In the third blog of our how-to series, we’ll look at how you can reduce Teams sprawl without restricting users’ ability to contribute, using ShareGate’s Teams management tools.
👉Free online course: How to get sprawl under control now and in the future.
It’s no secret that Teams usage has grown exponentially. And with the hybrid workforce here to stay, there’s no sign of it stopping.
Its surge in popularity has also led to the development of unforeseen challenges for IT admins, such as dealing with duplicate teams, managing team creation, and sorting out idle resources.
The main challenge we’ll be tackling in this post is the issue of “sprawl”. Left unmanaged, sprawl can negatively impact user adoption and their ability to collaborate on projects and find the resources they’re looking for.
Microsoft doesn’t provide any native solutions to this issue, but you can find the answers you’re looking for in a third-party tool.
In this article, we’ll explore how ShareGate is designed to minimize sprawl and help you keep your environment under control.
Table of contents
How to prevent Teams sprawl
Some believe the best way to prevent Teams sprawl is by limiting the end user’s ability to create teams or by putting in place a provisioning process that requires approval by IT admins before a team gets created.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t solve the problem. Some users might get frustrated with the lack of flexibility and decide to use unapproved tools as it might be quicker and simpler. If there’s a will, there’s a way!
Sadly, in your case, that’s not what you want. Not only would that affect Teams user adoption, but it could also lead to another potential issue – shadow IT. Preventing team or group creation altogether might seem like a viable solution, but along with dealing with shadow IT, you’ll still be left to figure out a solution to manage teams and groups that are no longer in use.
Should you really do something about it? Yes, you should.
While new teams and groups are created daily, old ones that have been forgotten or have served their purpose continue to live on in your environment.
Without access to the necessary information to take action on these teams and groups, you run the risk of making the wrong call. If you accidentally delete a team that was only temporarily inactive, you’ll get a request from an alarmed user trying to figure out what happened to their team. If that happens once, that’s alright, but if it happens to multiple teams regularly, then you end up wasting valuable time.
On the other hand, if you don’t do anything, your tenant becomes increasingly cluttered, making it hard for you and your users to find the resources you need, which can easily lead to frustration.
Let’s look at how most of you currently deal with inactive teams and groups using Microsoft’s tools.
How to find and manage inactive teams with Microsoft’s tools
Before you can clean up inactive groups and teams, you have to identify them. Unfortunately, there is no straightforward way for you to do this with Microsoft’s tools and multiple admin centers. Instead, you’re faced with two options:
- Pulling usage reports from Teams and other Microsoft apps that need to be manually reconciled
- Running PowerShell scripts that need interpreting.
Let’s be honest, no matter which one you choose, they’re equally time-consuming.
Now let’s say you’ve pulled and interpreted the usage reports from Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook or via PowerShell; what do you do next?
You get in touch with each team owner and ask them what they want to do with their inactive team or group. If you’re lucky enough, they’ll get back to you in a timely manner with a clear answer. Chances are you’ll instead have to run after owners and repeat this until they get back to you. Finally, once equipped with their answers, you manually delete or archive those that are no longer needed from either the Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Teams admin center.
Every time you want the latest information about inactive teams and groups in your tenant, and how to manage them, you’ll have to go through these steps. Repeating this process periodically sounds like a drag! There must be an easier way, and that’s a challenge we’ve successfully tackled at ShareGate.
A great how-to article that details four ways you can: Find inactive Microsoft Teams and groups
Use ShareGate to manage your Teams sprawl quickly
Cleaning up inactive teams and groups to prevent Teams sprawl shouldn’t be complicated or time-consuming. It should be easy peasy!
That’s why from the moment you connect your tenant to ShareGate’s Teams management module, it crawls your teams and groups to identify the inactive ones. With a single click, you can easily filter to see them in one centralized place. Since teams and groups are automatically crawled regularly, there’s no need for you to schedule running PowerShell scripts or reports to then manually reconcile.
You have the option to delete, archive, or keep inactive teams or groups yourself. Unlike in Microsoft, when you archive a team with ShareGate, it’s removed from Microsoft Teams, and not left in “read-only” mode. That way, users cannot see nor access it anymore – truly cleaning up your environment!
But if you’re like many of our users, you don’t necessarily know what should be done. Rather than leaving it as is or risk choosing the wrong option, you can directly contact owners via email or our Teams chatbot. Owners should take responsibility for the things they create, and there’s no better way to remind them of that than by asking them to clean up their own idle team or group. Since their decision takes effect immediately, meaning there’d be nothing left for you to do, why not have ShareGate automatically contact owners to act, whenever their team or group turns inactive?
The ability to collaborate with owners is so crucial, as they are the ones who know best which decision should be taken for their team or group. Otherwise, you’d easily spend your days keeping track of teams and groups that have turned idle, chasing after owners and manually implementing their decisions – a vicious cycle with no end in sight.
If you’re ever faced with inactive teams or groups who also happen to be orphaned (without an owner), easily promote a member to owner, directly from our app. That way, you can rest assured that there’s someone responsible for deciding on behalf of the team or group. Otherwise, it could stay indefinitely within your tenant, contributing to Teams sprawl, and no one wants that.
If you’re ready to clean up your Microsoft Teams without having to restrict users’ use of the app, try out ShareGate for free!
In the next article of this series, we’ll take a look at how ShareGate can help you better understand why users create teams and just how much of a risk they pose to your organization.
