Microsoft Teams ConsultingTeams works in conjunction with Office/Microsoft 365 and integrates with a variety of cloud services to deliver group conversation and collaboration. Designed as a successor to Microsoft's Skype for Business Online, Teams provides a single interface to support messaging, voice/video conferencing with screen sharing, calling, cloud-hosted voicemail, group mailboxes, plus document and app sharing. Microsoft Teams is fully integrated with Office/Microsoft 365 and depends on Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory) for opening up its complete set of capabilities. Your company can use Teams exclusively or you can configure a hybrid model that combines Teams along with self-hosted Skype for Business Server.

Progent's Teams experts can deliver online and onsite expertise to assist companies of all sizes to evaluate the business advantages of Microsoft Teams, plan and carry out an efficient migration to Microsoft Teams from Microsoft Skype for Business or Lync, and tune or debug a Teams deployment. Progent can help you to install and manage a cloud-centric communications system based on Microsoft Teams, and Progent's Skype for Business consulting experts can help your company to create a hybrid deployment that seamlessly combines Teams with your on-premises Skype for Business Server system. Progent's consultants can assist you to combine Microsoft Teams with Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, and Microsoft 365 applications and also with your internal PBX, your PSTN connection. gateway, and in-room telephony equipment.

Progent's Cisco CCIE network infrastructure consultants are available to help you to design and configure a robust network topology for Teams, and Progent's information security and compliance experts can help your business to create communications security policies following industry best practices. Progent's experts can troubleshoot occasional IT bottlenecks or provide comprehensive project management support to ensure that your Microsoft Teams deployment is carried out on time and within budget.

Major Features of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams combines chat, conferencing, IP calling, document collaboration, app integration, and file storage into a single user interface. Microsoft Teams is continually updated and has reached feature equivalence with Microsoft Skype for Business in all essential functions. Microsoft Teams also offers substantial improvements in scale, messaging, integration with Microsoft 365, and other aspects of collaboration. Also, Microsoft Teams brings the structures of Teams and Channels to make it simpler to collaborate on initiatives, have group chats, share files and applications, and conduct conferences.

Teams and Channels
Teams and channels are defining structures in Teams for enabling cooperation and organizing knowledge. A team is a group of people from inside and outside your business who can collaborate with one another in a positive manner via meetings and by exchanging messages, files, and apps. Teams can be based on business divisions, office locations, projects, common interests, or any unifying theme that can benefit from a modern collaboration solution. Whenever you define a team you create a Microsoft 365 group, a SharePoint Online site and document library, a Microsoft Exchange Online group mailbox/calendar, a OneNote notebook, and a persistent chat workspace. If you create a team from an existing Microsoft 365 group, that group's members, SharePoint Online site, shared mailbox, and OneNote notebook are all added to Teams. A team can be public or private and can include as many as 10,000 members.

Microsoft Teams Integration Consulting Services

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 topic you specify. All conversations, document sharing, and meetings for a given theme occur within the appropriate channel. Channels can be open to all team members or restricted to a portion of the team. Authorized team members can expand a channel by inserting 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 permit or reject apps for a channel. Meetings held in a channel can include shared whiteboards, notes, and chat. Incorporation of Microsoft Stream makes it possible for meetings to be recorded, saved, and replayed.

Microsoft Teams Channels Experts

Channels allow shared work areas inside a team

Compatibility with Microsoft 365 Services
The Teams client interface works in conjunction with Office/Microsoft 365 apps to provide a cohesive real-time collaboration solution. In addition, Teams connectors make it possible for you to expand Teams with third-party apps such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Analytics, Jira, and UPS Bot.

Teams Architecture Consultants

Teams integrates with SharePoint and Exchange Online and Stream

Examples of the combination of Microsoft Teams with Office/Microsoft 365 include:

