Lifecycle Management to Manage Info for Long Time Periods

Rushing a Microsoft Teams deployment is not advisable for any organization’s collaboration strategy. Without adequate planning, the platform is likely to be overpowered by challenges like sprawl, duplication, and several other issues. To truly utilize MS Teams to its full potential you must prepare for its efficient use throughout its longevity. Lifecycle management is all about managing the usage of teams in MS Teams. Let us explore how you can implement and benefit from this concept.

What is Lifecycle Management in Microsoft Teams?

Collaboration in MS Teams is as straightforward as it gets but users need to be mindful of how and where they are sharing content and collaborating. Enter, lifecycle management, a holistic concept that helps you utilize out-of-the-box tools or outside resources to manage information for long periods of time. So, in the context of Microsoft Teams, it is the method of managing teams in MS Teams for the long haul.

But if deployed without governance, soon a well-functioning MS Teams environment will be crippled with sprawl, duplication, orphaned teams, and a host of other problems. The ability to prevent such issues from occurring in the first place is the main agenda of lifecycle management, making it a must for your MS Teams adoption strategy. Duplication, orphaned teams, and a host of other problems can be mitigated with proper planning and implementation of lifecycle management, making it a must for your Microsoft Teams adoption strategy., duplication, orphaned teams, and a host of other problems. The ability to prevent such issues from occurring in the first place is the main agenda of lifecycle management, making it a must for your MS Teams adoption strategy.

What does the Lifecycle of an MS Team Look Like?

Each Microsoft Teams team is comprised of much more than just a team, including a SharePoint site, an Outlook Group, various channels, various tabs, etc. To better understand how a team evolves over time, see our breakdown into three stages:

  1. Creation is the first stage where a user requests or provisions a team. At this stage, all its features and policies are integrated into it.
  2. Active stage is the second stage when all the sharing, communication, and collaboration takes place as each team is being used.
  3. Sunsetting is the last stage to follow and at this point, the team has served its purpose, so it is time to think of ways to manage it from this point forward.

Utilizing Microsoft 365 Tools for Lifecycle Management

There are several Microsoft 365 out-of-the-box capabilities and resources that can be used to manage your MS Teams environment. You can pick and use them at different stages of a team’s lifecycle, to ensure that each team has a purpose.

Creation Stage: Be mindful to prevent the unnecessary creation of teams,

  • Plan your governance around team creation and implement some level of end user training so that they know when a team is absolutely necessary. With governance policies in place, you can limit the permissions of Microsoft Teams team creation to only a subset of people. OOTB resources like PowerShell for restricting group creation and Graph API for teams’ template provisioning can come in handy at this point, as well.
  • The use of custom MS Teams templates can go a long way in avoiding confusion around which features to integrate and keeping users from starting from a blank slate. can go a long way in avoiding confusion around which features to integrate and keeping users from starting from a blank slate.

Active stage: Keep an eye on what is going on in Microsoft teams to ensure its optimal usage,

  • Entitlement management is a lesser-explored option, but you can prove to be very useful as it enables you to delegate administrative tasks to non-admin members. It even offers the ability to create access packages to control what people have access to.
  • Also, keeping track of changes with access review elements helps control who has access to which resources. With this you can control and manage external guest access and access of those that are no longer with the organization.

lifecycle management with access review in identity governance

  • Monitoring is an integral aspect of the active stage as it offers powerful insights into how each team is being used. There are both build-in analytics and custom reporting options available that will give inputs on the usage patterns.

track usage and activity with Microsoft 365 admin center reports for lifecycle management
With an Azure AD P2 license, you can benefit from both access reviews and entitlement management elements within Microsoft 365 itself.

Sunsetting Stage: the final and most important stage in the lifecycle management of a team,

Once a team has served its purpose, it becomes increasingly important to think about how it is kept from adding to sprawl in the environment.

  • Implementing expiration policies prevents them from merely existing on the platform. Set an expiration date for the team to keep team owners accountable and in case a team is not renewed it will be deleted.

expiration policy for ms teams team

  • If you are worried about losing your resources and information from a team that is no longer in use, set retention policies to reserve information within your platform. You can set them at different levels – documents, SharePoint Sites, files, etc., and store them for extended periods of time.

Start Managing Microsoft Teams with Klarinet

Klarinet helps your employees connect with the applications that they are working with, enabling them to adopt, engage and become more productive with these apps/tools. Powered by Orchestry, we provide businesses with Klarinet’s Workspace Connect, a streamlined and cost-effective solution that empowers your organization to get the most from Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft 365.

work made simple in microsoft teams by Orchestry

Orchestry provides the ‘Work Made Simple’ user experience for both users and administrators to adopt, utilize and adapt with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and across Microsoft 365, with core capabilities that fill the gaps of governance, provisioning and lifecycle management.

Klarinet is here to help you carve the path and customize the experience to your organization. Together we take the guesswork out of what to use when in the Microsoft 365 suite and help organizations simplify their collaboration, communication, and connection throughout Microsoft 365.

Request a demo with us and learn how you can make your MS Teams environment more efficient.

Matt Fishman
Director of Solution Delivery & Support, Klarinet Solutions

Fishman has over 20 years of expertise architecting, managing, and deploying Microsoft technologies to elevate business experiences. As an award-winning, solution-focused IT professional, Fishman has been awarded the prestigious Valo Contributor of the Year, 2017. He brings together technical know-how with a knack for creative solutions that do the trick for any client challenge.