How to use Akkadian Provisioning Manager to Onboard Employees Onto Microsoft Teams
Akkadian Provisioning Manager Now Supports Microsoft 365/Teams
Akkadian Labs is excited to announce that Akkadian Provisioning Manager is now capable of Microsoft Teams on-boarding! In line with our commitment to providing the best provisioning and employee on-boarding experience possible, we’re bringing the same level of speed, consistency, and security to Microsoft 365/Teams as we have for Cisco Collaboration.
Akkadian Provisioning Manager’s single pane of glass streamlines moves, add, changes and deletes for the entire suite of Microsoft 365 applications, with unique capabilities for Microsoft Teams, including:
- On-boarding for instant messaging, video conferencing, and voice calling
- Direct routing of calls from outside Microsoft Teams
- Directory number management
- Bulk provisioning
These new capabilities are a great addition to our existing native integration with Microsoft Active Directory, which enables full-cycle, zero-touch on-boarding.
These new capabilities will have huge benefits for remote and hybrid work environments, including:
- Automating provisioning for hybrid Microsoft/Cisco UC environments
- Allowing customers to enable inbound calling, not just Teams to Teams calling
- Eliminating the need to run PowerShell scripts
Challenges of the Remote On-boarding Journey
In today’s remote work environments, employee on-boarding and provisioning of collaboration tools presents challenges for both new hires and UC administrators alike. In the absence of live events and conventional employee orientations, new employees can struggle to adapt and understand the company culture when joining a new organization. Likewise, managers and human resources staff can have a difficult time adapting the process for new employees to the new, hybrid work environment—let alone the challenges of connecting new employees to people working remotely.
A Solution for On-boarding Employees onto Microsoft Teams and/or Cisco Collaboration
Microsoft Teams on-boarding can present certain challenges—especially in hybrid Microsoft/Cisco UC environments.
In hybrid Microsoft/Cisco UC environments, engineers need a single pane of glass to automate user provisioning across both platforms. A single management solution for two UC platforms can achieve a powerful ROI by streamlining repetitive, manual, and error-prone tasks.
Organizations committed to providing the best employee on-boarding experience possible must recognize the market shift towards operating in hybrid Microsoft/Cisco UC environments. And they must also commit themselves to bringing the same level of speed, consistency, and security to these hybrid environments as they would to a single platform environment.
How to use Akkadian Provisioning Manager to Onboard Employees Onto Microsoft Teams
Akkadian Provisioning Manager’s streamlined, automated approach to Microsoft Teams on-boarding includes:
- On-boarding for instant messaging, video conferencing, and voice calling
- Direct routing of calls from outside Microsoft Teams
- Directory number management
- Bulk provisioning
Microsoft Teams On-Boarding of Instant Messaging, Video Conferencing, and Voice Calling
Manual on-boarding of Microsoft Teams is a time-consuming process that is subject to error, which in turn leads to re-work that requires even more time. This is less than optimal for engineers whose time would be better spent on the more strategic initiatives of their organization.
Akkadian Provisioning Manager completely streamlines the on-boarding of messaging, video conferencing, and voice calling for hybrid Microsoft/Cisco UC environments. Through a single-pane-of-glass approach, Akkadian Provisioning Manager uses pre-configured templates to automate the on-boarding process. This is in addition to our existing native integration with Microsoft Active Directory, which enables full-cycle, zero-touch on-boarding.
Direct Routing of Calls from Outside Microsoft Teams
Microsoft uses a Graph API to tie-in most of their applications, like Teams for instance. But for voice, a PowerShell script is required—a cumbersome and sometimes time-consuming process.
The normal Teams API doesn’t allow for easy inbound calling configuration—a huge obstacle to communicating effectively and seamlessly. Teams to Teams calling is highly useful for internal collaboration. Because the native approach to on-boarding Microsoft Teams can take hours, provisioners are often forced to check back periodically. Our automated solution can eliminate the time and effort of running PowerShell scripts.
Akkadian Provisioning Manager’s cloud platform converts PowerShell to a RESTful API—first provisioning the Microsoft Teams user, then enabling voice. What differentiates Provisioning Manager is that this all occurs in a single step—an automated solution where the status of a user is monitored in the cloud and automatically provisioned with voice capabilities. This is crucial in connecting new employees to people outside the organization.
Directory Number Management
Directory number management is difficult, costly, and highly prone to errors that often result in the needless utilization of telephone numbers.
Akkadian Provisioning Manager’s DN management feature automatically assigns available numbers, imports DN pools, provisions numbers in real-time, and much more. This significantly saves time, effort, and ultimately money on the needless expenditures for additional numbers. And unlike other provisioning tools, Akkadian Provisioning Manager’s DN management works across different clusters. Also, it’s built directly into our platform—no added costs or separate tools are required.
Bulk On-boarding
Big organizations have big UC provisioning challenges, especially when it comes to batch processing new hires or separations, rolling out work-from-home UC applications during a crisis, and on-boarding groups of temporary or seasonal employees in Microsoft Teams.
Manually provisioning all those new employees and their devices can be cumbersome and extremely time-consuming.
The bulk on-boarding feature of Akkadian Provisioning Manager easily enables UC Admins to create or delete multiple users and devices from a single file, with no scripting necessary. By significantly reducing the time and effort that would otherwise be required, it’s an ideal tool for boosting productivity.
Microsoft Teams is quickly becoming a staple of collaboration everywhere. But with Akkadian Provisioning Manager, streamlining the on-boarding process in hybrid Microsoft/Cisco UC environments is now much easier.
