How do I increase directory object quota limits to prevent issues with creating Groups?

Question

I have a service account that creates M365 Groups to go with small projects. It does this through Power Automate with a POST request to the Graph API. Recently the flow started experiencing intermittent errors with the following message: "The directory object quota limit for the Principal has been exceeded. Please ask your administrator to increase the quota limit or delete objects to reduce the used quota."

Through some searching, I see that a limit of 250 Groups applies to non-admin users. This service account has admin privileges and has already created close to 2000 Groups. How can make sure this service account is operating within quota limits and/or increase those so they are no longer an issue?

TIA,

Bryan

Answer 1

Hello Bryan,

Thanks for your question.

To address this, you can consider implementing group lifecycle to remove inactive groups after a set time. This will help ensure that you have up to date groupings based on usage

See.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/users/groups-lifecycle

If you want to raise the limit or quota above the default limit, you will need to open a support request. See:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/quotas/quickstart-increase-quota-portal

Regards,

Abiola

Answer 2

@Bryan Bates Thank you for reaching out to us, seems you have hit the default quota limit and assuming you have reviewed this doc - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/users/directory-service-limits-restrictions would request you to contact our support team for further assistance in increasing the default quota.

Let me know if you have any further questions, feel free to post back. If in case you dont have a support contract reach out to us via private message sharing your Azure Subscription ID where we can help with the support options.

Answer 3

Hi Bryan Bates,

Thank you for posting in the Q&A Forums.

First, you need to confirm that the service account does have administrator privileges and understand the specific quota limits in Microsoft 365 (M365) for group creation. Typically, Microsoft sets different quota limits based on different subscription plans and license types. Admins can view and modify these restrictions through the Microsoft 365 admin center.

If your service account has created nearly 2,000 groups and the standard quota limit is much lower than that, cleaning up groups that are no longer needed is a straightforward and effective way to reduce the quota used. This can be achieved by writing a Power Automate flow that automatically identifies and removes groups that have not been used for a long time or that meet specific cleanup criteria.

Consider how you want to optimize how your groups are used and managed. For example, you can evaluate whether all created groups are necessary, or whether you can reduce the total number by merging groups.

Best regards

NeuviJ

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