How to simplify Microsoft Teams Governance

The popularity of Microsoft Teams surged astronomically during the pandemic. As TechRadar’s number one collaboration tool, businesses across the world turned to Teams to uphold the new way of working. Since then, Teams has become part of many offices’ DNA by helping them navigate new hybrid working scenarios. However, this success also means IT departments face the threat of expanding workloads.

Knowing how to simplify Microsoft Teams governance is vital for ensuring your IT department has time to do its job, rather than solely becoming Teams supervisors. So, let’s start by identifying where IT departments are spending their time when it comes to managing Teams.

(Compliance Manager discussion starts at 10:37 minutes into the video)

Three Teams governance issues faced by IT departments

Teams is an incredibly versatile and useful tool for hybrid and remote workplaces. However, the lack of a Teams governance strategy can be a huge headache for your IT team.

Here are some of the most common issues:

Teams sprawl

The more Teams is used, the more data it accumulates. Even with manual Teams admin center governance and regular housekeeping, some of your Teams data is going to slip through the cracks. If you’ve been using Teams for a few years now—like many companies—there may be unused teams (made by someone who no longer works for you), or teams with external access to an account that you no longer work with.

Clearing up these problems can be time-consuming and—depending on the size of your IT department—and it may not be feasible to do this manually. Teams sprawl contributes to overall cloud-sprawl, which drives up your cloud costs and clutters your workspaces. This is an issue that requires a serious solution.

The increased risk of inactive teams

Inactive teams can cause a wide array of technical problems for your company, and also leave the door wide open for possible attackers, which may even result in the total shutdown of your business.

Are there external collaborators in your teams who might be a threat to the company? Perhaps a business rival or a disgruntled ex-employee? This may sound dramatic, but if you haven’t revoked their access, there’s a real risk of allowing non-secure users access to your network.

The Teams Admin Center is quite high-level when it comes to team management, which can make it difficult for admins to keep tabs on which teams are active and which teams contain active members, without doing some serious digging around.

Giving approval to join

When IT workers manage Teams governance, they most likely oversee the handling of permissions too. For example, if a collaborator from outside the company needs to join an internal team, they have to submit a request and wait for the IT department to run the necessary checks to verify the user.

In addition to being very time-consuming, it also increases the manual workload on your IT department due to generating a slow and inefficient process for end users to access Teams.

Take Team Captain for a test drive for easy Microsoft Teams governance. Get started!

How to manage Teams governance issues

There are a number of ways to tackle manual governance problems, including automation software, a third-party IT governance team, or a dedicated governance service.

Automate key processes

Automating your key processes—with software like Power Automate—gives you the ability to streamline some of the time-consuming tasks that keep your IT technicians from doing more valuable work:

The team joining approval process– put in place a series of triggers and actions that automatically assess whether a requester should be granted access—removing the process of manual verification.
Archiving old teams– set up automations to archive teams that haven’t been used in a set period—say six, twelve, eighteen months, etc.—to save space, reduce clutter and prevent external users (who haven’t had their permissions retracted) from accessing anything they shouldn’t.

This is the most cost-effective way to manage your Microsoft Teams governance. However, it can leave you with poor visibility if the software does not include analytics and admin dashboards. And putting together Power BI and Power Automate solutions requires someone with at least a little technical knowledge.

Easy governance with Team Captain

At the other end of the scale, you can outsource Teams governance to a trusted Microsoft partner who can work with you to develop a plan of action—taking into account your goals and the way your company currently works.

Employing a third-party Microsoft governance expert might be the most comprehensive way to quell any issues you have with Teams; however, it can also be extremely expensive, and you’ll have less control over how Teams is managed. You could also end up creating bottlenecks between your company and the third party managing your Teams governance. We think it’s best to remain part of the process from the start.

Use a dedicated Teams governance solution

Investing in a dedicated software solution that helps you to manage Teams governance represents the best of both worlds. It provides value for money, while bringing Teams governance under control for good. Team Captain, for example, is a Teams governance platform that features an in-depth visibility dashboard to give you insights at a glance, and the ability to dive deeper to root out issues.

Team Captain includes features such as activity monitoring on teams to check for any teams that are not currently in use; single click archiving for disused teams; and a whole host of other useful functionalities to help track Teams usage. Team Captain also contains prebuilt workflow templates that can be used to build out templates and create an entirely automated process for approval—relieving your IT department of the time-consuming duty of giving and retracting approval.