Category Archives: Microsoft 365

SharePoint Site Ownership Policies Deep Dive

SharePoint Site Ownership Policies comes with SharePoint Advanced management or Copilot and is part of Site Lifecycle Management. In a nutshell, it does 1) Identify sites that don’t meet organization’s ownership criteria, 2) send notifications to find new site owners or admins and 3) automatically mark sites in read-only (or just report). Below is my deep dive in this policy.

I will not retell what is already documented by Microsoft, but you can find some gotchas below.

Notification emails start coming in a few minutes after you activate the policy. From email address is
SharePoint Online <no-reply@sharepointonline.com> .

Here is how a notification email looks like (in case site has one owner and need another one):

SharePoint Site Ownership Policies Notification email example (in case site has one owner and need another one)

Site Name (title) is mentioned 4 times. There are 3 links in the email (SharePoint logo, site title and “Go to site” button) – all lead you to the root of the site that needs an owner.

The email template is not customizable at the moment (June 2025) and might mislead a little, as it says “Site Name” needs a site owner. but site does have an owner. Policy want an existing single owner to assign as second owner, which is said further in smaller font and not much people are able to force themselves to read. (Update: we expect Microsoft released Site lifecycle management policies v 2 before Sep 2025).

What I really do not like here is that even for group-based sites (e.g. teams) the policy asks to add a “site owner“, though it should be “team owner”. The only difference is if the site is a teams-connected site – there is a subtitle “Connected to Teams”:

I’d also assume that some users will need additional instructions – how to add a second owner to the site. There might be a confusion in terminology – who is the site owner, like “there are plenty people in ‘My Site Owners’ group – why am I asked to add one more?”

In case the site does not have owners and the policy is configured to send messages to site members and/or manager, here is an example of the email notification:

SharePoint Site Ownership Policies Notification email example (in case site does not have an owner and needs one to be assigned)

Basically, the difference is it says “Would you like to be a site owner?” vs “Identify an additional site owner to ensure compliance.” and the button says “Become a site owner” vs “Go to site“.

You cannot forward this email to other users (you can, but content will not be the same). Here is the example:

SharePoint Site Ownership Policies Notification email example (in case something is not configured correctly at the Exchange level, or network or computer etc. ) and the message is rendered as "This email contains actionable items that aren't supported by this client. Use a supported client to view the full email."

There are other cases an email comes as “This email contains actionable items that aren’t supported by this client. Use a supported client to view the full email.”

TBC:

Sites regulated by policy

Configuring the policy, we can choose site template – e.g. Classic sites, Communication sites, Group connected sites without teams, Team sites without Microsoft 365 group and Teams-connected sites to scope down the policy with the kind of sites the policy will be applied to.

We know, that template site was created with does not actually guarantee the kind of site in it’s current state. E.g. we can convert classic site to a group-based site or we can create site with no team and later create a team for the site.

With that said,
Question: what Microsoft means by “Sites regulated by policy” – template site was created with or current site category?

Owners vs Admins

Another moment I’d like to clarify is what Microsoft means by owner and admin, as configuring the policy

Under the “Who should be responsible for each site?” we can specify “Site owners” and/or “Site admins”
Under the “Who should be notified (via email) to assign or claim site responsibility?” we can not only specify “Current site owners” and/or “Current site admins”, but also “Manager of previous site owner and admin” and “Active members”

We know that for group-based sites “Group owners” of the Microsoft 365 group associated with site is actually goes to site collection administrators and nobody is added to SharePoint “site Owners” group by default. At the same time at the SharePoint site you can add users to site collection admins and/or to the default SharePoint “site Owners” group (the one with “Full Control” permissions. Moreover, nothing prevents us to create a SharePoint group “Site Business Owners” with e.g. read-only permissions to the site or e.g. create a SharePoint group “Board Members” with “Full Control” permissions to the site.

So, question: who according to Microsoft’s policy implementation are considered as site owners and site admins? Does it change for different types of sites?

