Does Microsoft Care about SharePoint Online PowerShell?

No Evidence that Microsoft Cares as Pnp.PowerShell Fills the Gap

I last wrote about the state of SharePoint Online PowerShelll in 2020. At the time, I focused on Microsoft’s PowerShell module (Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell), which is downloadable from the PowerShell Gallery. Based on the gallery statistics, the module is popular as each version attracts hundreds of thousands of downloads. Microsoft also updates the module monthly. On the surface, everything seems wonderful, and the module is in rude health.

If only this was true, but it’s not. It’s true that Microsoft updates the module to add tenant settings to control new features as they appear (like request files), but there doesn’t seem to be a coordinated plan about how Microsoft plans to support management of SharePoint Online through PowerShell.

Lack of Progress with Graph API

In 2022, Microsoft released the initial (beta) version of a Graph API to access and update SharePoint tenant settings. Apart from supporting the SharePoint settings API through the production (V1.0) endpoint, Microsoft doesn’t seem to have made much progress with the API since 2020. At least, the same set of tenant settings are visible two years on.

On the upside, SharePoint Online tenant settings are accessible using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. For instance, the Get-MgAdminSharepointSetting cmdlet reports the supported settings:

Connect-MgGraph -NoWelcome -Scopes SharePointTenantSettings.Read.All

Get-MgAdminSharepointSetting | Format-List

AllowedDomainGuidsForSyncApp                    : {}
AvailableManagedPathsForSiteCreation            : {/sites/, /teams/}
DeletedUserPersonalSiteRetentionPeriodInDays    : 60
ExcludedFileExtensionsForSyncApp                : {*.rar, *.zip}
Id                                              :
IdleSessionSignOut                              : Microsoft.Graph.PowerShell.Models.MicrosoftGraphIdleSessionSignOut
ImageTaggingOption                              : enhanced
IsCommentingOnSitePagesEnabled                  : True
IsFileActivityNotificationEnabled               : True
IsLegacyAuthProtocolsEnabled                    : True
IsLoopEnabled                                   : True
IsMacSyncAppEnabled                             : True
IsRequireAcceptingUserToMatchInvitedUserEnabled : True
IsResharingByExternalUsersEnabled               : False
IsSharePointMobileNotificationEnabled           : True
IsSharePointNewsfeedEnabled                     : False
IsSiteCreationEnabled                           : True
IsSiteCreationUiEnabled                         : True
IsSitePagesCreationEnabled                      : True
IsSitesStorageLimitAutomatic                    : True
IsSyncButtonHiddenOnPersonalSite                : False
IsUnmanagedSyncAppForTenantRestricted           : False
PersonalSiteDefaultStorageLimitInMb             : 5242880
SharingAllowedDomainList                        : {Microsoft.com…}
SharingBlockedDomainList                        : {Gmail.com}
SharingCapability                               : externalUserAndGuestSharing
SharingDomainRestrictionMode                    : none
SiteCreationDefaultManagedPath                  : /sites/
SiteCreationDefaultStorageLimitInMb             : 26214400
TenantDefaultTimezone                           : (UTC) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London
AdditionalProperties                            : {[@odata.context, https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#admin/sharepoint/settings/$entity]}

And the Update-MgAdminSharepointSetting cmdlet updates a setting:

$Body = @{}
$Body.Add("IsResharingByExternalUsersEnabled",$true)
Update-MgAdminSharepointSetting -BodyParameter $Body

SharePoint Online PowerShell is Windows PowerShell

Getting back to the PowerShell module, Microsoft has not updated it to support PowerShell 7. This might not be a problem if you always use Windows, but it does limit platform coverage. Attempting to load and use the module with PowerShell 7 usually fails, especially when multifactor authentication is involved.

The Community Approach to SharePoint Online PowerShell

This brings me to the Pnp.PowerShell module, also available from the PowerShell gallery. Based on the download numbers, Pnp.PowerShell seems to be four to five times more popular than the official Microsoft SharePoint Online module. This state is probably due to:

• Development driven by a committed set of community advocates.
• Wider coverage of SharePoint commands. The module spans over 650 cmdlets while the Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell module has 250. Part of the reason for the dramatic difference in cmdlet count is that Pnp.PowerShell dips into other Microsoft 365 workloads associated with SharePoint Online like Teams, Planner, Flow, and Entra ID. Another is that Pnp.PowerShell includes cmdlets to create objects like files in SharePoint Online document libraries (here’s an example) that aren’t within the scope of the administrator-centric SharePoint module
• Frequent updates to introduce new features and support for changes within SharePoint Online.
• Solid documentation.

Because Pnp.PowerShell is a community effort rather than something produced by Microsoft, some organizations are reluctant to use it. They fear that support for bug fixes will be limited or that some catastrophic bug will creep in due to a lack of testing. My experience is that the community developers are very responsive and do better testing than many Microsoft development groups (an example being the recent bugs afflicting the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK). There’s no reason to avoid using Pnp.PowerShell, subject to the normal requirements to test new versions and ensure that every cmdlet does what you expect.

Moving Forward with SharePoint Online PowerShell

Pnp.PowerShell wins the contest for popularity and coverage when it comes to PowerShell access to SharePoint Online. The official module appears stuck in time, and I know of no advocate within Microsoft who wants to bring it forward. The Graph tenant settings API started but hasn’t done much since 2022. Perhaps Microsoft should simply take Pnp.PowerShell over? Or maybe not, because then we might have three modules in a static state instead of two.

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