Category Archives: Automation

Automation, OneDrive for Business, python, Sharepoint Online

Uploading a file to onedrive for business with Python

41 Comments

For a Raspberry Pi project that’ll take a number of pictures of my house for an as of yet unknown period of time I’m sharing my very first Python script with you.

All it has to do is upload all files from a given folder to a given Onedrive for Business path, as obviously the Pi can’t store much data on its tiny SD card. You’ll need to register an azure ad app and give it the appropriate permissions. You’ll have to consent to the application once (url format = https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/adminconsent?client_id={client-id}).

Then schedule below Python script on your Pi, it will retrieve an Azure token without the need for external libraries, parse the directory and upload everything in it to the given onedrive for business URL, simple as that! It can also be used for Sharepoint or Teams by adjusting the path.

import requests 
import json
directory = r"c:\temp\uploads"
data = {'grant_type':"client_credentials", 
        'resource':"https://graph.microsoft.com", 
        'client_id':'XXXXX', 
        'client_secret':'XXXXX'} 
URL = "https://login.windows.net/YOURTENANTDOMAINNAME/oauth2/token?api-version=1.0"
r = requests.post(url = URL, data = data) 
j = json.loads(r.text)
TOKEN = j["access_token"]
URL = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/YOURONEDRIVEUSERNAME/drive/root:/fotos/HouseHistory"
headers={'Authorization': "Bearer " + TOKEN}
r = requests.get(URL, headers=headers)
j = json.loads(r.text)
print("Uploading file(s) to "+URL)
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for filename in files:
        filepath = os.path.join(root,filename)
        print("Uploading "+filename+"....")
        fileHandle = open(filepath, 'rb')
        r = requests.put(URL+"/"+filename+":/content", data=fileHandle, headers=headers)
        fileHandle.close()
        if r.status_code == 200 or r.status_code == 201:
            #remove folder contents
            print("succeeded, removing original file...")
            os.remove(os.path.join(root, filename)) 
print("Script completed")
raise SystemExit
Automation, PowerBI, Powershell

Import a PBIX to PowerBI using PowerShell

5 Comments

Reading up on the PowerBI API to import PBIX files to the PowerBI service and an example on the actual request I decided to write a PowerShell function to import a PowerBI PBIX file to the PowerBI service.

The PowerBI Import API is quite specific and kept giving me 400’s like:

  • “Bad Request” with no details
  • UnknownError pbi.error exceptionCulprit 1 (loved this one)
  • MultiPartMimeStreamFormatException
  • RequestedFileIsEncryptedOrCorrupted

Eventually I figured out how to import my reports directly into PowerBI, so to help you automate importing your reports into workspaces or directly to customers using PowerShell, I’ll share my PowerShell function with you:

GitLab: Import-PBIXToPowerBI.ps1

Automation, AzureAD, EMS, Intune, Powershell, Security

Devices that lack a bitlocker recovery key in AzureAD

10 Comments

With Intune’s new Bitlocker Encryption Report administrators have an effective way of seeing which of their devices have been encrypted.

But if we want to know if we can actually recover the bitlocker key of a device, we need to know if it was ever uploaded to AzureAD.

Network or local device issues can sometimes prevent the recovery key from reaching AzureAD, resulting in lost data if the device’s disk needs to be recovered for any reason. To hunt down devices that have not escrowed their recovery key to AzureAD, you can use my report function (in PowerShell as always):

GitLab source download link

Automation, Azure, Powershell

Programmatically triggering a group licenses refresh for AzureAD

5 Comments

Azure AD allows us to assign licenses to groups, a nifty feature that has made a host of automation scripts dealing with bulk license assignment obsolete.

A problem I’ve encountered is that when you assign users to a group, license assignments are not processed right away, especially if you didn’t have enough licenses when you assigned the user to the group (and added licenses to the tenant later).

