Create group

Namespace: microsoft.graph

Create a new group as specified in the request body. You can create the following types of groups:

  • Microsoft 365 group (unified 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.

Note: Although Microsoft Teams is built on Microsoft 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.

This API is available in the following national cloud deployments.

Global service US Government L4 US Government L5 (DOD) China operated by 21Vianet

Permissions

Choose the permission or permissions marked as least privileged for this API. Use a higher privileged permission or permissions only if your app requires it. For details about delegated and application permissions, see Permission types. To learn more about these permissions, see the permissions reference.

Permission type Least privileged permissions Higher privileged permissions
Delegated (work or school account) Group.ReadWrite.All Directory.ReadWrite.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account) Not supported. Not supported.
Application Group.Create Directory.ReadWrite.All, Group.ReadWrite.All

For an app create a group with owners or members while it has the Group.Create permission, the app must have the privileges to read the object type that it wants to assign as the group owner or member. Therefore:

  • The app can assign itself as the group's owner or member.
  • To create the group with users as owners or members, the app must have at least the User.Read.All permission.
  • To create the group with other service principals as owners or members, the app must have at least the Application.Read.All permission.
  • To create the group with either users or service principals as owners or members, the app must have at least the Directory.Read.All permission.

HTTP request

POST /groups

Request headers

Name Description
Authorization Bearer {token}. Required. Learn more about authentication and authorization.
Content-Type application/json

Request body

In the request body, supply a JSON representation of the group object.

The following table lists the properties that are required when you create the group. Specify other writable properties as necessary for your group.

Property Type Description
displayName String The name to display in the address book for the group. Maximum length: 256 characters. Required.
mailEnabled Boolean Set to true for mail-enabled groups. Required.
mailNickname String The mail alias for the group, unique for Microsoft 365 groups in the organization. Maximum length is 64 characters. This property can contain only characters in the ASCII character set 0 - 127 except the following: @ () \ [] " ; : <> , SPACE. Required.
securityEnabled Boolean Set to true for security-enabled groups, including Microsoft 365 groups. Required. Note: Groups created using the Microsoft Entra admin center or the Azure portal always have securityEnabled initially set to true.

Important

  • Creating a group using the Group.Create application permission without specifying owners will create the group anonymously and the group will not be modifiable. Add owners to the group while creating it to specify owners who can modify the group.

  • Creating a Microsoft 365 group programmatically with an app-only 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.

  • To following properties can't be set in the initial POST request and must be set in a subsequent PATCH request: allowExternalSenders, autoSubscribeNewMembers, hideFromAddressLists, hideFromOutlookClients, isSubscribedByMail, unseenCount.

groupTypes options

Use the groupTypes property to control the type of group and its membership, as shown.

Type of group Assigned membership Dynamic membership
Microsoft 365 (aka unified group) ["Unified"] ["Unified","DynamicMembership"]
Dynamic [] (null) ["DynamicMembership"]

Response

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

Examples

Example 1: Create a Microsoft 365 group

The following example creates a Microsoft 365 group. Because the owners have not been specified, the calling user is automatically added as the owner of the group.

Request

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

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

Response

The following example shows the response. The value of the preferredDataLocation property is inherited from the group creator's preferred data location.

Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.

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",
      "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": []
}

Example 2: Create a group with owners and members

The following example creates a Security group with an owner and members specified. Note that a maximum of 20 relationships, such as owners and members, can be added as part of group creation. You can subsequently add more members by using the add member API or JSON batching.

Request

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

{
  "description": "Group with designated owner and members",
  "displayName": "Operations group",
  "groupTypes": [
  ],
  "mailEnabled": false,
  "mailNickname": "operations2019",
  "securityEnabled": true,
  "owners@odata.bind": [
    "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/26be1845-4119-4801-a799-aea79d09f1a2"
  ],
  "members@odata.bind": [
    "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/ff7cb387-6688-423c-8188-3da9532a73cc",
    "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/69456242-0067-49d3-ba96-9de6f2728e14"
  ]
}

Response

The following is an example of a successful response. It includes only default properties. You can subsequently get the owners or members navigation properties of the group to verify the owner or members. The value of the preferredDataLocation property is inherited from the group creator's preferred data location.

Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.

