💬 Recipe · Microsoft Teams

List all Microsoft 365 Groups and Teams in the tenant

Inventory every Microsoft 365 Group and identify which ones are Teams-enabled

Complexity

Beginner

Impact

inventory + governance + reporting + read-only

Context

Why This Matters

Microsoft 365 Groups are the membership backbone for Teams, SharePoint sites, Planner, Outlook distribution, and Yammer communities. Over time, tenants accumulate hundreds or thousands of groups — some created deliberately by admins, others auto-provisioned when users spin up a new Team or Planner board. Without periodic inventory, it becomes hard to answer basic governance questions: How many Teams do we have? Which groups are orphaned? Are there duplicates?

This recipe produces a complete inventory of every Microsoft 365 Group in your tenant and flags which ones are Teams-enabled (vs. Outlook-only groups or SharePoint-only groups). Run it as a starting point for lifecycle cleanup, license chargeback, security reviews, or migration planning.

Expected Outcomes

After completing this recipe, you will have:

A complete list of all Microsoft 365 Groups in the tenant, with display name, description, and group type
A clear distinction between Teams-enabled groups and other group types (Outlook, Security, Distribution)
Group IDs that can be fed into follow-up scripts (membership audits, archival, deletion)
An exportable CSV suitable for sharing with governance, security, or compliance stakeholders

Risks & Considerations

Things to watch for

Permissions: You need Group.Read.All (delegated or application). Without it, the Graph call returns HTTP 403.
Paging: Tenants with more than 100 groups will return an @odata.nextLink. You must follow it or you will miss groups. The sample script handles this automatically.
Throttling: Very large tenants (10k+ groups) may hit Graph throttling. Add retry-with-backoff or use $top=999 to reduce round trips.
Soft-deleted groups: This query does not return deleted groups. To include them, query /directory/deletedItems/microsoft.graph.group separately.
Privacy: Group names and descriptions can contain sensitive project codenames. Treat the export as confidential.

Required Permissions

Permission	Why It's Needed
Group.Read.All	Required to list all Microsoft 365 Groups and read their properties, including groupTypes and resourceProvisioningOptions which identifies Teams.
Directory.Read.All	Alternative broader permission that also grants read access to all directory objects including groups.

The fastest way to get this done: just ask Dex. Copy the prompt below and paste it into your Dex conversation.

For IT Admins

Paste into Dex Pro

List every Microsoft 365 Group and Team in our tenant. Include display name, description, group type, whether it is Teams-enabled, and the primary email. Export the result as CSV and give me counts by type.

Try in Dex Pro

List groups via Microsoft Graph

The Graph /groups endpoint returns every group in the directory. Select resourceProvisioningOptions to identify Teams — a group is Teams-enabled when this collection contains the string "Team".

Request

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups?$select=id,displayName,description,groupTypes,resourceProvisioningOptions,mail,visibility&$top=999

Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
ConsistencyLevel: eventual

Sample response

{
  "@odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#groups",
  "@odata.nextLink": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups?$skiptoken=...",
  "value": [
    {
      "id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
      "displayName": "Marketing Team",
      "description": "Marketing collaboration space",
      "groupTypes": ["Unified"],
      "resourceProvisioningOptions": ["Team"],
      "mail": "marketing@contoso.com",
      "visibility": "Private"
    }
  ]
}

Interpreting the result

groupTypes = ["Unified"] → Microsoft 365 Group (has mailbox, SharePoint site)
groupTypes = ["Unified", "DynamicMembership"] → Dynamic M365 Group
groupTypes = [] with securityEnabled = true → Security group
resourceProvisioningOptions contains "Team" → Teams-enabled

Paging

Follow the @odata.nextLink URL until it is no longer returned. Each page holds up to 999 items when $top=999.

Filter to Teams only

GET /v1.0/groups?$filter=resourceProvisioningOptions/Any(x:x eq 'Team')&$count=true
ConsistencyLevel: eventual

The ConsistencyLevel: eventual header is required for advanced queries ($filter on resourceProvisioningOptions, $count, $search).

List groups and Teams with PowerShell

The Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK wraps the Graph endpoints shown above and handles paging and token refresh automatically.

Prerequisites

Install the module (one-time):

Install-Module Microsoft.Graph -Scope CurrentUser

Connect with the required scope:

Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "Group.Read.All"

List all groups and flag Teams

# Get every group, requesting only the fields we need
$groups = Get-MgGroup -All -Property Id,DisplayName,Description,GroupTypes,ResourceProvisioningOptions,Mail,Visibility

# Project into a flat report with an IsTeam column
$report = $groups | ForEach-Object {
    [pscustomobject]@{
        Id          = $_.Id
        DisplayName = $_.DisplayName
        Description = $_.Description
        GroupType   = if ($_.GroupTypes -contains 'Unified') { 'Microsoft 365' } else { 'Security/Distribution' }
        IsTeam      = $_.ResourceProvisioningOptions -contains 'Team'
        Mail        = $_.Mail
        Visibility  = $_.Visibility
    }
}

$report | Format-Table -AutoSize
$report | Export-Csv -Path ".\Groups-Inventory.csv" -NoTypeInformation

Quick counts

$report | Group-Object GroupType | Select Name,Count
"Teams: " + ($report | Where IsTeam).Count
"Total groups: " + $report.Count

Next steps

More Microsoft Teams recipes

Browse the rest of this category in the Dex Cookbook.

Automate this with Dex Pro

Let the autonomous IT engineer run this task under your policies.

Start free

Point Dex at a tenant and try it for 30 days, no credit card.