Tim Coalson is a Senior Consultant in the Delivery Practice at ThreeWill. Tim has been developing solutions on the SharePoint platform for over 15 years and has been a developer/consultant for over 30 years. Tim’s current focus is on helping organizations thrive in their communication, collaboration and automation by delivering our Intelligent Intranet, Teams Enablement and Power Platform service offerings.
The good news is that Microsoft Teams makes it easy for everyone to create a Microsoft Team. The bad news is that Microsoft Teams makes it easy for everyone to create a Microsoft Team. Microsoft Teams is a great tool and certainly one we want to encourage. However, we also know that I.T. needs to be able to support and manage Teams, and employees need to get some guardrails in place early on to keep things from becoming unmanageable. In this blog post, we will show you how to easily manage Microsoft Teams Provisioning using a solution we’ve adopted for our clients.
At ThreeWill, we truly believe in our Better Together core value, and we understand the importance of high-quality collaboration and the impact that has on an organization and its employees. Moreover, to achieve our goal of enhancing collaborative capabilities and employee success, we view Microsoft Teams as an invaluable asset.
ThreeWill leverages two power apps as part of our Teams enablement service offering to help govern the creation of new Teams and to bring existing Teams into compliance. These tools play an essential role in how we assist our clients in avoiding what many refer to as Teams Sprawl. This term describes the numerous teams many employees found themselves in, helping them invest more time in high-value, collaborative environments.
In my next blog post, we’ll dive into the second app and how it helps organizations partner with their employees to determine a clean-up strategy. Before proceeding, it’s essential to prevent future “messes” before they occur. This is where the Request-a-team app comes in, ensuring proactive management.
Request-a-team
The Request-a-team app is an application where your employees can request new Teams. And, using the same app, IT administrators can review the requests and either approve or reject them.
Request-a-team is a Power Platform solution comprising a PowerApp based user interface and associated power automate flows. It’s customizable to suit your organization’s needs, including enforcing Standard Naming Conventions established in the Teams Enablement service.
As part of ThreeWill’s Teams Enablement service, we identify team types and naming conventions. As a result, this facilitates easy identification as your Teams list grows. We also define standard channel structures and associated apps for each team type, both of which are combined to create appropriate templates. The Request-a-team app utilizes these templates to ensure Teams meet your naming conventions and maintain channel structure consistency.
Here’s what this will look like inside of your Teams application:
The Request-a-team app employs a simple wizard-type navigation. It gathers necessary information to create a new Team. This includes the selected template, privacy settings, team owners, and team name. Below is a sample of the first screen. Everything is customizable to meet your organization’s needs.
After a request is submitted, Administrators review it in the Approve Requests tab. They then decide whether to approve or reject it. Only administrators see the Approve Requests tab.
The My Requests tab provides the user a place to see the status of all their Teams requests. If requesting a second team, an old request can be copied to speed up an already quick request process.
Once approved, a new team will be created automatically using the definitions based on the selected template. As a result, the process allows admins and requestors the ability to easily manage Microsoft Teams provisioning requests.
A Giant Leap for Managing Teams Requests
If your organization lacks a strategy for managing new Teams in Microsoft Teams, Request-a-team is a great first step. A step that gives your I.T. a means to easily manage Microsoft Teams provisioning requests.
For your employees, they gain the ability to request teams in a way that is user-friendly and informative. They’ll understand your org’s team usage, submit requests, manage them, and access teams without governance constraints. It’s just all a part of provisioning.
This isn’t the end of the road, though. As your organizations usage of Teams matures, you’ll grow to need a more robust provisioning solution. A solution that includes standard folders, files, Planner plans, and more. This is something your ThreeWill Community Manager could help you with as a part of our managed services.
