Microsoft 365 New Year’s Resolutions for 2023
Happy New Year!
One thing is for sure about 2023, we will not be all heading back into large office environments and cubicles anytime soon. For most companies, their employees are going to continue to rely heavily on SharePoint Online for documents and Microsoft Teams for communications.
We also know that because a lot of 2020 SharePoint/Teams implementations were done in a hurry to facilitate a sudden, massive volume of “work from home” users, it was almost unavoidable that many organizations ended up with architectures that leave a lot to be desired.
And that situation brings us to our top three Microsoft 365 New Year’s Resolutions for 2023.
Clean Up Microsoft Teams
Teams is a great product for corporate communications. Leading industry publications suggest that within the next few years it will have an over 75% market share. And, while it came at exactly the right time to help with the “work from home” emergency, it has a dark side.
Too many managers don't realize that every time an organization creates a new Microsoft Team, Teams creates a new SharePoint site to store documents passed between participants during a meeting. Additionally, the creation of “private” Channels also create new SharePoint sites and libraries. This has resulted in many organizations ending up with hundreds of SharePoint sites and libraries(with documents) being inadvertently created.
Now that many organizations are more familiar with teams, the New Year is a prime opportunity for Team “owners” to review and consolidate their Teams and Channels. Within the last year Microsoft has improved Teams to allow for the easy consolidation of important documents and simplified removal of the unnecessary sites and libraries.
A simple implementation strategy is to send an e-mail to the site owners telling them what to look for and how to consolidate their own implementations. The same functions can be performed centrally by using an administrative tool such as those made by ShareGate or AvePoint.
If possible, create a SharePoint intranet structure that appropriately incorporates the Team’s SharePoint sites into the Intranet as a whole.
The goal is to end up with a consolidated structure where all of the documents that are passed during teams communications are automatically stored In the appropriate Department site library.
Regain Control of Corporate Documents
In the early, hectic days of “work from home” many employees were faced with difficult decisions for where they should store the documents that they used daily. To keep working, most individuals started storing company documents in locations they were already familiar with using for their personal documents.
The result was that corporate documents and other key files found their way to being stored outside the corporate firewall in a mixture of Dropbox, iCloud and Google Docs locations.
Beyond the obvious security risk, these documents are outside of the search capabilities of the corporate intranet and outside of the oversight of the individual's manager.
Similar to the consolidation of SharePoint sites automatically created by Microsoft Teams, the solution to consolidating these files and bringing them back inside the firewall is simple. Just create a document library for each employee inside their department site and instruct them, via e-mail, to consolidate all of their external documents there.
This will immediately make the files available to the appropriate individuals and expose them to SharePoint search.
Training
Well, it’s 2023 and Microsoft 365 Users still identify poor training as the number one obstacle to being able to use their SharePoint Intranet or Teams effectively.
The good news is that it has never been easier or less expensive to implement excellent on-demand training and end-user support for an entire organization.
On demand video segments made available through an organization’s intranet has become the new standard in providing complete software training curriculums as well as technical support tips.
Many organizations start with the purchase of some core curriculums and then add to their video training library with custom recordings as needed. Take a moment to Download our eBook How Your Staff Really Learns Teams and SharePoint and Why You Might be Surprised.
If you are looking to up your game in 2023… Take the time to get Microsoft Teams under control, end document “Drift”; and provide better training and support to empower your team.
Navigating Unusual Digital Transformations, M365, SharePoint, and Teams Situations
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