Determining if you should enable Microsoft Self-Service

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To drive effective utilization of Microsoft 365, we have to create new Microsoft Teams, Planner plans, Yammer communities, and SharePoint Online sites on a timely basis. But many organizations have gatekeeping reviews or regulatory requirements that require reviews and/or approvals prior to creating new teams, plans, communities, and sites. The tension between quick creation and required governance leads to difficult decisions:

What (if any) approvals should be required in order to get a new team, plan, community, or site?
How quickly should the new team, plan, community, or site be provided? Is 2 hours quick enough? How about 2 days? 2 weeks?
Who should be able to request a new team, plan, community, or site? And should they have to declare a business purpose or specify the type of data (e.g. company confidential, personal information, highly classified, etc.) included?
Who will approve the creation of teams, plans, communities, and sites?

You also need to decide what type of self-service model you’d like to leverage. A request and fulfillment model begins with an employee completing an intake request for a team, plan, community, or site. This intake would then be processed on an automated or manual basis. If the request was found to be valid (within appropriate parameters), the new team, plan, community, or site request would be fulfilled. A create and certify model enables employees to create and use their new teams, plans, communities, and sites immediately. Creators would then receive required attestation or registration forms that must be completed within an allotted time period or their new team, plan, community, or site will be deleted. Some companies use a certify and create model where employees complete a required registration process and are then provided a new team, plan, community, or site.

Your organizational culture, regulatory requirements, and governance/auditing needs should drive your decisions on enabling Microsoft 365 self-service. There is no one-size-fits-most model for success. In Episode 24 of the Microsoft 365 Voice, we share ideas for choosing a self-service model, provide examples of what we’ve seen work well, and give some getting-started ideas. We hope you enjoy the episode!