Add Office365 Group Member without Email Notification

[Tammy Emond]

I want to add members to an existing Office365 Group, but for various reasons, I don't want them to receive an email notification.  Is there a way to turn that notification off?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hey @Tammy Emond,

I think I should be able to help you out!

There is not a way to my knowledge to do this in outlook or the O365 GUI, but there is a way to do this in Powershell.

In Powershell O365 groups use the commands that are around "unified groups," which was an old name for what became O365 Groups. There is an attribute in there that is called a welcome message.

So for each group you wanted to do this on, you would need to run the following in Exchange Online Powershell.

Set-UnifiedGroup <groupname> -UnifiedGroupWelcomeMessageEnabled $false

To turn it back on, just pass the same command with $true

Adam

[#3]

Thanks Adam!  I was hoping to be able to do this without using Powershell.  I see that this has already been suggested to MS, so here's hoping they come up with a simple solution (like a checkbox?)...

[#4]

Well, you used to be able to use Exchange Online powershell and use set-unifiedgroup -identity groupname -unifiedgroupwelcomemessageenabled:$false to suppress the group join message. I think it should still work :P.

[#5]

Ops, had this open trying to reply to others too long didn't see Adam had beat me to it ;). Good job!

[#6]

@Adam Ochs, can this script or something similar be set so that all new dynamic groups will not send out an email? 

[#7]

@David Wissman,

just execute the above PowerShell commandlet immediately after creating a group - what's the problem?

[#8]

@Victor Ivanidze The "problem" is that the person who is creating the group may not have permissions to run the powershell command for exchange online / unifed groups. So now you've involved two staff and added a delay to the process of creating a group.  I want a way to change the default behavior globally.

[#9]

Hi @Pat Sullivan 

I don't catch your point. You can assign a person who is creating the group  permission to run the PowerShell command, correct?

[#10]

@Tammy Emond my boss found that if you create a Team, it creates an email group. If you add people to that created email group, it will add them to the team without sending them an email

[#11]

@Adam Ochs 

Just want to clarify this command and how it's written here; it should appear as:

Set-UnifiedGroup <groupname> -UnifiedGroupWelcomeMessageEnabled:$false

The : was missing between Enabled and $false. After that it worked perfectly.

Thank you!

[#12]

@petersonhd, can you elaborate on this process? I need to bulk add people before sending out an email communication, and PowerShell isn't an option. 

[#13]

@dhawley If I remember correctly, after you create the team it makes a group in 365. From the admin center, go to Groups then active groups. If you search for the team name, you should find it and the group type will be Microsoft 365. Click on the group and add members. This will add them to the team and our users didn't get an email about it.

[#14]

@petersonhd, so I would need to be a tenant admin? I tried finding and accessing admin portal URL for my tenant, but to no avail.

[#15]

This was all I needed for my purpose - thanks so much!

[#16]

Yes it is working, (without Powershell)@petersonhd your boos is a genius:)

1) Create a new Team (in Teams) - by creation of the Team: link it with the existing mail Group.

2) Add members to the Team, it will be immediately visible in the mail Group without any e-mails.

[#17]

I know this is an old thread but, if anyone is still monitoring it or sees this...

If I use the opposite of this, in other words, set -UnifiedGroupWelcomeMessageEnabled:$true, for a Mail-enabled Security Group (or any Security Group) in Microsoft 365, will that force email notification to the members added that they have been added? This is the behavior I want.