Reporting the Storage Used by Loop Workspaces

Understand the Impact Loop Workspaces Have on SharePoint Online Quota

Message center notification MC678308 (updated 2 November 2023) explains that the storage consumed by Loop workspaces (created with the Loop app rather than Loop components in Teams and Outlook) will count against tenant storage quotas. During the preview, Microsoft allowed people to use the Loop app without a license and create as many workspaces as they liked. The only limitation was on the size of an individual workspace, which was capped at 5 GB. Workspace data is held in a special form of SharePoint storage called Syntex repository services and Microsoft didn’t limit the storage occupied by the workspaces.

All good things come to an end. As the Loop app approaches the end of its public preview stage and moves toward general availability (I expect an announcement at the Ignite conference), Microsoft has revealed its hand with respect to licensing and storage. Only people with certain Microsoft 365 product licenses will be able to create new workspaces

Loop Counts Against Storage Now

According to MC678308, Microsoft will start counting Loop workspaces against tenant storage quotas between late October and late November 2023. When the change goes into effect for a tenant, the maximum size of a workspace increases from 5 GB to 1 TB.

The exact impact on a tenant is hard to know unless you use the Get-SPOContainer cmdlet in the SharePoint Online management module to fetch details of each tenant. For example, this command fetches details of existing workspaces:

[array]$LoopWorkspaces = Get-SPOContainer -OwningApplicationID a187e399-0c36-4b98-8f04-1edc167a0996
If (!($LoopWorkspaces)) {
    Write-Host "Can't get Loop workspaces - exiting"; break
}

The details reported by Get-SPOContainer miss some important information. For instance, while the creation date for a workspace is available, the last updated date is not, nor is detail about the person who last updated the workspace. Understanding the date when a workspace was last changed is critical to knowing if a workspace is in active use.

Reporting Loop Workspaces

This code generates a report with details of the storage used by each workspace and whether the workspace owners have one of the four licenses required to create new Loop workspaces:

$Report = [System.Collections.Generic.List[Object]]::new()
$TotalBytes = 0; $LicenseOK = 0; $i = 0
ForEach ($LoopSpace in $LoopWorkspaces) {
    $i++
    Write-Output ("Analyzing workspace {0} {1}/{2}" -f $LoopSpace.ContainerId, $i, $LoopWorkspaces.count)
    # Get detail of the workspace
    $LoopSpaceDetails =  Get-SPOContainer -OwningApplicationID a187e399-0c36-4b98-8f04-1edc167a0996 -Identity $LoopSpace.ContainerId
    # Get detail about the owner
    [array]$Owners = $LoopSpaceDetails.Owners
    ForEach ($Owner in $Owners) {
        $LicenseFound = $Null; $LoopLicenseStatus = "Unlicensed";  $LicenseName = $Null
        # Find if the Loop service plan is successfully provisioned for the account
        [array]$UserLicenseData = Get-MgUserLicenseDetail -UserId $Owner
        $LoopLicense = $UserLicenseData | Select-Object -ExpandProperty ServicePlans | `
             Where-Object {$_.ServicePlanId -eq $LoopServicePlan} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty ProvisioningStatus
        If ($LoopLicense -eq 'Success') {
            $LicenseOK++
            $LoopLicenseStatus = "OK"
        }
        # Find what SKU the Loop service plan belongs to
        $User = Get-MgUser -UserId $Owner -Property Id, displayName, department, UserPrincipalName
        [array]$SKUs = $UserLicenseData.SkuId
        ForEach ($Sku in $Skus) {
            $LicenseFound = $LoopValidLicenses[$Sku]
            If ($LicenseFound) {
                $LicenseName = $LicenseFound
            }
        }
    }
    [array]$Members = $Null
    [array]$Managers = $LoopSpaceDetails.Managers
    ForEach ($Manager in $Managers) {
        $Member = Get-MgUser -UserId $Manager
        $Members += $Member.DisplayName
    }

    $StorageUsed = "{0:N2}" -f ($LoopSpaceDetails.StorageUsedInBytes/1MB)
    $TotalBytes = $TotalBytes + $LoopSpaceDetails.StorageUsedInBytes

    $ReportLine = [PSCustomObject]@{
        ContainerId    = $LoopSpace.ContainerId
        App            = $LoopSpaceDetails.OwningApplicationName
        Name           = $LoopSpace.ContainerName
        Description    = $LoopSpace.Description
        Owner          = $User.DisplayName
        UPN            = $User.UserPrincipalName
        License        = $LoopLicenseStatus
        Product        = $LicenseName
        Members        = ($Members -Join ", ")
        Created        = $LoopSpaceDetails.CreatedOn
        SiteURL        = $LoopSpaceDetails.ContainerSiteUrl
        "Storage (MB)" = $StorageUsed
    }
    $Report.Add($ReportLine)
}

Figure 1 shows an extract of the information captured by the script. You can see that the James Ryan account is deemed to be unlicensed. This is because the account doesn’t hold a product licenses containing the Microsoft Loop service plan. Also note that new users all receive the Ideas workspace to help get them started with the Loop app. The workspace isn’t large (0.11 MB), but it’s a bit cheeky for Microsoft to charge for it.

Checking individual workspace containers is not a fast operation. The script can be sped up by removing the Get-MgUser commands used to fetch details about the licenses possessed by workspace owners.

You can download the complete script from GitHub. Remember that the intention of the script is to illustrate a principal rather than being a complete solution. Feel free to make whatever changes you deem to meet the circumstances of your tenant.

Update: The original script was limited to reporting the first 200 workspaces in a tenant. An updated script handles pagination to find and report all workspaces.

No Immediate Impact

It’s unlikely that Loop workspaces will have much of an impact on SharePoint Online tenant storage quotas in the immediate future. Documents will continue to be the major consumer of quota, even when tenants have the Microsoft 365 licenses necessary for users to create new Loop workspaces. Even so, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on how Loop is being used and how much space its files occupy.

---

Insight like this doesn’t come easily. You’ve got to know the technology and understand how to look behind the scenes. Benefit from the knowledge and experience of the Office 365 for IT Pros team by subscribing to the best eBook covering Office 365 and the wider Microsoft 365 ecosystem.