BUYER’S GUIDE FOR MICROSOFT TEAMS

Key Steps to Pilot, Rollout, and Operate at Scale with Microsoft Teams

PART 2: Implement a Successful Deployment

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Welcome to Microsoft Teams

Deploying Microsoft Teams

Familiarization with Teams

Piloting Teams

Rollout

Operating at Scale

Conclusion

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INTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION

In Part 1 of our Buyer’s Guide for Microsoft Teams, we learned about the key considerations and decision criteria for moving forward with a Teams deployment, including an exploration of the benefits of Microsoft Teams.

Now that you have selected Microsoft Teams as the right workstream collaboration (WSC) platform vendor for you, Part 2 of this buyers guide covers how to prepare for and execute a Microsoft Teams deployment, what you need to be familiar with, when and how to roll out Teams, and finally getting to day-to-day operations to complete a successful Microsoft Teams migration.

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Key Benefits of Microsoft Teams*

Promoting Engagement and Productivity

84% of employees are involved with multiple teams. Adopting collaboration software makes those interactions infinitely more effective.

Built-In Installed BaseOffice 365 is used by over 120 million users worldwide and Teams is available to every single one of them. Leverage the Microsoft ecosystem that is second to none.

Microsoft and the Enterprise

While other workstream collaboration platforms (e.g. Slack) have found success, they have struggled to meet enterprise demands —something that hasn’t been an issue for Microsoft to date.

Leveraging Microsoft’s UC History

Microsoft has been building Teams for over a decade, with UC platforms like Skype for Business heavily influencing Teams moving forward.

* for more benefits see Part 1

WELCOME

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Teams is a WSC application that allows you to communicate with your employees, partners, clients, and more, regardless of location. It provides a common workspace to share information and has baked-in features like document sharing, personal messaging, team and group chats, etc.

What’s more, Microsoft Teams also comes fully integrated with other Office 365 productivity tools such as Skype for Business, SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive for Business, making it an all-in-one software for your communication and collaboration needs.

What Comes with Microsoft TeamsRecognizing that different groups have various needs due to a variety of roles and work styles, Microsoft provides users more than just access to Microsoft Teams, but to the entire Office 365 platform. This includes:

There are three different client types available for Microsoft Teams — the desktop, browser, and mobile app. In the past, Skype for Business received criticism for its mobile client, with users complaining that it was problematic or not intuitive. With Microsoft Teams, users aren’t left wanting — the mobile app is capable of just about everything the other client types can do, just shy of screen sharing.

Availability – “Free” Teams vs Office 365For those with Office 365, all of the requirements and limits remain the same, however for those without Office 365, there is still a free version of Teams. This version is designed for smaller businesses or a team or department inside of a larger organization that would like to start piloting Teams.

WEL

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WELCOME TO MICROSOFT TEAMS

DEPLOY

Exchange Online for enterprise-grade calendaring and unified messaging

SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business for document/content management and enterprise search

Microsoft Stream for live and one-to-many events

Skype for Business for those transitioning with enterprise voice and conferencing

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WSC Goals and Use CasesWithout defining your goals around Teams, your deployment is doomed before it even begins. There are three dominating questions to ask when setting your goals that will define your project vision:

1. What do you want to accomplish by adopting Microsoft Teams?

2. What does success look like?

3. What are the risks, and how do you mitigate those risks?

Stay away from defining vague goals that may not exactly answer any problems or that aren’t defined by measurable outcomes over a specified timeline. Ensure that as you define your goals you think in terms of not just business goals, but also organizational, cultural, and individual goals (such as employee productivity). Refine your goals by describing your current business processes and the challenges that come with them, and how Microsoft Teams can help overcome those exact challenges. Business goals may include streamlining business processes, retirement of legacy systems, data security, and customer experience impacts (e.g. faster service, reduction in service incidents, customer referral/loyalty program participation).

DEPLOYING MICROSOFT TEAMS

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This eBook divides the deployment preparation process into three different sections, to make it easier to digest. All of the sections zero in on key questions and considerations for your organization. Section 1 deals with understanding your WSC goals, use cases, workforce demographics and rollout roadmap. Section 2 talks about whether your corporate infrastructure is Teams-ready, network bandwidth issues and considerations for your coexistence with other WSC apps. Finally, Section 3 addresses your conferencing and device requirements, the importance of operational governance, and your need for additional monitoring, analytics, and reporting tools.

