Enhancing Government Collaboration with Microsoft Teams: Key Features and Best Practices
Explore how Microsoft Teams revolutionizes cross-agency collaboration in government, focusing on chat, meetings, and Teams. Learn governance tips and resources.
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Collaboration and Communication using Microsoft Teams in Government
Added on 09/08/2024
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Speaker 1: Hi folks, welcome to Microsoft Ignite 2020. My name is Rima Reyes and I am a Principal Program Manager in Microsoft Teams Engineering. My role is a little unique because I focus just on Gov, which is what our topic is going to be about today. Today we're going to talk about collaboration and communication using Microsoft Teams in government, and hopefully I'll dispel some rumors or some misconceptions about how we do cross-agency collaboration. As I said before, my name is Rima Reyes. My favorite quote is really all about being yourself because hey, everybody else has already taken. I'm pretty authentic for those who know me. I'm sure there's a few folks in the crowd who are probably nodding. Yeah, she's pretty real. That's her on camera and in person. I was actually born and raised in the DC area, which is why I've got some pictures of DC. You can also see my dog Levi. He loves Teams. Clearly, he has to. He's part of the family, so he's got to love Teams. You can also follow me on LinkedIn and on Twitter. On Twitter, I tend to post some announcements on recent releases regarding Teams, so be sure to check those out. Today we're going to talk about a few mission-focused collaboration principles and what's blocking agencies today. Then we're going to dive into the three feature areas for cross-agency collaboration in Microsoft Teams. Those core areas really focus around chat, meetings, and Teams themselves. Then we'll go through a quick governance checklist, and I'll be sure to leave you with some resources on how to get started. We know in government, it's really important to empower your people and your workforce to collaborate effectively. I talk a lot about mission outcomes. That's really key because a lot of times we hear about business outcomes, but in government, we're not business. It's about the mission and it's about completing that mission effectively. That's why this is really a topic that's near and dear to my heart as well. Just because with today's landscape and scope of natural disasters and things we've got going on in our lives, being able to collaborate with external agencies when it comes to achieving those mission goals is really key. Sometimes we have challenges and barriers across agencies when we want to work effectively. Some of those barriers can be between even departments themselves within a government agency, or it can be, hey, we've got a really good paper-based system, but we just don't know how to bring that to the Cloud. Sometimes it's all about finding or accessing the right information at the right time, and that's really, really key. Right timing is key. Then also staying connected when you're working remotely. If you're out in the field or if you're working a natural disaster or a forest fire, what does that connection look like for you, and what are the tools available to you when you're out in the field? Then obviously for government, protecting all of this extremely sensitive information is a top priority for us in Microsoft, obviously for me and for your agency. We're really hoping that teams can help bridge that gap today, especially with all these disparate systems and bringing them close together, bringing people close together, I think is really going to revolutionize the way we look at these mission scenarios and how we complete them and how we communicate with others to get them done. Digital transformation is always a key word in Microsoft. I like to also use the word tech revolution, that's just me personally. But really what that means is we want to empower great people with the right technology and how it can transform government and how they work together. I've had the blessed experience of being able to work with the best and brightest minds in government in my past career, even before Microsoft when I worked at the White House or when I worked for other large federal agencies before that. It's really amazing to see how much people put their heart and soul into the mission and into helping the citizens of this amazing country. Again, that's why I'm very passionate about this space. It comes from a place of my heart really, which is why I care so much and I really lead with my heart in this space. That's why this topic is so key as to how we get the government into this new tech revolution, this new era of digital transformation. Some of the key things that we want to really achieve here are improved customer satisfaction or end-user satisfaction, that's key, or even improved citizen satisfaction. How we interact with citizens is also important. We also want to operate at a much higher efficiency. There's so much to do in today's day and age and not enough people to do it, that efficiency is key to getting all of those things done. Then obviously, we want to increase our employee engagement, especially during a time like this. It's really important to make sure that we're connecting with one another and having the right tools to do that. I like to focus or dive into a quick scenario here, in terms of who we communicate