MidDay Cafe pausing until re-launch with new format on May 10th

by Contributed | Apr 12, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

We are temporarily pausing MidDay Cafe until our re-launch on May 10th. 

Due to scheduling conflicts with increased interest in new offerings, as well re-structuring MidDay Cafe for a shorter format with different content and a new emphasis on podcast readiness, we are temporarily pausing MidDay Cafe. Look for an upcoming announcement with meeting invite and more. 

Michael Gannotti

Michael Gannotti

Dynamic Groups in Azure AD and Microsoft 365

by Contributed | Apr 12, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

When I first started in IT, my large organization had an entirely separate “Data Security” team who were responsible for user management – adds/moves/deletes and password resets. They were a small but busy team, handling both calls from users via the helpdesk and requests generated by HR. Apart from using some Active Directory automation scripting with VBScript instead of the GUI, each request was handled individually.

Fast forward to 2021 and as well as replacing those scripts with PowerShell, we can use dynamic groups to maintain the group members based on the attributes of those members.

Why would you use Dynamic Groups?

Using a query-based membership, when you update the attributes of a user or device they will be added to or removed from the dynamic groups that are now relevant to them, without you having to do any other steps. You might have a dynamic group for people who have the same department name or location specified in their user account. You can combine more than one attribute so, for example, the group members have to both be in the Finance department and be located in Brisbane, Australia. You can even create a “direct reports” dynamic group for people who report to the same manager.

Devices can also be group members but you can’t mix both users and devices in the same group. You could create dynamic groups of devices with the same operating system version, Intune device property label or enrolment profile name, for example.

For a full list of supported attribute queries and syntax, visit Dynamic membership rules for groups in Azure Active Directory. 

Licensing

Dynamic membership is supported in security groups and Microsoft 365 groups. It requires an Azure AD P1 license for each unique user who is a member of one of or more dynamic groups. This is an overall count though – the P1 license doesn’t have to be assigned to the people you want to be included in dynamic groups, but the total member count of people in dynamic groups must match or be exceeded by the total number of P1 licenses owned by your organization. Some Microsoft 365 license plans include this Azure AD premium functionality – E3, E5, MF1 and MF3. No licenses are required for devices that are members of dynamic groups.

Dynamic Groups in Azure Active Directory

The Azure portal provides a graphical-based rule builder for dynamic membership, which supports adding up to five expressions, and the ability to enter your query string directly into the text editor. You also need to use the text editor for the “direct reports” scenario I mentioned above, setting operator precedence, and for writing more complex rules.

Adding a dynamic membership rule to a group in the Azure Portal

Operator precedence is where we want a part of the query to be evaluated before another part. For example, we can use parenthesis to build a list of matching department names (finance or HR) and add that to the Brisbane location:

user.city -eq "Brisbane"-and (user.department -eq "Finance" -or user.department -eq "HR")

To build more complex queries, you can use the following operators:
-eq -ne -startsWith -notStartsWith -contains -notContains -match –notMatch -in -notIn
-not
-and
-or
-any -all

Example: Direct Reports

This rule maintains members who have their Manager property set to the same Manager ID. The Manager ID is the unique object identifier found in the manager’s profile. It does not support subgroups and can’t be combined with any other membership rules.

Direct Reports for "{objectID_of_manager}" for example Direct Reports for "62e19b97-8b3d-4d4a-a106-4ce66896a863"

Example: On-premises domain membership

If you’re synchronizing identities from Active Directory to Azure Active Directory, you can build dynamic groups based on which Active Directory Domain the user belongs to. This is based on the user’s Security Identifier (SID). You can use PowerShell to query the users with a domain filter to get the start of the SID that you need:

Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase "dc=domain,dc=local" | select Name,SID

Then use the rule syntax that queries Azure AD for the user.onPremisesSecurityIdentifier attribute:

(user.onPremisesSecurityIdentifier -startsWith "S-1-5-21-12345678-1234567891-123456789")

Verifying members of your dynamic group

When an identity attribute of a user or a device changes, Azure AD evaluates all dynamic membership rules that exist in that directory, triggering any relevant membership additions or removals. You can also see the list of current group members via the Azure portal, or use the following PowerShell command for a simple list:

(Get-AzADGroup -DisplayName "<DisplayNameofGroup>" | Get-AzADGroupMember).DisplayName

Note: This requires the Azure Active Directory PowerShell module that you can download here. 

