5 Top Tips for Successful Microsoft Teams Adoption

Now, more than ever, it’s important for teams to feel connected so they can effectively work together, even when they are apart. MS Teams may be the solution you are looking for, but to ensure its long-term success in your organization it’s critical to create a structured Microsoft Teams adoption strategy.

What is Microsoft Teams and how does it fit into the Office 365 application suite?

Microsoft Teams is one of the world’s fastest-growing business apps that is designed to support team collaboration. Described by Microsoft as ‘the hub for teamwork in Office 365,’ the chat-based app makes communication, file-sharing, and collaboration between team members a breeze. 

As an added bonus, Microsoft Teams fully integrates with the Office 365 application suite – including Skype, SharePoint Online, and Exchange – so you can bring all your tools into one place to create a more fluid way of working online.

Microsoft Teams provides the opportunity for a new, more efficient way of working, but only if there is sufficient engagement among end-users. If you are planning on rolling out Microsoft Teams across your organization, creating an effective M365 adoption strategy is vital to ensure the long-term success of the tool. 

Here are 5 top tips to consider when creating a successful Microsoft Teams user adoption strategy for your organization:

Image: Microsoft Teams - MS Teams desktop and mobile.

Establish a Microsoft Teams Adoption Framework

Establishing an adoption framework will help you integrate Microsoft Teams smoothly and successfully, so your organization can get the most out of the platform. Every organization is different, therefore it’s important to create a framework that will work best for your business, your team leaders, and your employees.

Microsoft recommends following a three-phased adoption framework: Start, Experiment, and Scale.

Image: Microsoft Teams adoption phases

Phase Microsoft Teams User Adoption Within Working Groups

When adopting large-scale software like Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, start small and scale up when you are ready. Identify workgroups or teams that you believe would be good early adopters and induct them into Microsoft Teams first. 

You can gather invaluable feedback from these early adopters that will help you to define usage scenarios, fix pain points and gain early insights into how the product is received. These learnings can help you refine your goals and your approach before you introduce the tool to the wider organization.

Make Microsoft Teams Governance an Enablement Practice

Governance is an extremely important factor when getting started with Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams works best as a collaborative hub when it is well-organized and efficiently run. Without a clearly defined governance strategy, it can quickly become overwhelming for users with too many chats, channels, and documents to keep up with.

As a starting point, we recommend defining: 

• Who has administrative rights - define Team Owners
• Who can create Teams
• Naming conventions for Teams and channels 
• A process for archiving inactive Teams & lifecycle management
• Which third-party apps will add value to users
• An external access policy & security and compliance policies

Being clear on these elements will go a long way to establishing an effective structure behind your organization’s use of Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams User Adoption Training, Education, and Self-Service

To truly revolutionize the efficiency of your workplace, Microsoft Teams must have a high level of engagement. You can encourage Microsoft Teams user adoption by facilitating continuous training and education so individuals can fully understand the platform, appreciate its value and feel excited about the opportunities it presents. 

As a starting point, Microsoft has a great library of training videos. On top of this, you could organize training sessions, provide access to online guides and even organize lunch-and-learns to raise awareness of key features and improve Team management skills.

Image: Microsoft has a library of Microsoft Teams training videos

Provide Support for Microsoft Teams Adoption

To encourage widespread Microsoft Teams user adoption and engagement in your organization, it’s important to make it clear to end-users where they can get help if required.

Providing clarity around your support system will help you develop an effective feedback loop so you can continue to improve your educational resources and training to minimize issues in the future. It will also make individual user experiences easier and more enjoyable.

After all, it’s important that employees enjoy using the platform to ensure long-term engagement, so you can experience the benefits Microsoft Teams can bring to your organization.

Want to get even more from Office 365 and Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is an extremely powerful collaboration tool and we hope that these tips will help you to successfully adopt it within your organization. Although the roll-out period can be long and complex, we are confident that the increased efficiency and productivity you will experience will make it worth your while. 

If you want to get even more from Microsoft Teams and make the experience as good as it can be for your team, then we are here to help. At Orchestry, we recognize that the technology landscape for digital workers and organizations has become overly complicated. That is why it is our mission to eliminate the disorder, confusion, and indecision that comes from having too many digital tools to make work as simple as possible.

Orchestry delivers expert insights, best practices, and practical information from Microsoft MVPs and Office 365 experts to take the guesswork out of which Microsoft tool is best to use for maximum efficiency.