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Understand what Microsoft 365 groups are and how they relate to other applications.

Quick reference

Work with Microsoft 365 Groups

We use Microsoft 365 groups whenever we want a quick and easy way to collaborate with team members.

Instructions

Microsoft 365 groups are collections of people that we can collaborate with and they feed through to many other applications within Microsoft 365. For example, we can create a group in Outlook and see that group in SharePoint. 

Microsoft 365 groups are a great time-saving feature. We can create a group once, add members, and set permissions and those settings feed through to other collaboration tools. 

Create a Microsoft 365 Group

  • Sign in to Microsoft 365
  • Click on the App Launcher
  • Select Outlook from the application list
  • In the folder list, scroll to the bottom

Note: Existing groups will show here also. We can click on an existing group and see information about that group including but not limited to, the members and any files that have been shared. We can email all group members from here. 

  • Under the heading Groups, click New group
  • Give the group a name, e.g. Project Alpha

The group will be assigned its own unique email address. This is useful as it means anyone can email all group members using the unique address. 

  • Add a description (optional)

We can then choose a level of privacy for the group. By default, the group is set to Private. This means that only invited members of the group can access the group. To change the privacy, click the Edit button. 

We can change the group to a Public group. This means that the group is open and available for anyone to join and see the contents. 

  • Click Create
Add Members

Once the group has been created, we get the option to add members to the group. We can add members from within our organization by simply typing their names and selecting them from the list. 

By default, members are given a permission level of 'Member'. The other level of access is 'Owner'. This is generally reserved for the person who created the group. We can promote people and make them co-owners. 

  • Click the drop-down arrow next to their name
  • Choose Owner from the list

We can also add external members (people outside our organization) but we need to type in their full email address. 

External members are referred to as 'Guests'. 

  • Click Add

The group will now be listed under the Groups heading in the folder pane. 

Work with Groups

We can view more information about a group by clicking on the group name in the folder list. 

From here we can choose Send email to send a message to all group members. 

We can also click on the Group files button to see a list of any files that have been shared between group members. Group files are stored in document libraries which can be accessed through other Microsoft 365 applications like SharePoint. 

We can access more features by clicking the three dots.

From here, we can open a shared OneNote notebook, a plan in Planner, or jump to the SharePoint site for this group. 