References, helpful links:

SharePoint Inactive Site Policies

Leave a reply

SharePoint Advanced Management includes Inactive Site Policies under Site lifecycle management. Effective content lifecycle management is a key pillar of SharePoint governance. It plays a vital role in optimizing storage, preserving data integrity, and ensuring regulatory compliance. By systematically removing inactive or outdated sites, it also enhances security. Additionally, it supports successful Copilot implementation by ensuring that the information accessed is both accurate and current. So, how exactly this Inactive site policy works and what is the difference between Entra Id groups expiration policy and SharePoint Inactive Site Policy.

SharePoint Inactive Site Policy vs m365 Groups Expiration Policy

The Groups Expiration Policy has been a feature of Azure AD (Entra ID) for quite some time. It is included at no additional cost. This policy automatically notifies group owners about upcoming expirations and provides options to renew or delete the group. Since all self-created Teams teams and Viva Engage communities are backed by SharePoint sites and managed through Microsoft 365 Groups, this policy also plays a significant role in SharePoint governance ensuring that information stored in SharePoint remains current and properly maintained. I have an article Microsoft 365 group expiration policy deep dive.

Inactive Site Policy is a feature of SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM), which is an add-on and require premium SharePoint license. It also Identifies inactive sites, Sends notifications to site owners and can automatically archive or make sites read-only. Sound like very similar to to groups expiration policy.

Key differences

Feature	Groups Expiration Policy	Inactive Site Policy
Where to configure Who can configure	Entra Id Groups Admin	SharePoint Admin center SharePoint Admin
Scope (policy is applied to)	Microsoft 365 Groups (including group-based sites, like teams, yammer)	SharePoint Sites (including both – group-based and non-group-based sites)
Who is notified	Group Owners	Site admin (group owner), site owners (*) TBC
Notifications come from email	msgroupsteam@microsoft.com	no-reply@sharepointonline.com
What if resource is active	group is automatically renewed, no emails sent	policy is not triggered against active sites
Can admin download report (list of inactive groups/sites)	No	Yes
Period of inactivity configuration	Configured in days, should be greater than or equal to 30 days	Options are: 1, 2, 3 or 6 months
Actions available (Options provided) to a resource owner	renew the group delete the group	certify site learn how to delete a site
What happens with resources owner did not take action (or with orphan resources).	Notifications is sent to a specific email address, group is deleted	site is archived or set to read-only or nothing

Inactive site policy user experience

Here is how the email notification looks like:

Note that

The email subject includes “Action required” and site title (name).
It always says “… has been inactive for more than a month” even if the policy configured for “6 months”.
It shows SharePoint logo, which might mislead “teams-oriented” users.
Site title is not clickable, so site admin/owner cannot just click site link but have to navigate to site manually.
When user clicks button “Certify site” – a message “The action completed successfully” pops up at the bottom of the email for a few seconds and then disappears. The email itself does not change, so when a user opens the same email again – there is no visual evidences the action was taken.

At the bottom of the email Microsoft mentions tenant name.

The email template is the same for all kinds of policies – it does not matter if the policy action is configured configured as “do nothing”, or to automatically enforce archive site or set it to read-only. I.e. email just says “Select Certify site to confirm if it’s still in use, or consider deleting it if the site is no longer needed.”. Email does not inform users that site will be set to read-only or archived.

Also there is no link where a user can get more info on the subject, but Microsoft says that inactive sites policy email template will be customizable – in the Site lifecycle management policies v2 expected summer 2025.

Admin – Inactive sites report

You can download a csv report of inactive sites generated by policy.
Report includes fields:
Site name, URL, Template, Connected to Teams, Sensitivity label, Retention Policy, Site lock state, Last activity date (UTC), Site creation date (UTC), Storage used (GB), Number of site owners, Email address of site owners, Number of site admins, Email address of site admins, Action status, Total notifications count, Action taken on (UTC), Duration in Read-Only.

There is no GUI to see the list of inactive sites (you can only download a csv file), but there is a magic button “Get AI insights”.

Get AI insights

Here are insights I have seen so far:

Inactive sites with significant storage usage
Multiple sites owned by the same account
Sites with Multiple Owners
Sites inactive for over a year

Inactive sites policy behavior

Policy sends emails immediately after policy activation. That means if you have thousands of inactive sites you might hit a 10k exchange limit of daily emails sent.

If a user owns multiple inactive sites – he/she will get multiple emails.