In preview, is the ability to validate your rules against up to 20 users or devices. The Validate Rules tab will run your query against your selected target users or devices and confirm if they would meet the requirements to be a group member or not. For more information, visit Validate a dynamic group membership rule (preview) in Azure Active Directory. 

Microsoft 365 groups and Microsoft Teams dynamic membership

Microsoft 365 groups (as a group type) provision access across a selection of Microsoft 365 services for a group of people who will be working together. They are designed to prove quick and easy access, removing the administration overhead of an IT Pro needing to set permission on several different Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, a SharePoint Online site, a Planner Plan, a Power BI workspace and a shared mailbox. This group type also supports dynamic membership, created via the Azure Portal the same as you would an Azure AD security group.

By using this group type and dynamic membership, you can add and remove members to a Microsoft Team automatically, without the team owner needing to do any administration tasks.

To achieve this, you can either:
Create your Microsoft 365 group in Azure Active Directory, adding your dynamic membership rule.
Then either create a new team from this group (after giving Azure AD time to update). 

Or apply dynamic membership to an existing team by changing its group membership from static to dynamic. 

For more details, visit Overview of dynamic membership for Teams. 

What about dynamic distribution groups?

Yes, Exchange Online supports dynamic membership for email distribution groups! Unlike security groups, the group membership is calculated each time a message is sent to the group. To set up and manage dynamic distribution groups, you need to use the Exchange Admin Center or Exchange Online PowerShell.

This example creates a dynamic group of Full Time Employees by querying a custom attribute:

New-DynamicDistributionGroup -Name "Full Time Employees" -RecipientFilter "(RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'UserMailbox') -and (CustomAttribute10 -eq 'FullTimeEmployee')"

For details, visit Manage dynamic distribution groups.

You also need to use Exchange Online PowerShell to query the list of group members at this point in time, as they can’t be viewed in the Exchange Admin Center or the Azure Portal:

$FTE = Get-DynamicDistributionGroup "Full Time Employees"
Get-Recipient -ResultSize Unlimited -RecipientPreviewFilter $FTE.RecipientFilter -OrganizationalUnit $FTE.RecipientContainer | Format-Table Name,Primary*

Check out View members of a dynamic distribution group for more details.

Conclusion

Dynamic group membership is a powerful feature, but like any technology capability it requires planning and alignment with your organization’s needs and its business processes. What scenarios do you have where dynamic groups would be useful? Need help writing more complex queries? Let us know in the comments!

How to get any site collection users with their roles using PnP PowerShell?

by Contributed | Apr 12, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Introduction

Sometimes we have a requirement to get reports of users and their roles on the SharePoint site and we have to export to CSV/Excel format. To achieve this solution we will use PnP Powershell. 

Let’s see step-by-step implementation:

Implementation

• Open Windows Powershell ISE


• Create a new file and write a script

Now we will see all the steps which we required to achieve the solution:

1.  We will read the site URL from the user

2.  Then we will connect to the O365 admin site and then we will connect to the site which the user has entered

3. Create a function to get user and their roles and store it in an array

4. And we will export the array to CSV format

So in the end, our script will be like this,

$basePath = "E:ChandaniBlogsUserRolesPS"
$dateTime = "{0:MM_dd_yy}_{0:HH_mm_ss}" -f (Get-Date)
$csvPath = $basePath + "userdetails" + $dateTime + ".csv"
$adminSiteURL = "https://*****-admin.sharepoint.com/" #O365 admin site URL
$username = #Email ID
$password = "********"
$secureStringPwd = $password | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force 
$Creds = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $username, $secureStringPwd
$global:userRoles = @()