whenever we are in the US government. For example, if we have a storm, let's say, which actually we have one happening right now down South. If there's a storm brewing, there's so many agencies that can come together just to help coordinate or even help our citizens get to safety. We've got federal agencies involved, we'll get state and local government involved, sometimes county or city government will get involved in those scenarios as well for evacuations, for example. Sometimes we'll have the US military, for example, the National Guard to help with evacuations or to rescue folks. Then we also have defense contractors there as well to help the military, to help federal agencies. Then at the end of the day, we have outside organizations and US persons that we have to work with. When we look at cross-agency collaboration, especially when we're focused on any mission scenario, it's not just one agency that does that mission, it's usually a collection of agencies that get that mission done or solve whatever problem that's happening. That's really key when we think about this, the importance of being able to communicate with other agencies is so profound here. I just wanted to highlight just one scenario that I like to talk about. When we look at cross-agency collaboration in Teams, I like to focus on just three main areas. When we look at these three main areas, they're really focused around chat, around meetings and calling, and around a team in Teams. When we have chat, chat really means being able to communicate with another user or another trusted user in an organization that you trust. That's just a one-on-one chat. That's a really easy, lightweight way to dive into the cross-agency collab scenario just through chat. Then another scenario that we have is really around meetings and calling. You want to empower your users to invite outside people to come in and join those team meetings, just like what we did with Skype. Then in Teams, when you want to have a really rich collaboration experience, having guest access enabled is really going to kick all that up a notch. You can enable guests from other agencies, again, that you trust to participate more fully and securely in conversations, in Teams, in meetings, in one-on-one chat, in files. I mean, the opportunities are going to be a little bit more endless there, and configurable as well. That's the real key thing here is that everything here is configurable based upon your security guidelines or your security needs. Let's dive into chat. When we talk about chatting with other agencies, we're talking about chat federation. In the Teams world, we call that external access. It's a really easy and lightweight way of allowing users to communicate with those external entities. The great thing about external access is it doesn't open up file-sharing for your organization. I know that's a big concern for a lot of government agencies today, that file-sharing sometimes is a little sacred, so to speak, because files are our records. I get it. I know when I worked at White House, we had to work very closely with NARA. Records management is really, really key for any government agency, whether it's state, local, federal, or in the DoD. Having this one-on-one chat experience allows for that communication between the two entities without exposing really any risk. Something to note that I do want to dispel a rumor, quote-unquote, is, hey, today we can't have a Teams user that's an external entity join a group chat. That's something that's hopefully going to be coming in the future, but today it's just one-on-one chat with an external entity. My examples here are actually a GCC user initiating a chat with a commercial user. I want to also dispel that rumor too. In GCC, we can actually communicate with other commercial entities as well in one-on-one chat. I'll actually talk a little bit more about GCC High as well. When you want to enable a chat, especially in the Teams Admin Center, you want to go to the external access toggle. That's under org-wide settings, you'll go on external access and you'll see a toggle and set it to on. The first thing that you want to think about is, which organizations do you want to communicate with and then add them? Clear, plain and simple, just add their orgs. Make sure that those orgs that you're adding into the Admin Center also have the same thing configured on their end. It's a two-way trust. That's really key to make sure that they're configured as well as you. Just as a heads up, if no domains are entered, chat will be allowed with any valid Microsoft Teams user who has external access configured appropriately. If that's left blank and let's say another entity has it left blank as well, essentially those two users could communicate. I want to dive back into who can communicate, especially in the Government Cloud because I know a lot of people have questions around that. I just wanted to say, so today, GCC and GCC High users can federate with each other and with organizations in commercial, which is huge. We know we've got a lot of agencies and companies in GCC High that need that chat capability. Go ahead, configure that chat federation. I know I use it with the agencies I talk to. How about it? It's a great way to really lift that initial barrier. Then something to note too is that today, DoD agencies can federate with each other. They just can't federate outside of the Cloud just per the DoD policy. Something to add. Let's dive a little bit into