You can scope the policy down by site template, sensitivity label and creation source if you want different behavior for different types of sites, e.g. if you want to setup longer period of inactivity for one type of sites and shorter for others… not sure when it makes sense…

Implementing an Inactive sites policy

First of all – It is highly recommended to take care of ownerless sites (find owners) before triggering an Inactive sites policy.

If you have a relatively new tenant – you probably have not much inactive sites, so turning the policy on should not be a problem. The older your tenant is the more inactive sites you have. For older tenants you probably already have a lot of inactive sites – ant that could be a problem. So we’d need to take care of initial policy implementation, and after some time it will just work so we could forget about it.

There is no way to pilot this policy with pre-selected scope of sites or users. You can scope the policy down by site template, sensitivity label and creation source, but you cannot scope the policy down the way only sites or uses you want to be a testers or pilot project members will be the target of the policy.

In small orgs there should be no problems implementing this policy. Still I would start from just getting a report. There is a “How long after the last activity should a site be considered inactive?” configuration, so I’d start from the longest – 6 months, then move to the shortest you need. Medium orgs could get some ideas from recommendations to large orgs below.

In large orgs you might

trigger a spike in number of tickets submitted by users who needs help
hit a maximum sending limit with Exchange Online which is 10,000 email recipients per day

So it would be crucial for enterprises to avoid an initial surge and start from smaller number of recipients, and gradually let the policy work at a full strength. One of the options to achieve that would be

configure the policy for reports only, get inactive sites report
select sites owner and admins in a separate list – then select only unique ones – so every user will get only one email, split this list into small chunks
communicate to site owners (by chunks) – using enterprise-approved “send from” email and enterprise-branded email template saying that the policy is gonna be implemented, you might receive an email (like this one – screenshot), you can trust this email and click buttons. A list of site urls user owns must be included in the email, so user could visit these sites
(Optionally) you can instruct users how they can delete sites if site is no longer needed or archive sites if they are not sure if it is still needed or not

If so – it’d

forewarn users so they would know to do and not be surprised and would create less tickets
users might choose to delete or archive sites which would also
users would visit their inactive sites and trigger sites activity, and that should dramatically decrease number of emails sent to users initially, on the day one of policy implementation
ideally – if users visit all sites – you’d have no inactive sites, so you’d just turn the policy on with no fear

then you’d wait for a couple of weeks, get new report to ensure that you have much less inactive sites – and you’d just enable the inactive sites policy (starting from the longest period – 6 month of inactivity)

References

Content Shared with Everyone: Access Review

Leave a reply

This article is for SharePoint or Microsoft 365 admins focusing on governance and information protection. If you have SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) – aka SharePoint Premium licensed or you got at least one Copilot for Microsoft 365 license (as having m365 Copilot license automatically enables SharePoint Advanced Management in tenant), then under reports – Data access governance (in SharePoint admin center) – you can not only get Content shared with ‘Everyone except external users’ (EEEU) reports, but also initiate access review. Let us look more closely at this functionality and discuss the pros and cons..

I’ll not repeat Microsoft documents:
– SharePoint Advanced Management
– Content shared with ‘Everyone except external users’ (EEEU) reports
– Site access reviews for Data access governance reports
but I’ll focus on what is not there and a real-world experience.

Reports

First of all, report does not provide you with all SharePoint content shared with “Everyone except external users”. Report helps you with what was shared with EEEU in the last 28 days. That drastically limits usage of this feature. I.e. you should first get initial report on the all content shared with EEEU, and somehow take care of it by other means (consider How to Find Content Shared with Everyone in SharePoint and Teams), and only then you can use this Microsoft’s content shared with EEEU report and access review.

You can share content with EEEU or directly – by adding EEEU to resource permissions directly or by including EEEU into SharePoint group. So content shared with EEEU reports come in two flavors – “Specific files, folders and lists” and “Site membership”

“Specific files, folders and lists” user experience

When you initiate access review from the “Specific files, folders and lists” type of report – users (site admins/owners) get email notification that says “You have sites with specific files, folders or lists shared with ‘Everyone except external users’. This means everyone in your organization has access to this content. Review the items shared for potential oversharing and manage their access.“

Content Shared with Everyone: Access Review - notification email example

Scrolling down, in the email, site owner can see a list (table) of incompliant sites with the following columns: Site name, privacy, sensitivity, external sharing and “Items shared”. Site name is clickable and sends user to the root of the site.

