The Out of the Box Creation Process for new Microsoft 365 assets makes it easy for the end user to choose a name, but this name can also be used in the background for things like URLs or e-mail addresses. This makes management very nasty; as for the IT, these are all assets they need to manage, but they have no clue what it is. So, streamlining the creation process is a significant benefit of EasyLife 365.
Users can choose from a variety of templates to have a clear structure and design from the beginning. You can have Templates for the following Microsoft 365 assets
For Teams templates, different from Microsoft Templates for Teams, you can configure Channels and Tabs that are fully configured. The following Tabs can be added and Configured per Teams Channel
During the Creation Process of every asset, you can define additional information you can request for this asset as simple forms. Metadata is stored in your environment; we do not save information in our databases. This meta-information is used for the end user as well as for the administrator to give them more insights. Metadata can be accessed through Graph API so that you can build advanced scenarios yourself.
If there is a need for mandatory Metadata, naming conventions, or a Policy that needs to be met before creating the asset, EasyLife 365 would only let you create your new assets if you met the minimum requirements.
This way, we ensure end users cannot create incompliant assets.
Using other provisioning tools, you often have to wait for quite some time until the user gets their asset. With EasyLife 365, we do all we can to speed up the process and create a new asset in the shortest possible time directly through Microsoft’s Graph API. Like this, we can save minutes to provision fully pre-configured assets. Other solutions can take up to 5 minutes to create and configure a Microsoft 365 asset.
Disconnecting the Name of an asset from its background architecture is an essential task to bring more structure to Microsoft 365 assets. But what should the new URL or e-mail address look like? With EasyLife 365, you can define how these should be made up. Using constants, counters, metadata, or even user profile information gives you a million options to structure your workspace URL’s and Group e-mails according to your needs.
Our mantra is to keep the environment open without the need to ask for permission whenever a new resource is required. On the other hand, some scenarios require an approval process before creating a new resource. With EasyLife, you can create sequential or parallel multi-stage approvals for all resources requested by your users.
Creating assets is one thing but then? In Groups, Planner, Yammer, or SharePoint, it is easy. You forget the Link or Group Name, and it is gone 😉. In Microsoft Teams, it is not much harder; you click to “hide,” and you can forget about it. But what happens over time? You will gather many assets that will still be visible in search, and finding becomes harder. With changes and job shifts, assets will become ownerless and stay for eternity if IT is not cleaning them up. But they really can’t because they are not the data owners. This is why we have so many data graves in file shares today. With Lifecycle Management from EasyLife 365, we prevent this.
The Owners directory gives you a clear overview of all assets you own and therefore are responsible for, whether you have hidden the Team or forgot the Group’s Name or SharePoint’s URL. EasyLife 365 shows you all your assets in one place. You can even show archived objects if you wish. In the owners’ directory, you can see if an asset needs your attention because it violates some assigned policies and solves the issue to get compliant again within seconds.
The Administrator can define policies for Confirmation or Expiration that will tell the Owner to decide if they still need this asset. As long as the Owner confirms, it is all good. We know that the asset is still in use. But what if we do not get an answer from the Owner? After a definable set of reminders, Administrators can choose the consequences. They can delete the asset or make it read-only through archival. Like this, you get a self-maintaining collaboration environment in Microsoft 365
You cannot do things that you aren’t aware of. That’s why we made it simple to handle policy violations through the Teams notification app directly. It makes it quick and easy for your resource owners to fix broken compliance. Of course, you can also send e-mails if you wish and even brand these with your banners, logo, and more.
Since Microsoft introduced Guest users, this feature evolved into a collaboration space as it became straightforward to work with people outside your organization. Just add an e-mail address to a resource like Teams, Planner, or SharePoint, and you are good to go. But very often, these Guest Accounts created in your Azure Active Directory are messy, with missing display names, and they will last forever in your Tenant. With EasyLife, we prevent Guest Chaos.
Decoupling Guest invitations from authorizing them to an asset is the first thing we do. Requiring the invited person to add more information than just the e-mail Address assures good quality of Guest-Information. You can even add your Metadata to it to be asked from the requestor. Finally, you can have a distinction between your guest users on what purpose they are in your Azure Active Directory. You can even start building your advanced scenarios.
Again, we believe that a requestor of a Guest Account should take some responsibility for the Guest they invited. So, we are introducing the Ownership Model on Guest Accounts too. Whoever invites a Guest becomes the Owner, and to ensure we are well backed, we add a Secondary Owner. Ownerships can be taken over or transferred to another person if the Administrators allow. Enabling or disabling is as well possible or even deletion. Of course, all privileges are manageable in the Admin Portal.
Are you familiar with the Scenario that you end up having hundreds or even thousands of Guest Accounts in your Directory? Not knowing who is active and who can be disabled or deleted? EasyLife 365 manages the Lifecycle for you. A Guest is no longer active, or the owners reported not working with the Guest anymore? Automatically disable the account and, after a certain time, delete it from the Directory. This will keep your Azure Active Directory neat and clean.
