Microsoft Groups

Microsoft 365 groups are used for collaboration between users, both inside and outside your company. With each Microsoft 365 group, members get a group email and shared workspace for conversations, files, calendar events, and a planner.

This is an Early Access feature. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature for your tenant.

Using the policy-based data protection solution from Cohesity Cloud Protection Service, you can back up and recover Unified Groups data in Microsoft 365.

This topic covers the following:

Considerations

Review and understand the following considerations before you protect your Microsoft 365 Groups data:

  • Mail-enabled security groups, security groups, and distribution lists are not supported.

  • Granular recovery of Group sites is not supported when Site Tagging is enabled.

  • Backup of Groups (Public and Private) with no owners is supported when at least one Exchange Online licensed member is available in the Group.

    If no owners/members are available in the Group, you can contact your Cohesity account team to configure a service account (with an Exchange Online license). This service account will be added as a member of the Group before backup/recovery and removed after the backup/recovery is completed.

    This is a Private Preview feature. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature.

  • File/folder permissions with no role will not be recovered since Microsoft does not allow adding such permissions via Graph APIs. For example, no role will be assigned when a Restricted View permission is added to a user from Advanced Setting.

  • During the recovery process:

    • The original sharing link is not restored. Instead, a new sharing link with similar settings is created.

    • Passwords associated with sharing links, if set, are not restored.

  • Microsoft 365 items with only special characters will not be listed in granular search. The item name must contain at least one alphanumeric character to be listed in the search result.

  • All the OneDrive and SharePoint limitations are applicable to Groups.

  • Groups tagged to Teams can be directly protected during Groups protection if Teams workflow is not enabled.

  • Recovery always creates a new version. The actual creation time and owner details of the file are not recovered. The current time is displayed as the creation/modification time and the SharePoint app is displayed as the owner/modifier.

  • Backup and recovery of OneNote files in OneDrive.

    • For new Microsoft 365 tenants (created after November 1, 2024), certificate-based authentication must be enabled.

    • For existing tenants (created before November 1, 2024), backup applications must be updated to use modern authentication and must be granted SharePoint admin permissions.

    • The first OneNote backup after enabling this feature may take longer than usual incremental backups, as it will include all OneNote files that were previously skipped.

    • This is a Controlled Availability feature. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature.

  • Backup and recovery of subsites within Teams sites are supported.


    When you search for a site using its display name, only items from that specific site are displayed. However, if you search using the URL of the site , items from that site and all its subsites are displayed

    This is a Controlled Availability feature. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature.

  • The following metadata fields are restored when Groups data is restored:

    • Created By (author)

    • Modified By (editor)

    • Created Date

    • Modified Date

      During cross-domain restore operations, the Created By (author) and Modified By (editor) fields are not restored because the corresponding users from the source domain will be unavailable in the target domain.
      The Created By metadata is not restored if the user referenced in the Created By field is deleted. The Modified By and Created By metadata are not restored if the user referenced in the Modified By field is deleted.

    • Backup and recovery of System Document Libraries and Templates is supported.

    This is a Controlled Availability feature. Contact your Cohesity account team to enable the feature.