Below the list of sites there is a button “View shared items” that sends user to the special system page –
“https://orgname.sharepoint.com/teams/site01/_layouts/15/siteaccessreview.aspx/<id>” where he/she can see list of SharePoint items shared with EEEU. Columns are: (item) Name, Shared on (date), Shared by (email), Action (manage access). Item name and manage access are clickable.

Content Shared with Everyone: Access Review - user experience - siteaccessreview.aspx page example

If an item is a library item – e.g. document or a folder – it is displayed correctly – with icon according to the doc type and doc name. Clicking on the doc name – an actual document opens so you can review it’s content.

If item is a list item – it is displayed incorrectly – no icon, no meaningful info about the item (it is displayed as “”). Clicking on the link – a warning icon and message “Can’t preview this file. Open the file or download it to view in your desktop app”. Buttons “Open” and “Download” are there but not helpful as well.

Clicking on “Manage access” opens almost standard “Manage access” dialogue you can have via “manage access” item context menu, but with no “…” more options at the top right:

which makes this dialogue screen useless, as you can only provide additional access to the item or remove all access. You cannot remove EEEU from access without three dots “More options”.

Manage Access from the Policy:

Regular Manage Access:

“Stop sharing” literally removes all permissions to the item except owners

Under the “Groups” tab – you’d see that the item is shared with “Everyone except external users” but you will not be able to remove just this group from access…

By clicking on a group name – site owner will be able to change this group permissions, but the option “No direct access” is not selectable…

“Site membership” user experience

In the case with a “Site membership” report, text would be slightly different: “You have sites where ‘Everyone except external users’ has been added to the site membership. This means everyone in your organization has access to this site. Review site permissions for potential oversharing and manage access.“, which makes sense.

Right after that, in the email, site owner can see a list of incompliant sites with the following columns: Site name, privacy, sensitivity, external sharing and “Groups with org-wide access”. Site name is clickable and sends user to the root of the site.

content shared with EEEU access review - Site membership user experience - You have sites where 'Everyone except external users' has been added to the site membership. This means everyone in your organization has access to this site. Review site permissions for potential oversharing and manage access.

Then there is a button “View SharePoint groups” that sends user to the special system page –
“https://orgname.sharepoint.com/teams/site01/_layouts/15/siteaccessreview.aspx/<id>” where he/she can see list of SharePoint groups (clickable) with EEEU as members.

By clicking on a group name – admin opens standard SharePoint “People and Group” membership page:
/_layouts/15/people.aspx?MembershipGroupId=X, which is nice, because from this screed a site owner can simply remove this group from the access list using Actions-> Remove:

siteaccessreview.aspx page

User can navigate directly to the reviews page:
“https://orgname.sharepoint.com/teams/site01/_layouts/15/siteaccessreview.aspx” and if there were reviews initiated by SharePoint admins – and it’ll work – admin will see all access reviews initiated for this site – columns are: Review name, Description, Requested on (date), Status, reviewed by (email) and admin comment. In case no reviews were initiated against tie site – “You have no reviews to take action on” will be displayed. That’s good.

Complete review

On the bottom of the siteaccessreview.aspx page you’ll see “Complete review”

Click on it, add comment (optionally) and confirm:

SharePoint Admin is able to see the status of every site access review stats – pending or completed – in GUI and in the .CSV report saved.

Admin experience: GUI only

Once you got report – you can initiate access review. All must be done in GUI, click-click-click selecting sites… But what if you have thousands? There is no PowerShell cmdlets or API for this functionality, which really limits your ability to implement it gracefully, especially in large Microsoft 365 environments and automate it.

Download detailed report

Report “Specific files/folders/lists…” does not include files, folders, list – i.e. it does not include what exactly is shared with EEEU. Report includes site id, url, name, template, is it teams-connected, sensitivity (?), privacy, external sharing, primary admin name and email, and number of items (?) shared with EEEU.

So technically you can communicate to site owners, but you’d need to rely on them to figure out what content is shared with everyone.

