Microsoft 365 Groups, formerly known as Office 365 Groups, serve as a cross-application membership service. While tenant administrators have several options to create groups, like through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center or Microsoft Teams portal, the process of creating multiple groups and managing memberships can be quite time-consuming for them.
Specmasoft’s Office 365 Manager tool simplifies the process of creating Microsoft 365 Groups in bulk using a CSV file. Additionally, it offers support for adding members during the bulk group creation process.
- Features Supported with Bulk M365 Group Creation
- Steps to Create Microsoft 365 Groups in Bulk from CSV
Features Supported with Bulk M365 Group Creation
Using this tool, you can specify/input the following properties/settings for the new M365 groups to be created from a CSV file.
- Group basic information (e.g., Group name, mailNickname/EmailAlias, Description, Privacy)
- Members: You can add members for each new group individually by providing the user’s UPN value as comma-separated values.
- Owners: You can individually add owners for each new group by entering the owner’s UPN value as a list of comma-separated values.
- SecurityEnabled: Typically, M365 groups created via the Graph API have the SecurityEnabled property set to False by default. This tool offers the ability to set the SecurityEnabled property to True when creating groups in bulk.
- Enable Microsoft Teams: The tool allows you to enable the Microsoft Teams feature in the newly created group.
The tool offers support for updating the following settings for the new groups through a separate action called Update M365 Group Settings in Bulk because these settings cannot be configured during the initial group creation.
- AllowExternalSenders: This option allows external users from other organizations to send emails to the group.
- AutoSubscribeNewMembers: This setting determines whether newly added members will automatically receive email notifications.
- HideFromAddressLists: Enabling this feature hides the group from the Global address book in Outlook and the Browse Groups dialog used for searching groups.
- HideFromOutlookClients: This feature hides the group from Outlook clients such as Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web.
You can find the complete list of supported fields in this sample template CSV file. If you wish to support additional fields for the group creation process, please reach out to our support team for assistance.
Steps to Create Microsoft 365 Groups in Bulk from CSV with this Tool
Follow the below steps to create multiple Office 365 Groups in bulk using Office 365 Manager.
- Launch the Office 365 Manager app‘s user interface console.
- Navigate to the Azure AD page, which is the default page when you open the application.
- Go to the Office 365 Groups tab.
- In the Update Groups section, select Create then choose Create Bulk Groups using CSV.
- Within the ‘Create Bulk Groups’ action UI, click on the ‘Download sample CSV file‘ link to get a template CSV file for bulk group creation.
- Replace the group details within the sample CSV file with the information for your new M365 Groups or adjust your existing CSV file to match the template’s format.
- Click the Browse button to select your CSV file. This action will load the CSV file details into the grid.
- Finally, initiate the group creation process by clicking the Update button.
- Keep an eye on the progress and status of the action within the result window, and if necessary, export the action results by selecting the Export button.
