ShareGate product update: April 2021

Want to know what’s changed in your ShareGate apps in the past month? You’re in the right place. Look no further than this April 2021 update.

Welcome to ChangeLog, our monthly series where members of the ShareGate Product Marketing team recap recent updates and changes to ShareGate and ShareGate to help you make the most out of your ShareGate software.

What’s new

In April, we shipped the first part of a two-part initiative that allows you to choose whether you want to contact owners of inactive teams and groups via email or ShareGate’s chatbot. Our product team is also going full steam ahead with all the exciting new features and improvements planned for Q2.

Contact owners of inactive teams via ShareGate’s chatbot

You can now contact owners via our ShareGate chatbot to ask them to manage their inactive teams. Collaborating with respective team owners is the quickest way to clean up teams that have served their purpose since they know best what should be done with their team. Previously, you could only contact owners to act on their inactive teams via email, but we understand that that might not be the most effective method since emails can easily be missed. That’s why we now give you the option of the chatbot or email.

By opting for the chatbot, it’s easily integrated with owners’ day-to-day workflow via Microsoft Teams, and it brings the issues to the forefront of their minds. Once you’ve chosen the chatbot option from the Settings page, once their team becomes inactive, entrusted team owners will automatically be contacted and asked to keep, delete or archive it.

As of mid-May, at your first entrust of a team or group, you will be able to select the chatbot as your preferred method of communication with owners. Otherwise, the default will be notifications sent via email.

Check out our documentation for more on how this feature works.

Other changes and improvements

Here are some other notable improvements and bug fixes for April. Check out the release notes in our ShareGate support documentation for the full list:

• ShareGate:
  • [Patch 14.2.1]: You can now copy files up to 250 GB to Microsoft 365 in both Normal mode and Insane mode. See the patch notes.
• ShareGate: Owners are now warned that if they choose a sensitivity tag for their team or group that doesn’t allow guests, existing guests will be removed.

What’s coming up next? 

It’s exciting times here at ShareGate, as our product team is working hard on new features and improvements that will be released in the upcoming months based on our users’ needs and requests . We have a busy roadmap for Q2, and here’s a sneak peek of what you should keep your eyes peeled for. 

Simpler way of collaborating with your owners using the chatbot

We know it isn’t always easy for you to get the answers needed to make the right decisions about the organization and security of your Teams. Luckily, team and group owners have most of those answers.

That’s why our upcoming feature will allow you to easily identify and individually contact the owners of specific teams and groups, both new and current ones, from which you need additional details using our Teams chatbot. Let’s say you have five teams without a sensitivity, you’ll be able to contact the respective owners via the chatbot to fill in those blanks.

This on-demand collaboration with owners will cover all our policies. It’ll allow you to confirm or get the missing information about a particular team or group’s purpose, sensitivity, inactivity status, and the validity of its externally shared files, whenever you need it.

Review guest access with ShareGate

Many of you have been asking for the ability to review your guest users in Teams, and we hear you! As time goes on, you might be faced with an increasing number of external people being invited to take part in all sorts of projects. It’s hard to know whether these guests should still have access to the resources they were given access to. Soon, you’ll be able to schedule periodic reviews to ask owners to review guests in their own teams or groups, and remove the ones who should no longer have access. That way, you can make sure that important information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Get better visibility on what goes on in your tenant in ShareGate

Having visibility on what goes on in your tenant is critical to keeping it safe and secure. Part of that is knowing when and what problems have occurred, and ideally being able to take action on them before they escalate. That’s why our team is working on an automated monthly digest sent directly to your inbox from ShareGate which will highlight the two most pressing issues that require your attention. It could be the case of teams or groups with the wrong security settings or an increasing number of ownerless teams or groups. Here’s a little sneak peak of what the monthly digest will look like: 

Bringing these issues directly in your inbox saves you time and gives you the chance to proactively minimize their possible impact on your organization and overall security of your tenant.

Upcoming Live Masterclass: Mastering Microsoft Teams management across the entire lifecycle

In collaboration with Microsoft MVP Jasper Oosterveld, on May 19th 2021, our Marketing team will be hosting an exciting 3-part masterclass on Teams lifecycle management.

In this masterclass, you’ll learn to build a solid Microsoft Teams foundation from the moment of creation, maintain a healthy and secure Microsoft Teams environment at scale, and define end-of-life strategies to keep your Teams organized and up-to-date.

Sign up to the masterclass!

“Ask the Expert” weekly drop-in sessions

Our Customer Success team has been hosting live “Ask the Expert” sessions to share their best practices with you, go over more complex use cases, and answer your most burning questions about both ShareGate and ShareGate. It’s also the perfect opportunity to share your experience with your peers (and maybe learn a thing or two from them as well!).

Sessions covering ShareGate products take place twice a week. Join our Tuesday sessions if you’re a new customer looking for help with getting started. Or, join our Thursday sessions if you’re a longtime ShareGate client looking for help with a particular scenario or looking to learn more about new features and capabilities. 

Learn more about our sessions and sign up for the next one here.