Email template

When you initiate Site access review – an e-mail notification is send to site owners. This e-mail is not customizable at all. The only admin can do is to add a message (for every “initiate Site access review” action). But the email looks really similar to the site lifecycle policies email notification, and Microsoft is working on version 2 of the policies with a customizable email template.

This email comes from “SharePoint Online <no-reply@sharepointonline>” address (not customizable), so comes “from outside of your organization” and can be considered as scam.

Microsoft’s logos and other graphics are blocked by default and e-mail includes a button “View shared items” – enough red flags for users to consider it as spam. Keep this in mind.

The good news is e-mail contains site name – so site owner can recognize it at act accordingly.

Usage scenarios

Small tenants

In small Microsoft 365 environments – yes, this functionality probably can be used “as is” (and should be used). Especially for new tenants – I’d recommend enable reports and use this feature on a regular basis.

Medium-size tenants

I’m not sure. It depends on your governance rules and company culture.

Enterprises

I’m very pessimistic if this functionality is useful in large environments. Reasons are:

if your tenant is not new – you already have a lot of overshared content, so you still need to come up with your custom solution (idk – PowerShell scripts?) to deal with oversharing. But once you designed your custom solution – why don’t you continue to use it?
In enterprises usually all the communication must follow approved templates, branding and so on.
User experience of reviewing shares with everyone… and managing permissions designed very poorly… In enterprise you do not want to deal with thousands of tickets from site owners who could not figure it out
In enterprises you’d think of automation

Solving Issues with m365 Copilot Agents

Leave a reply

Issue # 1 – Unable to create

It says “Unable to create” and “We were unable to create this agent due to an error. Try again.”
or
“Unable to update” and “We were unable to update this agent due to an error. Try again.”

Unable to create
We were unable to create this agent due to an error. Try again.

Unable to update

We were unable to update this agent due to an error. Try again.

More info:
The problem appears to be when copilot tries to save agent (POST to https://powervamg.us-il105.gateway.prod.island.powerapps.com/chatbotmanagement/tenants/…/environments/Default-…/minimalBots/api/…/publish – it returns 500 Internal Server Error).

Cause:
In my case the cause was my license was assigned a few hours before, so it seems like it takes some time for Microsoft to populate updates.
In the other case I troubleshooted it turned out user did not have a license assigned (license was removed), but “Create an agent” button was available.

Solution:
Ensure you have a license for Microsoft 365 copilot assigned and (ideally) wait 24 hours.
Microsoft: “If you recently purchased a license or started a free trial, it may take up to 24 hours for the license to take effect.”

SelectedOperations.Selected permissions in SharePoint

Leave a reply

Microsoft says “Initially, Sites.Selected existed to restrict an application’s access to a single site collection. Now, lists, list items, folders, and files are also supported, and all Selected scopes now support delegated and application modes.”. This article deep-dives into providing and using SelectedOperations.Selected granular permissions to SharePoint:

Lists.SelectedOperations.Selected	Provides application access to a specific list
ListItems.SelectedOperations.Selected	Provides application access to one or more list items, files, or folders
Files.SelectedOperations.Selected	Provides application access to to one or more files or library folders

Set of SelectedOperations permissions is exactly what Microsoft promised a few years ago. And this is great, as we really need granular access to SharePoint sites. I’ve been supporting enterprise SharePoint for more than 10 years now, and I know that it was always a concern when application require access to a list/library or a folder or even document, but admins have to provide access to entire site.

Especially, I believe, this feature becomes more in demand because of Copilot for Microsoft 365. As for now – it’s mostly developers and data analytics who needs unattended application access to SharePoint, but what if regular users powered with m365 Copilot license start creating autonomous agents?

So below is my lab setup, PowerShell scripts and guides with screenshots on how to provide granular (not to entire site but to library/list or folder, or even just one document or list item) permissions to SharePoint and how to use provided permissions.

Admin App

First, we need an Admin App – an app we will use to provide permissions.

The only requirement – this app should have Microsoft.Graph Sites.FullControl.All API permissions consented:

Target Site and Dev Setup

For this lab/demo setup, I have created a team under Microsoft Teams (so it’s a group-based Teams-connected SharePoint site), then test list and test library:

There must be an App Registration for client application – application that will have access to Test-List-01 and Test-Lib-01 only. This app registration should have Microsoft Graph “Lists.SelectedOperations.Selected” API permissions consented:

and I will use Python to access SharePoint programmatically.

