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Office 365 Group and SharePoint Site

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Office 365 Group is a feature for collaboration, a unified entity to access various Office 365 Apps. It makes use of Azure AD, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and so on. To know more about Office 365 Groups, refer Learn about Office 365 Groups.

Office 365 Group internally creates a hidden SharePoint site. Initially, I had few questions in mind. I have listed the questions and answers below for your reference.

  1. What site template does the site, created using Office 365 group, refer to?

    The site uses "GROUP#0" web template. This special web template is not available to create site collection in tenant administration.

  2. Does the site use special master page?

    Yes. The site uses "boston.master" page from Master Page Gallery. There is a very little documentation available about this master page. This master page derives from SPBostonMaster class.

  3. Can we customize the master page of group's site using SharePoint Designer?

    No. The master page editing is disabled for the group specific site.

  4. Where does the Office 365 Group Notebook is stored?

    The Office 365 Group's SharePoint site has a library "Site Assets". The group stores the Notebook in Site Assets library. By default, this library is not created until any group member opens the Notebook.

  5. What are the default lists / libraries, the SharePoint site has?

    There are only three document libraries: Documents, Form Templates and Style Library. Site Assets library is created after any group member visits the Notebook first time.

  6. What are the different application pages ("_layouts/15") being referred with SharePoint site?

    The classic view refers to three application pages as listed below.

Files

/_layouts/15/GroupDocuments.aspx

Shared with Us

/_layouts/15/sharedwithus.aspx

Recycle Bin

/_layouts/15/GroupRecyclebin.aspx

 

The modern view refers only single application page "_layouts/15/Group.aspx" with query string for each tab.

Files

?GroupId=<group id>&AppId=Files

Shared with us

?GroupId=<group id>&AppId=SharedWithUs

Recycle Bin

?GroupId=<group id>&AppId=RecycleBin

 

This information helped us to determine the site type using PowerShell script. While provisioning the site collection, the URL namespace started colliding with already existing site collections. Some of the site collections were created by Office 365 groups.

These insights will be helpful to program against CSOM, REST API.