Use Advisor for Teams to help you roll out Microsoft Teams
Advisor for Teams walks you through your Microsoft Teams rollout. It assesses your Microsoft 365 organization environment and identifies the most common configurations that you may need to update or modify before you can successfully roll out Teams. Then, Advisor for Teams creates a Deployment team (in Teams), with channels for each workload you want to roll out. Each workload in the Deployment team comes with a comprehensive Planner plan that includes all the rollout tasks for each workload. Using this Planner plan, you'll assign tasks to the people responsible for each phase of the rollout - including the project manager, Teams admins, support people, and your adoption and user readiness team. Each rollout task contains all the guidance and resources you need to successfully complete the task.
Advisor for Teams is part of the Teams admin center. At a minimum, you'll need a Microsoft 365 Business Basic license so you can take advantage of the Advisor for Teams integration with Forms and Planner. To begin using Advisor for Teams, click the Start button in the Deploying Teams workload widget on the Dashboard. Or go to Planning > Teams Advisor.
Important
Advisor for Teams isn't available for Microsoft 365 Government (GCC High or DoD) deployments.
For a guided overview of the Advisor for Teams experience, check out the Deploy & Configure Microsoft Teams Microsoft Mechanics video.
Using Advisor for Teams
Teams, Forms, and Planner licenses are required to use Advisor for Teams. However, you don't have to be a Teams admin to use Advisor for Teams - anybody in your organization can use it. We've set up special permissions so non-admin users can get to Advisor for Teams, even though it's in the Teams admin center. You DO have to be a Teams admin, Teams Administrator, or Global Administrator to open the tenant readiness assessments (this is because the special non-admin roles don't have access to the Microsoft Graph APIs underlying the assessments).
Important
If Teams Advisor is missing under Planning in the Teams admin center, it means the user isn't licensed for Teams.
The first time you use Advisor for Teams, it will create a Deployment team for you in Teams. It adds a channel for each workload you select.
Important
If a Deployment team has already been created and a different user tries to create it, they'll get an error telling them to contact their support team. This prevents Teams from unintentionally disclosing information about the existing team and its members. Ask the owner of the Deployment team to add you, or contact your support person for help.
Available Advisor for Teams plans
Advisor for Teams currently provides the following plans:
- Chat, teams, channels, and apps
- Tenant assessment
- Planner plan, including adoption tasks
- Forms user survey
- Advisor for Teams bot
- Meetings and conferencing
- Tenant assessment
- Planner plan, including adoption tasks
- Forms user survey
- Advisor for Teams bot
- Skype for Business upgrade
- Tenant assessment
- Planner plan, including adoption tasks
- Forms user survey
- Advisor for Teams bot
- Designed for customers who are currently using Skype for Business Online or Skype for Business on-premises environments, the Skype for Business upgrade plan will help you take the guesswork out of your upgrade journey. Leveraging a proven success framework for implementing change, the plan will guide you through the step-by-step process whether you’re just getting started with Teams, already using Teams alongside Skype for Business, or ready to upgrade. The plan will also connect you to online guidance and best practices, downloadable assets, live 1:many planning workshops, and additional resources to support your success.
- Education (visible only to Educational organizations)
- Tenant assessment
- Planner plan, including adoption tasks
- Forms user survey
- Advisor for Teams bot
- Designed for Educational organizations, the Education plan will help you deploy, adopt, and manage Teams in your educational institution.
For commercial organizations, we recommend that you start with the Chat, teams, channels, and apps plan. For educational organizations, we recommend that you start with Education plan. When you're done deploying that workload, go back to Advisor for Teams and select Add channel to start the next workload.
Tenant assessment
Each plan includes a tenant readiness assessment that you can use to quickly identify aspects of your environment that may need remediation before you roll out Teams. The assessments include prerequisites and best practices. Each assessment test will have a green check mark or an orange warning triangle.
A green check mark means your tenant passed the specific test.
An orange warning triangle means that we suggest you follow up to determine if any action is needed (for example, a Microsoft 365 Group expiration policy is recommended but not required).
Important
Once a user with an Administrative role starts Advisor for Teams, all assessments run in the background. If you update or remediate something, it may not be reflected in your assessments for up to 24 hours.
The sections below describe each assessment, including whether something is a prerequisite or best practices, what each assessment checks is doing and why, and guidance for remediation as needed.
