Microsoft Gold-Certified Consultants

Microsoft Teams operates on top of Microsoft 365 and connects with a variety of cloud applications to deliver real-time communications and collaboration. Designed as the replacement for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams offers a single platform to support messaging, audio/video meetings with shared screens and white boards, calling, cloud-hosted voicemail, group email, as well as document and app sharing. Teams is seamlessly integrated with Microsoft 365 and depends on Exchange and SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Azure Active Directory (AAD) for opening up its full feature set. Your company can use Microsoft Teams only or you can configure a hybrid model that combines Teams along with self-hosted Skype for Business Server.

Progent's Microsoft Teams experts offer online and on-premises expertise to help organizations of any size to evaluate the strategic advantages of Teams, plan and implement an efficient migration to Microsoft Teams from Skype for Business or Microsoft Lync, and optimize or troubleshoot a Teams deployment. Progent can assist your organization to configure and manage a cloud-centric communications system based on Microsoft Teams, and Progent's Skype for Business consultants can help your company to create a hybrid deployment that combines Teams with your on-premises Skype for Business Server system. Progent's consultants can assist your organization to combine Microsoft 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-certified network consultants can help you to design and configure a robust network architecture for Teams, and Progent's data security experts can help your company to establish communications security policies following leading. Progent's specialists can troubleshoot occasional IT bottlenecks or provide comprehensive project management support to make sure that your Teams deployment is successfully carried out on schedule and within budget.

Major Features of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams combines real-time chat chat, meetings, IP calling, document co-editing, app sharing, and file storage into a single client interface. Teams is continually updated and has reached feature parity with Skype for Business in all key functions. Microsoft Teams also delivers substantial improvements in scale, chat, operation with Office/Microsoft 365, and other areas. Also, Microsoft Teams introduces the structures of Teams and Channels to make it simpler to work together on projects, have group discussions, share documents and applications, and conduct meetings.

Teams and Channels
Teams and channels are defining structures in Microsoft Teams for promoting cooperation and organizing information. A team is a group of people from inside and outside your company who can interact with each other in a productive manner through meetings and by sharing messages, files, and apps. Teams can be based on departments, office locations, projects, common enthusiasms, or any unifying theme that can benefit from a modern collaboration platform. When you establish a team you start a Office/Microsoft 365 group, a SharePoint Online site and document library, an Exchange Online group mailbox and calendar, a OneNote notebook, and a persistent chat workspace. If you create a team from an existing Microsoft 365 group, that group's participants, SharePoint Online web site, mailbox, and OneNote notebook are all added to Microsoft Teams. A team can be public or private and can have up to 10,000 members.

Channels are chat workspaces within a team. Every channel other than the default General channel is concerned with a topic you define. All discussions, document sharing, and meetings for a topic occur inside the associated channel. Channels can be open to all team members or limited to a defined subset of the team. Authorized team participants can enhance a channel by adding apps that be tabs, connectors, and bots. Any files shared on a channel using the Files tab are located on SharePoint Online. Administrators can define policies to allow or block apps and services for a channel. Meetings occurring within a channel can feature shared digital whiteboards, notes, and messages. Integration with Microsoft Stream allows conferences to be recorded, saved, and replayed.

Integration with Microsoft 365
The Microsoft Teams client interface operates on top of Office/Microsoft 365 apps to deliver a cohesive collaboration ecosystem. In addition, connectors make it possible for your organization to integrate Teams with outside apps such as Twitter, YouTube, Jira, and MailChimp.

Samples of the combination of Microsoft Teams with Microsoft 365 apps include:

• Exchange Online and Microsoft Outlook provide group email and calendar functions. You can schedule and attend conferences through either Outlook or Teams. Chat and channel messages are held in Exchange for solid data security. You can also configure enterprise-class security and data loss protection for en-route email and file attachments.
• SharePoint Online support allows you to build communication and news web sites. Extensive choices for managing permissions allow secure document sharing in the Azure cloud.
• OneDrive for Business allows secure cloud storage of personal documents or files shared in Teams chat, synchronizes document edits made while offline, and supports co-editing. Third-party storage providers you can manage in Microsoft Teams channels include Dropbox, Box, ShareFile and Google Drive.
• Azure Active Directory (ADD) is leveraged by Microsoft Teams to allow SSO with Microsoft 365 applications, MFA for enhanced data security, and conditional access based on group membership, geolocation, and endpoint state.

Progent can provide as-needed support for the wide range of technologies required to maximize the business value of your Microsoft Teams deployment. Progent offers the assistance of Skype for Business experts and Lync consulting experts to help your organization to prepare your legacy system for upgrading to Microsoft Teams. Progent's Exchange experts, SharePoint consulting experts, and Office 365 consultants can help you to combine Microsoft Teams with familiar cloud apps. Progent's telephony integration experts can help your business to connect your phone environment to Teams.

Progent can provide online or onsite consulting support to assist your business to overcome occasional technical obstacles or Progent can provide end-to-end project management outsourcing expertise to your organization to plan and implement your upgrade to Microsoft Teams

Progent's consulting support for helping your business to migrate to Microsoft Teams include:

• Help you to define your objectives for your Teams deployment
• Review your current resources and identify any additional requirements for rolling out Teams
• Verify that all workers have correct licenses for Office 365 apps
• Provide advice for choosing a collaboration architecture that includes Microsoft Teams exclusively or a hybrid model that integrates Microsoft Teams with self-hosted Skype for Business Server
• Configure a compatible SBC for SIP trunking and PSTN lines to integrate your existing phone environment with Teams
• Check and revise current Dial Plans for operation with Teams
• Establish secure access and workflows for telecommuters and mobile users
• Create a governance plan that meets your internal standards as well as regulatory mandates
• Design and validate a cost-effective, non-disruptive migration process
• Set up an intermediate or permanent hybrid deployment that allows concurrency between Microsoft Teams and self-hosted Skype for Business Server
• Set up AAD sync, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and OneDrive
• Migrate content from a on-premises SharePoint implementation
• Configure Azure AD Premium P1 and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
• Set up Azure AD Connect with writeback for hybrid Exchange deployments
• Set up, install, and administer Office/Microsoft 365 workloads
• Deal with DNS and certificate issues
• Provide mobile computing support by providing Apple iPhone and iPad integration and Google Android phone and tablet management
• Deploy management utilities such as Microsoft Teams Admin Center, Azure AD Admin Center, and Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Center
• Deliver group and one-on-one online training
• Deliver ongoing consulting, programming, and debugging services

Contact Progent for Microsoft Teams Consulting Services
To find out more about Progent's migration services for Microsoft Teams, call 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.