That’s a very common problem in SharePoint world. You are looking for a site owner but there is no tool available for regular user to find who owns the site.
Scenarios.
You get a link to some SharePoint site, but you do not have access to it. You requested access but nobody has responded. You need to find who is the site owner.
(To be continued)
You are seeing messages “This form can’t be distributed as it is asking for personal or sensitive information. Contact your admin for assistance. Terms of use”
or
“Form can no longer be accessed. This form has been flagged for potential phishing. Technical details”
The reason is: Microsoft enabled automated machine reviews to proactively detect the malicious collection of sensitive data in forms and temporary block those forms from collecting responses. More about it.
Ask your tenant global or security admin to go to the Microsoft Security Administration (Defender) Alerts:
If your list of alerts is too big – use filter by Policy: “Form blocked due to potential phishing attempt”.
To unblock the form or confirm it is phishing – admin should open the alert:
And then click “Review this form“.
“Review the form” opens the page “https://forms.office.com/Pages/AdminPhishingReviewPage.aspx?id=”
where is the form Id.
Then global/security admin can review the form and unblock it or confirm it is phishing:
Microsoft recently implemented “Adaptive” retention policies. At step 2 of “Create retention policy” you’ll be asked “Choose the type of retention policy to create”: “A policy can be adaptive or static. Advantage of an adaptive policy will automatically update where it’s applied based on attributes or properties you’ll define. A static policy is applied to content in a fixed set of locations and must be manually updated if those locations change.”
And if you selected “Adaptive” – on the next step you will need to provide the adaptive scope (so at this moment you should already have created your adaptive scopes):
So, let us create your adaptive scopes.
What type of scope do you want to create? SharePoint sites…
And then you’ll have nothing more then set of conditions:
where you can use objects: “Site Url”, “Site Name” and “Refinable String 0″..”Refinable String 99”. Conditions would be “is equal to”, “is not equal to”, “starts with” and “not starts with”. Or you can select “Advanced query builder” and enter KQL query.
I will be saving my personal gotchas on Microsoft 365 External Access and Guest Access in SharePoint and Teams
We configure external/guest access in AAD, m365 Admin Center, Teams Admin Center, SharePoint Admin Center, specific Group, Team or SharePoint site.
We can configure external guest access directly, or can configure sensitivity labels and policies in Purview (Compliance Admin Center). Configuring sensitivity labels for sites/groups we configure external guest access settings. Configuring sensitivity labels policies we apply labels.
Be careful with “All users” group created as part of the process.
Microsoft: “The dedicated All Users group includes all users in the directory, including guests and external users.” And indeed, “All Users” group by default include external users.
So here is the scenario: we have a site where external sharing is enabled, and someone is sharing a specific file1 or folder1 with some external users. The other site/group member is sharing another file2/folder2 with “All Users” assuming All Users means all this group member. This gives external users access to file2/folder2.
Option 0: remove “All Users” group
Option 1: exclude External users or Guest users from “All Users” group:
(user.userPrincipalName -notContains "#EXT#@")
or
(user.userType -ne "Guest")(explained here).
Option 2: schedule a job that removes “All Users” from all sites UIL. Optionally inform site owners not to use “All Users” but use “Everyone except external users”.
Sensitivity labels are configured under Microsoft Purview (Compliance Center), Solutions, Information Protection. You’d need a global admin or “Compliance Administrator” or “Azure Information Protection Administrator” (?) role:
Since we are talking sensitivity labels for SharePoint Sites (not documents), we define label scope as “Groups and Sites”: “Configure privacy, access control, and other settings to protect labeled Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, and SharePoint sites.”
Then we define which protection settings for groups and sites we should configure on the next steps:
– Privacy and external user access settings – Control the level of access that internal and external users will have to labeled teams and Microsoft 365 Groups.
– External sharing and conditional access settings – Control external sharing and configure Conditional Access settings to protect labeled SharePoint sites.
