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Microsoft 365 Blog
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Office 365 Groups will become Microsoft 365 Groups

ScottSchnoll's avatar
ScottSchnoll
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Apr 13, 2020

A few weeks ago, we announced new Microsoft 365 offerings for small and medium-sized businesses, including the Microsoft 365 Personal and Family Subscriptions, the first consumer offerings from Microsoft 365. We also announced that the following product name changes will go into effect on April 21, 2020 (product name change only, no pricing or feature changes at this time):

 

  • Office 365 Business Essentials will become Microsoft 365 Business Basic
  • Office 365 Business Premium will become Microsoft 365 Business Standard
  • Microsoft 365 Business will become Microsoft 365 Business Premium
  • Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus will both become Microsoft 365 Apps, and we will use “for business” and “for enterprise” to distinguish them

Office 365 for Enterprise, Firstline Workers, Education and Government are not being renamed.

Back in 2014, we introduced a new cross-suite service for Office 365 commercial and education customers called Office 365 Groups, which enables people to create public or private groups. The first apps to take advantage of the Office 365 Groups service included Outlook, SharePoint, OneNote, and Skype for Business. Today, Office 365 Groups power collaboration experiences in more than 22 apps across Microsoft 365, and partners build custom solutions for their customers leveraging Microsoft Graph APIs and the PowerApps framework. Whether it’s a Team in Microsoft Teams, a Community in Yammer, or an Outlook Group, the Office 365 Groups platform enables users to create, share and discover knowledge and information.

 Microsoft 365 is the world’s productivity cloud and it represents our vision for the future of Microsoft productivity tools—an integrated set of apps and services that puts artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge innovations to work for you. To reflect the fact that Office 365 Groups power collaboration across Microsoft 365, Office 365 Groups will become Microsoft 365 Groups. These changes will happen over time and will be reflected in all the connected endpoints over the upcoming quarters.

 

--The Microsoft 365 Groups team

Updated May 06, 2021
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  • CarstenB's avatar
    CarstenB
    Iron Contributor
    Apr 14, 2020
    • Office 365 Business Premium will become Microsoft 365 Business Standard
    • Microsoft 365 Business will become Microsoft 365 Business Premium

    Sure you did not mix up (again) those two? Please don't make this more confusing than it already is for people.

  • Mike McLean (OFFICE)'s avatar
    Mike McLean (OFFICE)
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Apr 23, 2020

    "Planner really needs to be separated from Microsoft 365 Groups. 'New Plan' should not equal 'New Group'.  An individual user OR group should be able to create MULTIPLE plans.  Also, it should really be available for consumers as well."

     

    Hi JPJPJP, Planner now supports the ability to create multiple Plans per group. You no longer need to create a new group for every Plan. You need at least one group so we can provide access via experiences like Microsoft Teams. Try adding Planner as a tab in Microsoft Teams...you will be prompted to either create a new Plan or display a Plan that has already been created. They are all tied to the same group. You can also create multiple Plans in the Planner web client. And thanks for the feedback about consumers. Glad you like it and hope that helps!

  • JPJPJP's avatar
    JPJPJP
    Brass Contributor
    Apr 19, 2020

    Planner really needs to be separated from Microsoft 365 Groups. 'New Plan' should not equal 'New Group'.  An individual user OR group should be able to create MULTIPLE plans.  Also, it should really be available for consumers as well.

  • JPJPJP's avatar
    JPJPJP
    Brass Contributor
    May 22, 2020

    Mike McLean (OFFICE)  Awesome that's great to hear Mike, it works! And yes, regarding consumer it would be great to include Planner in Microsoft 365 Family and Personal, since To Do and Teams both have consumer and free versions, and have integration with Planner already.  I think many consumers would love to switch to Planner instead of having to use Trello, and that would increase the value of Microsoft 365 Family and Personal. :smile:

  • ShabriNair's avatar
    ShabriNair
    Copper Contributor
    May 29, 2020

     it would be great to include Planner in Microsoft 365 Family and Personal since To Do and Teams both have consumer and free versions

  • wroot's avatar
    wroot
    Silver Contributor
    Apr 14, 2020

    Why does this reminds me Vista SKU nightmare? Why does anyone uses two words in SKU naming in 2020? Business Premium, what a mouthful. And good luck with not confusing Office 365 Business Premium users..

  • pfoerster's avatar
    pfoerster
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 23, 2020

    Good to hear that you rename the groups. Only makes sense.

     

    Sorry for going a bit off-topic here:

    Now you "only" have to find a better naming for all ex. Office 365 licenses since it was kinda confusing before it hasn't gotten less with that recent name change. By the way, why don't you change the Office for Enterprise license names.  How does that make sense?

     

    Please compare

    Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus will both become Microsoft 365 Apps, and we will use “for business” and “for enterprise” to distinguish them

    with

    Office 365 E1, E3, E5 etc.