I was just approached by a colleague of mine having performance issues, while connecting to Exchange Online using the new EXO V2 module using app-only authentication.
The behavior lead into an overall elapsed timespan of over one minute, until the connection was finally established!
Continue readingI’m dealing with these issues already for a long time. But meanwhile, after a couple of support cases, the fog seems to lifting.
When you don’t have the following setup, you can stop reading:
For the others, feel free continue reading. It might open your eyes for some issues your facing.
Continue readingIn our daily work as administrator, we use a lot of functions and PowerShell scripts. At least friends, teammates and a lot in the community does.
Now GitHub is a place were a huge amount of code is being made available and I was wondering:
Why not have them imported on-the-fly?
Continue readingIn the past months. I’ve seen a lot of tickets and question from developer, service owner and some IT pros in regards of OAuth, consent and permissions (delegated/application).
Especially 3rd party applications and their documentation is missing very often some details. Therefore, I’m writing this post.
Continue readingI’m really excited about the fact that Microsoft fulfilled the ask for supporting Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol in ApplicationAccessPolicy as announced here:
Unfortunately Microsoft seems to make it harder for you to add EWS permission full_access_as_app to your app.
Continue readingAs mentioned in my previous post here, daily tasks shifted and so I had a closer look into Microsoft Graph. In this post it’s about retrieving group information.
In my daily work, I often have to deal with topics, where I need to collect more information about a group. Yes, the new UI in the AAD portal helps, but doesn’t provide all the information. On the other side there are a ton of PowerShell modules e.g.: MSOL, AzureAD or AzureADPreview.
Sorry, but I’m unhappy as not one module, gives me all information. In fact in some cases I have to use MSOL and AzureADPreview in order to get the whole picture. Besides the fact that some Cmdlets just throw an error in larger environements.
The only solution for me was to use Microsoft Graph and therefore, I wrote a function called Get-MSGraphGroup. Same like my other function Get-MSGraphUser, it incorporates all techniques from Microsoft Graph:
The function has the following parameters:
.SYNOPSIS
This function uses Microsoft Office application for retrieving access token and queries Microsoft Graph for group properties.
.DESCRIPTION
The Microsoft Office with ClientID d3590ed6-52b3-4102-aeff-aad2292ab01c can be used to retrieve an access token with the scopes AuditLog.Read.All, Calendar.ReadWrite, Calendars.Read.Shared, Calendars.ReadWrite, Contacts.ReadWrite, DeviceManagementConfiguration.Read.All, DeviceManagementConfiguration.ReadWrite.All, Directory.AccessAsUser.All, Directory.Read.All, email, Files.Read, Files.Read.All, Group.Read.All, Group.ReadWrite.All, Mail.ReadWrite, openid, People.Read, People.Read.All, profile, User.Read.All, User.ReadWrite, Users.Read
.PARAMETER Group
The parameter Group defines the id of the group. Unless you use the parameter ByMail. If this parameter is used in addition, the function tries to get the id of the group by searching for a group with the specified e-mail address.
.PARAMETER AccessToken
This optional parameter AccessToken can be used if you want to use your own application with delegated or application permission. The parameter takes a previously acquired access token.
.PARAMETER ByMail
The parameter ByMail is a switch, which can be used in combination with Group, when an e-mail address instead of an id is used.
.PARAMETER Filter
The parameter Filter can be used, when you want to use a complex filter.
.PARAMETER ShowProgress
The parameter ShowProgress will show the progress of the script.
.PARAMETER ReturnMembers
Switch to return members of group.
.PARAMETER ReturnMembersTransitive
Switch to return transitive members of group.
.PARAMETER Threads
The parameter Threads defines how many Threads will be created. Only used in combination with MultiThread.
.PARAMETER MultiThread
The parameters MultiThread defines whether the script is running using multithreading.
.PARAMETER Authority
The authority from where you get the token.
.PARAMETER ClientId
Application ID of the registered app.
.PARAMETER ClientSecret
The secret, which is used for Client Credentials flow.
