Yammer API with PowerShell: Private groups and messages

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Update: Private content mode will stop working on June 30, 2025.
Microsoft announced Private content mode retirement in Microsoft Viva Engage (Yammer).
Message ID MC1045211.

As an Office 365 administrator, I would like to get some reports on Yammer with PowerShell. How it’s done?

Patrick Lamber wrote a good article here: “Access the Yammer REST API through PowerShell“. The only I would add (important!) is:

By default, even with a Verified Admin token, you do not have access to private messages and private groups content.
To get private stuff, you need select “Private Content Mode” under Yammer Admin Center -> Content and Security -> Content Mode:

Check Microsoft: “Monitor private content in Yammer” and
Yammer: “Verified Admin Private Content Mode“

If you do not have “Private Content Mode” set up, you might see some weird “Invoke-WebRequest” errors like:

VSCode, PowerShell, .Net and GitHub hints

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Dotnet (.net core, .net 5) useful commands:

dotnet --info
dotnet new sln
dotnet new webapi -o API
dotnet sln add APi
dotnet watch run
dotnet dev-certs https --trust
dotnet new gitignore

Visual Studio Code setup:

Some useful plug-ins:

PowerShell from Microsoft
GitHub pull requests and issues from GitHub
C# from Microsoft
(+ ^P assets)
C# Extensions from JosKreativ
Material Icon Theme from Philipp Kief
Bracket Pair Colorizer 2

VS Code basic configuration:
– AutoSave
– Font Size
– Hide folders: Settings->Exclude “**/obj” “**/bin”
– Compact folders: Settings->”Compact folders”
– appsettings.Development.json: “Microsoft”: “Warning” -> “Microsoft”: “Information”
– launchSettings.json:
“launchBrowser”: true/false,
“launchUrl”

Git basic commands:

git init
create gitignore (dotnet new gitignore)
add appsettings.json to gitignore
git commit -m "first commit"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/orgName/AppName.git
git push -u origin main
git config --global credential.helper wincred
git config --global user.name "<John Doe>"
git config --global user.email <johndoe@example.com>

PnP.PowerShell Batches and PowerShell 7 Parallel

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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.

Long-running PowerShell Office 365 reports

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(WIP)

PowerShell is our best friend when it comes to ad-hoc and/or scheduled reports in Microsoft 365. PnP team is doing great job providing more and more functionality with PnP PowerShell module for Office 365 SharePoint and Teams.

Small and medium business organizations are mostly good, but for large companies it might be a problem due to just huge amount of data stored in SharePoint. PowerShell reports on all users or all sites might run days… which is probably OK if you run this report once, but totally not acceptable if you need this report e.g. daily/weekly or on-demand.

How can we make heavy PowerShell scripts run faster?

Of course, you start with logic (algorithm) and leveraging full PowerShell functionality (e.g. PowerShell 7 parallelism or PnP batching).

(examples)

What if you did everything, but it still takes too long? You need something like brute force – the closer your code runs to your tenant – the better.
What are the option?
– Automation account runbook (+workflow)
– Azure Function Apps
– Azure VM in the region closest to your Tenant

Automation account runbook (+workflow)

Seemed like a good option, but not something Microsoft promotes. Even opposite – automation accounts support only PowerShell 5 (not 7), no plug-ins for VS Code and recently there were messages on some retirement or smth.

Meantime, I tested it – and did not find any significant increasing in speed. In a nutshell, what is behind this service? Same windows machines running somewhere in Azure .

TBC

References
– PnP PowerShell

Create Azure VM in the region closer to your Office 365 tenant

Exact Location of your SharePoint Online Microsoft Office 365 tenant

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Quick answer: spin-up a few VMs in different Azure regions, then ping your SharePoint tenant. The moment you see 1ms ping you know the tenant exact location.

Full story

Microsoft says: “Customers should view tenant specific data location information in your Microsoft 365 Admin Center in Settings | Org settings | Organization Profile | Data location.”
And it might look like:

That’s accurate to the geography (e.g. US, UE, AP), but not to the region (for instance – “Central US”, “UK West” or “Australia Southeast”).
In other words, If you know your data are in the US, you do not know where exactly – East/West/Central or South US.
Meantime when you create an Azure resource (e.g. Virtual Machine) – you can select specific region.

How do I know – where is my Microsoft 365 tenant actually located?

Can we just ping the tenant, analyze result and find Office 365 tenant region?
Luckily, SharePoint tenant is pinging with just
PS>ping tenantName.SharePoint.com
I have tested 5 regions and 4 different tenants:

ping from/to (ms)	tenant 1 (US)	tenant 2 (EU)	tenant 3 (US)	tenant 4 (US)
North Europe	73	17	96	101
East US	1	83	39	31
Central US	22	114	23	23
West US	63	146	36	33
South Central US	31	112	1	1

So I figured it out:
My o365 tenants #3 and #4 regions are South Central US (Texas, San Antonio),
tenant #1 resides in East US.

Why do I need this?

Imagine you are running heavy reports against your tenant.
So probably you want your code running as close as possible to your tenant.
For this, you can spin-up a VM in Azure or use Azure Functions – just select proper region 🙂
(please check also “Long-running PowerShell reports optimization in Office 365“)

References:
– Where your Microsoft 365 customer data is stored

Beautiful Christmas at Centennial Lakes

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SPO: Allow users to create modern pages

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Microsoft: “Using modern pages in Microsoft SharePoint is a great way to share ideas using images, Office files, video, and more. Users can Add a page to a site quickly and easily, and modern pages look great on any device.
If you’re a global or SharePoint admin in Microsoft 365, you can allow or prevent users from creating modern pages. You can do this at the organization level by changing settings in the SharePoint admin center. If you allow the creation of site pages as the organization level, site owners can turn it on or off at the site level.“

By default both
– Allow users to create new modern pages
– Allow commenting on modern pages
are turned on (enabled)

Tenant or SharePoint admin can find settings under
SharePoint Admin Center -> Settings -> Pages

How it looks like:

Site Pages are created under “Pages” Library.

Let us test it, with:
– (tenant-level) Allow users to create new modern pages: ON
– (tenant-level) Allow commenting on modern pages: ON
– web feature “Site Pages” – “Allows users to add new site pages to a site”: Activated

User Permissions	can create Page	can edit page	can Enable/Disable page comments	can comment on Page
Full Control (Owner)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit (Member)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Read (Visitor)	No	No	No	Yes

There is a web feature “Site Pages” – “Allows users to add new site pages to a site”.
The feature is activated by default:

What if we disable this feature?
“New -> Page” has disappeared from “New” menu under “Site Contents” for Owners and Members…
From “Home” and “Pages” you still can see “New -> Page” options.
You can still create a new page from but if you try to create a page from Pages – “Sorry, something went wrong” “Cannot create a Site Page. Please have your administrator enable the required feature on this site.” :

Office 365 behavior, with:
– (tenant-level) Allow users to create new modern pages: ON
– (tenant-level) Allow commenting on modern pages: ON
– web feature “Site Pages” – “Allows users to add new site pages to a site”: Deactivated

User Permissions	can create Page	can edit page	can Enable/Disable page comments	can comment on Page
Full Control (Owner)	Yes, but only from “Home” not from “Site Contents” or “Pages”	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit (Member)	Yes, but only from “Home” not from “Site Contents” or “Pages”	Yes	Yes	Yes
Read (Visitor)	No	No	No	Yes