In fact, at Centric Consulting, we\u2019ve seen many companies truly embrace Microsoft Teams<\/a> as a platform not just to support remote workers with Teams\u2019 modern chat, calls and meeting features, but also to manage collaboration and standard business operations like enterprise communications or data analytics<\/a> and process automation<\/a> for individual groups.<\/p>\n These companies are creating group collaboration workspaces (i.e., teams within Microsoft Teams) to provide unique and highly integrated capabilities.<\/p>\n But even organizations like these may only be scratching the surface. For example, the Teams App Store<\/a> offers 1,001 (and counting) Microsoft, third-party and custom apps that allow workers to collaborate in the context of their Teams workgroups wherever or whenever they want. These integrated apps enable workers to stay in the flow of their work so that they rarely need to go to other applications outside of the team they are working in, increasing their overall efficiency and effectiveness.<\/strong><\/p>\n In this blog, we\u2019ll talk about how these integrated apps work safely within Teams as a platform. In future blogs, we\u2019ll dive deeper into other Microsoft products that integrate with Teams \u2014 Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Power Platform<\/a> and Microsoft Voice \u2014 and explore their collaboration potential.<\/p>\n Our goal is to help you leverage Microsoft Teams to its fullest capabilities, stretching the boundaries of its basic features to make Teams a true platform \u2014 a central hub and foundation for your organization that delivers the most ROI on your Microsoft 365<\/a> investment.<\/p>\n But before we get to specific solutions, let\u2019s talk about governance as the first step in getting you from the \u201ccrawl\u201d stage to the \u201crun\u201d stage on your Teams journey<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many people are now struggling with Teams because they rolled it out quickly without putting proper governance in place. This is perfectly understandable and totally acceptable given recent circumstances. When you transition from a traditional workplace to a 100 percent remote<\/a> or hybrid environment<\/a> overnight, your focus is getting a solution up quickly.<\/strong><\/p>\n But now that the dust has settled, you may find yourself with an out-of-control number of teams in your organization, inconsistent team naming conventions, stagnant teams, duplicate teams and more. As a result, workers may be frustrated, causing adoption to drop. Everyone feels the pain, including customers, partners and vendors.<\/p>\n An additional challenge is the lack of investment in resourcing Adoption and Change Management<\/a> plans. If you just \u201cturned on\u201d Teams and let it go, without sufficient communications, training and tactics like change champion networks and resistance management efforts, you and your end users may be regretting it now.<\/p>\n Good governance is the solution to these problems, but it\u2019s easier said than done. First, what constitutes \u201cgood\u201d governance will vary from organization to organization. Second, governance is a delicate balancing act. Too many controls and too much governance will make it difficult for end users to use the tool. Too few controls and governance will frustrate not just users but also IT, Security and Compliance administrators.<\/p>\n The end result: Users are unhappy, customers are unhappy, adoption drops, data may be at risk, and your ROI is dramatically decreased.<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s why you need to put a formal, intentional and fully resourced Adoption and Change Management Plan in place. And if you feel like it\u2019s too late, don\u2019t worry. We recently partnered with Orchestry<\/a>, an adoption and standardization platform that can help you reign in Teams and other tools across the Microsoft 365 suite.<\/p>\n Once your governance is in place, you can start exploring how apps integrate with Teams and more.<\/p>\n\n Governance, the First Step Toward a Teams Collaboration Platform<\/h2>\n