Microsoft Teams has seen a surge in popularity, boosted in part by the recent crisis. Many organisations use Teams for daily chat, collaboration, document creation and information sharing. Microsoft Teams provides this directly as a short-term solution that can be deployed immediately.

But as an organisation, how do you keep a grip on your information management and information governance? In this blog, you will find 7 challenges of Microsoft Teams when it comes to creation, sharing, storage and security of documents and information.

Information governance under pressure

Information governance can be defined as all the actions an organisation takes to balance the risk posed by information with the value delivered by information. Information governance focuses on the behaviour around the assessment, creation, storage, use, archiving and disposal of information.

Applying these concepts to Microsoft Teams, there are three main areas where companies need to be sharp:

• The creation of information
• The life cycle of information
• Information security

The creation of information

Every team, channel, conversation, document, meeting note, recording is a piece of information that is stored in a part of Office 365 and may need special attention for the purpose of information governance. 

The way information is created also has a direct impact on accessing that information at a later stage, which is why organisations looking to use Microsoft Teams effectively should ask themselves the following three questions:

What are we using Microsoft Teams for?

First, it is important to understand how employees will use Microsoft Teams. What are the key processes that the organisation wants to replace with Teams? What will be the most important function?

A shared understanding can make it easier for people to know what kind of information they are expected to create (and find) in Teams.

If the main purpose is internal communication, then most of the information created will be conversations, chat logs, meeting recordings, perhaps also meeting notes (all stored in different places). 

If, instead, Teams is also used for project management and collaboration, it is likely that contracts, project plans and client information will also be exchanged, further complicating information management. More on this later in this blog.

Who can create information?

Because of the difficulties in balancing productivity and information management, there is a great need to give everyone in the organisation the freedom to create information. The ability to set up a workspace without having to ask permission, for example, allows for flexibility and quick start-up of projects.

Nevertheless, it is smart to pay attention to the following issues:

• When is a team needed (instead of e.g. a channel)?
• Who should be invited? (internal employees or also external parties)
• What information do we allow on Microsoft Teams and what should we store elsewhere?

How do we classify information?

The naming of teams, channels, projects and documents also deserves attention. If each individual names these according to their own interpretation, you can imagine what chaos it becomes. Otherwise, you get the situation that multiple channels exist for one project, resulting in information being created in two places with all the consequences.

For example, the organisation's naming conventions when labelling documents should be transferred to document creation and storage in Microsoft Teams. 

The same goes for labelling sensitive information, for example.  

Information management systems such as M-Files help label documents with the right metadata to simplify document archiving and retrieval at later stages.

The life cycle of information

Once there is clarity on what Teams will be used for, who will oversee the creation of information and how it will be named (and thus classified), it is time to think about how information will be managed.

What happens to the information? Where is it stored?

How does it move from one state to another in its life cycle - for example, from approval to signing, from expiry to retention?

There are two key questions to ask when looking at information lifecycle management in Microsoft Teams.

How does the information move?

Documents and information generally rarely exist at a single point in time. They are malleable. They are edited, modified, approved, archived and so on.

Who does not know the mechanism of advisory report-V4-FINAL-def-def-latest-version.docx?

This is where it gets tricky in Microsoft Teams, for a few reasons.

Teams is a great tool for communication and collaboration, but it tends to silo information by storing a team's document in that team's SharePoint site - which can only be accessed by the members of that team. On top of that, documents shared 1-1 or in groups are stored in OneDrive. Moreover, Microsoft Teams has no workflow capabilities.

Therefore, organisations deploying Teams must be alert to the flows of information.

• Are there documents that different teams need access to over time - contracts that may be of interest to both a project team and a legal team, for example?
• If so, what is the most effective way to ensure accessibility for employees who are in different teams?
• Is sharing a link to the document in a chat sufficient?
• How can we ensure accountability for the steps needed to move the project forward, such as review, approval, signature?

If the answers to these questions are problematic, it is smart to consider a platform like M-Files that tackles all these issues.

How do we store information?

Following on from the previous question, a company also needs to understand how information is identified, archived and retained (or deleted).

With the previous questions, you should be pretty much able to determine at this point what risks your organisation may be facing.

Next, consider this:

• How information is maintained over time
• How to ensure information is not lost
• How to make retrieval easy
• How the organisation keeps track of changes and versions of documents

There are some features in Office 365 that might support this, but it requires a lot of human effort. With M-Files, you automate these steps and make your organisation audit-ready. For example, automation can help identify documents containing personally identifiable information (PII) and assign them to the right workflows for managing retention and disposition, and tracking the "who" and "when" of potential access and changes.

Information security

The next topic is perhaps the biggest risk of documents and information in Microsoft Teams: information security.

The essence of Microsoft Teams is about communication and collaboration, and this implies that information should circulate freely, at least between people who need it. However, the way this happens in practice carries risks. 

By answering the following two questions, organisations can better assess the risk of information leakage and data loss.

For whom is the information intended?

By default, if you are part of a team (or channels within a team), you have access to all the information that members of the team have access to. This means the entire conversation and all documents stored on the team's SharePoint site - that is, all the documents in the File tab at the top of the workspace.

That doesn't sound very secure, hehe. Suppose you have a team for a project, and also a channel for a specific piece of that project for which you want to invite an external contractor to keep him informed. This external guest will have access to all team-level information, and that might mean documents with sensitive customer data or quotes you have received from other contractors.

This indicates all the more that information is best secured at the document level, rather than at the team (or location/folder) level. That is exactly what M-Files does in Microsoft Teams. 

Which apps and integrations are allowed?

Channels can be customised in various ways by adding both Microsoft and third-party apps, and by connecting to external repositories (currently only Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Egnyte and ShareFile.).

But what if information comes from other systems or software for which no integration exists?

Will everyone then re-create information and thus duplicate it?

With the M-Files integration for Microsoft Teams organisation can connect all their systems, making information from almost any storage location imaginable available in the Teams interface.

The M-Files integration for Microsoft Teams

All the above issues are solved in one fell swoop thanks to the integration of M-Files in Microsoft Teams. 

M-Files partner GeONE, partner of the year, gives no obligation 1-on-1 demonstrations of the M-Files integration for Microsoft Teams. Register for free and find out how to eliminate all the above risks.