How to Create an Office 365 Group using PowerShell?

Requirement: Create New Office 365 Group using PowerShell.

How to Create an Office 365 Group in the Admin Center?

Microsoft 365 Group is a collaboration feature that enables teams to work together by establishing a single identity and a single set of permissions across Microsoft 365 apps, including group inbox, Shared Document Library from SharePoint, Yammer, OneNote, Planner, Power BI, etc. By default, anyone in your organization can create a new Microsoft 365 group from Outlook Desktop or Online. You can create Office 365 groups through Microsoft 365 admin center as an Administrator:

1. Log in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center site as global admin: https://admin.microsoft.com
2. Expand “Teams & Groups” and Click on “Active Teams & Groups” in the left navigation.
3. Click on “Add a Group” under the “Office 365” tab. 

   

4. Select the group type as “Microsoft 365” in the wizard and click on Next. You can also create other group types like security group, email distribution list, etc. from this wizard.
5. Enter the group name and description and click on “Next”.

   

6. Click on “Add Owners” >> Search and select the group owners to manage the group. Click on “Next”.

   

7. Similarly, select group members and then click on the Next button.
8. Enter a unique email address for the group. Specify the privacy option for the Office 365 Group. Set if the group should have a Microsoft Teams and click on “Next”.

   

9. Review all your settings and click on the “Create Group” button to start creating the Office 365 group.

Once we’ve created a group, all related resources such as Shared mailbox, Calendar, SharePoint Site, etc., get provisioned automatically. Also, when you create artifacts like the SharePoint Team site, create a new Team in the Microsoft Teams admin center, Yammer, Power BI, etc. the group creation happens automatically behind the scenes. You can also add a group from the Exchange Admin center.

Let’s see how to create an Office 365 group via PowerShell.

How to Create Office 365 Group using PowerShell?

Compared with the web browser interface, creating an Office 365 group through PowerShell allows you to have more control over the Group properties with additional settings. To create an Office 365 Group, first, you need to establish a remote session to Exchange Online and then use the New-UnifiedGroup cmdlet to create an Office 365 Group with PowerShell.

Open Windows PowerShell and run the following script:

#Get Credentials to connect
$Credential = Get-Credential
 
#Connect to Exchange Online
Connect-ExchangeOnline -Credential $Credential -ShowBanner:$False

#Create New Office 365 Group
New-UnifiedGroup -DisplayName "Consumers Group" -Alias "0365Group-consumers" `
        -EmailAddresses "[email protected]" -AccessType Private

#Disconnect Exchange Online
Disconnect-ExchangeOnline -Confirm:$False

This creates a new private group called “Consumers Group” with an email address of “[email protected]”.

The parameters used in this cmdlet are self-explanatory. They define the properties of the group:

• DisplayName: The Display name of the group, is the minimum parameter to create a group.
• Alias: Exchange alias for the group. If you don’t supply the value for this parameter, it will be generated.
• EmailAddresses: The e-mail address of the Group.
• AccessType: Public or Private.  

Numerous other parameters allow you to customize things even further, which are not available in UI!

Add a Microsoft 365 Group using PnP PowerShell

Use the New-PnPMicrosoft365Group cmdlet to add a new Office 365 group:

#Config Variables
$AdminSiteURL = "https://crescent-admin.sharepoint.com"

Try {
#Connect to PnP Online
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $AdminSiteURL -Interactive

#Create a new Office 365 group
New-PnPMicrosoft365Group -DisplayName "HR Admins" -Description "For HR Administrators" -MailNickname "HRAdmin" `
    -Owners "[email protected]" -Members @("[email protected]","[email protected]") -IsPrivate

}
Catch {
    write-host -f Red "Error:" $_.Exception.Message
}

Set the parameters like the Admin site URL, Group Name, Owner of the group and members, etc according to your requirements. To make the group privacy to private, use “-IsPrivate” switch.

Create New Office 365 Group using Azure AD PowerShell Module

You can create a new group in Office 365 using the Azure Active Directory module as well. Here is an example:

#Connect to Azure AD
Connect-AzureAD

#Create new Office 365 group
New-AzureADMSGroup -DisplayName "Accounts Group" -MailNickname "Accounts" -GroupTypes "Unified" -Description "Office 365 Group for Accounts Departmnet" -MailEnabled $True -SecurityEnabled $True

When the “Connect-AzureAD” cmdlet prompts for credentials, Enter your Office 365 Admin account!