Azure AD Expiration Policy for Office 365 Groups is Generally Available

First published on CloudBlogs on Mar, 14 2018
Howdy folks! Tons of you have already used the Office 365 groups expiration policy in public preview . It allows you to set an expiration timeframe for any Office 365 group. Once that timeframe is set, owners of the group get notification emails reminding them to renew the group if they still need them. Groups not renewed are automatically deleted. Today, I'm excited to announce this feature is now Generally Available! We've listened to your feedback during the public preview and made it even more intuitive for users to decide whether or not to renew a group. The newly redesigned notification emails now provide one-click access to the group content, and also allow the group to be deleted if it's no longer needed.

Getting started

Office 365 groups expiration can be configured from the Azure Active Directory portal, as well as programmatically via Azure Active Directory PowerShell. Learn more about how to configure Office 365 groups expiration .

To create a policy for your tenant, simply select Groups from the Azure Active Directory portal, and choose Expiration under 'Settings' , and configure the policy.

Group owners will receive email notifications 30 days, 15 days, and 1 day before the expiration date. From that email notification they can renew their group with a single click. We've upgraded the email notification experience to provide the group owner more context about their group. This includes a snapshot of the group membership, and one-click access directly to Office 365 group content such as the Group Mailbox in Outlook, Group Files in SharePoint, Posts in Yammer, and Conversations in Microsoft Teams. The group owner can decide if they want to keep the group, or, if they no longer need it, delete the group from the email itself.

If the owners don't renew their group within the required timeframe, their group will expire and be deleted. Owners of deleted groups will receive an email notification letting them know their group has been deleted and giving them the opportunity to restore their group for 30 days after its deletion date.

The Office 365 groups expiration policy feature is available in general availability today and requires an Azure AD Premium license for every user who is a member of an Office 365 group configured for expiration. As always, we'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions you have. Just leave a comment below. Best Regards, Alex Simons (Twitter: @Alex_A_Simons ) Director of Program Management Microsoft Identity Division