Research Triangle PowerShell Users Group User Group, 9 Sep 2021

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Microsoft Graph PlusPlus A better way to interact with Microsoft Graph API with James O'Neil

Description

The Microsoft Graph API is the future of querying data from the Azure cloud. It's incredibly powerful but isn't very PowerShell friendly.

James O'Neill is a former Microsoft employee who built a module that adds support for using all the PowerShell goodness you come to love but is missing from the Graph API.

If you need to work with the Graph API, then this module is an absolute time saver and a must-have tool for your toolkit. Join us on Wed, 7/21 for demo of how this incredibly useful module works. This module contains over a 100 cmdlets missing from the Graph API.

A little info about our speaker:

James O’Neill is a former Microsoft employee who has been working with PowerShell since 2006. His latest project has been to produce better tools for the Graph API.

After leaving Microsoft, he now works as a freelance developer. James lives near Oxford, England, and insists he will publish “The Hitchhikers guide to PowerShell”, eventually.

PSGallery:
https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Microsoft.Graph.PlusPlus/1.4.0
GitHub:
https://github.com/jhoneill/MsftGraph

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/jamesoneill?lang=en

PowerShell Docs:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/

Join the Group:
https://www.meetup.com/Research-Triangle-PowerShell-Users-Group/

A

Good evening everybody and welcome to the research triangle, powershell user group- we're super excited to have you again, and uh you know how mike how you doing tonight.

B

A

Am doing well how about yourself I'm doing well, I'm actually I'm super excited about tonight, because you know we get to talk about um graph and only after seeing what things that james was working on. Did I really understand the power of graph and actually all the things that he added to it, I think was super great. So uh with that, let me let me just bring in james how you doing james, I'm.

C

Doing pretty well considering it's uh 1 37 in the morning my time, it's I'm bearing up quite nicely as you as you might notice. I am I'm taking slugs of caffeine to keep myself going.

A

Well, we certainly appreciate you doing that and uh coming and joining us this evening and uh we're super glad to have you from across the pond. So that's good, so tell me a little bit about uh you know where you come from and that kind of stuff like what's your well okay,.

C

To uh to give you give you some background, I I live in england, uh not not very far from oxford. um I uh I've been in this industry for just over 30 years now. I started by doing a degree in computer science went to work for a pc manufacturer and basically stayed with with microsoft products pretty much. My my whole career um got into I've always been into automating things, but really that really took off with powershell.

C

When I was working at microsoft and before I left microsoft, I wrote the initial module for doing um hyper-v management. Originally the hyper-v shipped with some wmi support, but it didn't have a powershell wrapper for it. So I wrote one and got a couple of hundred thousand downloads for my effort and then just as microsoft decided they uh they didn't need my services anymore. The the product team took that work and used it as a sort of draft standard for doing the job properly.

C

So um a lot of the powershell commands you see for hyper-v even today started with the the the commands that I wrote, even though they don't share any code yeah, but they, the product team, basically came along and reworked them and said, oh well.

C

We need to have a command that looks like this and takes these these parameters, and so you, the my scripts written for my old module, will still work with the current module if they were written right, which is which is quite nice, um and then I've been involved in one or two other things. Doug mentioned that I've been involved with a couple of his modules and done some stuff around selenium and testing. That, and I've also got some some of my code in the azure devops module that donovan brown looks after so.

B

um I can tell just from listening to you with your history and seeing some of the things that you've done in other repos and stuff, like that, that you have a very big developer background, probably a huge depth of knowledge. um We kind of jumped in here a little bit fast for the people that are joining us from youtube.

B

Who might have found this online we're going to be talking about the microsoft graph plus plus module tonight, which is a module that james wrote to basically fill in the gaps for the microsoft graph api and that's what I wanted to ask you james, like how did you get started down this path with this module? Was it just out of frustration or was there another? How did you know like the going from graph to saying I'm going to build my own thing to make it better.

C

um So basically, I I wanted to be able to poke messages into teams and uh the the work that I was doing at that point I wanted just to be able to say post a message into a team's channel and I started looking around and the the way to get into teams was graph.

C

So I then started to have a look at what else was in graph and it was like. Oh wow, they've connected everything to this and I'll put up a slide. When I, when I start the presentation proper, that that's actually got a list of all of all the things that I I talk to. But there is this enormous spread of things that you can talk to. So it's not just teams and it's not just azure active directory.

C

um But it's also uh one note so I've written some some code a long time ago to poke things into. One note- and I said oh, I can do that through graph and you can interact with um excel through graph and you can interact with this huge plethora of stuff.

C

So I wrote wrote a module to do this and just as I I I let it out into the world, the product team said: oh we've got a module for that and I kind of went oh great. Thank thanks a lot. That's that's several months of my my uh my spare time.

C

uh That's gone into that and it comes to nothing and then I started looking at what they'd done and when it's not really very well done and again I'll I'll talk about some of the some of the the drawbacks of of of the way that that they work, but basically what they've done is they've taken.

C

um Most people will call them swagger files, but they're probably called open api files, but they've taken those files and they've run them through a code generator and every api in graph gets a function and they're all treated exactly the same.

C

So if you want the function, remove shared um iphone user that is implemented every bit as well as create new user account right or every bit is badly, but the it was all done by people who had never seen powershell, so nothing pipe nothing pipes into anything, nothing cab completes. There are no what-if switches.

B

So that's what I was about to that's what I was going to lead into next, which and then I was going to turn it over to you and let you talk about your presentation, which is when I was designing uh the the the write-up for this meeting.

B

I hear you talking about plugging in to all these different products that the graph api talks to, but in some ways your module, as as I'm giving a little foreshadow here, fills in the gaps for some of the expected powershell things that they kind of didn't put in there correct exactly right.

C

Yes, right and and it's and this is the problem that you have, if you auto- generate code from a from an api spec- that an api is an interface for a programmer to take some logic and produce a program right and if you just have a a converter that says I will take something that says: um set graph user manager and I will create a graph user manager function. All you're doing is. You is you're. Turning that you've got the thinnest possible wrapper for the api and there's no there's no actual application program in there.

C

There's no logic, there's no sense between the user and the and the the the rest call there's just this really thin wrapper and I've. I I kind of I gave the some of the people on the product team a tough time about it and they said well yeah. You know we're not powershell people well, okay, so why are you doing a powershell module guys, you know, would you would you like some powershell help, because you know I'm available? If you want me, uh we don't really know okay, um well, fine!

C

um So eventually I just said I can take all that logic that I'd written before and instead of calling the uh calling my code to to do things like log on and actually call the rest api, I could call their code and I could return the same rich objects that they were returning because part of the api specs. That would create proper object definitions, so I said well, I can I can take all of that.

C

I can take all of what they're doing and use my existing logic and that's how this this version came back as with the this plus plus tag on it, because it's obviously extending what's been done. Awesome.

B

So so there's the lead in folks. If you joined us from from the internet- and you know I wasn't sure what this is about- james is going to start demoing his module here about additions to the graph api that make it better, faster, bigger easier and that's what we're going to hand it over to him in a little bit. We just want to remind people if you're joining us we'd love for you to click the subscribe button, so you can keep up on all the videos that we post.

B

This is very active, powershell user group uh we post twice a month, so there's plenty of content, we'd love for you to join us, but james. I'm really excited to see what you have and I don't. I don't want to keep you because people may not be aware. Phil and I are in north carolina james, is in england and is very late for him. We don't want to keep him up any late later than we have to this evening. So we're going to hand it over to james.