Goals, Use Cases and Users Deployment Prep #1:

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Workforce DemographicsTo plan your deployment with your users in mind, it begins with a complete analysis of your workforce demographics. Understanding your workforce is vital to a successful adoption and will help outline a rollout plan.

Identify Key StakeholdersIn addition to analyzing the makeup of your organization, we suggest identifying the key stakeholders that will be responsible for aiding in a smooth deployment.

Microsoft Teams Use Cases for Every ScenarioCustomer Support• Enable continuous knowledge sharing

between shifts

• Provide visibility into customer escalations

• Search for solutions across conversations

• Speed up issue resolution with various subject matter experts

Engineering• Enable continuous discussion across a

distributed team

• Discuss ideas and requirements, gather inputs in the open

• Store standard documentation and files

• Integrate with developer tools like Jira

Finance• Prepare earnings release with cross-

functional stakeholders

• Streamline data consolidation and analysis

• Store budgeting documentation and files

• Share economic trends and news

Human Resources• Drive alignment on job descriptions and

streamline interview processes

• Plan and prepare new employee onboarding

• Engage distributed employees in training

• Share department resources and documentation

Marketing• Coordinate campaigns and event tasks

• Share the latest content drafts for feedback

• Get automated reports from analytics tools

• Prepare marketing launch across multiple stakeholders

Sales• Get quick answers from PMs and Sales Ops

• Share key customer wins

• Get lead notifications and deal mentions

• Share latest company, product and competitor news

Operations & Project Management• Streamline project communication and tools

• Provide status updates, get feedback, coordinate tasks

• Share files and collaborate on deliverables

• Get new project members up to speed quickly

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Build a Rollout Roadmap Transitioning to Teams should be a gradual process — while there are a lot of moving parts to consider, there’s also a need for understanding how new features will work with your organization, as well as IT team and end-user training. Because there are several pieces to juggle, putting together a roadmap that has a plan for when certain features will roll out within Teams — such as starting with just persistent chat, and moving on to file storage and voice — as well as understanding how external users will fit in, audio and video needs, conference room system upgrades, and how to fully transition away from Skype for Business or other workstream collaboration tools will be crucial for a complete and effective migration to Teams.

Types of Microsoft Teams Stakeholders

Executive SponsorsThe key leaders within an organization who have the ability to influence company culture and communicate the benefits of Microsoft Teams.

Service OwnersThe team who will ensure that people use Teams and are getting value from it. They will be responsible for tracking progress to meeting your set goals.

IT Professionals Like any software adoption, you need your IT team onboard to help with any difficulties.

ChampionsKnowledgeable and committed individuals who will help you gain buy-in from every user. They will assist with workshops and peer coaching.

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Environmental Dependencies for TeamsIn order to have a successful Microsoft Teams deployment, you must first ensure that your Office 365 services are properly implemented. Teams works in tandem with services like SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive for Business. While it’s not required to use all of these services, Microsoft recommends that they are all implemented as it may affect the functionality of Teams. Key dependencies to address include:

1. Exchange Online: users hosted on Exchange Online or Dedicated vNext can use all the features of Teams

2. SharePoint Online: required to share and store files in team conversations

3. Office 365 Groups: allows users to create teams within Microsoft Teams

4. Azure Active Directory: required for identity models and authentication

5. OneDrive for Business: enables file sharing and storage within private chats

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Teams Transformation ServicesIf you’re making the switch to Microsoft Teams but want additional help from expert consultants to help formulate your Teams strategy and outline your enterprise plan for provisioning, performance optimization, and end-user training and adoption, consider Unify Square’s Teams Transformation Services.

Infrastructure and Coexistence Deployment Prep #2:

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Network Bandwidth Required Verifying that you have the proper network bandwidth and connectivity capacity to enable successful integration with Teams is critical. It can be easy to forget to check if your infrastructure can withstand a new Teams adoption in the first place. You’ll want to confirm:

• Network bandwidth and technical capacity

• Office 365 prerequisites and licensing agreement compatibility with Teams

• Data storage

• Office 365 domain

• Identity and authentication models

• Direct routing connections (to enable telephony connectivity)

Teams Combines Three Forms of Traffic:

1. Data traffic between the Office 365 online environment and the Teams client (signaling, presence, chat, file upload and download, OneNote synchronization).

