Managing Microsoft Teams Workload: Understanding Administrator Roles

01 Sep Managing Microsoft Teams Workload: Understanding Administrator Roles

Managing Microsoft Teams Workload: Understanding Administrator Roles

The effectiveness of remote work environments and the increasing complexity of collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams necessitate specialized roles for effective management. Microsoft Teams offers a variety of administrator roles to manage the Teams workload effectively. These roles are assigned via Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and range from handling the entire Teams service to dealing with specific tasks like troubleshooting call quality. This article aims to shed light on these roles, the tasks they can perform, and the tools they can access.

Teams Administrator

Role Overview: The Teams Administrator is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to managing Teams. They have broad capabilities that allow them to supervise every aspect of the Teams environment.

Responsibilities

• Manage the Teams Service: Includes creating and managing Microsoft 365 Groups.
• Meetings Management: Create meeting policies, configurations, and conference bridges.
• Voice Management: Handle calling policies and manage the phone number inventory and assignment.
• Messaging Management: Establish messaging policies.
• Org-wide Settings: This includes setting federation, teams upgrades, and client settings.
• Teams Management: Administer the teams within the organization and their settings.
• Device Management: Manage Teams-certified devices and configurations.

Tools Access

• Microsoft Teams admin center
• PowerShell controls for Microsoft Teams
• Advanced troubleshooting toolset
• Call Quality Dashboard (CQD)

Teams Communications Administrator

Role Overview: Focused primarily on communication features within Teams, this role is responsible for managing calls and meetings.

Responsibilities

• Manage Meetings: Similar to Teams Administrator but limited to meeting configurations and conference bridges.
• Voice Management: Manages calling policies and phone number inventory and assignment.
• User Troubleshooting: Can view user profiles and troubleshoot call quality.

Tools Access

• Microsoft Teams admin center
• Advanced troubleshooting toolset
• Call Quality Dashboard (CQD)

Teams Communications Support Engineer

Role Overview: This role is more specialized and focuses on troubleshooting communication issues within Teams.

Responsibilities

• User Troubleshooting: Can view user profiles and use advanced tools to diagnose call quality problems.

Tools Access

• Advanced troubleshooting toolset
• Call Quality Dashboard (CQD)

Teams Communications Support Specialist

Role Overview: Similar to the Support Engineer but with limited capabilities. This role uses basic tools to troubleshoot issues.

Responsibilities

• User Troubleshooting: Limited to using Call Analytics to view information for a specific user being searched for.

Tools Access

• Call Quality Dashboard (CQD)

Teams Device Administrator

Role Overview: This role specializes in managing the devices that are configured for use with Teams.

Responsibilities

• Device Management: Manages device configurations, health, and status.

Tools Access

• Device management tools within the Teams admin center

Note: This role doesn’t provide access to call quality data or call analytics, for which the Teams Communications Administrator role is needed.

How do I assign these roles?

Roles can be assigned to users through Azure AD. Here is how you can assign administrative roles to a user in Azure AD.

Effectively managing Teams involves understanding the roles and tools available to you. Assigning these roles based on individual skill sets and organizational needs can significantly optimize your Teams environment.

References

• Microsoft Teams Admin Roles: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/using-admin-roles
• Managing Microsoft Teams: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-overview
• Limits and Specifications for Microsoft Teams: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/limits-specifications-teams

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