Manage your Teams experience using Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business modern Admin Portal

Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business modern Admin Portal:

Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center is single place for administrator to manage and customize the Teams and Skype for Business users experience. Before Teams admin portal, Teams manage experience was through Office 365 portal. The new admin center experience will provide Admin with a unified experience to manage both Teams and Skype for Business.

Teams admin portal has brought all properties together like Teams User management, users call quality details, User and Tenant wide policies & settings, Call analytics reports, Call Quality Dashboard etc.

Microsoft consistently adding new capabilities and features to Teams admin portal and eventually Teams admin portal will be the only admin portal available for all Teams and Skype for Business admin scenarios. You can do same admin stuff using PowerShell as well so it’s not only the web portal for Admin scenarios.

This article provides you complete insight and required information to Administer Teams user, enable tenant-wide setting, meeting policies, configure Teams policies and features. As Microsoft promised they are delivering additional functionality, end-to-end insights, and the ability to manage Teams settings on a user level.

Most important thing is Teams Admin portal supported by all kinds of web browser and devices with multiple language supports.

Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center: https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/dashboard

Teams new modern portal architecture: 

IT admin first connects to Azure Front door anycast ring then it connects to regions using Content Delivery network it connects and access backend services. Refer below simple architecture diagram which shows Azure anycast ring, Bootstrap services, Admin Portal UI and Backend services. 

Dashboard:

Dashboard will give overall information about your organization information, User search information, upgrade to Teams details and Help article. Refer the Dashboard image below. 

Teams: (Dashboard \ Manage Teams)

Teams and channels are collections of people, content, and tools used for projects or outcomes within your organization. You can manage all the teams and channels, create new ones and manage the existing ones. 

Teams manage admin portal will give complete information about total number of Teams in your organization with Teams name, how many channels in each Teams have, Total number of Team members, Total number of Team owners, Total number of guests and Teams privacy status. Refer the below image. 

Devices: (Devices > Manage Devices)

Manage devices let you control all of the devices in your organization. You can create and upload configuration profiles and update all of your devices that are used.

You will get Devices summary with number of devices, Devices which needs update and their status, like Online or Offline. 

Below the device summary you will see complete list of devices in your Organization and you can create custom configuration profiles for these devices. Refer below image for Manage Devices tab. 

Locations: (Dashboard/ Locations) 

Locations are used in your organization to show you the physical location of offices, buildings, or organizational sites. You can then associate IP addressing information to locations in your organization. Locations are useful for showing location wise data. You can easily upload existing location information to Teams admin portal by clicking on ‘Upload locations data’. Refer below image for locations tab. 

Users: (Dashboard \ Users)

You can manage both Teams and Skype for Business user settings in users. You can only manage Teams related attributes, to manage Office 365 user settings (for example, adding or deleting users, assigning license, or changing passwords), go to the Office 365 Admin center > Users. 

• You can search users.
• You can see information about; Display name, User name, Phone number, Location, Policies assigned.

Refer below image for Users tab. 

Meetings:

Conference bridges: (Dashboard> Conference bridges)

Conference bridges let people dial into meetings using a phone. You can use the default settings for a conference bridge or change the phone numbers (toll and toll-free) and other settings such as the PIN or the languages that are used.

You can add bridge number (Toll number and Toll-free number): 

You can modify conference bridge settings by clicking on ‘Bridge settings’ under conference bridge tab; refer the below image for bridge settings. 

You can customize below things under bridge settings: 

• Enable Meeting entry and exit notification with different types.
• Ask callers to record their name before joining a meeting.
• Set PIN number length.
• Automatically send emails to users if their dial-in settings change.

Meeting policies:

Meeting policies tab show all existing policy including default and custom created meeting policies.

You can create new policy by clicking on “New policy” for meeting with custom requirement or modify  existing policies which available by default. 

Refer below image for meeting policies. 

New policy creation:

Every organization may have different requirements for meeting, so default meeting policies may not sufficient, Teams admin portal allows you to create new custom Meeting policies.  For new meeting policy you can update below information including: 

• Policy name
• Descriptions – Give meaningful description to identify policy
• General – Under general policy information
• Audio & Video – select appropriate options as per your organization requirement
• Content Sharing – select appropriate options for content sharing
• Participants and Guest – You can customize participant and guest experience.

Meeting settings:

Meeting settings are used to control whether anonymous users can join Teams meetings, to set up your meeting invitations and if you want to enable Quality of Service (QoS), you can set the ports for real-time traffic. These settings will be used for all of the Teams meetings that users schedule in your organization. 

Under ‘Participants’ turn ON the switch to allow anonymous users to join meeting. Refer below image. 

