Microsoft 365 Community Community Demos, 21 Apr 2019

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From YouTube: Community Demo - Using Azure automation for provisioning of your SharePoint and Teams structures

Description

This community call demo is taken from the SharePoint General Development Special Interest Group recording on 18th of April 2019. In this video, Markus Möller (Avanade) shows how to use Azure automation for automatic provisioning of your SharePoint and Microsoft Teams structures.

Presenter - Markus Möller (Avanade) - @Moeller2_0

Full details on the community call from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/blogs/sharepoint-dev-community-pnp-general-sp-dev-sig-recording-18th-of-april-2019/

More details on the SharePoint dev community calls from http://aka.ms/sppnp.

A

My name is max mallow I'm from Germany I worked there for a Vinod I, have a Twitter account as well for sure and a personal blog, where I write about things, for instance, about the topic.

A

Also that I'm talking about right now- and this is about provision English with automation, so I think other automation is quite as a service from Asia, but it's not that popular in use, I think around SharePoint site and provisioning as well as teams, provisioning, I haven't, read so much about it, but I'm using it for quite a while now in customers and areas, and so on. So just give me some quick basics. Why should also think about using it?

A

So the set up I want to show you in a minute is they are quite simple and I think a bit simpler than other comparing technologies, for instance, when you have to set up an area function or there's a web app also takes a bit longer. I guess: PNP PowerShell I think is one of the best tools to work with SharePoint, especially with SharePoint provisioning. You have to need less lines of code for achieving results here.

A

The thing is in the demo: I will show you that you can use the same code base, meaning as around books for administrative reasons, as well as to connect them to your provisioning engine. This can be an lightweight approach, was really less lines of code. Rome I show you in the demo, but you can also, of course, stare this up to high end solutions and, unfortunately, for user requests, or something like that. Of course, you would need a specific UI and connect this to your unboxer.

A

This is not my topic today, but I show you on the administrative setup. So the first thing what we need is we need the automation account in Ezra. We have some ones here and for today we will use that one in that kind of an automation account. We have, of course, our run books come from there to a minute, and we also have some configuration assets, for instance like the powerful modules, where you explicitly, for instance, have to upload your SharePoint PMP PowerShell module, which is not out of the box available.

A

You can have your credentials here. You have some variables also have certificates. I used this right now for the modern authentication way we showing them a code in a minute, and that's all so.

A

Now come to our almost ran box. Indeed, are you in my case nothing else than PowerShell scripts? We have one parent run book here, which I'll show you next and we have some child run books which we will call one by one, and so first we will use the create team two today, because these are optional ones. In my block, you can see the difference here. What I tell you in a minute, so we will first create a team. In this case.

A

We will then go to provision staff with the provisioning templates and finally, we do some further steps which we cannot achieve with provisioning templates right now. This is roughly the pattern. I often used to provision that so the first thing is our parent handbook. We of course need some parameters here, such as the desired alias a display name, the description or an owner.

A

We get some yeah so here we can, for instance, get our credentials from the assets Don. So when we quickly, for instance, would remove this. We can also get this from here directly and add this to the canvas once again getting some I use this. It's a bit old-school Mary, but I use an XML parameter for Nixon, a string for several parameters in one variable and then here we go and we'll call our first yeah sopran book and execute this.

A

Once we have this, we will retrieve our team, which we got and then next point to this one. We will check if our site is ready yeah. This is um this is a typical pattern, also in a while string that we check for several times if everything is ready so far during provisioning, because the the speed of obviously is 8/5, of course you know, might differ from day to day, and so this is a cool pattern. We will check this for several times now.

A

Simple aside is ready and then we can go on with our second run book and finally, our our third one. It can test this now. I show you in a minute that the rest of the time, but we can already kick this off. I, did this in preparation. We will just change some parameters here, so we have our team and desired alias. We have our display name or description and also an owner and pick this off and now we run.

A

Still NICU but shouldn't they go now. It's already running um you don't have a life output here um this was in the past. It was working like that, but since the Y- it's not available anymore, but in case you need it in this test pain, you can still use refresh job scream, and here you see that we are already on the way. So what we can see right now we already connected to our tenant.

