Tag Archives: API

Automating Sites.Selected permissions provisioning

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Scenario

You administer Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online. Part of your daily activities is providing Microsoft Graph and SharePoint Sites.Selected API permissions to other users (developers).

In Aug/Sep 2023 Microsoft pushed an update that prevents site collection admins to create or update an Azure Access Control (ACS) principal (that was the way most of developers used to get Client Id and Client secret to access SharePoint site). So your users are probably getting something like Your SharePoint tenant admin doesn’t allow site collection admins to create or update an Azure Access Control (ACS) principal message attempting to create or update SharePoint App-only principal at AppRegNew.aspx or AppInv.aspx pages. Here are more details on the issue.

Microsoft and MVPs shared some technique how to provide Sites.Selected API permissions, but dealing with scripts manually, elevating individual permissions every time you need to run the script – it all takes time and not very efficient. More and more devs are reaching you on the app. So you want to automate this process.

Solution

Solution architecture

My way to automate it includes:

  • SharePoint list as a frontend
    here you can accept intake requests, organize approval workflow and display automation results
  • Azure Function App as a backend
    here will be your PowerShell script hosted that runs on scheduled basis and takes care of actual permissions provisioning

Solution details

High-level, getting application permissions to some specific SharePoint site is a two-step process:

  1. get application registration in Azure and properly configure it
  2. get permissions for this application to a specific SharePoint site

For the first step – check this and this articles. I’ll focus on the second step below.

You can provide Sites.Selected permissions for the app to a site with

I will be using second one one. Also PnP.PowerShell will be used to get access to SharePoint intake site and read/update requests from SharePoint list and so on.

Azure App Registration

I registered an admin Application in Azure – “SharePoint Automation App”, added Graph Sites.FullControl.All and SharePoint Sites.FullControl.All permissions, then added Microsoft Graph Directory.Read.All permissions and got tenant admin consent:

I generated a self-signed certificate and added it to the app:

This app will be used to call provide permissions, and to connect to the SharePoint front-end.

Users will register their applications in Azure, add Graph Sites.Selected and SharePoint Sites.Selected permissions, got tenant admin consent, then request permissions to the specific site by creating an intake request – new list item.

Front-End SharePoint Site

I created a SharePoint site for automation. This site will play a front-end role for users. I created a list “Sites.Selected” and updated list columns so I have the following fields:

  • Target Site Url
  • Application Id
  • Permissions (read/write)
  • Automation Output

In real-world (Prod) – You can (should) also implement approval workflow as you’d provide permissions for the application to the site only with this site owner approval. The PowerShell code behind should also validate site owner’s consent with app access to site. But for the sake of simplicity I’ll skip this in my demo.

Azure Function App

I created an Azure Function App with the following parameters:
– Runtime stack: PowerShell Core
– Version: 7.2.
– OS: Windows
– Hosting plan: Consumption

And then PowerShell timer-triggered function in Visual Studio Code.

Function requirements.psd1 (it takes a few hours for Azure to install modules; while modules are installing – you might see “[Warning] The first managed dependency download is in progress, function execution will continue when it’s done. Depending on the content of requirements.psd1, this can take a few minutes. Subsequent function executions will not block and updates will be performed in the background.”):

@{
    'Az' = '10.*'
    'PnP.PowerShell' = '2.*'
}

Azure Az module to access other Azure resources. PnP.PowerShell module will be used to access SharePoint.

I will keep my admin Azure registered app in a key vault, so need somehow to let the key vault know that this specific app can access this specific credentials. So I enabled system assigned managed Identity for the Function App:

MS: “This resource is registered with Azure Active Directory. The managed identity can be configured to allow access to other resources…”.
I’m going to use an object (principal) Id of this function to grant access to keyvault.

Azure key vault

Surely we do not hard-code app secrets. So we need a key vault o store app credentials.

I created a key vault under the same resource group in Azure and named it “SharePointAutomationDemo”. Then I added a roles assignment – “Key Vault Secret User” and “Key vault Reader” to the Function App via it’s managed identity:

I also assigned “Key Vault Administrator” role to the user (developer) who will add certificates/secrets to this key vault and develop Azure function code.

