Connecting to Microsoft 365 SharePoint and Graph API from Azure Function App

TBP

Microsoft 365 retention policies: Static vs Adaptive scope

Adaptive scopes are good, but what if both policies are implemented? Which one wins?
The scenario for two policies might be: static retention policy is implemented as default retention policy for all sites, and if site require different retention or deletion – it should fall under one of the adaptive scopes and an adaptive retention policy will be applied.

Implementing Microsoft 365 group expiration policy in large companies

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WIP

Scenario

Let say you administer a large Microsoft 365 environment (e.g. ~100k+ users and/or ~50K+ sites) and after some years you have a lot of ownerless groups and sites (around 5k probably), and a lot of inactive groups and sites (maybe 15k). And new ownerless groups are coming at a pace of dozens per week? You a thinking of stopping bleeding and cleaning this up…

Out-of-the-box we have Microsoft 365 groups expiration policy and Microsoft 365 ownerless groups policy. You might also have some 3-rd party tools implemented – e.g. ShareGate, SysKit.

If you do not care – you might just activate both OotB Microsoft policies – via GUI – they are simple to activate. But once you activated policies – they will trigger thousands of emails. Now imagine a person is getting dozens of emails asking him/her to be an owner or to renew the group that maybe does not make much sense… What’ll happen? Right, people will probably ignore these notifications. What will happen next? Groups and sites will be automatically deleted. And then? Right, there will be a noise and many angry users and high-priority tickets and you will have to restore sites/teams and finally you’ll have to look for groups owners manually.

So, what is the right way to clean-up a large Microsoft 365 environment from ownerless and inactive teams, groups sites?

Not a trivial question, hah?

Solution

TBP

Implementing Microsoft 365 groups expiration policy

If you are thinking of activating in an existing environment – you would probably have a spike – all the old groups will be subject to policy. The ide is to avoid situation when a specific person – group owner will get dozens of email. It would be better if a person will receieve, let say one email per week.

Here is my 4 possible approaches to avoid this spike, distribute notifications evenly across the time and ease the pain:

By changing Group Lifetime

You would need to change the policy every, e.g. week, specifying different group lifetime in days period. Consider
– calculate number of days between the oldest group created an today, plus 35 days – it’ll be your first “group lifetime”
– activate the policy with this number of days in “group lifetime” – and within a week you will get notifications on the oldest group/groups
– after a week or two – change the “group lifetime” decreasing it by e.g. 30-60 days and reactivate the policy… and so on

You can easily calculate it all and choose your pace depending on how many groups you have to renew, how much time you need to clean-up. You got the idea.

Downside – in the email notification it will be said “otherwise the group will be deleted on …”, but once you start joggling with dates – this will not be true probably.

By renewing groups as admin

tbp

By sending customized e-mails to users

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By sending users to the groups page

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Microsoft 365 group expiration policy deep dive

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Nobody likes garbage, including Microsoft 365 administrators. If any user can create a team or yammer community – they create, but then they leave company and we are getting more and more abandoned groups, teams and SharePoint sites. So we need a way to clean up environment. There is a Microsoft 365 groups expiration policy that can help remove unused groups from the system, but since all Teams and Yammer sites are group-based – it also helps SharePoint admins make things cleaner.

Who can configure the policy and how

The policy lives under Azure Portal, Azure Active Directory, Groups, Expiration:

Microsoft 365 groups expiration policy can be configured by Groups Admin or Global Admin (tenant admin) only. Microsoft 365 Teams or SharePoint admin cannot configure it. Microsoft says that User administrator can do it – so I need to verify it.

Here is the policy config screen:

Microsoft documented it well in the “Microsoft 365 group expiration policy“, but I completed some tests in my lab environment and here is what I found and what is not covered by Microsoft. Let me share it with Questions and Answers format:

Questions and Answers

General questions

Q: How long it takes for policy to start generating notification emails after activation?
A: Immediately, i.e. minutes, maybe up to one hour (in case there groups that are subject for the policy).

Q: Can I customize email that is send to group owners?
A: No, there is no such option at the moment.

Q: What is the email address notifications come from?
A: It’s “msgroupsteam@microsoft.com” with the display name “Microsoft Groups Team”

Q: What does a notification email look like?
A: Please find some examples below, in the end of this article.

Q: Are there any other ways to get notifications? Teams chat? Phone message?
A: I’m not aware of phone messages, but I have seen notification in teams: “TeamName is expiring soon. Renew now”:

but I got only one teams notification, though e-mails notifications I got many.

Q: What happens when a user clicks “Renew group” button in the email notification?
A: User will be sent to a Microsoft’s page and the following “Do you want to renew the group?” window will be shown:

On Yes, it says”<groupName> was successfully renewed. You can close this window now”:

And the group expiration date will be set up as current date.
On “No” it says “Group was not renewed. You can close this window now.”:

And an expiration day will not be changed. No more notifications will be generated. The group will be active until expiration date. Then the group will be deleted.

