Workplaces have modernized worldwide because of Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams makes communication and collaboration more efficient and seamless for organizations. However, if not deployed with forethought Microsoft Teams can deliver its own set of problems. To ensure productivity and optimum utilization of the tool, lifecycle management best practices must be established and executed.

When to Start with Microsoft Teams Lifecycle Management

If there is a right answer, it would be “as soon as possible.” Lifecycle Management of Microsoft Teams is crucial, and one should not wait for their Microsoft Teams environment to be unhinged before considering it. The right way to start with Lifecycle Management is to plan and implement a strategy right from day one with Microsoft Teams. But if you didn’t start Lifecycle Management in your Microsoft Teams environment, this does not mean that your environment cannot be remediated. The purpose of Lifecycle Management is to help you and your organization overcome hurdles no matter what stage of Microsoft Teams adoption you are in.

Where To Begin with Microsoft Teams Lifecycle Management

Lifecycle Management is all about taking care of the longevity of your Microsoft Teams every step of the way. Let us walk you through some of the essential steps in setting up and managing Microsoft Teams from creation to sunsetting.

1. Defining Your Microsoft Teams Teams

Before you start creating Microsoft Teams teams, make sure you define the purpose of the team and set a creation process in advance. This includes deciding what events warrant the creation of a team and who has the authority to do so.

With Orchestry, you can utilize the power of Pre-Built Workspace Templates and Controlled Self-Service Provisioning to create tailor-made Microsoft Teams teams and SharePoint sites to maintain a standardized experience throughout your platform. Templating allows you to control how an asset is organized and provisioned, enabling you to track owners, members and approve the creation itself before provisioning a new team.

Efficient Lifecycle Management with Self-Service Provisioning

2. Pre-Plan Microsoft Teams Governance

For the efficient creation and usage of Microsoft Teams, it is important that governance policies are configured. Make sure to follow a naming convention across your environment and identify what kind of teams will be public and private, plus who can add/approve new members to each team.

Further, plan transparent Microsoft 365 Governance with Orchestry, including set-up and deployment of naming conventions, sensitivity labels, metadata, and unparalleled compliance. Remove bottlenecks and access issues by carefully implementing enhanced governance policies with Orchestry.

Naming Convention in Microsoft Teams

3. Set Up Checkpoints for Monitoring Workspace Usage

As a team evolves and grows, keeping an eye on its utilization is very important. You need to track usage and activities in your Microsoft Teams to understand if they are being utilized to their full potential. With the correct reports and insights, you can quickly expose issues to remediate and immediately get a better handle on your Microsoft 365 collaboration environment.

Orchestry’s Actionable Insights and Reporting capability provide improved visibility in your Workspaces, Microsoft Teams, and SharePoint Online, like no other tool. You gain a rich understanding of each Workspace and how it has evolved over time. With powerful reports that deliver insightful metrics in the simplest and most beautiful interface, IT administrators can make informed decisions, fully optimize and remediate your environment more efficiently than ever before.

Detailed Workspace Lifecycle Overview

4. Identify Microsoft Teams that Need Revitalizing

Reporting is not all; extracting actionable information is what matters most. By looking into the Microsoft Teams teams, you will understand which need to be revived and which are nearing the end of their lifespan. Identification is the first step towards managing this unruly platform with ease.

With the help of Orchestry’s Insights and Reporting capability, it is easy to target remediation towards the Microsoft Teams teams and SharePoint sites that need it most. In addition to that, Comprehensive Lifecycle Management capability empowers you to manage these Workspaces by managing their owners, members, guest access, and other elements for a smooth clean-up.

5. Define What the End of a Microsoft Team Means

You need to define what happens after a team has served its purpose. It is essential to set the next steps and follow through to keep your Microsoft Teams environment from suffering from sprawl and abandoned Workspaces.

You have unmatched flexibility with Orchestry’s Archiving Policies that are triggered based on custom inactivity thresholds and can be configured on a template-by-template basis. Not to mention, once the policy is triggered, Orchestry notifies and confirms with MS Teams owners and administrators if they would like to keep their Workspace, giving them the freedom to extend its lifespan.

Implement Archive Policy within Orchestry

6. Set Microsoft Teams Archival Policies

The summation of the content that has accumulated in Microsoft Teams over time needs to be managed too. Whether you want to delete it, remove access to it, or store a copy of it in a Microsoft Azure instance, with the right policy configurations, you can easily manage the resources of your environment without losing control or terminating them.

If content retention is of importance to you, then Orchestry is your simplest solution. Without allowing the Microsoft Teams team and SharePoint site to grow further, the archive option with Orchestry allows you to:

(1) ‘copy and delete’ the Workspace

(2) copy over the entire content of the Workspace

(3) move to another location before deleting the Workspace

Explore Comprehensive Lifecycle Management with PAIT Group

We want you to operate in a productive business environment, which makes Microsoft Teams Lifecycle Management a crucial part of your digital workplace strategy.  As an official Orchestry Delivery Partner, PAIT Group is dedicated to maintaining a tamed Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 platform for you.

Join PAIT Group and Orchestry on November 9th for an interactive discussion on the importance of lifecycle management within Microsoft Teams and best practices that can help overcome the challenges of an unruly MS Teams deployment.

In addition, Explore the must-have lifecycle management and insights capabilities of Orchestry with the new product launch ‘Actionable Insights and Comprehensive Lifecycle Management’ with us. Complete your registration and gain early free access to the latest Orchestry capabilities: https://www.orchestry.com/event/orchestry-lifecycle-management-official-public-release/