Manage automatic creation of direct reports group

[Scott Johnson]

Please let me know what you think:

• "Beginning in March 2017, managers who have 2-20 direct reports, do not already have a direct reports group, and have permissions to create groups in Outlook, will automatically have a private group created for them with their direct reports. The manager will be added as an owner, and the direct reports of the manager will be added as members by default. The group will be named "<Manager's Name>'s direct reports", but that can be edited."

To view the complete article: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manage-automatic-creation-of-direct-reports-group-Admin-hel...

[#2]

First time I'm aware of this feature @Christophe Fiessinger @TonyRedmond any comments?

[#3]

I haven't seen this feature. It might not yet have been deployed. It might also be a feature designed for small tenants.

I do not think this is a good idea for large to enterprise tenants. In fact, it is a rotten idea. Enterprise tenants like to control their GAL and this sounds like a way to clutter that GAL up with a profusion of groups that will quickly become an uncontrollable mess. Unless, of course, Microsoft is going to update the newly-created groups on an ongoing basis to adjust membership based on changing reporting relationships. Creating groups is easy; maintaining them over time is bloody hard. That's why many enterprises have their own solutions (often integrated with HR processes) to do this kind of thing. It is a special challenge when organizations do not populate AAD with reporting relationships - or keep this data current, a problem that is more prevalent than you might think.

It's an example of a bright idea that looked good on a whiteboard but might be horrible in the field. 

Now I look forward to be proven wrong by the disclosure of a super-competenent system for tracking reporting relationships across large organizations and behind-the-scenes automatic adjustment of group memberships, removal of unwanted groups, and so on.

[#4]

> Unless, of course, Microsoft is going to update the newly-created groups on an ongoing basis to adjust membership based on changing reporting relationships.

I've no special knowledge, but I expect they will be dynamic groups so self updating.

It doesnt seem like a great idea to me, and we are certainly going to turn it off. Many users have already created groups, this would be huge duplication. It would create thousands of groups in our environment.

[#5]

I don't think dynamic groups will work.

First, they depend on AAD. If the data is not in AAD or is incorrect, the queries will not find the right people and you might end up sending information to the wrong recipients.

Second, Microsoft requires any user account that comes under the scope of a dynamic Office 365 Group to have an AAD premium license. That's fine if you have EMS or have bought the AAD licenses, but not so good otherwise. Perhaps they are changing their licensing policy - if so, that will be welcome and the right thing to do because dynamic email distribution groups are free.

But the big flaw in all of this is the dependency on AAD. If you are 100% perfect in maintaining AAD, you have a chance that this plan will work. If not, it won't. That's the reason why many large enterprises use processes tied to HR systems (which serve as the definitive source of reporting relationships) to generate groups (email DLs, not Office 365 groups).

TR

[#6]

Surprised to see this appear in my (and my customers') Message Center. At first blush this does seem like a very poor idea.

What if the manager already has a DL for their reports that they're happy with? They get a Group created anyway?

What if the manager already has a Group, or a Team that is being actively used? They get Yet Another Group created anyway?

Will the Group membership be auto-adjusted over time? Nothing indicates that it will.

If an auto-created Group is deleted, does it get recreated automatically later?

This seems like a semi-useful feature if it was opt-in, so you could carefully set up your reports/manager relationships, turn it on, and have them automatically created and managed. But as an opt-out feature, I am concerned this will mess up the GAL of many organizations, and mess it up quite badly.

[#7]

The feature is described as being an automatic group created of direct reports, so fundamentally the group must be based on the data for manager/reports in AAD. Where else would it get this information from.

I reckon it'll be an exception to the licensing requirements for AAD Premium, they aren't going to build another mechanism to do the same thing as an existing feature to work around a licensing limit.

[#8]

Yeah...most of the organisations I work with have poor implementations of ManagedBy, so I guess I'll scoot around and turn this off for now!

What's next - Groups for Country and Groups for Office and Groups for Department? That'll be great when "HR" and "Human Resources" and "HR/Payroll" get different Groups created.

[#9]

please see this article: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Automatic-creation-of-Direct-Reports-groups-in-Outlook-f434...

[#10]

@Christophe Fiessinger I've read that article several times (before I posted) and it doesn't answer my questions.

Unless you're saying it does actually answer my questions, in which case the wording is unclear because I'm not seeing the answers.

[#11]

Luckily it answered the only question I needed, DISABLE!

I think this functionality will "junk up" Groups in a lot of people's environments.  I do think having the option to "Create a Group Based on My Reports" would be a good idea, and do dynamic membership (like via AAD currently), but I dont think it is Microsofts job to make "business decisions" like this for an organization.

[#12]

great feedback on how our documentation can improve (note you can provide feedback directly at the very bottom of each article).

[#13]

Why are features like this that have such a massive impact on an environment, especially an extensive one (who, really, has their managedBy up to date?) being rolled out as opt-out? So many tenants are going to be littered with messy Groups as a result of this, I really struggle to imagine what went on in a meeting room to decide this was a good idea.

[#14]

It was posted today in Message Center.

[#15]

Totally agree with Chris comment, this new feature if not properly communicated (I think in this case the message center is not enough) can drive into scenarios where Groups are going to be totally unmaneagable

[#16]

I can see (I think) how this can be helpful in some cases and I can also appreciate the fact that we are given controls for this feature. And the advance communication, although as others have pointed out, the record proves that Message center entries are often overlooked, and with this regard a "default enabled" approach might/will have unwanted consequences. This is not the first example of such feature and Microsoft seems to be getting more and more agressive with them, which is definitely not a good thing.

I also agree that we need to know some more details before we can make a decision whether we want to use a feature like this. I'm also willing to bet few bucks that in order to start using this feature, some companies would need more control over it than just the "on/off" switch.

[#17]

turned up yesterday on the roadmap and the message center. I've immediately made a mental note to disable this today. DONE

Might be a good idea in theory, possibly for fresh tenants, but boy would this mess up my currently very clear organization of groups.
I already have department groups that mostly represent hierarchy structures, no need for additional groups.
Also the documentation lacks many scenarios as already described above.

[#18]

Pointless at best, positively disruptive at worst given we still don't have much in the way of tools for managing Groups in the first place. I can think of several things I'd prefer they spent the development time on doing or finishing:-

1. Group Soft Delete
2. Central IT access to All groups
3. Delve Search of private groups
4. Dynamic groups for all (not just AAD Premium)
5. Some way of navigating from groups to a central site
6. Better options for branding
7. Full set of SharePoint framework parts

I like Groups but please finish what you have before adding new stuff.

[#19]

1- Coming very soon

2- Please explain, IT can already manage all groups centrally

3- Still working on this

4- good feedback for your MSFT account rep

5- please explain? we are working on a unified groups card across apps.

6-7 good feeback for my SP colleagues

[#20]

We got this message in our tenant, which has 40k+ users, so it wasn't limited to only smaller shops.

Like others have said, this is a horrible idea.