[Show theme music]
STEPHEN ROSE: Hey, everybody.
Welcome to "Inside Microsoft Teams."
I'm your host, Stephen Rose,
and thanks so much for joining us.
We know it's getting near the end of the year,
so our goal is, with every feature focus, to bring you
and have our MVP show you features
that are great features
that you should be taking a look at and hopefully using.
And today, we have an international edition,
where we have representatives from both France and Mexico.
I'm excited.
Let's jump into it.
And let's start with our first guest, Laurent Carlier.
Laurent, how are you today?
LAURENT CARLIER: Yeah. Very fine. Thank you. [chuckles]
STEPHEN ROSE: Good.
And thanks for staying up late with us.
For those who watched our Ignite session,
you saw Laurent.
He did a great demo for us.
And today, you're going to be just doing
something a little bit different:
You're going to be talking to us about Teams for EDU.
So, take a moment and kind of tell us
what you're going to demo,
and then we want to jump into it.
LAURENT CARLIER: Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, Stephen.
First, maybe a slight introduction for me.
STEPHEN ROSE: Please.
LAURENT CARLIER: So, my name is Laurent Carlier.
I'm a Microsoft 365 consultant based in France,
And I work daily with companies and
educational institutions,
helping them build their digital transformation
around Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva,
and other Microsoft 365 online platforms.
So today, yeah, the topic is very interesting:
Microsoft Teams governance for education.
And as you might know or might not know,
the education version of Teams
is very different from the business version.
Change management is very important
as we consider three types of populations
when walking the education sector.
And those three types of populations
are administrative staff,
teacher staff, and students.
And what you have to understand
is that those three populations are very interdependent
in terms of proper use of Microsoft Teams.
So, a change management methodology has to be set up:
change envisioned, coaching and training planned,
resistance to change management planned, etc.
So it's a big setup.
It's a long-term project.
And today, I would like to focus on essentials
you have to know about Microsoft Teams Education.
STEPHEN ROSE: Absolutely.
And what's interesting
is, we've had several educational customers on the show.
We've had Kent State University,
we've had several different school districts.
And what's interesting is,
education is very slow to change at times.
Teachers are very much like,
"Look, I've got to spend all this time
trying to figure out how to teach people.
Trying to bring in new technology and change that up,
unless it's really worth it, it can be difficult."
And that's a key part of...
what we're going to talk about is also
that "worth it" equation.
So that sounds great.
Let's take a look at your demo.
LAURENT CARLIER: Yeah.
The first thing that you have to know
about Microsoft Teams Education is when you create a team,
basically you have four types of teams.
This is important to know
because if you make a mistake,
it's difficult to go back.
Let's go to Teams classes,
and I want to show you different things.
You have different tabs specific to education,
and you have channels, as with the business version.
The first thing that you have to be aware of
is that when you want to create a channel in Teams class,
you have only two privacies:
Standard and Private.
No shared channels.
So be aware of that.
If you want shared channels,
then the shared channels will be only on the PLC type.
Teams PLC is for teachers.
And when we create a channel on that,
then you have the 3:
Standard, Private, and Shared.
Let's go back to Teams class.
The the second thing that you have to understand
is you have to set up the tags.
The tags inside Teams for communication are very important.
And as you can see on my screen,
I set up a tag for students,
and I set up tag also for groups.
This is very useful.
And if I want to chat with a specific group,
I will click on "Chat with group,"
and I will be able to chat with the group.
The second thing is that
you have to consider OneNote.
OneNote, basically, is the central app
for pedagogical resource.
You do not want to work on files for this.
If you want to have a specific pedagogical resource,
you will use OneNote.
Basically, there are three spaces:
the Student Notebooks,
the Content Library, and the Collaboration Space.
And all these three space are specific permission
set by default.
So, this is very convenient for teachers.
And if I open the Content Library, I have pages.
And inside these pages,
I can put all the pedagogical resource I want to.
The second is that we have a Home page.
This is very good.
This Home page is built on SharePoint.
And I can set up different kinds of information.
And if I want to add a specific information,
like assignment, I can add assignment.
And then, the tab for assignment will appear.
And then, I can republish this Home page.