meetings. Let's talk about meetings. Online meetings with other agencies are really, really important just in day-to-day operations. What we call that in the meeting in the Teams Admin Center is called anonymous join. I know that sounds a little precocious because we have misconceptions or I guess we have bad connotations, obviously, about the word anonymous. That's never good in any shape or form, whether it's through culture references or even identity references. It's a little tough, but it's not truly anonymous. I wanted to dispel that rumor as well. But all it really means is that anyone can join the meeting as an outside user by clicking the link in that meeting invitation. When you enable anonymous join, it's just for the meetings. That's it. It's just for Teams meetings. It's not for any file sharing. It's not for any chat, like nothing. It's just for the meetings. That's really, really key. What's important here is that outside users, without a Teams account, they have to enter a name before they join the meeting so that you know who they are. Meeting chat for outside users without a Teams account is limited to just text. What's really cool is that if a user only has a mobile phone, as long as they have the Teams app installed, they don't have to be signed in. They just have to have the Teams app installed. They can also join a Teams meeting via the web as well. That's obviously through the mobile app. Then outside users with a Teams account can choose to sign in before joining the meeting for a really rich meeting experience. That's really key. I highly encourage folks, if you see that sign-in button, by all means sign in so that you can get the best meeting experience right away. Some of the screenshots I have right now on the right-hand side are focusing on, hey, we've got Barry Allen. I've been watching The Flash lately, so Barry Allen's my guest today. He's waiting in the lobby. I have a meeting policy where my organization has to view the lobby and admit one by one those who are external to my agency before I can allow them into the meeting. That's really key. We want to give you the power to essentially review those folks who are coming in that you might not know, so be sure to include that policy and I have some more information about that in a bit. Some of your go-tos. Make sure you set the toggle to on in the Teams Admin Center. You're going to go to the Teams Admin Center and under meeting settings, you'll see a toggle that says, hey, for participants, I want to allow anonymous users to join that meeting. Then the other thing too is that you want to configure participants and guests in the meeting policies, also in the Teams Admin Center, to match your organization security needs. Just how I was stating before, how I would like to review every guest that comes in before a meeting, you can configure that. You don't have to have it that way. You can absolutely let anybody in you want. But again, we want to give those controls over to you so that you have the freedom and the power to really match the security settings based upon your org's designated needs. Some of the rumor dispelling for the meetings for Gov really is that GCC and GCC high organizations can enable anonymous join to allow outside users to join their meetings. If I'm a GCCI user and I want to have somebody in commercial join my meeting, as long as I have that anonymous join toggle on, anybody from outside the Cloud can actually come into my meeting. Then again, for DoD, DoD again, per their policy, you can allow anonymous join, but then again, it would only allow for a DoD authenticated user through their hardware requirements and their just a policy requirements to come into a meeting. They can still join anonymously if they're in another organization that you're not necessarily federated with. They just have to have the appropriate design credentials. Let's talk about Teams, the funnest one of the bunch. How do we collaborate with other agencies inside of a team? That's guest access. Guest access is a third tier here and that allows teams in your organization to collaborate with people outside of your organization. Essentially, you're giving those people access to the teams and channels in your org, and guest users also get the added bonus of a better and richer experience with chat, which is really, really cool. Guest access consists of a couple of things. It consists of settings in Azure Active Directory, the M365 Admin Center, the SharePoint Admin Center, and the Teams Admin Center. When you blend these four areas and configure things based upon again your organization's needs, that's when things can really light up and really be a great experience. On the right-hand side, I have some examples of a guest user being added to a GCC tenant. I added a commercial user into a GCC tenant and that worked great. Then essentially, a guest user coming into my GCC tenant, if they want to post a message, they have that guest in the parentheses right next to their username. The thing to note here is that guest access for Azure Active Directory and Teams is available in GCC. GCC high DOD will have Azure AD and Teams guest access capabilities in the near future. But that's again going to have to follow the policies and guidelines set forth by those Clouds. Configuring guest access go-tos. This is like my cheat sheet to getting it all done. You want to go and configure external collaboration settings in the Azure Active Directory portal. That's