[New!] Drag and drop conversations into groups
Good news! We're currently rolling out drag and drop for messages and conversations into groups in Outlook on the web first for First Release customers, then Standard release customers. It's much easier to explain with a GIF: Support for Outlook 2016 for Windows is coming soon--stay tuned. You can find the documentation here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/24e809db-70e1-45b7-8d54-efac7951dc95
New Feature: Guest Management through admin portals
We are happy to announce the world wide roll-out of Guest management features in Office admin portals. With guest access we have democratized the way people collaborate with external users and since its launch 6 months ago, it’s an extremely popular feature among the 10 million people using groups in Outlook every month. It is important for IT Admins to manage guest users in safe and secure way. We have provided controls for IT admins to manage guests in portal & now we are rolling out Guest user management features in Exchange Admin Center(EAC) & Office Admin Center(OAC) where you can View & filter Guest users Add existing guests to Group through portal Here is the link to the detailed documentation: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/manage-guest-access-in-office-365-groups-9de497a9-2f5c-43d6-ae18-767f2e6fe6e0 Thanks, Sahil
PowerShell Script to Generate Reports for New, Changed, and Deleted Groups in Office 365
Get-O365GroupReport.ps1 is a PowerShell script for administrators to generate reports about the Groups in their Office 365 tenant. The script stores information about the Groups that were found in a tenant, and uses that information to determine which groups are new, modified, or deleted since the last report was generated. You can download the script from the https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Office-365-Groups-Report-7e3e161b or https://github.com/cunninghamp/Office365GroupsReport/releases, and read more on the http://practical365.com/collaboration/groups/powershell-script-generate-reports-groups-office-365/ web site.How I would "fix" O365 Groups
Been chewing on this stuff for a while, and I know Groups is not technically broken, but mentally it is, given all of the posts and confusion. If I were Microsoft, here is my list of things that I would do to "fix" and simplify the entire Groups concept in O365. Caveat: These are just my opinions and taking into account nothing "technical" that could go into making any of this a reality. When I say Group, I mean any Group created regardless of where When I say Service, I mean any potential Group workflow, like SharePoint, Planner, PowerBI, Outlook, Yammer, and I am including Teams as a Service (1) Consider and start selling Groups as an actual product offering, and not merely an underlying service. While I can agree Groups itself is not a tool, what Groups gives you and how it is perceived by business users is a collaboration unified set of tools. It is easier to think of the different Group services as an outcome of the Group than the Group being an outcome of the service. Too much time is spent explaining Groups away... This would be helped by doing what is in bullet #2 (2) Create a SharePoint-home-esque equivalent Groups home page Would be web based, but use the same concepts for what it shown in the Groups app, or Outlook for joining other groups Show all Groups the current user is a part of Make recommendations of Groups for a user to join Allow users to filter Yammer Groups, versus Outlook Groups, versus Team groups, keywords, members, etc Once you found a group, the entry should have quick links to each Group service that is enabled. (3) All Groups should technically have the all of the same services available to them, regardless where they are created. Meaning if I create a Group, I could technically have a Yammer, Outlook Inbox/Calendar, and Team if I wanted, in addition to Planner, SharePoint, Files, Notebook, PowerBI, etc. At the end of the day, a Group is a Group is a Group More details on what this ultimately means in bullets 4 and 5 (4) Give Group Admins the ability to "turn on" and "turn off" Group services as they want. I would envision this as a list of checkboxes underneath the Group settings Maybe technically everything gets provisioned, but at least hidden from the interfaces as to not clutter things up all the time. If I go to Planner, I see tons of unused Plans because they are being provisioning for tons of Groups that have no need to use Planner Maybe I started out with a Yammer group, but I want to shut off Yammer and start using the Outlook Inbox/Calendar instead later. At the end of the day, make the products available, but don't force them to be present and used if the team doesnt want to use them. Even more details on what this ultimately means in bullet 5 (5) In line with Points 2 and 3, give O365 Admins the ability to create Group service creation