PolyU Email Service Office Group (for Staff ONLY) The Useful ......PolyU Email Service - Office...
Transcript of PolyU Email Service Office Group (for Staff ONLY) The Useful ......PolyU Email Service - Office...
PolyU Email Service
Office Group (for Staff ONLY)
The Useful Tips and Techniques
Version 1.0
Last Update: 9 May 2016
PolyU Email: www.polyu.edu.hk/email
ITS HelpCentre Support: www.polyu.edu.hk/HOTS
ITS HelpCentre Support Hotline: 2766 5900
Table of Contents
What is an Office 365 group? ............................................................................................... 2 Collaborating in Office 365 Groups ....................................................................................... 2 Public and private Office 365 groups .................................................................................... 3 Group owners and group members ...................................................................................... 3 Discovering and joining Office 365 groups ........................................................................... 3 Conversations and e-mail ..................................................................................................... 4 Group calendar ..................................................................................................................... 4 Files, sharing, and OneDrive for Business ............................................................................. 5
Create a group ...................................................................................................................... 6 Subscribing to a group .......................................................................................................... 7 Group naming policies .......................................................................................................... 7 Office Group Limitation ........................................................................................................ 8 Reference .............................................................................................................................. 8
What is an Office 365 group? People are social. Some say it’s our most defining characteristic. We work and play in groups so we
can talk, listen, collaborate, and accomplish something. We quickly get together to get stuff done or
organize into a team or association. Whatever the reason, people in a group know and trust each
other, chat regularly, and often create reports and files. You can use an Office 365 group to make this
all happen a lot more productively.
Collaborating with colleagues can be challenging. When teams are working on a project together,
there can be a lot to keep track of. Emails and meetings in Outlook, conversations and calls in Skype
for Business and documents to store and share in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. Office 365
groups enables teams to come together and get work done, by establishing a single hub (managed in
Azure active directory), and a single set of permissions across all these Office 365 apps, so teams can
simplify collaboration and increase productivity. Office 365 groups also allows collaboration in
OneNote, Power BI and Dynamics CRM. When a user joins the group, they immediately gain access to
all of the work of the team and project. Check out the video below to see how one team uses Office
365 groups and read this topic to learn more about Office 365 groups.
Collaborating in Office 365 Groups We’re also working on more innovations for Office 365
groups. They’ll soon be working in Office Planner, Delve
and Yammer.
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Public and private Office 365 groups An Office 365 group can be public or private. A public group is open to everyone. If you just want to
see what the group is doing, all the content and conversations are easy to view. But if the group
interests you, you can join it and become a member. In most cases, a public group is your preferred
alternative. On the other hand, a private group is exclusive and only open to its members. The content
and conversations are secure and not viewable by everyone. Choose a private group when you are
concerned about security and privacy, such as trade secrets or confidential information. Although
anyone can see the name of the private group, information isn't accessible from search, links, or in
other ways. Joining a private group requires
approval from a group administrator. You can't
change a public group into a private group, or a
private group into a public group.
Note: Although you can't participate in a private
group that you aren't a member of, anyone can
send email to a private group and even receive
replies from that private group.
Group owners and group members There are a few things to call out about group members and owners.
When a group owner leaves your organization or team, all email, conversations, files, and
calendar events are saved, so other group members can access the data. As the admin of your
organization, you can add a new group owner or promote another owner of the group in the
Office 365 admin center or via PowerShell. Check out Manage Group membership in the Office
365 admin center and Use PowerShell to manage Office 365 Groups. You should also consider
having multiple owners for a group in case there needs to be some management tasks and
the group owner isn’t available.
A group can't have more than 10 owners.
A user can't create more than 250 groups.
Groups with more than a 1000 members are supported, but group users may notice that
accessing group conversations and the group calendar can take a long time.
Discovering and joining Office 365 groups Before you can join an Office 365 group, you need
to find it. Fortunately, groups are open and
discoverable by default. To help you build a strong
social network, take some time to discover existing
groups and their members in your organization. If
you know members of a group, their interests
often coincide with yours. Finding groups first also
avoids duplication of effort. Why create a group if
one with the same purpose already exists? When
you find a group that interests you, explore its
membership, conversations, and files. Then decide whether to join the group and become an active
participant. Check out Find, join, or leave a group.
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Conversations and e-mail To get things started and keep things going, an important part of any group is communication. A group
has its own mailbox so all group emails are easy to locate and manage. In Outlook Web App, you can
also have a conversation with group members by posting and replying to short messages. The entire
history of conversations are preserved, helping new members get up to speed quickly.
Conversations are sorted by date from oldest to newest, you can quickly catch up with new
conversation messages which
are marked with a blue tab and
even add attachments.