If we selected previously “Privacy and external user access settings” – now we need to select group/team privacy (These options apply to all Microsoft 365 Groups and teams, but not standalone sites). When applied, these settings will replace any existing privacy settings for the team or group. If the label is removed, users can change privacy settings again. You can also allow external user access – if group owner will be able to add guests:
Next step – define external sharing and conditional access settings. Specifically, if the content of the SharePoint site can be shared with Anyone (anonymously) or with authenticated users (new or existing) or no external sharing is allowed:
And you can either control the level of access users have from unmanaged devices or select an existing authentication context to enforce restrictions:
Sensitivity label policy is basically which label should be available to apply for what users and some other settings like
– do users need to provide justification before removing a label or replacing it with one that has a lower-order number or
– will users be required to apply labels and optionall the default label
“Global reader” role allows view existing sensitivity labels configuration:
Wording would be a little different, but all aspects of the label configuration will be mentioned. E.g. when editing GUI says label scope is “Groups & sites”, read-only label summary defines Scope as “Site, UnifiedGroup”.
To apply a label to a m365 group or Teams site with a group behind: MS Graph API support only Delegated permissions.
“Set-PnPSiteSensitivityLabel” works in the current site context.
Description says “If the site does not have a Microsoft 365 Group behind it, it will set the label on the SharePoint Online site and will not require Microsoft Graph permissions and will work with both delegate as well as app only logins.”
In fact (7/22/2022) app permissions are not working. This cmdlet can assign label to a standalone or a group-based site only with delegated permissions.
“Set-PnPTenantSite” allows you to remove or apply site sensitivity label to both standalone and group-based sites with app permissions. Furthermore, group and team settings respect this. I.e. if you apply label to a group-based site – group will pick this up.
References
Breaking news! It turned out that once the policy was activated and generated notifications for the group – the policy consider the group is done forever. Even if you re-activate the policy or change policy scope or other policy parameters – it will not help. Once messages are sent to the group members – no more messages will be generated for the same group ever.
Every resource under Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Teams team, Microsoft 365 group or SharePoint site) must have an owner/owners. Otherwise to whom we communicate on any question – site/group permissions, membership, site/group/team retention policy, content classification etc. Who will be responsible for team/site/group content and configuration and who will provide access to this site for other users.
MS: A team in Microsoft Teams or a Microsoft 365 group and its related services can become ownerless if an owner’s account is deleted or disabled in Microsoft 365. Groups and teams require an owner to add or remove members and change group settings.
Recently Microsoft implemented a new feature: a policy that automatically asks the most active members of an ownerless group or team if they’ll accept ownership. Very important feature. TY Microsoft!
It is important because many other “governance” activities (e.g. permissions attestation, retention policies) rely on site/team ownership. I.e., before we notify site owner that the site is going to be deleted due to inactivity – we want an owner present.
The configuration via wizard is straightforward and intuitive, and Microsoft documented it well, but still we have some questions regarding the policy behavior.
Q: Is it about groups ownership or sites ownership?
A: Group ownership and group-based sites ownership (teams, yammer etc.). Non-group based aka Standalone sites (e.g. communication) are not in scope of this feature/policy.
Q: Who can configure this policy? What kind of permissions required to create/update policy?
A: Microsoft says “Manage Microsoft 365 groups” permissions required – e.g. admins with Global admin or Groups Admin roles required. “Teams administrator” or “SharePoint Administrator” cannot configure the policy.
Q: After the policy activated – who will receive notification? What exactly “most active members” mean?
A: Microsoft only says “most active members” and does not disclose specific algorithm behind.
Q: How about group with no members? What if somebody created a group but did not add any members and then left?
A: In this case the policy will not work – as there is nobody who can be notified. This kind of groups must be handled manually, as no owners no members does not mean nobody uses related SharePoint site. What if the group is public and hosts some valuable data?
