Tag Archives: SPO

SPO Site LastContentModifiedDate vs LastItemModifiedDate vs LastItemUserModifiedDate vs Graph LastModifiedDateTime

How do we know when the SharePoint site was last updated?

We have a several site objects on when the site was modified last time:

  • Site LastContentModifiedDate
  • Web LastItemModifiedDate
  • Web LastItemUserModifiedDate
  • MS Graph LastModifiedDateTime
  • GUI Last activity

And we can modify site in a multiple ways – update document or list item on the site, change library or site settings, configure site permissions, assign site sensitivity label, setup site property and so on.

Question: which actions impact which “last modified” values? Or, in other words, which site “last modified” properties reflects which events?

This might be important if we think of retention policies, or any kind of clean-up processes…

Let say, we are getting report on abandoned sites (inactive sites), but recently we assigned sites sensitivity labels, or we are updating site custom properties (e.g. for adaptive scopes), we have an ownerless groups policy working etc.

What if we assign site sensitivity label to an inactive (5 years old site) – would it affect site retention since site was updated?

Results

Based on detailed results below, it seems like

MS Graph site property LastModifiedDateTime equals root web property LastItemModifiedDate

If site custom property is updated – it does not affect any site “last modified” property.

The same for sensitivity label updated by app – it does not affect any site “last modified” property.

The same for Microsoft ownerless groups policy – when user accept or decline group membership – no site “last modified” properties are changed.

Detailed test results

Test results if the event triggers property update:

EventLast Content Modified DateLast Item Modified DateLast Item User Modified DateGraph Last Modified DateTimeGUI Last activity
Page viewed by userYesYesNoYes
Document or list item updated by userYesYesYesYes
Document or list item updated by appYesYesYesYes
Site property updated by appNoNoNoNo
Site Sensitivity label updated by user via SharePointYesNoNoNo
Site/Group Sensitivity label updated by user via Teams
Site/Group Sensitivity label updated by user via AzureNoNoNoNo
Site Sensitivity label updated by appNoNoNoNo
Site collection admin updated by userYesYesNoYes
Site collection admin updated by appYesYesNoYes
SharePoint group membership updated by userYesYesNoYes
Standalone Site connected to a group by userYesYesYesYes
Add Microsoft Teams to Site by UserYesYesYesYes
Update m365 group membership via M365 admin console by adminYesYesNoYes
Update m365 group membership via Azure by admin
Update m365 group membership via Teams by userNoNoNoYes
Update m365 group membership via App
Accept group ownership invitation sent by ownerless groups policyNoNoNoNo
Decline group ownership invitation sent by ownerless groups policyNoNoNoNo

SharePoint Sites Lookup

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)

Get all SharePoint and Teams sites owners report with PowerShell

This PowerShell script pulls all tenant sites and all sites owners. The script require app authentication with Sites.FullControl.All and Directory.Read.All permissions.
PnP.PowerShell for PowerShell 7 is used.

It generates two reports

  • Owners report: one user per line, include: Site Url, Title, Owner e-mail, name and type
  • Sites report: one site per line, include: Site Url, Title, list of owners e-mails

Here is the script:


$connAdmin = Connect-PnPOnline -ReturnConnection -Tenant $tenantId  -Url $adminUrl -ClientId $clientid -Thumbprint $certThumbprint
$allTenantSites = Get-PnPTenantSite -Connection $connAdmin | Sort-Object Url
$allTenantSites.count