At this moment (we have a client app and secret, and “” API permissions, but did not provide for this app access to specific sites or libraries) – we should be able to authenticate to Microsoft 365, but not able to get any kind of data (we can get token, but other call to Graph API would return 403 error – Error: b'{“error”:{“code”:”accessDenied”,”message”:”Request Doesn\’t have the required Permission scopes to access a site.”,):

PowerShell script to provide selectedoperations.selected access for an app to a specific list would be as below. Here we use plain calls to MS Graph API. Full script for your refence is available at GitHub, but here is the essential part:

$apiUrl = "https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/sites/$targetSiteId/lists/$targetSiteListId/permissions"
$apiUrl 
$params = @{
	roles = @(
	    "read"
    )
    grantedTo = @{
        application = @{
            id = $clientAppClientId
        }
    }
}
$body = $params | ConvertTo-Json
$response = Invoke-RestMethod -Headers $Headers -Uri $apiUrl -Method Post -Body $body -ContentType "application/json"

Client Application

I use Python console app as a client application. Link to the code at the GitHub is shared below under References, but the core part of the Python code is (I do not use any Microsoft or other libraries here, just plain requests to Microsoft Graph for authentication and for data):

import requests
import json
from secrets import clientSc, clientId, tenantId, siteId, listId 

# specify client id, client secret and tenant id
# clientId = ""
# clientSc = "" 
# tenantId = "" 

apiUri = "https://login.microsoftonline.com/" + tenantId + "/oauth2/v2.0/token"

body = {
    "client_id"     : clientId,
    "client_secret" : clientSc,
    "scope"         : "https://graph.microsoft.com/.default",
    "grant_type"    : "client_credentials" 
}

try: 
    response = requests.post(apiUri, data=body)
    token = json.loads(response.content)["access_token"]
except:
    print("Error: ", json.loads(response.content)["error_description"])
    exit()

print("Got token: ", token[0:10], "...")
headers={'Authorization': 'Bearer {0}'.format(token)}

# Get specific site list
print("Geting specific site list")
# graph_url = 'https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites/' + siteId + '/lists/' + listId
graph_url = 'https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/sites/' + siteId + '/lists/' + listId
graphResponse = requests.get(   graph_url, headers=headers )
print(" Response status code: ", graphResponse.status_code)
if graphResponse.status_code == 200:
    list = json.loads(graphResponse.content)
    print(" List display name: ", list["displayName"])

Note.
I’m not sure if it’s a bug or my incorrect setup, but I noticed that if I provide access for the app to the list – app can read site.

TBC…

References

Automating SharePoint operations with Azure Functions

Leave a reply

There are many scenarios for SharePoint or Teams automations, and in most cases you need to run some code on scheduled basis (e.g. every 5 minutes or every 24 hours etc.). This is where timer-triggered Azure Functions might help. In this article I will provide use cases, overview of the whole scenario and technical setup, and provide links to the detailed step-by-step guides for configuring different parts of the entire solution.

Possible scenarios

Possible scenarios (end-user-oriented):

Create site upon user request
Convert site to a HUB site upon user request
Set site search scope upon user request
Setup site metadata (site custom properties)
Request usage reports/analytics

Possible scenarios (admin-oriented):

Provide temporary access to the site (e.g. during troubleshooting)
Provide Sites.Selected permissions for the App to the Site
Disable custom scripts or ensure custom scripts are disabled
Enable custom scripts (e.g. during site migration)
Monitor licenses – available, running out etc.

Typical setup

Front-end

SharePoint site works as a front-end. You do not need to develop a separate web application, as It’s already there, with reach functionality, secured and free.

The site can have:
– one or more lists to accept intake requests
– Power Apps to customize forms
– Power Automate to implement (e.g. approval) workflows, send notifications etc.
– site pages as a solution documentation
– libraries to store documents provided as response to requests

You can provide org-wide access to the site if your intention is to allow all users to submit requests or secure the site if you want to accept requests only from a specific limited group of people.

