Parallelism
Can I use PowerShell 7 “-Parallel” option against SharePoint list items with PnP.PowerShell? Can I run something like:
$items | ForEach-Object -Parallel {
$listItem = Set-PnPListItem -List "LargeList" -Identity $_ -Values @{"Number" = $(Get-Random -Minimum 100 -Maximum 200 ) }
} Yes, sure… But! Since it’s a cloud operation against Microsoft 365 – you will be throttled if you start more than 2 parallel threads! Using just 2 threads does not provide significant performance improvements.
Batching
So, try PnP.PowerShell batches instead. When you use batching, number of requests to the server are much lower. Consider something like:
$batch = New-PnPBatch
1..100 | ForEach-Object{ Add-PnPListItem -List "ItemTest" -Values @{"Title"="Test Item Batched $_"} -Batch $batch }
Invoke-PnPBatch -Batch $batch
Measurements
Adding and setting 100 items with “Add-PnPListItem” and “Set-PnPListItem” in a large (more than 5000 items ) SharePoint list measurements:
| Add-PnPListItem Time per item, seconds | Set-PnPListItem Time per item, seconds | |
| Regular, without batching | 1.26 | 1.55 |
| Using batches (New-PnPBatch) | 0.10 | 0.80 |
| Using “Parallel” option, with ThrottleLimit 2 | 0.69 | 0.79 |
| Using “Parallel” option, with ThrottleLimit 3 | 0.44 (fails level: ~4/100) | 0.53 (fails level: ~3/100) |
Adding items with PnP.PowerShell batching is much faster than without batching.
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