Using Windows PowerShell to Manage the Creation of Office 365 Groups

With Windows PowerShell, administrators can better manage the creation of Office 365 Groups.

In Office 365, a group is a shared workspace for files, calendar events, and conversations. While some organizations may be fine with end users creating groups, some may prefer to have administrators control the creation and management of groups.

In this blog, we’ll highlight how to control which users can create groups and show you how to better manage the permissions that control who can create groups within your organization.

How to Disable Office 365 Group Creation

By default every Office 365 user has an OWA mailbox policy that controls what they can do with their mailbox. Changing this policy allows you to disable the ability for users to create Groups. OWA policies are per user allowing you to limit the ability to create Groups on a user by user basis. Currently the only way to update a user’s mailbox policy is through Windows PowerShell.

To disable group creation for all users within your organization:

• Launch Windows PowerShell
• Type the following at the command prompt: Set-OwaMailboxPolicy -Identity test.com\OwaMailboxPolicy-Default -GroupCreationEnabled $false

To disable group creation for a subset of users within your organization:

• Launch PowerShell
• Create a new mailbox policy by using the following command, and replacing<policy> with the name of your policy (if you’ve already created a mailbox policy you can skip to the next step):
  New-OwaMailboxPolicy –Name “<policy>”
• Change GroupCreationEnabled to false using the following command and replacing with<policy> the name of your policy:
  Set-OwaMailboxPolicy –Identity “<policy>” –GroupCreationEnabled $false
• Set the policy on the users that should not be allowed to create groups. Replace<username> with the name of the user:
  Set-CASMailbox –Identity<username> -OWAMailboxPolicy “<policy>”

Now you understand how to effectively manage the creation of Office 365 groups on a user level. If you have any additional questions about creating and managing Office 365 groups, don’t hesitate to reach out to us today.