Microsoft 365 Apps Cloud Policy - Can a User Scoped Policy (Not Configured) Override a Tenant Policy?

Ragaven007 0 Reputation points
2026-07-24T11:12:57.9633333+00:00

Hello,

I am looking for guidance regarding Microsoft 365 Apps Cloud Policy Service behavior and policy precedence.

Current Configuration

In Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center → Policy Management (config.office.com), we have the following policies:

image (55) polic

Policy 1

Name: Shorten Meeting Global

Scope: Tenant

Priority: 0

Configured settings:

Shorten appointments and meetings = Enabled

Reduce the end time of short appointments and meetings = 5 minutes

Reduce the end time of long appointments and meetings = 10 minutes

Policy 2

Name: Test

Scope: User (Security Group)

Priority: 1

Assigned only to a dedicated test group

Relevant settings configured as Not Configured

Observed Client Behavior

On corporate-managed devices, affected users receive:

HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Cloud\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar

image (54)

shortenevents = End_Early

endearlyshort = 5

endearlylong = 10

and the Outlook option:

File → Options → Calendar → Shorten appointments and meetings

is greyed out.

User's image

Additional Validation

Using the same Microsoft 365 account on an external non-corporate device:

The registry path above is not present.

The Outlook option is editable.

Testing Performed

We created a User-scoped policy targeting a test security group.

However, for the setting "Shorten appointments and meetings", only the following options are available:

Not Configured

Enabled

There is no Disabled option.

The User policy was configured as:

Not Configured

User's image

but the Tenant policy continued to apply and the Outlook option remained locked.

Questions

Does Not Configured in a User-scoped Cloud Policy allow evaluation to continue to the lower-priority Tenant policy?

If we change policy precedence and set:

Test Policy = Priority 0

Tenant Policy = Priority 1 would the User policy potentially suppress the Tenant setting?

Is there a supported way in Microsoft 365 Apps Cloud Policy Service to provide exceptions for specific users while keeping the Tenant policy as the organizational default?

Has anyone successfully implemented an exclusion/override scenario for the "Shorten appointments and meetings" setting?

Is there a supported way to exempt specific users from a tenant-scoped Microsoft 365 Apps Cloud Policy when the setting only supports "Enabled" and "Not Configured" and does not provide a "Disabled" option?

Any guidance, documentation references, or real-world experience would be greatly appreciated.

Microsoft Security | Intune | Configuration
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  1. AI answer

    2026-07-24T11:13:41.24+00:00

    Based on the documented Cloud Policy behavior, Not configured in a higher-priority policy does not provide a supported exemption from a lower-priority policy that configures the setting.

    Key points:

    1. Cloud Policy uses priority when conflicting policy settings exist The documented rule is that if a user is a member of multiple Microsoft Entra groups with conflicting policy settings, the highest priority setting is applied, where 0 is the highest priority.
    2. The documentation only describes precedence for conflicting configured settings It does not state that a higher-priority policy with Not configured suppresses a lower-priority configured value.
    3. Tenant scope is a valid Cloud Policy scope The Cloud Policy audit schema defines these scopes:
      • Tenant = applies to all users in the tenant
      • User = applies to users in configured Microsoft Entra groups
    4. What the observed behavior indicates In the described test, the tenant policy is configured and the user-scoped policy is Not configured for that setting. The tenant value continues to apply and Outlook remains locked. That behavior is consistent with the available documentation because there is no documented exclusion model where Not configured in a user policy cancels a configured tenant policy.
    5. Changing priority is unlikely to create an exception Setting the user-scoped policy to Priority 0 and the tenant policy to Priority 1 would only help if the user-scoped policy had a conflicting configured value. Since this setting exposes only Enabled and Not configured, there is no documented opposite value to override the tenant configuration.
    6. Supported exception mechanism for this setting is not documented No provided documentation describes a supported way to exempt specific users from a tenant-scoped Microsoft 365 Apps Cloud Policy for a setting that only offers Enabled and Not configured.
    7. Why the setting is locked on some devices Cloud Policy settings are written under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Cloud\Office\16.0 and take precedence over Group Policy, preference settings, and locally applied policy settings. That explains the greyed-out Outlook UI when the policy is applied.

    For the specific questions:

    • Does Not Configured in a User-scoped Cloud Policy allow evaluation to continue to the lower-priority Tenant policy?
      The documented behavior and the observed result indicate yes for this scenario: the lower-priority tenant policy still applies when the higher-priority user policy is Not configured.
    • If the User policy is Priority 0 and Tenant is Priority 1, would the User policy suppress the Tenant setting?
      Not based on documented behavior. With only Enabled and Not configured available, there is no documented conflicting value that would override the tenant setting.
    • Is there a supported way to provide exceptions for specific users while keeping the Tenant policy as default?
      No supported exception method is described in the provided documentation for this setting.
    • Has anyone successfully implemented an exclusion/override scenario for this setting?
      No such supported implementation is described in the provided documentation.
    • Is there a supported way to exempt specific users when the setting only supports Enabled and Not Configured?
      No documented supported way is provided.
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