With the EasyLife 365 Policy set, you can define your own rules of what lifecycle you want to have for each asset. Each Template can follow its own Rules on what Policy should be enabled. And as we know, that Rules without penalty are just disregarded; guess what? You get a nasty surprise if you don’t follow the very friendly and courteous reminders of EasyLife 365. Your asset can get archived or even deleted by the Administrator’s choice, of course. If you wish, you can even write your magic and call it through a Webhook.
How many Owners should an asset have? Everything based on Microsoft 365 Groups like Group Connected SharePoint, Teams, Native Yammer, or Planner follows the principle of Owners. These are supposed to manage the asset and sometimes also manage access. If you now have just one Owner, what is a prevalent scenario Out of the Box? This asset can become ownerless quickly, or the Owner is not reachable, so nobody can manage access or settings. This will trigger a service desk call and produce unnecessary effort. EasyLife 365 allows you to ensure there are always at least two owners in place to prevent this.
Sometimes we use assets that should long be archived because we still have some documents in a closed project we still want to use as a template store or similar. Anyway, to make sure you still know what you have, EasyLife 365 asks you if you still need the respective asset from time to time. A simple yes keeps you going. Not important anymore? Let it go. Not in the mood to do anything? EasyLife 365 will care its way.
As very often, assets we create but no longer use are either hidden or the URL to it just removed from the favorites, it is good to have a little angel on your shoulder that reminds you of your duties. After some time of not using an asset, EasyLife 365 tells you there is an unused asset. This brings your responsibilities to your attention, and you can consciously decide what to do with the asset. Don’t you need it anymore? Out of the way with it! Do you still need it? You’re one click away from re-affirming the next period. Are you not doing anything? EasyLife 365 will do it for you, but maybe not the way you wan.
As soon as you let Owners out in the Business manage access to content, you actually do a very good thing because you take a load off the IT department. Business representatives also know who should have access, so this is the best option you have. Nevertheless, adding is easy but reviewing is often forgotten. So EasyLife reminds you of your duty, and also, it can become nasty if you don’t react to the notification. EasyLife will show no mercy.
Inviting new Guests is quickly done. But then? Guest Policies will keep you neat and clean. Guests that did not log in for some time will be regarded as Expiring, and a Guest Owner would have to actively confirm that they still work with this Guest or transfer Ownership to someone else. You also can be asked from time to time if you still need this Guest Account just to make sure everything is running smoothly. If no cooperation is in place anymore or you don’t answer properly, a Guest Account gets disabled and, after some time, deleted, if the Admin wishes.
Keep calm and automate all things. This is the very baseline we put into our product idea. Having administrated Microsoft 365 and Collaboration environments for years, we asked ourselves what product we would buy to make the life of a Microsoft 365 Administrator easier. All the Features above can intuitively be managed through an administrator’s hand. You can even give EasyLife 365 Administration to people without admin rights in Microsoft 365, which adds another RBAC role to your environment.
Within a clean and structured administrator portal, people of choice (they do not need Tenant Admin rights) can administrate the EasyLife 365 environment through this cockpit. Built into Sections with loads of options to control nearly every aspect of the Microsoft 365 Collaboration is built into different cockpit sections. Once set up, which is done in a few minutes, you can configure your environment in no time, and from then on, just lay back and let EasyLife 365 do the heavy lifting.
Want to know how you are doing? A nice and clear overview lets you see how your assets are regarding compliance status defined through your Templates and Policies. Easily search by name or filter by compliance status of the assets. With this feature, you are always on top of your collaboration status, and you can even do single or bulk edits on your assets. Is it possible to switch an asset you created pre-EasyLife 365 to one of your templates? No problem, done in a few seconds.
For each of the possible assets, you can have as many Templates as you wish. Define Metadata, accept Terms of use, and have multiple Guest User templates, all with no problem. Tons of settings and possibilities are just a few clicks away to make work simpler for your employees as well as your administrators. So many presets, additional information you might want to gather, and even naming conventions can be applied to your templates and, in the end, targeted to a set of users to have a granular configuration that meets all your needs.
You define the rules. With Policy Sets, you can determine the rules to create and manage assets. Be this an Expiration time for Projects, inactivity warnings for Guest Users, or the escalation path if someone does not do the access review. It is all in your hand. A Policy Set can be used for several templates so that you can have templates from a similar type but with a different setup, using the same policy set. So your work is minimalized to the optimum.
Don’t find a feature or setting that you need? No problem. With our built-in Online Documentation, you always have access to the runbook of EasyLife 365. From Architecture to 1o1 up to configurations of special features, you will all find on the documentation website. The Feature-history is also published there, so you will always be on top of the latest updates and features of EasyLife 365.
By booking a Demo, we can show you how powerful EasyLife 365 fights the Collaboration Chaos Monster.
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