Azure AD has a button to trigger an update manually:

But of course, this can also be automated with PowerShell!

function Invoke-AzHAPIReprocessGroupLicenses{
    <#
        .SYNOPSIS
        reprocesses group license assignment

        .NOTES
        Author: Jos Lieben

        .PARAMETER AzureRMToken
        Use Get-azureRMToken to get a token for this parameter

        .PARAMETER groupGUID
        GUID of the group to reprocess licenses of
    
        Requires:
        - Global Administrator Credentials (non-CSP!)
        - AzureRM Module
        - supply result of get-azureRMToken function
    #>
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$AzureRMToken,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$groupGUID
    )
    $header = @{
        'Authorization' = 'Bearer ' + $AzureRMToken
        'X-Requested-With'= 'XMLHttpRequest'
        'x-ms-client-request-id'= [guid]::NewGuid()
        'x-ms-correlation-id' = [guid]::NewGuid()
    }   

    $url = "https://main.iam.ad.ext.azure.com/api/AccountSkus/Group/$groupGUID/Reprocess"
    Invoke-RestMethod –Uri $url –Headers $header –Method POST -Body $Null -UseBasicParsing -ErrorAction Stop -ContentType "application/json"
}

Source on GIT: https://gitlab.com/Lieben/assortedFunctions/blob/master/invoke-AzHAPIReprocessGroupLicenses.ps1https://gitlab.com/Lieben/assortedFunctions/blob/master/invoke-AzHAPIReprocessGroupLicenses.ps1

Disclaimer: the ‘hidden azure api’ is not officially supported.

Requires output from the Get-AzureRMToken function

Automation, Powershell

Removing special characters from UTF8 input for use in email addresses or login names

3 Comments

When working with non-US customers, users often have characters in their names like ë, ó, ç and so on. Most of the time, a ‘human process’ converts these to their simple equivalent of e, o and c for use in computerized systems.

When searching for such a mapping of special characters to ‘safe’ characters I had a hard time finding a good list or PowerShell method to automatically convert special characters to standard A-Z characters so I wrote one:

function get-sanitizedUTF8Input{
    Param(
        [String]$inputString
    )
    $replaceTable = @{"ß"="ss";"à"="a";"á"="a";"â"="a";"ã"="a";"ä"="a";"å"="a";"æ"="ae";"ç"="c";"è"="e";"é"="e";"ê"="e";"ë"="e";"ì"="i";"í"="i";"î"="i";"ï"="i";"ð"="d";"ñ"="n";"ò"="o";"ó"="o";"ô"="o";"õ"="o";"ö"="o";"ø"="o";"ù"="u";"ú"="u";"û"="u";"ü"="u";"ý"="y";"þ"="p";"ÿ"="y"}

    foreach($key in $replaceTable.Keys){
        $inputString = $inputString -Replace($key,$replaceTable.$key)
    }
    $inputString = $inputString -replace '[^a-zA-Z0-9]', ''
    return $inputString
}

#example usage:
get-sanitizedUTF8Input -inputString "Jösè"
#result:
Jose

Edit: my colleague Gerbrand alerted me to a post by Grégory Schiro which solves this issue much more elegantly using native .NET functions. My slightly modified version to really ensure nothing non a-zA-Z0-9 gets past the function:

function Remove-DiacriticsAndSpaces
{
    Param(
        [String]$inputString
    )
    $objD = $inputString.Normalize([Text.NormalizationForm]::FormD)
    $sb = New-Object Text.StringBuilder
 
    for ($i = 0; $i -lt $objD.Length; $i++) {
        $c = [Globalization.CharUnicodeInfo]::GetUnicodeCategory($objD[$i])
        if($c -ne [Globalization.UnicodeCategory]::NonSpacingMark) {
          [void]$sb.Append($objD[$i])
        }
      }
    
    $sb = $sb.ToString().Normalize([Text.NormalizationForm]::FormC)
    return($sb -replace '[^a-zA-Z0-9]', '')
}
#example usage:
Remove-DiacriticsAndSpaces -inputString "Jösè"
#result:
Jose

And an even easier oneliner I converted to a function by John Seerden:

function Remove-DiacriticsAndSpaces
{
    Param(
        [String]$inputString
    )
    #replace diacritics
    $sb = [Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString([Text.Encoding]::GetEncoding("Cyrillic").GetBytes($inputString))

    #remove spaces and anything the above function may have missed
    return($sb -replace '[^a-zA-Z0-9]', '')
}

And the most advanced function I’ve found so far is by 
Daniele Catanesi (PsCustomObject): https://github.com/PsCustomObject/New-StringConversion/blob/master/New-StringConversion.ps1 in which all features of above functions are supported and parameterized.