Q: How do we know the group is ownerless? Only if owner has been deleted from AAD? What if an owner is just blocked or became unlicensed?
A: For the policy Microsoft consider blocked or unlicensed users presented in the group owners list as valid users and still group owners; so the policy will not be triggered until the group owners list is empty.
Q: We have implemented Azure AD Settings “EnableGroupCreation” and “GroupCreationAllowedGroupId” (as per Microsoft: Manage who can create Microsoft 365 Groups), so not everyone can create m365 groups. Would this impact ownerless groups policy? In other words – if a user cannot create group – would this keep user from being assigned as a group owners?
A: No. Microsoft’s Manage who can create Microsoft 365 Groups trick regulates groups creation only. Later – when a group is created – nothing prevents such user to be added as a group owner.
Q: I support a large Microsoft 365 environment and we already have hundreds and thousands of ownerless groups. I’m concerned how users might react and whether our helpdesk support teams are ready for new type of tickets etc. Implementing the policy in test/stage environment does not make much sense, since there are no really active users etc. So, can I test this policy in production – on real users, but pilot it within a small number of users or ownerless groups before applying to all groups in the environment.
A: Yes, you can do a test or pilot implementation in production limiting the impacted users or groups.
– if you need to limit users who will be getting notifications – e.g. a “pilot team” – during Step 1 “Notification Options” under “Specify who can receive ownership notifications” you can select “Allow only certain active members” and under “Specify security groups to allow members” you can select a security group – so only members from the specified security group will be sent ownership request. Microsoft 365 groups do not work here.
but be aware – if you choose this option – it is possible that Microsoft 365 groups might have more active members who are not the security group members. E.g. it might make sense to use this option for piloting – against a small number of isolated set of groups/members, but for not for phased implementation. If you have some specific requirements for group ownership – e.g. “only managers could be group owners” or “contractors cannot be group owners” – using security group to limit potential group owners would make sense.
Another option you can use for phased implementation or piloting the policy is to scope it down to a several selected m365 groups – use “Apply policy to” – “Specific groups” option:
NB! After all notifications are sent for a group – you will never ever get any more notifications for the same group. Even if you re-activate the policy or change policy parameters or whatever – it will not help. Once messages sent – it’s done for the group forever.
NB: Please also check “Microsoft ownerless groups policy in large environment“
Q: How many groups I can specify if I select Apply policy to Specific groups option? Is there a maximum?
A: Yes, there is a limit. You can specify no more than 50 groups.
Q: I know the policy is applied to Microsoft 365 groups only. But I have many standalone sites with no owners (no site collection administrators). How do I deal with ownerless SharePoint sites?
A: Options are: manual intervention, PowerShell, 3-rd party tools – depending on your specific case. E.g. you can elevate some “Site Owners” SharePoint group members to site administrators. For modern sites – how about converting standalone sites to Microsoft 365 group-based sites (TBC – as at the moment it is not clear if it is possible)?
Q: What happens after one of the notified members accepts the ownership request?
A: No more notifications will be sent for this group. But previously sent notifications will still be valid.
Q: What happens if several of the notified members accepts the ownership request?
A: Only two first served basis. As per Microsoft, only two members can be assigned to group owners via the policy. When a group got two owners – invitation message actionable item for the rest will be converted from “Would you like to be a group owner?” to “MemberName1 and MemberName2 have already agreed to become group owners.” with no “Yes” and “No” actionable buttons.
Q: Can I customize an ownership notification?
A: Yes, but
– E-mail message body is limited to ~1040 characters
– Policy does not provide any WYSIWYG rich text format options (but there are some tricks you can use to format it with headers, bold/italic, links, bullets/lists: more on email template format.)
Q: Can I use shared mailbox as a “send from” e-mail account?
A: No. You can use only user or m365 group mailbox.
Q: What if a group become ownerless after policy is activated?
A: Policy detects the group is ownerless and start sending notifications within 24 hour.
