Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Why you need to pay attention to Office 365 message center updates (Auto creation of Direct Reports Office 365 groups coming)

Image result for mayhem
[Update 2017-03-22]
As there was a community outcry against this rollout, Microsoft has decided to limit the rollout. You can read about it in MC96611. This means that if you have the message MC94808, then you are eligible for the rollout. If not, then wait and see what happens in the future.

We listened to your concerns and have decided to limit the rollout of this feature to a smaller set of customers (notified via MC94808) whom we will work with directly to ensure feedback is considered, and the feature has a positive impact. We thank you all for your constructive feedback, we have learned a few lessons and look forward to continued Group innovations in the future.

[Original]
There was a news item (MC96611) which peeked my interest in the Office 365 message center the other day about auto creating Office 365 Groups for “direct reports”. The support article states:
Beginning in April 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.
From the message center we get the following information:

What do I need to prepare for this change?

If you are looking forward to this, there is no action you need to take. Get yourself familiar with Office 365 Groups, update your user training, and notify your helpdesk, as needed.
If you would like to leave Office 365 Groups enabled for your organization but turn off direct reports groups creation, we have provided controls to enable and disable. Please click Additional Information to learn more.

Really!!?!

I can just imagine all the larger companies out there missing this information suddenly getting a plethora of AAD groups which the IT dude will just faint over. So the real action here I suspect is to head over to the support article and read how to opt-out from this change.

There's a long thread on the topic over at the Microsoft Tech Community if you want to chime in.