Today's IT pros can
utilize strategies and automated tools to declutter and streamline Teams
environments
By Willie Cash, General Manager of
Voleer Americas at BitTitan
In the
last year, Microsoft
Teams adoption surged with
the rise of remote work. Microsoft recently
announced that
Teams had reached 145 million daily active users, which is nearly double the
user count from a year ago.
However, the
shift toward remote work and employees' increased usage of Teams have presented
new challenges for managed service providers and IT professionals. One challenge
in particular is Microsoft Teams sprawl. With many companies relying on Teams
for workplace collaboration and more and more employees using Teams as their
primary way to engage and communicate, managing the growing amount of user data
can get unruly very quickly.
What is
Sprawl?
Before organizations
were forced to embrace virtual collaboration, employees interacted in physical
meeting rooms or by visiting a colleague's office or cubicle to discuss
projects. Now, much of this interaction happens in various project channels on
Teams. For example, an employee can start a private chat with a colleague on
Teams, then bring in another person on the conversation, and eventually, this
can stem into a project that is created in a private channel. Because it is
private, not all employees can view this correspondence - and IT may not even
know the channel exists.
After the
project ends, that channel may sit empty, taking up space and adding clutter. In
some cases, these inactive channels can include saved documents and important data
that can be potentially accessed by unwanted parties, presenting security
risks. Without a plan or policy to govern this activity, the result is the sprawl
of data.
Impacts
of Sprawl
While
increased usage is a positive sign that employees are adopting Teams and
collaborating, the sprawl of user data can interfere with productivity and
operations. An overabundance of disorganized data can make it harder to access
important information and locate documents or files. For larger organizations
with thousands of employees collaborating over Teams, a sprawl of user data can
also result in high storage costs.
For IT
teams, user data sprawl can make it nearly impossible to manage their Teams
network efficiently. It can interfere with the performance of network systems. To
have an efficient Teams environment, IT professionals need the ability to
properly assess it, clean it up and govern it in a way that aligns with how
their organization operates.
Strategies
for Success
Some strategies
and tools that service providers and IT professionals can leverage to get ahead
of Teams sprawl and optimize their environment include:
1. Develop
a comprehensive plan for employee training and adoption. According to Tim Hohman, a Microsoft Teams expert with IT company Peters &
Associates, it is critical to develop a comprehensive plan to support the employees' usage of Teams at the beginning of implementation.
"When Teams is rolled out without planning, sprawl is a big issue," Hohman said.
"Discuss your Teams' deployment and train your users so they have the necessary
knowledge and tools to prevent sprawl. Understanding retention, archiving,
naming and expiration options will set you up for a successful Teams
deployment."
2. Leverage automated solutions to manage your Teams
environment. Automated
tools and technologies can help IT teams effectively manage and streamline
Teams sprawl, including automated tools and assessments from BitTitan Voleer. These
tools can help companies create a baseline for ongoing business intelligence within
their organization's usage and adoption of the Teams platform. In addition to
the on-demand BI dashboards, they can also manage the channel structure, and ultimately,
clean up their Teams environment. IT professionals can schedule and run an
assessment on an ongoing basis to get an idea of the scope of data stored and
the number of teams, channels, devices, active users and more. The IT team can
identify abandoned teams or channels, then take action to consolidate or
archive channels to minimize clutter and free up space.
3. Create governance policies and best practices
that align with how your company operates. Lastly, by establishing governance policies and best practices that guide
employees on things like channel creation, IT professionals can keep the
environment organized - but only if these align with how your company works. A
policy is only effective if it can be applied in practice, and employees can
always find ways to work around processes that don't make sense to them.
Establishing best practices that are clear and accessible to employees can proactively
address looming challenges and enable an IT team to get ahead of user data
sprawl.
Whether your organization recently adopted Teams or has
been using it for years, steps must be taken to manage sprawl. Thoughtful
planning can go a long way, and IT professionals should take advantage of the
automated tools available to them. By being proactive, organizations can avoid
the headaches, make Teams work effectively for them, and realize its true
return on investment.
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About the Author
Willie Cash is the General
Manager of Voleer Americas
at BitTitan, where he works with SMB and enterprise partner companies to
identify and implement effective ways to drive solutions, grow revenue, and
increase profits in their day-to-day businesses.
Learn more about Voleer here.