Please note, some of the NHSmail portal screens have changed slightly since the NHSmail Licence Migration. However, the fundamental way in which LAs manage their user policies has not changed.
Create a new User Policy
1. Log in to the NHSmail Portal using your nhs.net credentials (the Admin toolbar will only show for LAs)
2. Navigate to Admin > User Policy Management
3. In the User Policy List page, click on Add > Create User Policy
4. Select the organisation you want to create the policy for, name the new policy and add a description to it if required
Note: Only the organisations you are a LA for will appear in the drop-down menu
5. Select a base licence from the drop-down menu and an add on licence if required.
Note: The base licence will correspond to what is provisioned to your organisation. For NHSmail Standard Service organisations, this will be the M365 F3 licence and for NHSmail Enhanced Service organisations, this will be the M365 E3 licence. If your organisation has also procured other licences and onboarded them to the NHSmail central tenant – e.g. E3 or E5, these will also appear in the drop-down menu. Examples of add on licence types include functionality like Dial-In Conferencing, Visio or Project. Again, these will only appear if directly procured by an organisation and onboarded.
For NHSmail Standard Service users, the default base licence will show in the Portal as: Organisation – National – Microsoft 365 F3 – Date
For NHSmail Enhanced Service users, the default base licence will show in the Portal as: Organisation – National – Microsoft 365 E3 – Date
6. You can then toggle on or off any applications as required for the new policy you are creating. Please refer to the NHSmail Feature Overview article for more information on what each of the M365 applications does.
Applications included under the base licence should appear and can be controlled by LAs. This excludes any applications controlled at a tenant-level.
Add-on licences must be applied to the policy via the drop-down menu – these will not appear as toggles. Multiple add-on licences can be applied to the same policy via the drop down menu licence.
Apps for Enterprise: When applied as an add-on, all the different M365 applications included within this licence type will be enabled by default. These are included below and are not currently configurable through toggles:
- Forms (Plan 1)
- Office Web
- Office Desktop
- Sway
- OneDrive for Business (Plan 1)
- Whiteboard
Forms and Sway host data outside of the UK and as mentioned above will be applied automatically through the Apps for Enterprise add-on. It is the local organisation’s responsibility to determine if it is appropriate to use these apps, subject to local risk appetite and Data Protection policies on offshoring.
Visit this guide to find out about managing mailbox size quotas.
For custom policies in which a locally procured licence has been applied as the base licence, the Larger Mailbox Size Enabled toggle must be enabled to beneft from the capacity provided by the licence. If not applied, the mailbox size for the user will be determined based on their organisation’s profile. Please note this toggle does not exist for national policies. For further guidance on mailbox size, please see the Managing Mailbox Quota guidance.
Enabling users with MFA using Policy Management is no longer supported. To bulk enable and disable MFA for users, click here. For further information on enabling and managing MFA on the platform, please see the following MFA Conditional Access – NHSmail Support guidance.
7. You can add members to the policy by selecting the Add button and searching for the user(s)
Note: Alternatively, the Import button can be utilised to add users in bulk if required. For full instructions on the import process, please see the User Policy Management: Adding Members guidance.
8. Once selected, click Update and a green success pop up will appear at the top right corner of the screen to confirm the user has been added.
Handy Tips:
- All user policy names are automatically prefixed with the ODS code of the organisation that the user policy belongs to and the licence assigned (i.e. ‘ODS.Licence.PolicyName’).
- Duplicate names: A single organisation cannot have 2 user policies with the same name. However, 2 or more different organisations can use the same name for their policies.
- The name must not be more than 64 characters and may contain letters, numbers and spaces. Special characters are not allowed.
- The description must not be more than 250 characters and may contain letters, numbers and any special characters.
- LAs can add a maximum of 500 mailboxes at a time to a policy through the add or bulk update import process. If the policy is larger than 500, the add or bulk import process can be repeated.
- The Teams Call Recording toggle will be enabled by default on all newly created User Policies. It can be turned off in the Applications Settings box.
- If an LA disables all the User Policy application toggles, but applies the Apps for Enterprise add-on – the users within the policy will still have access to all the applications provided through Apps for Enterprise, including OneDrive.
- Microsoft provide a grace period for SharePoint/OneDrive access. If LA’s disable the toggle for these applications in a user policy, there will be a period where users can continue to access the applications. LA’s can delete a user’s OneDrive content where appropriate and SharePoint Site Owners can actively remove access from Site Collections if needed.
Creating a new user policy and adding users into it will automatically remove them from the user policy they were previously a member of for that organisation – and as a result, they will lose the M365 configuration associated with their previous policy and be given access to whatever applications are enabled in the newly created custom policy.
Local Administrators will not be able to delete a user policy once it has been created. Instead, they should look to re-purpose the policy. If this is not an option, LAs can request for the policy to be deleted via the Helpdesk.
| Last Reviewed Date | 29/01/2024 |
