Office 365 Group Naming policies and Azure Active Directory

[Jaap Slot]

As you start a group either in Outlook or in Teams, you put an entry in Azure Active Directory. This is also used for your Global Adress Book for Mail and Skype.  Is it possible to enforce a naming convention for the different groups? Apart of the sanitization purposes it could also be handy for future functionalities. I can imagine a function for teams to join a skype meeting together or somethin similar,..

So a way to enforce a naming convention for groups (teams) would be very helpful. I don't like the idea of unleashing a mass of unreal email adresses or users on my user population. 

[#2]

This is something still to come...

[#3]

Here is a link to the O365 roadmap item correlating to the naming policy that you can follow as it moves to rollout.

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=#abc&featureid=38603 

[#4]

According to recent comment by Rob de Jong under this article (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/active-directory-accessmanagement-groups-set...), the feature is targetted for May.

[#5]

The current situation is that groups created with OWA and Outlook can be controlled by an Exchange naming policy.

This doesn't work with applications that don't know about Exchange configurations, which is why Microsoft is moving the policy to AAD. When that happens, all applications that create groups (Teams, Planner, SharePoint, OneDrive, Power BI, OWA, Outlook, and the various mobile apps) will be upgraded to support and enforce the new naming policy. 

As people have noted, this change is in the roadmap. It should have appeared some time ago (according to Ignite presentations), but it didn't. Maybe because of new apps - like Teams - using Groups, In any case, it is coming. Hang tight.

[#6]

I don't think that this currently exists. If you want this then you could create a request list in SharePoint. In this list enforce the standards that you want and use Powershell or webjobs to scan through the requests and create the groups

[#7]

We are talking here about Groups naming...

[#8]

It is May, does anyone know about schedule of this change? It would be really nice to be able to add prefixes or suffixes to the names of Groups!

[#9]

Funny I came here to say I found another way around the group naming enforcement and found this post.

I had set the policy so when you create a group directly it uses the correct prefix. But have since found team create bypasses it and creating a group from the sharepoint button 'create new site' also bypasses it.

Now I understand why, right now its only the exchange naming that is enforced. :(

really wish we'd get an update on the status of using Azure AD, but the bigger question is will it be part of the 'free' Azure AD or require an paid upgrade....

[#10]

It is still in development, probably has something to do with the external users as well? This feature is eagerly awaited. Is there an update available on the subject? 

Cheers, Jaap

[#11]

Is this features avaliable now? This feature is eagerly awaited. Is there an update available on the new dates ? 

[#12]

Wait for Ignite. It's just 12 days away...

[#13]

I started digging into Groups management today, and I stumbled across this thread, as well as this article: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Office-365-Groups-Naming-Policy-6ceca4d3-cad1-4532-9f0f-d46...

The article has no date, but judging from the above replies, I'm guessing it's recent. Has anybody tried this yet? It provides instructions on setting naming policy and custom blocked words, as well as includes all of the applications in which the naming policy will work. There are some limitations that puzzle me though: 

"Power BI workspaces aren't compliant with naming policy yet. Power BI workspaces created in your organization with naming policies will fail."

My company utilizes PowerBI. The clause above indicates that I will, therefore, not be able to implement any group naming policies on our Azure tenant, because if I do, PowerBI workspaces will fail. Am I interpreting this correctly? Is there a way I could instead isolate PowerBI from the naming convention policy? 

[#14]

I asked at Ignite. The answer is that the naming policy is in private preview at present. Wait a little longer.

[#15]

I think this is the link to the feature in Office roadmap:

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=&featureid=14687

[#16]

Just confirmed that the solution outlined by Tony Redmond does work as expected.  There are a number of other similar support articles on the exact subject that are not correct in minute details.  Reference: https://www.petri.com/office-365-groups-naming-policy

[#17]

Could you cite an authority for the statement that the Azure AD Naming Policy has been deprecated? I wrote about it in January https://www.petri.com/office-365-groups-naming-policy and it seems in rude good health still.

I fear that you are mistaking the distribution group naming policy that is in EAC. This only applies to distribution groups whereas the discussion here is about Office 365 Groups.

[#18]

Thanks Tony for the clarification. You may be correct. I think my testing may have not been sufficient after all. I reviewed your article and am testing. I have played with numerous similar recommendations without success. However, this may be related to impatience. I will report on results...

[#19 · Accepted solution]

Looks like the naming policy is doing a pretty good job in my tenant...

Office 365 Naming Policy in action