Office 365 Groups Expands Collaboration Footprint

The Office 365 Groups service provides resources like shared calendars, files, and notebooks shared among sets of users to provide a more uniform collaboration experience. Organizations looking for Microsoft’s latest technologies for Web-based chat, file sharing, and other collaboration services will increasingly have to rely on services built on Groups. However, those who stay with on-premises versions of some collaboration software, or do not convert from older online services, could be faced with increasing incompatibilities and some features that stop working.

Basis of Collaboration Services

Office 365 Groups is a Microsoft-hosted service and part of Office 365 that is the focus of Microsoft’s investment in collaboration spaces, which are virtual workspaces that offer persistent discussions and file sharing. Groups provides resources (usually a shared calendar, inbox, a OneDrive notebook, SharePoint file library, and a SharePoint team site) to a specific set of Azure Active Directory (AAD) users. Not all applications built utilizing the Groups model make use of all these resources, so they are not automatically created for these applications. For instance, when a group is created within the Microsoft Teams collaboration application, it does not get an associated SharePoint team site. (See the illustration “Office 365 Groups Shared Resources“.)