Network Help for Small Organizations
Microsoft Teams:
Planning, Deployment, Troubleshooting
Teams operates on top of Office/Microsoft 365 and connects with third-party cloud services to provide real-time communications and cooperation. Designed as the successor to Microsoft's Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams offers a single platform for chat, voice/video conferencing with shared screens and white boards, calling, cloud voicemail, group email, plus document and app sharing. Teams is tightly integrated with Microsoft 365 and depends on Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory (AAD)) for delivering its full feature set. Your organization can use Teams exclusively or you can deploy a hybrid network architecture that supports Microsoft Teams alongside self-hosted Microsoft Skype for Business Server.
Progent's Teams specialists offer remote and on-premises expertise to assist organizations of any size to assess the strategic benefits of Teams, plan and carry out an efficient migration to Microsoft Teams from Microsoft Skype for Business or Microsoft Lync Server, and tune or debug a Microsoft Teams deployment. Progent can assist you to configure and manage a cloud-only collaboration system based on Teams, and Progent's Skype for Business consulting experts can assist your organization to create a hybrid deployment that combines Teams with your self-hosted Skype for Business Server system. Progent can assist you to combine Teams with Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office/Microsoft 365 applications as well as with your on-premises PBX, your PSTN connection. gateway, and conference room telephony equipment.
Progent's Cisco-certified network infrastructure experts are available to assist you to design and implement a reliable network topology for Microsoft Teams, and Progent's certified information security and compliance consultants can assist your company to create enterprise-wide communications security policies and rules based on leading. Progent's consultants can help you resolve stubborn technical road blocks or deliver comprehensive project management support to make sure that your Teams deployment is successfully carried out on schedule and within budget.
Key Features of Microsoft Teams
Teams includes chat, meetings, calling, document co-editing, app sharing, and cloud storage into a single client interface. Teams is continually updated and has achieved feature equivalence with Skype for Business in all essential functions. Teams also offers significant advantages in expandability, chat, operation with Office/Microsoft 365, and other aspects of collaboration. Also, Teams introduces the concepts of Teams and Channels to make it simpler to work together on projects, have real-time chats, share files and apps, and conduct conferences.
Teams and Channels
Teams and channels are innovative concepts in Teams for promoting cooperation and organizing knowledge. A team is a collection of users from inside and outside your business who can interact with each other in a positive manner via meetings and by sharing discussions, documents, and applications. Teams can be based on departments, offices, company initiatives, common interests, or any unifying theme that can take advantage of a modern collaboration environment. Whenever you define a team you start a Office/Microsoft 365 group, a SharePoint Online web site and document library, a Microsoft Exchange Online group mailbox and calendar, a OneNote notebook, and a persistent chat-based workspace. If you create a team from an existing Office/Microsoft 365 group, that group's members, SharePoint Online site, mailbox, and OneNote team notebook are all brought into Microsoft Teams. A team can be public or private and can have up to 10,000 participants.
Channels are chat workspaces within a team. Every channel other than the default General channel is concerned with a theme you specify. All conversations, document sharing, and conferences for a theme take place inside the appropriate channel. Channels can be available to all team participants or limited to a subset of the team. Permitted team participants can enhance a channel by inserting apps that be tabs, connectors, and bots. Files shared within a channel via the Files tab are hosted on a SharePoint Online document collection. Administrators can control policies to allow or reject apps and services for a channel. Conferences held within a channel can feature digital whiteboards, notes, and messages. Incorporation of Microsoft Stream allows conferences to be recorded, saved, and played back.
Integration with Office/Microsoft 365 Services
The Teams client interface works on top of Microsoft 365 productivity apps and services to deliver a modern collaboration ecosystem. In addition, Microsoft Teams connectors enable your organization to expand Microsoft Teams with outside apps including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Analytics, Trello, and MailChimp.
Examples of the integration of Teams with Office/Microsoft 365 include:
- Exchange Online and Outlook provide group email and calendar functions. You can set up and attend meetings through either Outlook or Microsoft Teams. Chat and channel messages are held in Exchange for strong data security. You can also set up advanced security and data loss protection for in-transit email and file attachments.
- SharePoint Online integration enables you to build communication and news sites. Extensive choices for managing permissions enable highly secure document sharing in the Azure cloud.
- Microsoft OneDrive for Business allows secure cloud storage of private documents or documents shared in Microsoft Teams chat, synchronizes file edits made when users are unconnected to the Internet, and supports co-editing. Other storage services you can add to Teams channels include Dropbox, ShareFile and Google Drive.
- Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory (ADD)) is leveraged by Teams to allow SSO with Office/Microsoft 365, MFA for advanced data security, and conditional access rights governed by group membership, geolocation, and endpoint state.
