Convert SharePoint Team site to Office Group

[Martin Mueller]

Dear Experts,

is there a way to extend existing SharePoint team sites so they become Office 365 groups? There is already a migration option for distribution list but I suspect some customers rather have team sites as a starting point for a group purpose.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

The option to groupify an existing classic team site has been promised by MS.

No ETA though..

[#3]

To add to Salvatore's answer, as part of this promisse it will also possible to add a Group to the site

[#4]

Is there an indication when we can expect this functionality?

[#5]

Thanks Juan, this scenario seems interesting: So you would have a standalone team site and group, with the option to attach one to the other and essentially replacing the sharepoint site from the group?

[#6]

No exactly like this...the idea is that you will have a SPO Site that could be converted into a modern team site what means you will also be able to attach a Group

[#7]

 Oke, and how is it done with the url, because this is at this point important to make sure the site a group fits together. 

The sitecollection has an url and the groups site collection also, which url is leading when attaching a group to a existing site collection? 

[#8]

No idea, Microsoft has not shared yet process details

[#9]

This is of real interest to us. Our default Sharepoint site that was created when we joined O365 is "Company Name Team Site." 

Which is a bit confusing as it isn't a "Team" at all. I'd love to move this into Teams. The added benefit is everyone we set up as a new user automatically has access to it.

[#10]

Yes - please. Without this is will create problems with adoption of Groups.

[#11]

Mmm...I think we are talking about different needs over here...if we finally have the ability of "groupfy" a classic site as commented by Salvatore, it does not meant we will be able to "teamfy" this site. I agree that with Microsoft Teams, a site called "Team site" might be confusing, but I can tell that this way of naming SharePoint sites has been there since ages

[#12]

Thanks @Juan Carlos González Martín. I understand what you are saying. But if we "groupfy" a site, then it can be "teamfied" too by creating a team, then adopting that group. 

By the way, "groupfy" and "teamfy" should be powershell commands.

I just want a team that is a "global team" meaning all users are always part of it, like the default sharepoint site, so no maint has to be done when users are added/removed.

It seems MS is hiding sharepoint. I went to create a Sharepoint site last week to be a file archive, and it would only create a group via the O365 "create site" command. I'm generally ok with that, and will be totally ok with it when groups have calendars we can use via Teams.

If they are getting rid of Sharepoint - i.e. moving it to the background to do all of the heavy lifting but not really exposing the UI much - then let us migrate existing sharepoints to teams via groups.

[#13]

You can still create a classic team site (i.e. without a connected Group) in the SharePoint Admin Center.

[#14]

We are doing this manually at the moment (and taking the opportunity to clean up some other spilled milk at the same time).

We have self-service Group creation turned off, and we invested in ShareGate to migrate content from existing sharepoint sites into Group sharepoint sites. We are implementing Groups only for formal workgroups and organizational units at the moment.

It is greatly helping with our adoption to just move the content where it needs to go as opposed to waiting in limbo. Its a bit more manual work at the moment, by my time is less valuable than groups adoption success at this point in time.

Rumor has it if they are going to "groupify" sites, it would only be at the site collection level. So if you like us, we created a site collection called "Workgroups", and have subsites for each major workgroup. So in this case, it doesnt make sense to have a Group connected to the "Workgroups" site. We did this all of the place (cause remember with Information Architecture used to be a good thing?).

I suspect the complexity in what and how to "groupify" will get messy.

[#15]

Before you migrate anything manualy or automaticaly I suggest you to make yourself familiar with Group Sites

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint/The-dark-side-of-SP-O365-Group-Sites/m-p/63580#M60...

[#16]

Any update on this? I thought I saw it announced recently that a SP site (any site not created by a group, that's not a subsite) could be "upgraded" to be a new Group-based site collection.

But, naturally, I can't seem to find it any longer.

[#17]

"Later this year", says Mark Kashman (together with some other details) in https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/Personalize-team-sites-in-Office-365-and-ampl...

[#18]

Thanks for the reply and the source. I appreciate it.

[#19]

Hello, Brent - I was wondering how you guys are managing governance of Group. I've few questions if you can answer  

1. Since all the group site is a Site Collection, Is there any central location from where we can see list of all the Groups

2. How can we deploy predefined template (list/library/web part) so it is available by default to all groups  

3. Is there any we can setup default template for Groups?

Thanks,

Satish

[#20]

I am looking at doing the reverse.

We launched with a Group - but would prefer to convert this to a SharePoint Team site.

Is anyone aware of this being an option?