C

Hopefully, you can see I'm sharing a desktop. Yes, yes, that's always a good start. I find so. What I'm going to do is I've. uh I've got my uh little uh powerpoint presentation here, so what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to by the way we were talking about photography. Just in the background, there is some of the the photographs that I do so that's just outside my back door and I like to go to places that other people don't get to so london underground lets.

C

You visit some of their closed off tunnels and those there are a couple from the grand prix this weekend. So, let's, uh let's launch uh powerpoint and we'll see if I can sort of step through and explain some of this. So I called this the um the who.

C

Let's try that properly so who, where what? Why and how um and we've just got eight quick slides here, but who we've talked about some of this and there's some contact details for me um and how long I've been doing this? I I've worked for for microsoft until 2010. I spent a couple of years working for the mercedes formula, one team and anyone that wants to talk about contract work can get me through uh mobula consulting for anybody that doesn't know what a mobiler is.

C

It's uh it's a a large flat fish, it's a relative of the the manta ray. So it's one of those those found that family and that gives away my my other interest in in scuba diving.

C

This is almost entirely my own work. There's a couple of bits that justin grote wrote that uh I I've incorporated into it and I've. I've made sure I've marked the code where I I've done that. So I was joking with justin that he just has to download the my my repo and search for his own name, and you can see where I've I've taken his code. Anybody else who has something for the pod uh they're.

C

More than welcome uh to to get in touch with me, um the source code is here and the module is available there. So that's the that's the the. Where is it um so yeah I'm for for uh reasons. I don't entirely understand most places. J o'neal is unique, but there was already a j o'neil on github, so I'm j h, o'neill there, and uh uh rather than rather than the short form of my name. So what is graph now?

C

You can see this fairly large um diagram over here and there is lots and lots of stuff that we can get at this this by the way the the um both pdf and I think, the the vizio file for this are in the module. So if you download the module, this is included, but you can see, we've got directory bits with licensing with users with groups.

C

um We've got bits that relate to onedrive and sharepoint. We've got bits that relate to uh outlook and exchange, both the calendar side of outlook and the mail side. um We've got access to the planner, and I mentioned that teams was that was the initial jumping off point and although it's a bit bit small to see on the slide along here, you actually got some of the some of the commands.

C

So what's the plus plus module, as we were talking about in the leading the product group, have produced what they they think of as an sdk, but they've released them as full-on modules. um They're, not very power. Shelly is the is the way that I describe them, and so what I've tried to do is make the whole thing more usable or more power shelly.

C

um It will interoperate with the sdk modules. So, if anybody's out there has used the sdk modules you can you can mix and match the sdk modules with the code. That's in here um and in fact this code relies on the dlls from the sdk modules to to do some of it, some of its stuff.

C

I've also added a couple of extra methods of logging on, over and above what the sdk does and we'll see those right at the start of the demo. um Why do it? Well? uh Let's? um Let's go on to the next slide, um so the there is an api reference. um The the file is, as I was saying, in the leading. Most people still call them swagger files, but officially they they're they're called open api files and um these uh files define what's in there. So you can see the bit.

C

That's in the blue text at the top says, there's an http put command and if you send something to this particular url and the body text contains this, then that, for example, will set the manager for a user- and this is this is all very fine and good until you realize that you've got to dig out user ids um user ids aren't too bad because they're user principal names so they're um bob at mobileconsulting.com, um but the uh the major uh issue with um the uh with these is you actually have to go and find ids for things like groups and a lot of these ids are goods and they're not easy to discover.

C

um So you end up with a command like like that that one there in the first bullet point um and by not not being power shelly, you would think. um Oh, I can. I can take a user or I could take 10 users and pipe them into set user manager.

C

Well, no, you can't it does it that doesn't work. um The um there's no what-if support, so you've got delete without confirmation or or anything like that, so those things are dangerous. um There's no tab expansion.

C

um Now I, if any of you, have worked with organizations and I'm working with one at the moment where everybody is in the domain.onmicrosoft.com.

C

Domain for their for their user principal names, you find very quickly. It becomes incredibly tedious to keep typing the domain name, um just as a just as a um yeah. Well, anyway, that that bit gets gets incredibly tedious, so tab completion- I thought was quite important, so uh I put that in and also you don't really want 10 different commands to set all the different properties of a user or or at least I don't think so. I I don't think you want a set user manager command and then a set user department command.

C

You want to set user command and you set everything you set everything from one command and we'll see some of this in action. So uh how does it work.

C

um Basically, the way that it the way that it's driven is it uses the modules from the sdk, so it loads, whichever dlls it can find. It has to find the authentication one. So it won't work unless you install microsoft or graph or authentication and that's that's a dependency for it and then based on the dlls. It's able to find it loads additional scripts.

C

So if you haven't downloaded the module that provides support for sharepoint, for example, you get all of the graph plus except for sharepoint, um and an awful lot of stuff is enabled just by downloading the users module. But there are. There are other bits as well now inside the sdk there's a connect command and basically we call that connect command directly and the these additional logon methods I mentioned before, and we're going to see in a minute. They get an access token and pass it to connect graph and then the functions support.

C

All the stuff I was complaining was missing, um and the template for for every function is check that we've got a connection because graph supports um both proper microsoft accounts and um or proper azure ad accounts and microsoft. Personal accounts: um we check that we've got the right kind of logon because you can access your consumer onedrive and your consumer onenote through this. But if you try and access user accounts, obviously that's not going to make sense for a consumer account, so we check we've got the right kind of connection.

C

We call the invoke command, that's in the in the sdk and that will return a lump of json. We then convert those json into that json into the right kind of object and we've got a format xml and a type xml file to actually control um what happens to those objects afterwards. So the type xml adds adds some extension properties um and the format. Well, the format formats it so.

C

The next question is how- and that is the last of my eight slides um the this is demonstration time. I am going to show some things that are intended to to error, but I fully expect us to get what I what I like to think of as spontaneous errors.

C

So we may, uh we may see some things that were not exactly as planned, so.

B

So james got a question for you before you get to the demos, and this is probably a little bit off topic but related to the scope of the of the presentation. So um my function is an active directory admin and directory services.

B

Azure active directory all that stuff, and so you can imagine, I work within the az module a lot and you know: there's been iterations of that module, some good, some bad there's this version of the commandments that version of the commandlets and so to give people some perspective here, or at least what your insight here is your thoughts.

B

There are these microsoft, written powershell modules like az and all the sub modules and then there's the graph api. Do you think that in the future, it's the graph api and the modules sort of tail off? What's the purpose of the graph api? If the modules are there.

C

So if you, I think, if you look at any microsoft web service, there is a rest api to work with it and they all they all, follow a very similar pattern for how they authenticate and how you basically send a lump of json to a to an end point and get some json back and you've either.

C

Well. You've done one of the typical crud operations, so you've either created something read it updated it or deleted it, and once you once you've seen one of those they all look very similar now what's been layered on top of those.

C

First of all, you've got a web interface that most of the time is calling that and some of the time, the only way you can find out how some of these api calls work is actually to call up the developer tools in your browser and see what what's being poked at underneath, and we had to do some of that for um uh for the the azure devops stuff I was talking about in the in the preamble.

C

Now the the rest api can be the underpinnings for powershell commandlets. It is, and it is the power it is the underpinnings for the um for the both the um the az cli that is written in python and the um the the uh all the different powershell commandlets I as someone who's now outside of microsoft.

C

It looks to me as if there are multiple teams almost competing with each other, to produce some of these command line interfaces, and so we have seen, I think, three or four different ways of creating a user account, for example, and some of those modules don't work in all situations. Some of them only only work with windows powershell, so they don't work in the cloud shell, some of them uh and and we've had a number of challenges with with with those.

