Introduction Microsoft Teams​

As a leading technology provider in the area of industrial 3D-printing of metals and plastics, EOS GmbH, founded in 1989, is an international company with over 1,250 employees spread across seven technology centers worldwide.

With 15 locations and a growing number of partners and customers, collaboration posed an ever-increasing challenge. A uniform structure with clearly defined responsibilities and global networking was essential.

The Microsoft Teams implementation made it possible to have a centralized platform for meetings, chats, notes, file sharing, and task scheduling across locations to enhance communication and collaboration both internally and externally.

The rapid and agile introduction of Microsoft Teams deserves special mention. The concept and development phases took about two months, followed by a pilot phase that lasted another two months. The “go live” phase came at the perfect time for everyone, as it began just before the long-term home office phase caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This greatly facilitated the rapid adoption of MS Teams.

“Teams was introduced just in time before the CORONA crisis began and it really supported being able to work virtually from home offices. The employees from the specialized departments in the project were very motivated to implement new tools,”

Alexander Kinast
Director Global Information Technology bei EOS

At the beginning of the project, the pilot key users were defined, and they consisted of the pilot groups and contact partners. Training sessions were the cornerstone for capturing requirements and then a specialized concept was created from them. Subsequently, about 20 pilot team rooms (150 pilot users) were created. For example, IT mapped the IT portfolio board and KANBAN boards using Planner, thus replacing the manual boards. Status meetings were now conducted via Teams supported by Planner, in which the checklists corresponded to a “definition of done”.

The technical core of the solution was a centralized SharePoint site for managing the request process in Microsoft Teams and supporting users with any questions that they might have. Lists, Teams, and Planner were configured together, whereby a PowerShell job was used to generate Teams and Planners. MS Teams’ own generation function was disabled to ensure quality and clarity.

A uniform structure was defined for the automated configuration of Microsoft Teams with the help of the Graph API. The linking of MS OneNote as a separate tab, the creation of a connected MS Planner per team, as well as the generation of standardized buckets and tasks, created the basis for a comprehensive process together with MS Teams. The CI and the design of the SharePoint pages were individually customized for EOS to enable a uniform appearance. Using an agile working methodology, MS Teams has been continuously expanded, enabling ongoing process optimization.

As part of the technical implementation of the Teams rollout, additional information (e.g., a photo) was added to the employees’ Azure AD profile. The security settings for Azure-AD, MS Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, and for collaboration with external partners were revised and secured using multifactor authentication. Each step was closely coordinated with data protection, information security and the workers’ council.

Alight and EOS tackled numerous additional tasks and projects together: A training concept as well as assistance for key users and end users were developed. Furthermore, a platform for FAQ’s, a discussion forum as well as how-to videos and presentations were made available to the users in order to ensure sustained usage.

A concept for the operation and interaction with the teams was developed. Blog articles, news, regular mailings, and other materials were jointly compiled into a communication concept.

The outstanding team collaboration between all EOS colleagues and Alight also deserves special mention. Only through working together was it possible to implement the project in such a targeted, successful, and fast manner.