If you need to update a SharePoint site title (site name) programmatically (e.g. with PowerShell), and if this site is a group-based site (e.g. Microsoft Teams team site or Viva Engage community site or…) – you should not update SharePoint site title, but you should update group display name instead. Here is why.
In Microsoft 365 there is no sync from SharePoint site title to a group name. When you are updating SharePoint site title with GUI – you can see that new site title becomes new group/team name as well. So you might think that if you update SharePoint site title – Microsoft synchronizes it to connected group name. That’s not true. Actually when you are updating a group-based (e.g. teams-connected) SharePoint site title with GUI – Microsoft updates group first, then syncs updated group display name to SharePoint site name (title).
Here is the proof:
That’s a network trace I got with browser dev tools when I renamed site (updated site title) with GUI. So you can see the first API call is to update group, then group properties are synced back to site.
When we are updating a standalone site title – we are not seeing these calls.
So, if you need to update group-based site title programmatically – you must update group instead.
# does not work for group-based (e.g. Teams) sites:
Set-PnPTenantSite -Identity ... -Title "New Site Title"
# instead, you'd update group display name
Set-PnPMicrosoft365Group -Identity ... -DisplayName "New Display Name"
# and site title will be updated accordingly