ShareGate product update: February 2021

Wondering what’s changed in your ShareGate apps in the last month? Look no further than your February 2021 update.

Welcome to ChangeLog our monthly series where members of the ShareGate Product Marketing team recap recent updates and changes to ShareGate, ShareGate, and ShareGate Overcast to help you make the most out of your ShareGate software.

In this edition, you’ll find details on some brand-new features and product updates to make your experience using ShareGate even better. You can also get caught up on our recent announcement on ShareGate Overcast — along with some other notable improvements and bug fixes. And finally, get a taste for what’s coming up next on the product roadmap.

What’s new

Recently, we introduced a new feature in ShareGate that allows you to customize when teams and Microsoft 365 groups are deemed as inactive based on their business purpose. And once they’re inactive, you can now delete them, an option that you can also give team owners.

Clean up inactive teams based on their purpose in ShareGate

No group is created equal, so why should the rules applied to all groups be the same? That’s why this month, we’ve introduced the ability for you to decide when a Microsoft 365 group or team should be marked as inactive. Should a group wait, 5, 30 or 180 days after no activity has been detected before being flagged as inactive?

Now that depends on why the group was created—its purpose. The owner of a group created for an External project, with an end-date, can have their group marked as inactive not long after they’ve stopped using it. That way, you avoid having too much inactive time and too many project-based groups piling up in your environment, creating clutter.

On the other hand, groups that you know are used for a long time like Departmental or Office location-based ones , would benefit from a longer wait time before being deemed as inactive. Due to the purpose of these groups, there is no need to poke the owner as frequently, something we’re sure they would appreciate!

So, once you’ve set your group purposes, you can then customize the inactive threshold associated with each purpose (i.e., the number of days of no activity before a group is identified as inactive). That way, you can clean out short-lived groups more regularly to keep your environment clutter free!

Read our documentation on how to set it up properly.

Manage your teams all the way through to … deletion!

In addition to being able to keep and archive teams and Microsoft 365 groups that are no longer active, we’ve recently introduced the ability for you to delete them in ShareGate, something we know many of you have been eagerly waiting for.

Once a group has reached the inactivity threshold that you’ve set, let’s say 90 days, you’ll be given the options to archive, keep, or delete it. For groups that you know will no longer be needed, such as ‘Christmas Party 2019’, you can delete them directly in the app while still being able to archive those that might be needed again in the future. This not only keeps your Teams environment clean and up to date, but it also makes it easier for you and your users to find the teams you’re actually using.

Simply go to the Groups page, filter your teams that are inactive, and easily select those you want to delete—an action that you can also do in bulk.

You can also do that with archived teams, by going in the Archive section. However, note that they can only be deleted one by one, bulk delete is not possible for archived teams.

What about team owners? Since they’re in the best position to know what to do once their team is inactive, why not collaborate with them?

You can make them accountable for their group and empower them to make decisions that contribute to the overall safety of the organization. All you have to do is turn on Auto-entrust in the Settings page to entrust owners of newly created groups, and manually entrust owners of groups already created via the group’s detail page. Once that’s done, owners of new and current groups will automatically be notified by email to act once their team is no longer active—whether it’s to keep, archive, or delete it.

To make sure you properly entrust owners with their groups, have a quick look at our documentation.

We’re moving on from ShareGate Overcast

We have important news: On June 1, 2021, we will be discontinuing ShareGate Overcast. If you have been using the app, you can continue using ShareGate Overcast until that date, and then your subscription will end.

We’re profoundly grateful to our customers, fans, and partners who supported us in our Azure adventure. Read our announcement to learn more.

Other changes and improvements

Here are some other notable improvements and bug fixes for February and March. Check out the release notes in our ShareGate support documentation for the full list:

• ShareGate:
  • [Release 14.1]: You will see that the Documents with migration limitations report has been removed as the issue that was causing limitations during migration has now been fixed.
  • [Patch 14.0.4]: You will notice that diagnostic mode will no longer crash when you migrate files larger than 3Gb, and that legacy Microsoft 365 groups in the Permission matrix report will no longer have members and owners from another group loaded in the results. Read the release notes for the full list of improvements.
  • [Patch 14.1.1]: We fixed a bug that would return a webpage temporarily down error when you tried to access your messages in the Message History tab of Teams, and we solved a domain (DNS) issue that could prevent your migrations from starting in certain environments. See the release notes.
• ShareGate: To give you more flexibility, we’ve now added the ability to add a specific user to both Email Sender and Do Not Disturb List with their email address, instead of just the contact’s name. Read the release notes.

Coming soon

We’re always hard at work on new features and improvements based on our users’ needs and requests. Here’s what’s coming up next on the product roadmap:

Customize the frequency of external sharing reviews based on group sensitivity in ShareGate

Now that we’ve added the ability to customize when your group is flagged as inactive, what’s next? We’re in the process of extending the ability for you to customize the frequency at which links of external shared files are reviewed, based on a group’s level of sensitivity. This means you’ll be able to set more frequent reviews of information shared in higher-risk groups, lowering the risk of exposing data for a long period of time to those who should no longer have access.

Contact team owners to act on inactive teams via ShareGate’s Teams chatbot

Keeping your tenant safe and secure requires collaborating closely with team owners as they hold the answers to questions about the status, purpose, and sensitivity of their team. It’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure that information is accurate and that nothing falls into the wrong hands. That’s why our Product team is working on giving you the option to automatically contact team owners directly in Microsoft Teams via our ShareGate chatbot, rather than by email, when it’s time for them to decide what to do with their inactive team. By integrating this seamlessly with users’ day-to-day workflow, it’ll empower them to help keep your tenant up-to-date and secure.

Teams private channel migration in ShareGate

What’s one thing we know you’ve been asking for? Teams private channel migrations. Simply put, it’s the ability to move private channels from one team to another. Our Product team is working hard on this, and you can expect to see this capability in the upcoming weeks.

Are you an IT Manager or IT Project Manager who knows a thing or two about rolling out Microsoft Teams?

ShareGate’s research team would love to speak with you! We’re working on a report where we’re exploring IT Managers and IT Project Managers’ roles and responsibilities when deploying Microsoft Teams—and we need your help. If you’re interested in participating, please let the team know at feedback@sharegate.com

Research and product feedback

We’re always on the lookout for participants to give us their honest opinions on what we do at ShareGate, in the form of usability tests, surveys, etc. Help us help you better secure and simplify your Microsoft 365 journey. To take part in future research projects, simply sign up for our participant pool here and our research team will be in touch!

And if you have an idea on how we could improve our products, we’d love for you to share it with us in our feedback forums. Our Product team is listening!