“Microsoft Groups” in Microsoft Office 365 – What is it?

Groups in Office 365 let you choose a set of people that you wish to collaborate with and easily set up a collection of resources for those people to share. You don’t have to worry about manually assigning permissions to all those resources because adding members to the group automatically gives them the permissions they need to the tools your group provides. Additionally, groups are the new and improved experience for what we used to use distribution lists or shared mailboxes to do.

The specific resources that are provided depends slightly on the groups experience your team wants to have, so let’s quickly look at the choices. While you’re considering the options it’s important to remember that one size rarely fits all. Different teams may prefer to work different ways and Office 365 has the tools to enable collaboration in whatever form your teams prefer.

Groups in Outlook

If you prefer the shared inbox mode of collaboration, then the groups experience in Outlook is for you. By creating a group in Outlook you’ll get:

• Shared Inbox – For email conversations between your members. This inbox has an email address and can be set to accept messages from people outside the group and even outside your organization, much like a traditional distribution list

• Shared Calendar – For scheduling events related to the group

• SharePoint Document Library – A central place for the group to store and share files

• Shared OneNote Notebook – For gathering ideas, research, and information

• SharePoint Team Site – A central repository for information, links and content relating to your group

• Planner – For assigning and managing project tasks among your group members

After a group in Outlook outlives its intended purpose, you can delete it to free up system resources and to remove the group from being listed or displayed.

Groups in Yammer

Yammer brings the enterprise social experience to your collaboration. It helps you make new connections and discoveries across your organization. It can help you communicate and discuss ideas company-wide or around common interest areas.

By creating an Office 365 connected group in Yammer you’ll get:

• Yammer Group – A common place to have conversations and share information

• SharePoint Document Library – A central place for the group to store and share files

• Shared OneNote Notebook – For gathering ideas, research, and information

• SharePoint Team Site – A central repository for information, links and content relating to your group

• Planner – For assigning and managing project tasks among your group members

 

What do I need to use groups?

Any Office 365 subscription that has hosted Exchange Server and SharePoint Online will support groups. That includes the Business Essentials and Business Premium plans, and the Enterprise E1, E3 and E5 plans.

If you have an Exchange-only plan you can still get the shared Inbox and shared Calendar features of groups in Outlook but you won’t get the document library, Planner or any of the other capabilities.

Private groups vs public groups

When creating a group you’ll need to decide if you want it to be a private group or a public group. Content in a public group can be seen by anybody in your organization, and anybody in your organization is able to join the group. Content in a private group can only be seen by the members of the group and people who want to join a private group have to be approved by a group owner.

Neither public groups nor private groups can be seen or accessed by people outside of your organization unless those people have been specifically invited as guests.