Tips to Optimize Microsoft Teams Post-Pandemic

With the world attempting to return to normal, organizations that have embraced Teams need to think about how to get the most out of it however you will operate moving forward.

The good news is all the firefighting and urgency and late nights trying to get the business operational is behind us.  Home users are up and running, devices are connected, and the business now relies on Microsoft Teams to achieve its collaboration and communication needs. But as we look to reopen offices and work to go back to as close to “normal” as is possible, the reality is the organization is going to run in some sort of hybrid form. Some will go back to the corporate office, while others remain home. The other good news is you already have Teams in place to maintain the levels of productivity the organization has enjoyed over the last few months.

But as IT organizations look to adopt this new hybrid workforce model, your use of Teams needs to be optimized to ensure a consistent user experience and high levels of user productivity.

There are a few reasons why now is the time to begin optimizing:

You’re Teams-invested

In reality, there isn’t some magical, “perfect” time to begin the work of optimizing the connectivity between the user and the Teams services within Microsoft 365; the fact that your organization is “all in” relying on Teams causes it to be critical to the operation and makes now as ideal a time as any.

Your connectivity has never been more complicated

Your userbase today uses a mixture of personal and corporate devices, secure and insecure home networks, varying connection speeds, and network routing that can include either VPN access to the corporate network or going straight to cloud services. This wild blend of connectivity scenarios means that your job of creating a consistent user experience for all of them is many times harder than it would have been pre-pandemic.

Your governance requirements are getting more strict

While we’ve all let off the corporate governance gas pedal during the pandemic, the need to ensure necessary levels of security and compliance are adhered to is only increasing as new regulations are being released or updated. As you begin to plan for a hybrid workforce, the opportunity exists to include this as a consideration as you optimize connectivity to Teams.

You don’t need to look far to optimize

There is a myriad of best practices, software solutions, and recommendations that will help address each and every point of optimization; from the user’s endpoint, to their chosen network path, to Microsoft 365, to the Teams server servicing requests and back. So, there’s really no excuse not to begin the optimizing process.

While the reasons above are all important, the reliance on Teams is really the only thing that matters; Teams is critical to the organization, so you need to find ways to make it run better for every user, regardless of their situation.  If you’re ready to begin the process of optimizing Teams, read my whitepaper, Working in the New Normal: Optimizing Teams in a Post-Pandemic World, and learn four simple ways to optimize Teams for your hybrid workforce.

Written by Nick Cavalancia, Microsoft MVP