Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams

Your organization has adopted Microsoft Teams, but users are not maximizing their use of it.

IT needs to support the business to get the best value out of Microsoft Teams: managing Teams effectively while also enabling end users to use Teams creatively.
IT must follow best practices for evaluation of new functionality when integrating Microsoft and third-party apps and also communicate changes to end users.
Due in part to the frequent addition of new features and lack of communication and training, many organizations don’t know which apps would benefit their users.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Collaboration is as much an art as a science. IT can help users collaborate more effectively in Teams by removing friction – while still maintaining guardrails – for users attempting to build out and experiment with features and capabilities.

Impact and Result

Use Info-Tech’s Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams to help collaboration flourish:

Collate key organizational collaboration use cases.
Prioritize the most important Teams apps and features to support use cases.
Implement request process for new Teams apps.
Communicate new Teams collaboration functionality.

Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams Research & Tools

Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

1. Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams Deck – Maximize the use of your chosen collaboration software solution.

Set up your users for Teams collaboration success. Create a process that improves their ability to access, understand, and maximize their use of your chosen collaboration software solution.

Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams Storyboard

2. Microsoft Teams End-User Satisfaction Survey – Capture end-user feedback on their collaborative use of Microsoft Teams.

The survey responses will inform your organization's collaboration use cases for Teams and help you to identify which features and apps to enable.

Microsoft Teams End-User Satisfaction Survey

3. Microsoft Teams Planning Tool – A tool to help prioritize features to implement.

Use this Excel tool to help you document the organization’s key collaboration use cases and prioritize which Teams apps to implement and encourage adoption on.

Microsoft Teams Planning Tool

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Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams

Empower your users to explore Teams collaboration beyond the basics.

Analyst Perspective

Life after Teams implementation

You have adopted Teams, implemented it, and painted an early picture for your users on the basics. However, your organization is not yet maximizing its use of Teams' collaboration capabilities. Although web conferencing, channel-based collaboration, and chat are the most obvious ways Teams supports collaboration, users must explore Teams' functionality further to harness the application's full potential.

You should enable your users to expand their collaboration use cases in Teams, but not at the risk of being flooded with app requests, nor user confusion or dissatisfaction. Instead, develop a process to evaluate and integrate new apps that will benefit the organization. Encourage your users to request new apps that will benefit them, while proactively planning for app integration that users should be alerted to.

Emily Sugerman
Research Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Your organization has adopted Microsoft Teams, but users are not getting the maximum benefit.

IT needs to support the business to get the best value out of Microsoft Teams: managing Teams effectively while enabling end-user creativity.
IT must follow best practices for evaluating new functionality when integrating Microsoft and third-party apps, while communicating changes to end users.
Due partly to the frequent addition of new features and lack of communication and training, many organizations don't know which apps would benefit their users.

Common Obstacles

Users are unenthusiastic about exploring Teams further due to negative past experiences, preference for other applications, or indifference.
End users are unaware of the available range of features. When they become aware and try to add unapproved or unlicensed apps, they experience the frustration of being declined.
Users seek support from IT who are unfamiliar with new Teams features an apps, or with supporting Teams beyond the basics.
IT teams have no process to raise end-user awareness of these apps and functionality.

Info-Tech's Approach

Use Info-Tech's Collaborate Effectively in Microsoft Teams to help collaboration flourish:

Collate key organizational collaboration use cases
Prioritize the most important Teams apps and features to support use cases
Implement request process for new Teams apps
Communicate new Teams collaboration functionality

Info-Tech Insight

Are your users in a Teams rut?

Are users failing to maximize their use of Teams to collaborate and get work done?

Teams can do much more than chat, video conferencing, and document sharing. A fully-deployed Teams also lets users leverage apps and advanced collaboration features.

However, IT must create a process for evaluating and approving Microsoft and third-party apps, and for communicating changes to end users.

In the end, IT needs to support the business to get the best value out of Microsoft Teams: managing Teams effectively while also enabling end-user creativity.

Third-party app use in Teams is rising:

“Within Teams, the third-party apps with 10,000 users and above rose nearly 40% year-over-year.”
Source: UC Today, 2023.

Collaborate effectively in Microsoft Teams

Set up your users for Teams collaboration success. Create a process that improves their ability to access, understand, and maximize their use of your chosen collaboration software solution.

Challenges with Teams collaboration

Lack of motivation to explore available features
Scattered information
Lack of comfort using Teams beyond the basics
Blocked apps
Overlapping features
Confusing permissions

Empowering Collaboration in Microsoft Teams

Identify current collaboration challenges and use cases in Teams
Create Teams app request workflows
Set up communication hubs in Teams
Empower end users to customize their Teams for effective collaboration

Solution

Collate key organizational collaboration use cases
Prioritize the most important Teams apps and features to support use cases
Implement request process for new Teams apps
Communicate new Teams collaboration functionality

Project deliverables

Use these tools to develop your plan to enable effective collaboration in Microsoft Teams.

Key deliverable:

Microsoft Teams Planning Tool

An Excel tool for documenting the organization's key collaboration use cases and prioritizing which Teams apps to implement and encourage adoption of.

Sample of the Microsoft Teams Planning Tool deliverable.

Additional support:

Microsoft Teams End-User Satisfaction Survey

Use or adapt this survey to capture user perception of how effectively Teams supports collaboration needs.

Sample of the End-user satisfaction survey deliverable.

Insight Summary

Key Insight:

Additional insights:

Insight 1

Users can browse the Teams app store and attempt to add unapproved apps, but they may not be able to distinguish between available and blocked apps. To avoid a bad user experience, communicate which apps they can add without additional approval and which they will need to send through an approval process.

Insight 2

Teams lets you customize the message users see when they request unapproved apps and/or redirect their request to your own URL. Review this step in the request process to ensure users are seeing the instructions that they need to see.

Insight 3

A Teams hub is where users can access a service catalog of approved Teams apps and submit service requests for new ones via the Make a Request button.

Section 1: Collaborating Effectively in Teams for IT

Section 1

Collaborating Effectively in Teams for IT

Section 2

Collaborating Effectively in Teams for End Users

Stop: Do you need the Teams Cookbook?

If you:

are at the Teams implementation stage,
require IT best practices for initial governance of Teams creation, or
require end-user best practices for basic Teams functionality …

Consult the Microsoft Teams Cookbook first.

Understand the Microsoft vision of Teams collaboration

Does it work for you?

Microsoft's vision for Teams collaboration is to enable end-user freedom. For example, out of the box, users can create their own teams and channels unless IT restricts this ability.

Teams is meant to be more than just chats and meetings. Microsoft is pushing Teams app integration so that Teams becomes, essentially, a landing page from which users can centralize their work and org updates.

In partnership with the business, IT must determine which guardrails are necessary to balance end-user collaboration and creativity with the need for governance and control.

Why is it difficult to increase the caliber of collaboration in Teams?

Because collaboration is inherently messy, complex, and creative

Schubert & Glitsch find that enterprise collaboration systems (such as Teams) have characteristics that reflect the unstructured and creative nature of collaboration. These systems “are designed to support joint work among people in the workplace. . . [They] contain, for the most part, unstructured content such as documents, blogs, or news posts,” and their implementations “are often reported to follow a ‘bottom up' and rather experimental introduction approach.” The open-endedness of the tool requires users to be able to creatively and voluntarily apply it, which in turn requires more enterprise effort to help increase adoption over time through trial and error.

Source: Procedia Computer Science, 2015