Rolling out Microsoft Teams to Executives

Microsoft

I've recently been asked about best practices for rolling out Microsoft Teams to Executives.  I'd love to start the conversation here in the community to see what others have done to see success and ensure your execs experience is a positive one.

 

At Microsoft, we had a team that drove a white glove training experience for Execs and their Admins to make sure they were comfortable with and saw the value in Teams.  Their teams also were given access to start using Teams so they could see benefits in collaborating as a whole, immediately. 

 

Ensuring leadership and just as important, their support staff, knows how to use the technology properly is key to seeing successful adoption. We've also worked hard to make sure the Executive Meeting rooms were all updated and ready to support Microsoft Teams prior to rolling out Teams to those teams.

 

What have you done that has worked well to onboard your leadership teams to Microsoft Teams (or even strategies that have worked with other technology)?

15 Replies

@Laurie Pottmeyer 

The "whiteglove" approach is fairly common for the execs with most IT people. We implemented the move from Atlassian about 9 months to a year ago and for each of the execs and the accounting group we had a tech at the desk setting it up and ensuring that they were comfortable. For us that worked as we are still small enough to do that. For a larger corporation though that will not always be feasible. Having the team to work with the users remotely is an option provided there is a certain level of technical competence. 

 

As an MSP I am working through a migration for another company at the moment who is not technically competent. For this I am going the route of documentation, documentation, & more documentation. Lots of screen grabs and keeping the instructions in bite sized chucks. this will get them on the program and using the features they were familiar with from SfB. After that training is required on how to use Teams, working with Channels, and the many other features available in Teams.  

 

For the executives however there will always be a need for the concierge level of service. because we can never forget Knorpp's first law of IT support

"For any given project or task, the number of issues or errors encountered are directly proportional to the importance or sensitivity of the end user"

@Laurie Pottmeyer 

Thank you for starting this conversation.  

For our Executive Assistants it's a two sided coin:  

  1. Our Executive Assistance are loving the way that they can collaborate in one place using Teams.
  2. Our Executive Assistants are really struggling to know how to best support their Executives using Teams. 

It seems Teams is set up well for people to see their own actions /tasks (say, in Planner) or their own alerts & notifications - but not for an EA to manage their own, and keep track of their Exec's actions/tasks/alerts. 

 

They are also struggling to know how to set up Teams at the right level for collaboration - across different levels of the organisation, when some channels need tools like Planner but if others are included to the Team, would necessitate creating private channels. 

 

Keen to hear how others are addressing challenges for EA's using Teams, and what has worked to bring the Executives and Executive Assistance along the journey! 

@Debstar I am experiencing exactly what you describe - the two sided coin. Also whould like to hear more about - delegated access as in Outlook maybe?

The delegate access works the same as it did with SfB so that should not change. The problem is that the executive assistant (delegate) cant see the conversation of the executive. This is by design but it's what the assistants want. They want/are expected to control access to the executive and chat/teams call is a way around them. The delegate access just allows the assistant to set up Teams meetings on the calendar.

@James Knorpp cool I understand. But the Personal Assistants in this organization are eager to control and monitor their C-level teams notifications :) I know that is not possible but this is what they consinder to be part of their job - to sweep in front of their c-level, right. 

@Pernille Bernth 

first let me say that I agree with you whole heartedly.

Executive assistants are the gate keepers to the C Suite and nothing "should" get through to the C Level without passing through them. They have a point in that feeling as that is the whole purpose of their position. Unfortunately this is NOT how Skype was designed. the end result is that chats and calls through Skype and now Teams go directly to the end user and not their delegates. The only solution is that Teams NOT be installed on the C level desktop but that is overly drastic and defeats the usefulness.

I would suggest a user voice for this but I would not hold a lot of hope on getting this changed as it seems to require a massive amount of support to make it to the roadmap. I just don't see the support for what is essentially a niche need.

@Laurie Pottmeyer I would be keen to understand the content and delivery of your Exec white glove training experience, I would also welcome any Team templates for EA / C Suite collaboration via teams and to know how you address the challenges of scheduling channel meetings if you are not a member of the team with no delegation option?

 

As you know often EAs are called to cover each other, or can move from one Exec to another, adding the EA to all the Teams or channels is not always practical.

 

I would also love any EA specific training videos or other resources Microsoft might have, I have done all the general ones and found they are mainly aimed at single users and don't address the crystal ball requirement of our role.

 

Have a great day 

Libby

@Laurie Pottmeyer @Pernille Bernth @LibbyL @James Knorpp Very pleased to see this topic here :-). I am the Founder and CEO of a company in Copenhagen providing executive support to C-level executives and to C-levels minus org level 1-2 in large enterprises. We are struggling to have our EAs being able to act on behalf of our executive clients like we are used to.... working in Outlook with delegation permissions. This must be a huge pain point and affect productivity for many executives not being able to delegate work and tasks such as e.g. the planning and orchestration of Leadership meetings. We are searching for smart work arounds, if you know of any?
Best, Betina :)

Hi Betina, we are currently scheduling meetings via outlook, using existing delegation, but I dont know of any other work arounds, I agree it is a pain point and would welcome any changes Microsoft may consider to address this.
I agree with all the previous comments made. Has any suggestions been given on this topic?

@Laurie Pottmeyer 

 

My company is in the same boat. Our EAs are not on board with this because they have no control over their executives meetings. For example, they do NOT want their name being the one they send the invite from BUT if they don't then they are not able to get the attendance report. 

 

I was hoping that after 2 years of this being posted something would have been done with it. I have voted and submitted UserVoice request/discussions but still nothing. It would be so nice if Teams had such a thing as a co-owner of meetings or an account or something. 

 

Seems a lot of people are having the same issue but there doesn't seem to be a solution :(

@LibbyL thanks for asking this. I would love to see these resources!

@Laurie Pottmeyer  i would love to see any resources you all used when training the execs and EAs!

@James Knorpp To confirm EAs can only schedule meetings via Teams? Is there a way for EAs to send Praise on behalf of the leaders?

@Avi_bmo 

I have not done much with the Praise add-in so I can't answer that. Sorry.