M365 PlaybooksWorkspace· Operations
Decide if a Team is the right tool
Situation
Someone has asked for a new Team, and nobody has checked whether a Team is what they actually need.
At a glance
Outcome
A clear rule for when to create a Team, a communication site, a team site or a group chat, with naming, owners and guest access settled.
Benefits
- Fewer empty or duplicate Teams. How to measure: Teams with no activity after 90 days, as a share of new Teams.
- Information is easier to find for search and Copilot. How to measure: Duplicate Teams found in the yearly review.
Resources required
- Who is involved
- Collaboration service owner, a records manager, two or three workspace owners.
- Skills
- Working knowledge of Teams, SharePoint and Microsoft 365 Groups.
- Effort
- One or two working sessions.
- Duration
- One to two weeks.
Risk of not doing it
Teams multiply for every request, splitting information across workspaces that nobody owns.
Make the decision
The decision to make
Which workspace fits the request, and the minimum rules every new Team must meet.
Options and trade-offs
Team
Best for a group that works together daily. Creates a SharePoint team site for the team's files.
SharePoint communication site
Best for publishing to a wide audience. No chat, few authors.
SharePoint team site without Teams
Best for shared documents with little conversation.
Group chat
Best for short-lived conversations. No structure and no lifecycle.
Recommended default
Create a Team only for an ongoing group with a shared purpose. Every Team has at least two owners, follows the naming standard, and keeps guest access off unless the request names a guest need.
Owners
- Decides
- Collaboration service owner
- Operates
- Microsoft 365 admins
- Consulted
- Records management, security
Policy statement
Copy and adapt this statement for your policy.
A new Team is created only for an ongoing group with a shared purpose. Each Team has at least two owners, follows the organization's naming standard, and allows guests only when its request was approved for guest access.
What this constrains downstream
These rules become the provisioning template in Set up a Team that works.
Making it scale
Teams are created through a provisioning process (request, approval, template, naming applied automatically) rather than relying on owners to follow a document.
Partly enforced. The gaps are a risk until a mechanism covers them.
Avoiding common pitfalls
Letting everyone create Teams with no guidance
Route requests through a short form that asks what the Team is for.
A single owner
Require two owners at creation, so a Team never becomes ownerless.
Checkpoints
- The decision rule is published where requesters see it.
- Naming, owner and guest rules are written and approved.
Sources
- Overview of teams and channels in Microsoft Teams (Microsoft Learn)
- Enforce a group naming policy in Microsoft Entra ID (Microsoft Learn)
- Microsoft 365 groups naming policy (Microsoft Learn)
Reviewed against
Changelog
Changelog (1 version)
| Version | Date | Author | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sev Derghazarian | First published. Placeholder text for the pilot build; replace before launch. |