Function Login() {
    [cmdletbinding()]
    param([parameter(Mandatory = $true, ValueFromPipeline = $true)] $Creds)
 
    #connect to the O365 admin site
    Write-Host "Connecting to Tenant Admin Site '$($adminSiteURL)'" -f Yellow
  
    Connect-PnPOnline -Url $adminSiteURL -Credentials $Creds
    Write-Host "Connection Successfull" -f Yellow 
   
}
Function StartProcessing {
    Login($Creds);
    GetUserRoles
}

Function GetUserRoles {
    try {
        $siteURL = Read-Host "Please enter site collcetion URL"
        Write-Host "Connecting to Site '$($siteURL)'" -f Yellow          
     
        Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteURL -Credentials $Creds
    
        $web = Get-PnPWeb -Includes RoleAssignments
    
        foreach ($roles in $web.RoleAssignments) {
            $member = $roles.Member
            $loginName = get-pnpproperty -ClientObject $member -Property LoginName
            $title = get-pnpproperty -ClientObject $member -Property Title
            $rolebindings = get-pnpproperty -ClientObject $roles -Property RoleDefinitionBindings
            $roleName = $($rolebindings.Name)            
    
            $global:userRoles += New-Object PSObject -Property ([ordered]@{                   
                    UserName  = $title
                    LoginName = $loginName
                    Roles     = $roleName
                })            
        }       
    }
    catch {
        Write-Host -f Red "Error in connecting to Site '$($TenantSite)'"     
    } 
    Write-Host "Exporting to CSV" -ForegroundColor Yellow      
    $global:userRoles | Export-CSV $csvPath -NoTypeInformation
    Write-Host "Export to CSV successfully!" -ForegroundColor Yellow
}

StartProcessing

Output

Summary

So in this article, we have seen how to get users and their roles from any SharePoint site collection and convert it in CSV format.

Hope this helps! If it is helpful to you then share it with others.

Sharing is caring!

How to startup your data flows execution in less than 5 seconds! (Public Preview)

by Contributed | Apr 12, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

ADF has added a new option in the Azure Integration Runtime for data flow TTL: Quick re-use. This feature is currently available as a public preview. By selecting the re-use option with a TTL setting, you can direct ADF to maintain the Spark cluster for that period of time after your last data flow executes in a pipeline. This will provide much faster sequential executions using that same Azure IR in your data flow activities. You may find that parallel data flow executions or data flows that take have long execution times, will be better served as single job clusters without a TTL.

In the video below, I will walk you through how to use your TTL settings in the Azure IR so you can take your data flow sequential pipelines and move from 1-2 min warm pool startup times to activities that start in seconds:

Single-Command Power Platform Hands-on-Lab Configuration

by Contributed | Apr 11, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Suppose you are a community leader or an instructor who will run a hands-on lab session for Power Platform. You got content for it. Now it’s time for setting up the lab environment. There are roughly three approaches for the preparation.

1. Ask the participants to bring their existing Power Platform environment,


2. Ask the participants to set up their environment by themselves, or


3. The session leader is preparing the environment for the participants to use.

Each effort has its pros and cons like:

1. The first approach would be the easiest and the most convenient for the instructor because it’s based on the assumption that everyone is ready for the exercise. However, you never know if every participant has the same configurations as you expect. It really depends on their organisation’s policy. After all, you, as the session leader, will probably suffer from a lot of unexpected circumstances.


2. The second one can be convenient for you as the session leader. It might be as tricky as the first approach. Delegating the environment set-up efforts to the participants may make you free, but at the same time, you should provide an instructional document very thoroughly and carefully. Even if you do so, it entirely depends on the participants’ capability. After all, you should start the lab session by confirming the environment set-up anyway.


3. The last option goes to you as the session leader. You prepare everything for the participants. They just come, sit and practice. If you do this set-up by hand, it would be awful. You will not want to do that.

Therefore, as a hands-on lab session leader, I’m going to discuss how to automate all the provisioning process and minimise human intervention by running one PowerShell script.

The PowerShell script used in this post is downloadable from this GitHub repository.

