How to Limit Community Creation in Viva Engage Without Being “The Fun Police”

Viva Engage— the place where community vibes can sometimes turn into a chaotic jungle of rogue groups ! If you’re an admin looking to rein in the creation frenzy while still letting users enjoy some autonomy, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive into how you can control the madness and advocate for Microsoft to make this whole process smoother.

Here’s the catch : Viva Engage communities are powered by Microsoft 365 Groups. To limit community creation, you need to control who can create Groups across your organization. Which can lead to unnecessary friction for teams needing groups for things like Teams, SharePoint, or Planner.

It’s like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly.

Put a Leash on Community Creation

To limit community creation, you need to control who can create Groups across your organization.

Here’s Your Game Plan:

• Log In Like the Boss You Are
  Head over to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and grab your admin hat.

• Build Your Dream Team with Azure AD
  Create a security group in Azure Active Directory (AAD) for users who should have the privilege of creating groups (and by extension, communities). Call them something snazzy, like “Community Creators.”

• Deploy the PowerShell Wizardry
  Fire up PowerShell to lock down group creation for everyone except your chosen few. Here’s how: Use Set-MsolCompanySettings cmdlet and it’s parameters GroupCreationEnabled and RestrictGroupCreationToSecurityGroupId to set company-level configuration settings

    $GroupName = "Community Creators"
    $Group = Get-AzureADGroup -Filter "DisplayName eq '$GroupName'"
    $GroupId = $Group.ObjectId
  
    Set-MsolCompanySettings -GroupCreationEnabled $false
    Set-MsolCompanySettings -RestrictGroupCreationToSecurityGroupId $GroupId
  

• Test Your Setup
  Confirm that group creation is now limited to your elite team. Everyone else gets to focus on joining communities rather than creating them.

Why We Need a Community-Specific Fix

Admins shouldn’t have to restrict all groups just to tame Viva Engage communities. Microsoft could provide a solution that separates Engage community creation from general 365 Group creation. Think of it as:

• A toggle switch in the Viva Engage Admin Center to control only community creation.

• Role-based permissions for community creation without impacting other services.

• A streamlined workflow for admins to approve or deny community creation requests.

This would empower organizations to maintain order without stifling productivity across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

Let’s start a revolution !

Microsoft, it’s time to give admins the power to manage communities without hamstringing the entire MS 365 ecosystem!

Admins, unite! You can share feedback with Microsoft through:

• The Microsoft Feedback Portal (feedbackportal.microsoft.com).

• Viva Engage’s Help and Support options.

• Your Microsoft account manager, if you have one.

The more voices advocating for a targeted solution, the sooner we can ditch the all-or-nothing approach. Until then, admins will keep juggling PowerShell and diplomacy to make it work