When a users is added to a group. he/ she should be set to automatically "follow" by default. They should not have to follow it afterwards
When a users is added to a group. he/ she should be set to automatically "follow" by default. They should not have to follow it afterwards


The default option when Microsoft 365 Groups are created in Outlook is to now set “Follow in Inbox” to true for all group members. For Microsoft 365 Groups created prior to this change, group owners can toggle the setting to subscribe all group members.
21 comments
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Anonymous commented
Agree with Daniël, the desired setting should be a global- or groupsetting: when adding users to the microsoft 365 group, auto-follow the underlying sharepoint site (or not). When removing the user from the group: de-follow automatically the sharepointsite (or not).
This will decrease userquestions how to see the companying document library in onedrive, and how questions about why I see them in onedrive but have no rights.
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Dan Johnson commented
I don't really use the Outlook link to Groups. My issue has always been the default for the SharePoint site for each group being set to "not follow"for new members. We use the sync feature for document libraries from each Groups' SharePoint site in our organizations so that users see the Group document folders as a normal folder in their file system. Being able to implement this remotely would be helpful as well. Unfortunately it starts with following the group first.
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Daniel commented
Unfortunatelly it seems not to be done. The topic ist not about "follow in Inbox" but about "follow the Sharepoint". Without follwing the sharepoint users will eg. not see the folder in the OneDrive App...
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Jeff Fisher commented
This makes it extremely complicated to migrate from a DL to an O365 group, especially since following a group works differently on Outlook for Mac vs Windows. It results in a huge amount of confusion when upgrading a group, and people not understanding why they don't get messages from the list anymore because they didn't see the instructions to follow the group or didn't understand their significance.
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Anonymous commented
There should at least be the option via Powershell Module or O365 Admin Centre to switch this on or off. Global, per site, per user, anything really would be better than having to tell the user to go find the site and follow it themselves.
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Andrew Ching commented
Really cannot understand why this feature was left out from the beginning. Office 365 Groups members got "Following" by default in Outlook for communication but not default to following for related SharePoint Site. Microsoft idea was to "cross-sale" Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, wasn't it?
This is especially urgent when IT cannot help users to add such following arrangement in PowerShell environment like administrating other Office 365 or Exchange Online features.
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DS commented
We will not use office 365 in our organization without this feature.
You cannot tell users to follow all groups by themselves. -
Dan commented
Please. Obviously an annoyance for existing users, but also trying to get new customers up and running with groups is over-complicated, especially if we're just migrating them from other services. We want to logically separate them into groups, but having to go into each one and follow makes O365 seem needlessly complex from the start.
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Dave commented
The main issue we are finding here is the default follow value on Groups added through SharePoint Self Service Site Creation set to not-following while when added from other services it is automatically set to follow. Should this not be standardised.
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Anonymous commented
why has this not been implemented? This is crazy! in addition, Microsoft support tech just upgraded my all users distro list to office 365 group and now nobody is following it. FFS!
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Linda Locatelli commented
So now every time I create a DL I am asked 'If your users address email to multiple people, why not create a group in Outlook instead of a DL?'. Microsoft, this is why..
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Sascha Dainat commented
As a user I appreciate to be able to "silence" the groups which I am checking once in a while. However we have some group for which the default setting should be that the members are receiving the emails in their inbox.
=> It would be nice if - at the point of creation and in the group settings - the owner of the group can make a selection whether the group audience should follow in inbox by default or not. In addition the possibility to overrule the default setting and silence or follow should remain up to the individual user. -
David Strömberg commented
We have not started using Outlook online for all users. This means that they can not even find the group to follow unless they are sent a link to that group. Why is it not even possible to search groups?
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Mike Wells commented
100% agree - it's ridiculous that users are not automatically included! Cause major disruptions after migrating a Dist List to a group...
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Sean Rose commented
It appears this feature was added in August 2017: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Outlook-Blog/Introducing-Follow-in-inbox-and-other-improvements-for-managing/ba-p/102611
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Anonymous commented
Completely agree that this should be a default setting which, with experience, can be reversed by the user. It is highly discouraging for a new user, and can put someone less technologically apt off of using this product. Having to preemptively send out detailed instructions to new users is definitely a draw back, making first time use even more confusing than need be.
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Anonymous commented
It is surprising there are so few votes for this. It seems like it should be the default behavior.
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Timo Luukkonen commented
This needs to be done absolutely, like others have said.
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Kevin Robin commented
Agreed.
It's been more than a year since this topic was raised. Has a fix been implemented? -
Harrison Smith commented
This is a massive pain point in our use of Office 365. Currently we have to either walk the user through following the group themselves, or log in as them and do it ourselves for every single user. This wastes a massive amount of time, and is an extremely unintuitive process.
A new user would have no clue that they would have to go to Outlook, click 'More', click 'Site' and then 'follow'. It's unintuitive because to a new user (and even to an experienced one), there is no indication that any of these steps would result in the group being displayed in their OneDrive.
The easiest solution to this is to just automatically follow all new users. One assumes (using common sense) that once a user is part of a group, they would have access to the group in all apps. Making the user jump through additional hoops to have the group show up in OneDrive completely goes against this common sense.
I think there needs to be an option to set new users to automatically follow, or a way to control which groups a user is following through Powershell.