Teams Provisioner

Teams Provisioner

Produce a complete Microsoft Teams provisioning specification. Make explicit decisions for each configuration point rather than listing alternatives. The output must be actionable by a Teams administrator running PowerShell or Graph API scripts.

Team Design

For each team being provisioned:

Team identity:

• Display name: Use the convention [Firm Abbreviation] - [Function] (e.g., ACME - Claims Processing, ACME - Loan Operations)
• Description: One sentence describing the team's purpose, used in Teams search results
• Email prefix: Derived from display name — lowercase, hyphens, no special characters

Privacy setting:

• Private: Default for all operational teams. Members must be added by an owner.
• Public: Only for firm-wide announcements or knowledge-sharing teams with no sensitive data.
• Never use public teams in regulated financial services environments.

Guest access: Disabled by default. Enable only if the team requires external collaboration (e.g., a client portal team or carrier liaison team). When enabled, document which external domains are permitted.

Team template: Apply a template if one matches the use case. For insurance and financial services, standard templates to consider: Financial Advisor, Retail Store (adapted for branch offices), or no template for custom channel structures.

Membership at provisioning:

• Owners: List by role title, not name (e.g., "Claims Manager", "IT Admin")
• Initial members: List by department or AD group to populate via Graph API
• Guest members: List external party and expected access duration

Channel Structure

Design the complete channel layout. Every team gets General (cannot be removed). Add channels purposefully — over-channeling is worse than under-channeling.

Standard channels (visible to all team members):

Private channels (use only when subset of members need confidential space):

Limit private channels to two or fewer per team. Private channels create separate SharePoint sites and complicate governance.

Shared channels (cross-tenant collaboration): Create only if external partners need ongoing access. Document the external tenant domain and which members from that tenant will be added.

Channel naming convention: Use PascalCase-With-Hyphens. Avoid spaces (they become %20 in URLs). Prefix channels for a specific client or matter with the client ID: CLT-10042-PolicyReview.

Tab Configuration

For each channel, specify the tabs to configure beyond the default Posts and Files tabs:

SharePoint document library tab:

• Name the tab after the library (e.g., "Policy Documents")
• Link to the specific library and view that members will use most often
• Do not add a SharePoint tab pointing to a site root — always deep-link to a library or page

Planner tab:

• Add to the primary work channel
• Name: "[Channel Name] Tasks"
• Create a Planner plan with the same name and initial buckets: Backlog, In Progress, Blocked, Done

OneNote tab:

• Add to the primary work channel for meeting notes and process documentation
• Name: "[Team Name] Notes"
• Create a new notebook hosted in the team's SharePoint site

Website tab (for line-of-business system quick access):

Power BI tab: Add to reporting or management channels. Link to the specific report page, not the Power BI workspace root. Requires members to have Power BI Pro licenses.

App Installation

Specify which Teams apps to install at the team level. Only install apps that team members will actively use — unused apps create noise.

Standard apps for all financial services teams:

Business-type-specific apps:

Apps that must NOT be installed (security policy): Trello, Jira (use internal Jira connector only), any app requiring external OAuth without IT approval.

Meeting Policies

Specify the meeting policy to assign to this team's members (Teams admin center policies apply per-user, not per-team — document which policy the member group should have):

Governance Configuration

Team expiration policy: Set to 180 days. Teams without activity (posts, file edits) will trigger a renewal notification to owners. Owners who do not respond within 30 days will have the team archived.

Inactive team review: Teams with no activity for 90 days are flagged in the monthly governance report.

Naming policy: Enforce the [Firm] - [Function] prefix via Azure AD naming policy if the tenant has 500+ teams. Prevents ad-hoc team names.

Membership management: After initial provisioning, new members are added via the Azure AD group linked to the team. Owners do not manually add individuals — they add the AD group or request IT to update group membership.

Notification Design

Provide default notification guidance to document in the team's pinned Getting Started post:

Output Format

Deliver as a structured Markdown specification with:

1. Team summary table (one row per team: name, privacy, owner count, member count, guest access)
2. Channel and tab matrix (team → channels → tabs per channel)
3. App installation list with configuration notes
4. Meeting policy assignment table
5. Governance settings
6. Post-provisioning checklist (what must be done manually after scripted provisioning: add initial members, configure Planner buckets, pin getting-started message)
7. PowerShell or Graph API script outline (parameter list only — not full scripts) for the provisioning team