C

I think that the long-term trend is that graph will be the api through which things get called, and then somebody will have to come along and implement something on top of them. So if microsoft do their job properly, a lot of the stuff that I'm doing here will get subsumed into into things that come out of microsoft, but they're not doing that. You know anytime soon,.

B

Okay, so the api is the normal programming interface, which many many developers and other tools are using to interface with the azure cloud, and the modules are maybe how infrastructure people are more used to interfacing with azure, but the azure modules have some gaps and the graphy api has a ton of power. So so um james says you know what I'm tired of these crappy ac modules. I'm going to fill in the gaps on my graph thing here and be able to do graph in a powershell way. Is that am I in yeah yeah there's.

C

That so effectively you've got a module that you have. You have multiple modules that will do users and groups. You have something else that will do teams you have.

C

You then say, but if I want to put data into a a one note, notebook or I want to access my calendar or any of those things graph becomes this way into all of that gotcha, um and so it one if you, if you um in fact, let me just, I- should have it close to hand.

B

C

B

Was basically playing the role of someone wondering like why would I use graph if there's an ac module that gets me to you know uh various parts of azure? So now I understand.

C

B

C

What gra, what graph, isn't doing, for example, there's no graph interface currently to say I want to instantiate a new sql server right. There is a.

C

There is a rest api that is very like graph that sits underneath that okay and what is so, there was a thing I was doing with some arm templates um at the end of last week and something came along and it basically said um you have just deleted something and it's only soft deleted, and you think, oh great, okay, um so clear go to this link and it will tell you how to remove this soft deleted thing and the answer comes back. You have to do it by calling the rest api.

C

There is no clr, you know, there's no azure cli interface, for it, there's no powershell command for it, and the call is very, very like a call to graph, except it's not actually graph, that you're talking to it's a rest api. That's very graph like, but it's another, it's another another endpoint that you call to talk to that.

C

So graph is doing all these things, but there are a lot of uh if you're doing like say. Azure sql or you're, creating azure vms yeah, all of the azure resource stuff, really sits outside this. Okay.

A

All right, so, let's get right into the the from the meat of it mike. I want to see visually yeah.

B

I didn't I'm sorry to take them off track, but just trying to give some reference to the person. That's wondering like why graphs, okay.

C

So I told you I talked about the the the law.

A

Let's make that bigger james, can we make that bigger? Can we make that bigger.

C

How's, that doing is that looking better.

B

C

um Now, if you, if you've, actually installed the the sdk modules, if you just try and load um the module, just called microsoft graph, it takes quite a long time to load. Okay, well, there's mine loaded and you can see it just says right and I'm ready to connect. So I'm just going to run connect graph from azure, okay and.

C

What what you'll see there is, it doesn't recognize the parameter from azure session.

C

Okay, it's just not having any of it, and the reason for that is that that is a dynamic parameter, and it only um it only enables when um we're connected to azure. So what I'm going to do is say I want to uh to use an existing azure connection.

C

So I'm going to take that account.

C

I did that earlier, but it has actually connected successfully and then I can do this this same command again. So I just call that and this time, if I tab complete, it you'll see it recognizes from azure session and I'm connected now. This is something I I pinch from justin grote that we've now got an um a normal azure access token and we've said to graf.

C

We want you to keep using this access token, that access token will eventually time out and we've spotted that it will eventually time out and when it does, we will go and get a new access token, um so I've got little command modeled on. Who am I it's called g? Who am I and.

C

It's funny one of the one of the drawbacks of um having the um the memory in the in the buffer is, if you miss type a command, it remembers the mistyped command. As you can see, I can't type who am I reliably it becomes? Who may, um but you can see here. It says I've got um a user-provided access token, and I can do certain things the the that graph refers to as scopes.

C

So I have these things that I can do, and this is the account that I'm logged on with. So this is uh my admin account and you can see it. This is this, gives you some clue as to why I don't want to be typing my full user profile name, the whole time, um of course, gwmi is an alias.

C

So it's got a proper name, show graph session and I can start doing proper graph commands in here, so I can actually do get graph user and get a list of users in the system. With my monitor size like this, you can see it gets a bit hard to read, but one of the things I've done with users. I talked about having a types file. I actually define a property set for users, which is called organization.

C

So if I do get user and format table or by organization you can see. I get my my users here and you might pick up that. There is a slightly dickens theme going on here. With a couple of my users.

C

um We shouldn't really have jacob as a manager and we'll come back to that in a minute. um I can do some other stuff, so I can get things like the accounts group, but if I try and get the the one drive for the accounts group, it doesn't work with the azure access token, because those scopes say I can do these things, but I can't um um I can't do absolutely everything.

C

I've only got access to some branches of the graph api, so I'm just going to scroll back up to where I had my um uh session information there and I'm just going to open another powershell window and I'm going to do a different kind of login.

C

So same kind of thing, import, the module and I've got my credentials stored in an xml file. So, with a bit of luck, we'll import the module import, the credential tell it. We want to log in with the credential, and you might notice. I've said that this is going to fail and the same thing again. It credentials the dynamic parameter and the module's got like an auto exec file. That's called settings.ps1 and in settings.ps1 it says right: we're going to set the default usage location for licenses.

C

So it's one of the things that really annoys me that you actually have to go and set that. So when I create users, I automatically set it. What are the default properties we get for a user and a bit further down.

C

We've got your tenant id um the name of an app that is known to your azure directory and then a secret, that's associated with that app, and you can embed those in the file. You really you shouldn't be embedding the secret. You should be reading it from something: that's that's encrypted it, but I've got that I've got that in another settings file. So what I can do is I can just load my other settings file, which should be this one here.

C

And now, if I run.

C

The connect it will connect with that credential and you can see again it's a user provided access token, but if I switch back to the previous version, you can see this set of scopes here.

C

I had this very limited set of scopes available to me when I, when I logged on piggybacked onto my azure session and over here, you can see I've got a much bigger set of scopes. You can also see I've logged on with a different user account. So this is my non uh admin user account and I can do the same stuff that I did before so I can do get graph user.

C

C

In fact, I'll just type this in here some of these I've got abbreviations in for so you can see. I can do get graph group, uh it's just ggg and then, if I just tab complete you can you see it actually goes and gets my group names?

C

Okay, so I don't want to be typing an id or having to type a full name like global data connect admins, because I don't. I can't remember how that's punctuated you know. Is it global underscore data connect underscore admins, so these sorts of things, I can just say, go and get the accounts group, and if I want the members of the accounts group well, that's how I get the members of the accounts group and.

A

So you're saying that uh most of your stuff here supports that tab complete. So you know, if I'm doing group names, it will do groups, and if I have that scope and it'll allow me to to enumerate those it will, it will do that for me, yeah and I can even do some discovery of you know some of that stuff. That's super powerful!

A

C

A

C

Well, so I'll show you a bit more of that in in on the on the next next um uh next page, but um yeah we can do things like like uh expanding that we can. We can do things like uh if we take the uh consultants group that I'm in we can go and find out the the uh their my site.

C

um You can see I've just stuck the that result in a in an output variable, so the out variable of that's now in my team site and then, if I go and say get me that site and specifically get me its lists. You can see that these are the lists that exist on that site. So you can see I've created one for tracking issues in a project and various other bits and pieces.

C

Some of these, you can see, are quite new and some go back quite a long way, but we can do that and we can go and start interrogating the sharepoint site. So if I say, let's go and get the problems list one so just call that again.

C

And then uh we can see what columns are in that list.

C

We can get the items from that list and specific properties as well. Okay, so pretty pretty straightforward kind of stuff and I've got some commands in here to work with the planner as well. So I can go and get the plans for my team.

C

So these are the planner plans that we have and I can start mucking about with the the items in the um in the plan and I'm just going to move on from from there james james.

