Groups and Collaboration Spaces

The new Office 365 Groups feature could signal a new direction for Microsoft development in collaboration spaces, which are virtual rooms that offer persistent discussions and file sharing. Exchange Public Folders, SharePoint Team Sites, 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. Customers might want to focus their own investments on the technologies most likely to attract continued Microsoft investment.

Groups Overview and Roadmap

Office 365 Groups is a new feature in Office 365. The feature offers collaboration spaces in which group members can hold text discussions in a shared mailbox, maintain a shared calendar, and work on shared files in a SharePoint-like document library. Full access requires the Outlook Web App (OWA) browser interface, but users can participate in discussions via other e-mail clients, including mobile clients. Behind the scenes, an Office 365 Group is effectively an Azure Active Directory group that owns Office 365 resources (such as the shared mailbox, calendar, and document library).