Automating processes and using AI is all the rage at the moment. But there’s still some question over whether it’s a fad or of genuine use.
When it comes to Teams, there are generative AI features coming that are sure to make meeting catchups and non-attendance improve to the nth degree.
But what about the non-AI elements that can help your business save genuine time and cold, hard cash?
I’m not talking about asking AI to run programs in the background, although it’s a little bit like that. I’m also not talking about using ChatGPT to create you anything, although, at a stretch, it’s a little bit like that too.
What I’m talking about is the concept of auto-provisioning in Microsoft Teams.
How does Teams auto-provisioning work?
Instead of spending half an hour creating a new Teams user when you’re onboarding a new starter, you can pre-populate user persona templates based on job roles.
When someone new starts the business, you add an AzureAD attribute and, assuming you added everything you need, the user persona template does everything else for you.
For example, Sonya Smith join the Seattle sales team. She needs a local phone number and access to all the Teams policies that the rest of the Seattle sales team has. This could mean basics like Meeting, Calling, and Channels. But it might also mean department-specific policies like Compliance Recording or Call Park.
Rather than having to assign the phone number manually and adding all the relevant policies, only to find HR missed loads of things on the ticket, the user persona template for Seattle sales does the hard work for you.
How does Teams auto-provisioning save me time?
Here’s the obvious time saved: the time spent provisioning each new Teams user.
Here’s the less obvious time saved: the spent applying moves, adds, and changes to existing users.
Here’s the least obvious time saved: the time spent remedying human errors associated with manual user provisioning.
We’re talking about the manual errors we make when provisioning Teams users and the things we (administrators) don’t have control over.
When you’re busy fighting fires, it’s impossible to get everything 100% right all the time. One incorrect letter entered on a keyboard can have a large repercussion. Oh, and how many times have you forgotten to hit Save and had to start again?
You have control over these but nobody is perfect.
Then there are the things you don’t have control over.
Like in the case of a new starter ticket. The process goes a little something like this:
- New starter ticket gets submitted by HR
- Admin checks details and creates Teams user
- New starter logs into Teams and completes onboarding
- Another new ticket gets submitted by the user asking for access HR wasn’t aware of
- Admin checks details and needs approval from senior management
- New access is granted
- New starter continues to use Teams
- New starter finds something else they need
- The process continues until new starter is happy and productive
Here, you can clearly see the potential repetition that is commonplace in large organizations. Generally, the larger the organization, the more repetition because of the lack of awareness from staff who don’t spend all day in Microsoft.
We can’t expect them to know everything we need. But we can do something about it.
How does Teams auto-provisioning save me money?
The cost of an average provisioning ticket is around $60.
The average cost of a support ticket to resolve a provisioning error is a further $45.
|
Cost of error (IT Cost – no escalation) |
||||
|
Item |
Resource |
Number |
Hours |
Cost |
|
Service desk ticket logged |
Office Worker |
1.00 |
0.10 |
$1.53 |
|
Ticket triaged & assigned |
1st Line Engineer |
1.00 |
0.20 |
$2.97 |
|
Ticket actioned by engineer |
2nd Line Engineer |
1.00 |
1.50 |
$29.01 |
|
Ticket management |
1st Line Engineer |
1.00 |
0.75 |
$11.06 |
|
|
|
|
Ticket Cost |
$44.57 |
This can almost double in cases where escalation is needed to fix the most complicated errors.
|
Cost of error (IT Cost – with escalation) |
||||
|
Item |
Resource |
Number |
Hours |
Cost |
|
Service desk ticket logged |
Office Worker |
1.00 |
0.10 |
$1.53 |
|
Ticket triaged & assigned |
1st Line Engineer |
1.00 |
0.20 |
$2.97 |
|
Ticket actioned by engineer |
2nd Line Engineer |
1.00 |
1.50 |
$40.10 |
|
Escalation engineer |
Specialist Engineer |
1.00 |
1.00 |
$19.35 |
|
Ticket management |
1st Line Engineer |
1.00 |
1.00 |
$14.88 |
|
|
|
|
Ticket Cost |
$78.83 |
If we’re accepting that a new provisioning tasks costs between $60 and $144, and an average enterprise makes 120 moves, adds, changes, or new users per month, that’s $17,280 spent on provisioning tasks.
That’s over $200,000 per year.
The business case for automating Teams user provisioning writes itself when you have figures like these.
The ROI is clear, like in the case for automating lots of processes in business communications. The barrier, instead, is usually implementation and adoption.
But that’s the beauty of working in the Microsoft ecosystem. Yes, there’s the TAC and however many third-party apps you can get your hands on. But, at the core, there’s a single source of truth to pull data from.
As long as what gets entered in AzureAD is correct, you can start automating teams, and saving time and money, as soon as you create your first user persona template.