Forum Discussion
MicrosoftAbility to connect existing SharePoint team sites to Office 365 Groups is coming later this year
Hi all - yes our plan is to provide the ability to connect only root site collections to new Office 365 Groups. We've considered enabling subsite-to-group connections, but there are enough gotchas both architecturally as well as from a design standpoint in delivering an experience that is comprehensible to most humans. One example is that when we start rolling out classification-based policy (e.g. Confidential classification equates to group guests being disabled, SharePoint external sharing turned off, etc. - this is just an example for discussion), those policies apply at the site collection container level. If we enabled subsite connection to groups, we would have to deal with site parent-child policy conflicts, inheritance-based permissions, etc. Not saying it's impossible but cleary stands in the way of shipping an experience sooner.
Having looked at all site collections in the service, the vast majority are flat (i.e. no subwebs), for which this experience should work seamlessly. That said, we acknowledge that there are some very active site collections with subsite hierarchies. For these subwebs, there are a couple of paths to get to 'modern'. One is a migration effort from subsite to root site collection, and then connecting the collection to a new group with the feature described in this thread. The other, is a 'modernize this site' type of experience that brings the classic subsite to the modern experiences without a group connection. This is also a body of work we are investing in and will share additional details in the future.
Hope this helps to clarify. We'll definitely be talking more about this in the coming months as we make progress on the feature.
Thanks
For migration scenarios with nested sites and where the Teams functionality is also required: it could be an option to grant access separately to the SP sites, and "Teamify" the O365 groups where Teams make sense and the group is to interact across the collaboration and communication apps. Links can be added to the above mentioned Sharepoint sub webs to the Teams' tabs.
That's a handy integration during a migration: using Teams as a portal to tab-aggregate the old "classic" SP site with the new "group" site, and drop the new Teamified Office 365 group security principal into the required SP group of the old "classic" SP site, but ...
Don't let Redmond off the hook! Those so-and-so's will do anything to get you off the line! If you don't want to migrate, and do want to Groupify-Teamify an existing "classic" site to save unnecessary hours of extra migration work with users, make MS work for it.
I don't believe you can do the main site as a 365 Group. Only the top-level sites, i.e. the ones in /teams or /sites can be converted.
Group-connection can be performed for top-level site collections only. You cannot connect subsites to Office 365 groups.
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/features/groupify/groupify-overview
do you know if there's a workaround or solution to get my main domain connected to an o365 group?
- This option is not available for all the templates available for classic SPO sites
is this live yet?
I'm new to o365, but my main domain does not have that "Connect to O365 Group" as an option yet. however, some of my newer team sites do have that option.
So I was just wondering how to get my primary main domain (ex: mycompany.sharepoint.com) to have that option to connect to an O365 group, for the sake of having Teams show those sharepoint files in the Files tab.
Mmm, delayed three times, to be delivered in two chunks, and with a PnP (unsupported, open-source, if it works it works, but if it doesn't you're on your own in the forums) preparation scanner.
Why do I get these two familiar "Microsoft v.01 product" feelings? ...
(1) Microsoft really don't want to own it.
(2) An overwhelming urge to invite you and everyone else to go first in running it on your production "classic" sites and let me know how it goes - and then I might touch it with a barge pole.
So it's now Q2, rather than April.
Which means end of June, followed by an announcement that it's slipped again.
- cfiessinger
Please see this article: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/transform/modernize-connect-to-office365-group
- cfiessinger
Tejas Mehta shared the following timeline at Ignite: https://myignite.microsoft.com/sessions/59122 "early 2018"
- I usually post here and on twitter to gather more attention and a faster response. But I agree, this was announced eons ago and still nothing, plus I've been planning my role out of Groups contingent on this functionality.
- My thoughts exactly.
- Yes, it has been there some time (added in June last year) but apparently it has been updated yesterday and now the ETA is Q1 CY2018 so fingers crossed! :) It would be nice to hear some insights from the product group here in the tech community as this should be place where IT experts and customers could get closer to the product group and development, and not just follow general road map items.
Yes I know that. Most of the Team Sites we use are separate Site Collections with just few having subwebs (subsites).
Not sure if it helps but it seems that the item is on the Office 365 roadmap under the name 'SharePoint: connect an existing site to a new Office 365 group' and currently under development. You can find the roadmap here: https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=%26freeformsearch=connect%20an%20existing%20site%20to%20a%20new%20Office%20365%20group
- Hey Teemu, are they all separate site collections? Just wanted to make sure you know that the proposed solution is only for site collections and cannot be applied to subsites.