One-Liner Script

Let’s say you use the following information for the admin account.

• Tenant Name: powerplatformhandsonlab


• Tenant URL: powerplatformhandsonlab.onmicrosoft.com


• Admin E-mail: admin@powerplatformhandsonlab.onmicrosoft.com


• Admin Password: Pa$$W0rd!@#$

With this information, how can you set up the lab environment in just one go? Here’s the entire script and you just run the command below.

    ./Set-Environment.ps1 `

        -AdminUsername “admin” `

        -AdminPassword “Pa`$`$W0rd!@#`$” `

        -TenantName “powerplatformhandsonlab”

Wait, what? What’s going on? Here’s the magic. Let’s find them together.

Create Microsoft 365 Tenant

The first step to do as the session leader is to create a Microsoft 365 tenant. Microsoft 365 offers a free trial for 30 days. It includes 25 seats, including the admin account, which is suitable for the lab. Click this link, http://aka.ms/Office365E5Trial, and create the Microsoft 365 E5 plan’s trial tenant.

After filling out the form below, you get the trial tenant!

As you’ve got a new tenant, let’s configure the lab environment in PowerShell. Please note that you HAVE TO use the PowerShell console with the admin privilege.

Provisioning Order

There is no particular order for the environment provisioning. However, I would recommend following this order because there’s incompatibility found between PowerShell modules especially between Power Apps and AzureAD:

1. Activate Microsoft Dataverse for Power Platform Default Environment


2. Add User Accounts


3. Assign Microsoft 365 Roles to Accounts


4. Assign Microsoft 365 Licenses to Accounts


5. Assign Azure Roles to Accounts

If you do the Microsoft Dataverse initialisation later than Azure AD, you will get an error. I’ll discuss it later how to avoid it.

NOTE: To use any of the PowerShell module mentioned in this post, you need PowerShell v5.1 running on Windows. PowerShell Core (v6 and later) doesn’t support this scenario. For more details about this, refer to this page, Connect to Microsoft 365 with PowerShell.

Install AzureAD Module

You can add a new user account to a Microsoft 365 tenant through the AzureAD module. As of this writing, the latest version of the module is 2.0.2.130. Use the Install-Module cmdlet to install the module. If you append these two parameters, -Force -AllowClobber (line #3), it always installs the newest version regardless it’s already installed or not.

    Install-Module -Name AzureAD `

        -Scope AllUsers -Repository PSGallery `

        -Force -AllowClobber

Log-in to AzureAD as Admin

After installing the module, log into the Azure AD as the tenant admin. For automation, you should stay within the console. Therefore, the following command is more efficient for sign-in.

    $tenantName = “powerplatformhandsonlab”

    $adminUpn = “admin@$tenantName.onmicrosoft.com”

    $adminPW = ConvertTo-SecureString “Pa`$`$W0rd!@#`$” -AsPlainText -Force

    $adminCredential = New-Object `

        -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential `

        -ArgumentList ($adminUpn, $adminPW)

    $connected = Connect-AzureAD -Credential $adminCredential

Add User Accounts

It’s time to add user accounts. As the trial tenant includes 25 licenses, you can add up to 24 accounts. For more details to add a new user account, refer to this document, Create Microsoft 365 User Accounts with PowerShell. But you just run the following commands. Here are some assumptions:

• Each user has the same password of UserPa$$W0rd!@#$ for convenience, and it’s not allowed change (line #2-4).


• Each user has the same location where the tenant resides. For now, it’s KR (line #6).


• You need to create up to 24 accounts, so ForEach-Object is the go (line #9).


• All user accounts created are added to the $users array object (line #18).