$sitesReport = @()
$ownersReport = @()
foreach ($tenantSite in $allTenantSites) {
    Write-Host $tenantSite.Url
    $connSite = Connect-PnPOnline -ReturnConnection -Tenant $tenantId  -Url $tenantSite.Url -ClientId $clientid -Thumbprint $certThumbprint
    $site = Get-PnPSite -Connection $connSite -Includes RootWeb, GroupId, Owner
    $siteOwnerEmail = ''
    $siteOwnersReport = @()
    if ($site.GroupId.Guid -eq '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000') {
        $siteAdmins = Get-PnPSiteCollectionAdmin -Connection $connSite | ? { $_.PrincipalType -eq 'User' }
        $ownerType = 'Site Collection Administrator'
        $isGroupSite = $false
    }
    else {
        $siteAdmins = Get-PnPAzureADGroupOwner -Connection $connAdmin -Identity $site.GroupId.Guid
        $ownerType = 'Group Owner'
        $isGroupSite = $true
    }
    foreach ($siteAdmin in $siteAdmins) {
        if (!$siteAdmin.UserPrincipalName) {
            Get-PnPProperty -Connection $connAdmin -ClientObject $siteAdmin -Property UserPrincipalName | Out-Null
        }
        $aadUser = Get-PnPAzureADUser -Connection $connAdmin -Identity $siteAdmin.UserPrincipalName
        if ($aadUser.AccountEnabled) {
            $siteOwnerEmail += $aadUser.Mail + '; '
        }
        $siteOwnersReport += [PSCustomObject]@{
            SiteUrl     = $site.Url
            SiteTitle   = $site.RootWeb.Title
            IsGroupSite = $isGroupSite
            OwnerEmail  = $aadUser.Mail
            OwnerName   = $aadUser.DisplayName
            OwnerType   = $ownerType
            Enabled     = $aadUser.AccountEnabled
        }
    }
    $ownersReport += $siteOwnersReport
    $sitesReport += [PSCustomObject]@{
        SiteUrl     = $site.Url
        SiteTitle   = $site.RootWeb.Title
        IsGroupSite = $isGroupSite
        OwnerEmail  = $siteOwnerEmail
    }
}

$ownersReport.count
$sitesReport.count

Source code: https://github.com/VladilenK/Manage-m365-with-PowerShell

Manage result layouts for SharePoint results in Microsoft Search

Microsoft is improving Search (MC489165):

Manage result layouts for SharePoint results in Microsoft Search

We’re making changes to Microsoft Search. This update will allow Microsoft Search administrators to change result layouts for select SharePoint content using adaptive cards with Result Type feature in Microsoft Search administration.

The default result layouts for SharePoint sites, pages, list items and Portable document format (PDF) results can now be replaced with layouts built using adaptive cards. The changes can be made for Organization level search applicable to Office.com and SharePoint home as well as site level search on SharePoint sites. Changes for Microsoft Search in Bing will be rolled out soon. Note that the feature does not support changing of Office file search results.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 81952

Before the change, when you add a new result type under “Search and intelligence” Customizations – it looked like this:

result type content sources

So there was no built-in “SharePoint” content source as an option – only custom “external” data sources.

But with the new feature implemented list of content sources for the result type will look like this:

SharePoint and OneDrive content source

If you choose “SharePoint and OneDrive” content source – the next option would be to select type of content:

Select type of content and set rules

You also can create different result types for different types of content based on properties-based rules (e.g. one result type for all sites – and a separate result type for a specific site or hub) with optional “Set rules for this type of content”:

Default site result experience would look like

Search results with modified SharePoint result type might look like:

When you modify template via Layout Designer – it is essential to know available object properties.

You can get properties from the “Available properties” below – there is also search through properties feature.

Or you can use SharePoint Search Query Tool to get metadata on search results.

It might take hours and even days for your search to start showing new layouts, but “&cacheClear=true” should help.

… to be continued …

References

Microsoft 365 SharePoint: prevent throttling with RateLimit headers

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

Microsoft 365 Search Vertical KQL query field limits

What is the Microsoft Search KQL query field limits for a verticals? Is there limited number of characters or lines?

You know what is Microsoft 365 Search Vertical and what is KQL query in vertical configuration, right?

Microsoft 365 Search Vertical KQL query field limits

Under Microsoft 365 admin center Search and intelligence you can configure search verticals. There are some out-of-the-box verticals – like All, Files, Sites, People and you can configure custom one.

As a part of vertical configuration – you can specify KQL query – if you want e.g. limit search with some sites or content types etc.

The question is – how many sites I can specify in this query field? E.g. can I specify 1000 sites? 10k sites?

