BTEX 2021 : How to Get the Most out of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365

In the past, SharePoint was an option to help youmove into the cloud, says Sherman Woo, Senior Field Solution Architect,speaking at CDW's BTEX 2021 virtual event. And then, along came March 2020.Your digital transformation plan went from two years to two months, your peoplearen't allowed to come into the office, so how do we keep them working?

Most of us have strong internet connections andcapable machines. But the vast majority of files are still on the servers. So,we'll just get Microsoft 365 licences for everyone, give them a 30-minuteprimer on Microsoft Teams, copy files from the network to the SharePoint site,and you're back in business. People can talk to each other, have virtualmeetings, and they're all good. This showed that IT departments around theworld could quickly adapt and let many organizations keep on motoring.

But what'syour price for flight?

In the rush to roll Teams out so quickly, therewasn't time to plan and organize, says Woo. We couldn't deliver comprehensivetraining for everyone, and we didn't even know what best practices torecommend. We didn't know what we didn't know. We got everyone up and running,able to keep communicating with each other, maybe things could have been lockeddown a little bit better. But staff were able to create Teams as they needed.There were no roadblocks or delays from IT, but what you ended up was Teamssprawl everybody got a Team.

By now, you may know that for every Teams instanceyou create, there is a SharePoint site supporting it. So if you have 200 Teams,you will have 200 SharePoint sites. Not only are your files potentially stillon your network drive, they've also in various SharePoint sites, scatteredthroughout Microsoft Teams.

Work is still getting done, people are having meetings so what's the problem?

If we take a closer look, and we ask our staff, arethey really happy with how things are working, or are they just getting by andfocused on staying safe? The files are still on the network drive, so you maystill have a situation where I'm working in SharePoint Online and Teams, but Istill have to occasionally connect to the VPN to get to the network drivefiles. And, is IT confident that the content in the cloud is safe and secure?

Woo suggests four steps to help bring everythingtogether:

1. Figure out what you have
2. Determine what and how the services are used today
3. Build a roadmap
4. Create a governance plan to keep activities on track

Auditing yourMicrosoft 365 licences

In the rush, maybe there wasn't time to really figureout what mix of Microsoft 365 licences you have, says Woo. You can actuallymix and match, depending on the needs of your team and their roles. Noteverybody has to be on the same subscription level; you may be spending morethan you need to. It may not be the most cost-effective combination.

For the office worker that needs the power of Excel,or someone who's writing an in-depth report and needs to use citations, themobile versions aren't really for these people. They're going to need the fullpower of the desktop applications. So you might need something like BusinessBasic or Enterprise E3 or higher.

On the other hand, If you have a lot of retail staff or frontline workers, those licences are costly, and if they're never going to install the full desktop suite, you may be able to get away with something like Business Basic, E1, F1 or F3 for those people. The key is they all have Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. But let's use this time to regroup and figure out what licences we have, and are we spending our money wisely? Maybe we can find some cost savings and use those savings elsewhere.

Are you makingfull use of all your Microsoft Teams?

There may be a lot of Teams created within yourorganization, but they might not all be used as intended. I see a lot of timeswhere there's a bunch of Teams created, and the majority of them have onesingle channel, says Woo. So that tells me there wasn't really a good changemanagement plan or training plan put in place. And maybe it's not being usedmost effectively.

Maybe they're just using it for ad hoc chats andmeetings, and that's fine, but we're not really taking full advantage of thecapabilities that Microsoft Teams has. Employees may be content, they're OKwith it, maybe Teams isn't necessarily intuitive for them.

Or perhaps there's a lack of consistency orconventions between project managers and their teams. People are confused.They're not sure if it's really better than what they had before. Can we notjust go back to email and send attachments to everybody?

How to keeptrack of files on Microsoft Teams

Teams is everywhere, and so are your files,potentially, says Woo. SharePoint has become another dumping ground, wherefiles go to die. That's not what we want. We want people to be able to do whatMicrosoft calls high-velocity collaboration and communications. We want them touse Teams to get to their objective; a product deadline, accomplishing whateverthey need to accomplish quickly and efficiently.

This is where a content audit comes in. Are theyusing Teams, SharePoint, Planner, Stream, all of these different services thatyou may be licenced for, that people may have accidentally found. You need totake a look and see what content they have created, and what are they actuallytrying to do. Do an analysis of that content, what is the flow of information,how does it get started and are there any patterns? Then figure what you can doto help standardize and help the business make better use of that.

Building aroadmap it's a journey, not a sprint

Over the years, you've acquired and worked with manyvendors and technologies, and we get sometimes overwhelmed on the road to thedigital workplace utopia, says Woo. You're trying to give your staff the besttools for whatever they want to do. Our job in IT is to help make that all workbetter together.

There is no straight line to the finish, Woo adds. We want to have this fast track, but we all know that in technology, change is constant. The digital journey travels side-by-side with whatever your organization's objectives are. So, if you're trying to do a massive marketing campaign, what technology do you need to give your marketing team so they can meet their deadline?

Focus on those business drivers and outcomes to helpfigure out the paths and priorities. I like to chunk things into quarters, sowe can say by Q4 2021, we're going to have the new intranet in place. Or maybethe HR site is going to go live in Q4. Once you build these various SharePointassets, they can become part of your new intranet.

Understand thevarious tools within Microsoft 365 to help stay on track

When it comes to getting the most out of yourMicrosoft 365 suite, Make sure you figure out the basics, says Woo. You'vegot your identity with Azure AD, you've moved your Exchange to the cloud Fromthere, work out how each of the other Microsoft 365 services could solve someof your business problems. Find out what are your priorities, and map it out byquarters. Having a map will give you some sense of where you're going and howyou hope to get there.

You're going to get curveballs along the way, to stayon top of the continuous change of cloud services. But at least you'll see onthe horizon what your target is and you'll always be able to stay on track. Thedigital transformation journey to the cloud should not be rushed, but it doesneed to be managed.

To learn moreabout Microsoft 365 plans from CDW, please visit CDW.ca/Microsoft365. And besure to bookmark this page for more coverage of BTEX 2021.