Occasionally, you might want to
send an email message to the
group, to ensure everyone gets
the message right away. When
you create the message, just
type the group name on the To
line.
Group calendar A dedicated group calendar helps all members coordinate their schedules. Everyone in the group
automatically sees meeting invites and other events. If you belong to more than one group, it’s easy
to view each group calendar
side-by-side. Events that you
create in the group calendar
are automatically added and
synchronized with your
personal calendar. For events
that other members create,
you can add the event from
the group calendar to your
personal calendar, and the
event automatically
synchronizes with your
personal calendar. Finally, you
can overlay your personal
calendar with a group
calendar, to see how
schedules align.
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Files, sharing, and OneDrive for Business Sharing content, such as files and folders, is a hallmark of group collaboration. Shared content can live
elsewhere in Office 365, but OneDrive for Business makes it convenient to view and edit files
regardless of the actual location. Sharing content also helps unlock useful information hidden in
mailboxes and personal folders. A group’s One Drive for Business page is the primary place for group
files, but you can access other shared and followed documents that you may need throughout the day
to further collaborate with your group.
Note: When you try to add a folder, if you get the error message, Operation is not valid due to the
current state of the object, contact your site admin. Before you can add folders to your group files,
your admin must configure SharePoint to prevent users from running custom scripts on personal sites.
For more information, see Turn scripting capabilities on and off.
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Create a group Notes: The one who create the Group become the Group Owner of it, by default. He/She can add other
group owners, add/delete group members, change name of Group, and even delete the group.
Steps on Outlook on the Web
1 Login to web version of Staff Email: http://www.outlook.com/polyu.edu.hk
2 In the navigation pane, next to Groups, select the
Create button. (If you don't see the Create button,
hover your mouse over the navigation pane.
3 In Choose a name, enter a group name that briefly captures the spirit of the group.
4 To assign an abbreviated name to your group which will be part of the group URL, in the
Group ID box click Edit .
If you see "not available," the group ID is already in use. Try something different. Note that
once you choose a group ID, it cannot be changed.
5 In Add a description, enter a detailed description of the group to help others understand its
purpose. This description will be included in the welcome email when others join the group.
6 In Privacy, do one of the following:
To create a group in which anyone within your organization can view its content and
become a member, select Public.
To create a group in which membership requires approval by a group owner and only
members can view group content, select Private.
Note: This Privacy setting cannot be changed once the group is created. It is necessary to
delete the group and recreate it, if needed.
7 To enable subscribed members to receive email and calendar event notifications in both their
group inbox and personal inbox, select Subscribe members so they receive group
conversations in their inbox. This is recommended when members belong to multiple groups
because it means they can see all group notifications in one place without having to visit each
group mailbox in order to stay current with group activity.
8 Select Create.
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Example to show how Office Group as presented in Outlook 2016
Subscribing to a group When you subscribe to a group, you are requesting that conversations or events from the group be
sent to your inbox. If you prefer to use Outlook instead of Outlook Web App, it’s a great idea to enable
this feature, because it ensures that all members receive group email messages and calendar events
in Outlook in a timely way so they can stay up-to-date on group activity. You can also reply to the
conversations from Outlook, and the replies are immediately posted to the group conversation.
Subscribing to a group is also helpful when you are actively working in different groups and related
projects, and want to stay on the top of each conversation and calendar event from your inbox.
Subscribing is not enabled by default. You can enable subscribing for the group when you first create
the group. After creating a group, you can also enable subscribing when adding a new member. Finally,
each individual can enable or disable subscribing to suit their individual preferences.
If you think you are getting too much information from the group in your inbox, you can always
unsubscribe from the group to reduce the information flow. The conversations are still available in the
group, so you can revisit them from time-to-time to catch up on past conversations. There is a
convenient unsubscribe link at the bottom of all group email messages.
Group naming policies Group naming policies allows you to control how group names and email aliases appear in your
organizations directory, and how they appear to users. We are required a specific prefix be added to
the name for a distribution group when it's created.
In order to separate between Office Group and Distribution Group. Groups created by users must use the following naming format:
Grp_<Department code>_<Group Name>
where <Group Name> is a descriptive name provided by the colleague who creates the group.
For example,
Group Name: Workshop Department Code: ITS
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The name of the Office Group created: Grp_ITS_Workshop
Office Group Limitation • A Group can only have maximum of 10 owners
• Group type (Private or Public) cannot be changed after creation
• Recovered Deleted Items /Deleted Items is not available to Group mailbox
• There will be storage quota to be applied to each Group. It will be confirmed later.
• The Group will be expired and removed from the system after inactive for 6 months
Reference Chapter 7, Office 365 for Exchange Professional – by Tony Redmond
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Learn-about-Office-365-groups-b565caa1-5c40-40ef-9915-
60fdb2d97fa2?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US