A

um You use the output variable uh parameter for one of your commands just just a moment ago. Yeah, and I was wondering if if that was a requirement or if you could have actually done it done something like you did two steps. Two statements later, which is to assign, uh with an equals, with an equal sign.

C

So the the reason for the reason for doing it for doing this is just so that you so that this runs and we see the output of it and I've got it in a variable for the next command. Okay- and it's if I, if I was going to do that, so it's it. That's just saved me the equivalent of having a dollar problems list here.

C

Okay, so if, if I found I was writing that combination rather writing that combination there, I would just do this version got it so.

A

It gives you the ability right; it just gives you the ability to see output and assign assigned to a variable. Okay, thanks.

C

Yeah that and that it's great for demos, I very rarely use it in real world code. I have to tell you but uh yeah it's it's really, it's a really useful thing to do. Actually, one of the one of the I say I rarely use it.

C

I've been using it this week again for if I, if I, when I'm running a script, that calls lots of other pieces, um I I can stick each piece in an output variable and if I run that script in the global scope, then I've got that I've got those variables available afterwards. So I have. I have used it in other places, but mostly I don't so the two.

C

The two are, the two specialist logons I've shown you, but this last one I'm going to go back to my admin account and I'm literally just going to go connect graph. Who am I um so.

C

Back it comes and this time I've got all those scopes and you notice where, before it said, the authorization type in both of these was I gone and got my own access. Token.

C

Okay, so use the provided access token. Here it actually says it's a delegated logon and what we, what we've now done, is we've logged on, as if we were just using the normal sdk. This is just called connect mg graph, and this has which has saved my credentials.

C

There's a disconnect graph that you can run that that logs you out, otherwise, you just get signed in with the same account. You used last time for each session, so I'm now logged in. As that, I'm going to create. Oh I've done. I need to. I need to make a couple of changes, so we were talking about piping piping users and doing things things of that sort. So let me just do a little quick busk here, so I'm going to do get graph user.

C

When I can type bob- and you can see it'll tab complete bob all right so and I can do ft organization, so there's there's bob. We can see where he works. um We can do uh in actual fact, because bob is his first name. I can just do get graph user bob and it finds him.

C

Okay and again, that's stuff that the the the api just won't do you have to write quite a long and complicated filter to say where the name begins with bob. So if I do, if I go and look for his boss, for example, uh I can go and search for jac, star and I'll find I'll, find him.

C

Okay, so that kind of stuff is, is really quite uh quite useful. Now I can do. I can also do things like get graph user.

C

Where uh department I'm just going to move these users, because my next demo is actually going to.

C

Yes, it's finance type 2., so I can do set. Let's pipe that to set graph user minus department and this time I'm going to move them to legal.

C

And if I go back, you can see bob was in finance here.

B

C

B

You bring up a really good point here that you just made a few minutes ago. um I'm watching you do this and in the course of 10 or 15 minutes here, I think I've forgotten that you're using the graph api feels extremely power. Shell, like we're just using any old normal powershell module.

B

I forget that we're actually using the graphics, yeah yeah.

C

And you shouldn't as a powershell user, you shouldn't care what the api is underneath right, and this is something I've got really. You know there's a couple of other talks. I've done where I basically said.

C

If you make your users understand the internals of how stuff works, they will hate you you're doing it wrong, yeah, you know, and- and it's that's as basic as something like the user doesn't want to know when you query something from uh sigma, wmi, okay, the query syntax for that is a sql based syntax, so wildcards use a sql style percent sign, not a star.

C

Why does anybody ever make the user need to know whether the api underneath it uses sql, syntax or good, old-fashioned, star syntax? Why don't you? Why don't? Why not just say if I see a stock change it to a percent sign and there are 101 things like that and you you just don't want. Apart from the fact this graph in the commands, nobody wants to know what the api is. Underneath I mean you can look. If you really want to know you can go verbose and it will say I called this was the api.

C

I call the url that I called to get that information back.

B

That's just gross.

A

Right, but I think the magic there is as well is that, like someone thinks oh well yeah, you can construct that entire thing for you or you can simply just use, get graph user, and some of that, like the api, well yeah build all these parts. You know construct that expand property properly and do all this like gross stuff, like you said, and that's the thing with the magic is that's why I was super excited to see this, oh by the way.

C

This is how you this is what you have to do: to do: a search for a user by name right and by the way you have to pass that as a parameter.

A

By the way, that's acceptable.

B

Well, so that's my point I was going to make, which is to fill this thing. They were just saying so. Just imagine there's somebody watching this video and they're a beginner user and they're trying to get their head around the graph api and they have to try to type or write out the right. Syntax, that's equal to your verbose. To get that you have there. There is no user that wants to do that.

B

That is going to feel comfortable doing that it's going to take them, probably hundreds of tries for them to feel so comfortable that they, they feel a a real, easy comfort level with the graph api you're, taking all that away and you're just saying: well, whatever you know with the ad module or normal powershell client management file services. It's the same. It's basically the same now.

C

Yes, exactly and the and the thing is the what what's come back from the the guys, the product team that I've given a hard time to has been. But everybody who uses powershell is a developer and you go well. No a lot of people just use powershell, because it's a shell and they want to be able to type a command line, and you know this kind of this kind of stuff.

C

Just this is not acceptable and even if you're, a developer you're not going to put the you know, you you're not going to write this every time you want to find a user.

B

A

Okay, that's what I was saying just because I I can. I can develop the code and I can construct that if I I want to, but why should I have to like? So why should I go through that.

C

Hassle, let me let me show you a couple more things, because one of one of the things that I typically do look if I do get graph user jacob.

C

Right and get his direct reports, um we know that uh we know that he's gone by the way. I I create users with silly names. I've forgotten I've got that one in there, um but as well as well as um bob we've got, we've got doug graves, um we'll we'll probably find we have people with names like helen hancock and um carol singer and various other silly names before we're done. But I can take those users and look they're users right, so we can send them into a set graph user right.

C

So you saw up here right, bob's, um bob's manager was was jacob right, oh and by the way we've expanded that to his display name, not his um user principal name. um So we're going to make we're going to make me the manager of anybody that did report to jacob one command.

C

Okay, and if I go back to get bob, you know he now reports to me. How easy is that.

B

That's damn easy.

C

Or well, let's so you see, I've got my my silly users here right. So if I go get.

C

C

I've got two domains in my subscription. Okay and azure knows that this one is the default, not not that one. So if I go to create a user.

C

My typing is autopoc.

B

New, I I can relate graph.

C

User, so we've actually got in this command a nickname rule. Okay- and this is this- is the command that created that user. Above um I don't want to do that. Don't want to do that this time you notice, I've said just use his given name here. Well, I'm going to take that rule out so we'll use the default rule for creating a nickname for him and we'll.

C

And joe black and we'll let jacob be his manager again, okay, so I can just go in here and start typing um just to avoid too much round tripping to the server. The the user fields will only complete if you've typed something so I need to at least put in part of jacob, but for groups I can actually say uh put him in accounts and.

C

Finance and authors, and he can go in as many groups as I want and then oh, I want to assign him some licenses as well. So this time we can say what licenses does he want? So we can give him the um power bi standard, license yeah, good and power bi standard, because that's free. I think.

B

I've just created a user.

C

Put them in some groups give them a manager and um I've, given him a password. um I have this trick by the way, and I I quite I will recommend, recommend this for for auto, generating passwords.

C

I take um a 400 year range of dates from 1800 to 2200 and just randomly pick one of those dates and then format it in this form, because this meets the usual eight characters. Upper and lower case are numbers and for an initial password that has to be changed. That's really quite good enough, but we've worked out what his display name should be. We've worked out what his user principal name should be from just a first name and last name right: we've put him in groups. So if I go get graph.