Q: What if two owners choose opposite?
A: The last action will take effect.

Q: what if one user choose “delete group” but the other one later decided “Renew group”?
A: The one who click “Renew group” will see “<Group Name> successfully renewed. Because the group was deleted, it might take up to 24 hours to be fully restored. You can close this window now.”

Q: What if the group does not have owners?
A: If the group does not have an owner, the expiration emails will go to the email specified in policy configuration. Usually it is a distribution list with admins or other responsible team.

Q: What if I deactivate the policy – will email notifications sent earlier still be actionable?
In other words, would users still be able to renew the group clicking on the “Renew group” button?
A: Yes. Actually “Renew group” button is just a link to the Url:
https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/Group/RenewGroup?tenantId=<tenantId>&id=<groupId>
where a group owner can renew group.

Q: If one of the owners renewed the group – what will happen with notifications sent to other owner? What if other owner click “Renew group” or “delete group”?
A: Notifications sent will stay. Since buttons in the email are just links (not actionable buttons) – user will be redirected to a web-page where he/she will be able to renew or delete the group.

Q: As per MS: “Groups that are actively in use are renewed automatically around 35 days before the group expires. In this case, the owner does not get any renewal notifications. Any of the following actions will automatically renew a group…<list of actions>”. So, what exactly does “Groups that are actively in use” mean?
A: This is not disclosed by Microsoft. They only say “Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), part of Microsoft Entra, uses intelligence to automatically renew groups based on whether they have been in recent use. This renewal decision is based on user activity in groups across Microsoft 365 services like Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Yammer, and others.” Btw, <list of actions> includes almost all user actions – so basically any action – even just visit site/team is considered as activity.

Q: Can I track the policy in action via audit log?
A: There is no “activity type” for this policy’s specific actions… You also cannot specify user “msgroupsteam@microsoft.com” to get all activities. So no tracks on the policy “before action” – i.e. at the detection and e-mailing stage. If a user clicks “renew” button or “delete group” link – this should be logged as this user action. If it happens that the group is deleted by policy – this should be logged under policy’s account – I’ll follow up on this. TBC.

Q: After the group is deleted, who can restore it?
A: MS says: “A deleted Microsoft 365 group can be restored within 30 days by a group owner or by an Azure AD administrator”.
In fact, SharePoint admin,

Q: What if a user forward this e-mail notification to other user? Can this other user renew or delete the group?
A: When a user receive a notification email forwarded, and he/she click “Renew group” button – his/her experience will be the same if he/she is also a group owner. If a user is not a group owner – he/she will get “You don’t have permission to renew this group because you’re not an owner. To renew , contact a group owner. You can close this window now.”:

Note: if a user with active groups administration permissions receives email and try to renew or delete the group – he/she will also be able to do that.

Q: Can user get information on groups he/her owns, groups expiration data? Can user renew the group before the policy trigger email notification?
A: yes, all that can be done from the page: https://myaccount.microsoft.com/groups/groups-i-own

Scenario with many existing inactive groups

Let say we have a large Microsoft 365 environment with many inactive groups, some of them are inactive for a long time – e.g. 1 or 2 years. We want to implement groups expiration policy, but we want to understand better the policy behavior.

Microsoft says: “The expiration period begins when the group is created, or on the date it was last renewed” and “When you change the expiration policy, the service recalculates the expiration date for each group. It always starts counting from the date when the group was created, and then applies the new expiration policy.”
So in case we implement the policy first time, we know that Renewal Date for all groups is just a Group Creation Date.

Q: What will happen if I activate the policy – will the policy immediately start generating emails to the owners of inactive groups or the policy will wait for expiration period minus 30 days?
A: Immediately. Once activated – policy starts detecting expired groups and sending notifications.

Q: Which groups the policy will be triggered against? All or Inactive only?
A: As per Microsoft, if at around 35 days before expiration it will be determined that group is actually active, the policy can renew the group automatically.
But definition of this activity is not disclosed and might be not the same as group activity status 90 days based on MS Graph data you can see at CA.
(I got notifications for groups that were not active recently but with Active status).

Q: In the case above – what would be the deadline? When the policy will delete the group?
A: If the group expiration period is passed, but the policy was just activated – it does not delete the group immediately. Policy allows ~30-35 days for owners to renew the group.
E.g. My test policy was activated May 3 and I got message for old group immediately, but it said that the group will be deleted on June 7.

Q: What if there are more than 10K emails – will it trigger Exchange throttling?
A: Most likely emails not sent will be sent next day.

