Rolling out Teams for a large company

[RoelandW]

Hi, Roeland Wiersma here, Projectmanager for Brunel. 

We are looking to roll out Teams within our organization but because of the amount of users (at least 2.500, maybe 13.000) we have to be very careful and secure with the rollout, settings, governance and support.

We have piloted Teams in a small group for now and so far the reception is mixed. Even though most people think it is a good product, we also ran into a few issues that raised questions. Will share them all here, thanks a ton in advance for the time to look into any of them. Hoping that with some answers we can move forward on the roll-out because I'm a fan!

• Why are the Teams settings the same as Skype settings (as in if we change external user access for Teams, it also changes for Skype)
• Why is the Teams app not compatible with the Microsoft Server? Now we can not push the app in the remote desktop environment like we wanted to. Are there any workarounds? Because the web version is limited compared to the desktop version.
• Why can't we set authorizations per channel? This leads to a lot of unnecessary team creation.
• Can we change settings in a way that only private teams can be created? We have no need for public teams, could only lead to data leaks.
• Why is the look and feel not customizable? Would love to change it to company colors.
• When will there be an outlook integration? Less screens = profit ;)
• Teams is quite heavy on bandwith and computer usage. Are you looking to improve this in the future?
• Is there a roadmap / release planning available so we can adapt to coming changes and functionality early?

Sorry for the long post! 

[#2]

I can provide some answers:

1. Public teams is a confusing phrase, this just means that anyone in the company can join, it DOES NOT mean that people outside of your company join.

2. MS just added the ability to change the theme of the mobile app to Dark, but they have not announced any ability to allow branding. You don't brand Word or Excel, why would you want to brand Teams?

3. Skype functionality is getting moved to Teams, which is why the settings are connected.

4. MS is working on enabling private Channels.

5. What kind of integration with Outlook do you want? When you are in Outlook, you can create a Teams Meeting.

6. the main roadmap is at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=, and more details are in many of the presentations at Ignite 2018 conference.

[#3 · Accepted solution]

My responses are inline below... 

• Why are the Teams settings the same as Skype settings (as in if we change external user access for Teams, it also changes for Skype)
  • Could you provide some clarification? Remember it's the Teams & Skype Admin Center. :)
• Why is the Teams app not compatible with the Microsoft Server? Now we can not push the app in the remote desktop environment like we wanted to. Are there any workarounds? Because the web version is limited compared to the desktop version.
  • Which Microsoft Server are you referring to? Are you talking about VDI? Need some more details. 
• Why can't we set authorizations per channel? This leads to a lot of unnecessary team creation.
  
  • Private Channels will hopefully come to GCC not long after it gets released in the Commercial Cloud. 
• Can we change settings in a way that only private teams can be created? We have no need for public teams, could only lead to data leaks.
  • No not currently but please open a User Voice item for it. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public?category_id=320536
• Why is the look and feel not customizable? Would love to change it to company colors.
  • Cool idea! Definitely submit a User Voice for that one. :)
• When will there be an outlook integration? Less screens = profit ;)
  
  • What would be the best way to integrate Outlook in your opinion?
• Teams is quite heavy on bandwith and computer usage. Are you looking to improve this in the future?
  • Yes, we are always improving performance of Teams.
• Is there a roadmap / release planning available so we can adapt to coming changes and functionality early?
  • GCC Teams Page: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/plan-for-government-gcc

[#4]

Don't forget to take a look at the Teams Toolkit https://aka.ms/teamstoolkit

[#5]

Hi @Rima Reyes, thanks so much for the detailed answer. Really appreciated.

Why are the Teams settings the same as Skype settings (as in if we change external user access for Teams, it also changes for Skype)

• Could you provide some clarification? Remember it's the Teams & SkypeAdmin Center. :If you block "external access" in Teams it also blocks the external access in Skype which kills our VC rooms. 

We are using an RDS service environment for our "workplace". The Teams desktop app installs  in the app data folder of the user which means we can not push the app in this RDS environment.

[#6]

Hey Dean,

Thanks as well for your answers! Very much appreciated.

1. As we share documents in Teams that are not for everyone to see, and we identify people make public groups by accident, we would like to switch them all to private.

2. As Teams will be a very core part of our organization and is a new tool a little branding would really add to the user experience and adoption (in my opinion of course, could be wrong!)

3. I see, it is not ideal that it is attached like this but i get it.

4. Just discovered the topic about it. Excellent!

5. I want to be able to see my Email in a tab just like planner, shifts, meetings, files

6. Cheers!

[#7]

• Could you provide some clarification? Remember it's the Teams & SkypeAdmin Center. :If you block "external access" in Teams it also blocks the external access in Skype which kills our VC rooms. 

Actually @Rima Reyes  it is not Teams & Skype Admin Center anymore, MS removed the Skype part in the name ;-). But the reason is that Teams and Skype uses the same way/path/service for external access. For Teams there is other ways go connect VTC with the Cloud Video Interop (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/cloud-video-interop) or use native Microsoft Teams Room systems.

[#8]

1. the Group/Team owner can change the group type

5. you can add a Website as a tab with an ULR that point to OWA , but you may get some strange behavior.

FYI, every channel has a mailbox so you have mail delivered to the channel and then have a conversation about it.

[#9]

Hi Roeland,

I share your concern about rollout of Teams across large organizations.   Recent experiences I have seen is users getting very frustrated by the sheer volume of Teams and lack of clarity around their purpose.  You definitely need to put a lot of thought into your governance plan before starting any roll out.

It might be worth you considering some form of request based provisioning solution for the creation of Teams.  This will let you control who can create Teams, making them default to private and manage the lifecycle.

We have a neat solution at ProvisionPoint which can support with some of these key governance challenges.

Peter