Township of Langley (TOL)
The Township of Langley migrates to Microsoft 365 for easier access to information
Industry
Public Sector — Municipal Government
Technologies
SharePoint Online / on-premises
Power Automate
Power Apps
Exchange Online
Collabware CLM
Employees
900+ full and part-time staff
Context
The Township of Langley (“the Township”) is a municipality located in the southwest corner of the province of British Columbia, Canada.
Gravity Union has helped the Township with several projects over the years including on-premises SharePoint and Collabware CLM, as well as shifting capabilities to the cloud with Microsoft 365.
Solution highlights
Roadmap and Governance Planning
Microsoft 365 is a large and complex platform. Taking time to do strategic roadmap and governance planning gives teams the confidence to move forward on a realistic timeline that focuses on unlocking business value over time.
First, the Township teamed up with Gravity Union to develop a strategic roadmap for Microsoft 365 that covers compliance, collaboration, security and change management. Capabilities are plotted on a timeline and staggered with pilot group onboarding to roll out the functionality incrementally.
Next, we tackled governance planning. Governance takes into account how Teams workspaces and groups will be provisioned and managed over their lifecycle. Teams and SharePoint governance are critical to mitigate common issues such as Teams sprawl, content duplication and findability problems.
Council Meetings Solution
This solution was the Township’s first SharePoint Online solution and is used by the entire organization, including the mayor and councillors, for governing the Township. The Council Meetings solution manages over 30,000 documents such as agendas, meeting minutes, reports to council as well as a meeting calendar and action tracking workflows.
New meetings are created from a Power App which automatically creates a document set with the right naming convention and supporting information. The council dashboard is a user-friendly way to view meetings by date on a calendar and to view documents for upcoming meetings.
After a meeting, action items are saved into a list with colour coding for easy viewing. The Power App is used by council to view agendas and related documents on an iPad, and as the meeting continues another list tracks voting history.
Image: Courtesy of Microsoft
Exchange Online Migration
The Township of Langley engaged Gravity Union to migrate an on-premises instance of Exchange to a Canadian Datacenter-hosted instance of Exchange Online. As part of the project, Gravity Union reviewed the Township’s systems and Microsoft 365 tenant configuration, reviewed the identity architecture, provided recommendations, and migrated end-users’ mailboxes from an on-premises instance of Exchange to Exchange Online.
Gravity Union also provided support to end-users on their transition to Exchange Online and training to the Township’s IT team on Exchange Online administration.
“Gravity Union did an amazing job putting together the new Township of Langley Council Meetings Solution. It’s way easier to use and find stuff!”
– Wendy Bauer, Township Clerk
Benefits and results
Time savings with automatic records classification and workflows
Information that is organized for Council meetings resulting in action items with better visibility and transparency
A roadmap that gives teams confidence in how to move forward on the projects that have the highest business value
Lower operational effort for IT in managing cloud services vs. on-premises applications
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