policies based on where a Group is created from A group can now technically be provisioned from Outlook, SharePoint, Yammer, Dynamics, Stream, Teams, and probably a few more that I am leaving off A group admin could configure for example: A group created in Stream will receive only Stream and no other services. A group created in Yammer will by default receive Yammer, SharePoint, Notebook, Files, but no Planner, Outlook, PowerBI, and Teams A group created in Dynamics will by default receive SharePoint, Files, Notebook, but nothing else (6) Make Yammer not necessarily tied to the Group membership, but a tool of the Group Group could use it for internal Group-based conversations Or Group could extend it out to other non-Group members without granted access to the other Group services. E.g. a Learning and Performance Group could use the Yammer as a company-facing discussion interface without allow members to access their own Group tools (7) Revert back to the old Groups Mobile App Icon, or at least something a little less visually pointless. I'm also including don't do away with the Groups Mobile App, many have danced around this subject, but it is better to have the one app for all of the services then eventually make you go to a Service, then find a Group that you want to access for that Service. e.g. incorporating Groups Conv/Calendar into Outlook, incorporating Groups Files into OneDrive, incorporating Groups Notebook into OneNote Those are nice to have, but don't make that the only entry point to get to the services. (8) The Group should be able to be used anywhere in O365 as a Security container This is mostly true today, but some services dont let you share to O365 Groups e.g. O365 Video, PowerBI, Stream Group Writeback to AD should create elements as email-enabled security groups so that they could be re-used on-prem
Why Office 365 Groups are a nice destination for old (and not so old) Exchange public folders
It must be getting close to Ignite and teams of engineers are rushing to complete products to show in Atlanta. Here's some news from QUADROtech about their "project Adam" that applies intelligent analysis techniques to help admins decide where to migrate public folders - including to Office 365 Groups, which seems like a nice place to go! http://www.quadrotech-it.com/why-office-365-groups-are-a-great-destination-for-public-folder-data/
O365 Groups Management Concerns
I have been getting quite a bit of flack for not releasing O365 Groups on my campus. While I would love to release Groups and its other apps, I have some concerns. 1. Naming policy still not in Azure AD. We are trying to avoid namespace issues. This is the number one reason why we have not implemented Groups. This is necessary for our environment. 2. Naming prefixes for apps like StaffHub(doesn't seem to work), Teams(can't find one), Exchange(Only applies in Outlook, not in admin console.) etc, all provide a different experience. 3. When deleting a Group, things still seem to hang around(SharePoint space). From what I have read other users have experienced this issue as well. 4. For existing Groups that maybe want to use StaffHub, where is the option to add it,? Tt would be awesome if it was like how you would add an existing group in Teams. 5. There doesn't seem to be any cmdlets for the group creation for StaffHub , Team, or Yammer. The cmdlets are only for licensing. 6. Retention policies. From what I have read groups are not a permanent space like SharePoint. With that being said, I could see many students using this. If this cuts in to our tenant space, it would be nice to set expirations on Group spaces. I would be interested in hearing what other folks are doing with O365 Group management and how they are addressing the above. I can see how many of these apps could benefit our users but I also want to be prepared.
Send-as and Send-on-behalf of for groups in Outlook
We are excited to announce the ‘Send-as’ and Send-on-behalf of feature for groups in Outlook, which brings you one step closer to turning your email into a great customer support solution. With the new ‘Send as’ and ‘Send on behalf of’ feature, members of the group can respond to conversations using the shared identity of the Group instead of their individual personal identity – without losing the personal, individual touch. Because sometimes, that’s just what you need. In June 2016, we announced the 'send as' capability using PowerShell. With this update, IT Admins can now configure 'send as' and send-on-behalf-of permissions for groups in Outlook using the Exchange Admin Center. In addition, Office 365 Group members who have been granted send-as or send-on-behalf-of permissions, can send email as or on-behalf-of the group from within the group space in Outlook. Sound like what your business needs? Learn how to turn it on: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2017/01/24/send-as-and-send-on-behalf-of-for-groups-in-outlook/
