Forum Discussion
Manage automatic creation of direct reports group
THANK YOU all for your feedback, please see an update in this new thread: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Groups/Update-Auto-creation-of-Direct-Reports-group-in-Outlook-MC96611/m-p/55318#M2740
Surprised to see this appear in my (and my customers') Message Center. At first blush this does seem like a very poor idea.
What if the manager already has a DL for their reports that they're happy with? They get a Group created anyway?
What if the manager already has a Group, or a Team that is being actively used? They get Yet Another Group created anyway?
Will the Group membership be auto-adjusted over time? Nothing indicates that it will.
If an auto-created Group is deleted, does it get recreated automatically later?
This seems like a semi-useful feature if it was opt-in, so you could carefully set up your reports/manager relationships, turn it on, and have them automatically created and managed. But as an opt-out feature, I am concerned this will mess up the GAL of many organizations, and mess it up quite badly.
Microsoftcfiessinger can you confirm my thinking on something here... when it states "automatic group creation"...we are talking about an Office 365 Group (I've seen this stated as "connected group"). So this isn't just a Group in Outlook (a distribution list on steriods)? This is a fully fledged security group, distribution list, plus you'll get a OneDrive for Business folder, SharePoint site, Yammer group, Planner plan etc. etc. provisioned as well? This seems like a lot of moving parts that may not get used and sit stale and most likely be innaccurate membership.
Obviously this isn't that big of a concern I think. At hyperfish we're seeing that most organizations don't have the manager field populated for users, around 40% of users we've analyzed do. We can clearly help with completing and ensuring up-to-date manager fields.
- cfiessingerPlease see this: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Automatic-creation-of-Direct-Reports-groups-in-Outlook-f43455ed-81a6-4588-8299-08caa62abedd
Note document storage for Office 365 Groups is a SharePoint team site and NOT OneDrive; Office 365 Groups are NOT Distribution Groups nor Security Groups.
Not to name drop or anything, but I replied to Jeff Teper's recent tweet about some new, fun stuff coming to SharePoint and OneDrive with a comment referring to how badly this auto-creation of Direct Reports groups is. He kindly replied and it is interesting but begs a question and an opinion:
https://twitter.com/jeffteper/status/844285513859137536
Q: Is he suggesting that this roll out is now modified to be piloted in small orgs, or is he suggesting that Tenant Admins perhaps pilot the auto creation in small parts of our orgs?
Opinion: either way, I believe that my recommendation to my large org customers will be as follows:
1. Turn off Group creation for all users (allow groups to be created upon request) temporarily
2. Turn on Group creation permissions for certain small groups of managers who would be amenable to pilot this (and take responsibility for managing the membership of their group).
3. Work on the AD Managed By shortcomings
4. Once the org gets a feel for how this works, then perhaps release it broadly in their tenant by enabling more (all?) users to have group creation permissions.
Fortunately, (I guess) most of my customers are gov orgs, and so haven't quite gotten on the "everyone can create a group" bandwagon anyway.
This is one of the worst ideas I've seen come out of Redmond for years, if not ever. And that's saying something.
I've NEVER seen an organization with more than a few hundred people where the Active Directory data is even close to useful. Two of the prime things that are almost always wrong are Department and Manager. Manager most often contains the person you originally worked for when you were hired - if it contains anyone. There's a reason why Hyperfish is a fantastic product idea. So I would wager that a HUGE percentage of the Groups which would be gcreated are going to be meaningless.
Managers have all sorts of ways they work with their employees. If they want to use a Group, that's great, but assuming that it's the right answer for every manager who uses Office 365 is ridiculous. If I have two employees who sit right there with me, I'll never use the Group, even if it's a great idea.
Most people who use SharePoint - even after all these years - struggle with where to "put their stuff". This will automatically create Yet Another Location for Stuff which they will need to rationalize against. Again, they may get it and they may not, but if they don't WANT the Group, then why on earth would you create it?
Managers come and go, there are dotted line reporting structueres, etc. There is simply no way that all of the most common scenarios can possibly be covered here. Any decent-sized organization is going to end up with hundreds or thousands of orphaned or useless Groups.
What about all the governance questions? What happens when a Manager leaves? How does the content in a Group get archived or preserved if a position is eliminated? People sometimes have more than one manager - for real. AD has never supported this, and the Group here won't either - at least well.
The list of reasons why this shouldn't happen is incredibly long, and the reasons that make it a good idea are few - assuming there are any. I can only guess that it's yet another instance where someone at Microsoft's bonus is tied to the number of Groups "deployed". Full speed ahead and **bleep** the customers.
cfiessinger I've read that article several times (before I posted) and it doesn't answer my questions.
Unless you're saying it does actually answer my questions, in which case the wording is unclear because I'm not seeing the answers.
- cfiessingergreat feedback on how our documentation can improve (note you can provide feedback directly at the very bottom of each article).
cfiessinger a few other thoughts...
What cycle will this auto-creation run on? If I set up direct reports for someone, does the Group appear immediately (or within a few minutes), after an hour, after a day?
Will the auto-created groups comply with group naming policies already in place? If not, can we apply a separate naming policy to auto-created groups?
Luckily it answered the only question I needed, DISABLE!
I think this functionality will "junk up" Groups in a lot of people's environments. I do think having the option to "Create a Group Based on My Reports" would be a good idea, and do dynamic membership (like via AAD currently), but I dont think it is Microsofts job to make "business decisions" like this for an organization.
