Tag: Automation

Execute SharePoint Online PowerShell scripts using Power Automate

Most of us would have used PowerShell for SharePoint to manage SharePoint settings at the organization level and site collection level. SharePoint Online PowerShell commands are very efficient for batch operations for e.g creating multiple sites, list items etc. To use the SharePoint Online PowerShell commands

  • You must have the SharePoint Admin role or Global Administrator role in Office 365
  • Install the SharePoint Online Management Shell module

As you know you must be administrator to install a PowerShell module on your workstation which not everyone will have in corporate environments.

I often use a PowerShell script to enable App Catalog at a site collection level to test the PnP webparts & extensions before deploying at the tenant level app catalog based on requirement. If you are not an SPO admin then the dependency is with the SPO admin. In this blogpost I am going to show you how to automate this process by executing PowerShell script to enable App catlog in Azure using Power Automate.

Pre-requisite & permissions:

  • SPO Admin
  • Azure Subscription to create Automation account
  • Access to Premium connector (Azure Automation) in Power Automate
  • SharePoint List to collect details about the site which needs to have App catalog enabled

To complete this automation process, create the following two components

  1. Automation account in Azure with a Run Book to execute PowerShell script for enabling App Catalog in SP site
  2. Power automate flow to call the Run Book

Automation account in Azure with a Run Book to execute PowerShell script for enabling App Catalog in SP siteAutomation service in Azure is a cloud-based automation and configuration service that supports consistent management across your Azure and non-Azure environments. Go through the documentation from Microsoft to know about this powerfull service in Azure. Let’s use the service in Azure to create a simple Runbook with PowerShell code to enable App catalog in SPO site, you can do much more than this using this service. Refer to this link for the pricing details for the automation service in Azure.

Step 1: Go the Azure portal & create a resource Automation

Enter the name of the automation account, select the Subscription & resource group & click Create

Step 2: After the resource is created, go to the resource & click Modules Gallery under the section Shared Resources as shown below to add the PS SPO module

Search with the keyword “SharePoint” & click “Microsoft.Onlie.SharePoint.PowerShell” and then click Import. This step will the add the SharePoint online PowerShell module for us to use the available PS SPO cmdlets in Runbook.

Now click modules & verify if the SPO PowerShell is added & available.

Step 3: The next step is to add the user credentials (Username & Password) of the SPO admin which is safe & secure by not hardcoding the password on the Runbook. You can also use certificates or AppID AppSecret in PnP online Powershell for creating connection to SPO.

Step 4: Now we are good to create the Runbook, to create it click Runbooks under the section Process Automation and then click Create a runbook. Enter the Name of the Runbook, select the Runbook type to PowerShell and click Create.

Now let’s add the code by editing the runbook to enable app catalog. The section Dynamic Parameters on the code will be passed from flow. To connect to SharePoint Online we are using the SPO admin credentials created in the previous step. Find the code below

# Dynamic Parameters
param(
  [parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
  [string]$SiteURL = "https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/contosoportal",
  [parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
  [boolean]$enableAppCatalog = 1
)
# Credentials
$myCred = Get-AutomationPSCredential -Name "SPOAdminCred" 
# Parameters
$AdminSiteURL = "https://domain-admin.sharepoint.com"
# Connect to SharePoint Online
Connect-SPOService -Url $AdminSiteURL -Credential $myCred 
# Get the Site Collection
$Site = Get-SPOSite -Identity $SiteURL 
# Enable App catalog
if($enableAppCatalog)
{Add-SPOSiteCollectionAppCatalog -Site $Site}
# Disable App catalog if false
else{Remove-SPOSiteCollectionAppCatalog -Site $Site}
# Get Site Collection Title
Write-Output $Site.Title

The runbook is now created, you can test the script by clicking on Test Pane & pass parameters (Site URL etc) to test it. Click Publish button as shown below to publish so that it can be called from Power Automate. It’s now time to create the flow

Power automate flow to call the Run Book

You can now create a flow with automated trigger from a SharePoint list to get the site url & Boolean value either to enable or disable the app catalog on the site. Here I will be using an Instant flow with trigger “Manually trigger a Flow”

Once the flow is created, add the action “Create Job” under the connector “Azure Automation” which is a premium connector.

Select the Azure Subscription which has the Automation account resource with runbook>Select Resource Group>Select Automation Account>Select the Runbook name which has PS script to enable app catalog. If there is a need to wait until the automation job completes then select Yes on the field “Wait for Job”. For the dynamic parameter, write a JSON to pass the mandatory & optional parameters to the runbook script. On this example I will be passing the Site URL & Boolean value to either enable or disable app catalog using JSON as below

{
  "SiteURL": "https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/MyFirstTeam",
  "enableAppCatalog": 1
}

If using a SharePoint list, construct the above JSON dynamically with the URL

For the runbook parameters, you might also get an interface as shown below to pass the values (Site Url & enableAppcatalogbooleanvalue).

The flow is ready, run it to test now with parameters.