2. Peer-to-peer real-time communications traffic (audio, video, desktop sharing).

3. Conferencing real-time communications traffic (audio, video, desktop sharing).

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This impacts the network on two levels: traffic will flow between the Microsoft Teams clients directly for peer-to-peer scenarios, and traffic will flow between the Office 365 environment and the Microsoft Teams clients for meeting scenarios. To ensure optimal traffic flow, traffic must be allowed to flow both between the internal network segments (for example, between sites over the WAN) as well as between the network sites and Office 365. Not opening the correct ports or actively blocking specific

ports will lead to a degraded experience. Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that many workstream collaboration tools offer mobile applications, which use software clients on smartphones and PCs. The mobility of these tools increases performance demands on WLAN infrastructure to maintain the required user experience.

Network assessment readiness provides a clear understanding of the demands that will be made of the network when deploying (or making changes to) a UC platform. The Unify Square Network Assessment tests for signal strength, same channel overlap, NMOS degradation, and connected access points. We provide network recommendations, customizable survey locations, and reporting & analytics to help ensure your team is ready for business success with workstream collaboration deployments.

Coexistence with Slack and Other WSC Platforms You might find grassroots adoptions of workstream collaboration apps — like Slack — already in place within your organization. While your Microsoft Teams deployment may be your first official adoption of WSC software for your organization, a team of say, engineers, may have taken it upon themselves to adopt an “unofficial” WSC platform to help them with some sort of collaborative project.

This is fairly common and it’s nothing to worry about. Don’t try and stop these groups from using Slack, or any other WSC app platform. However, reinforce that an official corporate standard for WSC has been established so users cannot force their use of Slack onto others across the company. Existing WSC user groups will need to work with the IT-approved WSC apps for situations when they are collaborating across the organization with others.

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Conferencing and Device Requirements Understanding conferencing and huddle room needs for room systems also ensures that certified room systems are in place for Microsoft Teams. One thing that is often overlooked is preparing conference rooms and huddle rooms with devices that fit your long-term WSC platform provider goals. If you do decide to support an additional platform down the road, your room systems are not immediately obsolete. In many cases, your existing conference rooms systems may work great for Skype for Business or your other UC or WSC incumbent platform, but an upgrade or replacement will be required for Teams.

For individual devices, just because a user had a traditional desk phone prior to the Teams rollout, doesn’t mean that they still need one. Conversely, just because the user is asking for a high-end DECT softphone doesn’t mean that’s the right phone for them, either. By doing the work up front, you can ensure that the right devices are available based on an assessment of end-user needs.

Calls, Governance, and Tools Deployment Prep #3:

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Typical device challenges that surface with a WSC system go beyond selecting the right devices but also include receiving user acceptance of headsets and softphones versus desk phones, keeping devices up to date, and supporting devices from multiple vendors. Working user adoption and device fitting early-on into your WSC system deployment can help

mitigate user pushback, offer best practices, and be prepared to show users different features and functionality (such as how to use a conference room system). Also, keep in mind that many WSC platforms (such as Slack) don’t have the tight voice and conferencing integration which Teams enjoys. As a result, the device requirements may not be as important or well thought through.

Call Feature Use Cases

Basic Enterprise Advanced Enterprise Mobile

User Prefers Softphone Softphone Softphone Desk Phone and

Softphone Softphone

User Accepts Softphone Softphone Softphone Desk Phone Softphone

User Prefers Desk Phone

Desk Phone and Softphone Desk Phone Desk Phone Desk Phone

and Softphone

Source: Gartner (July 2017)

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DEP

LOY Operational Governance Requirements

While there are certainly a myriad of complexities for the voice portion of UC, especially voice in the cloud, IT shouldn’t ignore the importance of governance issues. “New age” governance topics for WSC include such complexities like:

Even though WSC platform providers offer some capabilities, in many cases they have not given enough thought to the day-to-day operations of governance and compliance. Existing models around governance, compliance, and security will continue to evolve as WSC takes root in the enterprise, and will need time to reach maturity. IT Teams should be prepared to have a proactive approach anticipating governance needs and executing on appropriate solutions before disaster strikes.

Group and Team Creation, Naming, Classification, and Guest Access

Your organization might require that you implement strict controls on how teams are named and classified, whether guests can be added as team members, and who can create teams. Specifically regarding guest access, the potential issue here is that IT can’t really control whether (or when) the organization is sharing private information with external parties. Further, in general, Teams is missing an overall permissions model (including guest access) between Teams, Office365 Groups, SharePoint, OneDrive, etc. IT teams should take extra precautions to properly configure guests in Azure AD, as well as remind their organization about shared files.

