Streamline SharePoint and Teams Provisioning with Orchestry
In a past article we discussed SharePoint and Teams sprawl, why it happens, and ways to mitigate the issues.
This post explores designing a provisioning process that streamlines new Teams and SharePoint site creation using the Orchestry platform.
We recently partnered with Orchestry because it’s an effective platform for balancing employees’ needs to focus on doing work with an organization’s need to manage data growth, risk and compliance.
Using a tool like Orchestry for provisioning is one of the most effective ways to create a sustainable process that gets you going quickly and doesn’t require maintenance of any custom development.
What is the ideal provisioning process?
Short answer: It depends. 😊
Longer answer:
In our experience, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all to provisioning. The best provisioning process depends on your organization’s risk tolerance, goals, industry, and admin team resources.
In general, the ideal Teams and SharePoint provisioning process provides your organization with visibility and control over what’s created, who created it, and why they created it.
It doesn’t stand in the way of employees getting work done. That means the provisioning process allows people to create new Teams and SharePoint sites with as little friction as possible so that you reduce bottlenecks, end-user frustration and shadow IT.
Microsoft 365 options for provisioning
You have options for tailoring a provisioning process in Microsoft 365 (M365).
One way to include reviews and approvals during provisioning is to use the Power Platform including Power Apps and Power Automate.
This requires some technical expertise and most likely, using the PnP provisioning engine.
The Power Platform works for simple scenarios but there are a couple of limitations:
A potential learning curve to build a usable Power App and integrate workflows with Power Automate
Time and resources to configure the provisioning process
Time for testing to ensure the scripts are doing what you expect
Maintenance overhead if requirements change
To enable a more robust provisioning process that still has options for reviewing and approvals, we recommend considering a platform such as Orchestry.
What is Orchestry?
Orchestry is a comprehensive governance and provisioning solution that simplifies the provisioning process. In addition, it has a solid suite of capabilities to handle the lifecycle governance of workspaces, compliance management, guest management and more.
Specifically for provisioning, Orchestry integrates into Microsoft 365 to automate SharePoint and Teams creation with approval and compliance features built in.
It offers a user-friendly interface, pre-built templates, and governance features that help you put governance into action.
Let’s explore how Orchestry streamlines the provisioning process.
Orchestry provisioning features
Template-based provisioning
Orchestry provides a library of customizable templates for SharePoint sites and Teams. These templates include predefined settings, permissions, and configurations.
Administrators can create their own templates tailored to specific departments, projects, or process.
When a new site or Team is requested, users can choose from these templates, ensuring consistency and adherence to organizational standards.
It’s common to have templates for the common repeatable scenarios such as:
Project spaces: Create project-specific Teams with predefined channels, apps, and permissions. This helps ensure consistent collaboration across project teams.
Department sites: Set up departmental SharePoint sites with relevant document libraries, lists, and permissions. This can help maintain a structured knowledge base.
Event workspaces: Quickly provision Teams for events, workshops, or conferences. For these repeatable scenarios, the workspace can include relevant apps and resources for efficiency.
The templates can also be setup to go beyond a simple SharePoint site and Team. There are options to add channels, lists, libraries, pages, webparts, OneNote files including tabs and sections, Planner boards with buckets and tasks pre-configured, document templates and more.
The options are robust and save time in repeated tasks like employee onboarding, offboarding, project initiation, and vendor / customer onboarding.
Setup a template to use during workspace creation. Image source: Orchestry
If you’re starting out, we recommend keeping templates simple and focused. Too many options can confuse users, and as your solution grows you can add templates based on feedback.
Approval workflows during provisioning
A common provisioning requirement is an approval process for site and Team requests. This helps administrators manage the growth and ensures that there are valid business reasons for new workspaces.
This is also an opportunity to identify opportunities to work with the business to understand their requirements, gain an understanding of business challenges and opportunities, and build a solution that is more functional than just an "out of the box" or "lift and shift" implementation of SharePoint, Teams or Microsoft 365 technology.
Designing the approval process is an excellent time to emphasize a need to support end users in achieving successful outcomes while also ensuring good company-wide practices are implemented with solid solution design practices.
Generally, we recommend keeping this process as simple as possible to not slow down people’s work and need to collaborate.
The additional process can be streamlined using Orchestry, while at the same time using Orchestry to support adoption of Microsoft 365 company-wide standards.
When a user requests a new site or Team, the workflow triggers a request to designated approvers. Approvers can review the request, ensure compliance, and grant or deny access.
For a streamlined approach, some types of workspaces may require approval, while others are directly provisioned without the approval steps.
Configuring workflow steps. Image source: Orchestry
Governance and compliance foundation
Designing the provisioning process is also a good time enforcing organization-wide standards with consistent metadata, naming conventions, structure and organization.
Orchestry provides the tools to help you put this type of governance into action.
New workspaces in Orchestry have options to add prefixes or suffixes to the name based on your rules, and suggests similar workspaces that might be duplicates or related:
Capture metadata and enforce naming conventions. Image source: Orchestry
This is helpful so that users don’t have to remember the governance guidelines on naming.
We recommend that any naming conventions are simple and easy to read when scanning a list of Teams or sites. Prefixes that are too long, or too cryptic can hinder quick scanning when looking for the workspace you need.
Additionally, naming conventions to keep URLs shorter are important as there is a total path limit in SharePoint for links to files.
Also consider names that help you avoid changes due to potential reorganizations in the future.
The provisioning process in Orchestry can include capturing metadata such as Department or Location in separate fields. This enables other scenarios such as records management, retention policies, search or other business processes.
External access reviews
Another key governance requirement for regulated industries is to make sure that the right external people have access to the information in SharePoint and Teams, and that their access is regularly reviewed.
If external users are added during provisioning or at a later time, Orchestry provides approval workflows and reminders to review external users
Lifecycle management
Orchestry also helps manage the entire lifecycle of SharePoint sites and Teams.
As part of the setup, you can configure expiration dates for sites or Teams, and Orchestry will automatically archive or delete the workspaces when the time comes.
This avoids the clutter that builds over time and reduces risk to your organization by ensuring data retention policies are followed.
During a period of inactivity, owners get email reminders to take action to archive or renew workspaces:
Email reminder for inactive workspaces. Image source: Orchestry
The lifecycle management dashboard provides an all-up view into the activity level and status of the workspaces which helps resolve issues and gives insight to tailor the provisioning process going forward:
Lifecycle management dashboard Image source: Orchestry
Because it’s all part of one IT admin experience, it’s easier to manage this process in the Orchestry dashboard rather than piecing together data from Microsoft Teams and Azure Entra ID admin interfaces.
Finally, a site directory helps end-users find all the newly created workspaces:
Workspace Directory Image Source: Orchestry
Conclusion
Orchestry empowers organizations to provision SharePoint sites and Teams efficiently while maintaining governance and compliance.
By leveraging the options for provisioning, you can streamline the process, reduce manual errors, and enhance collaboration across your organization.
Orchestry is a comprehensive platform designed to simplify and enhance governance, adoption, and standardization within Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and SharePoint Online. Gravity Union partners with Orchestry to support clients with automated provisioning, cleaning up Teams and SharePoint sprawl, providing compliance and governance controls, as well as delivering an intuitive experience for Microsoft 365 administrators.
Reach out to us if you’re considering integrating Orchestry into your Microsoft 365 ecosystem for a smoother experience. We’re here to help!