Enable or disable Microsoft 365 communication to users
In this post I describe how you can enable, configure or disable direct end user communication by Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 provides a bit hidden service supporting user adoption and training. It’s called “Microsoft communication to users” and can be found in the Microsoft 365 admin center. By default it’s on but not sending out mails because it is not defined by default what kind of training mails should be send out to users.
In the following screenshots I’ll show you where you can enable, configure or disable the service.
First you’ll need to go to https://admin.microsoft.com and open the settings area in the left-hand navigation pane, as depicted below.
There you can navigate to
- Org settings
- Services
- Microsoft communication to users
At this page you can decide how to proceed, to leave it enabled and configure it (7) or disable it by ticking off the box (6).
In case you want to enable it you can configure what’s relevant for your users.
You can choose several training topics:
- Microsoft Office 365
- Microsoft Office apps
- New Office 365 training
- Outlook anywhere
- OneDrive
- Microsoft Teams
After you’ve selected what topics are of interest you’ll get asked if you want to get a preview mail for approval before mails will be send to users. To approve end user mails each time with this approval mail process you need to tick the checkbox below the audience type.
Further, you can select who should receive the communication. At this stage you can select certain users or a group.
What if there are certain users which might not want to receive this communication?
Users can unsubscribe if they don’t want to receive the contents.
Conclusion, opinion and summary
The idea behind this is good. However, often companies create and provide their own customized content or user trainings which allows users to easily find what’s provided for them. At least that’s my experience. More and more companies establish a change management practice and have internal/external staff which take care of user training and adoption. Some organizations, they have already internal platforms for training purposes, not only for Microsoft 365. That’s why they tend to provide contents on an existing learning platforms and way instead of pushing out standardized mails directly from the vendor. The latter could also conflict with org wide settings, let’s say, something is not turned on in an org’s tenant and users get training content regarding this, it might cause irritations. Therefore, it’s relevant that you elaborate if you can use “Microsoft communication for users” or if it might collide with your existing learning concepts. In case there is no learning/adoption/training concept, you could consider “Microsoft communication for users” as an option to educate your users regarding Microsoft 365 related topics.