Teams Premium is an add-on product that allows Teams to be Teams more personalized, intelligent, secure, manageable, and expandable. The advanced features available with Teams Premium include substantial enhancements to vital areas addressed by Teams such as meetings, webinars, town halls, collaboration, protection, AI-powered meeting recaps, and virtual appointments. To access Teams Premium, you must subscribe to Microsoft 365 Teams as well as a separate subscription to Teams Premium. Progent can assist your organization to plan, configure, and tune your Teams Premium deployment so your organization can derive maximum value from this leading edge, AI-driven product.
Ways Progent Can Assist You to Migrate to Teams from Skype for Business
Teams supplants Skype for Business Online as Microsoft's flagship cloud-based platform for unified collaboration. Organizations now running Skype for Business or Lync should plan for the transition to Teams.
Progent offers on-demand support for the broad array of IT disciplines required to optimize the business value of your Teams deployment. Progent offers the support of Skype for Business experts and Microsoft Lync Server consulting experts to help your organization to stage your current collaboration environment for migration to Microsoft Teams. Progent's Exchange Online specialists, SharePoint developers, and Office 365 consulting experts can assist you to integrate Microsoft Teams with familiar productivity applications. Progent's telephony integration experts can help you to integrate your phone environment to Microsoft Teams.
Progent can provide online or onsite expertise to help you to resolve occasional IT obstacles or Progent can deliver comprehensive project management outsourcing and co-sourcing services to your business to design and implement your Teams migration.
Progent's expert services for helping your business to migrate to Teams include:
- Assist you to define your objectives for your Microsoft Teams deployment
- Inventory your current IT assets and call out any new requirements for migration to Microsoft Teams
- Check that all workers have appropriate licenses for Office/Microsoft 365 services
- Provide advice for choosing a collaboration solution that uses Microsoft Teams only or a hybrid model that integrates Teams with self-hosted Skype for Business Server
- Set up a supported SBC with SIP trunking and PSTN lines to connect your current telephony environment with Microsoft Teams
- Review and revise existing Dial Plans for running with Microsoft Teams
- Establish connectivity and workflows for at-home workers and mobile workers
- Create a governance plan that complies with your company standards as well as regulatory mandates
- Design and validate a cost-effective, non-disruptive migration procedure
- Set up a temporary or permanent hybrid implementation that supports coexistence between Microsoft Teams and self-hosted Skype for Business Server
- Set up Microsoft Entra sync (formerly Azure Active Directory sync), SharePoint and Exchange Online, and OneDrive for Business
- Migrate data from a self-hosted SharePoint implementation
- Configure Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) Premium P1 and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
- Configure Microsoft Entra Connect (formerly Azure Active Directory Connect) with writeback for hybrid Exchange environments
- Configure, install, and manage Microsoft 365 services
- Deal with DNS and certificate issues
- Provide BYOD integration by offering iOS management and Android smartphone management
- Deploy management utilities such as Teams Admin Center, Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure AD) Admin Center, and Office/Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Center
- Configure the Microsoft Teams Premium product to extend the feature set of Microsoft 365 Teams
- Deliver group and individual webinar education
- Provide ongoing guidance, development, and troubleshooting services
Contact Progent for Teams Support
To learn more about Progent's upgrade support for Microsoft Teams, call
An index of content::
Small Business Help Desk Outsourcing Outsourcing Company
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If you have a small business IT system with 10 to 50 network users, Progent's network outsourcing services free your company from dependence on an individual independent service provider while giving you affordable and dependable access to enterprise-class network expertise. By providing network consulting service when you need it, providing advanced expertise for critical technologies, delivering value-added services such as automated server monitoring, and billing only for services you use, Progent offers you an affordable way for maximizing the business value of your small business network. Progent is the intelligent way for small organizations to create and maintain a reliable and secure IT system and to have quick access to the experienced consulting typically restricted to enterprises who can afford a sizeable in-house IT organization.
Hosting Facility Outsourcing
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For enterprises with branches in or any area covered by Progent's consultants, Progent's Microsoft-Certified network consulting experts and certified Cisco system specialists can provide a range of network support services such as project planning, Sarbanes Oxley compliance, office relocations, corporate security, network design, local or phone-based branch office support, and technical support for colocation hosting environments. A Progent network consultant can show you how to design a multi-office network that makes smart use of co-location services and Internet hosting sites. Progent's Microsoft Premier consultants can help large corporations plan, deploy and support massive rollouts of updated versions of Microsoft products such as Enterprise Active Directory, Exchange Server, SharePoint, SQL Server, and Enterprise Windows. Progent's CCIE and CCNP experts can assist you to deploy Cisco technology for connectivity solutions that incorporate basic, high-performance, integrated, and wireless networking.
