Microsoft 365 Groups
Microsoft 365 Groups is a cross-application membership service that enables teams to collaborate effectively and securely by establishing a single team identity and single set of permissions to a collection of Office 365 resources.
All Microsoft 365 Groups include a SharePoint document library and Team site, a OneNote Notebook, and Planner, so where to choose to start a Group depends on the nature of your team's conversations or communication preferences:
- If your team is centered around email and calendar and looking to communicate in a more formal and structured manner, then create a Microsoft 365 Group in Outlook.
- If your team is focused on university-wide communication, broadcasting to large audiences or connecting users across the University, then start your Group in Yammer.
- If your team is looking to for real-time chat-based collaboration with the same group of people, then your best choice is to create your Group in Microsoft Teams.
- All Microsoft 365 groups include Planner for task management. If you create a new plan in Planner also creates a new Microsoft 365 group, making it easy for your team to collaborate not only in Planner, but also in OneNote, Outlook, SharePoint, and other apps. The plan email address that Planner creates goes to Outlook Group Conversations.
Getting Started
Who Can Have It?
- Groups is part of the Office 365 suite of cloud-based services available to all current students, staff and faculty of Queen's University with an active Queen's NetID@queensu.ca email account
- Alumni, retired staff and faculty are not eligible to request Groups. See Membership in the Additional Information section for details on group membership.
Are There Any Costs?
- Groups is part of Office 365 service and provided at no cost to eligible users
- Users are responsible for any personal ISP/cellular arising data charges
How Do I Get It?
- Please review the Microsoft 365 Group Usage Guidelines before getting started.
- Students, faculty and staff can create Microsoft 365 Groups using self-service from a variety access points including:
- Groups that require hidden membership can either request the group using the Hidden Membership Group Request form or create a "Classes" Team through Self-Service in Teams
How to access an existing a Group?
- There are multiple access points within Office 365 where a group can be accessed:
- Outlook
- Outlook tile in the app launcher of the Office 365 Portal, https://office.com/signin;
- Outlook 2016;
- Planner
- Planner tile in the app launcher of the Office 365 Portal, https://office.com/signin;
- Microsoft Planner on the web at, https://tasks.office.com/queensuca.onmicrosoft.com
- SharePoint
- SharePoint tile in the app launcher of the Office 365 Portal, https://office.com/signin
- Microsoft Teams
- Groups connected to Teams can be accessed from the Teams tile in the app launcher of the Office 365 Portal, https://office.com/signin
- Microsoft Teams on the web at, https://teams.microsoft.com
- Teams Desktop Client
- Yammer
- Yammer-connected groups can be accessed via the Yammer tile in the app launcher of the Office 365 Portal, https://office.com/signin
- Outlook
How Do I Discontinue It?
- If you would like to leave or unsubscribe from a group, please see Leave or unsubscribe from a group
- If you would like to transfer ownership of a group, please see Add and remove group members in Office 365
How Do I Delete a Group?
WARNING: When you delete a Group, Plan or Team, you are permanently deleting the group.
Deletion will remove access to all group conversations, email messages, files, calendars, and any other related information. If you would like to delete a group, please see Delete a Group
What if I Leave Queen's?
- Please see the Office 365 section of the Service Termination Dates page for details on when service will be discontinued following departure from Queen's
- Group owners must designate a replacement owner prior to departure.
Additional Information
Membership
- Staff, faculty, and current students are eligible to be members of a Microsoft 365 group.
Note: If a student is not published (hidden) in the Queen's Global Address List (GAL), they will need to change their publishing options and publish their name and email address in the GAL before they can be added to a group. See Manage Your Publishing Options for more information. - People from outside of Queen's with a valid email address can be added as a guest to a group.
- Additional information on granting access is available on the Microsoft 365 Groups Tutorials
Storage Quota
- Refer to the SharePoint Online service page for details on storage quota.
External Sharing
- If you're working with vendors, researchers, clients, or customers outside of Queen's University, you might want to give them access to certain areas of your Microsoft 365 group or to specific files and folders, options include:
- Guest access: The guest access feature gives group owners the ability to include people from outside of Queen's University in a Microsoft 365 group. Once added, guests can collaborate with members and have access to group conversations, files, calendar invitations, and the group notebook. For more information, including guest capabilities, refer to Microsoft's support article: Guest access in Microsoft 365 groups
- Anonymous sharing: Anonymous sharing links are enabled for Microsoft 365 group-connected sites. Group members can create a link that anyone can use to access (view-only) a document or folder, even if they're not logged in to Office 365. For more information on sharing links, refer to Microsoft's support article: Sharing files and folders
Supported Platforms
- Groups is designed to work with Outlook on the web (OWA), Outlook 2016 (Click-to-Run) and on mobile devices (see Mobile App availability).
Supported Browsers
- Groups is designed to work with the current or immediately previous versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox, or the latest version of Chrome. For more information, see Microsoft 365 system requirements
Mobile App availability
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Groups can be accessed via the Outlook mobile app for iOS, Android, Outlook for Windows Phone 10. For additional information, refer to: Use Groups in the Outlook Mobile app
Office 365 Connectors
- This feature is available for use with Queen's Microsoft 365 Groups
Limits
- Owners per group: 100
- Groups a user can create: 250
- Members per group: More than 1000. Only 1000 users can access Group conversations concurrently. Likewise, users may notice delays when accessing the calendar and conversations in large groups
- Number of Groups a user can be a member of: 1000
- SharePoint file storage: 10 GB.
- Group mailbox size: 50 GB
Accessibility
- Office 365 provides features that are accessible and usable for people who have special needs or disabilities. For more information, visit: Microsoft's Accessibility in Microsoft 365
- The Queen's Accessibility Hub is a central online resource for accessibility at Queen's and has information and developed a series of "How-to Guides" to assist faculty, staff, and students create an accessible learning environment across the university
Availability
Please refer to the Microsoft Office 365 service page for details on service availability.
Service Level Objective
Please see the links below for Service Level Objectives:
Governing Policies
Users of this service are governed by the following policies, failure to comply may result, at a minimum, with suspension of service:
- Electronic Information Security Policy
- Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources
- Network and Systems Security Policy
- Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Policy
- Records Management Policy
- Queen's University Data Classification Standard
Users of this service should review the Microsoft 365 Group Usage Guidelines before getting started
Help & Support
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Last Updated: February 14, 2021