In the ever-evolving landscape of digital collaboration and productivity, Microsoft 365 (M365) offers a comprehensive suite of tools and applications designed to transform the way we work. However, the true potential of Microsoft 365 lies not just in its expansive features but in the effective management of the wealth of information it houses. In this fast-paced era, where information is the lifeblood of decision-making, mastering the art of information management within Microsoft 365 is essential for maximising efficiency and ensuring the security and integrity of your organisation's information landscape.
In this blog post, we'll delve into the 7 best practices that will empower you to harness the full potential of Microsoft 365 information management. Let's embark on a journey to unlock the secrets of optimal information management within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
Best Practice 1: Define your Microsoft 365 Information Management strategy
As Henry Kissinger once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere”. So, ask yourself these questions when developing your M365 Information Management strategy:
- What’s your vision and purpose?
- What M365 IM success looks like for you?
- What you are trying to achieve and within what timeframe?
- How does it support your overall business strategy and business goals?
Your strategy should provide a high-level picture of what your current issues are and where you would like to get to in the future.
Ensure your strategy provides an ecosystem-wide approach to Information Management in Microsoft 365, including information in personal workspaces (OneDrive), collaboration and communication workspaces as well as organisation-wide spaces such as your organisation’s intranet.
Best Practice 2: Build an organization-wide information landscape
Microsoft 365 provides a range of user-centric views including:
- A list of Teams you are member of in Teams
- A list of your favourite and frequently used sites on the App Bar in SharePoint Online
While user-centric views allow users to quickly access the areas they are working in, they do not provide a holistic view of the organisation-wide information landscape. Giving users only user-centre views in Microsoft 365 is like giving them a Google Map without the actual map, but just a list of their saved locations.
Use hub-to-hub association and hub navigation to build an organisation-wide information landscape, connecting all workspaces in a logical way, using organisation-wide taxonomy. You can also provide users with a centralised directory of all workspaces filtered by organisation-wide taxonomy.
Best Practice 3: Controlled self-provisioning
Of course, we can simply turn the switch and allow everybody to create Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Sites. While this approach might work OK for the first few months, over time it will lead to uncontrolled creation of unused, outdated, duplicated or irrelevant teams and sites, cluttering your Microsoft 365 environment. Your users will be complaining that there are too many teams and sites and they can't find the right information. Your admins will be complaining that they can't monitor the environment and it is too hard to manage.
Uncontrolled provisioning results in chaos and confusion. Too much control however increases workload for IT and bottleneck.
Use fully-templated controlled self-service provisioning to empower your users while retaining required guardrails and control.
Best Practice 4: Manage information and workspaces throughout their lifecycle
Creating information and provisioning workspaces in Microsoft 365 is very easy. However all information and workspaces created in Microsoft 365 need to be managed well throughout their lifecycle, including archiving and deletion at the end of the lifecycle.
- Develop procedures and allocate resourcing for regular monitoring of all workspaces.
- Automate sunsetting processes whenever possible.
- Use 3rd party tools or Microsoft 365 retention labels and policies for managing retention and disposal of information stored in your Microsoft 365 environment.
To learn more about retention and disposal tools available in Microsoft 365, register for our Records Management Training Course.
Best practice 5: People-centric design
In everything we do we need to remember our users.
People-centred design is crucial for effective information management because it ensures that the systems and processes are tailored to the needs and behaviours of the end-users.
When information management systems are designed with a people-centred approach, it leads to improved information quality and accuracy. If end-users find it easy to input and access information, they are more likely to save records of their business transactions in the IM system. This, in turn, leads to more reliable data and better-informed decision-making.
People-centred design leads to higher adoption rates, increased user satisfaction, and ultimately better outcomes.
On the other hand, when Information systems are not designed with the needs and behaviour of the end-users in mind, they can become cumbersome, confusing, and frustrating for the users. Users will find a way to bypass such systems.
Best practice 6: Automate routine tasks
Use advanced Microsoft tools such as SharePoint Premium to automate routine tasks.
With SharePoint Premium, you can automatically generate standard repetitive business documents, such as contracts, statements of work, service agreements, letters of consent, and correspondence.
Use the annotations feature in SharePoint Premium to add notes, comment, and collaborate with others on your content in document libraries. You can use annotations without modifying the original files, so the original records are preserved.
If you have an image library, use SharePoint Premium to automatically tag images with descriptive keywords using AI. These keywords are stored in a managed metadata column, making it easier to search, sort, filter, and manage the images.
For scanned documents use SharePoint Premium to automatically extract the relevant text, and make the text from the images available for search and indexing. This lets you quickly and accurately find the keywords and phrases you’re looking for.
Use SharePoint Premium to automatically extract key information from financial documents to better store and classify documents and streamline financial processes.
Use SharePoint Premium with Microsoft Teams and Power Platform for building powerful solution like contracts management solution described in this video demonstrating contracts management automation with SharePoint Premium, Microsoft Teams and Power Automate.
To learn more about SharePoint Premium, register for our Microsoft 365 SharePoint Premium Training Course.
Best practice 7: Protect sensitive information
Robust information protection is a must for all organisations. According to the Microsoft Digital Defence Report 2022, cyber security is a key enabler of technological success. Innovation and enhanced productivity can only be achieved by introducing security measures that make organisations as resilient as possible against modern attacks.
Over the past few years, the world experienced DDoS activity that was unprecedented in volume, complexity, and frequency. The vast majority of successful cyberattacks could be prevented by using basic information security and protection hygiene.
Use information protection and security tools provided in Microsoft 365 to protect sensitive information in your environment.
Microsoft Purview Information Protection capabilities can help you to discover, classify, and protect sensitive information. These capabilities include:
- Sensitive Information types – pattern-based classifiers that detect sensitive information like credit card, bank account, social welfare number etc.
- Sensitivity Labels – a means to classify information, to indicate its sensitivity, and how it is to be handled. The sensitivity labels protect information by applying a security classification with visual markings in line with the PSR framework.
- Data Loss Prevention policies – a set of tools and processes used to ensure that sensitive information is not lost, misused, or accessed by unauthorised people e.g. to detect sensitive information, inform users about information sensitivity and block emails and file sharing.
To learn more about information protection tools available in Microsoft 365, register for our Microsoft 365 Purview Data Loss Prevention Training Course.
Further Help
We hope these 7 best practices will help you in your Microsoft 365 Information Management journey.
If you’re looking to discover more, our Microsoft 365 Information Management Discovery Package is a great place to start
Our Discovery Package essentially will help you to ‘discover the plan’. It is a standalone piece of work that independently reviews your current status against the parameters defined by you. The outcome will assist at a high level to support any future business cases as an independent assessment of your Microsoft 365 environment.
Begin by having a quick chat with one of our team. Use the Live Chat in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen or email us using the contact details below.
Jacqueline Stockwell (Australasia)
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