Actually the policy was designed to prevent ownerless groups. So it is recommended to activate the policy once you get the tenant.
Q: We know, that if a user declined ownership once – he will not get any more emails on the same. Is that true for current policy or for any further policies activations? I.e. If the policy updated/re-activated – will it remember user’s decision or it all starts from scratch?
A: All the next incarnations of the policy will not trigger e-mail notification for the group if all notifications were sent earlier. I.e. in this case user will not receive any more notifications on the same group.
Q: If nobody accepted ownership – can we reconfigure the policy to sent more notifications – e.g. to wider range of active members or with more strict language in an e-mail template?
A: No. After number of emails specified in policy were sent – no more emails will be generated for this group, so the group active members will not get any more emails on the group. Workaround: you can specify policy with e.g. 6 weeks – then after 3 weeks change e-mail template.
Q: What if we specify emails should be sent for 5 weeks, but stop the policy after two weeks? And then we re-activate the policy.
A: It is expected the policy will continue sending e-mail notifications until 5 emails sent.
Q: What if we specify 3 weeks in policy, but then re-configure the policy with 5 weeks specified and activate it again?
A: tbc – not tested yet
Q: Let say we have an ownerless group with 20 members. Let say we specified security group to limit user who will get invitations. And this security group includes only 6 users from the orphan group out of total 20. Microsoft says the policy will select the most active users. So the question is: will the policy select the most active users from the 20 orphaned group users and if the user in the security group – he/she will get an email?
A: No. The policy will select the most active users only from these 6 users that included in the security group, ignoring 14 users, even if they were more active then these 6 selected.
Q: What happens after the policy expires? E.g. after all notifications are sent…
A: Policy does not expires. If the policy is activated – it works. If all notifications are sent for the group – so yes, policy is done for this group. But if a new group became ownerless – policy will be triggered for this group again.
User can forward invitation message, but recipient will not see actionable “Yes” “No” buttons.
If a public group does not have an owner – all requests to joint the team will be declined with “The team does not have an owner” message:
(that means no new members, i.e. no new contributors, but read-only visitors access is sill available for everyone, as group is public):
Users can go to My Groups to see groups (Teams, Yammer communities and SharePoint Sites) they are members or owners of.
Proposal to be a group owner lasts forever. So if a user after some time finds an email that asks him “Would you like to be a group owner?” and clicks Yes – he/she will be a group owner, even if the policy is already updated or removed.
As per Microsoft, only first two members can accept the ownership of an ownerless group. No additional members are allowed to accept ownership. If either one or two members accept ownership, other members won’t receive further notifications.
You can de-activate the policy and then activate it again. Or you can reconfigure the policy. If you activated the policy again (or re-configured it), but emails are not sent – this might be an expected behavior. Let say you initially specified 3 weeks and 3 notification were sent to the most active ownerless groups members. That means no more emails will be generated for these groups.
Just uncheck “When there’s no owner…”, and save it to stop the policy:
downside – you’d need to configure the policy from scratch – all previous settings are gone now
How do I, as an Microsoft 365 administrator, know if the policy works or not, are the emails sent or not and how many (if any) users are accepted “Would you like to be a group owner?” invitation?
Microsoft 365 Audit Search under Microsoft Purview (Compliance center) should help.
Operations:
UserId: OwnerlessGroupComplianceAssistant
Record Type (AuditLogRecordType): 126
It seems like event is not added to the Audit log when a policy is created or updated.
Who can create Microsoft 365 Groups
It is possible to limit users – who can create Microsoft 365 Groups (please refer to Microsoft: Manage who can create Microsoft 365 Groups – there is a guide and PowerShell code sample). This might help to keep the environment under control – let say, “only managers can create groups”, or “contractor should not be able to create teams”.
It would be good if the configuration would be consistent in terms “if a user cannot create a group – user cannot be a group owner”. Unfortunately, with current configuration options (Aug 2022), this is not the case.