C

uh User, joe dot b start there. He is, and I can see what he's a member of.

C

Okay, and and all of that has been.

C

License uh what did I want? I want the one for I think I gave him power bi standard so who have I given licenses for power bi standard to okay, those kinds of things? As you see, we just tab, complete them automatically or I can do. I can look at that. The other way around and look at joe's licenses.

C

All pretty easy stuff yeah so.

B

Go on, I just I still am really sort of wrapping my head around the idea that we've gotten away from all that graph, api, crap and you're doing what any standard, powershell user kind of understands someone who's read. Monthly lunches can fit right in with what you're doing here. It's just, it's still a concept to me. That is very um I'm very appreciative of the time and the effort that you put in to make this happen.

B

Oh well, thank.

C

You so look we're not going to do. There's a there's, quite quite a long demo here and we're not going to do all of it, but um just to show you some of the other stuff that's in here, because because of the the reach of teams, so I'm going to create a new group in teams all right. So what we're going to do is we've already got so I moved those people into legal and you can see here. I would should have done the output variable trick here, but I didn't do it this time.

C

So I'm going to get a set of users. There are my users who are in legal and I'm going to create a new team in microsoft teams for the people in legal. Now, when you do this in graph, what happens is it? The group is created first and then it is. Teams enabled- and you can see here it has to has to retry a few times for azure to finish doing some of the stuff underneath sometimes this takes a full minute. Sometimes it happens in a couple of seconds, but there we go.

C

We've now got a um a a a team set up and you can see that these are teams style properties on there now so with.

A

Just as easily as the powershell, you can basically hey create a new team. I can even get my team, the existing teams, I'm currently in and then kind of change the allow gifi and all that kind of stuff. I can do all that stuff right from here, and I guess what you're going to get to at this point.

C

So yeah you just go set graph team uh dollar new team and then what you want to change. Geez.

A

C

You want to allow giphy or not sure, um and I think one of the things that I I try to do is because I try to avoid using um booleans. So if I want to forbid giphy, this is a switch and you have to actually use switch colon false and it will then it will then disallow giphy. So if I do that it should, and there you go it's it that one's actually got um confirmation requirement in there. So, yes, I do want to do that and if I do.

C

Get graph team new team.

C

Like that, it should come back and you can see if he's gone from true to false, so it was true there and it's now false as easy as that.

C

Okay and the team's got a should have a one drive all right and he's got a calendar.

C

So we've got all of those this one was playing up earlier on. It was creating the notebook but refusing to get it, and this time it's actually working properly. So we've got a one note: notebook for the team and we've got a channel for the team.

C

Okay, so we can do some some stuff. So let's have a look at the one drive.

C

Okay, so there's nothing much in one drive at the moment, but just to save me, typing minus drive team drive all the time. I can just set a home drive which just sets the default parameter for the drive commands later. So I can say make that my home drive and now I can run get graph drive without having to specify which drive. It is all the time. So if I go and ask for the special folder called documents, well, there isn't a special folder called documents.

C

Yet so you see it says the folder exists, but there was nothing to return there. But if I look at the root folder again, you can now see as well as general we've got.

C

We've got a documents folder, so we will be able to copy to that folder shouldn't we I mean that, would that would kind of make sense, so, let's actually just do go, find the uh excel files in the temp directory and copy them up there, and you can see I've gone to a little bit of trouble to try and make this look like a bit like a drive.

C

So you can see we're in documents and the path is root documents and that's the file we just copied up there and.

C

If I do a directory of that folder so before it said, the folder exists, but had nothing to return. Now, if I run that same command again,.

C

You can see the the the files in there and I can go and just open the web page for that.

C

So this is the root of the drive.

C

And you can see, we've got the documents folder there and there's the test file that I just uploaded to it.

B

So so james a little confused um so.

B

The work here is is exceptional right, it's it's just there's a not only have you made commands that are easy to use, but there seems to be logic between the commands, work together and naming convention, and you know this is a powershell group. We are very thankful for the support that microsoft has given us over the years. We've had number of microsoft.

B

Employees present here, certainly not looking to stir the power of microsoft, but, as you mentioned earlier, you've given the microsoft people, some grief about the graph api and things that are missing, they see you work.

B

What is it about your work that they don't kind of agree with, because this seems from a user standpoint just so much more logical and, like understandable I mean you literally, have to be a developer, to understand the graph api to be able to function with it and there's a whole section of people that are not developers.

C

I I think we we should probably ask some of the some of the people that I have. I have been so so unkind to over the last few months to have a have a watch of this video.

B

Okay, all right fair enough.

C

Because um the um uh the the the the problem which we have with the graph api is that it's very focused on the api itself, nobody has focused on making an actual application that calls the api apart from the the web interface. Okay, so nobody has actually come along and said. Powershell commands are an application.

C

They should have as much sense embedded in them as edge, for example, has embedded in it as a browser all right. No, nobody who calls a nobody who uses edge wants to know how server names are resolved and how you connect to https and what happens when um certificates get exchanged. They just want it all to happen right. Well, that's the difference between an api and an application.

C

All right- and you know it's very easy. You know a program's got an api at the bottom and a ui at the top, and it's got some logic in between and all that they have produced. Is the really really really thin layer between something that you can execute and the api and what I've done is said. Well, what about all the sense of what we want? You know I've been doing this for so long. I've got my own ideas of how users want to call this stuff.

C

So let's embed that sense in an application.

B

I mean it just I mean I'm, I guess maybe I'm beating a dead horse. I'm sorry! I'm sorry it just your viewpoint on this just makes so much sense as a leader of a powershell group and seeing how other powershell modules function, some good some bad. But this feels like I remember. We had jeff hicks on one time and he he did a demo. He has a module called get vegetable and he and he he. I.

B

I asked him like what is the purpose of this get vegetable module and he said I wanted to do a demo to show about how objects are handled in powershell without any colorization of active directory or sql or exchange or the file system, and to show them that it's just objects and objects have properties and and there's more data and so forth and so on, and this fits all in with that, and it just makes so much more sense.

B

As a guy like myself, I'm an on-prem uh admin coming to the azure world and having to adjust from using powershell for years doing on-prem stuff and having to move to the azure cloud and trying to figure out the azure way to do stuff. I look at the graph mod, the graph api, some of the stuff and my head. Spins and I've been doing this for a very long time. I can't imagine someone who's trying to tackle this for the first time unless they're coming out of school with a cs degree.

C

Yeah and- and I I we're on exactly the same page with that- and just seeing seeing one thing scrolling up the the chat window from stephen judd, which I I wanted to to answer. um Boolean parameters are always bad. Okay, but boolean parameters are the work of the devil um you shouldn't. You should never have something where the user has to write, parameter, name: space, true for 99 of the usage okay, so um I've been lazy with the lao giphy because allow giphy defaults true, and normally you any of those parameters.

C

You'd be writing true, and it's only if you want to do the reverse case that you you do colon false.

C

If the, if the thing that you usually call is to remove, it is actually to say, don't allow giphy, then I should really have a parameter called block, gifi, which I then call to change from the default, but where you, where you've, where you're only ever setting something true and the the setting it to false, is a really really really really rare case.

C

Then the parameters should there should never be a bullying um and uh yeah. That's the um that's the um the logic on that um the um somebody else also scrolling up the chat. How long has this taken so so far? um I think my family are asleep, um so I can. I can say it's mostly been done in my spare time and there must be upwards of a thousand hours working here.