Yesterday it was eight months since this was announced, how long do we need to wait Tejas Mehta and cfiessinger? We have hundreds of classic Team Sites which we would like to modernize to get them smoothly connected with Teams and Planner.
Hi,
When exactly is this being rolled out? It was announced during Ignite in September. It's been 3.5 months with still no estimate date when to be rolled out?
I have been planning my rollouts based on this announcement to avoid migrating sites.
I'd really appreciate a more SMART goal, with specifics as to when we can expect this to be usable.
- Great news.
When can we expect this feature to be rolled out.
I read "later this year" on https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/05/16/new-sharepoint-and-onedrive-capabilities-accelerate-your-digital-transformation-2/ but nothing yet as of today right?
I'm planning to write some internal policy and I need to know when this can be expected to be available.
Thanks - No, ability to add a Group to classic SPO sites means to add it to site collections...there are not plans to add Groups to subsites
An existing team site if it is a subsite of a site collection? Tejas Mehta
Tejas MehtaHi all! We are absolutely working on a feature that will connect an existing classic team site to a new Office 365 Group. We had a session at Ignite that covers the mechanics in more detail - you can have a look at this session: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/Microsoft-Ignite-Orlando-2017/BRK2434 and the 'groupify' portion starts at around the 19:13 mark of the video.
That's what we're waiting for.
Note that it will only work for sites, not webs / sub-sites ...
https://blogs.ibs.com/2017/10/17/connecting-existing-sites-to-office-365-groups-kind-of/
New OG groups are either created in the Office Admin Centre, or in the Outlook Groups part of Outlook's menus, or when you create a Team, or when you launch "SharePoint" from the Office 365 app launcher (waffle menu).
Old SP sites are created as you've described above.
The classic sites probably reside in a different corner of MS's Office 365 datacentre from the OG sites, both with respect to where the data is and the admin functionality that manages them. Notice the OG sites don't appear in the list of SP sites in the Office 365 SharePoint Admin Centre.
This is another reason - over and above the differing SP site templates - why MS will have to work quite hard to produce an upgrade or "magic merge" solution: The two systems and data areas are separate, and therefore data will have to be copied between the two. The process will likely not be able to happen in place.
- sorry, just one other thing... I notice from this article is more like what I'm expecting (see section, 'Connect an existing SharePoint team site to a new Office 365 group'):
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/Work-better-together-with-SharePoint-team-sites-Office-365-app/ba-p/109550 The "connecting" piece, i.e. in addition to permissions, can only be achieved thus far by some form of linky type navigation integration. Intertwining the menus on one site and the other, giving the appearance of merging the two, sort of thing.
The one suggested above was to use Teams. A Team has its intrinsic new OG site. And this is the site that the link on the Team tab called "Files" goes to. But you can add another tab to the Team called Old Files and link that to the old classic SP site.
Then on the left nav / quick launch of both old and new sites put all the same menu items / links on both old and new sites. You could indent the old and new libraries on the menu one above the other. So the Contoso scenario might look like this: -
V Documents
Old Documents
V Finance Docs Library
Old Finance Docs Library
If the user clicks on "Old Documents" they're taken to the "Old Documents" library on the old site. But because the left nav / quick launch menu looks identical on both old and new sites, they don't perceive the click through as a site-to-site navigation. Rather the old library looks like a sub-folder of the new library, and the click through appears as merely navigating to the sub-folder in the same site. (That visual trick / technique is quite useful for when you hit the 5000 limit on libraries too, splitting out the biggest root level folders into their own libraries and indenting them below the original library on the left nav / quick launch from whence they came).
And if the permissions setup is done as above and doesn't hinder them, they might, as one user said to me, wonder if the migration has already been done: "Why did you bring the old folders over into a sub-folder of the new library? Couldn't you have copied them to the root?"
No, of course, the users, or me, or someone has still got to lift those folders across. This is not a "magic merge" or groupification / teamification upgrade of an old "classic" SP site. That's what we're waiting for from Redmond. But at least Teams, the menu interleaving, and permissions tricks gives the perception of progress, integration, and old-new hybrid-ity quite early on in the project.
On the subject of the so-and-so's getting the actual job done, looks like they've missed the "this year" deadline. I suspect it might be quite a bit trickier than they thought. The new OG site and old "classic" site are two totally different SP site templates. The project to deliver the new OG sites was probably all done in an Agile/ Scrum-ish sort of way, with no-one lifting their head above the tactical parapet of the new OG world user story backlog to ascertain what strategic chaos it might cause for migrating / upgrading from the old world.
Go on Redmond, prove me wrong. Tell me you can "magic merge" or groupify / teamify / upgrade an old "classic" SP site on patch Tuesday next week! ...
