Teams ConsultingMicrosoft Teams works on top of Office/Microsoft 365 and connects with third-party cloud applications to provide real-time conversation and collaboration. Designed as the replacement for Microsoft's Skype for Business Online, Teams offers a single platform to support chat, voice/video conferencing with shared screens and white boards, IP calling, cloud-hosted voicemail, group email, as well as document and app sharing. Microsoft Teams is fully integrated with Office/Microsoft 365 and relies on Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Azure Active Directory for delivering its complete feature set. Your company can run Microsoft Teams exclusively or you can configure a hybrid network model that supports Teams in conjunction with self-hosted Microsoft Skype for Business Server.

Progent's Microsoft Teams specialists can deliver remote and onsite support to assist organizations of all sizes to evaluate the strategic advantages of Microsoft Teams, plan and carry out an efficient migration to Microsoft Teams from Microsoft Skype for Business or Microsoft Lync Server, and tune or troubleshoot a Teams environment. Progent can help your organization to configure and support a cloud-centric collaboration system powered by Teams, and Progent's Skype for Business consulting experts can assist your organization to create a hybrid solution that seamlessly combines Microsoft Teams with your on-premises Skype for Business Server system. Progent can assist you to combine Teams with Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, and Office/Microsoft 365 applications as well as with your in-house PBX system, your PSTN connection. gateway, and conference room telephony products.

Progent's Cisco CCIE network infrastructure consultants are available to assist your company to design and configure a robust network architecture for Teams, and Progent's certified network security and compliance specialists can help your business to create enterprise-wide communications security policies and rules based on industry best practices. Progent's experts can guide you through stubborn IT road blocks or provide comprehensive project management or co-management support to ensure that your Microsoft Teams initiative is carried out on time and within budget.

Key Capabilities of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams combines real-time chat chat, conferencing, IP calling, document co-editing, app integration, and file storage into a single user interface. Microsoft Teams is regularly updated and has achieved feature parity with Microsoft Skype for Business in all essential functions. Microsoft Teams also offers significant improvements in scale, chat, operation with Microsoft 365, and other areas. Also, Teams introduces the structures of Teams and Channels to make it simpler to collaborate on projects, have real-time discussions, share documents and apps, and stage meetings.

Teams and Channels
Teams and channels are defining concepts in Teams for enabling cooperation and organizing knowledge. A team is a collection of people from inside and outside your business who can interact with one another in a productive manner via conferencing and by exchanging discussions, files, and applications. Teams can reflect departments, offices, company initiatives, mutual interests, or anything else that can benefit from a modern collaboration solution. When you establish a team you start a Microsoft 365 group, a SharePoint Online web site and document library, a Microsoft Exchange Online group mailbox and calendar, a OneNote notebook, and a persistent chat workspace. If you make a team from an existing Office/Microsoft 365 group, that group's participants, SharePoint Online site, mailbox, and OneNote team notebook are all added to Microsoft Teams. A team can be public or restricted and can have as many as 10,000 members.

Microsoft Teams Solution Experts

Microsoft Teams is organized around the concept of teams and channels

Channels are chat-based workspaces associated with a team. Each channel other than the default General channel is concerned with a theme you specify. All conversations, file sharing, and conferences for a given theme occur within the associated channel. Channels can be available to all team participants or limited to a defined subset of the team. Authorized team participants can expand a channel by adding apps that be tabs, connectors, and bots. Files shared on a channel via the Files tab are hosted on a SharePoint Online document collection. Managers can define policies to allow or block apps for a channel. Meetings held in a channel can feature shared digital whiteboards, notes, and messages. Integration with Microsoft Stream makes it possible for meetings to be recorded, saved, and played back.

Teams Channels Consulting Services

Channels provide shared work areas within a team

Compatibility with Office/Microsoft 365
The Microsoft Teams user interface operates on top of Office/Microsoft 365 productivity apps and services to provide a cohesive collaboration ecosystem. In addition, connectors allow you to expand Teams with outside apps including Twitter, YouTube, Jira, and MailChimp.

