The first instinct when one person needs a different meeting limit is to change that one person’s settings. Six months later, the environment is a hand-built circuit of per-user exceptions, and nobody remembers the reasoning for any of them. Batches prevent this fate — collectively, settings attach to groups, not to individuals.
Three layers, one direction
- Global default. Everything not otherwise specified. Set it to the most conservative common denominator, never to the power user’s wish list.
- Named packages. Curated bundles — a “contact centre” package (recording on, call logging on), a “field team” package (loops, mobile-heavy). One package per real role, not per person.
- Individual override. Rare, documented, and reviewed with a date. Overrides are receipts of a special case; without a reason, they are debt.
Worth knowing
Precedence is decided by rank, not by intention. When two packages disagree, the higher one wins silently — which is why the audit step matters more at the moment a second policy touches the same people.
A rollout pattern that matters
Package first, group second, exceptions last. While a change is in flight, one person may sit inside several policies at once — so decide who wins before deployment, not after the first complaint. Test the ordering on two volunteers whose answers you can compare, then widen the assignment.
One package per role, with two or three exceptions documented and dated, beats fifty unique configurations. A short quarterly review of the exception list keeps the console navigable: every entry either earns its keep or gets absorbed back into a package.
