Microsoft Teams · champions
Give adoption a home and an owner.
Create a community of practice that helps people solve everyday problems.
Who should be involved: Change leads, learning teams, business managers
What is the role of an AI champion community?
An AI champion community helps colleagues apply approved practices, resolve everyday questions and share experience across teams. It needs recognised responsibilities, manager-supported time and a route to formal support. Amplified Pi designs the community as an ongoing service, with maintained answers and feedback to platform and learning teams. Champions support their peers; they do not replace accountable technical or business owners.
- When this is a good fit
- Useful experience is scattered across teams, the same questions recur and a small number of enthusiasts are carrying support informally.
- Before you invest
- Identify a community owner and confirm time with participating managers. If nobody can maintain answers or handle escalations, opening another Teams channel will not resolve the underlying gap.
Everyday questions improve how work gets done.
Questions from real work
People share tasks and barriers.
Make sense of the issue
Champions help and identify recurring themes.
Resolve with the right owner
Business and technical owners decide unresolved issues.
Provide reviewed support
Examples, task aids and clinics support the next use.
New experience feeds back into the community.
Champions support learning. Decisions about policies, access and risk remain with the accountable owners.
What we work on
- Design a Teams-based community with a sponsor, moderation, response expectations and escalation paths.
- Recruit champions across business roles and agree protected time with their managers.
- Run clinics, validate reusable work patterns and turn recurring questions into improvements.
What you take away
- A community charter, champion role description and launch calendar.
- A curated library of reviewed examples with owners and review dates.
- A feedback and escalation backlog connected to platform and process owners.
How we approach the work
A community becomes useful when questions receive a reliable response and experience turns into better working practices. We design that operating rhythm, including the time and authority needed to sustain it after launch.
-
Give the community a charter
We agree who the community serves, what belongs in the channel and which questions require formal support. A sponsor, community lead and platform contact are named. Moderation rules cover confidential examples, respectful discussion and the handling of reported incidents.
What you receive
A short charter and responsibilities that managers can resource.
-
Recruit for reach and trust
Champions should represent different roles, working patterns and locations. We agree time with their managers and provide onboarding in coaching, safe demonstrations and escalation. Technical enthusiasm is useful, but it is not the only selection criterion.
What you receive
A supported champion network with realistic commitments.
-
Run a repeatable support rhythm
The launch combines a clear invitation with useful first examples. We propose regular office hours, a questions queue and a small editorial routine. Repeated questions are grouped so the community can distinguish a learning need from a broken process or configuration.
What you receive
A calendar, triage routine and feedback backlog.
-
Turn answers into maintained knowledge
Reusable answers get an owner, an approved example and a review date. Product changes trigger an update or retirement. We review whether people get unstuck, whether support demand changes and whether champions have enough time, rather than reporting message volume as success.
What you receive
A maintained practice library and a review of community health.
The guidance behind the approach
A network with a clear purpose
Microsoft’s champion guidance emphasises peer support and sustained engagement. Its community framework assigns programme roles and a shared place for resources. We translate that into a Teams-based service with named operators and practical escalation routes.
Reference: Microsoft: champion programme; Microsoft: community programme framework
Illustrative example
Example: the same access question appears repeatedly
Several employees cannot use an approved source in their task. A champion collects the relevant context without copying sensitive material into the channel. The platform owner resolves the access issue; the community publishes a reviewed explanation and updates its onboarding guide. Champions do not grant themselves administrative rights to resolve the request.
What we need to get started
- A sponsor, community lead and technical escalation contact
- Manager-approved time for champions
- An existing Teams space or an agreed place to create one
Questions before you begin
Do champions replace the help desk?
No. They coach colleagues and help identify recurring issues. Incidents, permissions, policy exceptions and technical changes remain with the accountable support and governance teams.
What makes this sustainable after launch?
A realistic workload, visible sponsorship, maintained examples and a regular review. We design the handover so the community is not dependent on one enthusiastic volunteer or a permanent external facilitator.
Related modules
The decision at the end
The community has named operators and a workable handover; champions know the boundary between coaching and technical or legal decisions.
How progress is judged
Track resolved questions, reuse of approved patterns and recurring barriers; interpret participation in context.
Scope boundary
This is a community of practice hosted in Teams, not a claim that a specific consumer Communities feature is available in every tenant.
Choose the next step from the evidence.
The next module depends on the constraint revealed by the work. You do not need to complete every module.
Explore the other modulesProduct and policy references
- Microsoft adoption feedback guide
- Microsoft: champion programme
- Microsoft: community programme framework
Next step