Microsoft teams application helps us to work more easily, and it enables the users to work more productive and elaborate efficiently while staying up-to-date with the teams. During the pandemic time, it is not easy to get connected to each other while working remotely; therefore, teams is an outstanding solution the users must have. If we talk about the latest technologies and tools, it is equally important for us to know the digital collaboration tools thoroughly. It is quite challenging for the users to get friendly with the tools, especially the applications and software. Therefore the users should make sure that they have configured Microsoft teams in a way that supports their business needs along with the end to end encryption, security, etc.
Every challenge has a solution; therefore, in this article, we are going to describe the frequent challenges of Microsoft teams and the possible solutions.
Table of Contents
1. Teams sprawl
The uses of Microsoft can create teams by default. Therefore if there is no supervisor in for governance of Microsoft teams creation, you can create thousands of teams. In case you are not using these teams for any collaboration purpose, it occupies your storage space, and it automatically turns into a team sprawl. We can say it as ” test teams”, where are you can see so many teams on a similar topic and teams with a few users or teams with a general channel only.
How to solve it?
You can adopt a few strategies to reduce the teams sprawl. Below are some solutions to do the same:
Always communicate on the use of Teams
It generally happens that the team is adopting the Microsoft teams in a hurry. In this case, the adoption of the team in charge stops communicating properly while you are using teams. As a reason, teams do not share regular practices, or it does not provide the training; hence it leaves the users to figure it out by yourself mod.
To overcome this sprawl, it is equally important for the users to communicate to the entire members and channels. Also, to the channel conversation, chat messages and some other common use cases. This will help users to understand how we can use Microsoft teams and reduce the teams sprawl.
Try an Adoption Strategy
If you are deploying Microsoft teams and you are looking for the solutions to establish the correct governance beforehand, it is suggested you try to prepare an adoption strategy. It can help you formulate division and provide support of the executive, establish the governance and prepare the use cases, determine the KPIs, organize the communication, the training plans, and the recruiting champions.
SalesTim templates
This is an important key for you to minimize the team. You can set up the governance policies that should control teams creation policies while it answers the needs of the end-users. The sales team can do this with the collaboration templates. There are various governance capabilities, which can ensure that your teams are defined in advance and also, so it’s well-structured. Here is how it helps:
- The capability of naming convention allows to organize future teams better and makes it easy navigation.
- The approval of workflow enables the users to select a person or any group of people who can approve or deny the requests of teams creation.
- The audience targeting ensures that only a certain group of users in the organization should be able to see and it can access the templates.
- The permanent membership and ownership enables you to monitor the teams and review the activities of private channels.
2. Guest access
the feature guest access is one of the great features in digital collaboration tool which is Microsoft teams. It has the ability to invite guest users as well to the teams. In addition, you can work with the guest users together on the documents, and you can organize the meetings, share or exchange the information and make some important decisions altogether.
On the other hand, if you grant them access to your company and internal documentation to some users, it might be tricky. Therefore, it is challenging for you to ensure that you can collaborate with the prospects, the clients, and partners using Microsoft teams without even sharing too much information and taking risks.
What is the solution?
The solution of guest access can be done in the admin center. Here is how you can achieve this:
Through admin center
To avoid the potential exposure of sensitive information, you can easily configure the guest access from the setting. It can be done in the Microsoft teams admin center. It is not recommended to disable the capability entirely in case your operations and businesses need collaboration with some external users. However, you can still allow them Limited roles or privileges, which should be enough for the work that matters your mutual interest.
Labels of sensitivity
At the time of teams creation, you can also set up the sensitivity level for the team with whom you are collaborating. In this way, you will have an idea of which team has the highly sensitive information, and you can set their sensitivity level accordingly like” confidential”. After this setting, it is a clear indication for the members that they cannot invite other guest users to the teams. The team will be only available for the people who are inside the organization.
3. Integrate Microsoft teams with cloud storage services
Each time when you create a team and online site of SharePoint, it is also created which having some other services as well. Therefore, whenever the team members of your teams try to share the documents in a channel or upload them into the files tab, these extra files automatically appear in the library of your document on a SharePoint site.
For your workplace employees, you can use other cloud services, for example, Dropbox, Google Drive, ShareFile, etc. There is a method to integrate these cloud services with Microsoft teams. In this way, all the documentation will be stored in the central location and also so this will be organized structurally in the cloud.
What is the solution to activating cloud storage?
Activate the cloud storage
- In the admin center of Microsoft teams, under the ORG-Wide settings, go to the files option, then choose which file-sharing method and the cloud file storage option should be available for the users of your teams.