Multi-geo

DLP

Data-residency

Guest Access

eDiscovery

Hierarchical vs Flat Groups

Exfiltration Risk

Data Lifecycle Management

Connector Management

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Group and Team Expiration, Retention, and Archiving

Your organization might have additional requirements for setting policies for expiration, retention, and archiving teams and teams’ data. You can configure group expiration policies to automatically manage the lifecycle of the group and retention policies to preserve or delete information as needed, and you can archive teams (set them to read-only mode) to preserve a point-in-time view of a team that’s no longer active.

Proper Monitoring and Reporting ToolsThere are several different types of management tools – device, platform, administration, and performance tools:

• Device management tools come from the manufacturers for headsets, IP phones, conference room systems, etc. to enable firmware updates and configurations and to track performance.

• Platform tools come from the providers of on-prem or cloud-based UC or WSC platforms. These tools provide basic management functionality to help better use their platform.

• Administration (or operations) tools are third-party specialist tools focusing on UC and/or WSC configuration and provisioning and address MACD type management of the platform.

• Performance tools are also provided from third-party software providers and typically focus on UC/WSC uptime, problem/resolution, root-cause analysis, and monitoring.

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The evaluation of management tools alongside UC or WSC platform selection actually lets you capitalize on all the benefits. But, despite all of the up-front benefits, less than half of the companies that use management tools buy at the right time. Asking about management capabilities and partnerships offered by the platform or cloud provider can allow you to evaluate existing management tools that work with the platform decision you move forward with.

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For those getting ready to deploy Microsoft Teams, specialty management tools can not only bring greater visibility, but when used early on, they can drastically reduce UC costs.

Management tools, specifically third-party administration and performance tools, such as Unify Square’s market leading PowerSuite offering, can help save time in getting to a healthy UC environment, reduce training time, cut installation costs, and offers greater benefits than generic management tools.

FAMILIARIZE

For large companies, cost savings may be as much as 65% for implementation costs, and 43% for operational costs.

Research by Nemertes

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FAMILIARIZATION WITH TEAMSMake the Switch to Microsoft TeamsAs the initial IT and project teams begin to use Teams, it will be important to commit to using Teams chat, channels, and resources to run the pilot project. Your own usage of Teams is critical to the quality of your adoption project. Resist the temptation to fragment the project by having conversations with others in email. By switching to Teams you will model the behavior you ultimately want your employees to embrace.

Guidelines to Create and Manage TeamsIt is, by design, very easy to create and name teams and groups within Teams. A person who sees the glass as half-full likes this approach to help facilitate and drive user adoption. The glass half-empty IT person may fear this tactic because sprawl and duplication, as well as GAL/AD, confusion can lead to extra policies and additional headcount to govern and enforce these policies. A good best practice is to create strongly suggested naming conventions for Teams and Channels that are then enforced by your champions.

Understand the Teams/Channel Structure and RolesWithin the Teams app, there are Teams and Channels. Teams are a collection of people, content, and tools surrounding different projects. Channels are dedicated sections within a Team to keep conversations organized. Channels are a place where everyone on the Team can have open conversations and can also have Tabs, Connectors, and Bots extended to them.

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There are three basic roles within Teams – the owner, team member, and guest. The owner is the person who created the team or was assigned the role. This person is responsible for managing the team-wide settings, membership, and invitations. Team members are those that have been invited to join the team, and guests are users that are outside of your tenant that have been given access to the team by the owner.

Creating TeamsFor the purposes of this phase you can restrict who is able to create teams to the early adopter population in addition to your core project team. This will allow your early adopters to create additional teams if needed. Monitoring this behavior will give you key information for your broad deployment. If you want to disable the ability to create a team for specific users, it’s possible to do this inside of Teams admin manager. However, if you would like to disable for a group of users, it is best to do this using PowerShell or third party tools like Unify Square’s PowerSuite. To start, there are a few simple best practices for creating teams and enabling users and owners:

• Determine the roles and permissions of each team in advance as well as the number of users that can create new teams

• Designate multiple owners for each team

• Start with a smaller number of team members and scale upwards

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PILOT

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Approved AppsEventually, your optimized use of Teams will include the integration of other apps (from the Teams App Store) into the experience. At a minimum, your IT team should enable the first party and featured apps in your Teams experience. Depending on your use case and other apps used in your organization, you may opt to include additional apps as a part of your controlled experiment.

