Microsoft has announced that a newly included expiration policy, based on user activity, can be activated in Office 365 groups for select customers using Azure AD Premium. The new policy will allow customers automated access to lifetime renewals making user intervention no longer required.
Office 365 is an integral component of the 365 software package from Microsoft that currently ships with EMS (Enterprise Mobility and Security) and Windows 10. The bundle was designed by Microsoft with an aim to offer its customers the simplest method of using an easy-to-operate and safe productivity platform online.
A highly effective way for customers of Microsoft 365 to work together, Office 365 groups offers an enhanced communication method for users. Via multiple apps from Microsoft like Teams, Yammer, SharePoint and Outlook customers can communicate and collaborate with colleagues on a number of projects.
A closer look at the Office 365 expiration policy
A selection of Microsoft customers using Azure AD Premium will now have the ability to successfully enable the expiration policy in Office 365 groups. This new capability will ensure active groups can sidestep deletion which normally takes place automatically when a group lifetime term has been met.
Salil Kakkar, Program manager for Office 365 Groups, stated:
“We are excited to announce the new version of expiration policy which ensures any group being actively used continues to [live on]. This feature makes life easier for users, including admins, group owners and members, by automating the expiration and renewal process by tracking groups for user activity across different apps, like Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, tied to the group.
“The new activity-based Office 365 groups expiration policy will allow organisations to improve their groups' life-cycle management by keeping a balance between making sure that useful groups where employees are actively sharing are not haphazardly removed and deleting the ones no one uses anymore.”
The present group expiration policies will still be utilised to let admins know to renew or remove groups that have reached expiry but those who have enabled the policy will be renewed automatically.
User activity in SharePoint, Outlook, Yammer, teams among other O365 groups will form the basis for auto-renewal behaviour of activity-based groups.
New features
After the new feature is activated in Microsoft’s Azure portal, allocated admins will be afforded an overview of every automatically renewed group in Office 365 throughout their organisation.
Customers signed up for Azure AD Premium will not need to manually activate auto-renewal for groups, if an expiry policy is put in place for O365 then by default auto-renewal status will be enabled.
Owners of 365 groups will also have the capability to restore contents across several applications when unintentional deletion occurs. The apps include Outlook, Planner and SharePoint.
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