Repstor, a provider of Office 365-based content and collaboration management solutions, has published a new white paper with practical advice for information managers on how to keep control of Microsoft Teams content, as use of the platform proliferates.

The paper, 5 Ways to Maximise Microsoft Teams & Avoid Information Compliance Headaches, acknowledges the vast growth of Microsoft Teams, as organisations default to the platform as their primary collaboration tool.

“Microsoft Teams is fast becoming the business world’s default collaboration environment,” notes Fergus Wilson, Repstor’s CTO and author of the paper.

“Today, more than 13 million people use it daily, and 19 million weekly. This is great, as Teams is very modern, powerful and easy to use and a great productivity enabler. But at the same time, it needs some controls to get the best from it.”

After years of perfecting information management policies and adhering to the latest Data Protection requirements, organisations can’t afford to risk undermining those efforts by giving employees carte blanche to set up Teams and share content as they see fit.

“The risks sound daunting, but they needn’t be,” Fergus says. “It’s something we’ve explored in detail in our new white paper. We advocate that companies adopt best-practice governance, just as they have in all other aspects of team collaboration and content management.”

The paper sets out a number of proactive measures organisations can take to maintain order. These include controls over Team creation; establishing naming conventions and agreed classifications; maintaining control of emailed content; setting appropriate content security parameters; and automating content lifecycle controls (around archiving or deleting old Team content, for instance).

“Our latest Repstor Custodian content management solutions, designed to be embedded directly within Microsoft Office 365, include all of the necessary controls to ensure that Microsoft Teams fulfils its potential as a powerful aid to collaboration - without exposing organisations to content management chaos,” Fergus notes. “We have listened to CIOs’ concerns and directly addressed them in the latest version of our products.

“These latest capabilities around Microsoft Teams are drawing a lot of attention from CIOs and information compliance managers who are worried about Teams’ use spiralling out of their control,” he adds. “They’re relieved that we’ve come up with a timely solution, just as MS Teams use goes stratospheric.”

The new Repstor white paper, 5 Ways to Maximise Microsoft Teams & Avoid Information Compliance Headaches, is available for download HERE (no registration required).