And then, all the teachers and students inside the class
will have the proper information.
Talking about assignments, we have different tabs
assigned with OneDrive with specific vision about students.
And if I want to check the status for students,
I will be able to do it.
For the grades,
concerning assignment, I have all the list of my students,
all the assignments.
And I will be also able to see the status of students.
"Insight" is a very interesting tool specific to EDU.
And this side, I can track about students' activities.
And it gives me some pretty interesting information
about my classes.
I can check about assignments
with different kind of tabs.
And I can also check about digital activities.
This is good.
This is the digital activities for each student:
For Meeting, Communication, File, OneNote, Assignment, etc.
So for example, if I check for Ella.
Let's see.
I want to check for Ella, what was the activity
on the previous months.
And if I click on the specific day,
I will be able to see what Ella did on that day
and at that time.
So this is good.
And also, the "Parents" tab, also specific for education.
If I want to chat with parents, I will be able to do it.
Turning about governance.
There is many things to turn on on governance,
but I want to share some specific tools.
For meetings, you have to set up policies.
And inside policies,
you have to be very careful about who can register.
And also, the expiration time for meeting,
by default, is 120.
And if you want to never expire,
you have to set up this. For messaging policy,
this is the same thing.
They have different kind of things to set up:
Delete sent message. And also the chart permission role.
This is the supervised chart.
And if you want to restrict chat or enable chat for this,
you will have to look at this.
So that was for my demo.
STEPHEN ROSE: Awesome stuff, Laurent.
And in addition, something that a lot of folks don't know
is, there are hundreds, many hundreds,
of apps that are currently being used in education
that have plug-ins and can work right now inside of Teams.
And that's definitely worth taking a few minutes
and looking through that.
Go to "Apps," go to "Store," and choose "Education."
You'll see all the ones that plug into Teams today
that can add what you're saying
and create an even more seamless flow for education.
LAURENT CARLIER: Yeah, exactly.
And those app are single sign-on.
So this is very useful for teachers and students.
STEPHEN ROSE: Absolutely.
So what's the one big takeaway
for an education user today?
From what you just talked about,
what's the one thing that you really want them to take away?
LAURENT CARLIER: The first is change management.
I know this is a real important question for business,
but for education, this is mandatory.
Without change management, it will not work.
As I said in the beginning of the session,
those three populations are very interdependent,
so you have definitely to set up a change management.
And you have to educate the IT staff
on the proper IT governance.
If it is too strict governance,
then you will have many resistance.
So that is the two points I wanted to focus.
STEPHEN ROSE: Absolutely.
And I know you're going to be putting together a blog.
And in that, we'll also point back to your section...
LAURENT CARLIER: Exactly. STEPHEN ROSE: ...at Ignite.
Which you went through this, which is great.
So we'll tie this all together
for all of you... LAURENT CARLIER: Exactly.
STEPHEN ROSE: ...looking for more.
LAURENT CARLIER: Exactly.
STEPHEN ROSE: Laurent, thanks for staying up late with us.
We appreciate it.
LAURENT CARLIER: Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, Stephen.
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STEPHEN ROSE: All right.
For my next guest,
I had the pleasure of meeting this person
while down in Mexico City for a conference.
She is a really great communicator
and has taken something that's difficult--approvals--
and really made it easy to understand,
has driven a lot of people
to want to check out this feature.
It's what she's going to be talking about today.
She's a three-time MVP.
So joining me is, Fátima Blancas.
Fátima, how are you?
FÁTIMA BLANCAS: I'm pretty well, Stephen.
Thank you for having me.
STEPHEN ROSE: Absolutely.
Take a moment and tell everybody your name
and a little bit about yourself,
and then we're going to talk about approvals today.
FÁTIMA BLANCAS: OK.
Hi, everybody.
My name is Fátima Blancas.
I'm Mexican.
I'm the CEO of ITPro.
And I'm the happy CTO of Finance School in Mexico City.
STEPHEN ROSE: Awesome. And approvals is one of those things
that's kind of daunting for some folks,
but it's relatively easy
once you understand how to set it up and use it.
And it can be a game changer in getting people to use Teams
because of the amount of time that it can save for them.
Correct?
