Managing administrator permissions is one of the most important responsibilities in Microsoft Entra ID. If you give every user individual permissions, you will quickly find yourself trapped in an administrative nightmare. That is where role-assignable groups in Microsoft Entra come to the rescue.
These special groups allow you to assign a Microsoft Entra role (like Helpdesk Administrator) to a single group instead of dozens of individuals. But how do you find these groups once they are created? Let’s break down exactly how to locate all role assignable groups in Microsoft Entra ID.
What Are Role-Assignable Groups in Entra ID?
A role-assignable group is a special security group that can be assigned Microsoft Entra administrator roles instead of assigning those roles directly to individual users. For example, instead of assigning the User Administrator role to five different administrators, you can assign the role to one role-assignable group. Anyone who becomes a member of that group automatically receives the assigned administrative permissions.
This approach makes role management much easier because administrators only need to manage group membership instead of updating role assignments individually. Unlike regular security groups, role-assignable groups have additional protection. They cannot be converted from existing groups, and only highly privileged administrators can create or modify them.
Method 1: Find Role-Assignable Groups Using the Microsoft Entra Admin Center
If you only have a few groups to review, the Microsoft Entra admin center provides an easy way to identify them.
- Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.
- Navigate to Entra ID → Groups → All groups.
- Use the Role assignable filter.
- Select Yes.
The portal displays only role-assignable groups.
You can open any role-assignable group to review its members, owners, assigned administrator roles, and other group settings. This gives you a quick overview of who has privileged access through the group and how it is configured. For small environments or occasional audits, the Microsoft Entra admin center works well. However, as the number of privileged groups grows, manually reviewing each group becomes time-consuming.
Method 2: List All Role-Assignable Groups Using Microsoft Graph PowerShell
If you manage a large tenant, clicking through the portal takes too much time. You can use the modern Microsoft Graph PowerShell module to fetch this list in seconds. First, make sure you connect to your tenant with the right permissions.
Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "Group.Read.All" Once connected, run the below command to pull only the role-assignable groups.
Get-MgGroup -Filter "isAssignableToRole eq true" -All The IsAssignableToRole property identifies whether a group is role-assignable. Any group where this value is True can be assigned Microsoft Entra administrator roles.
PowerShell makes it easy to export results, schedule recurring audits, or combine the output with other reporting scripts.
Best Practices for Managing Role-Assignable Groups
Finding these groups is only the first step. Administrators should also review how they are being used.
It is a good practice to periodically verify that each role-assignable group is still required and that its membership accurately reflects the people who need administrative access. Temporary administrators should be removed once their work is complete, and inactive groups should be cleaned up whenever possible. Reviewing group owners is equally important because owners control who can join the group.
Organizations with privileged access policies should also include role-assignable groups in their regular security reviews to reduce unnecessary administrative permissions.