Live Communications Server Online Support Services
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MS Communications Server provides Instant Messaging and Real Presence as part of an extensible, world-class solution offering advanced security, seamless compatibility with popular Microsoft software, an extendable, standards-based development platform, and compliance with regulatory mandates such as HIPAA, SOX, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Your enterprise can realize lower costs and improved operational efficiencies, enhanced worker productivity, and better intellectual property protection with this simple-to-administer, highly available IM platform. Successful implementations of Microsoft Office Communications Server call for careful planning and consideration prior to roll out. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can provide the skill necessary to deliver all the benefits of Office Communications Server throughout your entire corporation.
Meraki MR32 Access Point Network Engineer
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Progent's Cisco-certified wireless networking consultants can provide remote and onsite consulting and support services to help your organization to design, install, manage, tune, and debug wireless deployments that utilize Cisco's Meraki access points. Progent's consultants can also help you to design and deploy hybrid environments that combine on-premises and cloud-based services and that provide easy access, enhanced protection, streamlined management, and dependable performance for all your wired and wireless devices.
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ransomware removal and file recovery Services
Progent's ransomware consultants can help you to evaluate your ransomware defenses, remotely monitor and protect your network, assist with negotiating a settlement with a hacker, and rebuild a network victimized by a ransomware variant like Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, DopplePaymer, LockBit or Nephilim.
Microsoft SCOM 2012 R2 Engineer
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Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants have more than a decade of experience designing, implementing, enhancing and repairing System Center Operations Manager environments and offer organizations of all sizes expert online or onsite consulting services for System Center 2012 Operations Manager. Progent can assist you to design a topology for Microsoft SCOM 2012 servers that provides the responsiveness and availability required to watch over your IT resources efficiently, whether your datacenters are onsite, cloud-based, or a hybrid solution. Progent can also help you to import and customize SCOM 2012 management packs according to leading practices for tracking network fabric and both Microsoft and third-party apps and services. In addition, Progent can provide responsive remote or on-premises troubleshooting to help you to fix serious problems detected by Microsoft SCOM 2012.
Technology Professional LifeSize Video Conferencing
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Progent can provide the support of a senior specialist with years of experience configuring, managing, and upgrading telepresence systems from leading vendors including Cisco/TANDBERG, Polycom, and LifeSize. Progent's consultants can coordinate with your in-house network management team, your ISP, and your video conferencing technology vendor to help your company maximize the strategic value of your video conferencing ecosystem.
SCVMM 2012 and Hyper-V Technical Consultant
On-site Support SCVMM 2012 XenServer
Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can assist businesses of all sizes to adhere to leading practices to configure System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager hosts and host groups, networking, storage systems, and library resources; plan, implement, and manage private clouds, virtual machines, and services in SCVMM 2012; and integrate SCVMM with SCOM 2012 for comprehensive monitoring. Progent can assist your business to migrate from a legacy release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager or from another virtualization management system, and Progent can assist you to enhance and troubleshoot your current SCVMM 2012 environment to make sure you realize maximum business value.
Windows 2022 Hyper-V Integration Support
IT Consultant Windows Server 2022 Windows Admin Center
Progent's certified Windows Server 2022 experts can help your organization to plan and implement a cost-effective migration to Windows Server 2022 using a self-hosted system architecture or a hybrid deployment model that integrates cloud-based Windows Server on Azure with an on-site implementation of Windows Server 2022.
SQL Server 2016 Always Encrypted Network Consultant
SQL Server SSAS Professional
Microsoft SQL Server 2016 introduces major improvements in speed, scale, security, uptime, BOYD support, and integrated BI. Innovations include PolyBase for processing SQL and NoSQ databases in one appliance for data warehousing, Jason support, Always Encrypted mode, Mobile Reports, and centralized control over local and cloud operations and services. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can provide remote and onsite expertise to assist organizations of any size to deploy, manage or troubleshoot any edition of SQL Server 2016. Progent can also assist you to integrate SQL Server 2016 with all key Microsoft platforms such as Windows Server, Exchange Server 2016, SharePoint Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and GP, Skype for Business, and System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).
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Progent can assist your business to plan an upgrade to Microsoft Teams from Skype for Business or Lync Server and configure, manage, and debug a cloud or hybrid implementation of Teams. Progent can assist you to connect Teams with Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and your PSTN gateway.
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Progent's Juniper-certified network engineers can assist your organization to design and carry out the installation of Juniper J Series firewall/VPN routers, configure security policies and fault-tolerant redundancy, and provide ongoing technical consulting and troubleshooting services.
Juniper SRX Series Firewall Security Audit Services
Juniper SRX Firewall Protect
Progent's Juniper-certified network engineers can help you evaluate the business case for adopting Juniper's SRX Series gateways, plan and execute cost-effective deployments, configure equipment to reflect your security strategy, and provide ongoing consulting services to help you monitor, manage, update, and troubleshoot your environment in order to maximize the business value of your SRX gateway solution.
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