    $userPWProfile = New-Object -TypeName Microsoft.Open.AzureAD.Model.PasswordProfile

    $userPWProfile.Password = “UserPa`$`$W0rd!@#`$”

    $userPWProfile.EnforceChangePasswordPolicy = $false

    $userPWProfile.ForceChangePasswordNextLogin = $false

    $usageLocation = “KR”
    $users = @()

    (1..24) | ForEach-Object {

        $user = New-AzureADUser `

            -DisplayName $(“PPUser” + $_.ToString(“00”)) -GivenName $(“User” + $_.ToString(“00”)) -SurName “PP” `

            -UserPrincipalName $(“ppuser” + $_.ToString(“00”) + “@$tenantName.onmicrosoft.com”) `

            -UsageLocation $usageLocation `

            -MailNickName $(“ppuser” + $_.ToString(“00”)) `

            -PasswordProfile $userPWProfile `

            -AccountEnabled $true
        $users += $user

    }

Assign Microsoft 365 Roles to User Accounts

The user accounts need to have appropriate Microsoft 365 roles. As it’s the hands-on lab configuration, you can assign the Power Platform admin role to each user account. For more details of the Microsoft roles assignment, refer to this Assign Admin Roles to Microsoft 365 User Accounts with PowerShell page. Run the following command to activate the Power Platform admin role.

    $roleName=”Power Platform Administrator”

    $role = Get-AzureADDirectoryRole | Where-Object { $_.DisplayName -eq $roleName }

    if ($role -eq $null) {

        $roleTemplate = Get-AzureADDirectoryRoleTemplate | Where-Object { $_.DisplayName -eq $roleName }

        $enabled = Enable-AzureADDirectoryRole -RoleTemplateId $roleTemplate.ObjectId
        $role = Get-AzureADDirectoryRole | Where-Object { $_.DisplayName -eq $roleName }

    }

The admin role has now been stored in the $role object. Now, iterate the $users array to assign the role.

    $users | ForEach-Object {

        $assigned = Add-AzureADDirectoryRoleMember `

            -ObjectId $role.ObjectId `

            -RefObjectId $_.ObjectId

    }

Assign License to User Accounts

To use Power Platform within the tenant, each user MUST have a license for it. You can assign the license through the PowerShell command. For more details, visit this Assign Microsoft 365 licenses to user accounts with PowerShell page.

First of all, let’s find out the licenses. As soon as you create the trial tenant, there SHOULD be only one license, whose name is ENTERPRISEPREMIUM.

    Get-AzureADSubscribedSku

Then, run the following command to assign the license to all users by iterating the $users array.

    $sku = Get-AzureADSubscribedSku

    $license = New-Object -TypeName Microsoft.Open.AzureAD.Model.AssignedLicense

    $license.SkuId = $sku.SkuId
    $licensesToAssign = New-Object -TypeName Microsoft.Open.AzureAD.Model.AssignedLicenses

    $licensesToAssign.AddLicenses = $license
    $users | ForEach-Object {

        $assigned = Set-AzureADUserLicense -ObjectId $_.ObjectId -AssignedLicenses $licensesToAssign

    }

So far, you’ve completed automating processes to create a trial tenant, create user accounts, and assign roles and licenses.

Activate Microsoft Dataverse for Power Platform Default Environment

Power Platform internally uses Microsoft Dataverse as its database. Microsoft Dataverse is fundamentally essential for other Microsoft 365 services to use. You can also initialise it through PowerShell commands. For more details, visit the Power Apps Cmdlets for Administrators page.

First, you need to install both PowerShell modules, Microsoft.PowerApps.Administration.PowerShell and Microsoft.PowerApps.PowerShell. Like the previous installation process, use the -Force -AllowClobber option to install the modules or reinstall both if they already exist (line #3, 7).

    Install-Module -Name Microsoft.PowerApps.Administration.PowerShell `

        -Scope AllUsers -Repository PSGallery `

        -Force -AllowClobber

    Install-Module -Name Microsoft.PowerApps.PowerShell `

        -Scope AllUsers -Repository PSGallery `

        -Force -AllowClobber

Log into the Power Apps admin environment, using $adminUpn and $adminPW values.

    $connected = Add-PowerAppsAccount -Username $adminUpn -Password $adminPW

NOTE: You might not be able to log into the Power Apps admin environment with the following error.

