blog.frederique.harmsze.nl my world of work and user experiences

If you have simply switched on Microsoft 365 without arranging for some well-considered governance, things tend to get messy. You could get a major security breach or lose important data. But even if no disaster occurs, you may still get a lot of confusion and unhappy users

Recently I talked about some things you should think about concerning the governance of Microsoft 365. That was inspired by the confusion and unhappiness I see at an organisation where they switched on Microsoft 365 and moved a lot of documents into SharePoint, to rescue them from an old file system that was falling apart.

There had not been time, money or sufficient interest from the business when IT had to take those actions. But then the users had to actually find their information in that new system, and they started to complain. Yes, the system is up and running, but to make it usable, it also needs more governance set up.

Here are 10 snags we hit when we have no proper governance.

1.We don’t know who can decide on the configuration.  

We hear many complaints that the main overview pages in SharePoint are useless. These complainers are perfectly right, because these pages have not been configured in any meaningful way. We want to address that, but we hit a snag: it is unclear who is responsible for these overview pages, so who can decide what should be on them? Just IT? Or people from the business? Some Change Advisory Board? With who in it? Same thing for other elements of the environment.

So you want to be clear on ownership: who should decide and who should you refer to when other users don’t agree.

2.People don’t know how strictly they need to conform and to what.

We have some Site Owners going wild in their sites, while others clamour for more consistency and best practices. It is not necessarily a problem if the department sites are all different and all Site Owners can do their own thing. But if that is how you want to set up (part of) your environment, that has to be clearly explained, so that people know what they can expect. And even then, you may want to put in some restrictions, so that they cannot include anything truly tricky. If you need more uniformity and consistency, what templates and settings do you want? And again: who decides on that?

So be clear about the rules: what templates should people use and what rules should they follow.

3.Important documents are not unique and clearly tagged.

We talked to some users who were getting desperate, because there seemed to be multiple copies of important documents. Which was the right one? Which was the officially published one? And where is it? Some documents are very hard to find, because they lack crucial metadata. For some documents, once they have been found, it is unclear what their status is. Is it a draft? Is it a copy for other purposes? Or is this the official version?

So you need to plan to keep the important data clean & clear. You not only need to explain to the users how important it is that they tag and store their documents properly, and how, but you also need to monitor and curate at least the set of important documentation.

4.Users cannot access information intended for them.

It turns out that important documents are locked up in a department site, while many others also need to consult those documents and are entitled to consult them. Just not permitted in SharePoint.

So you need to determine what kind of information belongs where and who should have access to it. For example, what belongs in a department site (or Team) only accessible to the members of that department, and what should be published to a more general documentation or knowledge site.

5.Users can edit information no longer intended for them.

In several sites, the right people have been given the right permissions. So far so good. But then some of these people got new roles in the organisation and others left. However, nobody changed their permissions in these sites or removed the people who should no longer be included. User management is not a one-off activity…

So you need to make sure access is managed regularly. Usually the Site Owners or Team Owners need to add and remove users to and from the right groups. For that purpose, you need an active Owner, and a deputy if the primary Owner is not available. But not too many Owners, because if everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible…

6.Self-service Team creation led to chaos.

At first, they had self-service Teams creation switched on, like everything had been switched on. That very quickly got out of hand, with all kinds of strange, overlapping and inappropriate Teams being created. So they switched that off. Now they are starting to allow the creation of Teams on request. But it is not clear yet how the Teams should relate to the existing SharePoint sites created from a specific site template.

So you need to determine who can create things like SharePoint sites and Microsoft Teams and how: via a request, based on a template, by adding a Team to a templated SharePoint site?

7.Users cannot get support.

If a user has a question or a request, what should he or she do? Call someone, enter a ticket in some system? The users grumble that they cannot not get any proper help, because the regular helpdesk does not know anything about Microsoft 365 and they do not know who else to contact. Very frustrating.

So you need to set up proper support and make sure that the people providing support are up to the task and stay up-to-speed.

8.The help materials are stranded.

We created and shared some training materials and we started to set up a Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways information portal. But then we had to stop, because it is unclear who is the owner: who decides how we should set up the portal, with information in which language about which elements of Microsoft 365 and with which custom additions about the specifics of the organisation? And who will keep it up-to-date? Could we start something like a ‘tip of the week’ or would it all die out as soon as the consultants left? Providing help materials is not a one-off activity.

