Ask owners about inactivity – ShareGate

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.

How-to ask owners

Select Manage from the sidebar.
Use the radio buttons to filter between your Teams or all Groups.
Select the tile Inactive teams or Inactive groups.
Check the box beside the team or group names.
Click in the bulk action menu.
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.
In the pop-up, click Ask owner(s).

The owner(s) will be notified via email or our chatbot to keep, delete, or archive their inactive teams or groups.

Note: If you choose to set up your Azure storage later, owners will be asked to Keep or Delete their teams or groups. The Archive option is only available when storage is set.

Notifications

Tip: 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.

Test your collaboration flow

Test your collaboration flow with team and group owners before you automate with ShareGate. For more information, see Test features before you turn on automation.

Once your process is set, select Settings > Policies from the sidebar, then set up and automate your Inactivity detection policy.

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