Introduction
Groups are an important part of cloud administration because they make it easier to manage users, access, ownership, and licenses in an organized way.
As part of my cloud computing learning journey, I completed a Microsoft Entra ID lab focused on basic group management tasks. In this exercise, I practiced creating a Microsoft 365 group, creating a security group, adding members to groups, assigning group owners, and assigning licenses at the group level.
The goal of this lab was to understand how groups help administrators manage users more efficiently in a cloud environment. Instead of handling every user individually, groups allow access and resources to be managed for multiple users at once.
Below are the steps I followed for this task.
Step 1: Create a Microsoft 365 group
Open the Microsoft Entra admin center at https://entra.microsoft.com and log in using your tenant credentials.
From the menu on the left, select Groups, then choose All groups. Next, select the New group option.
- Enter the requested information:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Group type | Microsoft 365 |
| Group name | Project23 |
| Group description | This group consists of members of the new AI Simulation software with codename Project23 |
| Membership type | Assigned |
- Under the Members heading, select No member selected, then add Bhogeswar Kalita by marking the checkbox and choosing the Select button. After that, select the Create button.
Step 2: Create a Security group
Open the Microsoft Entra admin center at https://entra.microsoft.com
From Groups, select All groups, then select the New group option again.
Enter the requested information:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Group type | Security |
| Group name | Guest Users |
| Group description | This group has all the Guest users currently in the tenant. |
| Membership type | Dynamic User |
Note: My initial tenant did not support the Dynamic User membership option, so I used a separate lab tenant with Microsoft Entra ID P2 trial enabled to complete this part of the exercise. This allowed me to test dynamic group membership and create a rule that automatically adds guest users to the group.
Under the Dynamic user members heading, select Add dynamic query.
Create a dynamic query with the following values and then select Save:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Property | userType |
| Operator | Equals |
| Value | Guest |
- Select the Create button.
- From the Groups page, select Refresh, then open the Guest Users group we just created and select Members.
This verifies that the dynamic membership rule automatically added the guest user we created earlier to this group.
Step 3: Add an existing user to a new group
Open the Microsoft Entra admin center at https://entra.microsoft.com
From the menu on the left, select Groups, then All groups and then select the Project23 group we created in Task 1.
Select the Members option from the menu, then select + Add members near the top of the page.
Mark the box next to External User and use the Select button.
Sub-Step 1: Alternative method to add an existing user to a new group
- Open the Users menu, then select All users and then find and select External User from the list.
- Select Groups from the menu, then select + Add memberships. Choose an existing group and use the Select button to add the user to the group.
Step 4: Add licenses and owners to a group
Open the Microsoft Entra admin center at https://entra.microsoft.com
From the menu on the left, select Groups, then All groups and then select the Project23 group we created in Task 1.
- Choose the Owners option from the menu.
Note: Your tenant administrator will automatically be added as the owner of a group, if no owner is specified.
- Select + Add owners, mark the box next to Bhogeswar Kalita, and use the Select button.
Notice the new owner has been added to the group.
Sub-Step 1: Adding a license to a group
Open a new tab and go to the Microsoft 365 admin center at https://admin.microsoft.com.
From the menu on the left, open the Billing section and select Licenses.
Select Microsoft 365 Business, then select Assign licenses.
Search for and select the licensing group, such as Project23-License, then select Assign licenses to save.
- Close the You assigned licenses notification and use the Refresh button to see the added group license assignment.
Note: Microsoft Power Automate Free was available at the user level in my tenant, but it did not appear as a group-assignable product under Billing > Licenses. Since the objective of the task was to practice group-based license assignment, I used the available Microsoft 365 Business license instead.
Also, the original Project23 group was created as a Microsoft 365 group, but it did not appear in my license assignment search results. To complete the group-based licensing part of the lab, I created a separate Security group named Project23-License, added the project users to it, and assigned the Microsoft 365 Business license to that security group.
Conclusion
Completing this Microsoft Entra ID group management lab helped me understand how groups are used to manage users, access, ownership, and licenses in a cloud environment.
In this exercise, I created a Microsoft 365 group, created a security group, added members to groups, assigned group owners, and practiced group-based license assignment. I also learned the difference between assigned membership and dynamic membership, and how licensing or tenant limitations can affect the options available in Microsoft Entra ID.
One important lesson from this lab is that groups make cloud administration easier because access and licenses can be managed for multiple users at once instead of handling each user individually.
This lab strengthened my understanding of Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft 365 administration as part of my wider cloud computing learning journey. It also gave me more confidence working with groups, users, licenses, and basic access management in a cloud tenant.
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