In some cases, you may want to separate who different groups of users can search and communicate with in Teams, e.g.:
- You have separate business entities that never communicate.
- You have policies or legal requirements that call for the separation of departments.
- School or university that wants to separate students and faculty.
How to Separate Groups of Users in Teams
There are two options to separate who can see who in Teams:
To use Address book policies in Exchange Online, you must enable “Scoped directory search controls how users can find and communicate with other people in their organization.”
Open up Teams Admin Center, select Teams, Teams settings, and go to the Search by name section:
But before enabling scoped directory search using Exchange address book policies, you need to have the following prereqs in place.
- Firstly, you must turn on address book policy routing in Exchange Online.
- Secondly, you must create an address book policy.
- Finally, you must assign address book policies to users.
Information Barriers in Microsoft Teams
Information barriers (IB) in Teams is a different approach to user segregation in Teams.
Microsoft recommends using information barriers, but there are specific license requirements for your users:
Generally, all users need an E5 license or an E3 license with certain add-ons. See the full details here.
Consolidate AD and Office 365 Administration
You’re not alone if your helpdesk struggles to manage hybrid Office 365 efficiently.
A lot of companies find it hard to staff up with competent first-level supporters that fully understand the complexities of synchronized identities.
The confusion of attribute authority forces hybrid Office 365 admins to log in to multiple consoles, including AD Users & Computers, Exchange Online Admin Center, Microsoft 365 Admin Center, and Exchange on-premises Admin Center – not to mention PowerShell.
With Easy365Manager, first-level supporters can perform all daily operations directly from AD user properties.
Even complex tasks like managing calendar delegation, which otherwise requires semi-complex PowerShell scripting:
With Easy365Manager, your first-level supporters work from one unified and intuitive interface.
The familiarity of AD Users & Computers ensures that any level supporters can manage Office 365 mailboxes with close to no training.
Easy365Manager is a simple snap-in to AD Users & Computers. It runs on any system with AD Users & Computers and it does not require any infrastructure changes.
You can download, install, and configure Easy365Manager in less than three minutes.