Groups Content, Retention Policies, and Licensing Requirements

[Deleted]

We use the new Unified Retention Policies to retain content in Exchange & Sharepoint.

Recently, we were told by MS that in order for our shared/resource MBX's to be covered by these policies we had to license them with an EOL Plan 2 license, (which we dutifully did...)

I'm rolling out Teams/Groups at my company now.  I've been asked by the execs whether the Groups Mailboxes/Sites are subject to the same requirement?  Will we have to assign an Exchange Plan 2 license to every Group mailbox?  

I'm a little confused/unsure as I see there is an option in the Retention Policies area to cover O365 Groups so it's obvious that the capability is there, but IDK about this whole license requirement.  Is that even correct?

On a related note, has anyone tried to do any Content Searches or eDiscovery against any Groups content?

Thanks.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Short answer: No, you don't need this requirement for Group Mailboxes and Group Sites...they are covered by your Office 365 Subscription and the license you have for your users that are member of those Groups

[#3]

And even if you wanted to license them, there are no actual user objects behind those mailboxes, so there's nowhere to apply the license.

[#4]

Thanks a lot guys!  With compliance and accounting depts now calmed, off I go to deploy Groups/Teams.

We're going to lead with Teams as the 'face' of Groups, but aren't ignoring the other vectors.

I have my settings/controls set up and working well for regular users.