There were additional reasons why secondary platforms were needed for select presentations, including the need for breakout rooms during video meetings - a feature which Teams had not yet launched, and so an alternative to Teams Meetings became an essential need for the project. For security reasons, they were not allowed to join any outside Teams deployments for fear that data leakage could occur. In some cases, we found that organizations who were participating in the program used Teams internally, and that their deployment included proprietary information that was critical to their company’s intellectual property. One of the reasons for this was the issue of corporate security policies at some of the companies who were sponsoring or providing mentorship for the program. Identifying ChallengesĮarly on it was identified that there would be instances where Zoom, rather than Teams, would need to be leveraged to power some of the meetings that would take place. However, our team quickly realized that there were other factors at play here that would prevent this “all under the Microsoft umbrella” solution.

This ability to monitor and report on the interns engagement was critical for SFRI - not only were these interns submitting work for college credit, but they were also getting paid for their time. Additionally, Envision and Skills for Rhode Island’s Future (SFRI) could have the ability to monitor student engagement, organize student assignments, and track attendance during virtual meetings using Microsoft Power BI.

By using Teams, the interns would have one place for all their communication and collaboration. Our team believed that the more unnecessary external platforms were added to the solution, the more likely we were to experience “platform whiplash” and subsequent issues regarding engagement levels and data integration. When Envision was originally architecting a virtual solution for this program, we intended for each student’s internal and external interactions to take place solely within the Microsoft 365 environment. To learn more, explore our media-rich case study. Envision Technology Advisors partnered with Skills for Rhode Island’s Future to conceive, architect, and deploy the technical solutions that supported this program. This article is part of a larger case study surrounding one of Rhode Island’s largest internship programs in history: The Empower Interns COVID-19 Innovation Challenge.

Zoom attendance report