Forum Discussion
Nesting Groups
Just use Distribution lists if that's all you want, they are entirely just as available as they have ever been, fully support nesting etc.
Alternatively if you read up, TonyRedmond explains that you can nest an Office 365 group within a DL via powershell if you absolutely must.
1) I can't forward other distribution lists to a Office 365 group, as per my use case above, which is my whole point. Even if I wanted to use collaboration, that group type wouldn't solve my problem. But, since you brought it up...
2) There are exactly zero Microsoft collaboration tools we're interested in using. In fact, I'm questioning the decision to use Office 365 itself, based on ridiculous feature decisions like this.
Just use Distribution lists if that's all you want, they are entirely just as available as they have ever been, fully support nesting etc.
Alternatively if you read up, TonyRedmond explains that you can nest an Office 365 group within a DL via powershell if you absolutely must.
Mike,
You can be sure that the lack of functionality in Office 365 Groups to allow them to replace DLs has been the cause of a lot of feedback to Microsoft going back to the introduction of Groups in November 2014. Indeed, at that time, I was roundly criticized by some of my MVP peers for standing up at a meeting in Redmond and saying to the Groups development team that what they planned to do was not up to scratch. The lack of management annoyed me more than anything else at that point (largely taken care of now), but other issues are still present. I don't know if nesting will be taken care of in the near future because of the way that Groups are now used as a membership service across Office 365. In some respects, Microsoft has traded utility for usefulness, but I can understand how they came to take that decision.
Read https://www.petri.com/microsoft-crusade-office-365-groups for more on this topic, if you are interested.
I’m perfectly happy to keep using DLs for what I need, and it sounds like that’s the answer—thanks.
My problem remains that Microsoft is pushing the new group types as a replacement for DLs, when they don’t offer the very basic functionality that everyone uses DLs for. SMBs don’t have the time, patience or money to turn on and learn how to use advanced features (including console functionality), or hire a consultant to do something so basic and fundamental to email list management. It shouldn’t be confusing for a part time IT ops guy to go in and create a hierarchy of DLs that do the right thing—that’s the vast majority of use cases.
/mike- You don’t get real world solutions to complex deployments in forums like this. If you want real help, then you engage experienced consultants who have the necessary experience and give them the time to work through the business requirements and technical issues - or you do the work yourself. No one, even MVPs, has the time to figure out the detailed responses that some posters seem to assume is available. I merely pointed out that part of taking on Office 365 as a platform is accepting the functionality that’s available. If it meets your needs, great. If not, keep on sending your comments to the Windows and Office teams to be included in their very long lists of customer wishes...
We've certainly looked at what's available within Office but managing hundreds or thousands of people AND advancing them from DLs into managed collaborative groups is not easy.
However we all know that Office 365 is not a static offering, and as both a former MVP and member of the Office and Windows teams, I engage with the design team as much as possible to advance those possibilities, because they want to hear real world situations, not rebuttals.
OK, but the point in rebuttal is that when you buy into a cloud service like Office 365 that serves millions of people, you must accept that the functionality offered is what's on offer... It's the same with G Suite, where you can have the same debate about how Google implements certain features.
You don't like Groups because they can't be nested, but you want the self-maintenance capability. Perhaps you can think of a way where you can change what you do to match what's available inside Office 365?
Hi
I think the point is that DLs is not all we want. We already have those but we also want the collaborative features of groups and ability to self-manage membership, without the overhead of having to go to central IT to micromanage the email features (incl SENDAS) or organisational structure (nesting).
Mike
- Yep, you can definitely add an Office 365 Group to the membership of a DL. The only thing is that you must do this via PowerShell because the GUI doesn’t allow the action. DLs are absolutely supported, very flexible and powerful if used correctly, and there is no need to use Office 365 Groups unless they meet your needs.