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

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

Nest steps:

  • calling other APIs
  • connecting to Databases
  • using secrets

Microsoft 365 SharePoint: prevent throttling with RateLimit headers

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Bert Jansen (Microsoft) revealed some details on throttling when you access Microsoft 365 programmatically – via Microsoft Graph or CSOM and guided developers on how to regulate request traffic for optimized throughput using RateLimit headers (Here).

Demystifying SharePoint throttling

Throttling is necessary to ensure that no single user or application consumes too many resources compromising the stability of the entire system, which is used by many clients.

Throttling happens at

  • User (there are user request limits. Microsoft counts all requests linked to user
  • Application (Delegated or Application permissions)
    • Resource units per app per minute
    • Resource units per app per day
  • Farm – Spike protection

Very common reason for throttling – when an Application (Delegated or Application permissions) reaches “Resource units per app per minute” threshold.

Usually you catch HTTP errors 429 or 503, wait for some time (respect Retry-after header) and try again.

SharePoint provides various APIs. Different APIs have different costs depending on the complexity of the API, but Microsoft favor Graph API over SharePoint REST/CSOM. The cost of APIs is normalized by SharePoint and expressed by resource units. Application’s limits are also defined using resource units.

Quota depends on tenant size.

Resource unit limits for an application in a tenant (please refer to the Microsoft article)

Predefined costs for Microsoft Graph calls:

Assuming 2 resource units per request is a safe bet.

Links

Yammer API

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WIP: Work in progress

There are three Yammer APIs that I know:

Classic Yammer REST API ( v 1.0 )

how to call Classic Yammer API from code …

MS Graph API – reporting in Yammer activity

…

Yammer REST API v 2.0 (in development/preview)

…

Accessing Yammer API with Azure registered App

There are two permissions you can provide to your azure app registration:

  • access_as_user – Read and write to the Yammer platform
    Allows the application to access the Yammer platform on behalf of the signed-in user
  • user_impersonation – Read and write to the Yammer platform
    Allows the application to access the Yammer platform on behalf of the signed-in user

Get list of new SPO sites with PowerShell

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Scenario

Let say you administer Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online and you want to get a list of new SharePoint sites (e.g. sites created recently – during last day/week/month).

With GUI it’s done easily: SharePoint Admin Center -> Active Sites -> sort based on “Date Created” – done.

With PowerShell – not so simple.
“Get-PnPTenantSite” cmdlet returns a site object but the object does not have “Created” field. It’s a web property. But to get a web object – you have to connect separately to each site and get root web object to check when the web was created. For small environments it is possible, for large environments it can take days… And still not nice.
“Get-PnPTenantSite” with “-Filter” option would help, but “…Currently, you can filter by these properties: Owner, Template, LockState, Url.”

Get-SPOSite – similar experience.

Solution

Microsoft Graph API helps. It returns result in seconds and you can sort or filter results based on created date . Below are two methods: Option 1 is based on Search and filtering and Option 2 is based on Sites Search and sorting. So there are some pros and cons for each method.

Option #1: Microsoft Graph Search API.

Entry point: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/search/query

Microsoft Graph Search API allows KQL in queries. So we can form a query with something like “created>=1/1/2021” and use entity type = ‘[“site”]’. Search should return only sites created after Jan 01, 2021.

Check PowerShell script sample here: Get-NewSites.ps1
https://github.com/VladilenK/PowerShell/blob/main/reports/SharePoint/Get-NewSites.ps1

If you are getting more than 500 results – think of paging.

Option #2: Microsoft Graph Sites API

Entry point: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites

This option is also based on Microsoft Graph API, but sites entry point, which allows search too and sort results by property “createdDateTime”. So we will just search for everything and select how many results we need based on createdDateTime property.

Check PowerShell script sample here: Get-NewSites.ps1
https://github.com/VladilenK/PowerShell/blob/main/reports/SharePoint/Get-NewSites.ps1

References

Yammer API with PowerShell: Private groups and messages

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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: