Nobody likes garbage, including Microsoft 365 administrators. If any user can create a team or yammer community – they create, but then they leave company and we are getting more and more abandoned groups, teams and SharePoint sites. So we need a way to clean up environment. There is a Microsoft 365 groups expiration policy that can help remove unused groups from the system, but since all Teams and Yammer sites are group-based – it also helps SharePoint admins make things cleaner.

Who can configure the policy and how

The policy lives under Azure Portal, Azure Active Directory, Groups, Expiration:

Microsoft 365 groups expiration policy can be configured by Groups Admin or Global Admin (tenant admin) only. Microsoft 365 Teams or SharePoint admin cannot configure it. Microsoft says that User administrator can do it – so I need to verify it.

Here is the policy config screen:

Microsoft documented it well in the “Microsoft 365 group expiration policy“, but I completed some tests in my lab environment and here is what I found and what is not covered by Microsoft. Let me share it with Questions and Answers format:

Questions and Answers

General questions

Q: How long it takes for policy to start generating notification emails after activation?
A: Immediately, i.e. minutes, maybe up to one hour (in case there groups that are subject for the policy).

Q: Can I customize email that is send to group owners?
A: No, there is no such option at the moment.

Q: What is the email address notifications come from?
A: It’s “msgroupsteam@microsoft.com” with the display name “Microsoft Groups Team”

Q: What does a notification email look like?
A: Please find some examples below, in the end of this article.

Q: Are there any other ways to get notifications? Teams chat? Phone message?
A: I’m not aware of phone messages, but I have seen notification in teams: “TeamName is expiring soon. Renew now”:

but I got only one teams notification, though e-mails notifications I got many.

Q: What happens when a user clicks “Renew group” button in the email notification?
A: User will be sent to a Microsoft’s page and the following “Do you want to renew the group?” window will be shown:

On Yes, it says”<groupName> was successfully renewed. You can close this window now”:

And the group expiration date will be set up as current date.
On “No” it says “Group was not renewed. You can close this window now.”:

And an expiration day will not be changed. No more notifications will be generated. The group will be active until expiration date. Then the group will be deleted.

Q: What if two owners choose opposite?
A: The last action will take effect.

Q: what if one user choose “delete group” but the other one later decided “Renew group”?
A: The one who click “Renew group” will see “<Group Name> successfully renewed. Because the group was deleted, it might take up to 24 hours to be fully restored. You can close this window now.”

Q: What if the group does not have owners?
A: If the group does not have an owner, the expiration emails will go to the email specified in policy configuration. Usually it is a distribution list with admins or other responsible team.

Q: What if I deactivate the policy – will email notifications sent earlier still be actionable?
In other words, would users still be able to renew the group clicking on the “Renew group” button?
A: Yes. Actually “Renew group” button is just a link to the Url:
https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/Group/RenewGroup?tenantId=<tenantId>&id=<groupId>
where a group owner can renew group.

Q: If one of the owners renewed the group – what will happen with notifications sent to other owner? What if other owner click “Renew group” or “delete group”?
A: Notifications sent will stay. Since buttons in the email are just links (not actionable buttons) – user will be redirected to a web-page where he/she will be able to renew or delete the group.

Q: As per MS: “Groups that are actively in use are renewed automatically around 35 days before the group expires. In this case, the owner does not get any renewal notifications. Any of the following actions will automatically renew a group…<list of actions>”. So, what exactly does “Groups that are actively in use” mean?
A: This is not disclosed by Microsoft. They only say “Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), part of Microsoft Entra, uses intelligence to automatically renew groups based on whether they have been in recent use. This renewal decision is based on user activity in groups across Microsoft 365 services like Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Yammer, and others.” Btw, <list of actions> includes almost all user actions – so basically any action – even just visit site/team is considered as activity.

Q: Can I track the policy in action via audit log?
A: There is no “activity type” for this policy’s specific actions… You also cannot specify user “msgroupsteam@microsoft.com” to get all activities. So no tracks on the policy “before action” – i.e. at the detection and e-mailing stage. If a user clicks “renew” button or “delete group” link – this should be logged as this user action. If it happens that the group is deleted by policy – this should be logged under policy’s account – I’ll follow up on this. TBC.

Q: After the group is deleted, who can restore it?
A: MS says: “A deleted Microsoft 365 group can be restored within 30 days by a group owner or by an Azure AD administrator”.
In fact, SharePoint admin,

Q: What if a user forward this e-mail notification to other user? Can this other user renew or delete the group?
A: When a user receive a notification email forwarded, and he/she click “Renew group” button – his/her experience will be the same if he/she is also a group owner. If a user is not a group owner – he/she will get “You don’t have permission to renew this group because you’re not an owner. To renew , contact a group owner. You can close this window now.”:

Note: if a user with active groups administration permissions receives email and try to renew or delete the group – he/she will also be able to do that.

