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
Microsoft
cfiessinger 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.
- He may have been referring to the fact that at launch this feature is only enabled for tenants with less than 50K mailboxes.
To be fair to the original question:
1. Microsoft originally presented the Files component of Office 365 Groups as an extension of OneDrive for Business. It's only relatively recently that the emphasis moved to SharePoint (where the files always were, even if the labeling indicated otherwise).
2. Microsoft makes a very big thing about the ability of Office 365 Groups to replace email distribution groups. While I agree that the two objects are not close to be the same, you do make lots of noise about being able to use Office 365 Groups in the same manner as email distribution groups, so I understand where the confusion arises. And email-enabled security groups function in some part like the identity part of Office 365 Groups, so again it's easy to see where confusion might come from.
