Forum Discussion
Warning: Provocative post - When is MS going to kill Groups?
Well, don't say I didn't warn you with that subject...
In my (and probably many others) opinion Groups is a horrible user experience. The fact that it's also been miss-represented/marketed doesn't help either. There is no "group" - it's just an interface ¨to try to tie together other applications.
And for MS to have launched Teams alongside has created massive confusion amoungst customers. Lets face it, Teams is a significantly slicker application and better user experience.
So, the question is... when is MS going to kill Groups and just go with Teams?
I think you have a lot of potential terminology collision going on here that would be best to clarify.
When you're saying Groups, I believe you mean "Outlook Groups" and not "Office 365 Groups". People still confuse these constantly as there has never been good documentation from Microsoft and the shared name is not helping at all.
Office 365 Groups are the membership construct that underpins all the various tools and services in Office 365.
Outlook Groups is the email based communication and collaboration method that attempts to centralize all the tools and services in the Outlook/OWA interface, although not very successfully at this point as you pointed out. These use an Office 365 Group as their membership service to determine who has access.
All three communication methods (Outlook, Teams, and Yammer) use Office 365 Groups as their membership service now. Much of the confusion was created when Office 365 Groups and Outlook Groups were released at the same time and not differentiated at all. This resulted in everyone calling the email based communication method an Office 365 Group, which is not correct.
cfiessinger and Kady Dundas There is still massive confusion about this :)
35 Replies
The differentiation between O365 groups and Outlook groups is interesting, however the fact that you can't create an O365 group without creating an Outlook group seems to kind of kill that differentiation. If I could create an O365 group with no Outlook group, or at creation time select what services I want to go along with the group, I think that would actually make a lot more sense and would reduce confusion. (or who knows, maybe it would make it worse). But the fact that every O365 group gets an Outlook group makes me and everyone else I know think there isn't really a difference. I think that's really what a lot of the complaints about. A better question for the OP might be "When is MS going to kill the O365/Outlook group linkage?".
You can create a Yammer group that uses an Office 365 Group for its membership and identity. And while an Exchange mailbox is created to use for a group calendar, it is not used to store conversations, so it's hardly an "Outlook group". If you choose not to use the Exchange mailbox, you can ignore it (and can hide it so it is never seen in an address list). At that point, who cares? It's just an empty mailbox.
In any case, I think your main point is that it should be possible to nominate the services that you want to use with a group when you create it (or thereafter). I agree with this notion and suggested at this week's Office 365 Admin AMA that it should be possible to edit a group in the Admin Center and select what resources it uses, much like you can select what applications a user can access using a license like E3/E5. I think this is a better way forward.
- David Rosenthal
Microsoft
I agree with the general idea of choosing what you want to use at creation, but I'd slightly change how I'd want it to work.
I'd prefer everything available get spun up at creation, but then the creator chooses what is visible by default and what is hidden until directly requested. This cuts down on the confusion of tool overload and keeps things streamlined, but then also allows these other tools to be instantly available should a team/group directly request them. The way the system works now there can be somewhat of a creation and/or sync delay.
I've seen more than my share of tickets/complaints get logged with our Helpdesk and/or Ops teams due to a user creating something in this Office 365 Group world and immediately trying to access it but receiving errors or some sort of not fully baked experience because the full creation and sync process had not completed yet. This would hopefully eliminate that and leave all tools available to use instantly, but hidden away to keep things clean until needed.
I think a lot of the concerns about tenants/AD getting "messy" will now lessen with the new expiration policies that are currently in preview and will continue to get better over time with more options.
They definitely dont need to be killed, but they do need to be "fixed"
Our organization is not "impressed" by Teams, too flashy, but Groups works exactly how we work. I actually wish Microsoft would adopt Groups as a legit collaboration tool (like teams), instead of continually diminishing it as "just a membership service"
Rule #1 of technology: Don't get distracted by marketing.
Rule #2...: The new stuff (like Teams) is always distracting because it is hyped by marketing.
Our organization is not "impressed" by Teams, too flashy, but Groups works exactly how we work.
This statement is true of many organizations who have moved from on-premises Exchange to Office 365. In the on-premises world, Outlook is king of the hill and the integration of Groups into Outlook is pretty good. Outlook Groups (or Office 365 Groups that use Exchange to store conversations) are important to the overall success of Office 365, simply because so many people use the client.
The weakness of Teams is perhaps not that it is too flashy (UIs can be tweaked). Rather, the evident flaws in email support, external users, poor search, and lack of full support for the range of compliance technology now available inside Office 365 are more pertinent reasons for organizations to pause in their deployment. On the other hand, Office 365 Groups have great email functionality, have their content fully indexed and searchable, support external access, and support most (but not all) of the new data governance framework. So they have a lot going for them.
