{"id":29375,"date":"2020-04-29T15:25:59","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T19:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/?p=29375"},"modified":"2022-08-02T20:26:58","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T00:26:58","slug":"microsoft-teams-for-government-nonprofit-and-educational-institutions-a-webinar-qa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/blog\/microsoft-teams-for-government-nonprofit-and-educational-institutions-a-webinar-qa\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Teams for Government, Nonprofit and Educational Institutions: A Webinar Q&A"},"content":{"rendered":"
We have seen unprecedented growth in the use of remote-working tools such as Microsoft Teams since the start of the COVID-19<\/a> crisis. Microsoft<\/a> recently reported 2.7 billion Teams meetings on a single day \u2013 March 31, 2020.<\/p>\n Usage has grown across all sectors, including government, nonprofit and education. Government adoption is being aided by a free six-month Office 365 Trial<\/a> for government agencies, called the G1 Trial. The Department of Defense (DoD) alone is rolling out about four million instances of Teams to implement its Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) Environment. The education and nonprofit sectors will follow suit through Microsoft’s free Office 365 A1 license.<\/p>\n As Linda Stevens<\/a> and Michael McNett<\/a> have noted, the transition has not always been smooth \u2014 but it’s getting better. On April 14, Stevens, McNett and Microsoft Senior Account Executive Jim Estepp held a webinar to share best practices with organizations in the government, nonprofit and education sectors and to answer users’ questions.<\/p>\n “It really doesn’t matter what type of agency or organization you’re with, there’s a way you can leverage these tools to improve some of the challenges we’ve seen,” McNett said. “The first step is getting Teams deployed, but we have found that in most cases, getting the technology on people’s computers is the easiest step. Driving adoption and helping them understand how to leverage it and make it part of their lives is the bigger challenge.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The participants discussed several scenarios they have encountered working with government clients:<\/strong><\/p>\n “If you think that we can just turn Teams on and people will come and use it because now they’re remote \u2013 don’t necessarily believe that,” McNett said. “You need to have an intentional approach to make sure people understand why you’re doing this. If you don’t do that, they’re probably going to go back to their old way of doing business, which probably means email, or they’ll bring in some third-party, non-approved tool that you will have no control over.<\/strong> That can put your organization and its information at risk.”<\/p>\n The Microsoft Team experts offered this advice:<\/strong><\/p>\n McNett took a closer look at governance and Teams by discussing DoD, non-DoD, and nonprofits and educational organizations separately.<\/p>\n For DoD, everyone will abide by the same governance rules across the agency, and they won’t have emailing or calendaring in place. That means people using Teams in the CVR can’t schedule meetings directly from within Teams, though they can still create and communicate meeting times.<\/p>\n However, DoD employees will retain control over certain aspects of their Teams environment, including putting some manual processes and policies in place to support governance areas such as good team naming conventions. DoD employees can go to www.cloud.mil\/CVR<\/a> for more guidance.<\/p>\n Non-DoD government organizations can obtain their own Office 365 Tenants while retaining complete control over governance. However, organizations receiving Teams service from another agency, such as a city or county government organization, may be subject to governance policies already in place, though they may have with some control over how employees use it.<\/strong><\/p>\n Nonprofit and the educational customers will probably own their own Office 365 Tenants, subject to Microsoft’s specific licensing for their organizations. McNett encouraged them to take advantage of the documentation Microsoft provided for organizations of various sizes and their specific needs.<\/p>\n Finally, for adoption, McNett advised monitoring Teams once organizations roll it out to identify pockets of growth and resistance. That information can help drive training for users with varying levels of skills and comfort with remote-working platforms.<\/p>\n\n
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However, whatever the scenario, communication, education, adoption and governance are critical.<\/h4>\n
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