Powell Teams is a Microsoft Teams application that helps you increase your productivity through useful integrations, information management tools, better governance, and automation. It is essentially a Teams optimisation software to help you get the most out of your Microsoft 365 investment.
Powell Teams was launched in June 2020 by the French digital workplace company, Powell Software. Powell Software was founded in 2015 and picked up $16 million in Series A investment in 2019. Today, its solutions are leveraged by over 2.5 million users, delivered via offices in Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, Africa, And the Middle East.
As Teams adoption skyrocketed during the pandemic, Powell Teams was designed to transform Microsoft Teams usage, governance, and ROI. Importantly, the company is a Microsoft Gold Partner and offers solutions across SharePoint and other Microsoft products as well. “The response from the market on Powell Teams has already been terrific since its launch,” commented Powell Software’s former North American Lead, Antoine Faisandier, in 2020.
Let us review Powell Teams by Powell Software in detail.
Inside Powell Teams for Microsoft Teams
The Powell Teams app is available for download from Microsoft AppSource, and Microsoft resellers can reach out to the company to optimise Teams implementations for their clients. The app is designed entirely for a Teams-based experience, which means that you will not have to download a separate platform. You can get started with Powell Teams by signing up for a free trial, post which it will be custom priced as per your requirements.
Here are the key feature highlights of Powell Teams:
- Prebuilt and custom Teams templates – Powell Teams allows you to set up your own Teams templates, complete with predefined settings, channels, and tabs. Users can choose from these templates to maintain consistency across the organisation.
- Approval workflows for team creation – You can set up predetermined approval workflows for creating Teams, based on business rules for specific use cases. This is essential in order to prevent Teams sprawl, where users can create multiple ungoverned and often unnecessary teams.
- Smart activity management dashboard – As a Teams administrator, you will be able to monitor team activity, from a centralised dashboard. You can zero in on specific teams using filters and focus on governing the teams that are assigned to you. Multiple administrators can choose their assigned teams as “favourites.”
- User recommendations – The Powell Teams app generates intelligent recommendations for best-fit team-employee matches. Employees will receive auto-generated recommendations on which teams to join based on their job roles.
- Teams end-of-life management – A crucial element in managing Teams sprawl is making sure that obsolete teams are retired. For instance, if a team was set up to coordinate a project that has now ended, it should be promptly deleted or archived to avoid security issues, ongoing costs, etc. Powell Teams generates reports that identify active and inactive teams. It also notifies the team owners about the specific action they should take.
- Bridged intranet – You can connect Powell Teams with your corporate intranet and enable easy access to resources, information, and employee records. Importantly, Powell has an intranet of its own, in case you want to set Teams and your intranet up from scratch.
- Teams governance policies – A major reason to adopt Powell Teams is for policy enforcement. The app allows you to create policies, workflows, and approval mechanisms that will regulate how a team is created. It prevents users from creating teams without proper review and validation.
- Quick automations – Powell Teams supports automated team generation to reduce admin and team owner effort. For example, you can configure the app to create teams when you receive a certain email message. You can also connect Powell Teams with business applications like your CRM so that CRM events trigger Teams creation.
- Search engine for Teams – The Powell Teams dashboard displays the many active teams in your organisation as cards. You can search for information, documents, users, and other entities within Teams from a universal search functionality on the dashboard.
Why the Powell Teams App Makes a Difference
Powell Teams addresses a vital and complex use case, and it does so with ease. It offers rich functionalities, in a simple and straightforward UI, with the potential to save hundreds of hours in admin efforts for Teams setup, governance, and course correction.
What We Think
As companies increasingly rely on collaboration apps like Teams, containing sprawl and shadow IT is crucial. Thanks to Powell Teams, you can achieve this directly from the Teams interface and without learning a complex set of admin skills – download it here.
