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Hide private groups from GAL by default

As soon as someone creates a private group, this should by default be hidden from GAL.

There are PowerShell CmdLets which allow administrators to hide/show the groups from the GAL. However this is a post-facto activity. With many users and groups this is very tedious and many times we don't even come know that a group has been created by someone somwhere.

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Abhitalks shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
thinking about it  ·  AdminMicrosoft 365 Groups Feedback (Product Owner, Microsoft Office 365) responded  · 

Following up on the previous update, if a workload (such as Planner) is enabled for Outlook by default, we don’t plan on hiding those groups from the GAL. The only other scenario currently under consideration where we would hide groups by default is “Secret Groups”. “Secret Groups” would be hidden from everywhere unless you are a member. “Secret groups” is on the Microsoft 365 Groups backlog, but there is no delivery date available at this time.

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  • Lori commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Is there a work-around. Is there a way to hide them after they are created. IT is talking about shutting this whole opting down. That's right... no more groups. If I go to my IT admin team with a sort of solution they might keep it up and running for us users. I was told that administrators could hide it after it's created. Where do I find these instructions?

  • Lori commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    It's been over a year so where is the "Secret Groups" - GAL is over-populated with user created groups. I need to hide them. How do I do this. Please Help

  • Bruce Stewart commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Joining in the chorus of "Please move this along". We need this capability on creation for users, not something an admin has to do manually after the fact when something of a sensitive nature is exposed in the GAL to be discovered. It also annoys group owners to get requests to join groups from other members of the forest that it has nothing to do with just because a group name happens to be something they think they might want.
    In an education institution with various groups; faculty, staff and students this is an important feature that is missing for the users to choose to have an undiscoverable group. Discoverable but Private is not enough.

  • Shane Bryan commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This needs to happen URGENTLY. We're trying to promote the use of Planner and Teams but the groups that get created should NOT appear in the GAL and should be hidden either by default, or have an option in the admin portal to hide them - as per a mailbox. Our GAL is filling up with rubbish that nobody needs to know about.

  • James Fillmore commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Come on we need a fix for this, its a real problem. First of all, why on earth did you make it so easy for users to create groups? System Admin's work HARD to keep these things clean, opening this up to anyone in the organization is a HUGE issue, we have groups now that have only one member, so that people can have private chats. We need to be able to control this feature better.

  • Marty commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I would prefer to have choices on how to handle private groups:
    1. Allow any
    2. Disallow all
    3. Only members of "HotStuffSubAdmins" are able to create groups
    4. All new groups require permission to be added to the GAL

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    We have 200 employees having exchange online plans and 2600+ students in our tennant. There are popping up unified groups several times a day, hence GAL is cluttered. Is there any chance to fix this? GAL is quite unusable in EDU environments

  • J.Bush commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Bump for "Hide from Address List" option!!! Really doesn't seem like this would take 2 years to implement since the same functionality is already in place for other items

  • Kim commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I'm going to echo what several on this thread have stated. There needs to be an ability, by default in the admin to hide *all* groups from the GAL. It is making the GAL a messy place and difficult to control. There could be an option in the individual groups to allow a group to show in the GAL. The roll out could be, option to show in GAL toggled on by default at the admin level, and admins can toggle off. Also, toggle on by default at the group level. The admin level would obviously over ride the individual levels.

  • Tyler commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Hopefully this also applies to visibility in the Groups section (bottom of the folder pane) in OWA. I ran the Powershell cmd and it hid the O365 group from the GAL, but the group name still showed up in OWA for a non-member. This is completely unacceptable and defeats the purpose of a private group.

    I like the name "Secret Group". Just hoping it's thorough and hides the group for non-members anywhere it's visible (GAL, OWA, etc.).

  • Anthony Lujan commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    1. I believe the concern on who sets the HidefromGAL feature should be defaulted to hide when any group is created. When the group is created, we can choose to keep it as a “Secret Group” by default or we should be able to make a request to our admins to set the group public. For an Example (random at that); We don’t need a group called “Company Downsizing” in our Address books and having our admins remove it which could take +30 minutes to hide this group. I believe the process right now is to go through PowerShell, set-unifiedgroup -hiddenfromaddresslistsenabled and -AcceptMessagesOnlyFromSendersOrMembers and even the option -hiddengroupmembershipsenabled is now disabled to make a group private.

    2. The option should be there to either be controlled by admins or users. This must be a choice by the organization to determine which is the best practice.

    3. Yes; We need a GUI-based way to quickly, simply hide these. You could make a check box called “Secret Groups” that is essentially a private group that aren’t visible in the directory by non-members.

    4. The workloads across Planner and Team could be very high and Right now, this is preventing any private or confidant task/project to be utilizing Microsoft Planner and Team.

  • Vijay Nelson commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    We apologize for confusion on this thread regarding the term 'Secret groups' and timeline for it. We are still working on defining it.

    We understand that there are few pain points with using the current HidefromGAL feature. Could folks on the thread help us understand the gaps and the pain points so that we can get this to our key engineering team to address it.

    1. As admins, you have a concern on who sets the HidefromGAL option and doing this after the group gets created is a problem?
    2. Do you want to make this option available to group owners? If so, why?
    3. Do you want to hide the group only from non-members and show it for members?
    4. What is the experience you expect for this group across workloads like sharepoint and planner?

  • Anthony Lujan commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Is there a status for this? Also will this include when groups are created in Planner and Outlook?

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