And the answer is: It does not matter, because the limit is not in number of characters or lines.

In my dev environment I was able to save 50,000 lines (~3M characters). But attempt to save 100K lines (6M symbols) has failed (due to timeout, I believe:

Again, as I said the problem is not here.

The problem is time required for search to apply query. I.e. when you ask search to bring you something – after it gets results from index and before display results to you it applies KQL query configured for the vertical. And this time is the bottleneck.

Here is what I got measuring search response time depending on query size:

Searchresponse time,
seconds
KQL query
# of lines
KQL query size,
# of symbols
works150028,000
works5100059,000
works92000120,000
works253000180,000
works/fails303500208,000
fails353600214,000
fails3550,0003,000,000
n/an/a100,000
(can’t save KQL query
6,000,000
(can’t save KQL query)

Which means that after ~ 1000 lines (50,000 characters) KQL query size – query becomes too slow, and after ~3000 lines (180k chars) – can fail (due to timeout I’d say).


Ownerless Microsoft 365 groups, teams and sites Q&As

Every team in Microsoft Teams or a Microsoft 365 group or a 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!

The configuration via wizard is straightforward and intuitive.

But still we have some questions regarding the policy.

Q: Why it is important?
A: 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.

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: How about group with no members? What if somebody created a group but did not add any members?
A: Assuming somebody created a group and left company. In this the policy will not work – as there is nobody who can be a new owner. This kind of groups must be handled manually, as no owners no members does not mean nobody uses related SharePoint site.

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 unlicensed?
A: blocked or unlicensed users are still users; so the policy will be triggered if 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. Microsofts’ 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 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 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.

NB: But there is a bug (I believe): When you specify this option (Allow only certain active members and a security group) – the policy just does not work.

another option – you can test the policy on a several selected m365 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: How about converting standalone sites to Microsoft 365 group-based sites (TBC)?

Q: What happens to group that become ownerless after the policy is created?
A: The policy will be triggered against this group – so next day the most active group members will receive invitation.

Q: What happens if several of the notified members accepts the ownership request?
A: 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” buttons.

Track the ownerless group policy in action via Audit Log

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:

  • OwnerlessGroupNeedAttention – “Unattended ownerless group”
  • OwnerlessGroupNotified – “Notified ownerless group”
  • OwnerlessGroupNotificationResponse – “Responded to ownerless group notification”

UserId: OwnerlessGroupComplianceAssistant

Record Type (AuditLogRecordType): 126

It seems like event is not added to the Audit log when a policy is created or updated.

Some more findings:

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.

Q: Can I customize an ownership notification?
A: Yes, but
– E-mail message body is limited to ~1040 character
– Policy does not provide any WYSIWYG rich text format, but you still can format it – headers, bold/italic, links, bullets/lists: more on email template format.

A member can forward invitation message, but recipient will not see actionable “Yes” “No” buttons.

Q: Can I use shared mailbox as a “send from” e-mail account?
A: No. You can use user or m365 group mailbox.

Q: We know, that if user declined ownership – he well not get more emails. Is that true for current policy or for any further policies? I.e. If the policy updated – will it remember user’s decision or it all starts from scratch?
A: ???

Q: Let say we specified security group to limit user who will get invitations. Let say there were 10 members in the ownerless group but only included 6 users from the orphan group into the security group. Microsoft says the policy will select the most active users. So question – the policy will select the most active users from the 10 group users and if the user in the security group – he/she will get an email, or the policy will select the most active users only from these 6 users that included in the security group, ignoring 4 users, even if they were more active then these 6 selected?
A: ???


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.

Issues

“Ownerless group policy configuration failed” error message.
And “Failure in configuring ownerless groups policy” and “Please try again.”
– seems like a permission 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…”

References

Token – SharePoint API compatibility matrix

If I get token with (Graph, MSAL, PnP) and use this token for (Graph API, SharePoint CSOM API, SharePoint REST API) matrix.