Q: Can I specify a distribution list in the policy as an “Email contact for groups with no owners”?
A: Yes

Q: Can I specify an external e-mail address as an “Email contact for groups with no owners”?
A: TBC

Q: Can admin ask user to renew or delete the group by some other custom solution (skipping the policy)?
A: yes. Actually, “Renew group” button is just a link to the following Url:
https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/Group/RenewGroup?tenantId=<tenantId>&id=<groupId>
where <tenantId> is tenant id and <groupId> is group Id. So basically anyone

Microsoft 365 Groups object model

Let me explain the policy behavior in m365 group object model terms.

There is a group property “RenewedDateTime”. When group is created – this property is set up to group created date/time (same as group CreatedDateTime property value).
For the notification purposes the policy calculates “Expected Expiration DateTime” as RenewedDateTime plus “Group LifeTime” (number of days specified in policy, e.g. 180). First notification is triggered about 30 days before “Expected Expiration DateTime”, so the policy simply selects groups with RenewedDateTime property value less then current DateTime minus “Group LifeTime days” minus 30 days and sends notification starting from oldest group:

RenewedDateTime < Today - GroupLifeTime -30

When owner confirms group is still needed – RenewedDateTime is setup to current DateTime.

Q: When a user chose to “Renew group” – will it impact group activity?
A: No. If a user did not visit group – but just clicked “Renew group” – it will not trigger group last activity date. E.g. inactive group will still be inactive.

Q: Is there an API to configure Microsoft 365 groups expiration policy programmatically?
A: Yes, in MS Graph API it is called Group Lifecycle Policy: groupLifecyclePolicy.

Q: Can I programmatically renew the group (all groups) as an admin?
A: Yes, consider using PowerShell 7 and PnP.PowerShell module.
PnP Doc says Reset-PnPMicrosoft365GroupExpiration command “Renews the Microsoft 365 Group by extending its expiration with the number of days defined in the group expiration policy set on the Azure Active Directory” – but that does not seem accurate. This command sets up “RenewedDateTime” group property to the current datetime, not related to current policy settings (the policy might even not have been activated).

Q: Is it possible to setup “RenewedDateTime” property to another date/time of my choice (not today)?
A: I could not find a way so far… It says
Property 'renewedDateTime' is read-only and cannot be set.

Q: What permissions are required to renew the group with Reset-PnPMicrosoft365GroupExpiration?
A: TBD

Screenshots

Notification e-mail that comes to group owners “as is” – web outlook view:

Notification e-mail that comes to group owners when content is unblocked (web outlook):

Notification e-mail that comes to group owners when pictures are loaded (desktop Outlook):

Notification e-mail that comes to group owners some key areas:

And I’d add that e-mail says how many members in this group (number of members, not including owners… i.e. if you are the only owner – it’ll be zero members).
Correction: “Renew group” is not an actionable button – it is just a html button with a link.

Screenshot of the notification that comes to email specified in policy for the groups that does not have owners:

References

Inactive SPO sites and groups remediation

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(WIP)

FastAPI on Azure Functions with Azure API Management

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Following Pamela Fox tutorial “FastAPI on Azure Functions with Azure API Management“.

The idea is to deploy FastAPI to Azure Functions the way auto-generated interactive documentation would be public, but actual API would be protected. Pamela solved it with Azure API Management and subscription keys:

“One of my goals was to have the documentation be publicly viewable (with no key) but the FastAPI API calls themselves require a subscription key. That split was the trickiest part of this whole architecture, and it started at the API Management level.”

Pamela published it in 3 parts:
– the idea and solution explained under her blog: FastAPI on Azure Functions with Azure API Management
– code and some initial steps at GitHub: pamelafox/fastapi-azure-function-apim
– video with more deploying details at YouTube: Deploying FastAPI app to Azure Functions + API Management

I will just repeat all the steps in this one-pager.

Environment I use: Linux Ubuntu + VS Code with “Dev Containers” extension and azd

Clone https://github.com/pamelafox/fastapi-azure-function-apim
Start visual studio code and reopen the project with container
ensure it works locally with
PYTHON_ISOLATE_WORKER_DEPENDENCIES=1 func host start
Deploy it to Azure functions with (you’d answer questions):
$ azd auth login $ azd init $ azd up
Go to API management Service, Subscriptions, Add subscription, copy the key (secure it)
From API management service, Overview – open Gateway URL and append it with “/public/docs”
Try GET /generate_name as is – you’ll get “401”
Try the same with subscription key – you’ll get “200”
Save Request Url to call the API from your front-end app

Nest steps:

calling other APIs
connecting to Databases
using secrets

Orphan Microsoft 365 groups in large environments

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Usually Microsoft 365 group can be created by anyone in your org as part of creation a team, Yammer community, Outlook group, SharePoint site etc. If the group owner lefts the company and account got deleted – the group became ownerless.

It would be a nightmare if we’d reach ownerless groups members peron-to-person trying to find out who is a real data owner and who should be a group owner. So we need some kind of automated way.

