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October 7, 2021

Microsoft 365 Reporting vs Orchestry Actionable Insights & Reports

Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 are crucial components of the remote work environment for many organizations. To ensure user productivity and efficiency of the platforms in a virtual world, there is a need for adequate monitoring and reporting capabilities. Microsoft 365 does have several reporting features in place. However, are they enough to truly understand your collaboration environment and give actionable insights to make truly informed decisions?

Why is Microsoft 365 Reporting Valuable?

Now that hybrid work is here to stay, understanding how your collaborative Workspaces are being leveraged and used has become imperatively more important. Gaining visibility into your platforms helps organizations ensure that it is being used to its full potential as well as identifying areas which could use improvement.

Is Microsoft 365 Reporting Too Much or Not Enough?

Microsoft 365 offers several reporting features out of the box. In the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, you can easily see how people are using the Microsoft 365 services.

lifecycle management - microsoft 365 admin center usage reports
Image: Usage Report within Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

On top of that, you can get Microsoft 365 usage analytics within PowerBI. With PowerBI you can get reports for each Microsoft 365 product with various metrics and a wide range of statistics. Other common approaches for reporting include PowerShell scripts and Power Automate to create custom reports.

To get more specific insights on each application, you can access its Admin Center reports. For example, with Microsoft Teams, the Microsoft Teams Admin Center provides you information about your teams and how users are collaborating in Microsoft Teams. However, to access these reports, you must be a Global Admin in Microsoft 365.

MS Teams - reporting
Image: Microsoft Teams Analytics and Reports Feature.

There are quite a few options in Microsoft 365 to create a myriad of complex reports with cross-product views, cross-team analytics, regional and departmental performance, and the list goes on.

By going over to different Admin Centers and utilizing additional tools, organizations can access a bounty of data to understand their digital workplace. While it is evident Microsoft 365 offers plenty of options when it comes to reporting, these choices and plentiful data can also be daunting and confusing.

Making Insights Actionable with Simplified Reporting

Orchestry, true to its mission, dove in to deliver WORK MADE SIMPLE reporting by simplifying reports for administrators, site/team owners, and users to deliver the insightful data needed to take action in remediating their collaborative Workspaces in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams to sustain healthy Workspaces for the long-term. There is so much more to reporting than providing data, what really matters is how the data is presented to provoke action. In the case of Microsoft 365, PowerShell scripts can be used to generate massive reports on platforms, but they are not presented in a manner that allows users to extract information.

Moreover, the variety of reports that can be created out of the box also leads to confusion of equal measure. What administrators need is a simplified reporting interface that paints a clear picture of what needs to be done and how their collaborative Workspaces are performing.

orchestry insights dashboard for microsoft teams
Image: Complete Workspace Dashboard for Microsoft Teams within Orchestry

Orchestry’s Actionable Insights and Reports capability is built with this in mind. Here are some key areas that Orchestry monitors across applications and assets:

  • Microsoft Teams teams – members, owners, activities, conversations, replies, and reactions.
  • Microsoft 365 Groups – outlook conversations and outlook reoccurring meetings as part of the group mailbox.
  • SharePoint sites – total storage size, file reads, file writes, page views, and page writes.

There is so much more to Orchestry’s Actionable Insights, take a look:

Simple and Beautiful

Orchestry’s reports are upfront and easy to understand at a glance. People do not need to comb through heavy workloads or apply multiple data filters to comprehend what is going on in the platform. An easy to interact interface goes a long way in driving engagement in the platform. What sets Orchestry apart from Microsoft 365 reporting is that all the reports can be accessed from a single platform!

quick access inactivity report in Orchestry
Image: Create Reports Based on Workspace Inactivity with Orchestry

Maps the Journey of Workspaces

Unlike other reporting tools that provide real-time information only, reports within Orchestry enable you to see how a workspace has evolved over time. You have the power to see how a Microsoft Teams team, SharePoint site, or Microsoft 365 Group grew or at which point members stopped using it. To be able to see the journey of these Workspaces delivers valuable insights on usage trends that you will not have access to in Microsoft 365 reporting alone.

workspace lifecycle management overview with actionable insights
Image: Understand Every Orchestry Workspace's Lifecycle with Insights and Metrics

Broad Overview to Granular Details

Orchestry offers the best of both worlds, from basic aggregated data that gives insights across Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Sites and Microsoft 365 Groups to specific details about every single Workspace. You will see all changes that have been made to these Workspaces, in terms of owners, members, pages, content and more!

Extensive Reporting

The possibilities are endless when it comes to generating new reports. Orchestry creates reporting options that are most useful in a collaborative Workspace. As of now, there are six reporting categories that support nineteen different ways of sorting and understanding your Workspaces.

workspace actionable insight options in Orchestry
Image: Actionable Insight and Reports with Orchestry

Orchestry goes far beyond the functionalities available within Microsoft 365 reporting to empower users with simplified, actionable reporting capabilities. It offers better visibility into your environments and pulls together information that allows you to make informed decisions to simply improve the productivity of your collaboration environment.

Get Started with Actionable Insights with Orchestry

Start simplifying your reporting experience with Orchestry to get data that you can act upon in an instant. You have the chance to make your Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 environment efficient from start to finish with Orchestry. Create Workspaces, manage Workspace usage and see Workspaces through to the end of their lifecycle with archival, renewal, and extensive governance policies.

If you haven’t yet, take a look at Orchestry’s ‘Actionable Insights and Comprehensive Lifecycle Management’ release for a deep dive into the new capabilities. Request FREE access today and unlock a beautiful timeline, to show the evolution of each Workspace, along with aggregated metrics to gain a quick overview at the organization level!

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