Tips for Setting Up Microsoft Teams Templates

We're now well into 2024 and many of us have been busy planning how we're going to knock out the coming months. 

If you're a Microsoft 365 admin with dreams and goals of making better team workspaces for your organization's departments, here are a few tips (with examples) to help you plan and design workspaces using Orchestry.

Tip #1: Setup Channels that Every Department Needs in Live Templates

Orchestry's live templates allow you to use existing teams and SharePoint sites as templates for new workspaces. Live templates can include team channels, group membership, site pages, libraries, lists, content and much more.

You can take advantage of this by configuring team channels with the apps and resources staff need. Here are a few channel examples that you can try yourself.

Channel Example A: The 'Onboarding and Training' Channel

Onboarding and training has been near and dear to my heart since the early days of my career.  Every organization and industry approaches training differently based on needs and regulations, but no matter who you ask - training staff is expensive!

To help streamline staff training and onboarding - you can customize this (standard) channel to include access to  organizational resources departments need, such as:

The Files Tab (SharePoint)

The home for department-owned training resources.  While you don't need to include these in your live template, you CAN include URLs that link to core training resources (i.e.: external applications, sites or other SharePoint sites).

A 'Training Resources' Channel Tab (SharePoint)

If you have a SharePoint communication site that hosts all organizational resources (i.e.: policies, procedures, etc.) - then add it as a channel tab using the SharePoint app.  You can use this app to link users to a well-designed site page, or directly to a document library from another site.

A 'Support Community' Channel Tab (Viva Engage)

If your organization is ahead of the curve and using Viva Engage, you can add your communities to Team channels using the Viva Engage app.  Adding a community where staff can openly ask questions to leadership and SMEs can help everyone.

Channel Example B: 'Department Meetings' Channel

For teams with a lot of internal recurring meetings, centralizing them into a single channel has a few advantages.  For example, the channel folder will automatically store recorded meetings in addition to any files shared within a meeting itself.  I'm also expecting collaborative meeting notes for channel meetings to be stored in SharePoint when it's released (ETA early 2024).

It may or may not be enough to include this channel in your live template without any customizations.  Alone, having all of their meeting resources in a single place can make it easy for staff to find what they're looking for. However, you can spice things up by adding a channel tab that contains information on good meeting practices for your organization - such as a PDF, training video, an article on SharePoint, etc.

This should also count towards your AI-readiness/modernized-IT-governance journey, as all of the content is stored in a space only department members can access it, as opposed to someone's OneDrive.

Tip #2: Setup Approvals for Guests and the Workspace Template

Part of any good IT governance and/or AI-readiness plan is to reign in the sprawl of guests, teams and sites.

In Orchestry, we can setup approvals for:

• New workspace requests, and
• New guest requests

Workspace Request Approvals

By disabling 'Self-Creation' on SharePoint communication sites and M365 groups (including teams, SharePoint team sites and Viva Engage communities), Orchestry becomes the go-to place to create new workspaces for the next department or project team. 

This allows us to validate whether the workspace is needed BEFORE it gets created.  

A cool part of the workspace approval workflow is that IT admins don't need to own the responsibility of approving EVERYTHING.  We can setup approvals that are sent directly to individuals across the org or groups (M365 groups and security groups).

New Guest Requests

Updating your templates to include a Guest Request policy will ensure every guest is vetted before they're added to the team. The request process helps us ensure that we know who they are, why they're being invited and more.

All of the guest information is synced to their Entra ID profile, so we don't need to manage them in multiple places.

Guest Review Policies

A big part of managing guests is clearing them out of workspaces when they no longer need access.  Review policies in Orchestry automate the review process by:

1. Sending out a notification to workspace owners OR specific users after a set period of time (i.e., 3 months)
2. Automatically sending out reminders to reviewers who haven't replied. 
3. Setting a default action if/when reviewers don't respond after X day, weeks or months. I.e., remove guests after 60 days if the reviewer hasn't replied.

Tip #3: See it for Yourself

Whether or not you're a customer of Orchestry, I hope you found these brief tips helpful! 

See how you can clean up your team workspaces by getting in contact with us or trying us out for 28 days! 

Thanks for reading!