Prefixes and Suffixes
Prefixes, Suffixes and Banned Words¶
Prefixes, suffixes and banned words are used to ensure Groups and Sites created through Teamwork follow a consistent policy of always having a consistent prefix or suffix attached to the name of the group or site. Additionally, a list of banned words can be provided to exclude specific words from being used in a group or site name.
There are in total three different ways to define the use of prefixes, suffixes and banned words in Teamwork:
- Follow the global Office 365 Group naming policy (requires AAD Premium license)
- Manually define a policy for all groups and sites in Teamwork
- Manually define template-specific policies for each template in Teamwork
If a global Office 365 Group naming policy is found, it is always applied. Office 365 forces the policy for group creation and it can't be bypassed. If no global Office 365 Group naming policy is configured, template-specific policy is applied. If none of the previous naming policy types are configured, then the manually defined policy is applied, if configured.
Global Office 365 Group Naming Policy¶
Global naming policy can be configured in Azure Portal > Groups > Naming policy. For naming policy, you can configure two different things: blocked words on the 'Blocked words' tab and Group naming policy to configure/force the naming for the created groups. Naming policy contains settings for prefix and suffix, which will be applied to all groups created in the Tenant also via Teamwork.
We recommend not to use global naming policy only for Teamwork because policies for Teamwork created groups can be configured in a more targeted manner with template-specific naming policies or manually configured Teamwork specific naming policy and Global Office 365 naming policy has some restrictions from Teamwork's perspective.
Office 365 Group naming policy restrictions from Teamwork's perspective¶
If you are planning on having user specific naming policy rules (Attributes) applied to the Office 365 Group naming policy in combination with static rules (String), then all static prefix rules should be at the beginning of the policy and all static suffix rules should be at the end of the policy set up. User specific rules should be after the static prefix and before the static suffix.
Correctly setup Office 365 Group naming policy from Teamwork's perspective¶
Incorrectly setup Office 365 Group naming policy from Teamwork's perspective: user specific attributes at the beginning and at the end.¶
Manual naming policy for all groups and sites¶
If you want to define your own naming policy that is only applied in Teamwork, you need to specify the naming policies in your Teamwork Azure Functions Configuration. Apply TeamworkGroupNamePrefix, TeamworkGroupNameSuffix and TeamworkGroupNameBanWords to set your respective settings. If you want to have a trailing space in your prefix, add [space] to the end of your setting.
Template level naming policy¶
Teamwork allows admins to define naming policy to each individual template. Naming policy contains prefix, suffix and banned words for the template. To change or view template's naming policy settings navigate to Teamwork Admin site (e.g. https://{tenant}.sharepoint.com/sites/teamworkadmin) and open Templates tab.
Next choose the wanted template and select Edit template behind three dots.
From Policies section admins can find Naming Policies and define the wanted naming policy for display names and site addresses. Site addresses can either use the same naming policy than display names or have different naming policy.
Info
Previously, user must add [space] placeholder to add space for display name prefix or suffix. Starting from version 2.0 space can be added at the beginning of the suffix and at the end of the prefix just clicking space from keyboard when defining naming policies from Teamwork Admin site.
Warning
If user creates an order with template that does not have any naming policy defined, but naming policy is applied to the template before the order is approved, will teamwork creator apply that naming policy to the order.
In this case user can see different name for the group in the order form than what the actual group name will be after the naming policy is applied and group is provisioned (e.g user ordered group Marketing, no naming policy -> naming policy is added before approval, suffix: - Team -> order is approved -> teamwork creator checks the naming policy and group is created with name Marketing - Team).
User properties placeholders in template level naming policies¶
Starting with Teamwork release 2.0 it will be possible to use user properties placeholders in naming policies, e.g. prefix like "[Department]" - in this case group name will have prefix resolved from current user properties department field.
Possible user properties for template level naming policies are following:
- [Department]
- [Company]
- [Office]
- [StateOrProvince]
- [CountryOrRegion]
- [Title]
Example how naming policy looks on workspace order form¶
