Managing groups in a large environment often proves to be a significant admin burden, and that’s if groups are even being properly managed yet.
If you’ve ever had to dig through a sea of old, inactive groups to find the ones that actually matter, you know the pain. Whether it’s project groups in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint sites and their related Office 365 groups, or just general-purpose groups, they tend to stick around long after they’ve served their purpose.
What is Group Expiration?
Group Expiration is a feature in Entra ID that automatically cleans up inactive Microsoft 365 groups and allows admins to define how long a group should last before it’s considered “expired.”
After a group hits its expiration date, it either gets renewed or deleted, depending on whether it’s still in use. And don’t worry, if a group gets deleted accidentally, it enters a soft-delete phase, so you’ve got time to recover it before it’s gone for good.
Why You Should Care About Group Expiration
Prevent Group Sprawl
In any organization, groups multiply quickly, especially when you’re relying on collaboration tools like Teams or SharePoint. Without a system in place, groups tend to linger long after their purpose is done, creating clutter and confusion. Group Expiration keeps that under control by automatically removing inactive groups.
Streamline Governance
Manually managing the lifecycle of groups can be tedious and more importantly, time consuming. With Group Expiration, you can set it and forget it, automating governance so you can focus on the stuff that actually matters.
Enhance Security
Stale groups aren’t just a clutter problem, they’re a security risk. Old, inactive groups can often be forgotten, leaving open permissions or access points that no longer need to exist. Group Expiration helps to ensure that only active groups stay in your directory, reducing your attack surface.
Pro Tip: Group Expiration forces group owners to stay on top of their resources. If no one renews a group, it gets removed, keeping your environment clean and lean.
How Group Expiration Works
The expiration process is pretty straightforward. Here’s how it works, step by step:
- Set Expiration Date – Groups are given an expiration period (e.g., 180 days).
- Notifications – Group owners receive an email 30 days, 15 days and 1 day before the expiration date notifying them that their group is about to expire. They can then choose to renew the group, extending its lifecycle, or let it expire.
- Deletion – If the owner doesn’t renew the group, it gets deleted. Deleted groups may be restored up to 30 days after deletion.
How to Set up Group Expiration
You’ll need Entra ID Premium P1 or P2 to access this feature. Assuming you’ve got the right license, here’s how to set it up:
- Sign in to Azure and navigate to Entra ID.
- Go to Groups > Expiration.
- Here, you can configure the Group lifetime in days, what email addresses will receive notifications if a group has no assigned owner and the scope of the Group Expiration feature.
- Save your changes.
Restoring a Deleted Group
Mistakes happen and emails can be missed, luckily Entra ID provides a 30-day soft-delete period for groups, so even if a group expires and gets removed, you can recover it within that window.
Steps to Restore a Group in the Portal
- Navigate to Entra ID > Groups.
- Select Deleted groups.
- Find the group you want to restore and click Restore group.
Best Practices and Key Considerations
Security Tip: Combine Group Expiration with Entra ID Privileged Identity Management (PIM) to enforce tighter access control and monitor privileged roles more effectively.
Assign Group Owners: Groups without owners can’t be renewed. Make sure every group has a responsible owner to manage renewals.
Audit Group Activity: While Group Expiration automates a lot of cleanup, conducting regular group activity audits ensures you catch any edge cases.