- Now go to the teams channel, and click on the files tab, then add cloud storage.
- Now select which cloud storage you are looking to use with Microsoft teams; it will be e redirected to the login page of the application you select.
- In addition, you can add a directory to the specific team or the channel in Microsoft teams. You will see the cloud services in the folder under the files tab.
4. File management
It will be quite challenging to manage the files appropriately along with the information you have uploaded and shared in the private chats and Microsoft teams channels. The users upload the document in a chat directly; the file will appear under the files tab in the general channel instead of the proper folder. In the meantime, in case you upload any file in the channel conversation, it will go to the files in that channel. You can look at this file manually and move the files to the right location, but it is a useless step. Apart from this, if you do this, it will be too late for you. You can end up with thousands of files, which are dispersed in the document library.
What is the solution?
Always upload the files to the relevant folder
First, you should create all the folders, which require in the files tab of all the respective channels and try to upload the files directly. After this, you can copy the link of the file, which you would like to share on teams. You can simply paste the link into any private channel or chat. This solution will keep the document library clean and organized; so that you can avoid the duplicate file problem or loss of any files.
Try to use the metadata
In the folder, it may happen that some same files can be e copied into multiple folders. Therefore, if you are using metadata, you can create the categories of your files according to the various criteria, and you can navigate the documentation easily. Here is how you can do this:
- Add a website tab to the correct channel and paste the link to the SharePoint library2
- You will get fast access to all your documents, which you can categorize in different ways according to the respective metadata.
Try to add another document library along with the reusable files
Generally, you can see that only the members of teams can have access to the documentation, which are stored in the respective team. It indicates that if the users or your employees would like to share the information in different teams, it may be challenging.
It is suggested that you should create one more document library that would be used as a knowledge base for all teams, which requires similar information. Let’s take an example of project management- you can create the document library and keep all the documents of the former project and deliverables in the new library. You can also give access to the library to all project management teams by pinning this document as a tab in each of the teams. This option will provide document search and sharing. Also, it will allow the users to keep the entire documents on the project management and in a similar location.
5. Microsoft 365 groups management
Whenever you create a team, you might have observed that a Microsoft 365 group has been created to manage the team and membership. The users of this group have access to all the shared resources like calendar, Outlook inbox, Planner, and SharePoint library, etc.
The email name of the Microsoft 365 group used to repeat the title. Therefore, it can be challenging for the users to differentiate the Microsoft 365 group emails if there is no policy of consistent naming.
What is the solution?
Use Azure AD P1
To avoid the emails differentiation of the Microsoft 365 group, you can set up the naming policy is using Azure AD P1. This consists of the prefix- suffix and also the custom block words features such as CEO, HR, COO, etc.
Try the naming policies along with SalesTim
With the collaboration templates of SalesTim, you can easily set up the naming policies for the teams and Office 365 group emails at the template level. To do this, you would require different names in the conversation for the different scenarios. Let us take an example- for the project management teams, you can choose project_ name_ City as the name in conversation. And department_ project name_ user ID as the email convention. These settings enable you to adopt the naming policies according to the needs of your organization, which helps you to find the group easily.
6. Teams lifecycle management
Just like the projects, your teams have the beginning, the middle and the end. All teams are created for some purpose that is aligned with a goal or project. When you complete the goal, it is important for you to acknowledge the same and delete the teams which are no longer in use. It will help the user to prevent access to the outdated or any other sensitive credentials of your organization. Teams are deleted with the ‘ the soft delete’, which means it can reverse for up to 21 days.
If you work in a big organization with various teams which have been created weekly/daily, it is quite challenging for you to keep track of all the teams.
What is the solution?
Azure AD P1
Azure AD P1 can be used to set the expiration policies for the Microsoft 365 groups. Therefore, in case any group is set to expire, the following will happen:
- The group will be renewed automatically if there is an activity by users.
- The coming group expiration notification will be sent to the group owner to renew the group whenever required.
- If you have not renewed any group, it will be deleted.
- You can restore and deleted the group within 30 days.
- If you want to set the group expiration, open the Azure AD admin center, then select group, then select expiration.
7. Documents external sharing
There may be chances where you would need to share the documents with some users outside the organization. You can have control of this process by enabling external sharing in the Microsoft teams, and you can monitor all the sharing activities.
What is the solution?
SharePoint admin center?
If you want to enable the advanced external sharing and settings, follow The below steps:
- Go to the SharePoint admin center.
- Under policies, choose sharing.
- Configure the external sharing and select the level of permission.
