Microsoft Teams is garnering a lot of attention right now for its video conference and communication capabilities. However, this chat-based workspace within Office 365 offers much more than virtual meetings. 

To leverage Microsoft Teams services for your organization, it’s important to learn the ins and outs of the platform first, so you can customize it to your needs.

Consider the following questions during your initial Microsoft Teams setup. 

1. What is the purpose of the platform? What will you be communicating via Microsoft Teams? It’s important to decide what you want to accomplish with Microsoft Teams in your business operations. Know your overarching intent before you start using the platform. 
   
   
2. Are you already using Slack or IM? If so, you need to learn how these chat apps work with Microsoft Teams to maximize effective communication. 
   
   
3. Will you be using Microsoft Teams to communicate with people outside of your internal teams? If so, you’ll need to set up your structure differently, implement specific permissions and notify your internal staff so they are aware of those restrictions. 
   
   
4. Who will have the authority and the ability to add a team to the Teams application? You will want to avoid Teams data sprawl wherein many people are continuously adding teams. It’s important to understand the difference between teams, channels and conversations, so you will need to set guidelines to define your structure. 
   
   
5. Are you going to use Microsoft Teams as the primary file storage location for relevant documents? Duplicate documents can cause a real headache. When you create a channel, will you link to documents elsewhere or will you use Teams as the go-to repository for your documents? 
   
   
6. Are you going to integrate other applications with Microsoft Teams, such as Planner or to-do apps? It’s important to have a structure in mind from the beginning so these can be set up and implemented correctly. 
   
   
7. Will you be using Microsoft Teams and Yammer simultaneously? If you plan to use both platforms, make sure you’ll generate enough content to warrant having both. Also be sure that you have policies in place to use each platform efficiently.
   
   
8. Based on the type of internal communication running through email and through Microsoft Teams, how urgent is each type of communication? What are your expectations regarding response time? If you use Teams for chatting, your staff needs to understand that this is an operational team or channel that requires a quick response, such as within the hour. However, other channels may be project related and need responses within a business day. Email may then become your main stream of communication for perpetual archival and official purposes. 
   
   
9. What are your naming conventions for teams and channels? Defining these can help organize your information and make it easy to find moving forward. 
   
   
10. What permissions are needed within Microsoft Teams? Decide who will have access to public channels versus private channels. 
    
    

As you can see, customizing Microsoft Teams’ managed services takes a lot of forethought and planning to ensure that the platform addresses your business needs. 

While Microsoft provides a lot of documentation and training for Microsoft Teams, CoreTech can help further. It’s not always easy to restructure the platform once it’s set up, so we recommend consulting with an expert and taking the time to decide what kind of Microsoft Teams setup will best benefit your organization. 

To get started with our Microsoft Teams consulting services, contact us today for a free consultation.