An App used in this tests has Sites.FullControl.All MS Graph API and SharePoint API permissions, as well as FullControl ACS based permissions to SharePoint (AppInv.aspx).

Token/APIMS Graph
/v1.0/sites
SharePoint CSOM
PnP.PowerShell
Get-PnPSite
Get-PnPTenantSite
SharePoint REST API
PnP.PowerShell
Invoke-PnPSPRestMethod
Invoke-RestMethod
MS Graph
/oauth2/v2.0/token
secret
OK(401) UnauthorizedAudienceUriValidationFailedException
MSAL.PS
Get-MsalToken
with secret
OK(401) UnauthorizedAudienceUriValidationFailedException
MSAL.PS
Get-MsalToken
with certificate
OK(401) UnauthorizedAudienceUriValidationFailedException
PnP.PowerShell
Get-PnPAccessToken
with Certificate
OKOK
OK
OK
AudienceUriValidationFailedException
PnP.PowerShell
Get-PnPGraphAccessToken
with Certificate
OKOK
OK
OK
AudienceUriValidationFailedException
PnP.PowerShell
Get-PnPAppAuthAccessToken
with Certificate or secret
InvalidAuthenticationTokenOK
OK
OK
OK
PnP.PowerShell
Request-PnPAccessToken
with Certificate
InvalidAuthenticationTokenOK
OK
OK
AudienceUriValidationFailedException
PnP.PowerShell
Request-PnPAccessToken
with Secret
InvalidAuthenticationTokenOK
OK
OK
OK
AudienceUriValidationFailedException = Exception of type ‘Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.AudienceUriValidationFailedException’ was thrown

Hide User Accounts from Microsoft 365 People Search

Update from Mar 5, 2023: Microsoft confirmed this as valid solution.

Scenario

You want specific users do not appear in Microsoft 365 SharePoint, Teams or Delve search results.

Solution

Set “ShowInAddressList” Azure AD User object property to false. If users are synchronized from local AD – set AD property instead.

Detailed

In many cases we do not need some accounts appear in Microsoft 365 Search. Examples of are:

a) secondary/admin accounts
e.g. a person have several roles and several accounts under the same name, e.g.
regular user: John Smith John.Smith@contoso.com
administrative account: John Smith John.Smith.2@contoso.com
b) role, shared or service accounts
c) non-mail-enabled objects
d) disabled accounts

Getting multiple results for the same one person might confuse users and even lead to miscommunication and broken processes.

There is a good article by Tania Menice (Microsoft): Exclude Users From Delve and SharePoint Online People Search with the latest updates explaining how it is done for classic search and stating that currently it is not possible for modern search, but Microsoft is working on it.

Basically, the article says:

  • Set the profiles AD property msExchHideFromAddressLists to True or Yes,
  • Sync/wait, so finally SharePoint UPA service SPS-HideFromAddressLists property will be set (msExchHideFromAddressLists AD property is mapped to the UPA SPS-HideFromAddressLists)
  • Under SharePoint classic search – update query:
    {searchboxquery} to {searchboxquery} -“SPS-HideFromAddressLists”:1

It works perfect for classic search. The problem is it does not work as expected in modern Microsoft Search.

“People” vertical is not customizable so far. So we cannot change query in Microsoft 365 search to do the same trick. But… it seems like Microsoft is working on it so finally it should be done by ootb means.

Here is the current situation on how different services or search entry points respect SPS-HideFromAddressLists property:

Microsoft 365 Service or Search Entry pointrespect SPS-HideFromAddressLists
(msExchHideFromAddressLists)
web Outlook “New message” user pickerYes
web Outlook “Contacts”Yes
Office.com “All” verticalYes
Office.com “People” verticalNo
SharePoint landing page “All” verticalYes
SharePoint landing page “People” verticalNo
Bing Work All VerticalYes
Bing Work People VerticalYes

So only “People” vertical in Microsoft search does not respect SPS-HideFromAddressLists (msExchHideFromAddressLists).

What about cloud-based accounts (not synchronized from local AD)?

