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Collaborate with your colleagues using Microsoft 365 Groups

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Note

Effective February 2022, support for Microsoft 365 Groups (previously known as Office Groups) and Yammer in Dynamics 365 will be deprecated. This will impact customers who use Microsoft 365 Groups and/or Yammer for collaboration in Dynamics 365. We recommend that customers transition to Microsoft Teams for more advanced collaboration functionalities. For information about integrating Dynamics 365 with Teams, see Integrate customer engagement apps in Dynamics 365 with Microsoft Teams.

If you've questions about the deprecation, contact your Microsoft Customer Service representative or Microsoft Partner.

Office 365 Groups are a shared workspace for email, conversations, files, and events where group members can collectively get stuff done.

You can use groups to collaborate with people across your company, even if they don't have access to Customer Engagement (on-premises). For example, you can create a group for your sales team and invite other Office 365 users to join the group, and then share documents, conversations, meeting notes, and OneNote information related to specific accounts or opportunities.

The groups solution works with any entities, even custom ones.

Important

This feature requires that you have an Office 365 subscription or a subscription to an online service such as SharePoint Online or Exchange Online. For more information, see What is Office 365 and how does it relate to Dynamics 365 (online)?

Dashboard of an Microsoft 365 group.

Collaborate through meetings, conversations, notes, or documents.

Note

Check out the following for a quick introduction to Office 365 Groups:

Prerequisites

  • You need to have an Office 365 subscription which includes Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

  • Before you can start using Office 365 Groups, the groups solution needs to be deployed and turned on for your Customer Engagement entities. For more information, see Deploy Microsoft 365 Groups.

Create or join a group

  1. Go to the record that you want to create a group for. For example, Go to Sales > Accounts.

  2. Choose an account.

  3. On the nav bar, choose the drop down menu next to the account name, and then select Microsoft 365 Groups.

  4. In the Welcome to Microsoft 365 Groups for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises)! section, select Create Microsoft 365 Group or search for an existing group to join.

Note

  • As of November 2019, Office Groups with MIP (Microsoft Purview Information Protection) sensitivity labels can't be created from Dynamics 365 (on-premises). You have to create the group outside of Dynamics 365 (on-premises). For more information see, Learn more about creating new group with Sensitivity Label. Once this is done, add the link from Dynamics 365 (on-premises) by joining the group.
  • You can only connect to groups returned in search for which you are a member. Hover over the search results to see your status.
    • When you add team members to a project, they will be automatically added to the associated group.
    • You can associate existing groups to Customer Engagement records. You don't need to create a new group to create an association.
    • When you delete a group, you'll receive a notification on the Welcome to Microsoft 365 Groups for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) page so you can take the appropriate action.

Join a meeting

Group meetings help all members coordinate their schedules. Everyone in the group automatically sees meeting invites and other events.

  • Choose the meeting title to view meeting details.

Start a conversation

Having a group conversation is a way to communicate with group members. The conversations section displays each message, where you can read, reply to, and create new conversations.

  • To start a new conversion, in the Start a group conversion box, type in your message.

  • In the Conversations section choose a conversion to read and reply to it.

Add notes

Share notes with everyone in your group using the shared OneNote notebook. OneNote lets multiple people write in the same notebook, on the same page, at the same time, and it automatically merges everyone's changes.

  • In the Notebook section, choose the group's notebook. When OneNote opens, add your notes.

Share documents

When you create or upload a file in the group's OneDrive for Business page, it's automatically shared with all members of the group. When you add members to the group, they automatically get shared access to the files. By default, only group members have view and edit access to the files. When you create a group in Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement, it's set to private, so only the group members can see information about the group including files, conversations, or even the group itself.

  • To see the latest list of documents, refresh the list using by choosing the refresh icon.

  • To upload or manage all of your documents in OneDrive for Business, select Open OneDrive.

Use the Microsoft 365 Connectors for Groups

Use the Office 365 Connectors for Groups to connect new or existing Office 365 Groups with Customer Engagement (on-premises) so the group is notified when new activities are posted.

To set it up, see Deploy Microsoft 365 Groups.