New Office 365 Groups Naming Policy

New Naming Policies for Microsoft Office 365 groups, and how to manage them with Azure Active Directory

New Naming Policies for Office 365 (O365) groups are now in public preview.

Alex Simons, Director of Program Management, Microsoft Identity Division, has written a great summary of the new Naming Policy here, as well as the end-user experience for creating an O365 group in the Azure AD end-user portal, Outlook Web (OWA), SharePoint, and the increasingly pervasive Teams. And there’s more information here.

What are the benefits of the new Office 365 groups naming policy?

Administrators can:

  • Enforce consistent naming conventions for O365 groups across associated workloads
  • Block certain words from being used in group names
  • Discover in which office, department, or region the group was created

These new capabilities, included with Azure Active Directory Premium (Azure ADP), add to the rapidly growing list of powerful Azure AD/O365 group features, including:

  • Dynamic groups
  • Self-service groups
  • Group-based access management/provisioning
  • Group-based license management
  • Access reviews (group membership attestation)

It is clear that group management, provisioning, governance, and other critical IT processes – for organizations of all sizes – fall into the realm of Azure ADP. And, if you’re an Office 365 administrator, you better have a foot planted firmly in both Office 365 and Azure ADP to realize the full potential of these technologies.

Now let’s open the door a little wider. What about all the other business applications you have running, whether they are SaaS in the cloud or legacy on-premises? These group management capabilities are not just for O365 – they integrate deeply with your organization’s overall identity and access strategy.

Last Fall OCG Principal Architect Chris Lloyd presented a webinar, “Supercharge O365 with EM+S: Security, Groups, and Conditional Access,” which includes more information on O365 groups. View the webinar recording.

Are you interested in learning more about Office 365 groups? Let us know!