I am not perfectly fluent in this, so I would like to see some detailed advice as much as you, but for the problem of the geosurvey group: If you have a carrier for those geo probes, you can just go to the "special order/organization" tab in the carrier task force after launching them all, where you will find the means to set a default order (like survey) and then the ability to copy those default orders to all sub formations (which the geo probes are automatically since they come from this carrier).
You then probably want to set the default order to neutral again for the carrier, unless he is meant to help, but the rest of the group will now start exploring automated. Only works for one kind of automation however, so if you do geo and grav survey simultaneously, you either have two carriers, or survey craft that can do both (though you will then still need to do it one after another).
If you are asking to quickly separate your survey craft from a carrier, read the tooltip for "divide TG" on the table just right of that.
Otherwise, if you don't use a carrier at all, then I fear I have not understood what the problem was. There is nothing that can possibly lighten the burden of micromanagement when it comes to single ships. Well, you could of course form groups by hand in the said "special order/organization" tab by assigning any number of ships to a leading one, and then just copy orders from the leader if you want to fly in several autonomous survey crafts to some system and then work automated. That would work.
If you are making a task force organization chart you could probably generate that relationship with such a structure (I just created a pseudo one to show it, and have not tested this):
The procedure would be to first detach "Branch+Sub" on the survey leader, and then head over to the other tab do use "divide TG". The leader then probably has the rights to copy his orders still ( can be checked by selecting any of the subordinates). If that doesn't work, then you can try to first make a "Branch Only" split right after the branch+sub step first. This formation will surely have a connection to their leader, so if you do a "divide TG" on those, it should be taking the flag over.
I have not tested any of this though, as I am perfectly fine with the state of affairs and sending out craft one by one. (and I am one that always seeks to minimize any micromanagement burden e.g.: by making ships large instead of many when resources become abundant) I guess it would really help if you do omnidirectional advance though, which I haven't done since my second game anymore, because indeed of complications in overview and management.