B

Well, I will you know on that note: the community really amazes me the amount of time that people invested into creating what is essentially open source software right, there's, no uh payback for this work. It's really just wanting to add for the good of the community and for the ease of use for whatever, whatever the motivation may be. uh It's amazing what some of the community members like yourself, have produced.

A

Oh, thank you. Oh my god, I'm I'm reading this code, you can create calendar, invites.

C

Yeah, so look here, so so I'm just gonna so right now, if we look at go back to who I'm logged in as yeah.

C

So, who am I so I'm on here with my admin account, so I'm I'm I'm that account not my not the email address. I gave you at the beginning and if I do uh get.

C

Graph team, new team- minus members- I'm not in that group, yet okay, so I'm just gonna, go add graph group.

C

Group, member new team- and you can see if I just do j at tab complete- um you can see why, even with even with mobile consulting, I cannot be bothered to have a longer name, so I've just got a one character: name, okay! So now I'm in that group and if I pop over to outlook, let's hope that nothing too untoward is visible in my inbox.

C

But outlook should say sometime really really soon, it's not doing it just yet, but it should say really soon.

C

That I have joined well, funnily enough, it hasn't sent me the mail to say I've joined the legal group, but down here in groups, I'm in the legal group, so I'm in it, but um but it hasn't yet. I haven't yet got the mail to say I'm in it and if I go and look at calendars, you can see I've got the legal calendar here as well.

C

All right now, you can see here. We've got the midweek lunch for the finance team, which I was messing around with before. What I'm going to do here is just choose this for a different day of the week. So I'm going to make this thursday.

C

So for the next year the legal team are going, gonna have a um a lunch every every thursday for the next 52 weeks, all right and then we'll say who's going to attend that that so it's going to be, who the members and the owners of that and we're just going to put that set of people into new event. Attendee.

C

So we'll do that and then we'll add an event to the calendar.

C

And with a little bit of luck, what sometimes happens you may you may hear a noise from my phone and you may see me um sort of jump there you go. My phone has just had the invitation, and over here in outlook you can see. Outlook has just said: we've got an invitation and it's filled that in for the midweek lunch for legal- and I hope it's in the legal calendar as well all right, so all all fairly simple to do and we can do the same with with notebooks.

C

So we we've had a team notebook before so um that was the notebook we can go and get the sections from that notebook. So right now there are no sections in it. So I'm going to create one.

C

So we've now got a section and we can actually just take that url and connect to that url and see what's in the in the notebook but I'll add a page first. So here's a page and it's not going to say very much but here's just a token page. Any html can go on that page and if I go click here.

C

Here's my onenote with my new section that I just created a default home for your notes and so on, and it would be rather nice, wouldn't it if that actually showed up in teams. So if I go over to teams.

C

Come on and go to teams in teams, you can see. I've now now joined legal, and if you noticed up here, we've got posts and we've got files and we've got wiki.

C

But what I'm just going to do is say I want to have a new onenote tab in teams.

C

And if I come back to teams you just timed that right, I hope you just saw notes appear when I, when I brought teams back onto the screen and if I go to notes.

C

There's the onenote section that we were just in before, which is kind of neat. I think so now I've added the the uh the one note into there, and this was the thing I wanted to. This was the where I started. I just wanted to send messages in teams, so I can send that to the the team's channel.

C

And I come back to teams and actually go to posts in the channel.

C

You can see. There's the message appeared in the in the channel that I I wanted it to and that's.

B

That so yeah, so james, if I'm keeping score, seems totally worth it. You can write the teams. It only took you about an hour, a thousand hours of development time, great job yeah.

C

C

It was a real achievement to to to be fair to myself going back to the.

C

uh Say he says.

A

So so, in the same fashion, you know you're calling you know, nude, graphic craft channel message and all that kind of stuff, and you put verbose in it. It's just going to give you what the api call was yeah.

A

So, if they're, if it's, if, if you need to do anything that that you're currently not doing that that, if I have some, you know, tasks that I need to, you know play with excel and dump it into here, like you probably have that already, but I could just as easily just do vervos with some other stuff, it's kind of similar and figure out what those api calls, because that's often the hardest part with with a lot of these things is not so much is okay. What exactly is that api call?

A

And you know what is you know? How do I parse these different parts together? Let me get this id, you know it's the wrong id. I need to this part id and all that kind of stuff. That's always the hardest part. When you're dealing directly with the graph itself right.

C

Yeah and the well the so this this stuff here you you, can you can see what I what I'm calling but.

C

Let me let me, try and show you what the process is. Actually I will show you what the process is like, because something went wrong this evening um when I was I was saying before about the notebook not appearing properly, and I thought microsoft had made a change to the api where they didn't provision a team notebook initially, so I then wrote something which I hadn't bothered with before, which was a.

C

um The add a notebook command. Okay, so up here you can see the the help text is still wrong because I've copied this from another another function. But uh oh hang on I'm looking at the wrong one! That's get! I want new graph notebook.

C

New graph, one note notebook yes, so the help text is broken, but this is just going to take uh a name, a team and a site now over here.

C

God knows what I'm going to reveal in my history.

C

Create notebook so in microsoft, docs you've got the graph api reference. Okay, so you can actually search for microsoft, graph, api and eventually you will find a link that brings you to here. So when you go to navigate it, this this hierarchy down the side is the different areas. So you can see there are one or two things which I just don't get into like education and all the in tune related stuff, okay, but down here in notes, we've got notebooks and we've got here's the api for creating a notebook okay.

C

So what it tells me is we're either going to post to me, onenote, notebooks or user, and then a guide or a upn name, onenote notebooks or groups, and a guide or sites and a guide, and we post to one of those and then the json that we have to send, looks like this okay.

C

So, in order to do that, I've got a hash table that I'm going to splat into my command. Okay, and what we're going to say is the method is post, the content is json.

C

We want to strip out any property that looks like this and convert the thing to a graph onenote object when we're done. Okay and then we can say if we've been past a team and we haven't got a team id then go, we've probably just been given a string go and get a team object.

C

If we've got a team id, then that's going to be the path that you just saw in the um on the web, page. Okay. So if it's a team, we're gonna we're gonna go to groups.

C

If we've got a site well again uh we're gonna say it looks like that if we have a site id, if someone's trying to give us a site, name we're going to fail and if we haven't got a site or or a team, we're just going to say we're going to create it as one of my notebooks, so that builds up the uri okay. So we've now got a splatterable set of parameters with all those and uri in it, and then the body that we're going to pass all we need is a hash table.

C

That looks like that and then convert it into json, and I find it's much easier to write the hash table like that.

C

And then convert it so that just converts it to look like a piece of json everywhere I hit everywhere. I do this. I dump the json out to the debug channel. If so that we can debug it and then, in this particular case we go, um it should process.

C

Add a new notebook um uh in fact that that that's wrong as well, but because this is adding something and not damaging anything, we won't. We won't um do a confirmation anyway, so should process is always going to be true. We just run invoke group graph or request and that so it's build the uri figure out which method it is and if you've got a sense of json you're always going to send this and then figure out what the json body is.

C

The the difficult bit usually is figuring out what you have to strip out so that the returned object will convert to one of these.

A

Impressive super impressive.

C

Okay, but but if so, if you, if you, if, if you come along and you go and you say uh so where's one that I don't try and think of one that I don't do at all.

C

So insights, for example, I I don't think I've done anything with insights, but if you said you know this is I want to get a list of what's trending?

C

Okay, you can see here. Well, okay, that's what it looks like you could. You could take a simple one of my commands and knowing that you call me insights, trending, you could you could produce your own command in sort of two minutes flat.