Organizing TeamsBefore deploying Teams to your pilot, ensure you have a plan for what initial teams and channels you’d like to create, and what team member will be added to each team. Be sure to use the service administration tool to enable or disable any features your organization may want to use or limit. Settings that should be organization wide should be set by admins at the tenant level. This will ensure all users inherit uniform settings.

Guest AccessDepending on the scope and type of your project and the nature of your industry, enabling secure collaboration with partners or vendors may be an essential capability you want to test. You can limit who can add guests to your Teams implementation. Just remember that currently, Microsoft does not provide channel exclusivity, meaning that if you’d like to work on a project with a guest, but don’t want them to have access to other files in the Team, you’ll have to make a separate Team for this project.

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PIL

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Many companies have struggled with new apps and solutions leaking out to their end-user groups without a roadmap. This frequently leads to end-user (or even worse, executive) backlash. The roadmap discussed earlier will be handy in helping to address these concerns. It doesn’t hurt to also line up expert support for the journey prior to beginning your Teams pilot. Again, it’s also important to keep the end-user experience in mind. Avoid dumping the entire Microsoft Office 365 stack on your organization in the hopes that they will drink from the firehose – they’ll feel overwhelmed and start looking for alternatives.

Types of Pilot ScenariosThere are four types of rollouts defined by Microsoft when it comes to deploying Microsoft Teams. The first is using Teams only for collaboration with everything else remaining on Skype for Business. The second is keeping chat and calls on Skype for Business, but moving meetings and collab to Teams. Third is operating in Islands mode with all workloads running for both products, and finally there is the option of going all in on Teams (this may be the case for those not using Skype for Business already).

Skype for Business Teams Modes

Start End

• Chat• Calling• Meetings

• CollaborationSkype for Business with Teams collaboration only

AND

Skype for Business with Teams collaboration and meetings

• Meetings• Collaboration

• Chat• Calling AND

IslandsAll workloads on both products

• Chat• Calling• Meetings• Collaboration

• Chat• Calling• Meetings

AND

Skype for Business onlyorTeams onlySingle client experience

• Chat• Calling• Meetings• Collaboration

• Chat• Calling• Meetings

OR

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Odds are, if you’re getting ready to move to Teams, you’re organization is not starting from scratch. Most organizations will experience a hybrid environment of some kind, with Skype for Business being the most common starting point. However, there is no one-size fits all hybrid map. While Islands mode may be popular for many organizations, we find it is best only for organizations that expect to quickly move beyond coexistence to just Teams.

The reality is, most large enterprises aren’t ready for dramatic changes and will be most comfortable supporting meetings and calls over Skype for Business and Teams for persistent chat and general collaboration. This method also embraces organizations that may have had other workstream collaboration tools introduced without formal IT support (such as a department that chose to use Slack privately).

Select Champions Champions are an essential component of a good pilot, helping drive awareness, and education in your organization. Depending on the size of your organization you may have this as a formal part of the person’s role, but often employees take on this role themselves because of their core motivation to help others. Champions should:

• Be formally trained to increase their depth and breadth of knowledge

• Be encouraged and empowered to guide, teach, and train their peers

• Have consistent and positive reinforcement that affirms the impact of their efforts

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ROLLOUT

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Onboard Support PersonnelTo ensure that the early adopter and champions teams will have the appropriate support as they start using Teams, meet with your support staff and review the capabilities of Teams. Key members of the support organization should also join your early adopter program. Encourage the use of Teams in their own scenarios.

Identify Early AdoptersIn addition to champions, your pilot needs early adopters. Early adopters share certain traits no matter what size or industry your organization may be. Typically, early adopters are interested in technology, willing to be a part of change, collaborative by nature, willing to share their observations, and are risk takers.

You can use a simple form in Office 365 to allow early adopters to opt into your early adopter program for Teams. Depending on the size and complexity of your organization, you may choose to enable some or all of these individuals for your experimentation phase. In this program, they are agreeing to actively participate and provide regular feedback to the project team.

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ROLLOUTAt this point, an understanding of your technical environment and its readiness for Teams should be complete, user experience should be understood, and piloting has been completed. You’re now ready to begin a broad rollout. Be sure to get your champions ready to help provide best tips and tricks and help encourage user adoption.