Azure AD Directory Setting “GroupCreationAllowedGroupId” works only for creation. Later, when the group is create – it is possible to add to group as a group owner those who is not able to create group.
“Ownerless group policy configuration failed” error message.
And “Failure in configuring ownerless groups policy” and “Please try again.”
– seems like a permissions issue.
SharePoint admin, Teams admin or Group admin roles: cannot configure Ownerless Groups Policy.
Global admin: yes, can configure Ownerless Microsoft 365 Groups Policy.
What is the minimum role required?
According to a recent update of the Microsoft’s article – “A Global administrator can create a policy…”
Sites.Selected MS Graph API permissions were introduced by Microsoft in March 2021. One year later, in 2022 they added SharePoint Sites.Selected API permissions.
Why is this so important? Because MS Graph API for SharePoint is still limited and cannot cover all possible needs. I’d estimate: 90% of applications use SharePoint CSOM, so developers have to use AppInv.aspx to provide permissions for their applications to SharePoint API.
But from this moment – having SharePoint API permissions in MS Graph – in theory – we can fully rely on permissions provided in Azure and – in theory – this should allow us disable SharePoint-Apps only principal:
Set-SPOTenant -DisableCustomAppAuthentication $trueMy math professor taught me: “before trying to find a solution – ensure the solution exists.” So let us test:
Are we really able to work with a specific SharePoint site using MS Graph and SharePoint API Sites.Selected permissions provided via Microsoft Azure?
What will happen with our new/legacy applications if we disable SharePoint app-only SPNs (DisableCustomAppAuthentication)?
I’m getting controversial test results… maybe PnP.PowerShell 1.10 is not fully support SharePoint Sites.Selected API.
Tech Wizard (Sukhija Vikas) on March 20, 2022 in the article “SharePoint and Graph API APP only permissions for Selected Sites” suggests using pre-release (AllowPrerelease).
So please ignore the following for a while.
Meantime I’ll test providing SharePoint Sites.Selected API permissions via Graph API call.
DisableCustomAppAuthentication: $false (SP-app-only spns are enabled).
All applications have “write” access provided to a specific site only.
Connecting with Connect-PnPOnline and then test access with Get-PnPSite
| App / Get-PnPSite | Secret | Certificate |
| ACS based (Azure+AppInv) | OK | The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized. |
| MS Graph API Sites.Selected | The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden. | The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized. |
| SharePoint API Sites.Selected | OK | OK |
| MS Graph API + SharePoint API Sites.Selected | Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)) | OK |
| App with no permissions | The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden | The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized |
| Action/Via | SharePoint + MS Graph Sites.Selected “secret” | SharePoint Sites.Selected “secret” | MS Graph Sites.Selected “secret” |
| Connect-PnPOnline | WARNING: Connecting with Client Secret uses legacy authentication and provides limited functionality. We can for instance not execute requests towards the Microsoft Graph, which limits cmdlets related to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Flow and Microsoft 365 Groups. | WARNING: Connecting with Client Secret uses legacy authentication and provides limited functionality. We can for instance not execute requests towards the Microsoft Graph, which limits cmdlets related to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Flow and Microsoft 365 Groups. | WARNING: Connecting with Client Secret uses legacy authentication and provides limited functionality. We can for instance not execute requests towards the Microsoft Graph, which limits cmdlets related to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Flow and Microsoft 365 Groups. |
| Get-PnPSite | OK | OK | The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden. |
| Get-PnPList | OK | OK | |
| Get-PnPListItem | OK | OK | |
| Set-PnPSite | Attempted to perform an unauthorized operation. | ||
| Set-PnPList | Attempted to perform an unauthorized operation. | ||
| Set-PnPListItem | OK | OK | |
| New-PnPList | Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)) | ||
| Add-PnPListItem | OK |
DisableCustomAppAuthentication = $false
(SP-app-only spns are enabled).
