Need to quickly get started with Microsoft Teams? Here’s a six-step process that keeps it as simple as possible.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the need for a remote workforce has shifted the focus to collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams. What may have been a few weeks ago, “it sounds good, but do I really need it?” has now become “how soon can I get it?”
The short answer is, “quicker than you think.”
But to get there, you need to put thought into it, since this product impacts your employees both at the technical and cultural level.
In this blog, we’ll walk you through a process we’ve found helps quickly deploy Teams. This process includes answers to many questions you may have, such as:
- How do I assess my Technical Readiness?
- How do I determine my Organizational Readiness?
- How do I develop my Deployment Plan?
- What do I do about Post-Deployment Support?
- What kind of Implementation Timeline is realistic?
- What Lurking Gotchas are beneath the surface?
But before we dive in, let’s consider the bright side.
Quickly Get Started with Microsoft Teams
Everyone can use some good news these days, and Microsoft Teams helps on that front.
First, Teams can be brought online quickly, and more so if your organization already uses Office 365. Licenses for most of Teams’ underlying components, such as OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online, are part of Office 365, and your employees are likely familiar with at least some of these.
Second, even if your company doesn’t have Office 365, we can help you implement Office 365 quickly and securely.
Third, because Teams runs in the cloud, hardware procurement and set up is not an issue. It is a software as a service (SaaS) tool with just about everything you need already in place. That makes the first step, Technical Readiness, a lot easier to manage.
Another thought – if you were looking for a time to move off of Skype for Business, go all-in. It is going away in 2021, and events unfolding with the new coronavirus could help move that transition along rapidly.
1. Technical Readiness
Most of you may already have the high-speed network access needed to power Microsoft Teams. Your only remaining technical tasks are to:
- Examine your existing Office 365 tenant’s configuration (or that of your new tenant) to help integrate Teams with software like SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Exchange Online, and your organization’s various security tools.
- Identify the rules you want to enforce to manage access rights, team owner restrictions and guest access, team naming conventions, team lifecycle processes, regulatory compliance and more.
- Review your network capacity with Microsoft tools and worksheets. And remember, Teams is “smart” about throttling down resource hungry resources such as video during phone calls.
- Use the information you have gathered to deploy basic security configurations, enable licenses of key services (OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, and Exchange) if you don’t already have them, and standardize common tasks like adding guests or creating new teams and private channels.
The main idea is to keep it as simple as possible. You can go back later to add needed resources like automated governance or enhanced security and compliance features.
2. Organizational Readiness
Teams touches everything in your employees’ day-to-day life, from voice and video calling to meeting scheduling, file sharing, instant messaging, collaborative document creation and editing, and more. This fact can make adoption challenging, especially when employees have so many other things on their minds.
So as you go into a Teams rollout – even if it is rapid – consider a few of the ways you can define the scope of your adoption needs and create an adoption plan:
- Stand up a demo Team: Gather a group of enthusiastic people and allow them to experience Teams firsthand. Take note of concerns, gaps in functionality, and training needs while looking for champions and resisters.
- Host workshops to identify user requirements: Give your champions roles in the rollout and training process to drive enthusiasm while winning over resisters with training and support.
- Synthesize your findings to create a deployment roadmap: Include things like when to turn features on, training schedules, organizational support structures, staffing requirements and integrations with other enterprise applications.
Throughout this process, remember that you are working with people. Properly train and resource your support staff. Communicate regularly and honestly with all employees, from end users and managers to the C-suite. Give people ownership by assigning Teams leaders who embrace your governance policies. And keep up with Microsoft about changes that could affect your users.
3. Deployment Plan
The information you have gathered and work you have done so far will drive your deployment plan. Ideally, it will include:
- Details about Teams tenant configuration (see Technical Readiness)
- Change management activities (see Operational Readiness)
- Longer term support and training
Again, in a rapid deployment environment, keep your plans as simple as possible. Focus on putting the most important collaboration and communications tools in front of your employees as quickly as you can, such as chat and meetings.
4. Post-Deployment Support
Teams’ cloud-based nature greatly simplifies ongoing support needs. However, you will need some people who are comfortable in the cloud and working with Office 365, and you should be flexible to accommodate varying levels of comfort with Office 365.
Two great tools are Teams’ Help feature, in the bottom left corner of the screen, and Teams’ new Bots automate routine question answering. Bots will even escalate questions, if necessary. You can also create a team or channel dedicated to answering questions.
That said, it will also be helpful to have:
- Technical support for issues like access rights, authorization and authentication, low bandwidth environments, video and audio quality questions, and dial-in capabilities for external meetings.
- Power users who can provide quick advice on practical questions like, “What’s best, setting up a new team, or adding a channel to an existing team?”
- A way to monitor compliance of important procedures to prevent runaway growth of teams, standardize team naming and control some basic communications standards.
- A tool to monitor adoption rates so you can get the most out of the tool. Coreview and Panagenda’s Office Expert products can help here.
- An organization-wide communications team to drive adoption throughout the organization. This same team can be used to answer questions for remote users.
5. Implementation Timeline
“I’m surprised that you cannot tell me the precise timeline”—said no experienced IT person ever. But while determining a specific implementation and adoption timeline is difficult, key factors include:
- Your (current and future) licensing status
- How many users will need Teams
- The geographic locations you serve
- Security and compliance requirements
- The range of your employees’ experience level, from digital natives to digital newbies
Various technical issues can also affect your timeline, from network deficiencies and working with older versions of SharePoint to a desire for a lot of custom functionality.
However, if your organization is already Office 365 savvy and you only want to roll out the most essential tools (chats, meetings, calls, OneDrive, SharePoint, the most critical teams), you could be up and running in three to seven days. But if you have 5,000 employees who have a moderate level of technical maturity and specialized compliance requirements, it could take a month or more to start rolling out features, and three to six months for full implementation.
Again, carefully think through what you need now. In today’s environment, the goal is to get what you need online quickly and safely. You can always add functionality later.
6. Lurking Gotchas
As with any new technology, you’re likely to encounter a few gotchas that could increase costs or slow down timelines. Some, like licensing problems, are easy to fix. Others, like lack of leadership buy-in,out-of-date network architectures, or legacy security policies, may be more challenging. You may also find yourself feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of documents you feel you have to move.
Our advice is:
- Don’t overthink it. We are in a new world, and those who can adapt quickly and smartly will come out of it better.
- Don’t ignore security concerns or all the “nice-to-haves,” but don’t let them stop you, either.
- Do the work to determine what is most critical, now, and move on from there.
The Way Forward
Even as you quickly shift to remote work in response to COVID-19, keep in mind that the key to successfully get started with Microsoft Teams is to know your people, know your environment, and know which features are most important to your business. Then, strive to reduce confusion, keep communication lines open, recruit champions, and use education to convert resisters.
Whether you jump into to the deep end with Teams or wade in from the shallow end depends on your organization’s culture. But in most cases, Teams will get you to a better place. That’s why it’s Microsoft’s fastest-growing product of all time.
The post A 6-Step Process to Quickly Get Started with Microsoft Teams appeared first on Centric Consulting.