Fast Deploy Microsoft Teams for Education

Inspiration

While it has been a struggle for all schools to transition to virtual based learning solutions, we have seen it be a huge struggle for smaller schools who do not have IT support staff. We designed this solution for small private school, homeschool co-ops, and tutors who would like to start using Microsoft Teams for their students.

What it does

This solution provides a simple Excel workbook that allows them to enter their teachers and students, and assign them to classes. Then they can run a single script to import all the data into Microsoft Teams. An Office 365 user account is created for each teacher and student, and a Team’s site is created for each class. Teachers and students are then assigned to the appropriate classes.

How I built it

We knew of at least one homeschool co-op that was in need of a solution. We worked with them to find out what information they had, and what it would take for them to get up and going. Their main requirements where, creating the logins for all teachers and students, creating a Team site for each class, and assigning the teachers and students to those classes. We knew the majority of this could be done using existing PowerShell modules, so we built it in PowerShell. We used to Excel to provide the schools an easy to use interface, that they would be familiar with.

Challenges I ran into

We originally built this as a series of PowerShell scripts that uses CSV imports. We quickly learned that most educators did not know what a CSV file was, let alone how to map usernames to classes to ensure there were unique values. So, we redesigned the original concept to be more user friendly. Now, everything they need is packaged together. There is one Excel workbook that they can fill out all the information in. When it comes to assigning classes, all the teachers and students are included in a dropdown to ensure proper mapping. Once they complete filling out the Excel workbook, they can execute a single batch file to start the upload process.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I proud that I was able to provide a quick and easy solution for schools and individuals who are most likely too small to use something like official School Data Sync from Microsoft.

What I learned

As a backend automation architect, I'm often not too concerned with how I get the data. In my normal role, I am typically pulling data and information from infrastructure and business systems, and working with people who are very familiar with technology. I enjoyed the challenge and learning of taking what seemed like a simple automation, and making it friendly and easy to use for anyone.

What's next for Fast Deploy Microsoft Teams for Education

I would love to expand upon the solution to make it fully online. I envision taking the wireframe from the Excel workbook and building that into a series web forms. Then moving the backend code into something like Azure Functions, that will allow a small school to get setup in no time. I would also like to add additional functionality to it, so teachers could create class templates that they could apply to their Team's sites.