Deploy Group Templates

Streamline group creation across multiple tenants in Microsoft 365

This wizard applies a saved group template to one or more tenants, creating the same group in each. Templates are managed on the Group Templates page, and the values a template supplies can be adjusted for this deployment without changing the stored template.

1

Tenant Selection

Choose the tenants the group should be created in. Several can be selected, and the group is created separately in each. There is no All Tenants option here, so the tenants have to be picked individually.

2

Choose Template

Choose a Template lists the saved templates by name and group type. Selecting one fills in the fields below, which can then be edited for this deployment. A template is not required: the fields can be completed by hand instead.

Field	Description
Group Type	The kind of group to create: Dynamic Group, Security Group, Distribution Group, Azure Role Group or Mail Enabled Security Group. Required, and it decides which of the settings below appear.
Group Display Name	The name the group is created with. Required.
Group Description	A description for the group.
Group Username	The mail nickname the group's email address is built from.
Allow external emails to the group	Allows senders outside the organisation to email the group. Shown for a Distribution Group.
Membership Rules	The rule that decides membership. Shown for a Dynamic Group, and required.
Email Aliases	Additional email addresses, one per line. Shown for a Distribution Group or Mail Enabled Security Group.
Hide this group from the Global Address List (GAL)	Hides the group from address lists. Shown for a Distribution Group or Mail Enabled Security Group.

3

Confirmation

Review the values and submit. The group is created in every tenant selected in the first step.

Any of the fields above accepts a variable, written as %variablename%, which is replaced with each target tenant's value as the group is created. %tenantfilter% gives the tenant's default domain, as in postmaster@%tenantfilter%, and %tenantname% gives the tenant's name, so one deployment can give every tenant a correctly named group. Values for your own variables are set for every tenant in Global Variables, or for one tenant in the Custom Variables box on Edit Tenant, where the tenant's own value wins.

Licences held on a template are carried into the deployment even though this wizard does not display them, so a Security Group template with group-based licensing attached still assigns those licences. To see or change which licences a template holds, edit the template itself.

The Group Type list here does not include Microsoft 365 Group, so a Microsoft 365 template cannot be deployed from this wizard. Selecting one leaves the group type unset and the wizard will not continue. Create Microsoft 365 groups from the Add Group page in the meantime.

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Feature Requests / Ideas

We value your feedback and ideas. Please raise any feature requests on GitHub.