A

We created the new team with the desired display, name and alias the team got created so far, but it's not ready yet because under the would still things are going on. Ok, this tanks, some time. In the meantime, we can check the run book which is currently on its way, and this is the creation of team, and here we see already what we saw on the output that we connected. First against the Microsoft graph with an F ID I have secret and our tenant, which we got from the prof on the variable.

A

Stop then we create our header and what we do in this case- and this is my create team, run book tool. This is the currently productive approach to create teams. We first will create a group with our team, or we first will check if the alias is available. Sorry and then we are going to create a group here, we build our request for that and then finally, we kick that off and from that group we afterwards create a team request to enhance this group to a team.

A

This is quite that scenario which you might have already seen. For instance, in the video on Powder Piazza was showing a couple of weeks ago. I increased. This only was desired, alias and also adding owners, because I think creating groups without owners is not the best practice. So this was the first one. We can check by the way back to our test scenario, which quarry is gone through.

A

So let's jump up here so we saw our team did not get ready so far, but with one we try, it got ready and then here already our provisioning run book starts this. Maybe we first have a look into the code here. The first thing we will do. We define the function here to download the PMP tablet because the PMP template you know when you will run your partial using you use from your file system. In that case, running in an edger automation account we will download this from Asia blob storage.

A

Yes, so I can show you in a minute from where you find it for the blob storage, we need our credentials and also for connecting to the SharePoint. This is our credentials we created. This is a bit more complex here, but I love to work with the model of Education. Finally, I will tell you why this all stuff, you could also replace your what we I'm doing in this lines of code was just a simple get credential, but modern authentication with an app registration is much better here.

A

We connect then against a SharePoint, and then here we have our template, which we download. We saw the function above and finally, we only applied this up against the side. So how does it look like in an as a starch? Here's our template from there it's downloaded.

A

The final thing is doing some rubber stamps I can quickly go through that which is currently not possible with PMP provisioning. We just decided to create another team tab and therefore, in the final run book once again to make sure we have that we connect against Microsoft graph. We create another rest request header. We create a request, URL the tap request where we, finally whence the you are here, we create a URL against a list.

A

I'll show you in a minute which we created with PNP provisioning, with our template, yeah and the final result in our chests list that everything went fine. Here we have the download of our XML template, which was done to the local running environment of the automation account and then finally, here the provisioning is done. This was the second run book and here already starts the third run book where we are adding the top against our team and then, finally, when we switch against our team, we have team number 15 created.

A

This is standard, but this employees list, which we show up here, was created by PNP provisioning inside the team side and finally show you. The team is the template that I used for that so I'm, creating here some fields, creating a content, type, creating a list instance and finally creating lots of data rows for a reference list for sorry. First, and here are all our employees, which we just saw, that was my little demo.

A

Finally, some lessons learned from this thing when I have to create a side or team, whatever I used the pattern that first I try to solve my requirements with the provisioning template. If this doesn't work, then I try to use PMP commercial before or after provisioning.

A

Finally, you saw this in that case because does not work creating the tabs so far, I use rest methods, for instance against graph or SharePoint whatever you can also try to use deeper methods inside PowerShell and what you can finally do if nothing helps I also did this in southern cases. Is writing your own powershell commandlets?

A

We also made migrations with pet approach. In that case, we do it a bit different: don't handle one side in all steps, Oh, meaning creation, provisioning, doing forever steps. No, then we do just speed up a bit. We would first create maybe, for instance, 100 sites, then go to all 300 sites and provision them and then finally do the additional steps to all hundred sites afterwards command yeah.

A

Finally, the thing is um when, when it comes off indication, what I found out is when you work with the modern app authentication, you solve lots of problems on top, such as multilingual parks, because you don't have a user service account which might not fit the current language, and then you get issues with PNP provisioning he also don't have to handle. Even when you update science, you can also use this for administrative tasks. You don't have to handle getting admin, site, collection, admin access once again and remove it afterwards.

A

If you want to do this, though you always have this access when you have to write operations and so on, yeah, that's for my site, thanks! So much for listening.

B

Thanks thanks markers, really really great demo, and actually that's that's a really great explanation- how we are using those different pieces and bits and pieces on the on the UI. So thank you for clarifying and the learnings are always good. Learnings are really good on the demos as well, because they help other people understand what you've gone through and and and then you're sharing your the learning, so they don't have to bang their head against the wall. So to say so. Thank you for that.

B