A

So in that same fashion, is there anything that you, you know you think is like you know the another golden nugget, because I think you've given up a whole bunch of stuff and uh then after that is, uh you know, you're still taking contributions from others? How can people help you or are you looking for help or.

C

Yeah, so anybody who who wants to extend the coverage of this um would be really welcome. The the um I had not worked in an organization, that's using intune for for some while and some of the stuff around in tune, um which I think is in is in is under here. If somebody works with with uh within tune and actually wanted to wanted to write an intune section for it.

C

I would be delighted to accept that, um but anybody who came along and said, oh, you know, you've done trying to think of something in um uh in, for example, I haven't bothered to set calendar permissions if somebody said well, you know it would be really nice if you could come and set calendar permissions for me, yeah um well, you know I'll take that that contribution some.

A

Of the, so, how does those contributions come to like you, you strictly live inside github? Is that.

C

People can say if you go to the um the project in github, so the the link was there, but if you've, if you find find me on github um and originally before it was called microsoft graph plus, it was just called ms msft graft um and basically, if you, if anybody sends me a pull request, um the um uh eyeball uh I'll, I will be very happy to have them uh any any issues. People spot um again, I'm really really happy to have them.

A

C

A

Other ways that people can support you in any way. You know I know some people have like you know, buy me a coffee kind of thing. Is it.

C

I should at least do the buy me a coffee thing, um the. uh If people want to want to want to send donations, I I will. I will put a thing up for for donations by paypal, but.

A

I just think that you know thousand hours worth of work, for this is you know impressive and uh you know, should be rewarded.

C

Yeah, the the number of number of downloads we've had for for export uh or import excel is up, is pushing up to to. We reckon it'll break a million this. uh This is uh august. I think doug we haven't had more than 10 donations from a million downloads.

B

I think I think doug had a drop off earlier. All.

C

Right, the donate.

C

I think I keep saying I will finish writing my powershell book and when I, when I get the powershell book published, people can support me by buying the book um but uh yeah the um at the moment. There isn't there isn't a way of of um of sending me cold hard cash and yeah.

C

The the problem with most most places is that, if you're using this in any kind of business, it's really hard to actually pay a contribution to somebody pay a donation to somebody and have it and get it reimbursed, and so people who are using this would be paying out of their own pockets ra rather than their employer who's benefiting doing it.

B

C

B

It though, but you know so like um I don't know how confident I would be to be able to write something that I could submit to you from the code side, um but a lot of developers are great at writing code, not so great, at documentation and help files. Do you I mean? Is there room for people to help on the simpler stuff as.

C

Well, so some of the some of the stuff yeah, just actually I'm I'm fairly good at making sure that everything has got code in an example. The one thing that that I am, I am missing is sort of better test exposure um when you're working with.

C

So I have, I have one, my own um microsoft, azure pack, um action pack azure subscription that I use, and this is a production, albeit a small scale system, but it's the one through which I get my own email and the um uh the amount that I can do in here to test things is very limited.

C

Other people who could come along and just test this and make sure, for example, um everything that's in in each of the examples still works. I haven't written us if you, if you look at what doug and I have done with with excel, we've- got a really good suite of pester tests. This this hasn't got any, and so somebody who understood um pester, who came along and uh wrote pester pester tests, somebody who actually came along and just went. You know what you can make the the english far clearer in the help.

C

um Those would all those will all be a benefit, um but the help is, you know, there's a there's, a real there's, reasonably good coverage in the help. um I'm not sure that it it's it. You know it would stand up to better proof. Reading, certainly.

B

Well, listen! It's a little bit of a call out to the community. That's watching this video! This gentleman has donated quite a fair amount of his time to make a module that we all benefit from. If you have some spare hours and you can commit some grammatical changes, some help files, some pester tests or maybe actually write some dev code that can help improve the module. There's definitely room for everybody here to do something to help this man along he's done, I mean an amazing amount of work on his own.

B

I think us, as a community can support him in some way, but at least at least at the very least say thank you for the work that you've done, but move the project along by just offering a second thread of work time, rather than one person to do all the work. But I don't know what you had planned to demo tonight. I don't know if you want to do more or if you've hit the limit here, but I mean this is super impressive. What you've done tonight?

B

uh What you've showed tonight in the work that you've done? I mean I'm again, as I said earlier, uh the idea that we're not even we're working with the graph api, but it just feels like regular old powershell. I mean.

C

B

C

Is how it how it should you know the like? We were saying before nobody, nobody wants to know the api behind the thing they're calling you know if you, if you think of you, know backing back in this window that I had uh here.

C

You know we call right right at the top of this, we called connect a z account right now. You don't want to know what there's a there's a rest api underneath that you don't you don't want to know how that works.

C

Where would anybody want to know what the what the innards of that? Are it? It's it's it's crazy and yet what we, what the only thing that we've got for from the from the the teams in microsoft?

C

Is this thing that basically says in order to use this you've got to understand all the ins and outs of the api? You cannot. You know the the thing that I showed with um when I did I'll. Do it again, just for so just to make it visible, but the.

C

That one okay, you can so I'm showing you the the the the the um the doc site all right. So this information is all there. Okay, when you go to uh it's.

C

I was gonna, I was looking for users and of course now I can't find where users are so. I just go user well.

A

Related to that it says it's not very, you know transparent to find okay, hey we're doing users, and then it's this whole like we're here. In what ways are we doing it so yeah yeah? So.

C

So list users right, optional, query parameters, so you've got filter and select and search, and so on so get all users and eventually down here you can see that we've got this kind of stuff for how we actually go and find a user, and this stuff is not simple.

C

Okay, you're asking people to compose something, that's really quite complicated and it's a yeah. It's okay!

C

Once you've done a few, you know you can you can do others but, like I was like I was saying if you're, even if you're a developer- and even even if you understand this stuff, who is going to put this lot in a command line right- um and you know I should it's- it's not perhaps the most politically correct thing to say, but I work with a lot of people with um very difficult to spell for names, and I I have to have search because I don't know if um somebody called um trying to think of one of the indian guys, um somebody with a name like hiresh kumar as his first name.

C

I'm not entirely sure how you spell that first name all right and he's he he's his full name is probably um his full upn he's, probably 60 characters.

A

C

I think the thing.

A

Is the idea is just that you know if you can support tab completion and you can you can make it? You know easier for the end user overall to just deal with some of that. You know, I think that's the best. You know feature of it all yeah and you know.

C

Abstractions, you have to be able to do that right if I can't do that, which I could do with on-prem active directory. You know to me: it's not usable yeah.

B

So james just wanted to uh there's a question in the chat here um from stevie valediner. uh He wants to see how you build urls. Is there a private function, hiding that does the actual call to graph.

C

uh Okay, well, let's.

C

Let's actually show you.

A

Yeah, I think we're getting along too. So, let's kind of like uh wrap this up, and you know I think we could. Even uh you know just take that offline too, because I think you know one of the biggest features of this whole thing is hey tab. Completion is there for is your friend pipeline is just magic and the basic help that you've written so far will get you 90 there. It's not feature complete as you dig set, but you accept you know new features as people aren't find them, and so yeah really and.

C

And the the the feature completeness remember: the the um the auto generated stuff has a hundred percent coverage, but it's got no intelligence.

A

C

This is kind of taking the functions that that I think are important and giving them some intelligence. So the the completeness of coverage is a is a function of what I think has been important up to now. So there is other. That's why there's no in tune, because I don't work with intune.

A

Yeah- and that doesn't mean it can't be there, but also.

C

A

Where it is, but some.

C

Somebody else will need to contribute the bits that I don't think are important.

A

Yeah and again we're: where can people you know, find some more information about you um and we'll go from there? I don't think that uh we need to keep that in the recording. As far as you know that I think that's more deeper than other people need to know or unless you agree there uh james, you know I'm gonna leave that up to you.