really, really key. In the M365 Admin Center, there is a setting for Office 365 groups, Microsoft 365 groups that allows guest members to access group content. There's two checkboxes, you want to make sure that's done. Then you want to configure external file sharings in the SharePoint Admin Center. That's really key because that's going to apply to SharePoint in OneDrive. That's again, if files are something that's near and dear to your heart and you want to lower or reduce what that sharing experience is like, by all means you can. Again, it might mean like a different team experience for your guests, but you have that control, and so that's really key. Obviously, as everybody out here, I'm sure already knows, Teams honors the settings that we put forth in SharePoint, as well as the records policies. Then finally, your last step, you want to go enable guest access in the Teams Admin Center. Really simple, just a quick toggle, just turn it on. All right, governance, my favorite topic. Lots of nighttime bed reading on governance talks, right? Here's the governance checklist. This is my quick hits of things that you really want to think about and discuss when you're looking at enabling any of these three core features. Number 1, you really want to create a retention policy for Teams chat or channel messages, and for SharePoint online files or OneDrive files through the Office 365 Security and Compliance Center. That's really key because you want to make sure that you're retaining what's happening even as you communicate across agencies. Another key thing is creating an expiration policy for Teams through the Azure Active Directory portal. Creating the expiration policy will allow folks and teams who have not used those teams maybe for a while, to expire and acquiesce on their own time. Again, you can determine what happens to that data at the end of life of that group or team. Another fun thing is to make sure to turn on the audit log in the Security and Compliance Center as well, so that again, you can know what's exactly happening within the audit log, and there's a whole bunch of options in the audit log as well. Then make sure you review those meeting policies I talked about when you're inviting participants and guests into your meetings. That's really key because that will really drive that user experience for how people join meetings. Then I have a really great link. Anything that you see in here in blue that's got an underline in it is going to be hyperlink, but compare the external versus guest access URL that I have here. It's got a really great chart of what external versus guests really is. It doesn't include meetings, but it does talk about the external versus guests like pros and cons, and what it includes and what it doesn't include. That's really important to understand how they differ. You might want to enable external access for a larger amount of agencies, but guest access may be for only like the top five that you can communicate with, so that's really key. Then finally, review the documentation around setting up external identities in Azure AD, including allowing or denying guest invitations to certain domains. I worked with a government agency that really took a very unique stance on this. They said, hey, we want to allow invitations only for certain agencies. That's how they did it in the beginning. They're like, okay, we want to lock it down. Then they also locked down essentially what meant for files. But what was really cool is that afterwards, we're like, no, we're going to open up. We want to allow guests to a lot more agencies. But then what they ended up doing is dialing down the SharePoint and OneDrive file-sharing settings to just the top five that they communicated with. I thought it was a really interesting and unique way to say, hey, we want to empower our user community to do what they need to do in order to get the mission done. But we want to make sure that our files are staying only within these core set of agencies. I thought that was a really unique way of looking at it by splitting those two decisions. That's really cool. Resources. Yes, the best part, right? I'm a big advocate of the public sector tech community. We actually have a great leader in the public sector tech community. If you want, you can learn about new features, best practices, and get the latest information directly from Microsoft. Now, the public sector tech community is just focused on Gov. It's not just Teams, it's everything M365. You can find things on security, on CMMI topics, anything you could ever possibly want is in there. You can also ask questions to the Microsoft community and from your peers. We also have a lot of AMAs. AMAs are essentially a shortcut for saying, ask me anything. Those events we have quarterly at a minimum and they can be on a variety of topics. Then obviously, we award badges. We give recognition out to overall contributors and to the rest of the community. Be sure to check out our link aka.ms slash pubsecblog. Finally, don't forget to check out the virtual hub where we've got content, conversations, and you can connect with others. There's a deep dive technical training for IT pros, developers, and your user champions in this virtual hub. Make sure to check out aka.ms slash virtual hub. For folks who are interested about the roadmap, feel free to go to aka.ms slash teams underscore roadmap for more information. Thanks so much.

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