Blog Post

Microsoft 365 Blog
1 MIN READ

Azure AD Expiration Policy for Office 365 Groups is Generally Available

Tom Batcheler's avatar
Tom Batcheler
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Mar 14, 2018

Office 365 groups expiration policies allow administrators to set an expiration timeframe for any Office 365 group. Once that timeframe is set, owners of these groups get notification emails reminding them to renew these groups if they still need them. Groups not renewed will automatically be deleted.  

 

Starting today, this feature is now Generally Available! 

 

 

 

We’ve listened to your feedback and made it even more intuitive for users to decide whether they want to renew their 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.  

 

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. For more information head over read the full announcement by Alex Simons over on the EMS Blog.

 

The Office 365 groups expiration policy feature will require an Azure AD Premium license for every user who is a member of an Office 365 group configured for expiration. Visit Office 365 Support for more licensing details.

Updated Feb 10, 2023
Version 3.0
Microsoft 365 Groups
office 365
  • Joe Stocker's avatar
    Joe Stocker
    Bronze Contributor
    Mar 15, 2018

    Two recommendations:

    1) Have a whitelist that allows for groups to not expire, or a powershell parameter on a group that excludes from expiration. If the community agrees, please vote for this on user voice here:
    https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/286611-office-365-groups/suggestions/31010725-office-365-groups-expiration-need-exclusion-feat

    2) Have the expiration email notification only send out if there is no group activity occurring. For example, no files accessed or uploaded, or no emails sent/received. Currently, groups can expire even if they are actively being used for email or sharepoint. The risk is if the group owner doesn't see three emails then the group could be deleted. If the community agrees, please vote for this on user voice here:
    https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/286611-office-365-groups/suggestions/33646915-expire-groups-based-on-inactivity

  • Vikas Dhingra's avatar
    Vikas Dhingra
    Copper Contributor
    Mar 15, 2018

    Hi Tom,

     

    Sometime people doesn’t care about email. is there any way to retrieve this data after 30 days of deletion?

     

    Cheers

    Vikas

  • Joe Stocker's avatar
    Joe Stocker
    Bronze Contributor
    Mar 15, 2018

    We enabled the group expiration feature. On one of the emails that we received, we had the option to "Delete this group now" (rather than waiting 30 days for it to expire). This feature did not work, it gave a message that said something like "this feature is not yet available." Is there an ETA on the 'delete now' feature?

  • Brett Zeigerbacher's avatar
    Brett Zeigerbacher
    Copper Contributor
    Oct 30, 2018

    Tom Batcheler Thank you for the clear explanation of this feature. I do still have one question however after looking through all the support material for this. 

     

    Is there a way to enable this setting for all sites, but selectively OPT OUT certain sites? I can assume that if we left the default set to ALL and if I turn off a site with PowerShell that the ALL setting may override my change. I cannot effectively test this on my own since I do not have Azure Premium in any of our dev environments. 

     

    The use case we are trying to solve is to have like 40 sites we want to not have this policy applied to and then every other site created in the environment we do want it on for by default. 

  • ZulStantec's avatar
    ZulStantec
    Copper Contributor
    Dec 06, 2018

    Can we have multiple Expiry Policies for O365 Groups or can we increase the 500 Group limit ?