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Azure AD Expiration Policy for Office 365 Groups is Generally Available
Published Sep 07 2018 09:07 AM 22.3K Views
First published on CloudBlogs on Mar, 14 2018
Howdy folks! Tons of you have already used the Office 365 groups expiration policy in public preview . It allows you to set an expiration timeframe for any Office 365 group. Once that timeframe is set, owners of the group get notification emails reminding them to renew the group if they still need them. Groups not renewed are automatically deleted. Today, I'm excited to announce this feature is now Generally Available! We've listened to your feedback during the public preview and made it even more intuitive for users to decide whether or not to renew a group. The newly redesigned notification emails now provide one-click access to the group content, and also allow the group to be deleted if it's no longer needed.

Getting started

Office 365 groups expiration can be configured from the Azure Active Directory portal, as well as programmatically via Azure Active Directory PowerShell. Learn more about how to configure Office 365 groups expiration .

To create a policy for your tenant, simply select Groups from the Azure Active Directory portal, and choose Expiration under 'Settings' , and configure the policy.

Group owners will receive email notifications 30 days, 15 days, and 1 day before the expiration date. From that email notification they can renew their group with a single click. We've upgraded the email notification experience to provide the group owner more context about their group. This includes a snapshot of the group membership, and one-click access directly to Office 365 group content such as the Group Mailbox in Outlook, Group Files in SharePoint, Posts in Yammer, and Conversations in Microsoft Teams. The group owner can decide if they want to keep the group, or, if they no longer need it, delete the group from the email itself.

If the owners don't renew their group within the required timeframe, their group will expire and be deleted. Owners of deleted groups will receive an email notification letting them know their group has been deleted and giving them the opportunity to restore their group for 30 days after its deletion date.

The Office 365 groups expiration policy feature is available in general availability today and requires an Azure AD Premium license for every user who is a member of an Office 365 group configured for expiration. As always, we'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions you have. Just leave a comment below. Best Regards, Alex Simons (Twitter: @Alex_A_Simons ) Director of Program Management Microsoft Identity Division
10 Comments
Brass Contributor

This a nice feature, albeit a little lacking in what most administrators would want.

It really should be an option to base it on "Last Activity" of all underlying apps (combo of last chat activity, last sharepoint activity, last mailbox activity, etc.)

  • This way it would only truly target those TEAMS that have not been used in x days since last modified, where x is the period we specify as admins

Multiple policies should be allowed, similar to the Label policies.  This would allow us to specify different time period policies to be selectively applied either manually or possibly even based on the classification label of the team.

Brass Contributor
Hi Alex, If a team\group is renewed, is the renewal period the same as the original period. For example I set an expiry date of 180 days, when the user renews the group, is it active for another 180 days? I assume that this is the case, but I can't seem to find any official documentation for it. Rgds Lee
Microsoft

Saw behavior when after renewal group owner received 30 day notice to renew. Perhaps the settings in this case were incorrect.

Copper Contributor

Does using Group expiration require users to be able to create Groups?  We have limited who can create a Group but are looking into using Group expiration.  Do users need to be able to create a Group in order to renew the Group?

Brass Contributor

Hi Deborah,

 

No users do not need to be able to create groups, so that they can renew a group that has reached its expiry date. All they need to be is the group owner and they will receive the expiration emails which they can then decide whether to extend or let the group expire. They will also get the option to extend the group from within the team itself.

 

Rgds

Lee


@Alex Simons (AZURE) wrote:
First published on CloudBlogs on Mar, 14 2018
Howdy folks! Tons of you have already used the Office 365 groups expiration policy in public preview . It allows you to set an expiration timeframe for any Office 365 group. Once that timeframe is set, owners of the group get notification emails reminding them to renew the group if they still need them. Groups not renewed are automatically deleted. Today, I'm excited to announce this feature is now Generally Available! We've listened to your feedback during the public preview and made it even more intuitive for users to decide whether or not to renew a group. The newly redesigned notification emails now provide one-click access to the group content, and also allow the group to be deleted if it's no longer needed.

Getting started

Office 365 groups expiration can be configured from the Azure Active Directory portal, as well as programmatically via Azure Active Directory PowerShell. Learn more about how to configure Office 365 groups expiration .

To create a policy for your tenant, simply select Groups from the Azure Active Directory portal, and choose Expiration under 'Settings' , and configure the policy.

Group owners will receive email notifications 30 days, 15 days, and 1 day before the expiration date. From that email notification they can renew their group with a single click. We've upgraded the email notification experience to provide the group owner more context about their group. This includes a snapshot of the group membership, and one-click access directly to Office 365 group content such as the Group Mailbox in Outlook, Group Files in SharePoint, Posts in Yammer, and Conversations in Microsoft Teams. The group owner can decide if they want to keep the group, or, if they no longer need it, delete the group from the email itself.

If the owners don't renew their group within the required timeframe, their group will expire and be deleted. Owners of deleted groups will receive an email notification letting them know their group has been deleted and giving them the opportunity to restore their group for 30 days after its deletion date.

The Office 365 groups expiration policy feature is available in general availability today and requires an Azure AD Premium license for every user who is a member of an Office 365 group configured for expiration. As always, we'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions you have. Just leave a comment below. Best Regards, Alex Simons (Twitter: @Alex_A_Simons ) Director of Program Management Microsoft Identity Division

 

Copper Contributor

@Joanne Wright  can you point me to Microsoft documentation for the response for this: If a team\group is renewed, is the renewal period the same as the original period. For example I set an expiry date of 180 days, when the user renews the group, is it active for another 180 days?

Your response was the group would be renewed for 30 days.

Thanks!

Microsoft

@Deborah Stubblefield I clarified my comment above. I will see if I can leverage an environment to test what is the behavior now 

Copper Contributor

@Joanne Wright  Your "clarified" response is completely different than or original response and now doesn't seem to answer the question that was asked by @Deleted .  He was looking for (and I am also) documentation to support our assumption that when you renew a Group, it's renewed for the original renewal time.  Your original response indicated it's only renewed for 30 days.   I'm mentioning him in this thread so he's aware that you changed your response.  Since the date stamp didn't change, it would have been better for your to strike through your original response if it was different than the original or at least make clear what you changed so the history remained for anyone who may have read this and taken action.  Appreciate any documentation you can provide.

Microsoft

Ill take that into consideration if I change my post in the future to use the strike thru to remove confusion. I realize now that there is no edit history or a note that it was edited. Lesson learned. Thanks.  To be clear, I do not have documentation.  The post was based on my experience. I'll test again to see what occurs. 

Copper Contributor

Alex,  

I have a handful of O365 groups created now that I do not want to expire, so I assume I cannot select "enable: all" but any O365 groups created from this point forward I would want to have the expiration policy apply to.  Is there a way to set that up or do I have to actively go in here and add the newly created groups to the policy? 

 

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