Last updated 15 February, 2019
Office 365 Groups is a service that works with the Office 365 tools you use already so you can collaborate with your teammates when writing documents, creating spreadsheets, working on project plans, scheduling meetings, or sending email.
This article will help introduce you to what groups are, and give you some helpful links to the next steps.
For the latest news and videos about Office 365 Groups see Office Blogs |
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What are Office 365 Groups?
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. Resources such as a shared Outlook inbox, shared calendar or a document library for collaborating on files.
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. 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.
- 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
- 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
Model | Advantages |
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Open (default) | Users can create their own groups as needed without needing to wait for, or bother, IT |
IT-led | Users request a group from IT. IT can guide them in selecting the best collaboration tools for their needs |
Controlled | Group creation restricted to specific people, teams or services (See: Control who can create Office 365 Groups) |
Maximum... | Value |
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Owners per group | 100 |
Groups a user can create | 250 |
Groups an admin can create | Up to default tenant limit of 500K |
Number of members | More than 1,000, though only 1,000 can access the Group conversations concurrently. Users might notice delays when accessing the calendar and conversations in very large groups in Outlook |
Number of Groups a user can be a member of | 1,000 |
File storage | 1 Terabyte + 10 GB per subscribed user + any additional storage purchased. You can purchase an unlimited amount of additional storage. |
Group Mailbox size | 50 GB |
If you are planning to user the feature 'Group Writeback' from Azure Active Directory Connect tool, the maximum length is 448 characters related to the 'Description' attribute.