Does Opt-out of MyAnalytics disable data collection for Workplace Analytics?

Question

Hi,

my employer has introduced MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics.

My understanding is that MyAnalytics collects my usage data and presents it to me privately. Workplace Analytics then presents the same data in aggregate form to my employer.

I opted out from MyAnalytics as described here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/workplace-analytics/myanalytics/use/opt-out-of-mya

My question is this:
Does the opt-out of MyAnalytics disable the overall data collection, so there is also no usage data supplied to Workplace Analytics?
Or does the opt-out of MyAnalytics only disable the display of the usage data to myself, while usage data is still being collected for Workplace Analytics?

If usage data is still collected for Workplace Analytics, is there a way to generally disable this kind of usage data collection?

Thanks for your replies.

Answer 1

Hi JakobKrakel-7976,

I'm part of the team working on Workplace Analytics and MyAnalytics, so I think I can help answer your question. Workplace Analytics and MyAnalytics are currently two separate applications, even though they have similar names and both measure signals from Microsoft Outlook and Teams. MyAnalytics does all its calculations right in your mailbox - the data doesn't "go" anywhere, so privacy is built-in. As you know, you can ask your organization to turn off MyAnalytics for you, and even if it's turned on, individual users can also turn off some or all of its features if they don't find them useful.

By contrast, Workplace Analytics processes data from lots of "mailboxes" (user accounts) so that trends can be understood in aggregate. Workplace Analytics has a number of privacy controls in place to protect the identities of any one mailbox that forms that aggregate data set, but the big one that controls "opting out" is managed by your organization's Office 365 administrator. When they assign Workplace Analytics licenses to a group of mailboxes, Workplace Analytics will processes data from those mailboxes (and no others).

If you would prefer that your data not be part of this larger aggregate data set, I would recommend reaching out to your IT administrator to request that they either not apply the Workplace Analytics license to your mailbox, or that they remove the Workplace Analytics license from your mailbox if it has already been applied. Once they do this, Workplace Analytics will no longer process your data.

I hope this answer helps!

Answer 2

In order to be included in Workplace Analytics, the account has to be enabled for MyAnalytics and have a WorkPlace Analytics license

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/workplace-analytics/use/insight-faqs#q2-who-is-included-as-a-measured-employee

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/workplace-analytics/use/insight-faqs#q7-why-are-some-employees-in-my-team-not-eligible-to-enroll-in-plans

Employees might not be eligible for a plan if:

They do not have MyAnalytics enabled.
Are already enrolled in an existing plan.
The team does not meet the minimum group size limit.

Answer 3

Hi JakobKrakel-7976,
We understand that you have questions about data collection for Workplace-analytics after you Opt out of MyAnalytics. I have tried to reasearch a lot about it, and according to my research, we would stop receiving inline suggestions and weekly digests and our email activity would not be included in other users' email open rates when we opt out the MyAnalytics, but there seems be no official article mentioning if it would affect the data collection for Workpalce analytics.

Due to here we mainly focus on general issues about Outlook desktop client, we may know little about the working principle of workplace-analytics. In order to solve your issues better, it's suggested to get support follow this official article: get Workplace Analytics support, and you would get more help with Workplace Analytics setup, onboarding, features and functionality, and data analysis by this way. Thanks for your understanding.

Hope that would be helpful to you.

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