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

{
    "@odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#groups/$entity",
    "@odata.id": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v2/84841066-274d-4ec0-a5c1-276be684bdd3/directoryObjects/21d05557-b7b6-418f-86fa-a3118d751be4/Microsoft.DirectoryServices.Group",
    "id": "21d05557-b7b6-418f-86fa-a3118d751be4",
    "deletedDateTime": null,
    "classification": null,
    "createdDateTime": "2021-09-21T07:09:14Z",
    "description": "Group with designated owner and members",
    "displayName": "Operations group",
    "expirationDateTime": null,
    "groupTypes": [],
    "isAssignableToRole": null,
    "mail": null,
    "mailEnabled": false,
    "mailNickname": "operations2019",
    "membershipRule": null,
    "membershipRuleProcessingState": null,
    "onPremisesDomainName": null,
    "onPremisesLastSyncDateTime": null,
    "onPremisesNetBiosName": null,
    "onPremisesSamAccountName": null,
    "onPremisesSecurityIdentifier": null,
    "onPremisesSyncEnabled": null,
    "preferredDataLocation": null,
    "preferredLanguage": null,
    "proxyAddresses": [],
    "renewedDateTime": "2021-09-21T07:09:14Z",
    "resourceBehaviorOptions": [],
    "resourceProvisioningOptions": [],
    "securityEnabled": true,
    "securityIdentifier": "S-1-12-1-567301463-1099937718-295959174-3827004813",
    "theme": null,
    "visibility": null,
    "onPremisesProvisioningErrors": []
}

Example 3: Create a Microsoft 365 group that can be assigned to a Microsoft Entra role

Request

The following example shows a request. The calling user must be assigned the RoleManagement.ReadWrite.Directory permission to set the isAssignableToRole property or update the membership of such groups.

A group with isAssignableToRole property set to true cannot be of dynamic membership type, its securityEnabled must be set to true, and visibility can only be Private.

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

{
    "description": "Group assignable to a role",
    "displayName": "Role assignable group",
    "groupTypes": [
        "Unified"
    ],
    "isAssignableToRole": true,
    "mailEnabled": true,
    "securityEnabled": true,
    "mailNickname": "contosohelpdeskadministrators",
    "owners@odata.bind": [
        "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/99e44b05-c10b-4e95-a523-e2732bbaba1e"
    ],
    "members@odata.bind": [
        "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/6ea91a8d-e32e-41a1-b7bd-d2d185eed0e0",
        "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/4562bcc8-c436-4f95-b7c0-4f8ce89dca5e"
    ]
}

Note: A group with isAssignableToRole property set to true cannot be of dynamic membership type and cannot have an owner. For more information, see Using a group to manage Microsoft Entra role assignments.

Response

The following example shows the response. It includes only default properties. The value of the preferredDataLocation property is inherited from the group creator's preferred data location.

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

{
    "@odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#groups/$entity",
    "@odata.id": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v2/84841066-274d-4ec0-a5c1-276be684bdd3/directoryObjects/55ea2e8c-757f-4f2d-be9e-53c22e8c6a54/Microsoft.DirectoryServices.Group",
    "id": "55ea2e8c-757f-4f2d-be9e-53c22e8c6a54",
    "deletedDateTime": null,
    "classification": null,
    "createdDateTime": "2021-09-21T07:23:06Z",
    "createdByAppId": "de8bc8b5-d9f9-48b1-a8ad-b748da725064",
    "organizationId": "84841066-274d-4ec0-a5c1-276be684bdd3",
    "description": "Group assignable to a role",
    "displayName": "Role assignable group",
    "expirationDateTime": null,
    "groupTypes": [
        "Unified"
    ],
    "infoCatalogs": [],
    "isAssignableToRole": true,
    "isManagementRestricted": null,
    "mail": "contosohelpdeskadministrators@contoso.com",
    "mailEnabled": true,
    "mailNickname": "contosohelpdeskadministrators",
    "membershipRule": null,
    "membershipRuleProcessingState": null,
    "onPremisesDomainName": null,
    "onPremisesLastSyncDateTime": null,
    "onPremisesNetBiosName": null,
    "onPremisesSamAccountName": null,
    "onPremisesSecurityIdentifier": null,
    "onPremisesSyncEnabled": null,
    "preferredDataLocation": "EU",
    "preferredLanguage": null,
    "proxyAddresses": [
        "SMTP:contosohelpdeskadministrators@contoso.com"
    ],
    "renewedDateTime": "2021-09-21T07:23:06Z",
    "resourceBehaviorOptions": [],
    "resourceProvisioningOptions": [],
    "securityEnabled": true,
    "securityIdentifier": "S-1-12-1-1441410700-1328379263-3260260030-1416268846",
    "theme": null,
    "visibility": "Private",
    "writebackConfiguration": {
        "isEnabled": null,
        "onPremisesGroupType": null
    },
    "onPremisesProvisioningErrors": []
}