Hints & tips

  • If you create a team in Microsoft Teams, that will also show up as a group in SharePoint and Outlook. However, groups created in Outlook do not automatically show up in Microsoft Teams but we can create a team using an existing Microsoft 365 group. 
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  • 00:04 Office 365 groups are collections of people that you can collaborate with.
  • 00:09 And groups feed through to many, many different parts of Microsoft 365.
  • 00:14 So it's good to get your head around them early on in this course, so
  • 00:19 you start to get an idea as to how everything feeds through, and
  • 00:22 how the applications interact with each other.
  • 00:25 When you create a group in one application in Microsoft 365,
  • 00:30 very often you can see it in another application.
  • 00:33 For example, we could create a group in Microsoft Outlook, and
  • 00:38 we'll be able to see that group in SharePoint, and also in Teams.
  • 00:43 So this is effectively a real time saver.
  • 00:46 We create a group in one place, and
  • 00:48 it feeds through to other applications in Microsoft 365.
  • 00:53 So let's take a look at how we can create a Microsoft 365 group.
  • 00:58 Now to do this, we're going to open up Outlook.
  • 01:00 And if I look at my menu bar on the left side, I can see an Outlook.
  • 01:06 If you can't see yours just there click on the applications launcher,
  • 01:09 you should find it here.
  • 01:10 If not, last resort, go to all apps, these are in alphabetical order and
  • 01:14 you can select it from the list.
  • 01:17 So, we're going to open up Outlook,
  • 01:19 also remember that this is the online version of Outlook.
  • 01:23 So this is going to look quite a bit different to the native Outlook desktop
  • 01:27 application that you might be used to using.
  • 01:30 Now, if we scroll down our folder list, what you'll see at the bottom is
  • 01:35 a section called Groups, and these are your Microsoft 365 groups.
  • 01:40 You can see that I already have one in here called Sample team site.
  • 01:45 If I click on this, I get to see some information about this particular group.
  • 01:50 I can see that the group has eight members, so
  • 01:53 if I click on that little link, I can see all of the members of this group.
  • 01:58 Remember, these are all fake coworkers.
  • 02:01 I can click the Send email link if I want to email all of the group.
  • 02:06 And we are going to talk a lot more about this in the next few lessons.
  • 02:10 But for the time being, just know you can click on the group name and
  • 02:13 you can see some additional information.
  • 02:16 What we want to focus on here is creating a brand new group, and
  • 02:20 this is as straightforward as you might think it is.
  • 02:24 Again, if you take a look just under where it says Sample team site,
  • 02:28 I have a new group option just here.
  • 02:30 So let's click on New group.
  • 02:33 We can now give our group a name.
  • 02:35 So I'm going to pretend that this group is for
  • 02:37 all of the people who are working on the project, Project Alpha.
  • 02:42 So let's call this Project Alpha.
  • 02:45 You can see that Microsoft 365 assigns this project its own unique email address.
  • 02:51 And this is going to be based on the email address that you created when you set up
  • 02:55 your Sandbox account.
  • 02:57 If you're not using a Sandbox account, then this will be the name of
  • 03:00 the organization that your email account is attached to.
  • 03:03 We can give our group a description, and
  • 03:05 I would highly recommend that you do this just to save a bit of time.
  • 03:09 I'm not going to add one at this stage, and
  • 03:11 then notice underneath we have some default settings.
  • 03:14 And you can see that by default, the privacy is set to private.
  • 03:18 Now, a private group means that the only people who can see this group
  • 03:22 are the people that are members who have been invited to this group.
  • 03:27 We can also have public groups.
  • 03:29 If I wanted to change this to public, I would click on Edit,
  • 03:32 and then I can switch this to public.
  • 03:35 Now, what that basically means is that this group is open to the public,
  • 03:39 anybody in my organization can search for this group, they can join this group,
  • 03:43 they can see everything that's going on in the group.
  • 03:46 Now, we're going to keep this as a private group for invited members only.
  • 03:51 Let's click on Create.
  • 03:53 Now, at this stage I get the opportunity to add people to this group.
  • 03:58 So I'm going to add, let's just add a couple of people.
  • 04:00 Let's add Grady, let's add Adele, and let's add Pradeep.
  • 04:06 And you'll notice that by default, everybody has member access.
  • 04:10 Now, the other type of access is owner, and that is reserved for
  • 04:14 the person who created the group, in this case, me.
  • 04:17 But you could upgrade any of your members to co-owners of a group as well,
  • 04:22 which just means they have a little bit more permission to do things than regular
  • 04:26 members.
  • 04:27 I'm going to keep everyone on member level access.
  • 04:31 Another thing that's worth noting is that you can add people who are outside
  • 04:35 of your organization to your groups, and these people are classed as guests.
  • 04:41 Now, guests don't have a great deal of access to groups,
  • 04:44 they can basically just see emails, they can't really do anything else.
  • 04:48 But it is possible to add people,
  • 04:50 you simply just need to type in their full email address at the top here.
  • 04:54 It will then send them an email and give them access to the group.
  • 04:58 I'm going to click Add at the bottom,
  • 05:00 which will finish the process of creating this group and adding the members.
  • 05:06 If you now take a look at groups, I have Project Alpha.
  • 05:09 If I click on it, I have a little bit of information just here,
  • 05:12 and you'll see that it says one member.
  • 05:14 This sometimes takes a few minutes to refresh, but if I click on it,
  • 05:18 you can see there are all the members of this group.
  • 05:21 Now, a couple of other things to note about these groups.
  • 05:24 We can send an email to all members.
  • 05:27 You can see here we can go to group files.
  • 05:29 So as all of the group members start working on files,
  • 05:33 we're going to be able to click on this link and
  • 05:36 see all of the files listed just here, and this is basically a document library.
  • 05:41 And this is something again that you'll see runs fairly consistently through other
  • 05:45 Microsoft 365 applications.
  • 05:47 We have document libraries in our groups, we have document libraries in SharePoint,
  • 05:52 and all of these document libraries are the same.
  • 05:56 If I was to click on the three dots,
  • 05:58 you can see here we have an option to go to site.
  • 06:02 Now, this will jump me across to SharePoint,
  • 06:06 where I also have a documents library.
  • 06:09 So the files that I see in here for this particular group,
  • 06:12 are going to be the same as the ones that I can see in Outlook
  • 06:16 because it's essentially a shared document library.
  • 06:20 So, just be aware of that, and
  • 06:21 start to get your head around how everything interacts.
  • 06:25 Also under this three dots we can create a shared notebook in OneNote.
  • 06:29 We can go to Planner, and we can adjust different settings from here as well.
  • 06:35 Now, if we jump back across to Project Alpha and click on the three dots,
  • 06:39 we can jump straight to the associated SharePoint site.
  • 06:43 And it's worth noting that if we click Documents in the left-hand menu,
  • 06:47 this is going to give us access to the exact same file library that we use in
  • 06:51 the Microsoft 365 group.
  • 06:53 However, we're working with it in SharePoint as opposed to Outlook.
  • 06:57 So the same group is visible in Outlook, in SharePoint, and in Microsoft Planner.
  • 07:03 And if you use Microsoft Teams, every time somebody creates a new team,
  • 07:08 it's going to show up as a group in SharePoint and Outlook.
  • 07:12 Just be aware that the reverse is not true.
  • 07:15 If you create a group in Outlook or SharePoint first,
  • 07:18 it doesn't automatically show up in Teams.
  • 07:21 Now, we can create a team based off of an existing Microsoft 365 group,
  • 07:26 and I will show you how to do that a bit later on in this course.
  • 07:30 But just be aware of how all of these different moving parts interact
  • 07:34 with each other in Microsoft 365.

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