Teams

Latest Articles

Bridging the Gap Between Microsoft Teams and Email

Teams is mostly an internal communications platform while email connects billions of people around the world. Inside Microsoft 365 tenants, you might need to connect Teams and email together. In this article, we discuss the out-of-the-box features available to link the two and describe some of the positive and negative points of each. You can certainly bridge the gap between Teams and email, but maybe Microsoft could grease the connection just a little more...

January 25, 2022

How to Manage Teams Apps Permissions and Policies

As Microsoft Teams continues to be rapidly adopted across the globe, the number of applications that integrate with Teams grows as well. So much that it's often difficult for decision-makers and administrators to determine what apps are beneficial to their organization and necessitate inclusion. Fortunately, the Microsoft Teams admin center provides the data around each app you need to decide. This article helps you navigate the Teams admin center; explores the various app types available; and provides detail around permission policies, setup policies, and things like Resource-specific consent you’ll want to familiarize yourself with so you can effectively manage Teams apps for your organization.

January 12, 2022

How to Use Cloud Shell from the Microsoft Teams Admin Center

Microsoft has updated the Teams PowerShell module to allow it to run in a Cloud Shell session. This is good news if you need to run one or two Teams cmdlets without access to your normal workstation, but it's not so good if you expect to run code which runs well in normal PowerShell sessions. The limitations which exist get in the way of getting work done, which is a pity.

December 14, 2021

Moving Teams Phone Systems During Tenant-to-Tenant Migrations

With the COVID-19 pandemic driving rapid adoption of Office 365, tenant-to-tenant migrations are becoming more common. While content on this subject is plentiful and readily available, little detail exists around how to move the Teams Phone system as part of a migration. Jason Wynn and Mike Weaver detail best practices around testing prior to proceeding.

December 13, 2021

Microsoft’s Bold Vision for Loop Might Crash Due to User Habits

Office 365 tenants are now getting to use Loop components in Teams chat. Some are very excited at the new technology; others are less so. It all depends on how you use current composition tools and how easily work habits can embrace ever-changing Loops. In this article, we look at some of the challenges facing user acceptance of dynamic composition as seen in Loops.

December 7, 2021

How Long Should Teams Chat and Channel Retention Be?

Governance and Compliance can be a complex subject, especially in the context of modern collaboration. While cloud services and mobility have improved productivity and collaboration, it has also become essential to secure and monitor that data and protect sensitive information on-premises, across devices, SaaS applications, and cloud services. Kat Greenan provides more context around retention policies, specifically for Microsoft Teams, to remain compliant.

December 6, 2021

Comparing Functionality in Teams Essentials and Teams Free

On December 1, Microsoft launched Teams Essentials, a new product that isn't connected to Microsoft 365 or Office 365. Teams Essentials looks a lot like Teams Free (launched in 2018). We checked out the functionality available in Teams Free and compared what you can get for nothing against what Microsoft says is available in Teams Essentials for $48/user/year. Small organizations certainly have a choice, and for an extra $12/year, they can get Teams and Microsoft 365.

December 2, 2021

Use PowerShell to Create a Report About the Teams Policies Assigned to User Accounts

Like all the other Microsoft 365 administrative consoles, the Teams admin center doesn't have any print options. If you want to print off any kind of information about Teams settings, you need to write your own code. PowerShell makes it easy to create a report about the Microsoft Teams policy assignments for user accounts. In this article, we explain how to extract policy information and generate a HTML report.

November 29, 2021

Loop, Mesh, Connect IQ, and Lots of Teams Dominate Office at Microsoft Ignite 2021

The Office news at Microsoft's Fall Ignite event was dominated by Teams and technology associated with Teams. A new Microsoft 365 app called Loop will be available in 2022 and we'll have the chance to use Connect IQ to make our messages even more intelligent than they are now. And if you really get funky, you can join a Teams mesh meetings in a virtual environment. But the bad news is that Teams Shared Channels are delayed until preview in early 2022.

November 2, 2021