AvePoint Online Services Helps Organizations Implement Proven Best Practices for Office 365 Groups Management

New Governance Automation Online release gives organizations more control over Office 365 Groups without limiting innovation or collaboration

Jersey City, New Jersey — April 18, 2016 — AvePoint, the Microsoft Cloud expert, today announced the general availability of the latest release of AvePoint Online Services, AvePoint’s 100 percent Microsoft Azure-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for Office 365. The release provides organizations using Governance Automation Online with enhanced Office 365 Groups management capabilities, including new features for Groups recertification as well as inactivity and user accountability tracking.

More than 17,000 customers worldwide rely on AvePoint Online Services, the industry’s only solution that provides Office 365 backup, management, governance, reporting, and archiving from a single SaaS platform. As part of AvePoint Online Services, Governance Automation Online gives business owners oversight into provisioning as well as content and permissions management to reduce the burden on IT administrators, provide more efficient service to users, and ensure organizational policies are met across Office 365 – including Office 365 Groups.

“Office 365 Groups are a powerful tool for cloud-based collaboration, but the lack of control administrators have natively has made Groups a disruptive and challenging innovation for some organizations,” said John Peluso, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy, AvePoint. “With AvePoint Online Services, we’re providing greater oversight and simplified management of Office 365 Groups to help organizations meet governance policies without slowing down user productivity or burdening administrators.”

Automatically Maintain Governance Policies with Office 365 Groups Recertification

In the latest AvePoint Online Services update, Governance Automation Online allows Office 365 administrators to require recertification of Office 365 Group members on a periodic basis according to organizational needs. This ensures access permissions for resources are appropriate and key governance controls remain in place. Governance Automation Online provides an automated workflow that sends a task to Office 365 Groups owners to review members and owners. Owners can then make necessary changes before submitting the task for administrator approval. All recertification activity is logged, auditable, and reportable – and all Office 365 Groups changes are automatically reflected in the environment once approved.

Better Office 365 Groups Lifecycle Management with Automatic Inactivity Tracking

One of the most common concerns around Office 365 Groups is that users will create and then abandon them – wasting resources on outdated, irrelevant content. To avoid this scenario, Governance Automation Online can now monitor an environment for Office 365 Groups that have been inactive for a specified amount of time. The solution can automatically contact Office 365 Group stakeholders to inquire if the Group is still required or can be deleted or archived. An Office 365 Group is flagged as inactive when there are no additions or changes made to the Office 365 Groups mailbox, calendar, files, notebook, SharePoint site, Planner attachments, Planner task comments, and Microsoft Teams files.

Tracking User Accountability and Custom Properties across Office 365 Groups

Office 365 Groups can have multiple owners, making it difficult to hold the right individuals accountable for ensuring Groups remain active and the right members are involved. In addition to Group owners, Governance Automation Online now tracks additional roles – such as primary and secondary group contacts – that can be used to identify key stakeholders of the Group. These contacts can be utilized to enforce accountability and ensure key stakeholders are involved in approval and end-of-life processes.

With Governance Automation Online, organizations can also leverage multiple custom metadata fields to better classify, track, and manage Office 365 Groups. Governance Automation Online allows for the population of contacts and metadata during provisioning, import of existing groups, and as a result of requests to update or change information.

AvePoint Online Services receives regular monthly updates to provide customers with new features and enhancements around the latest Office 365 innovations. The latest release of AvePoint Online Services is generally available today, April 18, 2017. For more information on the platform and product features, please visit our website.

Organizations interested in learning more about Office 365 Groups best practices can obtain guidance from Microsoft experts in AvePoint’s free Office 365 Groups Playbook.

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