.
Leverage PowerSuite’s comprehensive policy framework and functionality to create policies to simultaneously cover ALL collaboration platform security and workflow needs.
Microsoft Teams Management Videos
Core Value Beyond Out-of-the-Box Microsoft Admin Tools
A common misconception is that Microsoft has already done all the heavy lifting with their native management tools. Although Teams comes with some basic monitoring tools, it doesn’t provide the full functionality required by enterprise IT admins. Here’s what sets PowerSuite apart from the native admin experience:
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Troubleshooting Microsoft Teams just got faster with these Teams management tools and services. PowerSuite centralizes information from multiple collaboration administration consoles to give IT a single & secure tool to monitor, analyze, and remediate all platforms. With PowerSuite, you can optimize costs by reducing time spent troubleshooting Microsoft Teams and accelerate the adoption process.
Voice Performance & Health Analytics for Teams
PowerSuite is the leading specialty tool that helps IT visualize Teams voice performance and health. The PowerSuite formula for collecting and analyzing data from multiple sources creates a unique voice quality map which can be used to proactively pinpoint and troubleshoot Microsoft Teams calls.
Workplace Analytics for Teams
PowerSuite provides visibility into organizational usage & adoption of Teams. PowerSuite reports on details about workforce performance & app operations trends to help improve decision-making for IT, identify communication & training opportunities, increase organizational efficiency, facilitate culture change, and extend the value and productivity of employees.
Guest Access
External users are an essential part of the digital workplace, but where do you set boundaries? It is critical to ensure that only the right people are accessing your teams, channels, and data. PowerSuite allows you to monitor and control guest access, surfacing important insights into the behavior of these external users.
Work from Home
Embrace the reality of a distributed workforce. Use performance benchmarks to analyze the various countries, states, provinces, cities, and ISPs available within your environment, no matter how small the user population.
Additional Services for Microsoft Teams
Monitoring Microsoft Teams
During Microsoft Teams adoption, it is important to evaluate your performance monitoring and management needs early on to maximize ROI and minimize time spent troubleshooting Microsoft Teams. Issues with Microsoft Teams adoption can lead to poor user experience, increased costs, and lower productivity. By implementing Microsoft Teams management tools, IT teams can help address these issues.
Without Microsoft Teams management tools to help with provisioning, performance monitoring, and user satisfaction tracking, IT will likely compromise overall collaboration health.
Microsoft Teams Reporting
Microsoft Teams reporting offers the information necessary to achieve frictionless deployments and is essential to measuring adoption, feature usage, and end-user success. With Microsoft Teams management tools like reporting, IT can ensure positive call experiences by identifying top problem areas in Microsoft Teams call analytics. Ultimately, it can reduce time spent troubleshooting Microsoft teams, increase adoption, improve call quality, and uncover security blind spots.
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