 

 

It’s because the internal log-in process for both Microsoft 365 tenant and Power Apps environment are different from each other. If it happens to you, don’t panic. Just open a new PowerShell console with an admin privilege and attempt to log in.

Here are some assumptions for the Microsoft Dataverse initialisation:

• Initialise Microsoft Dataverse on the default environment (line #1),


• Follow the currency settings of the default environment (line #5), and


• Follow the language settings of the default environment (line #10).

    $paenv = Get-AdminPowerAppEnvironment -Default

    if ($paenv.CommonDataServiceDatabaseProvisioningState -ne “Succeeded”) {

        $currency = Get-AdminPowerAppCdsDatabaseCurrencies `

            -LocationName $paenv.Location | Where-Object {

                $_.IsTenantDefaultCurrency -eq $true

            }

        $language = Get-AdminPowerAppCdsDatabaseLanguages `

            -LocationName $paenv.Location | Where-Object {

                $_.IsTenantDefaultLanguage -eq $true

            }
        $activated = New-AdminPowerAppCdsDatabase `

            -EnvironmentName $paenv.EnvironmentName `

            -CurrencyName $currency.CurrencyName `

            -LanguageName $language.LanguageName

    }

Assign Azure Subscription

Building custom connectors is inevitable while using Power Platform. In this case, you might need to handle resources on Azure, which requires an Azure subscription. If you create the trial tenant for Microsoft 365, you can also activate the trial Azure subscription. As it requires credit card verification, it MUST be done within Azure Portal. If you log into Azure Portal with your admin account, you can see the following screen.

Click the Start button to sign-up for the trial subscription.

Once completing the trial subscription, log in to Azure using the PowerShell command below. The $adminCredential object is the same one used for Azure AD log-in.

    $connected = Connect-AzAccount -Credential $adminCredential

NOTE: You SHOULD install the Az module beforehand.

 

    Install-Module -Name Az -Scope AllUsers -Repository PSGallery -Force -AllowClobber

Only a limited number of resources are available in the trial subscription. For custom connectors, mainly Azure Logic Apps, Asture Storage Account, Azure Virtual Network, Azure API Management and Azure Cosmos DB are supposed to use. Therefore, to use those resources, run the following command to register those resource providers.

    $namespaces = @(

        “Microsoft.Logic”,

        “Microsoft.Storage”,

        “Microsoft.Network”,

        “Microsoft.ApiManagement”,

        “Microsoft.DocumentDB”

    )

    $namespaces | ForEach-Object {

        $provider = Get-AzResourceProvider `

            -ProviderNamespace $_ | Where-Object { $_.RegistrationState -eq “Registered” }

        if (($provider -eq $null) -or ($provider.Count -eq 0)) {

            $registered = Register-AzResourceProvider -ProviderNamespace $_

        }

    }

Then, assign the subscription to each user account. For Azure Roles, visit this Assign Azure Roles Using Azure PowerShell page for more details.

NOTE: Instead of scoping the entire subscription to each user account, it’s better to create a resource group for each user, scope to the resource group and assign it to each account. For the resource group, you need a location. In this example, koreacentral is used.

    $role = Get-AzRoleDefinition | Where-Object { $_.Name -eq “Contributor” }

    $location = “koreacentral”

    $users | ForEach-Object {

        $rg = Get-AzResourceGroup | Where-Object {

            $_.ResourceGroupName -eq $(“rg-” + $_.MailNickName)

        }

        if ($rg -eq $null) {

            $rg = New-AzResourceGroup `

                -Name $(“rg-” + $_.MailNickName) `

                -Location $location

        }
        $assigned = New-AzRoleAssignment `

            -ObjectId $_.ObjectId `

            -RoleDefinitionId $role.Id `

            -Scope $rg.ResourceId

    }

All users are now able to access to Azure resources for the exercise.

So far, we’ve walked through how to automatically provision a Power Platform environment for hands-on labs, using PowerShell. Now, if you are going to run a hands-on lab session and need a new environment, simply run the code above. Then, it’s all good to go!

This article was originally published on Dev Kimchi.