What is the different between New-MgGroupMember and New-MgGroupMemberByRef?

Question

Hi All,

I am curious, what is the difference between using New-MgGroupMember and New-MgGroupMemberByRef?

I know how to use them both and I know for New-MgGroupMemberByRef you need to use an Odata bind defined within a hashtable. But why are there different commands to achieve the same result? Am I missing the reasoning behind there being two very similar commands like this? the same goes with all the other duplicate commands that are appended with 'ByRef'..

Thank you
Dan

Answer 1

Hello !Daniel Bradley

Thanks for reaching out!

As per my understanding, both cmdlets let you create a member in a group. New-MgGroupMember cmdlet adds a member to an Office 365/security group through the members navigation property whereas New-MgGroupMemberByRef creates new navigation property ref to members for group.

Sample query using New-MgGroupMember:

New-MgGroupMember -GroupId '987648e7-b23a-4328-bd46-f1bd431c2354' -DirectoryObjectId '6aqc50d3-fcbd-4727-a889-8ab232dfea01'

Here we are straightforwarding passing the value. This adds a member specified by the DirectoryObjectId to the specified group.

Sample query using New-MgGroupMemberByRef:

Import-Module Microsoft.Graph.Groups
$params = @{
	"@odata.id" = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/{id}"
}
New-MgGroupMemberByRef -GroupId $groupId -BodyParameter $params

We make use of HashTable while using above cmdlet.

Hope this helps.

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