Can't create private O365 Group from Office Admin Portal

[Wim van Wieren]

Admin Portal is currently only capable in creating new Office 365 Groups with Privacy (AccessType) Public. When I specify 'Private - Only members can see group content" the group is created, but with Privacy set to Public.

While creating the site, specifying Privacy shows a message "You can't change the privacy setting after the group is created."

This seems to be true, because once the Group is created we can't change Privacy. We also tried to change the scope through PowerShell, but this also fails

Command:

set-unifiedgroup -identity group@domain.com -AccessType Private

Returncode

We failed to update the unified group. Please try again later.
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Set-UnifiedGroup], TaskException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : [Server=VI1PR08MB3214,RequestId=87faaf57-58bd-423b-a9e2-7d9bbf3e3171,TimeStamp=1-6-2018 06:45:50] [FailureCategory=Cmdlet-TaskException] 67E5BF8A,Microsoft.Exchange.Mana
   gement.RecipientTasks.SetUnifiedGroup
    + PSComputerName        : outlook.office365.com

[#2]

Forgot to mention, there are workarounds … Do not create the Group through the Admin Portal. Instead create the group with PowerShell or use OWA - New Group.

[#3 · Accepted solution]

Both of these seem like bugs. I can certainly create private groups from the O365 admin center, and change the access type later on without issues. If you can reliably reproduce them, open a support ticket.

[#4]

@Wim van Wieren, are you using a Global Admin account or an account with lesser permissions to create the group, do you know? Do you have more than one Admin account in your tenant, and if yes, do they all see the same issue? Are your Admin accounts licensed or unlicensed?

[#5]

It seems everythins works again. We tried this for 2 consecutieve days from multiple machines, which means we can create private and public groups. Still though, we get the warning"You can't change the privacy setting after the group is created." in the O365 Admin center when we create a group. After the group is created we can change the AccessType, so the warning seems to be bogus.

The PowerShell failure is probably related to permissions. All Global Admins are required to use MFA. Exchange had issues, so still a number of scripts use a dedicated account that seems to fail this operation. 

$ExchSession = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $AutomationAccountCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

An Global Admin connecting through Connect-EXOPSSession works as a chime.

Thanks for the headsup

Wim