Independent Publication
About GovernanceConsult
We're a compact team of Microsoft 365 (M365) and Office 365 (O365) practitioners who grew tired of governance advice that was either too vague to act on or lost somewhere inside Microsoft's own documentation. So we built the reference we always wished existed.
24
In-depth articles
6
Topic categories
2
Staff contributors
2025
Founded
Our Mission
Microsoft 365 and Teams reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide — yet governance material for administrators and compliance officers stays scattered, frequently out of date, and seldom written by anyone who has actually had to configure and run a large M365 / O365 tenant in production.
GovernanceConsult sets out to fix that. Everything we publish comes from direct, hands-on experience: real policy configurations, real sprawl, real eDiscovery requests, and the genuine trade-offs enterprise IT teams weigh when they balance day-to-day usability against security and compliance obligations.
We cover the whole arc of M365, O365, and Teams administration — from day-one setup in the Admin Center through lifecycle management, external access controls, data retention, legal hold, and adoption reporting. The aim is to be the page you bookmark, not the one you skim once and forget.
Editorial Independence
GovernanceConsult has no affiliation with Microsoft Corporation. We are not sponsored by Microsoft, and we do not represent any vendor of Microsoft 365, Office 365, or Teams add-ons and integrations. Every editorial call is ours alone, and we never accept payment for favourable coverage.
When we endorse a configuration approach, it is because we have tested it or watched it hold up in practice — not because anyone asked us to. When we flag a limitation or a risk, we say so plainly.
Microsoft and Microsoft Teams are registered trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. Their use on this site is purely descriptive and editorial, identifying the subject matter we cover. We are in no way suggesting official affiliation or endorsement.
Trademark Notice: GovernanceConsult is an independent publication with full editorial independence. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft, Microsoft 365, Office 365, and Microsoft Teams are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
Meet the Team
The editorial team behind GovernanceConsult brings together experience across large enterprise Microsoft 365 deployments, compliance consulting, and IT security — all in environments where Teams governance wasn't optional, it was a requirement.
Natalie Brooks
Microsoft 365 Governance ConsultantNatalie has spent the past nine years helping mid-market and enterprise organisations build sustainable Microsoft 365 governance frameworks. She's seen what happens when Teams sprawls out of control — and what it takes to get it back under management. Her writing focuses on practical frameworks and the admin workflows that actually hold up over time.
Marcus Whitfield
IT Security & Compliance AnalystMarcus works at the intersection of Microsoft Teams security and regulatory compliance — conditional access, data loss prevention, eDiscovery, and compliance recording are the problems he deals with every week. He writes for GovernanceConsult when he finds a topic that isn't covered well anywhere else, which turns out to be fairly often.
Editorial Principles
Accuracy over speed
We'd rather publish fewer articles that are rigorously accurate than push out thin content quickly. Every configuration step we describe has been verified in a live tenant.
No vendor bias
We don't accept sponsored articles, paid placements, or affiliate arrangements. Our content reflects our own views and experience, full stop.
Plain language
Microsoft documentation can be dense. We write for the IT administrator who has a limited amount of time and needs to understand the decision, not just the syntax.
Transparency about limitations
When a feature doesn't work the way you'd expect, or when Microsoft's documentation is ambiguous, we say so. We'd rather under-promise and over-deliver.
Content Coverage
Our articles span six topic areas that represent the full governance lifecycle for a Microsoft Teams deployment:
- Admin Center & Policies — navigating the Admin Center, configuring meeting and messaging policies, managing app permissions
- Governance & Lifecycle — team creation governance, naming conventions, ownership rules, lifecycle management, sprawl prevention
- Security & Compliance — sensitivity labels, DLP, conditional access policies, MFA enforcement, security posture review
- Guest & External Access — guest user provisioning, external access federation, B2B direct connect, auditing external sharing
- Retention & eDiscovery — Microsoft Purview retention policies, eDiscovery searches, legal hold, compliance recording
- Adoption & Reporting — usage analytics, adoption metrics, governance audit processes, change management for rollouts
Contact the Editorial Team
We welcome feedback, corrections, and suggestions for topics you'd like us to cover. If you've spotted an error in one of our articles, please let us know — accuracy matters to us, and we update our content when the underlying Microsoft product changes.
You can reach us at info@governanceconsult.org, by phone at (952) 926-6666, or through our contact form.
Our editorial office is located at 7128 Minnetonka Blvd, Minneapolis, MN 55426, USA.