Orphaned teams and groups

In ShareGate Protect, a team or group is considered orphaned when there are no assigned owners or when the owners are unlicensed and/or deactivated. For example, a team or group may become orphaned if users are deleted from Microsoft 365 or the Azure Active Directory.

Assign users as owners of orphaned teams and groups with ShareGate. Do this as a quick action, through the team or group details, or as a bulk action.

ShareGate provides a list of recommended owners that shows the 3 members with the most recent Teams, Outlook, or SharePoint activity.

Tip: It's best practice to have at least 2 owners for each team and group. That way there's always someone available to receive notifications and take action on your policies.

Index

• How-to find orphaned teams or groups
• How-to assign owners
  • As a quick action
  • In the team and group details
  • As a bulk action
• Notifications
• What to expect when you add a new owner to an orphaned team or group

How-to find orphaned teams or groups

ShareGate crawls for orphaned teams and groups once every 24 hours. This information is displayed on the Manage page.

Choose between your tenant's Teams or All Groups.

Select the tile Orphaned teams/groups or click to apply the filter No owners under Number of team/group owners.

How-to assign owners

As a quick action

1. Select Manage from the sidebar and apply filters.
2. Hover over the row of the team or group that you want to add an owner to.
3. Click Add owner.
4. In the Add owner(s) pop-up, select user(s) from the recommendations or click + Or pick someone else to choose a specific user.
5. When you're ready, click Confirm.

In the team and group details

Select the row to open the team and group details. In the Overview tab, you will see:

• A list of recommended owners (e.g., members with the most recent activity).
• *The previous owner.
• *When that owner was deactivated and/or unlicensed.

Select user(s) from the list of recommendations, pick someone else from your organization, or promote a current member to owner

Note: *The previous owner will only be listed if ShareGate detected the team or group as orphaned. If the team or group was orphaned before connecting your tenant, that information is not available.

As a bulk action

Perform a bulk action to add a specific owner to multiple teams or groups at the same time.

1. Select Manage from the sidebar and apply filters.
2. Check the box beside the team or group names.
3. Click Add owner in the bulk action menu.
4. In the Add owner(s) pop-up, select the user(s) you want to add.
5. When you're ready, click Confirm.

Notifications

The user(s) will receive an email saying that they have been selected as the new owner of the team(s) or group(s).

What to expect when you add a new owner to an orphaned team or group

If the orphaned team or group is:

Active - ShareGate emails the new owner to let them know you've selected them as an owner.

Inactive - ShareGate emails the new owner to let them know you've selected them as the owner and asks them to decide whether the team or group should be kept, deleted, or archived.

Note: The option to archive a team or group is only available if you have set up an Azure storage account to store your data. For more information, see Archive overview.