Office 365 Groups at Microsoft Ignite 2018

Microsoft

Last month at Microsoft Ignite in Orlando, we spent a week with customers hearing about their Office 365 Groups journey and answering their questions. Office 365 Groups is the membership service providing a single identity for teamwork across Office applications and services.

 

ignitefig1.png

                                     Figure 1: What is Office 365 Groups?


Discussions ranged from administration and governance to use cases and everything in between! We also demoed exciting new features to help you manage groups at scale. In case you missed it, here are the recordings and slides we shared:

 

Key Office 365 Groups sessions

Groups related sessions

·       Embrace Office 365 Groups: What's new and how to get started

·       Real-world best practices for managing Office 365 groups

·       Office 365 Groups automation inside-out

·       Ask us anything about Office 365 Groups

·       What's new in Groups in Outlook

·       The future of Yammer: Vision and roadmap

·       What's new in Microsoft Teams, the hub for teamwork

·       Use Microsoft Information Protection to help protect your sensitive data everywhere, throughout its ...


A popular topic at Ignite was How Microsoft governs Teams, SharePoint, Office 365 Groups:
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                                     Figure 2: How does Microsoft IT manage groups?


Office 365 Groups roadmap shared in Orlando
:

 

  • Expiry: auto-extend based on activity & in-app notification: Groups that are actively being used will be automatically renewed. Users and administrators will no longer worry about the accidental deletion of their favorite groups. We'll also surface upcoming expiration date in the teamwork apps tied to a group so that users will no longer have to rely solely on email notifications to renew their group.
  • New and improved group admin roles: We are enabling the existing SharePoint and Microsoft Teams admin roles to perform day to day group lifecycle tasks (e.g., edit a group, restore a group) to remove the dependency on the Global admin. We will also be introducing a new admin role to manage Office 365 groups to avoid relying on the Global admin to perform lifecycle tasks.
  • Admin center improvements: We'll redesign Microsoft 365 group management for everyday efficiency, removing the need to rely on other admin centers or depend on PowerShell cmdlets to perform day to day lifecycle tasks.
  • Unified Group classification using Microsoft Information Protection Labels: We'll both unify group classification by leveraging the Microsoft 365 security and compliance center and introduce privacy and guest policies that can be associated to classifications.
  • Microsoft Teams: dynamic membership support, manage Teams page: Microsoft Teams will support dynamic membership based on users’ Azure AD attributes to enable you to manage your teams at scale. A new Teams page in the Teams admin center lets the Teams administrator easily manage teams.
  • Group driven membership: Group owners will be able to leverage existing groups to drive membership in Office 365 Groups.

 

To track the status of features, please go to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap.

 

Thanks to everyone who joined us in Orlando, attended our sessions, and dropped by our booth. We have already announced that Ignite 2019 is back in Orlando on November 4-8, 2019. See you next year, and until then, please continue to engage with us in the Microsoft Tech Community.

9 Replies
Sounds great! Thank you!

Sounds awesome. 

Quick question about Group driven membership: Does this mean we'll be able to add Azure AD security groups to O365 groups for membership?

Hi Vikram, 

 

Using Azure AD security groups is one of the options we're evaluating. We know customers have created a variety of groups over the years which include security groups, distribution lists, and even other Office 365 Groups. Would you find using security groups particularly valuable and would you like to share any additional details? Thanks!

 

Mike

Hi Mike

Yes absolutely. We already have security groups created by department and teams, and behind able to add them to office group will make adoption of Teams really easy.

Thanks
Yes! This is something I’m asked about almost daily

Adam
Hi - I didn't see a schedule for "Expiry: auto-extend based on activity & in-app notification" on the road-map. When is this going to be released ?
"New and improved group admin roles" as mentioned above is currently not on the Roadmap. This is a must have in larger organizations. As a SharePoint admin I also have a requirement to manage the O365 Groups, especially to be able to report on them. My hands are currently tied as I would need additional admin roles just to be able to produce reports for management. Any idea when this will be available, or at least on the Roadmap? Thanks.
Very much agree with this. We need ways to be able to delegate office 365 group management without giving higher levels of admin access. Any updates on the new admin roles?

@Dbmstech Hi folks, a new Groups Admin role is still in the roadmap and work is underway. We should have the M365 Roadmap updated shortly. Great to see so much interest!