Office 365 groups

[Easy_506]

Morning all,

 

We've been on Live@Edu/OWA/Office365 for a long time now, but just recently a couple of staff members discovered they could create email groups.

 

Unfortunately, these industrious people have created security groups instead of distribution groups, and therefore the groups do not show in our global address book.

 

Anybody got any thoughts as to the best way forward with this? I've been investigating the issue, but cannot see an easy way of converting existing security groups into distribution groups.

 

Cheers.

[EduTech]

Hi,

 

Are you using Directory Sync?

 

If you are using DirSync, If you add an SMTP address to the security group object then run a sync and it should do what you want without any problem and make it an Mail-Enabled Security Group.

 

Add the SMTP Address into the 'proxyaddress' attribute.

 

I'm not aware that you can just convert it from a Security Group > Distribution Group it will have to be a Mail-Enabled Security Group... Still does the same thing that you want though.

 

If you are not using DirSync... Then I am not sure... let me have a play around with it real quick and i'll get back to you on the other option. (if their is one).

 

Thanks,

James.

Edited October 16, 2013 by EduTech

[EduTech]

Ok... Just been having a look and if you are using Cloud Identity Only... then you have no way to convert it.

 

I'm not too great with PowerShell scripting but theoretically you would need to do the following:

 

Use a single PowerShell window to connect to MSOL PowerShell, as well as Exchange Online. [To do that see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj984289(v=exchg.150).aspx]

 

First grab the group name, and export the info, or assign to a PowerShell table.

 

You would then have to "get" the membership of a group

 

get-msolgroupmember -groupobjectid take the "email address" and either export this information, or put in a PowerShell table as well.

 

Once you have the group name and member list, you then use Exchange Online commands

 

First create the new group (either using the tabled information to translate the attributes -example: MSOL groupdisplayname will = ExchangeDG displayname) or use the exported information, and import it as the values.

 

Then add the members similar to the above using the "emailaddress" property

 

This is the "theoretical" explanation, how to write this in actual scripting is a another story

 

The base commands that you will need though are as follows:

 

get-msolgroup

get-msolgroupmembers

 

and

 

new-distributiongroup

set-distributiongroup

 

I hope that helps, Good Luck! :-)

 

Thanks,

James.

Edited October 16, 2013 by EduTech

[Easy_506]

James,

Can't thank you enough for this! Much appreciated!

 

Matt