Group Naming Policy

[Tony Redmond]

Now in preview https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Office-365-Groups-Naming-Policy-6ceca4d3-cad1-4532-9f0f-d46...

The only surprising thing I see is "Group naming policy requires Azure active directory Premium P1 license for unique users that are members of Office 365 groups." I interpret this to mean that the naming policy is only active when those creating groups have an Azure AD Premium P1 license or equivalent (like EMS 1). I think this is a bad decision, but we shall see what the market says.

[#2]

The Azure AD Premium requirement was communicated last April in this blog post: https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/04/06/whats-new-in-office-365-groups-for-april-2017/ & good feedback for our licensing specialists

[#3]

Hi,

I see:

*Azure Active Directory Premium is required.

at the bottom of the page. I am not sure that this effectively communicates the need for a premium license for a feature that is a) free in its Exchange distribution group naming policy equivalent and b) relatively easy to impose through PowerShell scripting. I know that the answer is that you're not licensing a single feature but a group of features, but still, this one sticks a tad.

[#4]

See this: https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/286611-office-365-groups/suggestions/15008712-separate-naming...

And this: https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/286611-office-365-groups/suggestions/14479938-allow-creation-...

The naming policy was working before without AAD Premium. But it had niggling problems and were not separated between DLs synced from on-premise AD and cloud-only groups. Why this requirement of AAD Premium now? Is there something special with O365 Groups that this warrants a premium subscription? Doesn't matter if it was announced in April. The logic still stands.

[#5]

That $20bn target puts some presure I guess :)

But joking aside, I would definitely love to see at least some of the features that are "locked" to AAD Premium licenses now become available at least for the E3/E5 SKUs, without requiring additional licensing...

[#6]

The reason why the naming policy was working before is that Groups used the Exchange Online distribution group naming policy, which is free.

[#7]

Why is a P1 license required to be able to apply a naming policy to the Office 365 groups?  That should be made available as part of the free Azure AD license.

[#8]

Also discussed here: https://www.petri.com/aad-licensing-groups-teams

If you don't like this, tell your local Microsoft representative and ask them to pass the message to the AAD licensing team.

[#9]

I know this is realy sad...
I have a customer that was holding Groups creation before having proper governance "controls" for naming. I know that requirement for AAD P1 will be a blocker for them.
I guess they will just ditch th Groups feature and stick with the old-school aproach.
Bye bye modern workplace for them :'(

[#10]

It sucks, to be sure. If complaints get you nowhere (and I fully expect MS to not change their mind about this) then consider whether other features of AAD P1 will be worth adopting for your organization, making the investment more worthwhile.