Innovative learning course: Microsoft 365 governance
Without proper governance, organizations may experience a security breach, data loss, non-compliance with industry regulations, and wasted resources. Learn how a well-designed Microsoft 365 governance strategy can help prevent unauthorized access to critical data, establish the right permissions for employees, and automate routine tasks to ensure maximum productivity for your end users and your IT team.
What you’ll learn in our course on data governance
What exactly to include in your governance strategy
The impact of good governance decisions and bad governance strategies
Understanding the relationship between cloud governance and self-service
How to build and use a governance strategy communication framework
How to keep your strategy optimized even after deployment
The best policies, processes, and automations to help you run your governance strategy effectively
How to monitor and report on your governance strategy’s success and make improvements based on the data
Why is a governance framework so important?
A governance framework ensures that Microsoft 365 is used effectively to support your organization’s objectives. A detailed governance strategy can help ensure your Microsoft 365 environment is secure, its services are being used efficiently and widely by employees, and there’s consistency across your organization.
We all know governance is important, but creating a governance strategy, implementing it, and continually optimizing it can be an intimidating and time-consuming project for many organizations.
Unfortunately, the alternative is that you waste time with manual processes and a lack of visibility. Managing external users with access to your sensitive information and data, managing permissions, and managing other governance controls is crucial to a secure Microsoft 365 environment. And ensuring proper lifecycle management of resources, naming conventions, and abiding by regulatory requirements is essential to make sure your tenant is running smoothly.
Trying to do all of that manually without a cloud governance strategy in place is complicated, labour intensive, and time consuming.
Additionally, not using governance policies, or not properly communicating governance policies to employees, often leads to increased costs from wasted resources because end users don’t know how to use the tools provided to them.
This leads to not just a waste of money on the right tools that being underutilized, but a loss in productivity for the organization. If employees aren’t using Microsoft 365 to collaborate and communicate, then you can be sure that it will take them longer to complete their work.
In our course, you’ll get step-by-step instructions on how to create a governance strategy, tips for which stakeholders to include, and advice on how to implement and monitor your strategy’s success.
Optimize governance in Microsoft 365 course objectives:
This course is part of our Microsoft 365 Maturity Program, aiming to help IT pros improve their Microsoft 365 strategies, implementation, and monitoring.
This course explains what sets a good Microsoft 365 governance strategy apart and gives a detailed breakdown of how to plan, build, and analyze your office 365 governance strategy. It also talks about how you can optimize your governance strategy—no matter how long you’ve been in Microsoft 365—and how to communicate changes to end users.
Each lesson has exercises to help you get started and tips from Microsoft MVPs to help you increase your expertise.
Very informative in plain, simple and straightforward words.
— Dennis
ShareGate Academy Student
Based on 12 reviews
Summary of the course
This course is divided into 6 modules and 11 lessons
Module 1: Welcome to the Microsoft 365 Maturity Program course on governance (2 mins)
Module 2: The importance of a governance strategy in Microsoft 365 (6 mins)
Module 3: The relationship between self-serve and governance (3 mins)
Module 4: What a great governance strategy looks like (15 mins)
Module 5: Resources and tools available to help you implement your governance strategy (8 mins)
Module 6: Overview: How to optimize governance in Microsoft 365 (3 mins)
40 minutes to complete
Free Assessment
Not sure where to start?
Assess how your unique Microsoft 365 environment is performing for free with our online tool. It only takes 10 minutes, and you’ll get personalized results and tips for improvement.
ShareGate Academy is ShareGate’s learning platform. We offer free, online courses on all kinds of Microsoft 365 topics, from adoption to sprawl, from Microsoft Teams, to SharePoint. ShareGate Academy is here to help IT pros expand their knowledge so they can work smarter, not harder.
We also aim to help you in a way that in turn helps your end users to be more productive. With the rise of hybrid work, IT is increasingly crucial to the employee experience and your organization’s success. The better managed your Microsoft 365 environment, the more likely your end users are to use the tools you provide them, which in turn will maximize the value of your investment in Microsoft 365.
