Tips and Tricks for smooth adoption of Microsoft Teams

Introduction

An upsurge in the growth of collaboration applications has increased the need for effective user adoption. Without proper adoption strategies, an organization can’t make significant cost savings and create efficiencies. Sadly, many organizations do not take it into account before launching a new product such as Microsoft Teams and face transformation failure.

Barriers to user adoption

Microsoft Teams is designed to unlock human potential for remote work providing a rich toolset to support various job roles and tasks. However, it will not make an impact or deliver an expected value if users refuse or feel pressurized to use it.

We know that a new piece of technology implemented in an organization will have its share of difficulties because of user resistance. Also, simply bringing Microsoft Teams and explaining that it will improve productivity doesn’t count unless it connects to people’s experiences. Hence, barriers remain.

So, how will you make your teams feel empowered and excited about the change? How will you ensure that your teams are fully engaged in their work after the deployment of MS Teams?

As we try finding an answer to these, let us also discuss adoption challenges from an end-users perspective.

• Too many integrations

It gets overwhelming for end-users to find numerous applications, both Microsoft 365 (previously, Office 365) and third-party, integrated into Microsoft Teams. For instance, using different communication tools such as Teams chat, Outlook, Yammer, etc. nearly for the same purpose may confuse them.

To sort this out, you should define an approach to guide users to use which tool when for efficient communication.

• Multi-functional environment

Besides being a platform to support chat, instant messaging, and audio-video calling services, Microsoft Teams is a complex world of teams, channels, document storage, real-time collaboration, and more.

Hence, rolling out MS Teams in stages feature by feature is an effective strategy for deployment success as it helps users to get familiar with the basic functionalities one at a time.

• No governance

While a viral growth of teams indicates a boost in MS Teams adoption, it also leads to internal chaos which gradually diminishes adoption. Lack of active management and monitoring of teams and channels causes various issues such as team sprawl, information overload, duplicate files, data invisibility, data loss, data leakage, data insecurity, and so on.

Hence, adopting a governance strategy is an excellent way to save MS Teams from becoming the wild west. For instance, activating a request process for the creation of teams will give users the freedom to create teams while being under organizational control. Governance in MS Teams helps to maintain order, a secure environment, and leverage full-fledged potential for deriving superior value.

• Threats to cloud security

Due to inadequate cloud security posture management strategies, cloud infrastructure is more prone to data breaches. Cloud-based deployments are directly accessible from the public internet. Hence, it is easy for hackers to gain unauthorized control over cloud resources as they are outside the corporate network perimeter.

Furthermore, misconfigurations in cloud security settings, insecure APIs, limited ability to monitor cloud-based resources, difficulty in controlling external access to shared resources, accidental exposure of credentials, etc., make cloud data susceptible to sophisticated attacks.

Hence, it is imperative to have a cloud-compliant solution with good governance in place to support secured collaboration by providing tools or controls for effective tracking and monitoring of workloads and teamwork to prevent cyber infringement.

Adoption tricks using TeamsHub by Cyclotron

To overcome adoption challenges as mentioned above, use TeamsHub by Cyclotron to foster fearless collaboration and engaged teams –

1. No context switching, no frustration – TeamsHub by Cyclotron offers a unified collaboration platform with a single-entry point for different workloads, apps, or tools that users need to perform their daily tasks.

2. No more burden on IT teams – With simplified governance, TeamsHub by Cyclotron ensures maximum user engagement and focus to high-priority tasks.

3. Automating the self-service process of teams creation – TeamsHub by Cyclotron provides a dynamic user request form to allow the creation of meaningful teams and thus, helps in maintaining a hygienic Teams ecosystem.

4. Rich insights for Teams monitoring – TeamsHub by Cyclotron lets you grab actionable reports into Teams adoption and evaluate usage patterns in your organization to know the level of employee engagement with the new tool.

5. Enhanced security to prevent data leaks – TeamsHub by Cyclotron provides the robust protection of sensitive data by using the best Microsoft 365 security features and add-ons such as Azure Information Protection, Data Loss Prevention, and Information Rights Management which boosts Office 365 adoption.

6. Reliable external collaboration –  TeamsHub by Cyclotron enables you to manage externally shared files and revoke access on detection of suspicious activities. By configuring access controls, you can restrain external users to gain full control over organizational resources.

7. Help users train themselves – TeamsHub by Cyclotron offers an adoption module, a learning portal for your employees to educate themselves and quickly find what they need without leaving the platform. It includes content like instructional videos, tips and tricks, how-to guides, and more to clarify commonly asked questions on Teams and various other workloads such as SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, and more.

8. Enriching user experience with an intranet – TeamsHub by Cyclotron offers intranet on Teams to improve internal communications. It promotes socialization and greater collaboration by bringing people closer to themselves and existing business systems.

To know more about how to increase Microsoft Office 365 adoption, please click here.

Summary

Adoption is the most critical process of software deployment. Teams alone doesn’t guarantee immediate and efficient teamwork right after implementation. Also, the risks of deploying without governance are many.

As such, we bring to you TeamsHub by Cyclotron that serves the best of governance features by automating MS Teams making it easy to manage and enabling collaboration without confusion to amplify Microsoft Office 365 adoption.

To explore more about TeamsHub by Cyclotron, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo