The dark side of SP O365 Group Sites.

[Sławomir Skowroński]

When I’m dealing with Modern Sites and Group sites I'm feeling like beta tester on development environment.  Before you start using Office365 (SharePoint) group sites makes sure that you know what are you doing. You can end up badly without testing, and without some restrictions for your power users.

First test was to create SP group site with name Intranet, via OWA and this test failed. I’ve been able to create Group Site with name which already exist in our SharePoint environment as a standard SharePoint subsite. I end up with error "Sorry, something went wrong".

Second test was to create SharePoint subsite group site from new Landing Page _layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx. As a SharePoint admin I would like to warn you do not use it J On first screen “Let's create a team site and group - Team site name” if you type Group site name and click Next you do not even know but you just created new group and you do not have chance to go back any change it. You do not even need to click on Finish button J This button just redirect you to newly created site. This generates subsites which you might not need. This is not the end. You users might create tons of such entries via Outlook client or OWA. You think that’s the end of issues? No ;-] Group site created in this way may include group mailbox address with some random numbers in it which do not looks good. All of this is nothing :-] Real dark side of group sites is that you might lost your group data if you delete it accidently. There is no backup procedure, and id you are not lucky enough you can also lost you data if you are to fast with power shell Remove-SPOSite and Remove-SPODeletedSit.

The best option is to use Admin Portal to create Group sites but my must have Global Admin rights to use it.

With all that said, can I ask you to do simple test, and try to rename Group Site via Edit site information to ab some space between leters and make it capital? As you can see in attached files I can't even take such simple action with this s...

Regards

[#2]

You can restore a deleted Group now

Group-based SharePoint != regular SharePoint, they are dramatically different animals that masquerade as the same animal

In general, I agree with your statement (though less gloom and doom), you HAVE to understand Groups and what they are before you just start throwing them out there. That is why we have turned off self-service group creation and have a carefully tailored process for what Groups we roll out and how they are managed.

[#3]

Hi @Brent Ellis,

very interesting.

Can you tell me more about your process to create the groups for your users?

It is a workflow and finally your admin creates the group for the users?

According to my knowledge in the moment it is not possible to create a Group or a Team not with PowerShell and there is now API to do this – or not?!

[#4]

Hello @Heiko

I created group sites via button on the new Start/landing page under https://tenant.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx but you can do this also via Admin panel which might make some difference, and save you from some troubles described above. To set up modern group sites via PowerShell should depends on the setting you have in the SharePoint Admin Center under settings, so once you set to new experience all new creation of sites will be on the new experience.

[#5]

Hi Brent, 

Don't be so sure that you are ableto restore group sites even with MS Support... :-] Another problem is that I cannot create modern sites by PowerShell. As on attached screen shot - "GROUP#0 is not available for sites on this tenant". Is there anyone who experienced such error ?

[#6]

@Sławomir Skowroński, i'd use the "New-UnifiedGroup" endpoint instead of the sharepoint-based endpoint

@Heiko Watz, ive got a few other threads in the O365 Groups area that go into detail on what we are doing:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Groups/Experiences-quot-migrating-quot-to-an-O365-...

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Groups/Our-Groups-Rollout-part-2/m-p/51922/highlig...

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Groups/quot-My-Groups-quot-list-for-SharePoint-Hom...

[#7]

Hi Brent, 

Thanks for all this links, but can you provide just link of powershell code which will create few SPO Group Sites with assigned access for SharePoint security group. Many Thanks

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt219359(v=exchg.160).aspx 

New-UnifiedGroup -DisplayName "Engineering Department" -Alias engineering

This working fine but do not does whole job which we have around this topic. 

Regards

Slawomir

[#8]

When working with a Group it would be best to work with the overall permissions of the Group instead of SharePoint specific permissions unless you need to.  Once you create a Group using New-UnifiedGroup you could use the Add-UnifiedGroupLinks to add members to your Group which would therefore grant them access to the SharePoint site that is part of the Group.