Awareness and Training – Organizational Change ManagementAdoption of a new company-wide tool is challenging. After all, you may have employees who have spent years using your current tools and are now resistant to any change. To ensure success, you must implement a change management strategy. The goal of a change management strategy is to maximize end-user awareness and adoption. Awareness and training are the marketing and communications segment of your overall deployment strategy. A strong awareness campaign and training program will ensure that your employees are aware of the new capabilities of Microsoft Teams and its underlying Office 365 services and apps. Also, remember those groups of people who may be resistant to this change? This part of the deployment strategy is designed to bring users into the fold and guarantee high satisfaction. For both your initial pilots and your eventual company-wide rollout, your internal communications should be a priority. They should include:

• Internal awareness materials such as posters, digital signage, and events

• Self-help and training information in a single location (both instructor-led and online)

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Teams User AdoptionWhen it comes to user adoption, we have seen a number of different approaches. One common finding is that user adoption is something organizations regret not focusing more of their attention on. The Teams champions and early adopters from the pilot can help identify where users will need education early on, as well as

identify that the business’s use will be more valuable, regardless of cost. These initial power-users will also be able to share tips and help encourage user adoption. Get the end-users to be the champions of adoption, while placing IT to facilitate the process. Avoiding this top-down approach helps remove the perception that IT is a bottleneck and encourages user adoption.

If you’re making the switch to Microsoft Teams but need additional help encouraging user adoption from expert consultants to help formulate your Teams strategy and outline your enterprise plan for end-user training and adoption, consider Unify Square’s User Adoption Services for Microsoft Teams.

Hybrid UC with Skype for BusinessPart of the full rollout includes considering how Teams will coexist with your existing Skype for Business or other core UC platforms and functionality. Microsoft has accelerated the development of Teams, and while they claim to be at feature parity, you may discover a few gaps as relates to your specific usage of conferencing and voice. Because of this, for many enterprises, an immediate dive into Teams that abandons Skype for Business altogether may not make sense as part of the initial full rollout.

Skype for Business Server 2019 The newest Skype for Business update allows organizations to tackle their unified communications and workstream collaboration with a hybrid approach: Microsoft Teams in the cloud and Skype for Business (or another legacy UC platform) on-premises, with the ultimate goal being a complete Microsoft Teams adoption. Because of overlapping features, you must carefully select which features/functionality of your employee communications and collaboration will move to Teams, and what will stay on Skype for Business.

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OPERATING AT SCALEOnce you’ve reached the stage where Microsoft Teams has become a core part of your entire organization’s everyday use, there are a number of additional processes that you’ll want to consider deploying.

Governance ExpansionThe process of revisiting and scaling governance decisions made in the pilot and rollout phases is critical. You should revisit all of your security assumptions and decisions to ensure these policies are in alignment with the full set of users who will be using Teams.

User Feedback LoopThroughout your pilot, you’ve captured information about how people have used the product and their experience. It’s now time to use this information to adjust your awareness and training programs on an ongoing basis. The formal process of asking for, collecting and acting on end-user satisfaction surveys is paramount for a new app like Teams. In some cases, third party tools may actually have user satisfaction apps or features incorporated into their offerings.

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As part of the long-term operation of Microsoft Teams, even with this service being hosted in a Microsoft datacenter, many organizatiovns find that the cost of hiring, training, and retaining full-time Teams experts can overwhelm IT budgets and plans. An alternative is to consider a managed service for Teams such as the PowerSuite Cloud Managed Services for Teams from Unify Square.

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TE Service Health ReviewsPlan to hold regular service health reviews for Teams. In these reviews you will share insights on the following measures:

• Service usage: active usage data including information about services deprecated or consumption reduced as a result of moving to Teams

• Service health: call quality, service availability and user satisfaction ratings, review of any support incidents and helpdesk ticket levels, and security and governance topics

• Project roadmap: what is the schedule of remaining onboarding or further collaboration improvement projects? What additional features still remain to be enabled?

• Awareness campaign and training success update: includes reach, participation, key feedback themes, key wins, and success stories

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Conclusion Launching a new deployment of Microsoft Teams doesn’t have to be a daunting task. One of the key strengths of the WSC platform is its unprecedented amount of configurability and control. Unfortunately, the amount of choice you have also means that, depending on the size of your organization and the complexity of your IT infrastructure, it can be a challenge to ensure it’s configured to meet your needs. Following the best practices in this eBook will ensure that you’re well on your way to enjoying all the features and strong communications capability that Microsoft Teams delivers.

Unify Square is a global leader in providing Workstream Collaboration and Unified Communications software and services helping businesses improve Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business performance. Connect with a consultant to learn more about how Unify Square can help optimize your Microsoft Teams deployment.

Cover photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash