Tag Archives: PowerShell

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 during last 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 site objects but the object does not have “Created” field. You have to connect separately to each site and get root web object where you can check when the web was created. For small environments it is possible, for large environments it can take days… And still not nice.
-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. There are some pros and cons for each method though.

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

Retrieve programmatically SharePoint Online system page html content

How can I get HTML content of a SharePoint online page from code, e.g. PowerShell?

Invoke-WebRequest returns “Sign in to your account” page, not a real page, even with -Token option.

Thanks to Denis Molodtsov, the solution is found. It turns out the “Invoke-PnPSPRestMethod” PnP cmdlet works not only against /api endpoints, but also against site pages and system pages.

But (as per my experience) it works only with PnP.PowerShell and with -UseWebLogin authentication option and with -raw parameter.

Connect-PnPOnline -url $siteUrl -UseWebLogin
Invoke-PnPSPRestMethod -url /_layouts/15/viewlsts.aspx -Raw

Other combination of authentication options ( -interactive, -clientId, -Token, -SPOManagementShell, -PnPManagementShell ) – worked well, but only for /_api endpoints, and gave me “401 UNAUTHORIZED” against system/site pages.
Unattended authentication (with clientId, clientSecret and certificate) – same.

Legacy PnP module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline did not work at all: “EXCEPTION,PnP.PowerShell.Commands.Admin.InvokeSPRestMethod”.

I tested it with
– SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline v 3.29.2101.0 (under Windows PowerShell 5.1) and
– PnP.PowerShell 1.8.0. (both Windows PowerShell 5.1 and .net core PowerShell 7.1.5)

Search Unified Audit Log Daemon Job

How to run “Search-UnifiedAuditLog” in unattended way, i.e. non-interactive.
What are the minimal permissions required?

The PowerShell code:

$clientId = ""
$cPwd = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "" -AsPlainText -Force

$cPath = ""C:\Users\UserName\Certificates\Cert.pfx""
$organization = "contoso.onmicrosoft.com"

Connect-ExchangeOnline -CertificateFilePath $cPath -CertificatePassword $cPwd -AppID $clientId -Organization $organization

[DateTime]$start = [DateTime]::UtcNow.AddMinutes(-45)
[DateTime]$end = [DateTime]::UtcNow
$resultSize = 1000

$results = $null
$results = Search-UnifiedAuditLog -StartDate $start -EndDate $end -ResultSize $results.Count
$results | Select-Object RecordType, CreationDate, UserIds, Operations -First 3

Disconnect-ExchangeOnline -Confirm:$false

Troubleshooting

The error “The term ‘Search-UnifiedAuditLog’ is not recognized”:

Search-UnifiedAuditLog: C:\scripts\PowerShell.auth\Search-AuditLog-w-App.ps1:16:12
Line |
16 | $results = Search-UnifiedAuditLog -StartDate $start -EndDate $end -Re …
| ~~~~~~
| The term 'Search-UnifiedAuditLog' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable
| program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

means a proper administrative role (e.g. “Exchange administrator”) is not assigned to the app.

References

PowerShell Script to Fetch All Alerts from SharePoint Online Site

PowerShell Script to get All Alerts of all Users from a specific SharePoint Online Site Collection, including subsites:

https://github.com/VladilenK/PowerShell/blob/main/reports/Site/Fetch-All-Alerts-from-SPO-Site.ps1

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/VladilenK/PowerShell/main/reports/Site/Fetch-All-Alerts-from-SPO-Site.ps1

based on Salaudeen Rajack:
“SharePoint Online: Get All Alerts from a Site Collection using PowerShell“

Connect to SharePoint Online with PnP.PowerShell Interactively with Client App and msal token

Scenario

You use PnP.PowerShell and you need to connect to SharePoint Online via Connect-PnPOnline interactively (on behalf of a user).

Solution

  • register an Azure App (single tenant)
  • configure authentication blade:
    – add platform – “Mobile and Desktop app”
    – select “https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/nativeclient”
    – add custom Redirect URI: “http://localhost”
  • configure API permissions blade:
    – add delegated permissions you need (refer to specific API you’ll use)
    e.g. Microsoft Graph Sites.FullControl.All and SharePoint AllSites.FullControl
  • use the following code to connect to your site:
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/myTeamsSite"
$appId = "" # Client Id
$connection = Connect-PnPOnline -ClientId $appId -Url $adminUrl -Interactive -ReturnConnection # -ForceAuthentication
$connection

A pop-up window will appear to authenticate interactively. If you are already authenticated with another credentials (or single-sigh-on) – an interactive window might pop up and disappear – so you are not able to enter your admin id.
To ensure Connect-PnPOnline prompts you for your credentials – use ” -ForceAuthentication” option.

If you are a SharePoint tenant admin – you can connect to a tenant with:

$orgName = "yourTenantPrefix" 
$adminUrl = "https://$orgName-admin.sharepoint.com" 
$appId = "" # Client Id 
$connection = Connect-PnPOnline -ClientId $appId -Url $adminUrl -Interactive -ReturnConnection # -ForceAuthentication 
$connection

The other option is to use MSAL.PS module to get an msal token. This might help with Microsoft graph-based requests:

$tenantId = ""
$clientid = ""
$url = ""
$token = Get-MsalToken -ClientId $clientid -TenantId $tenantId -Interactive
Connect-PnPOnline -AccessToken $token -Url $url

By default token expires in ~ 1 hour. But you can refresh it silently.
This helps if you run heavy PowerShell script and it takes hours to complete.
So you can include something like this in the loop:

if ($token.ExpiresOn.LocalDateTime -lt $(get-date).AddMinutes(10)) {    
  $token = Get-MsalToken -ClientId $clientid -TenantId $tenantId -ForceRefresh -Silent    
  Write-Host "Token will expire on:" $token.ExpiresOn.LocalDateTime
}

NB: For delegated permissions, the effective permissions of your app are the intersection of the delegated permissions the app has been granted (via consent) and the privileges of the currently signed-in user. Your app can never have more privileges than the signed-in user.

Read access: Read items that were created by the user via PowerShell

Scenario:

You have a list in SharePoint Online. You want list items be visible to specific users only.
You want to leverage Item-Level Permissions under List Advanced settings: “Read access: Read items that were created by the user”. But the problem is it was not users who created items. E.g. the list was imported from excel file or created programmatically or migrated.

Solution:

PnP.PowerShell helps. Using “Set-PnPListItem”, you can re-write “Author” field in the list item.

Set-PnPListItem -List "Test" -Identity 1 -Values @{"Author"="testuser@domain.com"}

And, of course, use Item-Level Permissions under List Advanced settings: “Read access: Read items that were created by the user”:

Add users to “Site Visitors” group for read-only access:

… more TBP

Find sites shared with Everyone in SPO

There is a know problem in SharePoint – it’s complicated permissions system. As a result, many sites are overshared (over-exposed) and site owners/administrators even do not know – who has access to their sites…

The most concern is sites shared with “Everyone”, “Everyone except external users” and “All users”. How do we find sites shared with “Everyone” in a large Microsoft 365 tenant?

Approach #1 (Brute force)

We can get full permissions report at tenant level (or permissions provided to “Everyone”). There are 3-rd party tools (e.g. ShareGate, SysKit, AvePoint, Metalogix etc.), or you can run PowerShell script…

Sounds easy? Well, if you have 1000 sites – probably it will work. But if your environment 10K+ sites – it will take forever. Permission report might run hours for an average site with site/subsite, list/library and list item details level. So the approach will not work for large enterprise environments.

We cannot limit report with root web only – we need report detailed up to every item level deep, as even one file with sensitive info shared with everyone can cause security issue.

So, if this approach is not working – what’s working?

Approach #2 (Search)

Clever idea: why do we need to iterate through all the tenant documents/items if all the content is already crawled by search? Can we just use search to get files shared with Everyone? Sure!

The idea is to use some dumb/test user account with no specific permissions provided and no group membership and try to search content on behalf of the user. Results we get are obviously from sites shared with everyone.

Check this and this articles. Can we get results programmatically (e.g. with PowerShell)? Can we use Microsoft Graph search API? Sure.
Check this article “How to search against SharePoint Online Content with Microsoft Graph search API with PowerShell”.

But! We have two problems here.

Search Problem #1. The problem is the same as in “brute force”. Search returns so many results – it’ll take weeks to get all of them. (There are team sites “legally” shared with everyone, public Office 365 group based sites, communication sites… ).

Search Problem #2. Even if we get all search results – we do not know – what is the exact Url of the resource shared with all users. So we will need to build list of sites based on the search results – ant then still need to run permissions report against these sites.

Approach # 3 Hybrid

The idea: why do we need to get all search result if even one result from a site would be enough to add the site to the list of sites require permission review.

So, consider (imho, the best) approach.

  1. You get list of sites in tenant. Here you can refine the list excluding, e.g. sites connected to public teams or known communication sites… Using sensitivity labels you can start with high-sensitive sites.
    Finally you’ll have a list of sites you want to check – if there are resources on this site shared with “Everyone…”
  2. You run search against each site in the loop (e.g. consider KQL option “Site: https://yourTenant.SharePoint.com/sites/YourSite”.
    Once at least something found in the site – add the site to the “Open Sites” list

With this approach you will get list of sites shared with “Everyone…” in a couple of minutes.

NB: consider there are resources like “Styles Library” shared with everyone by default.

The Next step would be “How to let site owners know what are resources shared with Everyone… on their sites”.

References

Authenticate to Microsoft Graph from PowerShell Interactively

Scenario

You are a developer or power user in a company with Microsoft 365 tenant.
You need to connect to Microsoft Graph and then call Microsoft Graph API to consume some MS Graph resources on behalf of authenticated user programmatically with PowerShell – e.g. add/remove documents or list items, search for sites or documents content etc. – whatever available with Graph API.

You do not have tenant admin permissions or any tenant-level admin permissions (SharePoint, Teams, Exchange etc. ). But you can register an Azure App and request tenant admin consent.

Solution

  • register an Azure App
  • under authentication blade – add platform – “Mobile and Desktop app”
    add “http://localhost” (and select …/nativeclient Url ?)
  • under API permissions blade – add delegated permissions you need
    (refer to specific API you’ll use)
  • install MSAL.PS PowerShell module
  • use the following code to get graph access token and call graph API
$AppId = ""
$TenantId = ""
$connectionDetails = @{
    'TenantId'    = $AppId
    'ClientId'    = $TenantId
    'Interactive' = $true
}

$token = Get-MsalToken @connectionDetails
# or 
$token = Get-MsalToken -TenantId $TenantId -ClientId $appId -Interactive 

$Headers = @{
    'Authorization' = "bearer $($token.AccessToken)"
}

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me' -Headers $Headers

You can find the code sample here: https://github.com/VladilenK/

Did not work:

Az PowerShell module did not work for me:

Connect-AzAccount -Tenant ""
$azAccessToken = Get-AzAccessToken -Resource "https://graph.microsoft.com" 

$Headers = @{
  'Authorization' = "$($azAccessToken.Type) $($azAccessToken.Token)"
}

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me' -Headers $Headers

As I understand we need somehow let Azure know API permissions we want (e.g. via app registerd)…

PnP did not work for me too:

$url = "https://orgname.sharepoint.com"
Connect-PnPOnline -ClientId "" -Url $url -Interactive 
$pnpToken = Get-PnPGraphAccessToken 
$Headers = @{
    'Authorization' = "bearer $($pnpToken)"
}
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me' -Headers $Headers

# did not work as well:
$pnpToken = Get-PnPAppAuthAccessToken
$pnpToken = Get-PnPAccessToken

the error message was (maybe I missed something – please let me know):

“code”: “InvalidAuthenticationToken”, “message”: “Access token validation failure. Invalid audience.”

References

PnP.PowerShell Release 1.3.0

Great news:

Added -Interactive login option to Connect-PnPOnline which is similar to -UseWebLogin but without the limitations of the latter. The -UseWebLogin is using cookie based authentication towards SharePoint and cannot access Graph tokens. Using -Interactive we use Azure AD Authentication and as a result we are able to acquire Graph tokens.

more changes: https://github.com/pnp/powershell/releases/tag/1.3.0

Connect-PnPOnline with a certificate stored in Azure Key Vault

Scenario

You need to run some PnP PowerShell code unattended (daemon app, with no user interaction) against SharePoint and/or Azure AD. PnP require authentication with a certificate. You want certificate stored securely in Azure Key Vault.

Solution

  • create a self-signed certificate
  • register an application in Azure
  • add API application permissions to the app
  • upload the certificate to the app
  • create an Azure Key Vault
  • provide permissions to the Key Vault for the user
  • run Connect-AzAccount
  • upload certificate to the Key Vault manually (with GUI)

now you can run this code and it will not ask you to login:

# set parameters:
$orgName = "orgname" 
$clientID = "" # Client ID
$VaultName = "" # Azure Key Vault Name
$certName = "" # Certificate Name as in Azure Key Vault
$tenant = "$orgName.onmicrosoft.com"
$adminUrl = "https://$orgName-admin.sharepoint.com"
# run the following
$secretSecureString = Get-AzKeyVaultSecret -VaultName $vaultName -Name $certName 
$secretPlainText = ConvertFrom-SecureString -AsPlainText -SecureString $secretSecureString.SecretValue
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $adminUrl -ClientId $clientID -CertificateBase64Encoded $secretPlainText -Tenant $tenant

The same PowerShell code in GitHub: https://github.com/VladilenK/PowerShell/blob/main/PnP/Connect-PnPOnline-with-certificate.ps1

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/az.keyvault/get-azkeyvaultcertificate?view=azps-5.3.0

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43837362/keyvault-generated-certificate-with-exportable-private-key