There is a Microsoft’s ownerless groups policy that detects ownerless groups and sends emails the most active groups members with the question- if they want to become a group owners and in case member accept ownership – policy automatically elevates a person from a group member to group owner. Policy does not cover standalone sites, but majority of orphaned resources in org are usually m365 groups, so that policy should help.

The policy was designed to prevent ownerless groups concept in mind, i.e. to deal with ownerless groups gradually – stretched in time – when they become ownerless. So it is actually recommended to activate the policy once you get the tenant right away. Configuration is done via GUI, it is intuitive and straightforward. Microsoft documented it well, but if you still have questions regarding the policy behavior – here is my Q&A on what is not covered by Microsoft’s FAQ as well as some tips and tricks and gotchas…

The problem is that Microsoft introduced this feature just recently, and if you own the tenant for years, you probably already have some ownerless groups. In small and medium environments with a few dozens of ownerless groups it’s not a big issue, but in a large Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online environment you might end up having hundreds and thousands of ownerless (orphaned) resources you have to deal with.

The challenge is how to implement the policy correctly if there are already many ownerless groups present and then to take care of groups that will become ownerless in the future. Yes, we’d need to address two consecutive issues:

Remediate vast amount of existing ownerless groups
Prevent groups to become ownerless

Obviously we’d need two different strategies and policies configurations.

There are also 3-rd party tools – like SysKit Point that can help with orphaned resources by enforcing minimum number of owners. There is also “Orphaned resources” policy under SysKit that allows multiple workflow options to resolve the issue – but there is no “fully automated” option -all SysKit options require an interaction from admin/manager.

Microsoft 365 built-in feature – “Ownerless groups policy” allows fully automated process:

detects ownerless groups, and for every group found
generate e-mail invitations to most active group members
assigns users as group owners if they accept invitation

Another problem in large environments is we have strict requirements we want to satisfy:

end-users to get only a few emails in a certain period so they can process it
end-users get only relevant messages so they will not ignore further notifications
high percentage of acceptance and (ideally) no orphaned resources

We want the policy to be tested in production but within a small group first and then we want phased implementation – so we could have a chance to get a feedback on phase 1 and adjust our approach at phase 2 etc.

The policy allows limiting policy scope in two ways:

by limiting “who can receive” messages – it’s done by specifying a security group – so only this security group members will be eligible to get invitation and accept or decline it
by limiting Microsoft 365 groups that would be in scope for the policy – it’s done by specifying group names

Two options can be specified in the same policy and effective eligible members would be those who satisfy both requirements.

Configuration is done using GUI – i.e. there is no PowerShell commands known on the subject at the moment.

There are a lot of “what if” questions regarding the policy – most of them are resolved in Microsoft’s “Microsoft 365 ownerless group policy FAQ” and my Ownerless m365 groups Q&As, gotchas, findings…

But the most important gotcha for me is that we do not have a chance to re-configure the policy or re-activate it to get more messages for the groups all messages were generated earlier. I.e. if an e-mail messages were generated for a group and the policy stopped working after a specified period of time – it’d done forever. No more e-mails could be generated for the same group.

The other limit is you can specify maximum 50 m365 groups in policy under Apply policy to Specific groups option. And we’d keep in mind exchange’s limit of 10k emals per day.

So, having this said, what would be the proper approach to do phased implementation in terms of configuring policy to scope it down for each step?

First – know your data. Get full report on ownerless groups, analyze it and come up with approach. Let’s assume we have an org with ~100K users and ~5000 ownerless groups. I bet you will find out that you have

large m365 groups (50+ members): <1%, i.e. 10-20 groups
medium m365 groups (5-50 members): ~25%, i.e. ~1000-2000 groups
small m365 groups (1-5 members): ~50%, i.e. ~2500 groups
null m365 groups (0 members): ~25%, i.e. ~1000-2000 groups

You’d might have your own classification, but I would propose the following approach to each category.

large groups:
configure policy with “Apply policy to Specific groups” option
and specify all or several of your large groups (the limit if 50 allowed groups in this field)
medium groups:
configure policy not scoped down (e.g. apply to all groups, all users)
small groups:
elevate all group members to owners
optionally – elevate specific titles (manager, lead) or salary grade members to owners
null groups:
consider deleting these groups
optionally – delete only inactive no-members groups or groups with no or small amount of storage/files.

You’d also come up with the ideas on

desired min and max number of owners
deleting groups/sites phased approach
archiving groups/teams/sites

Remember – this is production, so at this moment you should test the policy in non-prod an be fully comfortable with all aspects of configuring the policy and formatting e-mail template etc.

As a remediation part plan I would propose the following:

(WIP)

Wave 0 – piloting

select a few (3-5) ownerless m365 groups came from IT – whose members are your pilot team members, so you could finalize all settings and polish notification message etc.