There is a configuration setting “Show in global address list” that does the same job. It’s under Microsoft 365 admin center -> Active Users -> User – Edit -> Mail -> Show in global address list:

And another configuration settings “Hide from global address list (GAL)” under Exchange Admin Center:

Here are experiment results:

User Account12345
EnabledYesNoYesYesYes
Licensed (E5)NoYesYesYesYes
m365 Admin Center: Show in Global Address Listn/aNoNoYesNo
Exchange Admin Center: Hide from global address list (GAL)n/aYesYesNoYes
Get-AzADUser -UserPrincipalName <upn> -Select ShowInAddressList -AppendSelected | Select-Object UserPrincipalName, ShowInAddressListnullnullnullnullFalse
SPO UPA ‘SPS-HideFromAddressLists‘ valueFalseFalseFalseFalseTrue
Outlook Address List “All Users” Shown
Office.com Search: Vertical “All”Shown
Office.com Search: Vertical “People”ShownShownShownShown
Bing Work Search: All/People verticalsShownShown
Teams Search: “All” VerticalShownShown
Teams Search: “People” verticalShownShownShownShown
Microsoft 365 Profile card – OrganizationShownShown
Teams Profile card – OrganizationShownShownShownShown
Teams People PickerShownShownShownShown
SharePoint People PickerShown
Outlook People Picker:Shown
* – some users can see changes after hours, for some it takes days

It seems confusing we have properties:

  • “Show in Global Address List” under m365 Admin Center
  • “Hide from global address list (GAL)” under Exchange Admin Center
  • “ShowInAddressList” Azure AD User object property
  • “SPS-HideFromAddressLists” SharePoint User Profile property

Are these properties related to each other?

Let’s test it:

Action-Consequences
(immediate reaction – minutes if not other mentioned)
“Show in Global Address List”
under m365 Admin Center
“Hide from global address list (GAL)”
under Exchange Admin Center
“ShowInAddressList”
Azure AD User object property
“SPS-HideFromAddressLists”
SharePoint User Profile property
New user created, license assignedYesOffnullFalse
Uncheck “Show in my organization address list” under Microsoft 365 admin centerNoOnafter one minute: null
after 24 hours:
null
after one minute:
False
after 24 hours:
False
Set “ShowInAddressList”
Azure AD User object property to “True”
YesOffTrueFalse
Set “ShowInAddressList”
Azure AD User object property to “False”
NoOnFalseTrue

Note: Az module works fine too. I.e. Get-AzADUser instead of Get-AzureADUser and Set-AzADUser instead of Set-AzureADUser.

Findings:

  • “Show in Global Address List” under m365 Admin Center and “Hide from global address list (GAL)” under Exchange Admin Center – same switch, i.e. if you change one – another is updated automatically
    Neither of them affect “ShowInAddressList” Azure AD User object property or “SPS-HideFromAddressLists” SharePoint User Profile property
    and vise versa (???)
  • “SPS-HideFromAddressLists” SharePoint User Profile property is not changeable.
    If you try to change the property value you get an error message:
    Set-PnPUserProfileProperty : Property Not Editable: This property can not be modified.
  • “ShowInAddressList” Azure AD User object property is editable and synchronized to “SPS-HideFromAddressLists” SharePoint User Profile property (takes minutes)
    but then search crawler must pick this change up (takes hours) to hide/show the user
  • here Microsoft says: regarding showInAddressList – Do not use in Microsoft Graph. Manage this property through the Microsoft 365 admin center instead. Represents whether the user should be included in the Outlook global address list. See Known issue.
  • Known issue (Microsoft): showInAddressList property is out of sync with Microsoft Exchange. When querying users through Microsoft Graph, the showInAddressList property may not indicate the same status shown in Microsoft Exchange. We recommend you manage this functionality directly with Microsoft Exchange through the Microsoft 365 admin center and not to use this property in Microsoft Graph.

Bottom line

Setting “ShowInAddressList” Azure AD User object property to “false” is the most effective way to hide user account from search, but it could be changed only through API e.g. via PowerShell and Microsoft’s vision is unclear.

References