Microsoft 365 Groups are the backbone of various Microsoft 365 workloads. As you might know, each group utilizes a SharePoint site collection and an Exchange shared mailbox.
When creating a new Microsoft 365 group, SharePoint Online must store the associated site collection. SharePoint Online uses predefined paths to determine the storage location. These paths are called: Managed Paths.
SharePoint Online uses two different pre-configured managed paths:
- /sites
- /teams
With /sites as the default setting for the Microsoft 365 tenant.
Whenever you create, e.g., a new team in Microsoft Teams, the associated site collection is stored in https://TENANTNAME.sharepoint.com/sites/TEAMNAME. As a SharePoint administrator, you see the site collection paths in the list of active sites in the SharePoint Admin Center.
But what can you do if you want to store the associated site collections in the /teams managed path?
Changing the Managed Path
The SharePoint Admin Center allows you to change the managed path for sites created by users.
Open the SharePoint Admin Center, and navigate to Settings –Site Creation.
Change the setting for Create team sites under to /teams/.
The description of this setting is misleading. This setting affects not only SharePoint team site creation initiated by users on the SharePoint start page or OneDrive, but also site collections created by Microsoft 365 Groups.
You do not need to enable the checkbox to let users create sites from the SharePoint start page and OneDrive. This setting is only required when you want to enable the self-service creation of modern SharePoint sites for users. The modern SharePoint sites are based on Microsoft 365 Groups.
After changing the path, SharePoint Online creates new associated site collections for Microsoft 365 Groups in /teams/.
Note:
Changing this setting affects Microsoft 365 Groups in general. It does not control which Microsoft 365 app you use to create a new group.
The associated site collection for a new plan in Planner, a new team in Microsoft Teams, a new Group in Outlook on the Web, or even a new website in OneDrive, is created using this configured path.
Enjoy SharePoint Online.