FÁTIMA BLANCAS: Correct.
It's an amazing tool to stay focused
with all the things that you have to approve.
It doesn't matter if this is a document
or maybe something different, like a permission
or something like that.
But it's amazing how you can improve
your hybrid work with that.
STEPHEN ROSE: Agreed. Agreed.
Let's take a look at your demo.
FÁTIMA BLANCAS: Great.
As we saw in the past episodes,
approval is a great way to streamline
all your requests and processes.
If you are facing troubles
to keep track of all the requests and processes
that occur during your working day,
you will find approvals very useful
to improve your hybrid work environment.
In the "Approvals" hub,
you can organize the elements using the column names.
Click on the name of the column
according to your preference
to set the order ascendant or descendant.
Also, remember that you have two different types:
one to show the approvals that you sent,
and another to show the approvals that you receive.
Approvals app is part of the Microsoft Teams.
It means that it could be a starter from different ways.
For example, you can start approvals
for the "Approvals" hub.
And you can insert approvals
into a chat with one person or with a group.
If you need to, you can create some templates
for the channels that you work with your team.
But if you need more, you can use this feature
into Power Automate to create your own flows
that will show in the "Approvals" hub.
Today, we will pay special attention
to the feature to attach documents.
As you know, you have three different ways to attach:
one, from OneDrive,
from your computer, and also to insert a link.
After you fill the information for the approval,
select the option that you prefer.
In this case, I will use "Upload from my computer."
This option will attach the document
and will be uploaded into the Approvals document folder.
It was created automatically to share the information
into my OneDrive.
It will set the document permissions
as everybody can access.
It means that everybody in my subscription
can access this document if they have the link.
It could be not safe for the security of some documents
that have sensitive information.
Regardless, this sharing mode is automate.
We can use a different way to upload the documents.
I recommend to you to share all the information,
all the documents, into a folder
that you can set previously
according with the permission that you need.
For example, you can set the people
that you need to have access to this content.
And also, you can define if they have access to edit
or only to view.
Do this and copy the link,
and after to insert information for the approval,
remember that you can insert this link
into the approval info.
The difference between the using the information option
with OneDrive or folder from your computer
is that you can attach more than one document
instead of one document
that the other options allowed you.
This is an excellent point to have in mind,
that if we want to be sure about the access
that we are opening for our documents,
if we use a link in a folder,
it makes your approval more secure and more sustainable.
Think about it: If you use this method to share information,
you can maintain, under the control,
the size of the storage that we are using
on the entire subscription.
If we consider that each team can contain
almost 400 different templates for approvals
and each template can collect, at maximum,
50,000 requests,
it means a lot of information
that we can be sure that not be duplicated
if we use the links instead of the shared documents.
If you want to customize Approvals to create some templates,
you need to be sure of the permission
that you have in the subscription.
If you are an admin,
you can share the templates from three different levels.
If you are not an admin,
you need to be the team's owner
to complete or create the templates.
In both methods,
you can create the template from an existing
or you can start your own from scratch.
Have in mind that all the elements
that you create will stay in your Approvals hub.
If you need to delete one of those,
the only way is to deactivate the template
and create a new one.
Don't wait more to start using Approvals.
It will help you to improve your communication
with your hybrid teams,
customizing the template for your process,
and it will make easier to keep the truck.
STEPHEN ROSE: Awesome. Thank you so much.
That was great.
So the important thing to really be aware of here, folks,
is that no matter where it starts,
it's going to move into Teams,
whether it's in OneDrive local,
you can pick if this is sort of an open approval
that's going to go to a group of people
or very very specific ones depending on the information.
The great thing is, we're going to be linking
this to a blog,
which Fátima will be writing,
which we'll go a little bit more detail,
provide some great resources,
and help you to better understand
how you can leverage this to help reduce time
and flow and cost of work
and all the other good stuff.
Right, Fátima?
FÁTIMA BLANCAS: Right.
STEPHEN ROSE: Absolutely. Awesome.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
We appreciate it.
For everybody here at "Inside Microsoft Teams,"
we want to thank you.
And we will see you all again very very soon.
Have a great day.
And thank you to all of my guests that joined us today.
We'll see you soon.
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