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Can I determine how many Office 365 groups a user has created?

Copper Contributor

Our business employees have embraced Office 365 groups in a big way and have started reaching the regrettable 250-group-creation limit for non-admin accounts. Is there a way to determine how many Office 365 groups an account has created so we can tell if the account is about to turn into a pumpkin or do we just have to wait for them to suddenly not be able to create Office 365 groups anymore?

7 Replies
best response confirmed by Kelp_Acres (Copper Contributor)
Solution

Apart from harvesting the Audit logs, I'm not aware of any method to list all groups created by a specific person. You can guesstimate the value based on the number of groups he's an owner of, but that's not a 1:1 correspondence.

I don't see how they could track it either. Curious if you can only be owner of 250 and that's how they limit it?

When we first encountered this, someone was setting up groups for all existing client accounts and then suddenly couldn't anymore after making a group for the 250th account on the list. Here is what she recalls:

 

We thought it was 1 and the same, so I removed Ownership from me on all the groups, and found out that, even when I gave them away, after my email address [UPN] had created 250 groups, I could no longer make any groups.

 

We went through Microsoft, and it is correct, 250 groups created is a user limit.

 

In her specific case, she is a very trusted employee so I elevated her account to admin so she could finish her project and then busted her back down to private again. 

 

I don't see where "created by" is a unified-group property and if the user who created the group doesn't own it, then why even track it in a way that burns the user after only 250. It's an odd limitation to build into something that is supposed to move this menial task out of IT and into the line of business, where it is going to be performed by some administrative person, until, oops, they can't do it anymore. Unless they are in the IT Dept.

 

 

Interesting, good to know, but yeah I agree kind of odd that the limit is set like that without a seeming way to Change the creators to something else to clear out there count or something somehow.

Hi, @Kelp_Acres.

I've previously submitted a User Voice related to this issue to include "Created By" column in the SharePoint administration center. It may not prevent the 250 limit for creating Teams but should give admins visibility to coordinate with workspace owners. 

 

https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/273493-office-365-admin/suggestions/33485983-office-365-group...

 

Fred

 

Here is what Office 365 tech support responded with:

 

After extensive research, only the Audit log and the group listing would be a way to see how many groups a specific user has created. Groups created by this user will need to be deleted before he/she will be able to create more.

 

I wasn't able to get a response from the guy about what the "group listing" is that he was referring to, since no listing I've seen shows the creators; only the owners which is not the same thing. For now I will pass on to the LoB that we basically can't tell when an employee is going to max out and to try having people log into OWA with a new account ginned up just for making Office 365 groups until it too gets burned and then just order it deleted and have another one made.

 

Thanks, Fred. I have left some votes and a note detailing our struggle on /lol/feedback, I mean User Voice.

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Kelp_Acres (Copper Contributor)
Solution

Apart from harvesting the Audit logs, I'm not aware of any method to list all groups created by a specific person. You can guesstimate the value based on the number of groups he's an owner of, but that's not a 1:1 correspondence.

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