Teams Manager greatly expands your administrative capabilities and gives you the ability to implement and control Templates, Naming Conventions, Lifecycles, Policies, and Approvals, to name a few.

Once you fully move to the Teams Manager workflow, all of your employees will be required to submit Team creation requests based on pre-existing Templates that you've created.

These Team creation conditions can be further modified with other governance components to create a truly effective communication infrastructure, complete with well-thought-out names, lifespans, and rules.

Let's go through some major governance components to better understand how they all work together.

Templates allow you to set up preconditions for the structure of all Teams created within your organization. You can specify which Channels, Members, and Widgets will be included by default, and easily manage them after the fact.

When a user creates a new Team, they’ll be limited to a selection of Templates you’ve created. This ensures that all future Teams follow your defined structure.

You can also add different Metadata fields to your Templates. These fields are filled out by users when they request Teams and help you collect useful information.

Metadata can even be tied to specific Governance Policies. For example, a "Start Date" calendar field can be used as the basis for a Lifecycle Policy, automatically archiving the Team once a certain date is reached.

Overall, Templates are great for implementing rigid governance standards and enforcing them across the entire tenant.

Naming Conventions allow you to fully control Team naming across your entire organization by adding Prefixes and Suffixes to each Team that's based on a certain Template.

You can easily get rid of random Team Names that might resonate with their original creators but aren't suitable for a professional environment, and offer them a structured, straight-to-the-point alternative instead.

They're great if you want to add extra information to Team names by default. You can even disallow users from specifying their own Team names and force the Naming Convention that you've implemented.

For example, you can add a "P_" prefix to certain Teams to designate the fact that they're for a project, or you could automatically pull information from Metadata fields and Attributes.

Overall, Naming Conventions are a great way to standardize your communication space and streamline Team navigation.

Lifecycle Policies help you get rid of unnecessary bloat left over by old, unused Teams and Spaces. They allow you to institute Automatic Archiving and Deletion Procedures that will free up the time that would otherwise be spent on manual Team management.

You can set up how many days a certain Lifecycle lasts, when you'll get notified about it, and when the Space actually gets deleted.

Deletion allows you to take decluttering to the next level and actually delete the Teams after they've been archived. However, due to the fact that Archiving is enough for most workflows and Deleted Teams and Spaces cannot be recovered, we advise that you exercise some caution when dealing with this feature.

Overall, automatic archival procedures are a wonderful tool for decluttering spaces that allow you to focus on the task at hand instead of outdated teams.

Once you've set up different Rulesets like Naming Conventions and Lifecycles, you can use Policy Packages to bundle and execute them based on specific Conditions.

When a new Space is requested, Teams Manager checks the request, and if the defined conditions are met (e.g., a specific Template has been used, or a certain Metadata field has been filled), the corresponding Policy Package is executed, and the Rulesets that it contains are applied.

This allows you to set and execute specific rules for specific use-cases:

For example, you can define a specific set of rules, like Naming Conventions and Lifecycles, specifically for "Project" Teams that use your previously created "Project" Template, while applying completely different rules for internal Teams that may use another Template.

Overall, Policies act as a powerful enforcement tool that allows you to set up a number of different rules for select spaces.

Rules like Naming Conventions and Lifecycles make a great base for fostering well-structured workspaces; however, if you're after truly effective governance, you should implement the 4-eyed principle and set up a thorough Approval Process.

With Teams Manager, when a user decides to submit a new request for a Team, they'll have to fill out the Metadata fields you've created. Depending on your Policy Setup, certain Metadata might apply a specific Policy Package to the Team.

Once the user's request is finalized, the Admin (or the Approver Group) receives an Adaptive Card via the Teams Manager Bot and is prompted to review the request.

During this review, they have the opportunity to change Team details or leave comments for the original requester to resolve.

Once the request is approved, the Admin (or a member of the Approver Group) is notified about the successful creation of the Team in question.

Overall, Approval processes allow you to fully control which teams actually make it onto the tenant and give you an extra level of control over your entire communication infrastructure.

When you have long-term projects that involve a lot of different individuals who might not necessarily need to remain a part of the Space for the entire project duration, it makes sense to introduce a regular review protocol for the sake of efficiency, accessibility, and security.

Access Reviews allow you to easily reassess whether or not certain users still need to be a part of a given Team by scheduling a date when you'll have to go through all Team members and allow/reject their access.

Once an Access Review is triggered, you'll receive an Adaptive Card as a reminder. That same card allows you to quickly glance over all of your users and easily continue or revoke their access to the corresponding Team.

Overall, Access Checks are great for reassessing the viability of the current team composition and ensuring that the only users with access are the ones who actually need it.

Get further assistance with Teams Manager through our support chat widget within the app, or reach out to us at [email protected].