Forum Discussion
Groups Lifecycle / Archiving / Moving
-Remove/Change Membership
-Hide from Global Address List (helps with groups search sprawl)
-Change Display name to some kind of Archive Prefix
I'd prefer a microsoft supported method to manage the lifecycle of these though properly.
You could easily take the script posted at https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Check-for-obsolete-Office-c0020a42 (to identify obsolete groups) and modify any group deemed to be obsolete or suitable for archiving as you want.
- Change the name
- Hide the group from address lists
- Remove all the members
- Send a note to members to tell them that the group is now closed
You don't need to delete the group because you might want its content for compliance purposes.
Hello, so the remove members and hide group is still the goto-archiving-method?
Do I see this correctly, that a user that wants to restore access to group, needs to ask an administrator to add him again?
Isnt there a way to reduce the group clutter but still grant easy access to "archived" groups when needed?
Certainly you can close down a group by removing all users from the membership list and hiding it from the GAL. In effect, you put the group into an "inactive" status. Later on, you can remove the group if you don't want to keep it around, perhaps by running a PowerShell script to look for inactive groups and deleting those who are found. Microsoft is due to introduce a policy-based method to do this by assigning groups a lifecycle period. When a group's lifecycle period expires, the owner receives a message to renew the "lease" on the group and extend its lifetime. If they want, the owner can decide to have the group removed at that point.
If you put a group into inactive status and discover later on that you need to resurrect the group, you unhide the group to reveal it in the GAL and add whoever needs to access the group to the membership list.