TR
- David Rosenthal
This is part of the point of this thread, and why I keep politely poking Kady and Christophe. Office 365 Groups IS a membership service. Outlook Groups, or Groups for Outlook, or whatever it is actually called, is a communication medium for users to select from. They get to choose Email, Teams, or Yammer, and Office 365 Groups takes care of membership and connecting everything together.
See if this helps everyone: https://twitter.com/cfiessinger/status/884833139004063744
Outlook Groups, or Groups for Outlook, or whatever it is actually called, is a communication medium for users to select from.
Rather, Outlook Groups is the most functional and feature-rich of any of the collaboration applications available inside Office 365 today. Yammer is more scalable but less functional. Teams is the new kid on the block and needs work to meet the requirements of many enterprises. All the other applications that use Groups as a convenient mechanism for membership management Stream, Power BI, and Planner do so in the full knowledge that the membership service is a tad flawed because of its lack of granularity in access control. In fact, what is talked about as a membership service is really just a thin layer on top of Azure Active Directory group objects.
I doubt MS will ever kill Groups, (most corporations seem loathe to admit they might have made any kind of mistake), but I have a feeling we'll see a name change or two at the very least.
Or company is slowly migrating to O365, and the confusion around when to use Teams vs when to use Groups vs when to use regular SP sites, (remember those?), is causing us no end of problems. To make it worse we are in a hybrid environment, with "almost" everything of a "group" nature being handled by our Service Desk through AD. They create all Distribution Lists and Security Groups, and make sure that all policies and naming conventions get followed.
Now all of that is out the window. We have users creating Groups and Teams willy-nilly. I I have multiple groups with almost the exact same name, and I (as admin) don't have any idea which is the correct one, or what exactly is in that site. At least on my 75 on premises SP servers I can easily log into a SP site and see exactly what is on that site. Not with groups, (or at least any way I have found).
We are now looking at completely restricting the use of Groups and Teams until MS get's this mess sorted out. MS says they use this all through the company, and that's all well and good for them, but for our users it's just a confused mess.
Ted
Exactly to the point.
Collaboration is all good but all these mess is not.
When users are allowed to create Teams, Yammer (O365 Connected Groups), Planner etc.. they also need to be allowed to create O365 Groups. When they are allowed to create Groups they can create Groups from Outlook, and OneDrive too. And all these Groups (no matter where they are created from), each comes with a Mailbox that goes in the AAD GAL, and a SharePoint Site Collection. And there's no easy way to identify who's the owner/admin for those Site Collections. There are ways to find out from AAD but that's way too many steps, not good. Also SharePoint sites' storage comes from a pool of storage allocated for SPO for a tenant and is limited. You have to pay if you go beyond that allocated pool. We don't hear MS talks about this.
There is no need (in my opinion) for users to create O365 Groups on their own from Outlook and OneDrive if users ought to use Teams, Yammer, etc. for collaboration purposes as MS suggests. Creating O365 Group links from Outlook and OneDrive needs to be hidden or disabled by Tenant Admins but they can't right now. Each company should decide whether they would allow their users to create Groups from Outlook and OneDrive. MS needs to figure out how to configure Teams, and Yammer Connected O365 Groups, Planner etc. without needing users to create O365 Groups.
Thanks......
Monir Khan wrote:
Exactly to the point.
Collaboration is all good but all these mess is not.
When users are allowed to create Teams, Yammer (O365 Connected Groups), Planner etc.. they also need to be allowed to create O365 Groups. When they are allowed to create Groups they can create Groups from Outlook, and OneDrive too.
TR: You can mitigate this fact by restricting the people allowed to create groups/teams. I think this is a reasonable thing to do as it avoids the need to scan for unused groups, etc.
And all these Groups (no matter where they are created from), each comes with a Mailbox that goes in the AAD GAL, and a SharePoint Site Collection.
TR: You can hide Groups from the GAL if you want.
And there's no easy way to identify who's the owner/admin for those Site Collections.
Use Get-UnifiedGroup and then Get-UnifiedGroupLinks to find who are the owners of the groups. They are the owners of the site collections. See the report described in https://www.petri.com/identifying-obsolete-office-365-groups-powershell
There are ways to find out from AAD but that's way too many steps, not good. Also SharePoint sites' storage comes from a pool of storage allocated for SPO for a tenant and is limited. You have to pay if you go beyond that allocated pool. We don't hear MS talks about this.
