Microsoft Teams Lifecycle Management Made Simple

The number of active monthly Microsoft Teams users is growing exponentially, currently totaling more than 250 million. This is a clear indication that organizations and users have now adapted remote, digital, and hybrid workspaces for the long term. However, to stay efficient, businesses must invest in ways to manage this growth to not lose their productivity.

Why did Orchestry Build Microsoft Teams Lifecycle Management features?

Microsoft has its ways to store information. However, Microsoft Teams' lifecycle management is not well organized.

Additionally, it lacks detail. To save data, tools often transfer content from Microsoft Teams to Azure storage. Although it may appear beneficial, this idea hinders users from searching or utilizing specific compliance features. As a result, it becomes more frustrating than enjoyable to use.

Admins mistakenly believe they can easily delete Microsoft Teams teams and SharePoint sites from an administrative standpoint. It is not that simple! Even though they can process this content, they cannot make decisions around the content and need approval from content owners. This entire cycle is extremely time-consuming and frustrating for both admins and users.

Image: Edit Archival Policy for Workspaces in Orchestry.

Systematic Method of Archiving Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Sites

After finding problems with managing the content lifecycle in Microsoft 365, the Orchestry team developed Microsoft Teams Lifecycle Management features.

These features offer much to admins and end-users. They allow the users to create archival and deletion policies for different types of sites and teams. Each policy can have a set of rules applied to it. You can apply these rules as default rules to assets created outside of Orchestry as well.

A systematic workflow triggers the entire process of archiving SharePoint sites and Teams when there is inactivity. It is easy to set an inactivity threshold for Workspaces, which the policy can kick in.

In addition, you can assign policy approvals to owners, members, or individuals. Orchestry understands that long-term governance requires empowering everyone, as the IT department alone cannot handle everything. To achieve long-term Microsoft Teams governance, it is important to empower everyone. The IT department cannot handle all the responsibilities on its own.

Image: Setting Permission Configurations for Workspace Security

Multiple SharePoint and Microsoft Teams Archiving Use Cases

SharePoint and Microsoft Teams Archiving Policies in Orchestry offer many possibilities beyond deleting workspaces and removing content from your environment.

• Remediate Existing Workspaces: Take control of your Microsoft Teams environment and tackle sprawl by attaching an archival policy to unwanted Workspaces. The applied policy goes ahead and asks users if the workspace is still in use and archives it if not active.
• Activate archival policy for Workspace Templates to trigger based on configured inactivity threshold and renew/extend workspaces. But Orchestry checks with users if they would like to keep their Workspace, giving users the freedom to extend its lifecycle.
• To archive existing workspaces, you just need to add the archival policy to multiple workspaces and manually trigger the archiving process.

Content Options

When setting up an archival policy, users have the flexibility to choose what happens to the content in the Workspaces. You can handle the content in three ways.

• Keep MS Teams team, clean it up. This allows you to make changes to its name, or remove members and update owners without moving the content.
• Keep content, and stop the growth of MS Teams and SharePoint. This copies over the entire content of the Workspace and moves to another location before deleting the original workspace.
• Delete: As the name suggests, this simply deletes the Workspace.

Quick note: There is a possibility to rehydrate archived Workspaces through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. 

Archive Actions

Archive actions set Orchestry apart from all the tools out there and even Microsoft 365 itself. Orchestry gives the flexibility to meet your requirements in several different ways at the time of archival.

There are several things you can do. For example, you can link a SharePoint Site to a Hub.

You can also change the Workspace name. Additionally, you have the option to delete old document versions. Lastly, you can keep the environment secure by removing guest access.

Image: Archival Policy Options in Orchestry

Archival Policy Execution

Orchestry has flexibility down to the last detail. Orchestry gives you the option to manually archive Workspaces, use automatic triggers, or set policy approvers. You control when and how archival policies are executed.

Including owners and members in archival policies empowers and holds them accountable for following governance policies. It enables them to make decisions on their content while maintaining the health of the platform.

At the same time, automatically assigning approvers allows for unlimited automation and scalability possibilities.

Image: Workspace Users Overview with Lifecycle Management features.