Groups and Collaboration Spaces

Office 365 Groups is the focus of Microsoft’s investment in collaboration spaces, which are virtual workspaces that offer persistent discussions and file sharing. Exchange Public Folders, SharePoint Team Sites, Yammer, and many other technologies provide collaboration spaces, but not all of these technologies will continue to receive improvements, and some will probably be retired in the next one to three years in favor of offerings built upon Groups. Customers might want to focus their investments on the technologies most likely to attract continued Microsoft investment.

Groups Overview and Roadmap

Office 365 Groups is a service in Office 365 that offers collaboration spaces in which group members can hold text discussions, maintain a shared calendar, and work on shared files and OneNote notebooks in a SharePoint-like document library. Groups first appeared as a feature of the Outlook on the Web and Outlook interfaces to Office 365, but it has since expanded to support other services and features.