Teams Day Online 10x

On April the 6th, 2022 I was honored to speak at Teams Day Online. This is still a great event, with great participants, speakers, and organizers. I decided to take on two particular subjects; Information Barriers and Communication Compliance as related to Microsoft Teams. Here’s some more information and the presentation itself.

Emails

Setting barriers for Exchange Online. Information Barriers will restrict users to find other users in specific segments. This is familiar with the older function of Address Book Policies. When you try to send an email and try to add a user – you’re not able to select this user.

Creating teams

Some thoughts on the creation of new Teams. In my tests, when a new Team creator is part of a segment, then the Information Barriers policy will kick in. However, if the creator is not part of any segment, then no policy will kick in. And in effect: such a Team can contain users from different segments. This is similar to the Owner moderated mode for Information Barriers.

SharePoint Online

As for SharePoint Online – please keep in mind that the segment associated with the new Teams environment takes some to be added to the SharePoint Online site or sites. But when the segment is added, it will be displayed on the site itself.

Information Barriers for SharePoint Online also include the Explicit mode. What’s the difference with the Implicit mode, which is the default for Teams connected SharePoint Online site? Non-connected SharePoint Online sites also support Information Barriers. The explicit mode can then be used. This mode requires that the user’s segment is the same segment as assigned to the site. Also, the user needs to have access to the site.

When using the Implicit mode, any user needs to be part of the Microsoft 365 Group connected to the SharePoint Online site.

Preview GUI

The Compliance center GUI offers you the options to create segments, and policies and to check the status of the policies. As you might notice – the Policy Application screen is somewhat limited. You cannot see the identity of the policy and you cannot open the details of the policy status.