Setting default associated group via PowerShell not working

Question

In SPO we have a couple of sites that lack a default group for the "Allow members to share this site and individual files and folders".

I'm trying to set a SharePoint security group named "OOTB Visitors" as the default group for this through PowerShell.

Through the GUI it's easily done by going into the group choosing:

In PowerShell I found a method for the web named .CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups()

However, I can't get it to work. I don't get an error message but it also doesn't change anything.

Any idea what I'm missing?

Here's my code:

$ctx = Get-PnPContext
$web.CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups('Owners', $null, 'OOTB Visitors')
$web.Update()
$ctx.ExecuteQuery()

Answer 1

Please try the following code:

Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll"  
Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll"  

$siteURL = "https://xxx.sharepoint.com/sites/wendy2"  
$userId = "[email protected]"  
$pwd = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter password" -AsSecureString  
$creds = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($userId, $pwd)  
$ctx = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($siteURL)  
$ctx.credentials = $creds  
try{  
    $web = $ctx.web  
    $ctx.load($web) 
    $ctx.executeQuery()  
    $web.CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups('xxx', $null, 'xxx')
    $web.Update()
    $ctx.executeQuery()
}  
catch{  
    write-host "$($_.Exception.Message)" -foregroundcolor red  
} 

Answer 2

I believe to have fixed it. I noticed that the first argument passed into CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups has to be a site owner present in the user information list for that site. Retrieved one via Get-PnpUser, stored the result in an object and passed it as the first argument. Note however that if the groups are already present no duplicates will be created.