  • Exchange Online and Microsoft Outlook provide group email and calendar functions. You can schedule and attend conferences through either Outlook or Microsoft Teams. Chat and channel messages are held in Exchange for solid data security. You can also set up advanced security and data loss protection for en-route email and attachments.
  • SharePoint Online support enables you to create discussion and news web sites. Extensive options for assigning permissions enable highly secure document sharing in the cloud.
  • Microsoft OneDrive for Business supports secure cloud storage of personal files or files shared in Microsoft Teams chat, synchronizes file updates made while unconnected to the Internet, and allows co-editing. Additional storage services you can manage in Microsoft Teams channels include Dropbox, ShareFile and Google Drive.
  • Microsoft Entra ID (formerly ADD) is used by Teams to allow Single Sign On (SSO) with Office/Microsoft 365 apps, MFA for advanced data security, and conditional access governed by group membership, geolocation, and endpoint status.
Features of Microsoft Teams Premium
Microsoft Teams Premium is an add-on product that allows Teams to be Teams more personalized, intelligent, protected, manageable, and expandable. The rich features provided with Teams Premium offer substantial enhancements to key areas supported by Teams like meetings, webinars, town halls, collaboration, protection, AI-assisted meeting recaps, and virtual appointments. To access Teams Premium, users must subscribe to Microsoft 365 Teams as well as an additional subscription to Teams Premium. Progent can help you to plan, configure, and tune your Teams Premium deployment so your company can extract maximum business value from this leading edge, AI-powered add-on.

Microsoft Teams Premium Integration Experts

Microsoft Teams Premium can be personalized to improve engagement

Ways Progent Can Assist You to Upgrade to Teams from Skype for Business
Teams takes the place of Skype for Business Online as Microsoft's flagship cloud-based platform for unified communications and collaboration. Organizations now relying on Skype for Business or Lync Server should plan for the upgrade to Microsoft Teams.

Progent can provide as-needed expertise in the broad array of IT disciplines required to optimize the ROI of your Teams investment. Progent can provide the assistance of Skype for Business consulting experts and Lync experts to assist you to stage your legacy collaboration environment for upgrading to Teams. Progent's Exchange specialists, SharePoint Online specialists, and Office/Microsoft 365 experts can help your business to combine Teams with familiar cloud apps. Progent's phone system integration consultants can help your organization to connect your phone system to Teams.

Progent offers remote or onsite consulting support to help you to resolve occasional IT issues or Progent can deliver end-to-end project management outsourcing services to your organization to design and carry out a smooth Teams migration.

Progent's expert support for assisting your business to upgrade to Teams include:

  • Assist you to define your goals for your Teams deployment
  • Review your existing IT assets and call out any new requirements for rolling out Teams
  • Check that all workers have correct licenses for Office/Microsoft 365 apps
  • Provide advice for choosing a collaboration solution that uses Teams exclusively or a hybrid model that integrates Teams with self-hosted Skype for Business Server
  • Set up a supported session border controller (SBC) with SIP trunking and PSTN lines to connect your current telephony environment with Teams
  • Check and revise existing Dial Plans for operation with Microsoft Teams
  • Establish connectivity and efficient workflows for at-home workers and mobile workers
  • Create a governance strategy that complies with your internal standards as well as regulatory mandates
  • Plan and validate a cost-effective, phased migration process
  • Set up an intermediate or long-term hybrid implementation that allows coexistence between Microsoft Teams and self-hosted Skype for Business Server
  • Configure Microsoft Entra sync (formerly Azure AD sync), SharePoint and Exchange Online, and OneDrive
  • Upload data from a on-prem SharePoint implementation
  • Configure Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) Premium P1 and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
  • Configure Microsoft Entra Connect (formerly AAD Connect) with writeback for hybrid Exchange environments
  • Set up, install, and administer Microsoft 365 workloads
  • Deal with DNS and certificate issues
  • Provide mobile computing integration by offering iOS integration and Android smartphone management
  • Deploy management tools such as Microsoft Teams Admin Center, Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure AD) Admin Center, and Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Center
  • Configure the Microsoft Teams Premium add-on to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Teams
  • Deliver group and one-on-one webinar education
  • Deliver ongoing guidance, development, and debugging services
Progent's Cisco-certified network infrastructure consultants can help your organization to configure your network resources to deliver the scale and resilience required for your Teams solution. Progent also offers Cisco Unified Communications management expertise to integrate Microsoft Teams with Cisco IP voice and video conferencing systems. Progent's certified network security and compliance consultants can assist your organization to create policies for your Microsoft Teams deployment following industry best practices. Progent's disaster recovery experts can assist you to build resilience into your phone infrastructure.

Contact Progent for Teams Support
To learn more about Progent's upgrade support for Microsoft Teams, phone 1-800-993-9400 or see Contact Progent.