Ask owners about inactivity

Collaborate with team and group owners to keep your Microsoft environment relevant and clutter-free.

The Ask owner(s) feature lets you manually send a ShareGate Teams chatbot notification or email to multiple team or group owners simultaneously.

You can send a notification asking owners to take action on their inactive teams or groups.

Tip: Set up the Inactivity detection policy so owners can automatically take action when teams or groups become inactive.

Index

• How-to ask owners
• Notifications
  • Frequency
  • No response
  • Do not disturb list
• Collaboration status
• Update your policy
• Use cases
  • Test your collaboration flow

How-to ask owners

1. Select Manage from the sidebar.
2. Choose between your tenant's Teams or All Groups.
3. Select the Inactive teams or Inactive groups tile.
4. Check the box beside the team or group names.
5. Click in the bulk action menu.
6. If you have not yet:
   • Selected your Azure storage - Choose ShareGate storage or set up a custom storage account by following the prompts now. For more information, see Azure storage options for archiving.
   • Selected a communication method for your owners - Choose Microsoft Teams chatbot or email in the pop-up.
   • Activated the ShareGate Teams chatbot - If you choose our Teams chatbot, follow the prompts to activate it now. 
7. In the pop-up, click Ask owner(s).

Note: The pop-up shows a list of the teams or groups included in your Ask owner(s) request. Since notifications can't be sent to owners already asked to take action (i.e., within the 14-day timeframe), you'll also be informed of any teams or groups in your selection who won't be receiving a notification.

The owner(s) will be notified via email or our chatbot to take action on their inactive teams or groups. From the notification, owners have the option to keep, delete, or archive inactive teams and groups; however, if you have not yet set up an Azure storage account, owners will only be given the options Keep and Delete. The Archive option is only available when storage is set.

Note: Only owners of teams or groups that are inactive based on your set Inactivity detection policy can be contacted about inactivity through the Ask owner(s) feature.

Notifications

To see what notifications look like to owners, check out Take action on inactivity. Share the article with team and group owners so they know what to expect.

Frequency

• The notification is sent as soon as possible.
• A notification is sent to all owners of the team or group; however, an owner can only receive 1 inactivity notification per day, even if they are the owner of multiple teams and/or groups.

No response

• An owner has 14 days total to respond to the notification. If an owner does not respond to the first notification, a reminder is sent after 7 days.
• For security, inactivity notifications expire after 7 days. 
• When a notification is sent, a team or group owner cannot be asked again until the 14 days have passed. 
• If an owner does not answer, the team or group remains inactive until you manually take action, until the next inactivity detection cycle, or until you send another request.
• Teams and groups will not be archived or deleted unless that action is explicitly taken.

Do not disturb list

It's possible to add specific users to the Do not disturb list to prevent them from being sent notifications.

Tip: It's best practice to have at least 2 owners for each team and group. That way there's always someone available to receive notifications and take action on your policies.

Collaboration status

Use the collaboration status to monitor your Ask owner(s) progress from the Manage page. The tile shows the number of requests pending, while the team or group list gives updates specific to each request.

For more information, see Collaboration status.

Update your policy

Click the gear located on the tile to go directly to the Settings, where you can update your policies as needed.

Use cases

When you ask owners to take action on inactivity, you're keeping your Microsoft environment clutter-free and secure. Use Ask owner(s) to take action on teams and groups:

• Created before you activated ShareGate.
• Created before you automated the Inactivity detection policy.
• That you think need to be revisited.
• To practice your collaboration flow with owners before automating policies with ShareGate.

Training video: For more info, watch End-Users Communication Settings.