How Bioland Manages Teams and Guests in Microsoft Teams
Bioland e.V. implemented Microsoft Teams to facilitate collaboration among employees and volunteers. The IT team quickly realized that the lack of rules and uncontrolled guest invitations posed a risk of losing control. Additionally, the administration scattered across various Microsoft Admin Centers made management more challenging. As a result, Bioland adopted the governance apps Teams Manager and External User Manager from Solutions2Share just one month after launching Microsoft Teams.
Teams Manager helps Bioland’s IT team create new teams in a controlled manner. An approval process ensures that only necessary teams are created. To maintain consistency and clear structures, Bioland enforces naming conventions with fixed prefixes based on the team’s purpose. Templates define team lifecycles. After implementing Teams Manager, the IT team also integrated previously created teams into the managed structure.
With External User Manager, Bioland keeps track of all guest users in Microsoft Teams. Employees can invite guests independently, while the IT team retains a full overview into which guests have access to which teams and who is responsible for each guest.
Using Teams Manager, Bioland now creates teams in a structured way while avoiding duplicate entries. Lifecycle settings ensure that unused teams are automatically archived or deleted, and naming conventions are enforced consistently.
External User Manager simplifies guest management. The IT team can immediately see how many guests are active and which teams they belong to. If a guest’s mandate ends or they leave a project, they can be removed with just a few clicks.
Bioland also benefits from having a centralized Microsoft Teams management solution, eliminating the need to navigate multiple Microsoft Admin Centers.
“With Teams Manager and External User Manager, managing Microsoft Teams runs on autopilot. We don’t have to worry about anything and still have a full overview and control over all guests and teams.“ Michaël Schmitt, Network Administrator at Bioland e.V.
Challenges at Bioland
Bioland e.V., the largest organic farming association in Germany with approx. 9,000 member farms and 1,300 partners, introduced Microsoft Teams to facilitate collaboration among employees and volunteers. Within the first month, the IT team noticed a loss of control, as users had complete freedom and struggled to follow rules such as naming conventions for new teams. The team also recognized the risk of users inviting external guests without oversight.
In addition, the settings options scattered over multiple Microsoft Admin Centers made the work of the administrators more difficult.
Seeking a governance solution for teams and guest management—preferably from a German provider—Bioland discovered Teams Manager and External User Manager during an online conference and implemented both just one month after launching Microsoft Teams.
Our solution for Bioland
Teams Manager helps Bioland’s IT team to keep control over new created teams. With an approval process, IT decides whether a new team is created.
To ensure consistent naming and more precise information about the purpose of the team, Bioland uses naming conventions. The IT team created a set of rules with a predefined prefix depending on the purpose of the team, e.g. P for projects, GD for shared services that are relevant for the entire Bioland organization, as well as further abbreviations for locations, committees or expert panels.
Different team templates cover different lifespans. For example, a project team has a shorter lifecycle of just six months, while a location team is set up for a longer duration.
After introducing Teams Manager, IT also integrated the previously created, unmanaged teams into the managed structures.
With External User Manager, Bioland gets a detailed overview of all guests in Microsoft Teams. Employees can invite guests to their teams themselves. However, IT uses External User Manager to see which guests are invited to which teams or which employee is responsible for a guest.
Benefit for Bioland
With Teams Manager, Bioland’s IT team filters requests for new teams, preventing duplicate team creation.
The lifecycle settings determine how long a team remains in place and ensure that unused teams in the tenant are archived or deleted. The governance tool also automatically enforces naming conventions for consistent team names.
For Bioland, the greatest added value of the External User Manager lies in the easy administration of guests. The IT department can see at a glance how many guests are active in a team. With just a few clicks, it is also possible to see which teams a particular guest belongs to. If a guest needs to be removed – for example, because their mandate has ended or they have left a project – this can be done quickly and easily with External User Manager.
Bioland particularly appreciates the fact that Microsoft Teams administration is now no longer spread across different Microsoft Admin Centers, but is now handled within a single solution.