.PARAMETER Certificate
The certificate, which is used for Client Credentials flow.
.PARAMETER MaxRetry
How many retries for each user in case of error.
.PARAMETER TimeoutSec
TimeoutSec for Cmdlet Invoke-RestMethod.
.PARAMETER MaxFilterResult
MaxFilterResult when Filter is used.
.EXAMPLE
Get-MSGraphGroup -Group ServicesSales@bla.com -ByMail
Get-MSGraphGroup -Group 6288514a-9840-4426-as05-d2955a03ea27
Get-MSGraphGroup -Filter Get-MSGraphGroup -Filter "startswith(mail,'ServicesSale')"
.NOTES
If you want to use your own application make sure you have all the necessary minimum permission assigned: Group.Read.All (this might change in the future. Consult the full permission reference for Microsoft Graph)
It has basically same functionality like Get-MSGraphUser, with the difference that it retrieves data from groups.
The function also supports multi threading using PowerShell runspaces. On top of this it is important to understand the following parameters:
By default only the total number of members will be returned. IF you need to get all members, you can use one of those switches. Be aware that this can take a while and depends on how many members a group has.
You might wonder about the difference between both:
ReturnMembers will return only members of a group. This can also be another group. It will not recursively resolve all levels down to a user object.
ReturnMembersTransitive will exactly do this for you: recursively retrieve flat list of all users.
Just to give you a real-life example. We receive very often tickets, where it is asked about checking Exchange for issues as it seems not all members of a group received an important e-mail.
Well, before it was some kind of hassle to get the flat list of users. Now with this it’s easy as you can just use Microsoft Graph and transitiveMembers.
As mentioned in previous posts, I’m super lazy and that’s why I have it somehow automated to load all my little helpers in combination with a tweaked PowerShell profile. You can find my little helpers here:
https://github.com/IngoGege/Miscellaneous/blob/master/ExchangePowerShell/HelperFunctions.ps1
You might wonder about the needed application and permissions. No worries as you can use (partially) the app “Microsoft Office” (appId: d3590ed6-52b3-4102-aeff-aad2292ab01c), which is available to everyone and has even the scope Group.Read.All or Directory.Read.All. Usually these permissions require Global Admin consent!
I hope this code helps YOU in your daily work. Feedback is always welcome!
A few days ago, I was approached by some Executive Support colleagues. The had to handle a lot of mail items in shared mailboxes. One issue the came across, was the fact that they had to move items and delete folders, but couldn’t as the folders contained private items.
Note: Don’t get me started about the use case “Private Items”! It doesn’t gives you any security value as it’s only honored by a few clients!
Well, back to the topic…I’m aware of this behavior and there is also a KB article about this topic:
“Cannot copy this folder because it may contain private items” error in Outlook
Since the shared mailbox is in M365 and the fasted way with least effort was to add the permissions for this user using Add-MailboxFolderPermission and make use of parameter -SharingPermissionFlags.
That’s what I thought and then run into this…
Continue readingOver the last weeks I had a steep learning curve with Microsoft Graph. In my daily job and especially as we moved to M365 it’s absolutely necessary querying attributes for users.
On-premises you most likely would use Get-AdUser or even just ADSI to do so. With the move to M365 you will call Microsoft Graph. And of course make use of OAuth2.0 flows for authentication and authorization.
Continue readingRecently I was approached by some of our developers as they wanted to get some reports about the usage of their Office Add-ins. I thought this would be an easy one.
Unfortunately it turns out that Microsoft doesn’t give you the ability for such a report.
Continue readingI know that this topic is really a topic with gets high attention.At the moment there is nothing available in Microsoft Graph, which would make it possible to manage objects in Exchange Online.
The few things, which exists, are more for end-user (e.g.: accessing their e-mails, calendar or tasks) and for auditing and reporting (e.g.: Security API). Nothing available for managing a mailbox permissions or attributes. Not even like simple CustomAttribute1-15.
Now Microsoft released a new Exchange Online PowerShell module: EXOv2.
Continue reading
The clueless guy 