 Summary: The use case I’ve chosen is a simple one but azure automation can be a more powerful service to perform various automation tasks. Find few below

  • Write Python script in the Runbook
  • Many samples are available within the Runbook gallery (Create AD user, Display All provisioned site collections etc) under the section Process automation.
  • With the PowerShell type Runbook all the PS modules (Azure AD for automating AD account creation, PNP SP Online etc) are readily available for us to import easily.
  • There is a feature by name “Hybrid Runbook Worker Feature” available within Azure Automation account for us to connect Onpremise resources in Azure (e.g SharePoint Onpremise, Onpremise AD etc).
  • Create a Webhook to call the runbook from an External application by making a POST call
  • Call a custom built dll by importing them in to the Modules section
  • Create graphical Runbook with GUI to add cmdlets & to configure the steps
  • Create schedule linking a runbook

Hope you have enjoyed reading this post and find it useful. If you have any comments or feedback, please provide it on the comments section below.

Automate the provision of Azure AD Account & License assignment – Part 1

A decade back I was part of a team to automate the On & Offboarding process of employees for a customer using .NET framework, it had a module to provision user accounts in an on-premise environment. I still remember having used couple of dll’s for Active directory 2003 & exchange 2007 to create AD & Email account. It was not easy but nowadays with the Office 365 in place its so easy to create account & enable different Office 365 services (Exchange, SharePoint, Yammer etc) for a user in Azure Active directory. This example will be applicable for the Organization which does not have On-premise Active directory. Organizations having On-premise active directory, the user account’s will be synchronized from On-premise AD to Azure AD. On this post I am going show you how to

  1. Create Azure AD account & assign license using Power Automate
  2. Assign License using Graph Endpoint

Create Azure AD account & assign license using Power Automate:

There is a Power Automate action Create user under the connector Azure AD which helps us to create account in Azure AD but there is no action as of now to assign individual license to a user but we can overcome this by adding the user to the AD security group which has a license assigned to it.

There is a flow action Add user to group under the same connector for adding the user to the security group, all the members of the group will get the license assigned on that group. The Azure AD connector does not return custom attributes of Azure AD. For e.g you can’t assign a value to a custom AD attribute with the Create user action, if you want to assign a custom attribute or an attribute which is not exposed in the Create User action then the account has to be created using PowerShell. There are ways to call a PowerShell script from Azure Automation Runbooks with the help of a flow action.

Other Azure AD actions apart from the above screenshot which could be of use are

  • Create group
  • Get group members
  • Get groups of a user
  • Get user
  • Remove Member from Group
  • Update user

There are templates available in Power automate template section which helps you create account based on the information from the SharePoint List, based on HTTP request etc

Prerequisite:

  • Permissions on Azure AD:
    • Group.ReadWrite.All
    • User.ReadWrite.All
    • Directory.ReadWrite.All
  • Security group with license assigned

For assigning a license to Security group, go to Azure AD Admin center. Follow this documentation from Microsoft to assign license to a group.

You can also turn off certain services from the license to the group, for e.g Turning off the Power App service for the user

You can also use dynamic groups for assigning license to a user, if you have dynamic group based license assignment to a user then you could ignore the step on the flow to add user to the security group. Dynamic groups works based on rules to determine group membership, for e.g if a user has an AD attribute set for Department. In this case the AD user created with certain department will get automatically added to the group which will in turn assign a license to the user.

Let’s now create the flow, I have used an Instant flow with trigger Manually Trigger a flow. Add the action Create user from the connector Azure AD

Now add the action Add user to group, the Group Id should be for the Security group which has a license assigned to it. The User Id field should be dynamic value Id from the previous action Create user.

To get the group Id, go to Azure AD

Run the flow. Once the flow runs successful the user account will be provisioned on Azure Ad with a license.

Assign License using Graph Endpoint:

There is a beta graph endpoint to assign license to a user. Find the Microsoft documentation for more information

All types of license (E5, E3, PowerApps, Power etc) has a Service Plan id also called as SKU id. Find the list of SKU id’s on this link if your tenant has procured the license for the service

 To get the available service plan or SKU ID, make a GET call to the endpoint https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/subscribedSkus & also from the beta endpoint of the user https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/me

Once the sku id are available based on the type of license to be assigned, you will have to make a POST call to

Endpoint URL: https://graph.microsoft.com/beta /users/testuser10@mydevashiq.onmicrosoft.com/assignLicense

Request Body:

{
  "addLicenses": [
        {
            "disabledPlans": [],
            "skuId": "b05e124f-c7cc-45a0-a6aa-8cf78c946968"
        },
        {
            "disabledPlans": [],
            "skuId": "a403ebcc-fae0-4ca2-8c8c-7a907fd6c235"
        }
  ],
  "removeLicenses": []
}

The first SKU id is for Enterprise Mobility & Power BI (Free)

To remove the license for a user, use the collection removeLicenses. This graph endpoint to assign license can also be called from a Flow.

Summary: You can also use a HTTP request trigger in the Flow for integrating with other applications. On next post I will write about creating account in On-premise Active Directory. Hope you find this post useful & informational. Let me know if there is any comments or feedback below.