Back-end

Timer-triggered Azure Function works as a back-end. The function can be scheduled to run based on job specific requirements (e.g. every 5 or 10 minutes, or daily or weekly etc.). The function can be written in PowerShell, C#, Python etc.

The function’s logic is to

read SharePoint list, iterate through items to get intake requests
validate request eligibility
perform action
share results (e.g. update intake form, send e-mail, save document to library etc.)

Configuration

There should not be an issue to setup a front-end. You’d just need a solid SharePoint and Power Platform skills.

For the back-end the solution stack would include the following tools/skills:
– Azure subscription to host solution
– Registered Apps to configure credentials and API access permissions
– Azure Function App to actually run the code
– Azure Key Vault to securely save credentials
– programming skills in language/platform of choice
– SharePoint API, Microsoft Graph API

Please refer to the separate article Configuring Azure Function App and Key Vault to work with Microsoft 365 SharePoint via Graph API for the basic setup.

Secure

Having basic setup in place, we’d improve solution security. Specifically, we’d address the following:

Azure Function network security
Key Vault network security
Storage Account network security
Key Vault purge protection
tbc…

TBC…

References

Configuring Azure Function App and Key Vault to work with Microsoft 365 SharePoint via Graph API

Working with SharePoint from Python code via Graph API

Leave a reply

Python code samples published by Microsoft at the Microsoft Graph API reference pages use GraphServiceClient module. But you also can use just requests module and call Microsoft graph API directly, using requests.post or requests.get methods. Here I’m sharing my Python code samples.

https://github.com/VladilenK/m365-with-Python/tree/main/Graph-API-Plain

Azure ACS retirement: How to prepare your tenant – Guide for SharePoint Admins

Leave a reply

Microsoft announced EOL of ACS, and we as SharePoint administrators must take actions. ACS retirement as is a really big deal – entire era of SharePoint app-only service principals will be gone. SharePoint developers used ACS apps since 2013 to build solutions, and when it comes to software development – it always takes time. Imaging the code that was designed for ACS now needs to be reviewed and re-written to adopt changes, then re-compiled, re-tested, re-deployed etc. So it is critical that we should take measures now to avoid bigger issues in April 2026.

Recommended transition tactics: for developers

Get a new App Registration in Azure (Entra Id) with Sites.Selected permissions, ensure no ACS permissions provided to the app (see details on Sites.Selected) and use it
Prioritize using Microsoft Graph API
If Graph API does not provide required functionality – it’s ok to use SharePoint API, but keep in mind in this case certificate should be used (not secret) for authentication

Recommended transition tactics: for SharePoint admins

High-level recommended steps are:

Keep saving audit logs
Encourage users and developers to register applications in Azure (not in SharePoint)
Start providing Sites.Selected permissions
Disable ability for site owners to use AppRegNew and AppInv
Stop registering service principals via AppRegNew and providing ACS permissions via AppInv
Pull report on existing Apps that use ACS permissions
Notify developers and users of the ACS apps
Switch ACS off earlier than Microsoft

Thinkin on devs – keep in mind:
– ACS apps have a huge legacy – tons of articles and code examples and so on…
– Switching to a modern authentication method would require changes in code (though minor, but still), so developers must be engaged
– Any change in code would require another round of code compilation, testing, deploying etc.

That means it is not easy (sometimes it is not even possible) to adopt a new modern authentication method. It requires efforts and time, so you need to notify dev as earlier as possible. So it is crucial to complete steps above and start communicating to users as earlier as possible.

Detailed steps for SharePoint administrators:

Keep audit logs

This should be done in advance, but if you did not – starting today and until it’s over you’d get audit logs from Microsoft 365 purview center – consider selecting all events with record type SharePointAppPermissionOperation. Also might be helpful to keep events anyone visited appinv.aspx or appregnew.aspx page. Pull logs now starting with earliest available event (usually 90 days). Some audit logs are available only through Microsoft Graph API. See more details regarding audit logs for ACS tracking KBA.

Encourage users registering applications in Azure (not in SharePoint)

Creating App Registrations in Azure is usually not what SharePoint admins do. Sometimes users are allowed to register apps, sometimes it is blocked for a regular user and done by identity management (or so) but the main idea – users and developers should be able to get service principals (App Registrations) in Azure. Users would need Sites.Selected permissions consented (see more about Sites.Selected) or granular permissions consented (more on granular permissions to SharePoint).