Q: Can user get information on groups he/her owns, groups expiration data? Can user renew the group before the policy trigger email notification?
A: yes, all that can be done from the page: https://myaccount.microsoft.com/groups/groups-i-own

Scenario with many existing inactive groups

Let say we have a large Microsoft 365 environment with many inactive groups, some of them are inactive for a long time – e.g. 1 or 2 years. We want to implement groups expiration policy, but we want to understand better the policy behavior.

Microsoft says: “The expiration period begins when the group is created, or on the date it was last renewed” and “When you change the expiration policy, the service recalculates the expiration date for each group. It always starts counting from the date when the group was created, and then applies the new expiration policy.”
So in case we implement the policy first time, we know that Renewal Date for all groups is just a Group Creation Date.

Q: What will happen if I activate the policy – will the policy immediately start generating emails to the owners of inactive groups or the policy will wait for expiration period minus 30 days?
A: Immediately. Once activated – policy starts detecting expired groups and sending notifications.

Q: Which groups the policy will be triggered against? All or Inactive only?
A: As per Microsoft, if at around 35 days before expiration it will be determined that group is actually active, the policy can renew the group automatically.
But definition of this activity is not disclosed and might be not the same as group activity status 90 days based on MS Graph data you can see at CA.
(I got notifications for groups that were not active recently but with Active status).

Q: In the case above – what would be the deadline? When the policy will delete the group?
A: If the group expiration period is passed, but the policy was just activated – it does not delete the group immediately. Policy allows ~30-35 days for owners to renew the group.
E.g. My test policy was activated May 3 and I got message for old group immediately, but it said that the group will be deleted on June 7.

Q: What if there are more than 10K emails – will it trigger Exchange throttling?
A: Most likely emails not sent will be sent next day.

Q: Can I specify a distribution list in the policy as an “Email contact for groups with no owners”?
A: Yes

Q: Can I specify an external e-mail address as an “Email contact for groups with no owners”?
A: TBC

Q: Can admin ask user to renew or delete the group by some other custom solution (skipping the policy)?
A: yes. Actually, “Renew group” button is just a link to the following Url:
https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/Group/RenewGroup?tenantId=<tenantId>&id=<groupId>
where <tenantId> is tenant id and <groupId> is group Id. So basically anyone

Microsoft 365 Groups object model

Let me explain the policy behavior in m365 group object model terms.

There is a group property “RenewedDateTime”. When group is created – this property is set up to group created date/time (same as group CreatedDateTime property value).
For the notification purposes the policy calculates “Expected Expiration DateTime” as RenewedDateTime plus “Group LifeTime” (number of days specified in policy, e.g. 180). First notification is triggered about 30 days before “Expected Expiration DateTime”, so the policy simply selects groups with RenewedDateTime property value less then current DateTime minus “Group LifeTime days” minus 30 days and sends notification starting from oldest group:

RenewedDateTime < Today - GroupLifeTime -30

When owner confirms group is still needed – RenewedDateTime is setup to current DateTime.

Q: When a user chose to “Renew group” – will it impact group activity?
A: No. If a user did not visit group – but just clicked “Renew group” – it will not trigger group last activity date. E.g. inactive group will still be inactive.

Q: Is there an API to configure Microsoft 365 groups expiration policy programmatically?
A: Yes, in MS Graph API it is called Group Lifecycle Policy: groupLifecyclePolicy. 

Q: Can I programmatically renew the group (all groups) as an admin?
A: Yes, consider using PowerShell 7 and PnP.PowerShell module.
PnP Doc says Reset-PnPMicrosoft365GroupExpiration command “Renews the Microsoft 365 Group by extending its expiration with the number of days defined in the group expiration policy set on the Azure Active Directory” – but that does not seem accurate. This command sets up “RenewedDateTime” group property to the current datetime, not related to current policy settings (the policy might even not have been activated).

Q: Is it possible to setup “RenewedDateTime” property to another date/time of my choice (not today)?
A: I could not find a way so far… It says
Property 'renewedDateTime' is read-only and cannot be set.

Q: What permissions are required to renew the group with Reset-PnPMicrosoft365GroupExpiration?
A: TBD

Screenshots

Notification e-mail that comes to group owners “as is” – web outlook view:

Notification e-mail that comes to group owners when content is unblocked (web outlook):

Notification e-mail that comes to group owners when pictures are loaded (desktop Outlook):

Notification e-mail that comes to group owners some key areas:

And I’d add that e-mail says how many members in this group (number of members, not including owners… i.e. if you are the only owner – it’ll be zero members).
Correction: “Renew group” is not an actionable button – it is just a html button with a link.

Screenshot of the notification that comes to email specified in policy for the groups that does not have owners:

References

• Microsoft 365 group expiration policy
• Implementing Microsoft 365 group expiration policy in large orgs