Smarter Retention in Microsoft 365: A Step Toward Cleaner, More Relevant Data - Coming soon

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Anyone who has worked with SharePoint management knows that data governance is a cornerstone of digital productivity, especially in large organizations where information can accumulate rapidly. Today, retention policies in Microsoft 365 allow administrators to manage data based on creation or modification dates. However, in my experience, this approach is not always sufficient. Files that haven’t been accessed in years may still linger in OneDrive or SharePoint, cluttering storage, slowing down search, and diluting the relevance of AI-powered tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot. A new feature in Microsoft Purview Retention Policies, expected this winter, promises to enhance Data Lifecycle Management. This upcoming setting will enable policies to identify files that have remained untouched for a specified period and automatically flag them for deletion or archival. This enhancement is particularly valuable for organizations leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot. By removing outdated or irreleva...

Microsoft Teams Guest Access for all (Not just MSA)

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A truly collaborative platform

For a collaboration tool to be truly collaborative, it needs to support not only most kind of devices but it should also be able to include users from across the globe. For some time now, Slack and Google hangout have kind of ruled this space, by being able to bring people together based on a simple e-mail address, and not making it a prerequisite to be a subscriber of their services.

Microsoft Teams first version of Guest Access had the limitation of only being able to invite other users from companies who also were users of Office 365.

Their second version expanded this functionality to users with a so called MFA (much like Skype Consumer federation was limited to users with a "Microsoft" account).

But all that is gone now. It was just announced that the support for all kinds of guest access into Teams will be supported, and here is quick glance at how it looks.

Prepare the tenant

Guest access is controlled by the Admin of the tenant, and in order for it to work, the administrator needs to set the propper rights and licencing in the portal. This is quite easy done like this:
  • Click Settings
  • Click Services & Add-ins
  • Select "Microsoft Teams"
  • Select "Settings by user/license type"
  • Select "Guest" in the drop down list
  • Verify the option is set to "On"


Invite the user

Once the settings are implemented (Note: the setting is global), users may invite guest by entering an email address in the "add member" dialog:


This will send an email to your contact, which will contain a link to initiate the participation.




After the initial sign in, the user may choose download the client or participate in the web browser of his or her choice, and participate fully with everyone in the team.

I have been playing around with this for a while, and I see this as a great development of Teams, strengthening it's position in the market.