TR: The storage pool is not used if group members don't store files. But if they do, that's goodness because those files are then in the cloud and subject to compliance, etc. The amount Microsoft charges for extra storage is likely less than you'd pay for your own local storage, assuming the same degree of resilience and feature set.
There is no need (in my opinion) for users to create O365 Groups on their own from Outlook and OneDrive if users ought to use Teams, Yammer, etc. for collaboration purposes as MS suggests.
TR: So impose a group creation policy and that will stop users creating groups from Outlook etc. It's your choice.
Creating O365 Group links from Outlook and OneDrive needs to be hidden or disabled by Tenant Admins but they can't right now. Each company should decide whether they would allow their users to create Groups from Outlook and OneDrive. MS needs to figure out how to configure Teams, and Yammer Connected O365 Groups, Planner etc. without needing users to create O365 Groups.
TR: As I said, it's up to each tenant to decide how to create and manage groups. When you buy into a massive multi-tenant service like Office 365, you accept the strengths and weaknesses of the service and cannot dictate a tailored service to meet your own needs, as you can (to some degree) with on-premises systems. So turn off group creation for all, impose a policy, and start managing groups in your own way.
Thanks......
Now all of that is out the window. We have users creating Groups and Teams willy-nilly. I I have multiple groups with almost the exact same name, and I (as admin) don't have any idea which is the correct one, or what exactly is in that site.
This is precisely the scenario that I and some other MVPs warned Microsoft would happen when they briefed us about Office 365 Groups in Redmond in November 2014. Those of us who had been down the path of public folders and the uncontrolled sprawl that resulted when users were allowed to create public folders without let or hindrance forecast that the same would occur with Groups. Microsoft's response at the time was that they wanted users to control the creation of groups so that collaboration could flow without administrators or IT departments deciding what should happen. It was complete ill-smelling brown bovine material at the time and it is the same today. No sensible tenant operates without a group creation policy that restricts the right to create groups to a small set of people who might actually understand what they are doing. Yes, this impacts Teams, Planner, Stream, and so on, but it is the only reasonable approach to group management.
I am sincerely sorry that your tenant has gotten into such a mess. I wish that every tenant came complete with a fully-functional group creation policy, but I guess I am less collaborative than Microsoft would like me to be...
Not too provocative imo :) I wrote about Teams being a good interface for O365 Groups back in March ;) (http://www.techmikael.com/2017/03/context-to-function-function-to-context.html)
To me it's not a problem. O365 Groups will back many offerings, and you pick the UI most suitable to you. If that is Teams, then fine, or it could be some other 3rd party portal app, and Insort of see Teams as a third party app, as it happens to use O365 Groups and adds more in their "portal" UI.
So yes, the oob Groups UI is confusing at times, but it is what it is and won't be killed any time soon. I think perhaps the Yammer UI might turn into a nice experience as well on top of Groups.
Mikael Svenson - Nice Blog post
I very much doubt that any appetite exists for an axe to be taken to Outlook Groups for the very good reasons that:
1. Outlook is still the most important desktop client in the world of Exchange. Having Groups in Outlook gives people a collaboration platform in the client that they use.
2. Teams is lousy at email. Even when external access comes, I suspect that the free and open nature of SMTP-based email will allow email to continue in its predominant role in partner communications.
3. Ditto Yammer.
4. And back to email again, 10 million users of Outlook Groups is a lot of people. Ok, that's still only 10% of Office 365 MAU, but it's a lot. https://www.petri.com/microsoft-crusade-office-365-groups
As others have pointed out here, Groups the service is just that (flawed and imperfect, but very usable). The implementations of collaboration applications built on top of Groups will serve individual needs for different companies and allows Microsoft to have answers where other companies do not. For these and other reasons too boring to go into here, I don't see Outlook Groups hitting the buffers anytime soon.
Imran MasudWhen is MS going to kill Groups?
Short answer: never !!!!.
Continue reading if you want to know why :)
Demystify Office 365 Groups !!
An Office 365 Group is a "container" whose identity is mastered in AAD which could have many resources / workloads associate with it unlike legacy distribution group which could have only single resource i.e. email
Few examples of Office365 groups resources (outlook, msteams, yammer (*conversation resources)), Calendar, Planner, SharePoint Site, Power Bi, NoteBook, CRM, Assignments, etc.
Being a centeralized identity with attributes such as public / private , owner/members/guests, hiddenmembership and others that all O365 workloads understand enables Office365 Group to be really powerful and productive platform for diverse collaboration needs. The new MSGraph api for groups will also allow client to create O365 Groups with different workload configurations and resources.
Outlook Groups was the first consumer of Office365 Groups therefore they were used interchangeably for sometime. When other collaboration experiences such as MSTeams and Yammer opted in for O365 Group for its strength and for the right reasons it got confused by some people as a replacement.
