Microsoft 365 Groups

Microsoft 365 Groups are a modern way of grouping people and resources into a single location so that you can collaborate and share information easily and quickly.  They are an essential part of the way that SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams manage who is allowed where.

Every single Team or Sharepoint site will have a corresponding Microsoft 365 Group. For example the Senior School Teachers Team will have a group with the same name.

Anything sent to or copied into these group folders will automatically be visible to ALL members of that group as well as any future members when they are added.  Please avoid using these groups unless you understand them fully and the potential for sharing information with more people that you realised!

DO NOT use these groups for filing or storing your own emails.  By doing so you will immediately share those emails with other people and may cause a Data Breach.

Where can you find these Microsoft 365 Groups?

In outlook your groups will be shown at the bottom of your email folders, under the "Groups" heading:

You can also find these groups when sending an email.  You can tell them apart from traditional groups as they do not have a group icon next to them and if you try to expand them when in the To field you will get an error:

What happens when you email a Microsoft 365 Group?

Instead of sending a copy to everyone in the group, it will only send one copy directly to the group, like a shared mailbox.  Individual members will NOT be notified that you have emailed the group unless they manually find the group and click on it in their email folders.

Individual group members can subscribe to updates from individual groups if they choose but it is a personal, per group choice.

Which groups should I Use?

By far the best method of emailing is to use the older groups in outlook, these groups will ensure that all members of the group are individually sent a copy of your email and any future members will not get any old emails or messages when they join.

You can find these class groups under their exact set name with the group icon next to them as shown below:

These groups can be expanded and will show all their members, a good way of checking you have the right group.