C

Well, I think, there's enough in the recording for people to find me, um so somebody wanted to know how the how the url was built. So let's say we can I'm just going to step through it here.

C

um So um this is the thing I was about: checking whether we we've we've got the the right credentials to get a user and.

C

C

This is basically saying: we've got a username and it's not a um it's, not a upn or a guide. So I need f11 here. Don't I so now we're gonna we're gonna go and get get this as a list of users.

C

And the list basically says: we've got a filter on there, so we need to add a header. Otherwise this doesn't work properly, which is a really nice thing. Microsoft did we're going to make sure that we get all the right properties.

C

And then this is building the uri, so graph uri is just a global variable and then that's built the uri there, okay and then we've added the select fields. So uri looks like that. Now that was the thing you saw me calling and then this builds up. The uri.

C

So, depending on what else has been called, and now we dive into invoke graph request and invoke graph request is a wrapper.

C

Oh that's useful. I just pressed f10 instead of f11.

C

So I'm just going to put a breakpoint there and try and do that again.

C

That doesn't need to be there.

C

So just keep pressing f11.

C

So this is checking work or school account and.

C

In fact, what I want to do is just go back to where I put that breakpoint.

C

So now, let's do this properly, if not name. Oh sorry, we've got, we've got a name. So now we build up the that filter string and now we call.

C

C

And now we call invoke graph request and invoke graph request, as I'm saying before. That's the wrapper for what's actually built into um the sdk modules and the main thing about this is: it knows how to call the request with the necessary security headers. So I don't have to do the work of of adding headers to um invoke webre the invoke web request command in powershell.

C

So when I do that.

C

It checks that I'm connected.

C

And then you can see this is where it's actually calling the one. That's that's provided by the um by the sdk and then I can. I do some work and say if, um depending on what's being fetched, we may just say we may say: we've got we're dealing with value, multiple values rather than a single object, and then once we've got that object, we can do some cleanup on it and then we call new object and the type name. So if I step through all of that.

C

So for each for each um result that we get basically go through and remove any properties that are excluded and then we've specified as type so right now, we've got a hash table: dollar r and that's the the user that we've got and then we're going to turn that into.

C

A well, in fact, in this case, we're not going to turn it into anything. We're just going to we're just going to return that that user and process it and process the user at the other end, but that's the that's the the guts of it.

C

So it's the one I've been showing previously is probably a better example, but um this one in notes is a it's a simpler one to call so you can see it's, as I said, just build the uri here and then pass that to invoke graph request and that will take the uri the method and the data type and uh return you. The objects.

A

Wow that goes down deep into the rabbit hole.

A

No, no! That's awesome, though, that that is like I yeah, I'm I'm at a loss for for the the work involved that you put into this to make it complete or as seamless as it is today, and uh you know I hats off to you, you know and uh well.

C

Again, most of the most of the work was done um two years ago, and then this sdk stuff came out and as I say, it monitors killed it stone dead and then I came back and said I can take most of what already exists and literally instead of where I've been calling invoke web request and I'm putting the my authentication headers in- and I had my own incredibly baroque logon stuff, because that the stuff for that is not not easy and straightforward.

C

I can just say well call the log on stuff that they're doing for me that they're doing and call their invoke, and then I can reuse all the same code. So most of the most of the the work for to make this work on the sdk was coming back and all this stuff was the same. But all I had to do here was just change.

C

What I, what I was calling to be invoke graph request and make subtle changes to these parameters and um yeah that was so making it work with the sdk was the easy part, the the kind of exploring all this stuff from.

C

Exploring all the stuff that's in the.

A

So, to come back to the beginning, there is that the requirements for getting started here is you need the sdk which you can get from. You know you need the graphics sdk, which you can download from microsoft and then once you install that and the parts you need and then yeah install the module from ps gallery powershell gallery.

C

Yeah, so basically, if you go to the ps gallery, let's actually do that as well. So uh if I just go, that's a quick, quick and dirty way to get into the powershell gallery.

C

So if you just go here and just do a search for microsoft, graph.

C

You you could download the whole lot right and if you do, if you download this one, actually it's got all the child modules or you can just bring down the ones that you're interested in. So you can bring down authentication and users, for example, which should be down here somewhere.

C

So you can bring down authentication and users and then you've just got the you've. Just got the bits that you need and I I'm fairly sure that I've specified that if you haven't already got authentication um downloading, the plus plus version will will pull down authentication for you. So if you wanted to to do the intune bits, for example, you could just install intune uh or microsoft graph.intune, and then you follow the same pattern that I've done so it's load the.

C

Load, the dlls so.

A

So you first have to install their module, at least the parts that you were looking for right. It just needs to be installed. It doesn't need to actually be invoked. So when you would then import correct um graph plus plus you just do that, and then it knows that these modules have already been installed.

C

Yeah, so what you can see? I've got the dlls in here, okay and when the module loads.

C

He says I'm going to regret going into here, but uh there are all my classes for the term completion and somewhere.

C

Here we go so these the these names in the hash table correspond with the names of the dlls okay, so we've got personal contacts, identity directory management, yeah users, functions, users, actions, identity, sign-ins and reports.

C

These are the items listed here are then any any commands that we're going to load that are present in those those modules and then we go through and we basically say if you can find the module in the current directory, the dll in the current directory great go load.

C

The dll from here otherwise go find where the module is and just load the dll, and I think you can just see there so, okay, they all follow the same name, so just load the dll from the module and if the module module's not present, then you just go right, verbose. Oh, we didn't find that one we're going to skip that and a bit later on, we go right. So all these skipped ones.

C

We can say you know: if script contains users, then these modules only rely on users right, so we load those and then for the other. For the other modules we just go through and if the, um if we were able to find users for example, we then load those parts, those parts there. Okay. So if you, if the if the file here is called reports, there'll be a reports here and there should be reports there so reports.

C

We we need the dll from reports, because it defines some types that we don't get anywhere else, but we don't need any of its functions.

A

C

A

So again, it's pretty feature complete, so I think you know again mad mad mad props, to you know all the work you put into this and uh you know, is there. You know anything else, you'd like to say any last words like I. I really appreciate you know you come into this group and putting it together and for those who uh you know join us after the fact and who are watching this on youtube.

A

Is that you know don't forget we meet twice so twice a month and uh feel free to uh look us up on youtube and uh enjoy the night any last words james. No.

C

I I think it would, if you've enjoyed what you've seen um and you think it's worth other people looking at it send tweet out the the the link to the the youtube video when it's there and promote the promote the hell out of the youtube video.

B

But we'll we'll definitely do that, um so I would just say thank you again for presenting this was fantastic, really enjoyable. I think the people in attendance here really enjoyed this as well. There was a lot of questions in the chat, a lot of good chatter, about just the quality of the work and the thought process put into this. um If you're watching this on youtube and- and you made it this far. First of all, thank you for sticking with us. This long check out our youtube channel. We have plenty of great content.

B

We have over 100 other videos on all things related to powershell. At the end of this video you'll get some suggestions on things that might be useful to you. um So with that, maybe we should wrap this up and say goodnight phil. It's been another good meeting, thanks for reaching out and saying we should get this we should get james on. This is like a home run, grand slam. This was such a fantastic event and james. Thank you for staying up late with us. I mean I.

C

Know it's late. I shall now now go to bed and uh I shall promise put my eyes open with a couple of matchsticks in the morning for work.

A

Well, thank you super appreciate. It super appreciate it all right.

C

Now everybody I'm I'm gonna drop off now.

A

C

B

Much again thank.

A

B

And have a great night.

C