All applications have Sites.Selected SharePoint and MS Graph API permissions.
Using Client Secret (not a certificate)
Using PnP.PowerShell
| Read | Write | FullControl | |
| Connect-PnPOnline | WARNING: Connecting with Client Secret uses legacy authentication and provides limited functionality. We can for instance not execute requests towards the Microsoft Graph, which limits cmdlets related to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Flow and Microsoft 365 Groups. | WARNING: Connecting with Client Secret uses legacy authentication and provides limited functionality. We can for instance not execute requests towards the Microsoft Graph, which limits cmdlets related to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Flow and Microsoft 365 Groups. | WARNING: Connecting with Client Secret uses legacy authentication and provides limited functionality. We can for instance not execute requests towards the Microsoft Graph, which limits cmdlets related to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Flow and Microsoft 365 Groups. |
| Get-PnPSite | Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)) | ||
| Get-PnPList | Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)) | ||
| Get-PnPListItem | |||
| Set-PnPSite | |||
| Set-PnPList | |||
| Set-PnPListItem | |||
| New-PnPList | |||
| Add-PnPListItem |
C#, SharePoint CSOM, PnP.Framework
PnP.PowerShell Get-, Grant-, Set- and Revoke-PnPAzureADAppSitePermission cmdlets require Azure App with MS Graph Sites.FullControl.All app permissions (otherwise it says “Access denied”) and authentication via certificate (otherwise it says “This cmdlet does not work with a ACS based connection towards SharePoint.”)
The same actions – managing permissions for the client app to the specific site collections – could be done via Microsoft Graph Sites Permissions API using just secret-based authentication.
If an azure app does not have Sites.Selected API permissions configured – “Grant-PnPAzureADAppSitePermission” works as expected – no error messages – the output is normal – as if Sites.Selected API permissions were configured in the app. The same for Get-, -Set and Revoke-. Permissions provided for the app to the site are not effective though: Connect-PnPOnline works well, but all other commands – starting from Get-PnPSite – returns “The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.”
If an app have no permissions to SharePoint – “Connect-PnPOnline” works ok, but “Get-PnPSite” return an error: “The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.”
Set-PnPAzureADAppSitePermission gives an error message “code”:”generalException”,”message”:”General exception while processing”
if the site is not specified.
AppInv is not working?
Error: Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))
WIP
What if we provide Sites.Selected App permissions to SharePoint Admin Site?
TBP
Update: Sites.Selected API MS Graph permissions was introduced by Microsoft in 2021. It was a good move towards site-level development, but still developers were limited with only what MS Graph API provides for SharePoint dev.
So devs had to use AppInv.aspx at site level to provide ACS permissions to their apps to be able to use SharePoint CSOM and REST APIs.
Recently Microsoft introduced Sites.Selected SharePoint API permissions for registered Azure Apps! So now devs should be fully happy without ACS-based permissions.
You have an application that needs access to Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online site/list/documents. Application is running without interaction with users – e.g. unattended, as daemon job.
There are two options you can authenticate to Microsoft 365 – with the secret or with the certificate. Authenticating with certificate is considered more secure.
Note: we will use PowerShell 7.2 and PnP.PowerShell 1.9 to illustrate it.
If SharePoint-Apps only principal is disabled in your tenant
(i.e. ‘Get-PnPTenant | select DisableCustomAppAuthentication’ returns $true ), then the only way you work with SPO from code is:
In all other cases (even your Connect-PnPOnline command complete successfully) – you will be getting error 401 (unauthorized) when trying Get-PnPTenant or Get-PnPTenantSite or Get-PnPSite
If SharePoint-Apps only principals are enabled in your tenant
(i.e. ‘Get-PnPTenant | select DisableCustomAppAuthentication’ returns $false ), then you have two options to work with SPO from code:
(Get-PnPTenant, Get-PnPTenantSite)