eG Help

A Distribution Group (DG) is a group that contains two or more people, has an email address and appears in the Global Address List (GAL) for a company. Internal and External users can send emails to the DG and it will go to all members of the DG.

Typically, a Universal Distribution Group is a distribution group that is created only to serve as an email distribution group in Exchange. A security-enabled distribution group (or security group) on the other hand is created so that you can assign permissions to a large group of users instead of assigning permissions to individual users one at a time.

With the help of the O365DistbnGrpsTest test, administrators can easily and efficiently audit distribution groups. For each DG type (Universal and SecurityEnabled), this test reports the count and details of new, deleted, and modified groups of that type. Additionally, empty groups and orphaned groups are also brought to the attention of administrators. This way, administrators can identify groups that may have to be assigned new owners and groups that are still awaiting members.

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each DG type in the Office 365 tenant being monitored.

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Modified_groups	Indicates the number of groups of this type that were modified during the last measurement period.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which groups were modified and when.
Newly_created_groups	Indicates the number of groups of this type that were newly created during the last measurement period.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which groups were created, when.
Soft_deleted_groups	Indicates the number of groups of this type that have been soft-deleted.	Number	If you have deleted an Office 365 group, by default it's retained for 30 days. This 30-day period is called “soft-delete” because you can still restore the group. After 30 days, the group and associated content is permanently deleted and cannot be restored. During the “soft-delete” period if a user tries to access the site they will get a 403 forbidden message. After this period if the user tries to access the site they will get a 404 not found message. Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which groups were soft-deleted and when.
Total_groups	Indicates the total number of groups of this type.	Number
Orphaned_groups	Indicates the number of groups of this type that are orphaned/ownerless.	Number	If a group owner leaves your company the group could find itself without an owner. Such a group is called an Orphaned group. The content in the group is unaffected by this - the content belongs to the group and isn't tied to the owner's account. But not having a group owner means there's nobody with permissions to manage the group. Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which groups are orphaned / ownerless.
Empty_groups	Indicates the number of groups of this type that are empty currently.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to identify the empty groups. If any group is found to be empty for too long a time, you may want to delete such a group.