M365 - Microsoft Teams Center

Microsoft Teams is the darling of the Microsoft 365 suite, with pretty much every app in the ecosystem pushing for their share of user real estate.

2022, here we are. It's been a couple of years since I was invited to write one of these "look back" articles (maybe I was too harsh last time?) but with the rapid pace of innovation in Microsoft Teams, I think it's good to look back at how far we've come.

Wow. As I sit here and reflect on the afterglow of Comms vNext Reconnect, that's all I can think. With all the craziness of the past 18-20 months, I know many have been wondering if in-person events would ever come back and if they did, would they be any good? From my experience, there is only one word to answer both of those questions: yes.

Over the past year, many organizations have adopted entirely new collaboration systems then what they had a year ago (if they even had one at all). As employees start to return to the office, this poses a challenge in the meeting rooms and can ultimately end user experience and productivity if the proper equipment and training isn't in place. For many organizations, they had simplistic rooms or if they did have collaborative rooms, they may be based around a platform that isn't in use or isn't compatible with the new platform employees are using now.

Lately I have been approached by a fair number of customers (both small as well as large Organizations) complaining about not so obvious and very confusing behavior between Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams.  Those Organizations are already using Skype for Business (mainly On-Premises for their Enterprise Voice solution) and have started trials or pilots for Microsoft Teams.

There is no denying that as IT Pros we are writing more ‘code’ than ever before. I like to think of this an an evolution – If you cast your mind back 13 years to 2007 when PowerShell first made an appearance, many of us were just coming to terms with using single cmdlets to perform tasks instead of clicking GUI buttons. Over time, cmdlets became one-liners which in turn led to PowerShell scripts all the while helping us automate repetitive tasks in a predictable manner with orchestrated runbooks being a lot more commonplace today.

For many people who are moving to Microsoft Teams for Enterprise Voice, a major component that needs to be addressed is Call Queues. Other PBX systems might call these Hunt Groups. No matter what you call them, a Call Queue is just an ordered way to handle call routing to a group of users and is a critical component of Microsoft Teams reporting.

Yes, you read that right. The title is not a question or suggestion, but a statement of fact: Your approach to Microsoft Teams governance is wrong.

Right now, you must be thinking I have some serious chutzpah to make such a statement, and you’d be correct – but that chutzpah is built on real-world experience working with organizations of all sizes and industries. 

With the COVID-19 situation impacting the world in 2020, many, if not all, learning institutes are turning to remote learning and some schools and education institutes are leveraging tools such as Microsoft Teams.

Hello from the bunker! I assume most of you will be reading this blog post from my future, and hopefully the world has returned to something closer to “normal”. By normal, I mean there isn’t a pandemic going on and people can leave their houses. As I write this blog post, I am about a month into the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and I haven’t left my house except for trips to the grocery store for what feels like about 20 years.