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Introduction

Restoring Microsoft 365 Groups is crucial for maintaining business continuity and ensuring access to essential collaborative data. This guide provides a comprehensive overview of restoring Microsoft 365 Groups using Druva, including step-by-step procedures, considerations, and limitations.

Understanding the Restore Process

Restoring a Microsoft 365 Group involves a specific sequence to ensure all components are accurately recovered:

Group Metadata Restore: The process starts by restoring metadata, re-creating the group with the original settings before deletion.
Planner Restore: After restoring the group, Planner data—including tasks, buckets, and comments—is restored (excluding attachments).
Group Mailbox Restore: Next, emails are restored, followed by attachments.
SharePoint Restore: Lastly, SharePoint data is restored, ensuring that Planner-related attachments stored in SharePoint are recovered.

📝Note: If a Group Site is quarantined, the corresponding group is also quarantined. Full restoration is not possible for quarantined group data.

Restore Specific Groups Data

📝Note: Ensure the Group is in an enabled state.

Procedure:

Sign in to the Druva Cloud Platform Console.
Navigate to Microsoft 365 > Groups.
Select the desired group or click on its name.
📝Note - Before you restore Planner, ensure you have the members of the plan available. Restored Planner plans will only display assignments for members who are part of the plan.
Click Restore Data.
In the Snapshot Viewer, select a snapshot to restore data.
📝NOTE: Snapshots appear only when a Group and its associated sites have been fully backed up. If a backup is in progress, snapshots are not visible.
Select the group settings and review snapshot details for the SharePoint site.
Choose the data to restore and click Restore.
In the dialog box, select the restore location:
- Restore to the same Group:
  - Select Restore to the same Group.
  - Click Next.
  - Choose to restore Owners' or Members' group settings.
  - Click Restore.
  📝NOTE: Selecting group settings is recommended to prevent restore failures.
- Restore to a new Group:
  - Select Restore as a new Group.
  - Enter the new group name.
  - Select group visibility: Private (requires permission), Public (open to all in the organization), or None (for Security Groups).
    Note: If "Azure AD roles can be assigned to the group" is enabled on the Microsoft 365 portal, restoration is only allowed with Private visibility.
  - Click Next.
  - Choose to restore Owners' or Members' group settings.
  - Click Restore.
  📝NOTE: If the group no longer exists, the data is restored as a new group.

Restore full Group

You can perform a full restoration, including Group Metadata, Planner, and Site Data.

📝NOTE: Ensure that the Group is in a configured state.

Procedure

Sign in to the Druva Cloud Platform Console.
Navigate to Microsoft 365 > Groups.
Select the desired group or click on its name.
Click Restore Data.
In the Snapshot Viewer, select a snapshot.
Choose the items to restore and click Restore Full Group.
Follow the steps for restoring to the same or a new group as outlined above.

Restore considerations

1. Group Restoration Limitations

Distribution Groups or Mail-enabled Security Groups are restored as new Microsoft 365 Groups due to Microsoft API limitations. Owners of these groups cannot be restored.
Deleted groups on the Microsoft 365 portal can only be restored as new groups.
Restoring data to a new group without existing owners may result in Druva adding an owner to ensure proper management and protection.
📝NOTE: If a group has only one owner, it is not possible to remove that owner, as every group must have at least one owner to maintain control over settings, members, and content.
Group owners added by Druva can inadvertently gain access to a non-subscribed group in the following scenarios:
- Restore abruptly ends - The owner added by Druva will retain access indefinitely.
- Global admin is changed - Any owner added by Druva who could not be removed during the restore will retain access indefinitely.
- Group has no owner, or restore is tried without any owner - The owner added by Druva will retain access until a new owner is added to the group.

2. Geo-Location Limitations

Restoring a group site associated with a Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo tenant will restore the site data to the same geo-location. Changing the geo-location during restore will still result in the site data being restored to the original geo-location.

3. Planner Limitations

For more details on Planner Protection, please refer to Protect Microsoft 365 Planner.

4. Group Mailbox Restore Limitations

For more details on Group Mailbox Protection, please refer to Protect Microsoft 365 Group Mailbox.

5. Groups Naming Policy Considerations

When a restore is initiated, a group is created. The Microsoft Groups API leverages the Microsoft 365 groups naming policy and the new group is created as per the naming policy. For more information about the naming policy, see, Microsoft 365 groups naming policy in the Microsoft documentation.

Considerations when restoring to a new group or restoring a deleted group:

Custom Blocked Words Naming Policy
If the group name contains a blocked word, the restored group is created with the format <BlockedWord><RandomThreeDigits>.
- Example:
  - Blocked word: Sample
  - Original group name: Development Sample
  - Restored new group name: Development Sample123
For more information, see Custom block words in the Microsoft documentation.

Prefix-Suffix naming policy:

If configured, the restored group name follows <Prefix>Name<Suffix>.
- Example:
  - Prefix: CompanyName
  - Suffix: CostCode
  - Original group name: Development Sample
  - Restored new group name: CompanyName Development Sample CostCode