Microsoft Graph API Office 365 usage reporting GA, existing API and PowerShell cmdlets will be removed January 29, 2018

Microsoft announced in a blog post on 19th December, new APIs are available now, and

• Using these APIs, you can retrieve the data available in all of the web-based usage reports on the Office 365 portal
• You get Organization level summaries per service, entity level (user, sites, accounts) usage information
• Reporting periods of the last 7/30/90/180 days, and daily activity aggregates.
• Any user with global admin, product admin rights (for Exchange, Skype for Business and SharePoint), or a reports reader role can retrieve data through these APIs
• Documentation: Microsoft Graph documentation
• Submit feature requests by asking or voting on an idea on UserVoice. Please submit questions by posting them on Stack Overflow and tagging microsoftgraph.

Microsoft Graph API Offers the following usage reports for Skype for Business

• Skype for Business activity reports
  • Get user detail
  • Get activity counts
  • Get user counts
• Skype for Business device usage reports
  • Get user detail
  • Get distribution user counts
  • Get user counts
• Skype for Business organizer activity reports
  • Get activity counts
  • Get user counts
  • Get minute counts
• Skype for Business participant activity reports
  • Get activity counts
  • Get user counts
  • Get minute counts
• Skype for Business peer-to-peer activity reports
  • Get activity counts
  • Get user counts
  • Get minute counts

Details at – https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/docs/api-reference/v1.0/resources/skype_for_business_activity_reports

Microsoft Graph API Offers the following usage reports for Microsoft Teams

I didn’t find these documented, but my colleague Tom Morgan has already blogged about them here: Accessing Microsoft Teams Usage Data in code with Microsoft Graph

Again you get the same details are available in the Office 365 portal reports

Deprecation of Existing Office 365 Reporting API and PowerShell Cmdlets

Microsoft note: “With this announcement, we are announcing the deprecation of the following APIs within the Office 365 Reporting Web Service:

• ConnectionbyClientType
• ConnectionbyClientTypeDetail
• CsActiveUser
• CsAVConferenceTime
• CsP2PAVTime
• CsConference
• CsP2PSession
• GroupActivity
• MailboxActivity
• GroupActivity
• MailboxUsage
• MailboxUsageDetail
• StaleMailbox
• StaleMailboxDetail

We will remove these APIs, as well as any related PowerShell cmdlets, on January 29, 2018.”

This feels like quite an aggressive depreciation timeline to me. That’s only ~40 days from the blog post notification, and over the Christmas/holiday period.

• Anything that relies on an API requires some development changes, usually, this has a lead time, particularly for third-party products
• IT Pro’s may well be using PowerShell cmdlets but don’t fully understand how to achieve the same outcome via an API.

In particular, I think “replacing” PowerShell cmdlets with an API, while it might well be the better technical solution, should be better supported with a longer notification period.

That being said, the blog post highlights the following Office 365 Reporting PowerShell cmdlets that are being removed:

• Get-CsAVConferenceTimeReport
• Get-CsActiveUserReport
• Get-CsP2PAVTimeReport
• Get-CsConferenceReport
• Get-CsP2PSessionReport
• Get-ConnectionByClientTypeReport
• Get-ConnectionByClientTypeDetailReport
• Get-GroupActivityReport
• Get-MailboxActivityReport
• Get-GroupActivityReport
• Get-MailboxUsageReport
• Get-MailboxUsageDetailReport
• Get-SPOActiveUserReport
• Get-SPOSkyDriveProDeployedReport
• Get-SPOSkyDriveProStorageReport
• Get-SPOTeamSiteDeployedReport
• Get-SPOTeamSiteStorageReport
• Get-SPOTenantStorageMetricReport
• Get-StaleMailboxReport
• Get-StaleMailboxDetailReport