Update: Auto creation of Direct Reports group in Outlook (MC96611)

[Christophe Fiessinger]

Following the publication of this message center post: Auto creation of Direct Reports group in Outlook on March 16 (MC96611), we've seen a few questions and concerns from customers about this upcoming feature slated to roll out on April 13^th, and wanted to provide an update to our community.

The goal of this feature is to help managers collaborate more effectively with their team, using groups in Outlook (see this article for more info). We understand your concerns and have decided to limit the rollout of this feature to a small set of customers (notified via MC94808) whom we will work with directly to ensure both feedback is considered, and that feature usage has a positive impact.

We thank you all for your constructive feedback, and look forward to continued Group innovations in the future.

[#2]

Thank you! It's good to see our feedback taken into consideration. Is there a way to join the set of customers that this will go to? I'd like to help in any way.

[#3]

Thank you for making that change, nice to see that Microsoft is listening.

[#4]

Great to see the flexiblity on this @Christophe Fiessinger. Thanks for staying engaged with us and listening.

[#5]

We certainly do appreciate you and the product team's responsiveness to our concerns. This will hopefully strengthen the bonds between Microsoft and partners and users,rather than weaken them, as it very well may have done.

[#6]

Thank you for the update!

[#7]

Thank you for the update, and seems like a smart move for roll-out strategy indeed.

[#8]

Thank you for this and for taking into account our feedback!

[#9]

Thanks for listening! 🙂

[#10]

Hi,

just wanted to add that in my message center I cannot see MC96611, but on the weekly digest that I receive via email it is on the list. Would be great if communication especially with automatic enablement would be streamlined.

Best

Martin

[#11]

So...does it means that there could be a kind of disconnection between what we see in the Message Center and the Weekly Digest message @Brian Levenson FYI @Paul Cunningham is it happening also with your Digest script?

[#12]

My script hits the SC API and picks up everything, including changes to existing messages (it detected when the original MC notice about auto-groups changed from "Plan for Change" to "Stay Informed" and with different message body, for example). So far it's been 100% consistent between the emails it generates and what I see in MC.

I'm a bit unimpressed with the weekly digest Microsoft is generating. It's sending me multiple messages per tenant because it has been enabled by default for every admin account (e.g. multiple service accounts, all with my email as backup address) and needs to be turned off on a per-account basis. It also seems to be incomplete. A digest received on March 22nd has notices up to March 17th, and is missing two noticed from March 20th and two from March 22nd (maybe those second two was just a timing issue, but the first two shouldn't have been missed). Weekly is also too infrequent for me. I want to know ASAP about MC noticed.

Anyway, that's just my 2c, and why I keep using my own script to get daily alerts. Obviously I wrote a script that suits my specific needs and that's why I like it, but I think the Microsoft generated digest could still be improved.

[#13]

Has this since been cancelled?
https://www.petri.com/microsoft-auto-generate-office-365-groups seems to say so...

[#14]

Bump.

@Christophe - is this feature still planning to roll out?

I can't find any references to it on the Office 365 Roadmap.

[#15]

no

[#16]

Thanks, @Christophe Fiessinger.  Guess I need to remember to use the @mention feature next time to get a quicker response.

[#17]

@Christophe Fiessinger 

Can anyone point me to the current location of documentation on this feature?   I keep finding articles saying that Microsoft killed the feature, but it's still happening in our organization. I'm  having a hard time finding any current documentation on it.