Learn about Microsoft 365 Groups
Microsoft 365 Groups is a service that works with the Microsoft 365 tools you use already so you can collaborate with your teammates when writing documents, creating spreadsheets, working on project plans, scheduling meetings, or sending email.
Groups in Microsoft 365 let you choose a set of people that you wish to collaborate with and easily set up a collection of resources for those people to share. Resources such as a shared Outlook inbox, shared calendar or a document library for collaborating on files.
You don’t have to worry about manually assigning permissions to all those resources because adding members to the group automatically gives them the permissions they need to the tools your group provides. Additionally, groups are the new and improved experience for what we used to use distribution lists or shared mailboxes to do.
The specific resources that are provided depends slightly on the groups experience your team wants to have. While you’re considering the options it’s important to remember that one size rarely fits all. Different teams may prefer to work different ways and Microsoft 365 has the tools to enable collaboration in whatever form your teams prefer.
You can create Microsoft 365 Groups from a variety of tools including Outlook, Outlook on the web, Outlook Mobile, SharePoint, Planner, Teams and more. Which tool you choose to start from depends a bit on what kind of group you're working with. For example; at Microsoft we tend to start from Outlook when we're creating a Group organized around email and calendar. If the Group is for company wide communication we tend to start with Yammer. For chat-based collaboration we'd start our Group from Microsoft Teams.
Owners, Members and Guests
Group owners are the moderators of the group. They can add or remove members and have unique permissions like the ability to delete conversations from the shared inbox or change different settings about the group. Group owners can rename the group, update the description or picture and more. If you're familiar with SharePoint roles then a group owner is a site collection admin.
Group members are the regular users in your organization who use the group to collaborate. They can access everything in the group, but can't change group settings. In the SharePoint world they are site members. For information about adding or removing group members see Add and remove group members in Outlook.
Guests are like group members, but they are outside your organization. By default your users can invite guests to join your group, and you can control that setting. For more information, see Guest access in Microsoft 365 groups.
There are three primary models of provisioning in Microsoft 365 Groups: Open, IT-led or Controlled. Each has its own advantages.
| Model | Advantages |
|---|---|
| Open (default) | Users can create their own groups as needed without needing to wait for, or bother, IT |
| IT-led | Users request a group from IT. IT can guide them in selecting the best collaboration tools for their needs |
| Controlled | Group creation restricted to specific people, teams or services (See: Control who can create Microsoft 365 Groups) |
If you want to control how your Microsoft 365 Groups are named you can use naming policy to force Group names to adhere to certain standards including prefixed or suffixes as well as blocking objectionable names. See Microsoft 365 Groups Naming Policy for more information.
Every group has at least one owner that can add or remove members and do some basic curation of the group and its content. Usually the owner does that in Outlook. See: Add and remove group members in Outlook. If a group's owner (or owners) leaves the organization for any reason the administrator can assign a new owner to the group. See Assign a new owner to an orphaned group.
Additionally, if you have Exchange Online Administrator permissions you can administer your groups from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center (See Manage Group membership in the Microsoft 365 admin center) or from PowerShell (See Manage Microsoft 365 Groups with PowerShell .
There may come a time when you want to delete a group from your tenant. For information on how to delete a group see: Delete a group. If a group is accidentally deleted admins can restore that group for up to 30 days, see: Restore a deleted Microsoft 365 Group.
If you prefer a more automated way to manage the lifecycle of your Microsoft 365 Groups you can use expiration policies to expire groups at a specific time interval. The group's owners will get an email 30, 15 and 1 day before the group expiration that allows them to easily renew the group if it's still needed. See: Microsoft 365 Group Expiration Policy.