Assessment tests for all workloads
| Assessment test | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Vanity domain configured | Whether there's a [email protected] domain configured for your tenant (for example, @contoso.onmicrosoft.com). You can use the @onmicrosoft.com domain, of course, or you can configure a vanity domain - your choice. For more information, read Add a domain to Microsoft 365. |
| Teams licenses | This is a prerequisite - you must have Teams licenses in order to roll out Teams. Queries the Microsoft Graph to see whether you have Teams licenses (with at least one license available to assign). For more information, read Microsoft Teams service description. |
| Exchange Online licenses | Whether you have an active subscription with available Exchange Online licenses. While Exchange isn't required for basic Teams functionality, integration with Exchange provides an optimal Teams experience. Queries the Microsoft Graph to analyze the subscriptions associated with your tenant and validate whether you have subscriptions with an eligible Exchange Online license (with at least one license available to assign). For more information, read How Exchange and Teams interact. |
| SharePoint Online licenses | Whether you have an active subscription with available SharePoint Online licenses. We recommend per-user SharePoint Online licenses to provide OneDrive for Business for file storage in chats. Queries the Microsoft Graph to see whether you have SharePoint Online licenses (with at least one license available to assign). For more information, read How SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business interact with Teams. |
| Guest access enabled | Whether guest access is turned on. Guest access lets you invite external users to your join your teams. See Collaborate with guests in a team to walk through turning on guest access in Teams; the checklist includes the required Microsoft Entra configurations. |
| External access configured | Whether external access is turned on. By default, it's turned on, with open federation. |
Assessments for chat, teams, channels, and apps
In addition to the Assessment tests for all workloads, the following additional assessments are run for the chat, teams, channels, and apps workload:
| Assessment test | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Group naming policy configured | Whether naming standards have been configured for Microsoft 365 Groups. Microsoft 365 Groups naming policy enables your organization to apply a consistent naming strategy to user-created teams and also applies to other Groups workloads (including Outlook, SharePoint, Planner, and Viva Engage). This test queries Microsoft Entra ID via the Microsoft Graph to check for the existence of naming policies that apply to Microsoft 365 Groups. For more information, read Groups naming policy. |
| Microsoft 365 Group Expiration Policy configured | Whether a Group Expiration Policy has been defined for Microsoft 365 Groups. This enables your organization to automatically remove inactive Teams. It's turned off by default. This test queries Microsoft Entra ID via the Microsoft Graph and reports whether the value has been modified from the default. For more information, read Microsoft 365 group expiration policy. |
Assessments for meetings and conferencing
In addition to the Assessment tests for all workloads, the following additional assessments are run for the meetings and conferencing workload:
| Assessment test | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Audio Conferencing licenses | Whether you have an active subscription with Audio conferencing licenses. This is a prerequisite if you're deploying Audio conferencing bridges. Queries the Microsoft Graph to see whether you have Audio Conferencing licenses (with at least one license available to assign) For more information, read Teams add-on licensing. |
| Stream licenses | Whether you have an active subscription with Microsoft Stream licenses. This is a prerequisite if you want to turn on Meeting Recording. Queries the Microsoft Graph to see whether you have Microsoft Stream licenses (with at least one license available to assign). For more information on Stream and how to turn it on, read Teams meeting recording. |
Assessments for Skype for Business Upgrade
In addition to the Assessment tests for all workloads, Skype for Business Upgrade also includes assessments used in the meetings and conferencing plan.
Advisor for Teams bot
Once Advisor for Teams creates your Deployment team, the Advisor bot delivers the following message in the General channel:
Welcome to your Deployment team for Microsoft Teams!
The purpose of this team is to walk you through your organization's Teams rollout by giving you all the resources you need and providing a collaboration space for the project team. Each channel created using Advisor for Teams includes a step-by-step Planner plan and other resources such as a Forms users survey that can be used throughout your rollout. At any point, you can go back and review the tenant readiness assessment or add additional workload plans using the Teams admin center.
Call to action
- If you're new to Teams or Planner, check out our Teams walkthrough and watch the Planner quick-start videos.
- Head over to your Deployment team in Teams. Select your workload channel (for example, Chat, teams, channels, and apps), and select the Planner tab to get started.
To learn more about Advisor for Teams, read Use Advisor for Teams to roll out Microsoft Teams.
Important
The Advisor for Teams Bot is only used to send a welcome message to your Deployment team. No additional data is collected.
Important
The Advisor for Teams bot is turned on by default. Don't turn it off if you use or plan on using Advisor for Teams.
Advisor for Teams and Microsoft 365 learning pathways
Microsoft 365 learning pathways is an on-demand learning solution that you can customize to train your users, and increase usage and adoption of Teams in your organization. Use learning pathways together with Advisor for Teams to get your users up and running quickly and drive adoption.
Learning pathways gives you a SharePoint Online site template and the ability to easily build a learning site for your users. You can customize the learning pathways training portal to include training and support content specific to your users' needs. Use the Teams playlists from the Microsoft online catalog and add your own.
You can build a learning site in learning pathways, and then add it as a tab to a channel in teams for quick and easy access by users.
For example, use Advisor for Teams together with learning pathways to train your help desk and Champions, and then let learning pathways support training your end users. Build a learning site to help onboard your help desk and Champions to Teams, and then add it as a tab to each workload channel that you're rolling out. Your help desk and Champions can then create a support page on the learning pathways training portal with links and custom playlists to support your users on Teams. This support page can be added to a channel in any team to help train your end users.
The following is an overview of how you can use Advisor for Teams together with learning pathways.
Get started in learning pathways
To get started with learning pathways, check out Get started with learning pathways.
To set up a new learning pathways solution in your environment, see Provision a new learning pathways solution.