Course contributors
Elle Crosby is the Senior Content Producer at ShareGate. For more than 3 years, Elle has been sharing IT knowledge through ShareGate blogs, eBooks, webinars, and more by demystifying Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams operations.
Accompanied by Samuel Martineau, Solutions Architect at ShareGate, Samuel is presenting and spreading the importance of having a clear Microsoft 365 management strategy at conferences and in ShareGate’s Microsoft 365 Maturity Program.
The Microsoft Maturity Program is approved by Microsoft MVP and VP of Product at ShareGate, Benjamin Niaulin. Benjamin crafts products to help organizations adopt new ways of working with the tools the Microsoft cloud provides. Benjamin has been a Microsoft Certified Trainer since 2008, and is a Microsoft Regional Director and Office Servers and Services MVP.
Microsoft 365 governance strategy course FAQ
What topics are covered in this course?
This governance course cover:
An introduction to the course
The importance of a governance strategy in Microsoft 365
The relationship between self-service and governance
What a good governance strategy looks like
Resources available to help you implement your governance strategy
An overview of the course
Is this course self-paced, or instructor-led?
This course is self-paced, you can view the full course plan here. We know you’re busy, so you can work your way through this course in whatever timeframe works best for you. Plus, you’ll have unlimited access! So, if after completing the course you want to revisit a particular section for a refresher, you’ll always have that option.
What are the prerequisites for the course, and who is the intended audience?
There are no prerequisites for this course! This course was created for anyone who works in the IT department, but especially those who are responsible for managing their organization’s Microsoft 365 environment.
Does the course cover specific Microsoft 365 applications, such as SharePoint or Microsoft Teams?
Throughout the course, examples of specific policies, lifecycle management strategies, security features and more are given for all kinds of Microsoft Office applications, including both SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.
Does the course cover governance best practices for Microsoft 365?
Yes, it does! In module 4, What a good governance strategy looks like, there is an entire section dedicated to Microsoft 365 governance best practices, as well as information on how to effectively communicate your strategy to end users and how to optimize your governance framework after deployment.
Does this course cover managing external access policies?
It does! In module 5, Resources available to help you implement your governance strategy, we discuss automation solutions and monitoring administrative control and auditing resources that can help you manage external access in Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online so you can sleep easy at night knowing only authorized users have access to your sensitive data.
Will the course cover security and compliance considerations when implementing a governance strategy?
Yes, security and compliance are important parts of governance, so they are discussed in this course. However, if you want to dive deep into security and compliance, with specific advice on how to manage permissions, use sensitivity labels, ensure secure collaboration, ShareGate Academy has a specific course on this topic. You can enrol in Improve security in Microsoft 365 for free today.
Does the course cover how to establish policies and controls for Microsoft 365 usage?
Yes, it does! In module 5, Resources available to help you implement your governance strategy, there is an entire section dedicated to policies and controls you can put in place to help with Microsoft 365 usage.
Are there any tools or resources that will be provided to help with governance?
Yes! Module 5, Resources available to help you implement your business goals and governance strategy, is made up of three sections:
Our favourite policies for governance Microsoft 365
Tools to help analyze the effectiveness of your governance strategy
Does the course cover how to monitor and audit Microsoft 365 usage?
Yes, it does! In module 5, Resources available to help you implement your governance strategy, there is a section about how to monitor and audit Microsoft 365 usage to determine the effectiveness of your cloud governance strategy.
Does the course cover how to adjust governance policies and controls as business needs change?
Yes, it does! In module 4, What a good governance strategy looks like, there is a section about how to optimize your governance framework after you’ve already been in Microsoft 365 for a while.
Business needs change, and we all know Microsoft releases updates and new features at a rapid pace, so you need to ensure your governance strategy is adaptable as well. In this course, we cover how to do this and how to create a communication framework to explain these types of changes to end users.
What is the cost of the course, and are there any discounts or promotions available?
All the courses in the Microsoft 365 Maturity Program are free!
Assess your Microsoft 365 maturity for free
ShareGate’s Microsoft 365 maturity assessment tool is a free, online tool consisting of a series of questions to help you identify areas of improvement in how your Microsoft 365 environment is being managed.
