Teams Sprawl Can Hinder Your Copilot Rollout. Team Owners Can Help!

Microsoft’s Copilot promises to unlock the power of generative AI and revolutionize the way you work.

By utilizing large language models and analyzing your tenant's data, Copilot can rapidly generate content (e.g. e-mails, docs, slides) that typically takes minutes or even hours to prepare.

Get your Organization Ready for Search

By design, Copilot respects user-specific permissions to any content or information it retrieves and only generates responses based on information users explicitly have permission to access.

What will happen when you enable Copilot to search through outdated documents or documents that users shouldn’t have access to?

We all know the answer — 🗑️ Garbage in, garbage out!

It’s no surprise that Microsoft’s top recommendation on How to get ready for 365 Copilot is to get your organization’s information ready for search.

An important way to improve searchability in your tenant and aid your CoPilot rollout success is to reduce Sprawl in Microsoft Teams.

What is Microsoft Teams Sprawl?

Microsoft Teams Sprawl is the uncontrolled growth and disorganization of your Microsoft Teams implementation, resulting in duplicate, abandoned, or ownerless Teams, Channels, and Documents.

Does this Scenario Sound Familiar?
Company ABC rushed to roll out Microsoft Teams during the pandemic with no real training for end users and no plans for governance.

📼 Roll the tape forward to today. This is what Teams Sprawl looks like…

• People on different teams or channels re-post the same copies of the same information, creating duplicate or disparate versions of the same content.
• Users save their docs to their local computer, making collaborating on teams (or for CoPilot to see) impossible.
• People rename & share different documents with the name “v1, version 2, v3”, further adding to the confusion.
• Nobody knows which version to use or where to find the “Main/Latest Copy”.
• You have many “ghost town” teams and channels with outdated, obsolete and irrelevant documents everywhere.

This confusion, inefficiency, and difficulty in searching for important information decreases productivity and collaboration and hinders CoPilot’s capacity to produce valuable and precise content.

Lucky for you, there’s an easy and important way to correct this problem. Train responsible team owners.

Team Owners can become superheroes 🦸‍♂️ fighting file duplication and overshared access - all in preparation for CoPilot.

As Uncle Ben once told a young Peter Parker — With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

5 (not 10) Commandments for Teams Owners

Receive Training

Teams Owners must be trained in the Fundamentals of Microsoft Teams and Owning and Managing a Team. They must understand how to add or remove channels and members. They must know how to share, version and delete files. This will allow them to evangelize best practices to their members and keep their teams in order.

Manage Team Members

It is essential to perform periodic reviews of the team membership to ensure that only authorized individuals can access the team's resources. During the review process, team owners should assess the team members' status, remove those who no longer require access or have left, and add new members when necessary. This practice helps maintain the team's integrity and ensures all members have access to relevant resources.

Use Private Channels for Sensitive Data

Private channels are used to restrict conversations or files that only specific team members should have access to. Every private channel has its dedicated SharePoint site that is linked to the parent team site. This separate site ensures that only members of the private channel are authorized to access its files.

Manage External Guests

When you welcome external guests, it is important to make sure that their access is temporary and doesn't become an overstay. For instance, if a contractor joins your organization for a project, you should ensure that they do not stay beyond their intended time. Additionally, you should be cautious about sharing sensitive information with external guests that they should not have access to.

Review Files Regularly

Regularly reviewing the files in your team is essential to ensure that any duplicate or obsolete documents are deleted while ensuring the important and relevant information is organized and easy to search.

Although Teams Owners cannot view the content of private channels they are not members of, they can see the names of the channels and work with their respective owners to ensure the files are kept up to date. This helps to maintain a clean and efficient work environment where all the necessary information is easily accessible to the team members.

Want to learn more? 📚

Microsoft Teams Sprawl has been a persistent problem. CoPilot's emergence and Microsoft's recommendation to prepare your tenant for search have increased the need to fix it.

There are some smart people out there who have set out to further solve sprawl by providing additional measures you can and should take.

These efforts include leveraging Microsoft Purview, establishing retention/deletion policies, auditing your environment, and implementing best practices and naming conventions.

I encourage anyone wanting to learn more to check these products and blogs below:

• AvePoint — https://www.avepoint.com/blog/manage/microsoft-teams-sprawl-management
• Orchestry — https://www.orchestry.com/insight/microsoft-teams-sprawl-what-it-is-and-how-to-avoid-it
• CoreView — https://www.coreview.com/blog/how-to-reduce-microsoft-teams-sprawl
• ShareGate — https://sharegate.com/blog/how-to-minimize-microsoft-teams-sprawl-by-cleaning-up-inactive-teams

Happy Reading!