Create group

11/27/2018
3 minutes to read
Contributors

Use this API to create a new group as specified in the request body. You can create one of three types of groups:

Office 365 Group (unified group)
Dynamic group
Security group

This operation returns by default only a subset of the properties for each group. These default properties are noted in the Properties section.

To get properties that are not returned by default, do a GET operation and specify the properties in a $select OData query option. See an example.

Note: Although Microsoft Teams is built on Office 365 Groups, you can't currently create a team via this API. You can use the other group APIs to manage a team that has been created in the Microsoft Teams UI.

Permissions

One of the following permissions is required to call this API. To learn more, including how to choose permissions, see Permissions.

Permission type	Permissions (from least to most privileged)
Delegated (work or school account)	Group.ReadWrite.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account)	Not supported.
Application	Group.ReadWrite.All

HTTP request

POST /groups

Request headers

Name	Type	Description
Authorization	string	Bearer {token}. Required.

Request body

The following table shows the properties of the group resource to specify when you create a group.

Property	Type	Description
displayName	string	The name to display in the address book for the group. Required.
mailEnabled	boolean	Set to true for mail-enabled groups. Set this to true if creating an Office 365 Group. Set this to false if creating dynamic or security group. Required.
mailNickname	string	The mail alias for the group. Required.
securityEnabled	boolean	Set to true for security-enabled groups. Set this to true if creating a dynamic or security group. Set this to false if creating an Office 365 group. Required.
owners	string collection	This property represents the owners for the group at creation time. Optional.
members	string collection	This property represents the members for the group at creation time. Optional.

Specify the groupTypes property if you're creating an Office 365 or dynamic group, as stated below.

groupTypes options

Type of group	groupTypes property
Office 365 (aka unified group)	"Unified"
Dynamic	"DynamicMembership"
Security	Do not set.

Note: Creating an Office 365 Group programmatically without a user context and without specifying owners will create the group anonymously. Doing so can result in the associated SharePoint Online site not being created automatically until further manual action is taken.

Specify other writable properties as necessary for your group. For more information, see the properties of the group resource.

Response

If successful, this method returns 201 Created response code and group object in the response body. The response includes only the default properties of the group.

Example

Request 1

The first example request creates an Office 365 Group.

POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups
Content-type: application/json
Content-length: 244

{
  "description": "Self help community for library",
  "displayName": "Library Assist",
  "groupTypes": [
    "Unified"
  ],
  "mailEnabled": true,
  "mailNickname": "library",
  "securityEnabled": false
}

Response 1

The following is an example of the response.

Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability. All the default properties are returned from an actual call.

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-type: application/json

{
    "id": "b320ee12-b1cd-4cca-b648-a437be61c5cd",
	  "deletedDateTime": null,
	  "classification": null,
	  "createdDateTime": "2018-12-22T00:51:37Z",
	  "creationOptions": [],
	  "description": "Self help community for library",
	  "displayName": "Library Assist",
	  "groupTypes": [
	      "Unified"
	  ],
	  "mail": "library7423@contoso.com",
	  "mailEnabled": true,
	  "mailNickname": "library",
	  "onPremisesLastSyncDateTime": null,
	  "onPremisesSecurityIdentifier": null,
	  "onPremisesSyncEnabled": null,
	  "preferredDataLocation": "CAN",
	  "proxyAddresses": [
	      "SMTP:library7423@contoso.com"
	  ],
	  "renewedDateTime": "2018-12-22T00:51:37Z",
	  "resourceBehaviorOptions": [],
	  "resourceProvisioningOptions": [],
	  "securityEnabled": false,
	  "visibility": "Public",
	  "onPremisesProvisioningErrors": []
}

Request 2

The second example request creates an Office 365 group with an owner specified.

POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "description": "Group with designated owner",
  "displayName": "Operations group",
  "groupTypes": [
    "Unified"
  ],
  "mailEnabled": true,
  "mailNickname": "operations2019",
  "securityEnabled": false,
  "owners@odata.bind": [
    "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/26be1845-4119-4801-a799-aea79d09f1a2"
  ]
}

Response 2

The following is an example of a successful response. It includes only default properties. You can subsequenty get the owners navigation property of the group to verify the details of the owner.