Restrict access to i.e. Planner

[Thomas_Steibl]

I removed all applications from my users because I only want them to try out Microsoft Teams from the whole Office 365 package. Nevertheless they are able to access Planner online services (only within their Office 365 Groups) and also OneDrive anyway.

Any ideas how to restrict access to other applications?

[#2]

Hi Thomas,

I once did a thought experiment about only using team for private chat after a few people asked for this in the community. This included locking down every app

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/microsoft365pro.co.uk/2019/03/26/teams-can-you-do-private-chat-only/a...

It’s quite difficult to do, but results may vary. There is a link in the article about OneDrive (you can’t hide it completely but you can restrict uploads) and with Planner you should be able to disable its use in Teams by blocking all applications with an app permissions policy (although you may still be able to access it).

The point I am trying to get to! Thanks for bearing with me

1.) Teams is a collaboration hub which is architected on Office 365 groups, when you create a Team it creates a SharePoint site, shared exchange mailbox and a one note in SharePoint for the wiki

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/office-365-groups

By turning off exchange online, SharePoint online and OneDrive (via SharePoint as OneDrive is a part of SharePoint) you are in effect removing functionality in Teams as Teams sits across those apps. Teams, in effect isn’t just the Teams app and the Teams experience is designed to work with other apps in the Microsoft 365 stack

2.) Because Teams is so integrated with a number of other apps via Office 365 groups it’s really difficult to isolate it from everything else and in doing so impacts the user experience. Best example is OneDrive, you can turn off SharePoint and PowerShell out the user permissions on personal sites which blocks uploading files but you still can’t remove it visibly from the file section of Teams. It gives a kind of weird experience for users. This is because it was designed to work with other apps but also the interconnectedness of the Microsoft 365 applications and how things like the portal is designed. It’s hard to do and often frustrating and users can often access things elsewhere which is inconsistent.

That is my experience, but hope it goes some way to answering your question

Best, Chris

[#3]

Thanks for your response. I kind of expected something like that. And I'm also well aware of the fact that Teams is the hub for collaboration and therefore you need all these tools. Nevertheless I have to roll it out slowly in our company and a requirement for that is to use only Teams for videoconferencing. Nothing more nothing less.

I don't get it, that I have the option to disable the applications in the license menu, but this only hides it within the application launcher and nothing more... Kind of a weird solution.

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Many apps within the O365 suite do not honor license assignments, and for some the users can even self-sign to a "free" tier license, making it impossible to disable access. In some cases, app-specific restrictions can help, in others you can play with Conditional Access policies and such, but there is no single solution sadly.

[#5]

Thanks a lot @Vasil Michev 

I guess I'll try my best to restrict the access at least for the time being.

I'm looking forward to use the whole O365 suite corporate wide 8)