Forum Discussion
Brent Ellis
Nov 18, 2016Silver Contributor
Recommendations on Naming Conventions for O365 Groups
 What are others out there doing for their naming conventions on O365 Groups?  Looking for recommendations, whats working well, what might not be necessary after you implemented it, etc. 
cfiessinger Microsoft
Microsoft
Nov 18, 2016Looking at data, not a lot of customers have implemented naming policies since it's not very natural to end users and might reduce engagement, so would not recommend any complex prefix_NAME_suffix. I know of one customer who has just added a "G" in front of the name to differentiate them in AD. Please note that we have not delivered yet naming policies in AzureAD (currently we only apply naming policies to groups created via Outlook endpoints)
- DeletedNov 23, 2016We are a company with a single tenant for about a handful of sub-companies. We are completely stuck in our Office 365 roll-out because everything nowadays relies of Groups and there is no way to enforce a naming policy. We prefix our DLs with a short prefix identifying the relevant company and we want to do this for Groups as well, since Groups are listed in the GAL. Currently we're getting spammed with all sorts of weird names because people create Groups via Power BI, Planner and all kinds of places that don't respect the policy we have set in Exchange.
 For us it is a huge problem that Microsoft keeps changing everything to use Groups without giving us the necessary admin controls. I can see that the AAD naming policy is still in development, which probably means it will take at least six months before it is rolled out. Until then we are stuck with our users screaming at us to enable all the new features being announced. Of course, we can create the Groups for them manually, but we really don't have the staff for this. And I don't see that as the intention for Groups.
 Any suggestions on how we can start using the features relying on Groups without ending in chaos would be greatly appreciated.- Brent EllisNov 23, 2016Silver ContributorWe disabled group creation in AAD and made it so that our admin team can create groups on request (this is how our organization currently does all requests for SP sites, email groups, etc, so it made sense). This is to prevent the kind of chaos that you are referring to, ensure we dont have unnecessary duplication, and have some kind of structure. We are only on at the beginning of the process, but we did get out ahead of it before it could run rampid.
 And I know, blah blah, empowering end users and shadow IT and all those buzz words, but my biggest complaint against Groups has always been provisioning so much garbage that isnt needed, it makes a massive mess of things for IT.
 Someone else mentioned in another thread, it would be potentially a good practice to do some PowerShell scripting and to do something like this: get all groups, if it doesnt have GRP- on the front, add it, otherwise skip:
 $O365Groups = Get-UnifiedGroup
 foreach ($O365Group in $O365Groups){
 Write-Host $O365Group.DisplayName
 if($O365Group.DisplayName -like "GRP-*"){
 Write-Host "OK" -ForegroundColor Green
 } else {
 Write-Host "Not OK" -ForegroundColor Red
 Set-UnifiedGroup -Identity $O365Group.Name -DisplayName ("GRP-"+($O365Group.DisplayName))
 }
 }- escuphamApr 21, 2017Iron ContributorBrent Ellis, do you hide O365 Groups from your GAL?
 With adding a prefix to all groups, what happens to SharePoint sites that are created as O365 Group Connected? Do the sites assume the prefix too?
 
- Tony RaduanoNov 23, 2016Copper ContributorWe are in the same boat. We have disabled (as best we can) everything with O365 Groups. We can't have someone creating a new one as "President@comanyx.com" or just something vulgar in our GAL. User's also don't know a group they create in OWA it is listed in the GAL (such as "my sister's wedding" that someone created in ours). All other similar institutions we talk to are doing the same. Please give us admin controls on the naming conventions and the ability to remove them from the GAL. - cfiessingerNov 23, 2016Microsoft As mentioned on our public roadmap and at Ignite in this session we are working on these three features around naming policies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfox9-L5Xt0 - naming policy - banned words - profanity checking Directory management – what’s next