Create a learning plan
Plan your learning content
Before you build your site in learning pathways, take some time to review and collect the learning resources and capabilities available to you. With learning pathways, you can use content from the Microsoft 365 training page and add content that you create to tailor the site to your unique needs.
To learn more, see Plan your learning pathways content and Resources for supporting your remote workforce.
Explore Teams content in learning pathways
Learning pathways provides a SharePoint site with a web part that's connected to an online catalog. The Microsoft 365 training page, which hosts the web part, shows all the training available in learning pathways. Have a look around to get familiar with what's available and how content is organized.
Go to your learning pathways site, select Microsoft 365 training, and then select Microsoft Teams to see all the Teams training playlists in the online catalog. Select a playlist and then select the Next and Previous buttons to navigate through it. You can also click the down arrow to view the contents of the playlist and go to a specific topic.
Take an inventory of Teams learning resources in your organization
Review the Teams learning content that's already available in your organization. For example, you may have already developed custom onboarding, training, or support content for Teams. Your existing SharePoint assets can be mixed with Microsoft content in a playlist to build a targeted playlist for your organization.
Build your site in learning pathways
The Admin Success Center in learning pathways provides guidance and resources to help you plan and customize learning pathways in your organization. Learn how to customize the site, show and hide content, build custom playlists, and more.
To access the Admin Success Center, on the learning pathways Home page, select Admin Success Center.
Add your site to Teams
When your site is ready, add it to a channel in any team for quick and easy access.
- In Teams, go to the team, and then select a channel.
- At the top of the channel page, select + (Add a tab).
- Select SharePoint Pages, and then select Add a page from any SharePoint site.
- Paste the URL of your learning pathways site, and then select Save.
To learn more, see Add a SharePoint page or list to a channel in Teams.
Train your support team
Use the resources in your learning pathways site to onboard your help desk and Champions to Teams. Get them ready with the tools and information they need to support your users on Teams.
For guidance and resources on preparing your help desk and Champions for Teams, see Train your org and Build Champions.
As the go-to contact for your users for “how to” questions, your help desk and Champions can use the learning pathways site to train users and as an alternative to creating support tickets. Encourage your help desk and Champions to customize your learning pathways site by building a training and support page, and then add it as a tab to a channel in a team for users to self-serve.
Drive adoption
After you have customized your site and put together your learning plans, consider how you'll drive awareness with your users to encourage them to use learning pathways for ongoing learning.
Use your communication channels to promote the site and generate awareness. For example, include a standard tagline such as “Check out our training and support site for how to get productive with Teams” in communications to your users.
Engage your users by highlighting the ways they can collaborate in Teams, and then direct them to the learning pathways site to learn how.
Check out these resources, which include guidance, adoption kits, best practices, and more, to help you implement a successful rollout and adoption plan.
Frequently asked questions
What are the licensing requirements for Advisor for Teams
At a minimum, you'll need Microsoft 365 Business Basic so you can take advantage of the Advisor for Teams integration with Forms and Planner.
Can I delete the Deployment team
After Advisor for Teams has created your Deployment team, manage the team like any other team - including the ability to delete it. Be aware that, if you don't delete the team by using the Teams admin center, the Teams admin center will show that the team still exists.
Can I add or remove channels in the Deployment team
Yes, once the Deployment team has been created, you'll manage the channels the same way as any other team.
Can I add or remove project team members in the Deployment team
Yes, once the Deployment team has been created, you'll manage it the same way as any other team.
Can I modify the Planner plans
Yes, after Advisor for Teams has created your Deployment team, you should update the Planner plan so it best supports your Teams rollout. You can modify anything - buckets, tasks, task details - just like any other Planner plan.
Can I modify the Forms survey
Yes, after Advisor for Teams has created your Deployment team, you can modify the Forms survey as needed.
Are there any differences between Advisor for Teams in GCC
Yes, user survey Forms are created but are not pinned in plan channels as the Teams Forms app is not available in GCC presently.
What information is Advisor for Teams collecting about my organization
Advisor for Teams requests your agreement to collecting non-EUII (end user identifying information). The information that is collected is in the form of telemetry that provides feedback to Microsoft on how well Advisor for Teams is driving successful outcomes and where it may need to be improved. This same data is used to identify opportunities for Microsoft to proactively engage with your organization in an effort to assist with your deployment.
Can I use Advisor for Teams with FastTrack
Yes, FastTrack leverages Advisor for Teams for all customers looking to deploy Teams. They can assist with the initial setup of your Deployment team using Advisor for Teams (if required) and also provide as-needed support on specific topics during your Teams rollout.
Can I use Advisor for Teams with a partner
Yes, you can use Advisor for Teams while also using a deployment partner for your Teams deployment. If your partner is a CSP and manages your tenant on your behalf, they can use Advisor for Teams to create your Deployment team and assist you with executing the overall project. Additionally, you can work with any partner by adding those individuals as guests in your Deployment team, to allow them to participate as a member of the overall project team.
How do I use Planner
Check out Microsoft Planner help and the Planner quick-start videos.
How do I use Forms
Go to the Forms help center.