Teams Architecture Consultants

Teams works with SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Stream

Samples of the integration of Microsoft Teams with Office/Microsoft 365 include:

  • Exchange Online and Microsoft Outlook provide group email and calendar services. You can schedule and participate in conferences via either Outlook or Teams. Chat and channel messages are stored in Exchange for solid information security. You can also configure advanced security and data loss protection (DLP) for in-transit email and file attachments.
  • SharePoint Online support allows you to create discussion and news web sites. Extensive options for managing permissions allow secure document sharing in the cloud.
  • Microsoft OneDrive for Business allows secure storage of personal files or documents shared in Microsoft Teams chat, synchronizes file revisions performed while offline, and allows co-editing. Other file storage providers you can append to channels include Dropbox, Box, ShareFile and Google Drive.
  • Azure Active Directory is used by Teams to allow SSO with Microsoft 365 applications, MFA for advanced security, and conditional access rights based on group membership, geolocation, and device status.
How Progent Can Help Your Business to Upgrade to Teams from Skype for Business
Microsoft Teams supplants Skype for Business Online as Microsoft's flagship cloud-based service for unified collaboration. Companies currently relying on Skype for Business or Lync should prepare for the upgrade to Microsoft Teams.

Progent can provide on-demand expertise in the wide array of technologies required to maximize the ROI of your Microsoft Teams deployment. Progent offers the assistance of Skype for Business Online specialists and Microsoft Lync Server specialists to help your organization to prepare your legacy system for upgrading to Teams. Progent's Exchange consultants, SharePoint Online experts, and Office/Microsoft 365 consultants can help you to integrate Microsoft Teams with familiar productivity apps. Progent's phone system integration specialists can assist your organization to connect your phone environment to Microsoft Teams.

Progent offers online or onsite expertise to assist you to resolve occasional IT issues or Progent can deliver end-to-end project management outsourcing expertise to your organization to plan and implement your Teams migration.

Progent's expert support for assisting you to migrate to Teams include:

  • Help you to determine your goals for your Teams deployment
  • Review your current IT assets and call out any additional requirements for migration to Microsoft Teams
  • Check that all users have appropriate licenses for Microsoft 365 apps
  • Provide guidance for selecting a collaboration architecture that includes Microsoft Teams exclusively or a hybrid deployment that integrates Microsoft Teams with self-hosted Skype for Business Server
  • Set up a supported SBC with SIP trunking and PSTN lines to integrate your current telephony environment with Teams
  • Review and revise existing Dial Plans for operation with Teams
  • Establish secure access and efficient workflows for at-home workers and mobile users
  • Establish a policy strategy that meets your internal standards as well as regulatory requirements
  • Plan and test a cost-effective, non-disruptive upgrade process
  • Set up an intermediate or permanent hybrid deployment that supports coexistence between Microsoft Teams and self-hosted Skype for Business Server
  • Configure Azure AD sync, SharePoint and Exchange Online, and OneDrive for Business
  • Migrate content from a self-hosted SharePoint deployment
  • Configure Azure AD Premium P1 and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
  • Set up Azure AD Connect with writeback for hybrid Exchange deployments
  • Configure, install, and administer Microsoft 365 services
  • Deal with DNS and certificate issues
  • Provide mobile computing support by providing iOS integration and Google Android phone and tablet management
  • Set up management tools including Teams Admin Center, Azure AD Admin Center, and Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Center
  • Provide group and individual webinar education
  • Deliver ongoing consulting, programming, and troubleshooting help
Progent's Cisco-certified network infrastructure consultants can help your business to configure your network infrastructure to deliver the scale and availability needed for your Teams environment. Progent can also provide Cisco Unified Communications integration services to integrate Teams with Cisco IP voice/video conferencing technology. Progent's certified network security experts can assist you to define policies for your Teams environment following leading practices. Progent's disaster recovery experts can help your organization to incorporate resilience into your telephony system.

Call or Email Progent for Teams Consulting
To learn more about Progent's upgrade services for Microsoft Teams, phone 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.