Microsoft Teams is used in hundreds of thousands of organizations to help keep remote and hybrid workplaces with dispersed workforces running smoothly. But while Microsoft Teams can seem easy for the user, Teams administrators must stay on top of a wide range of topics, including device administration techniques, quality benchmarks, and security and compliance measures.

With this handy cookbook, author Fabrizio Volpe provides a clear, concise overview of administrative tasks in Teams-along with step-by-step recipes to help you solve many of the common problems that system administrators, project managers, solution architects, and IT consultants may face when configuring, implementing, and managing Microsoft Teams. Think of this book as a detailed, immensely practical cheat sheet for Microsoft Teams administrators.

Recipes in the book will show you how to:

• Apply Teams best practices, compliance, and security
• Automate administrative tasks
• Successfully deploy Teams
• Implement Teams collaboration
• Deploy and manage Microsoft Teams Rooms
• Leverage the monitoring, productivity, and accessibility features
• Foresee roadblocks in migrations to Teams and Teams Voice
• Optimize Teams on virtual machines

When Microsoft Teams was launched in 2017, the reaction was mixed. Some were optimistic about the new solution; others were busy comparing it to competitors that looked to be ahead of Teams in a specific market. Users’ experience with some previous cloud offerings from Microsoft, such as Skype for Business Online, had created some preconceptions (often not positive ones).

Since then, Teams has come a long way in the right direction, covering a lot of ground in a short time, adding features and flexibility, and improving the experience for both users and administrators.

Teams now has a strong position as one of the leading collaboration and communication platforms for businesses and organizations. It is also a welcome “single pane of glass,” providing a centralized and unified interface for users to access and manage various collaboration and communication features, all within a single application.

The range of hardware and software dedicated to Teams has evolved, and now anyone who wants to use the product has a wide variety of solutions that integrate with Microsoft 365 services. Even AI is being gradually added as a new ingredient to Teams, and we will surely see plenty of exciting news in the coming months.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Users and Teams Management

Chapter 2. Microsoft Teams Security

Chapter 3. Microsoft Teams Voice: Voice Users Deployment

Chapter 4. Analog Devices, DECT, and Legacy Hardware Integration with Teams Voice

Chapter 5. Advanced Voice Features in Microsoft Teams

Chapter 6. Microsoft Teams Integration

Chapter 7. Extending Microsoft Teams

Chapter 8. Automating Teams Administration

Chapter 9. Microsoft Teams Rooms

Chapter 10. Monitoring Availability and Quality in Microsoft Teams

Chapter 11. Collaborating with External Users

Chapter 12. Productivity in Microsoft Teams

Chapter 13. Teams and Virtual Machines

Chapter 14. Accessibility and lnclusivity Features in Teams

Chapter 15. Microsoft Teams Governance

Chapter 16. Microsoft Teams Compliance

Chapter 17. Free and Open Source Tools for Microsoft Teams

Chapter 18. Teams and SharePoint

Who Should Use This Book

I’ve tried to capture as much as possible of the current landscape of Teams in this book, ensuring that it provides a comprehensive overview of the information and recipes relevant for a Teams administrator (and, more generally, for all Microsoft 365 administrators who have Teams on their list of competencies).

As an administrator, you play a vital role in managing and optimizing the Teams environment for your organization. The recipes in this book are in a handy format to help you quickly understand and use the features you will manage and deploy.

People who are involved in managing projects that include Teams and adoption experts who are helping companies to adopt a Modern Workplace approach (aimed to optimize collaboration, flexibility, and innovation) can benefit from this book too.

How to Use This Book

I don’t assume that the reader has a deep understanding of Microsoft 365 or Teams. If you have some previous experience as an administrator in one of the various Microsoft 365 products (like Teams, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and so on), and if you’ve had some exposure to PowerShell, you will start from a better position when reading some of the recipes. But I do try to explain all the steps without taking anything as a given.

All recipes developed for this book were tested on a demo tenant, with a user having Global Admin permissions. I suggest readers try the contents of the book with a similar arrangement (for example, you should be able to use a demo tenant using the Microsoft 365 Developer Program). As exciting as it is to work with real-world scenarios, testing the recipes and trying to apply them directly to production is not the best approach, due to the risk of errors or mismatches between the results you expect and the results you will achieve. As a more sensible approach, starting with a demo tenant will work better for your mental well-being, sparing you a lot of stress.

About the Author

Fabrizio Volpe is a senior consultant at Exponential-e. An IT professional with two decades of experience in the Microsoft ecosystem, he has specialized in Microsoft's unified communications products, starting with Lync 2013. He received the Most Valuable Professional award for different Microsoft products and unified communication platforms. Fabrizio is the author of several books on security and Microsoft technologies.