Some pro’s of App Registered in Entra Id (vs SharePoint App-only service principals):
– It supports authentication with client secret and/or certificate, custom expiration time
– It supports both APIs – Microsoft Graph API and classic SharePoint REST API

Be prepared to instruct users how to get and use certificates in their app registrations.

Provide Sites.Selected permissions

99% of requests for application permissions to SharePoint would require access to a specific site (sites), or to a specific list/library/folder/file (but not to entire tenant). So consider providing Sites.Selected permissions by default (or granular permissions when they are in GA). Create a process so users can request permissions to SharePoint sites for their Azure-Registered Apps. Consider automation if you are a large company (here is one of the possible Sites.Selected automation solutions).

Inform user that ACS is deprecated and you do not provide any new ACS permissions.

Disable registering new service principals in SharePoint

Once you are good in providing non-ACS permissions, it’s time to disable registering service principals in SharePoint. Users should not be able to get a new SharePoint App-only service principals (apps that they used to get from SharePoint sites just going to AppRegNew.aspx).

Disable ability for site owners register service principals in SharePoint via appregnew.aspx is done via Set-SPOTenant PowerShell cmdlet:

Set-SPOTenant -SiteOwnerManageLegacyServicePrincipalEnabled $false

When the value is set to false, the service principal can only be created or updated by the SharePoint tenant admin. Using AppInv.aspx page will also be disabled for site owners. Your users will start seeing “Your SharePoint tenant admin doesn’t allow site collection admins…” message (see details), but that’s ok.

There might be rare cases when your in-house solutions or 3-rd party apps got their secrets expired and would require new legacy ACS-based permissions, it is tempting to allow ACS permissions as an exception (as technically it is possible for SharePoint service admin to provide ACS-based access to sites), but I would strictly discourage you to do so. If you decide to provide ACS – track this activity (so you know for whom this ACS-based permissions were provided).

Pull report on existing ACS Apps that use ACS permissions

You need to know who are your vulnerable clients – you should pull reports to get a list of existing Apps that use ACS permissions, apps owners, maybe sites these apps have access to and sites owners

You can get list of developers combining
– audit log data from Admin Center and Graph API
– report from Entra Id on apps and owners
– report from SharePoint sites on permissions provided for apps
– reports generated by PnP Microsoft 365 assessment tool

Here is the detailed KBA on how to get reports on legacy ACS service principals usage in tenant

Consider the following steps to get ACS apps owners

get ACS apps with permissions using Microsoft 365 assessment tool
pull these apps owners from Entra Id
using Graph API audit logs data – mark apps active/inactive based on date of the latest login

Notify developers and users of the ACS apps

From the step above we can have a lost of legacy ACS apps and their owners, as well as apps activity (last login), so we can start communicating developers (app owners):

As earlier as possible – e.g. in March-April 2025 (1 year before ACS EOL), notify all apps owners that they need to transition to Azure apps and Selected permissions
Get ACS apps activity and repeat communication, including active app owners
Get ACS apps activity and repeat communication, including owners of sites apps still have access to
Communicate to all apps owners that there will be a temporary and permanent shut down of ACS (see below)
I case you have ACS apps with tenant-level permissions – communicate to them separately

Switch ACS off earlier than Microsoft

You need to plan actual ACS apps disablement in tenant in advance – earlier than Microsoft will do it (in case Microsoft will not put it off). Also consider temporary switch off ACS (“scream test”) even earlier, let say, starting September 2025.

Temporary and permanent ACS disablements before official ACS EOL are needed as scream tests – in case there are users who ignored all communications and still use ACS apps. Disabling ACS early may cause problems with existing applications, but it is necessary to avoid more serious consequences when the time comes for Microsoft to turn it off. So be prepared to handle tickets and communicate to apps owners in advance.

This might be your draft plan:

schedule the first and 2nd temporary (e.g. during 1 hour) ACS apps disablement ~ 6 and 5 months before EOL
schedule the 3rd and 4th temporary (e.g. during 24 hours) ACS apps disablement ~ 4 and 3 months before EOL
schedule the full (permanent) ACS apps disablement ~ 2 months before EOL