Outlook Groups, MSTeams and Yammer are just different collaboration hubs build on top of Office 365 Group identity and each provide a unique value proposition; and there no single winner !!. It really depends on the end user needs as each platform have different collaboration strengths. Note almost all O365 Connectors work for both Outlook Groups as well as MSTeams.
Teams : Great for realtime chat and AV support, Works well for small teams (in my opinion), modern gestures support and overall fun to use. It could be challenging to follow long threads and search for a thread unless you are @mentioned. Channels compensate for not having subjects but it requires that group members are displined to use right channel. I have seen Channel overload where a single group have 30 channels and it could get hard to follow. On other side Channel to have emails was a good addition for interop across organizations / teams. For private group you cannot @mention external people.
Outlook Groups: Backed by email and easy adoption for existing outlook consumers and DLs. When a new user joins a group he can just see all previous conversations which was not possible with DLs. Threaded conversations are a lot easier to follow. There is no sub folders support but searching is relatively easy if you know what you are looking for, msg from, to , has attachments, etc... Member ability to subscribe to groups enables to stay on top of important groups. In a private outlook group you could still include people to a thread who are not member of the group. Groups is backed by mailbox which have all rich functionailiy of normal mailbox such as sender restrictions, ediscovery, litigiation or inplace hold, etc.
Outlook Groups could futher be broken down into two sub parts
a) Group Mailbox Experience in Outlook
b) Group Mailbox or Group Shard as storage. Group shard is backbone for many resouces such as Delve, Conenctors, and also used by MSTeams and Yammer.
Yammer: Great for large groups, community discussions and was pioneer in social collaboration.
I use all of them.
I agree one of the main challenge have been that each workload call Office 365 groups a local name which for some people was not clear in the begining
Outlook = Outlook Groups
MSTeams = Teams
Yammer = Groups
Sharepoint = TeamSite
Planner = Plan
If you create a new Plan you actually create an Office365 group. If you create Sharepoint TeamSite you actually create an office365 group. Today when you create TeamSite or Plan they choose outlook as the main conversation module. In future that could be configurable based on Organizational and customer needs.
Imran Masud - Thanks that was helpful, and .... I have been creating groups using the new Unified Group commandlet in powershell. This is provisioning an O365 Group right? Is there a way to create an O365 Group that is NOT surfaced in Outlook? In other words, I would like an O365 Group with an instance of MS Teams but I do not want it to display in OWA or the Outlook client. Thanks - Greg
No, when you create a Team, you create an Office 365 Group. You can hide the group from appearing in the Exchange address lists afterwards with PowerShell by running Set-UnifiedGroup -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled $True cmdlet, but the group will be there and the Exchange mailbox exists to host a) the team calendar and b) compliance records captured from conversations in the channels belonging to the team.
- David Rosenthal
One small note for you on your Teams paragraph. Teams actually does allow subjects for new conversations in a Channel. Hit the rich text button and you'll see where you can add them.
My main team has actually found this very valuable and we've set a norm that if you start a new conversation in a Channel, you MUST add a subject. It helps keep things clear and segmented without causing additional Channel sprawl.
- David Rosenthal
I think you have a lot of potential terminology collision going on here that would be best to clarify.
When you're saying Groups, I believe you mean "Outlook Groups" and not "Office 365 Groups". People still confuse these constantly as there has never been good documentation from Microsoft and the shared name is not helping at all.
Office 365 Groups are the membership construct that underpins all the various tools and services in Office 365.
Outlook Groups is the email based communication and collaboration method that attempts to centralize all the tools and services in the Outlook/OWA interface, although not very successfully at this point as you pointed out. These use an Office 365 Group as their membership service to determine who has access.
All three communication methods (Outlook, Teams, and Yammer) use Office 365 Groups as their membership service now. Much of the confusion was created when Office 365 Groups and Outlook Groups were released at the same time and not differentiated at all. This resulted in everyone calling the email based communication method an Office 365 Group, which is not correct.
cfiessinger and Kady Dundas There is still massive confusion about this :)
Concur. And to reinforce the point I don't think that "Outlook Groups" is an official term from MS, except in the context of the mobile app.
- David Rosenthal
Completely agree, but no one at Microsoft seems to have a handle on this. Here is the official site for Outlook Groups which should mean the app, yet it shows pictures of OWA and Outlook desktop on the landing page, above the fold. :)
Teams are Groups though, just another interface layer. So they will be killing both :)
Remember that O365 is huge and catters to all types of customers, what's not good experience for enterprise customers might be great for 5-people shops, and vice versa.
