Make The Most Out of Your Teams

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​Collaboration tools are the oil that helps organizations smoothly run their engine. Many organizations find that Microsoft Teams is an invaluable tool that allows you to run online meetings, message your colleagues, and upload files for sharing. However, without proper oversight or planning – they can quickly spiral out of control. This can result in a cluster of unnecessary Teams, sensitive documents being inappropriately shared, and time lost to administrative busywork. Businesses can avoid Teams Sprawl by provisioning Teams to fit their business needs. There are many Teams provisioning services in the market, each of which are unique in their offerings. Although this market segment is full of many service providers, I hope to provide an insightful analysis into a handful of companies.   




  • Valo Teamwork is an all-rounded product that provides services to support the entire Teams experience. 
  • Since each business has unique collaboration needs, Valo provides custom Team templates for various types of teams. By providing unique metadata structures for different co-operations requirements, Valo can integrate powerful search and filter functionalities. 
  • Employees can create customized dashboards with direct access to their own Groups, Sites and documents from Teams of SharePoint. External users can also be allowed to access specific groups to make collaboration easier and safer than ever.  
  • Valo Teamwork’s governance tools help businesses prioritize self-service without sacrificing safety. Businesses can implement strict approval processes and privacy permission requirements. Administrators have the power to approve or reject new processes and archive groups and sites with no use.  


  • Sharegate offers their cloud-based automated governance tool: Sharegate Apricot. Sharegate brandishes their client network which include Warner Brothers, Siemens, Crocs, Fujitsu, Mont Blanc, and Ikea.​.  
  • Sharegate’s goal is to avoid unnecessary Teams sprawl by providing visibility and insight in a Teams’ lifecycle. Apricot can detect inactive teams based on user activity, uncover teams without owners, see newly created teams and understand their purpose and, archive teams that are inactive or irrelevant. 
  • Their security features allow you to see all links to files shared externally by each team and set up automatic external sharing reviews.  
  • They offer simplicity as their product does not use PowerShell, coding or Azure AD Premium.  
  • They offer a blanket price of $3,995 USD per year.    


  • Avepoint is another all-rounded Office 365 Provisioner that offers a simplified catalog of Office 365 services tailored to specific audiences.  
  • Avepoint promotes adoption while still managing Office 365 security and compliance. Use automatic approvals for low-risk requests or involve multiple approvers and levels for higher-risk requests. Conditional approvals allow for dynamic and appropriate oversight.  
  • Avepoint eases the burden on your IT team with over 20 service types that will automate everything from Microsoft Teams security and compliance to SharePoint governance, Office 365 management, and Office 365 retention policies.  
  • Businesses can also oversee and automate Office 365 auditing, data ownership and access. Set requirements for workspaces that require ongoing oversight and manage the review process for content owners.  
  • Control growth and duplication of Office 365 content with automated cataloging, archiving, and deletion of workspaces.    


  • tyGraph for Teams provides rich and meaningful reporting and analytics.  
  • tyGraph gives visibility into Teams and Channel activity, member interactions, external users and even sentiment tracking.  
  • Network interactions allows you to see how people are really interacting with each other both in terms of connectivity and network volume. To gain valuable insights from an individual’s role, region and organizational structure, Teams comes preconfigured to integrate with your HRIS data.  
  • tyGraph allows you discern a Measure of Active Engagement (MAE) score to see the most engaged Teams and users. tyGraph leverages Microsoft’s Cognitive Services Machine Learning algorithms to score sentiment on a per message basis. 
  •  tyGraph provides a wide scope of empirical evidence which can be used (with the help of corporate context) to make decisions among leadership.     

 
  • Provision Point eases the burden on Team Owners by providing a range of pre-defined templates that defines how each team is created, including multiple Channels each with relevant Tabs and Apps.  
  • Provision Point can help your business gain insight into behaviour and control over usage. Capture customisable metadata as part of the request process and use the data for custom search solutions.  
  • Implement organization specific authorisation processes. Notify key users about provisioning requests, authorisation actions and request outcomes.  
  • Administrators can monitor and analyze trends of provisioning requests. Enable self-service to request new Office 365 objects, manage sites through authorized users, and assign leases against different Office 365 objects.    ​

 

  • Orchestry's product targets every part of the Office 365 experience to promote efficiency, collaboration and security. 
  • Save invaluable time by using pre-built Office 365 Workspaces with just a few clicks.  
  • Manage the creation of Microsoft Office 365 objects and govern Teams and SharePoint through end-to-end lifecycle management. 
  • Orchestry's Workspace Directory delivers an simple interface that enables your organization to gain better visibility and access into all your Microsoft 365 Workspaces. 
  • Eliminate bottlenecks by empowering your end users to self-service gaining access to needed tools.  ​
  • Orchestry allows administrators to create with control with a user-friendly interface. A workspace request wizard provides a guided experience in requesting a workspace; eliminating the "what to use when" confusion.  

 
  • Extranet User Manager offers an open source solution that helps you unlock the most out of your Teams.  
  • Our resource promotes self-service but adds a level of control and consistency. Certain types of requests can be automated, while others can require approvals. Businesses can also designate “power users” that can be auto approved.  
  • Teams are pre-configured with templated tabs, tags, and channels. To promote seamless collaboration, templates are further integrated to support OneNote, Planner and SharePoint.  
  • To support self-service, we integrated a Request Form Web part that enables requesting a new Teams, Channels, Office 365 Groups, and SharePoint sites. The Request Form can customize the Microsoft object based on the division of the organization or the pre-defined template chosen.   
  • Moreover, we support increased filtering and organization through an A-Z Web part that displays as an A-Z list, tabs or a simple list.    

All of the mentioned features are included in our open source solution, so if you have a development team on-standby they can download and implement our solution. If you have unique needs that are not included in our current solution, for a one-time fee Extranet User Manager will update the open source solution to accommodate that feature. Why does Extranet User Manager provide an open source solution? Because we want our clients to be happy. And more than anything, we want our clients to run their businesses efficiently. 


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