- [Gini] Microsoft 365 groups are a powerful tool.
They allow us to provide spaces and tools
to groups of people who need to collaborate.
For example, I have a group here called Service to Sales.
And the service to sales group has an email address
but they also have access to Microsoft Teams.
They have a shared calendar, they have a notebook
they share use of planner, and they have a SharePoint site
and all of that was created by creating a group for them.
Microsoft 365 groups can be created in SharePoint,
They can be created in Dynamics,
and they can also be created in Outlook.
When you create the new group starting from Outlook
the group will be provided
with a SharePoint site as well as file storage.
And there are group settings that allow us to add members
invite others, or edit the group.
We can view the groups
by selecting the all groups directory here in people,
but we create new groups from Outlook Mail.
So I'm going to click mail,
scroll down in the left navigation pane
and you'll see a list of groups here.
This might be collapsed
so all you see is the title groups, but you can expand it.
We'll show you the first few groups.
You can choose to see more or see less.
These are all of the groups that I have a relationship to.
Not all of the groups in Kinetico
but the groups that I am part of
or groups perhaps that I created.
You can discover groups to go find a group,
and this is a good idea to start here
when creating a new group.
We have a new initiative
where we are going to create focus groups of our customers
to learn more about their experience with our products
and with our services.
So I actually need to create a focus groups group.
I'm going to enter the word focus
and it says there are no groups that match focus.
I'll enter focus groups too, but of course
if focus didn't show anything
then we're not going to find anything here.
I'm very confident this group doesn't exist
because the initiative isn't going to start for a few months.
But if I wasn't certain, I would go to talk
with whoever's in charge of the focus group's initiative
and make sure no one else has created this group
or that no one else creates it tomorrow
after I've created it today.
But I'm ready to create a new groups.
So I will click new group,
and the name for this is Focus Groups.
And Outlook is checking to see
if the name with all of its spaces stripped out
is a valid email address, and it is.
It doesn't already exist.
Now I want to tell people the purpose of our group.
And the purpose of our group
is communication and collaboration
for the Focus groups initiative.
Now, the default settings are that this group is private
and it will be created in English
and members will receive all group conversations
and events in their regular inboxes.
I can edit these settings
and I'm actually going to.
With Microsoft 365 groups,
there's no such thing as a super private group.
In other words, everyone can see that the group exists
but they may not be able to see the content.
That's a private group.
The opposite of a private group is a public group
and with a public group
anyone can see it and anyone can ask to join.
Right now, I can only create private groups.
That works for me
because this is indeed going to be a private group.
The only thing you really can't ever change here
is the language.
So this is not a good time to go check something else out
like to choose Spanish
just to see how the group would look.
Unless of course, all of the members
of the focus group's group actually read and write Spanish,
then it would work just fine.
And then finally, we have subscription.
Subscription means that anytime an email is sent
to focusgroups@kinetico.info,
the new group's email address,
all members of the group will receive that in their inboxes,
but they can choose later to opt out.
It's easier to start people in the group
and let them opt out if they wish,
rather than turning this off
and trying to make sure
that they are in fact going to the group's page
to view emails.
So this is on by default for a good reason.
Let's click create, to create our new group.
And I could add members to this if I wish.
I'm going to add one, my executive assistant, Reggie Top
And I actually had to press enter
to drop his name down here.
I didn't get an expand on that.
Let's try one more.
Note that I press enter,
and it knows who to add,
but it's not giving me a dropdown here.
That's a little unusual.
And people can be members or they can be guests
who are from outside of the organization.
I'm all set now.
We'll add other people later.
So I'm going to add these two members, Charles and Reggie
and our new group exists.
It is right here, Focus Groups.
This is the inbox.
There's nothing in it.
But if I go back to the People app
and I look at all groups, I'm going to refresh all groups.
Here's the Focus Groups group.
I can click here to see our small number of members
and these are the apps that are available.
If I wanted to see the SharePoint site
that had been set up for this group,
I can click on Site
and this is a brand new SharePoint site,
waiting for this focus group to work on it.
Note that I'm already being offered help
to build out this SharePoint site.
I can also easily add a connection to Microsoft Teams.
The link is right here from SharePoint.
Back here in Outlook,
I can access a notebook.
This is a shared calendar
for the entire group, not my calendar,
but this is where we would put group events.
So my calendar appears on the left.
This is the focus group calendar here on the right.
As you'll see, under groups.
And members of the group can add meetings or appointments
or all day events to this calendar, if they wish.
If you need space for a group of people to collaborate,
to have access to a shared calendar, shared email
shared files, and perhaps a SharePoint site,
or Microsoft planner and or Teams,
you can build, starting with a Microsoft 365 group,
here in Microsoft Outlook.