So you need to plan how you will keep offering relevant and up-to-date help to your users.

9.We are getting drowned by Microsoft’s changes.

One thing we know for sure: Microsoft 365 keeps evolving, with new apps and improved features. We see that some users start experimenting with new options in ways that turn out to be unsafe. And we see other users get confused because functionality suddenly is different from last week.

So you need to plan how to go with the flow of Microsoft’s changes instead of drowning in them: monitor the changes, determine their impact on your organisation, determine if and how you want to activate and then manage them, communicate about them.  

10.People with good ideas feel like lone voices in the wilderness.

Now that people are starting to use SharePoint and Microsoft 365, some of them have interesting ideas for improvements. But how can they make themselves heard? How can these great suggestions be implemented? When we started to talk to people in the business, we not only got swamped in complaints, but also in ideas. However, I could only take note of them, because it still is unclear who can decide on the environment. This of course brings us back to point 1, that you really need to have clear ownership.

So you need clear ownership and a process for improvements. For example, people can request changes, discuss changes with key users, ask a change advisory board to decide on bigger changes, get budget and set up projects to realise big changes…

Fortunately, in this organisation the users and the business discovered that some governance had to be set up and improvements had to be made to the first set-up of Microsoft 365. Unfortunately, they discovered it by getting stuck in their daily work and then getting frustrated. But at least, they started the ball rolling…

So you have Microsoft 365 up and running in your organisation. But have you also thought about its governance? The word Governance often conjures up visions of big, stuffy documents. But the point of governance is not to generate such documents, but to keep your environment up and running smoothly. So you need to ask yourself and answer some questions, as to how you want to do that. This is not a complete checklist, but rather a high-level sketch of the sort of things you should consider.

Your goals

You are rolling out or have rolled out Microsoft 365 for a reason. For example, you want to empower your employees, to collaborate, communicate and share knowledge effectively, efficiently and safely, offering them a smooth and convenient experience. To reach your goals, you not only need to set up your environment properly, but you also need to make sure that it keeps working properly.

So first of all, it it important to be aware of the reasons why you are using Microsoft 365. What are you trying to achieve?

Things keep changing

Things change, so need to keep up-to-speed and keep the environment up-to-date. This is the case for every system, but it is even more pressing for systems that live in the cloud, like Microsoft 365. How do you keep meeting your goals when everything keeps changing?

• The user population changes: new colleagues arrives, others leave or get different roles.
  So:
  • How will you make sure the right people can do the right things, at all times?
  • And how do you deal with externals/guests who are not a member of your organisation?
• The content changes: People are collaborating and communicating in the environment, that is the whole point. They keep adding, editing and deleting content.
  So:
  • How will you make sure that the users don’t get swamped in obsolete old content?
  • How do you strongly protect confidential information, while keeping keep less sensitive content easy to use?
  • And what actually is your confidential information, which “informational crown jewels” do you absolutely need to protect?
• The application landscape changes: Microsoft adds applications to Microsoft 365 and improves existing applications. All the time.
  So:
  • How will you stay up-to-speed with what’s new & what’s hot in Microsoft 365?
  • And how do you determine which standard applications the end-users can use, now and in the near future? What should their default settings be?
  • What are your rules for custom applications?  In particular: who is allowed to create what kind of no-code/low-code solutions using Microsoft’s Power Platform?
• Insights and needs change: When you started with Microsoft 365, you decided what goals you wanted to achieve and how you had to set up the environment to meet those goals. But once you start using the environment, you may get new insights. And even if you interpreted everything perfectly in the beginning, the actual needs may have changed. An obvious example was the massive need for online collaboration and communication that surged when the pandemic hit.
  So:
  • How do you gather feedback on how users like and use the environment, and what they are missing?
  • What’s the procedure for changing the environment? Who decides what to change? And how do you test what it will be like, before you launch it to everyone?
  • How do you make sure that the end-users know about, understand and adopt the evolving applications that are most relevant for them at this time?
  • How do you monitor what’s going on in your environment, so that you can take action when you are moving away from your goals?

These are some things you should consider. And while you are at it, write down what you decided. Not in a stuffy document, but in a Communication Site on the intranet, that users can easily check if they want to know how their environment is governed.