Rollout of Teams - Limiting to just Chat, Phone and Meetings

[CindyOsborn]

My company is just starting to move from On premise to M365. As part of that we are looking to rollout out Teams for the communication aspects - Chat, phone and meetings. The thought is that this can be rolled out with Teams client but not rollout 'teams' of people and not rollout the Sharepoint pieces at this time. Our organization is larger than 10,000 users. I'm trying to find out technically if this is possible. I believe it is not possible. The thought is that this could be rolled out so that Jabber Chat and Webex Teams/Meetings could be retired. Any direction and information that could be shared by others with more experience would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks,

Cindy

[#2 · Accepted solution]

This is a huge ask for the community :) The very short answer is you can rollout Teams but then you'd need to turn off Teams Native File Upload policy https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/turn-off-teams-native-file-upload-policy, while at the same time not allowing anyone to create M365 groups, i.e. ability to create Teams team. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/solutions/manage-creation-of-groups?view=o365-worldwi...

*edit for licensing part*

Let me correct myself. I had a test user which I removed the SharePoint license from quite some time ago and now when signing in I can use Teams but with the difference from last time I tried I'm getting an error message when trying to go to "Files" tab in a Team (SharePoint) and when trying in an 1:1 chat (OneDrive) it works to share files, but I can't reach OneDrive if not taking detours such as typing in the URL in my browser.

In other words, you'll stumble across some issues with this approach that's why I recommend it should be a step-by-step deployment starting with a pilot and so on. There are some great articles over at the MS Docs.

Good luck!

[#3]

Alternative solution for your scenario: Disable Teams creation in the tenant. Bear in mind that if you want some users to create Teams, those users will need Azure AD P1 licenses

[#4]

I actually linked to that above :)

[#5]

@ChristianJBergstrom Thank you - you answered my question.