Meeting QoS network setting: 

You can use automatically use available port option or manually set specific port numbers for Quality of Service for Teams media traffic. Refer below image where I specified the ports for Audio, Video and Screen sharing. Most important is to turn ON insert QoS marker for real-time media traffic switch. 

Live events policies: (Dashboard\ Live events Policies)

Live events are used for large broadcast meetings. Teams live events policies are used to manage event settings for groups of users. You can use the default policy or create additional policies that can be assigned to users that hold live events within your organization. 

You can create new live meeting policy with your custom requirement. Refer below image. 

Messaging policies: (Dashboard\ Messaging Policies) 

Messaging policies are used to control what chat and channel messaging features are available to users in Teams. You can use the default policy that is created or create one or more custom messaging policies for users in your organization. Refer below image shows messaging policy custom options. 

Analytics & reports:

Analytics and report are essential part of admin task because as admin you must track your user’s activity and usage by using Microsoft Teams. You can use activity reports to see how users in your organization are using Microsoft Teams. So far there are three reports available with date range as last 7 days and 28 days means four weeks. Microsoft may add more reports in future.

Available reports:

Teams user activity – This report tells Teams users activity including, 1 to 1 call, messages sent in channels, total numbers of chat messages and last activity reported per user wise.

Teams device usage – This report gives information about how Teams apps getting used in your organization on different platforms and operating systems including Android, MacOS, Windows and iOS

Teams usage – Teams usage report give details about how Teams getting used in your organization with Total active users, Teams and channels active users, Active channels and messages. 

 If you are looking details report on how your organizations users are using Teams, calls, meeting, chat than, Login to Office 365 admin center, select Reports > Usage > On the Usage page, choose ‘Select a report’ to select from a list of the available reports. 

Teams user activity report: 

Teams Device Usage Report: 

Teams Usage Report: 

Org-wide settings:

Organization wide settings are applicable to all users in your organization that’s why you have think before modifying these settings.

External Access:

You can allow or block external domain name by clicking on “Add a domain” and then type domain name and select to allowed or block. 

Guest Access:

Guest access in Teams lets people outside your organization access teams and channels. You can use the settings below to control which features guest users can or can’t use. Under Guest Access there are different settings.

Calling: You can allow guest to make private call.

Meeting: You can allow or restrict guest to make IP audio/video calls, Desktop Sharing and meet now as ad-hoc meetings.

Messaging: you can allow or restrict guest user for, editing sent message, guest can delete sent message, chat, use Giphys in conversation, use memes in conversation, use stickers in conversations. 

Refer below image; 

Teams settings:

Teams settings let you set up your teams for features such as email integration, cloud storage options, and device set up. When you make changes to the settings here, they will be applied to all of the teams within your organization.

1. Email integration:

Email integration lets people send an email to a Teams channel and have the contents of the email displayed in the conversations for all team members to view. You can customize email integration by doing below: 

You can turn ON or OFF ‘Allow users to send emails to a channel email address’ which is useful for users to send direct email to channel email address. Refer below image. 

2. Files: 

Turn on or turn off file sharing and cloud file storage options for the Files tab. Teams gives you option to turn ON or OFF file share for Sharefile, DropBox, Box, Google Drive. 

3. Organization: Organization tab allows Teams users to see others in their organization hierarchy. You turn ON or OFF, Show Organization tab in chats in Teams. 

4. Devices: Set up how meeting room devices operate in meetings. You can customize below option for Devices:

Require a secondary form of authentication to access meeting content – use drop down to select suitable options.

Set content PIN – You can set contect PIN by using drop down menu to choose suitable options. 

Resource accounts can send messages – You turn ON or OFF resource account can send message options 

5. Search: Manage how search operates in Microsoft Teams. 

Scope directory search in Teams using an Exchange address book policy (ABP) – you turn ON or OFF address book search in Teams. 

Teams upgrade:

Teams upgrade lets you set up your upgrade experience from Skype for Business to Teams for your users. You can use the default settings or make changes to the coexistence mode and app preferences to fit your organizational needs.

Coexistence mode:

Islands: Uses both the Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams apps.

Skype for Business only: Users receives chats and calls in Skype for Business 

Teams only: Users configured in this mode use Teams as their only communication and collaboration tool. 

Legacy Portal:

This is legacy portal for Skype for Business Online, most of things are available in Teams and Skype for Business Admin portal however few things are still available under Skype for Business legacy port like Voice policy, dial plan, call queue, phone number porting etc.

Call quality dashboard:

The Call Quality Dashboard (CQD) for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business Online allows you to gain insights into the quality of calls made using Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business services. This topic provides detailed information about the dimensions and measures exposed by CQD.

Thank you.