Aug 01 2016 10:21 AM - edited Aug 01 2016 10:29 AM
We're an Office 365 shop and had previously disabled Office 365 Groups because we required document libraries to have metadata in order to enforce several corporate policies.
When Planner was added to Office 365, our users are once again creating Office Groups as a result of their use of Planner.
Can Groups be disabled in Planner? If so, will Planner still be functional?
Aug 01 2016 01:31 PM
Groups are Planner, but to answer the question, you can disable the option to create new Plans as well: https://thoughtsofanidlemind.com/2016/06/07/controlling-the-creation-of-office-365-groups-using-an-a...
Aug 01 2016 02:47 PM
Aug 02 2016 11:44 PM
Tell us more about the metadata ask - how do you apply metadata to your site libraries today? Do you use a standard site template? I'm asking because we're exposing the underlying group site collection in the near future.
Aug 03 2016 09:10 AM - edited Aug 05 2016 10:43 AM
Hi Eric,
We have record retention policies to enforce in our organization. We do that by adding 'Process' and 'Content Classification' metadata fields to our libraries. Together those two fields determine the length a document lives (after its last modification), before being flagged for deletion. Upon receiving a flag, the library owner(s) get notified via email their document(s)/file(s) are about to expire at which point they have the option of resaving them to reset the last modified date and thus start the retention clock over again.
We have a procedure for creating SharePoint sites and as part of that, the owners identify the process and content classification(s) they need. We then build them the library(s) with the identified processes and content classifications built into their libraries.
The other roadblock for our organization allowing Groups is the administration of group content by the Office 365/SharePoint Admin team. When we build private SharePoint sites, we still build them with a SharePoint Admins AD group as co-owners to the requesting owners. We can then run our scripts to check for content expiration without having to actually get into the group and see the content.
With Groups, in order to monitor content, we would need to add ourselves to the Group membership. That would make us part of the Group and thus we would get all the Group communication (which we don’t want and in the case of private Groups, shouldn't get). Therefore, monitoring of content in Groups becomes unmanageable.
For us to even consider to begin using Groups, the file storage behind O365 Groups must have configurable content type support, and support use of the tenant Content Type Hub.