How BCAA frees up their IT team’s time with Microsoft 365 automation

The challenges

Making Microsoft 365 management sustainable

BCAA has been the leading auto club in British Columbia since 1906. With over 1 million members, they need to organize and secure an enormous amount of data. 

When they were ready to migrate to the cloud, BCAA kept an eye on the future. Senior Product Owner of Microsoft 365 Neda Ilic was leading the team through a phased approach to make sure the transition was a success. 

She says, “We started the journey with our intranet, which was built on SharePoint Online. Then, we moved users to the cloud and empowered them with Office 365 and OneDrive. The next step was moving all the content and collaboration onto Teams.” 

While using ShareGate to migrate their huge 10 TB file share, Neda and her team realized they were going to need a long-term solution to bring more visibility and control to manage issues like permissions, searchability, storage space, and even ransomware. 

They searched for a solution and were thrilled to discover that the best option was built right inside their migration tool. 

Neda says, “I immediately saw the value in ShareGate’s management tools. They filled the feature gaps in Microsoft 365 admin, including group management, which is important to us.” 

Not only would ShareGate help the IT team create effective routines to manage cloud content, but it would also let them hand-off certain responsibilities to Teams owners. 

“We had a lot of content and owners to support. If we spent all our time managing Microsoft 365, we wouldn’t be available to help our end users get the most out of the cloud transition.” 

BCAA set up ShareGate’s automations to create sustainable routines for managing orphaned teams, inactive teams, and external sharing permissions in their Microsoft 365 environment.

“We had a lot of content and owners to support. If we spent all our time managing Microsoft 365, we wouldn’t be available to help our end users get the most out of the cloud transition.”

The solution

A purpose-built tool for Microsoft 365 management

Neda loved ShareGate’s thoughtful configuration right out of the box. 

“I really appreciated that you could set it and forget it,” she says. 

During the original migration, she’d used the ShareGate pre-check report to identify potential issues and was able to adjust the schedule so that mission-critical files would be moved during off-peak hours. 

“ShareGate’s migration auditing capabilities were absolutely great. I could check in after each stage and get a full picture of what went well and what didn’t. That visibility instilled confidence in the owners as well and uncovered things we didn’t even know existed. It was a win for everybody.” 

That same user-driven design made ShareGate’s Microsoft 365 management features an instant hit with BCAA. 

Easy setup, long-term benefits 

The IT team set up governance guardrails to ensure compliance. Neda could also check ShareGate’s pre-built reports on a weekly basis to uncover orphaned, inactive, or mis-categorized teams that ShareGate automatically flags.  

And with the ShareGate chatbot, team owners are assigned the rest of the group management tasks. Not only does this take the load off Neda and her team, it also puts decision-making to those involved. Team owners are best positioned to decide whether a team is still needed and who should have access, for example. 

Neda says the process was effortless. 

“You just put your policies in place, and then the reports and review reminders go out to owners automatically.” 

Robust security routines 

Setting guardrails around external sharing and making sure permissions were regularly reviewed was a critical win for BCAA. 

Neda says, “Information security is very important to our organization. Before, it was almost impossible to find all the sharing links. Now, it’s a scheduled review, and everyone takes it seriously.” 

ShareGate’s external sharing review policy automatically reminds Teams owners to go through their sharing links and guests to remove any that are no longer appropriate. 

Meanwhile, the Permissions Matrix Report provides an overview of all of the users with guest access attached to each team. 

Empowering Teams owners to manage content 

Shifting maintenance responsibilities to Teams owners was an enormous boost for IT. 

With ShareGate, it was easy to create processes that owners could easily understand and execute, and that Neda and her team could trust. 

“Setting it all up was a piece of cake. It took me under two weeks, including all of the communication and training for the owners. Then they were up and running with it—and now it really runs itself.” 

Outstanding support and ongoing development 

One of the reasons Neda chose ShareGate was that every one of their teams, from marketing to development and support, showed that they listen to their customers. 

She’s been continuously impressed by the constant improvements in the tool, and the way that new features are driven by customer feedback. 

“They’ve been an amazing partner to work with, and their support is absolutely incredible. It’s consistently good, it’s very timely, and they really know their stuff. They deliver above and beyond what you expect.” 

One of the new features that will be important for BCAA is Provisioning. With ShareGate, IT teams can now create customizable Teams provisioning templates that help ensure their end users create teams that follow their organization’s guidelines.  

“ShareGate Provisioning is something that we’re definitely planning to implement as soon as possible because we are very passionate at BCAA about digital enablement and really empowering our end users to do their jobs.” 

 Neda is also excited about ShareGate’s administration tools.

“I’m very excited about ShareGate Administration. We have a lot of teams that no longer have operational value, but some of their content is still important. The moment I advertise this feature to our owners, the requests are going to start coming in to consolidate teams.” 

“Information security is very important to our organization. Before, it was almost impossible to find all the sharing links. Now, it’s a scheduled review, and everyone takes it seriously.”

The results

92% of Microsoft 365 management performed by Teams owners

By using ShareGate for Microsoft 365 management, BCAA has increased the quality of maintenance on their content efficiency and security, all while reducing the strain on their IT team. 

In the last year alone, 26% of inactive teams were removed. The remaining teams are more searchable and efficient because the environment is clutter-free. 

Neda says, “Best of all, 92% of these actions were performed by Teams owners. ShareGate is empowering the people who know our content best.” 

The system improved BCAA’s data security. In one month, 70% of eligible groups were reviewed, 33% of external sharing links were removed, and 10% of guest users were removed from the environment.  

“That’s a lot of risk that’s been averted. Our owners are taking the time to ensure that our environment is secure, and ShareGate is enabling them to do that.” 

For Neda, these new Microsoft 365 maintenance processes have brought peace of mind and more opportunity to make an impact for BCAA. 

“For me, the biggest benefit of using ShareGate is that it frees up IT time for other value-added activities. I don’t have to babysit my environment because the governance guardrails are in place.” 

For other organizations looking to empower their teams to better manage content through its lifecycle, she highly recommends ShareGate. 

“ShareGate can help you maintain security and minimize noise for your end users. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to set up, how responsible your end users will be, and how valuable it will be for your technology planning.” 

“92% of maintenance is being performed by Teams owners. ShareGate is empowering the people who know our content best.”