Microsoft 365 Groups may not be as recognised a name as Microsoft Teams, but it is a key component how Teams operates.
The massive increase in Microsoft Teams usage because of organisations rapidly transitioning to remote working has meant that both Administrators and the Microsoft 365 platform have had to react to ensure operations run smoothly.
The Microsoft 365 Groups Roadmap highlights the future plans and features which are being released. This article aims to highlight the items which we think are worth your attention.
What are Microsoft 365 Groups?
Microsoft 365 Groups is the membership service for more than 22 collaboration apps and workloads within Microsoft 365. The most visible of these for users is typically Microsoft Teams, but it also includes Yammer, Stream and Planner.
Microsoft 365 Groups were previously called Office 365 Groups. This relabelling aligns the service with the wider ‘Microsoft 365’ branding across the platform. There is no change to the capabilities and the terms are basically interchangeable.
A Microsoft 365 Group does have a few similarities (but many differences) to a traditional Active Directory or Azure AD Security Group, which will be familiar to system admins. Although Azure AD underpins the group identity management, the relationship with the collaboration workloads is a new capability and needs to be understood to prevent issues for users and administrators.