Allow Tenant Admins to Control New Features being Enabled/Disabled by Default
Tenant administrators should have the ability to specify whether or not new features such as Teams, Sway, etc. are enabled by default within their tenants. Just like there's the ability to set a tenant to receive First Release, Admins should be able to specify how changes are introduced to their environment. It's great that there are Powershell commands to turn features on/off but it would be much easier to either set these new features to be off by default, or enable Admins to enable when organizations are ready to absorb those changes. Functionality like Teams is absolutely fantastic, but without the right change management planning it becomes confusing for users. For Tenant Admins that either ignore announcements of new features, or are unavailable to turn them off when they become available - this is an appropriate solution to enable organizations to effectively manage how they are consuming Office 365.
Jared Matfess
shared this idea
9 comments
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Joshua Barnett
commented
Absolutely.
If a new service is introduced under a license it should be disabled by default. -
Ananth Kumar
commented
Yes I request that every time a service plan is introduced under a license it should be set as disabled and an administrator with his script would assign or not assign for users.
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Vikkas Mittal
commented
Yes if get that feature enable for Tenant admin because company can easily manage O365 tenant environment and enable/disable feature as per company requirement or policy.
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Faran
commented
Definitely YES. Tenant Admins should have controls to enable\disable new features.
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Anonymous
commented
Absolutely the preference for larger tenants is to manage the process of a feature rollout, not to automatically enable features that directly impact user processes. Using the example of Teams, it is immediately evident that you can create "duplicate" team names that a users owns and/or is a member. The Teams client can show the same team names and the GAL show the same Display Name for the associated O365 Group. For a larger tenant with 15,000 plus licensed accounts the exponential growth and duplication of objects and names within the directory as users test and play with the functions can turn a benefit to a hindrance within several weeks. WIthout proper planning, guidance, and training of a new feature it creates a chaotic environment for users and IT. While smaller tenant user bases makes for a new and exciting challenge of new features, larger more established infrastructures need the ability to balance multiple hurdles such as Identity Management processes (MIM, ADFS, AD Connect) together with Active Directory, Azure, Exchange, Office 365 to lifecycle an account. Creating something new is only one step for an organization. Companies must plan to be in business for 5 or 10 years and develop a life cycle for objects to create, manage, and potentially delete accounts, groups, teams, etc.
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Chuck
commented
I agree completely. We prefer to have the business units and IT team collaborate to evaluate the business need before releasing software into our environment. It's not really appropriate for a software vendor to assume they know better than their customers what software needs to be released into their corporate ecosystem. We currently have to take the extra step to disable features after they are released. In the meantime, at a minimum, there should be large notifications on admin portal whenever a new product is being released so that global admins are aware when something is being pushed to their end-users.
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Anonymous
commented
This is particularly important for large tenant, where a significant amount of work needs to go into determining if the feature is suitable or harmful to business processes, if it is suited due to legal applicable legal frameworks, or if support documentation can be prepared in time.
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Anonymous
commented
I agree it should be up to the Tenant owners and business to have the process functions and the required service-desk staff trained up before new apps are pushed out to the users.
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Anonymous
commented
It is so great to hear other admins/O365 owners have the same issues. Great that MSFT is putting out new capabilities - but don't deploy them for me. I manage the user experience - NOT MSFT. It is a huge frustration when they just turn stuff on and add it to the MSFT Tool bar.
Has MSFT considered MY data security needs, policies and processes when they turn stuff on by default?