M365 Changelog: Group Policy Assignment Support to Additional Policy Types in Microsoft Teams admin center

MC557241 – Microsoft is extending group policy assignment support to additional policy types via Teams admin center. Admins can create new groups in Microsoft 365 admin center or can use existing groups to assign custom policies for various policy types in Teams admin center.

This capability will enable your organization to have different custom policies for various policy types assigned to user groups for specific needs and inherited through group memberships. You will not have to rely on global (org-wide default) policies or direct policy assignments via manual user selections.

When this will happen:

• This new update will be available for Caller ID policy, Dial plans, Teams update policy in mid-May 2023 for all Microsoft Teams commercial licenses.
• This new update will be available for all other policies mentioned in subsequent section in early-June 2023 for all Microsoft Teams commercial licenses.

How this will affect your organization:

The group policy assignment feature lets you assign custom policies to groups that were created in the Microsoft 365 Admin center. The Teams admin center supports Microsoft 365 groups, distribution lists, mail-enabled security groups, and security groups for group policy assignment. Apart from core policies such as meeting policies, calling policies, and messaging policies, group policy assignment support is now extended to the below policy types in Microsoft Teams Admin Center:

• Call hold policy
• Customization policy
• Emergency calling policy.
• Emergency call routing policy
• Enhanced encryption policy
• Mobility policy
• Meeting template Policy
• Template policy
• Voicemail policy
• Voice routing policy
• Voice applications policy

Note: For the above policies, Microsoft has also lifted the limitation on the maximum number of groups per policy, which was previously capped at 64.

What you need to do to prepare:

Follow below steps to be prepared:

1. Login to Microsoft Teams admin center and check the new Group policy assignment tab that is available on all the above-mentioned policy page.
2. Review how the policy assignment for users and groups works.
3. Review how policy takes effect for users due to precedence rules.
4. Review how to clean up direct assignments to be able to make way for group policy assignments to take effect (due to precedence rules mentioned in #1).
5. You can then review groups that you have created in Microsoft 365 admin center or create new groups.
6. Based on your organization’s needs, you can assign custom policies for these policy types to user groups via Microsoft Teams admin center.