Known issues with Microsoft Graph

  • 13 minutes to read
  • Contributors
    • Jeremy Thake (Microsoft)
    • Office GSX
    • Laura Graham
    • Nick Kramer (Teams)

This article describes known issues with Microsoft Graph. For information about the latest updates, see the Microsoft Graph changelog.

Users

No instant access after creation

Users can be created immediately through a POST on the user entity. An Office 365 license must first be assigned to a user, in order to get access to Office 365 services. Even then, due to the distributed nature of the service, it might take 15 minutes before files, messages and events entities are available for use for this user, through the Microsoft Graph API. During this time, apps will receive a 404 HTTP error response.

Photo restrictions

Reading and updating a user's profile photo is only possible if the user has a mailbox. Additionally, any photos that may have been previously stored using the thumbnailPhoto property (using the Office 365 unified API preview, or the Azure AD Graph, or through AD Connect synchronization) are no longer accessible through the Microsoft Graph photo property of the user resource. Failure to read or update a photo, in this case, would result in the following error:

	{
	  "error": {
	    "code": "ErrorNonExistentMailbox",
	    "message": "The SMTP address has no mailbox associated with it."
	  }
	}

Using delta query

For known issues using delta query, see the delta query section in this article.

Microsoft Teams

Create chat thread API

The current API to create a chat thread will be replaced with a richer API that is consistent with the schema for listing channel messages.

Graph Explorer and global admins

Currently, Graph Explorer allows global admins to manipulate teams they are not an owner or member of, but other apps attempting to make the same API calls will fail if the current user is not a member or owner of the team.

GET /teams and POST /teams are not supported

See list all teams and list your teams to get a list of teams. See create team for creating teams.

Missing teams in list all teams

Some teams that were created in the past but haven't been used recently by a Microsoft Teams user aren't listed by list all teams. New teams will be listed. Certain old teams don't have a resourceProvisioningOptions property that contains "Team", which is set on newly created teams and teams that are visited in Microsoft Teams. In the future, we will set resourceProvisioningOptions on existing teams that have not been opened in Microsoft Teams.

Groups

Permissions for groups and Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Graph exposes two permissions (Group.Read.All and Group.ReadWrite.All) for access to the APIs for groups and Microsoft Teams. These permissions must be consented to by an administrator. In the future, we plan to add new permissions for groups and teams that users can consent to.

Also, only the API for core group administration and management supports access using delegated or app-only permissions. All other features of the group API support only delegated permissions.

Examples of group features that support delegated and app-only permissions:

  • Creating and deleting groups
  • Getting and updating group properties pertaining to group administration or management
  • Group directory settings, type, and synchronization
  • Group owners and membership

Examples of group features that support only delegated permissions:

  • Group conversations, events, photo
  • External senders, accepted or rejected senders, group subscription
  • User favorites and unseen count

Policy

Using Microsoft Graph to create and name an Office 365 group bypasses any Office 365 group policies that are configured through Outlook Web App.

Adding and getting attachments of group posts

Adding attachments to group posts, listing and getting attachments of group posts currently return the error message "The OData request is not supported." A fix has been rolled out for both the /v1.0 and /beta versions, and is expected to be widely available by the end of January 2016.

Setting the allowExternalSenders property

There is currently an issue that prevents setting the allowExternalSenders property of a group in a POST or PATCH operation, in both /v1.0 and /beta.

Using delta query

For known issues using delta query, see the delta query section in this article.

Bookings

ErrorExceededFindCountLimit when querying bookingBusinesses

Getting the list of bookingBusinesses fails with the following error code when an organization has several Bookings businesses and the account making the request is not an administrator:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "ErrorExceededFindCountLimit",
    "message":
      "The GetBookingMailboxes request returned too many results. Please specify a query to limit the results.",
  }
}

As a workaround, you can limit the set of businesses returned by the request by including a query parameter, for example:

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/bookingBusinesses?query=Fabrikam

Calendars

Accessing a shared calendar

When attempting to access events in a calendar that has been shared by another user using the following operation:

GET \users('{id}')\calendars('{id}')\events

You may get HTTP 500 with the error code ErrorInternalServerTransientError. The error occurs because:

  • Historically, there are two ways that calendar sharing has been implemented, which, for the purpose of differentiating them, are referred to as the "old" approach and "new" approach.
  • The new approach is currently available for sharing calendars with view or edit permissions, but not with delegate permissions.
  • You can use the calendar REST API to view or edit shared calendars only if the calendars were shared using the new approach.
  • You cannot use the calendar REST API to view or edit such calendars (or their events) if the calendars were shared using the old approach.

If a calendar was shared with view or edit permissions but using the old approach, you can now work around the error and manually upgrade the calendar sharing to use the new approach. Over time, Outlook will automatically upgrade all shared calendars to use the new approach, including calendars shared with delegate permissions.

To manually upgrade a shared calendar to use the new approach, follow these steps:

  1. The recipient removes the calendar that was previously shared to them.
  2. The calendar owner re-shares the calendar in Outlook on the web, Outlook on iOS, or Outlook on Android.
  3. The recipient re-accepts the shared calendar using Outlook on the web. (It will be possible to use other Outlook clients soon.)
  4. The recipient verifies that the calendar has been re-shared successfully using the new approach by being able to view the shared calendar in Outlook on iOS or Outlook on Android.

A calendar shared with you in the new approach appears as just another calendar in your mailbox. You can use the calendar REST API to view or edit events in the shared calendar, as if it's your own calendar. As an example:

GET \me\calendars('{id}')\events

Adding and accessing ICS-based calendars in user's mailbox

Currently, there is partial support for a calendar based on an Internet Calendar Subscription (ICS):

  • You can add an ICS-based calendar to a user mailbox through the user interface, but not through the Microsoft Graph API.
  • Listing the user's calendars lets you get the name, color and id properties of each calendar in the user's default calendar group, or a specified calendar group, including any ICS-based calendars. You cannot store or access the ICS URL in the calendar resource.
  • You can also list the events of an ICS-based calendar.

onlineMeetingUrl property support for Microsoft Teams

Currently, the onlineMeetingUrl property of a Skype meeting event would indicate the online meeting URL. However, that property for a Microsoft Teams meeting event is set to null.

Calls and online meetings

Note Calling and online meetings are currently in preview and are available only in the Microsoft Graph beta endpoint.

  • Navigation path /applications/{id} is not supported. Navigating through the global applications node to the application, even your own, is not allowed. Please use the /app navigation only.

Contacts

Organization contacts available in only beta

Only personal contacts are currently supported. Organizational contacts are not currently supported in /v1.0, but can be found in /beta.

Default contacts folder

In the /v1.0 version, GET /me/contactFolders does not include the user's default contacts folder.

A fix will be made available. Meanwhile, you can use the following list contacts query and the parentFolderId property as a workaround to get the folder ID of the default contacts folder:

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/contacts?$top=1&$select=parentFolderId

In the above query:

  1. /me/contacts?$top=1 gets the properties of a contact in the default contacts folder.
  2. Appending &$select=parentFolderId returns only the contact's parentFolderId property, which is the ID of the default contacts folder.

Accessing contacts via a contact folder in beta

In the /beta version, there is currently an issue that prevents accessing a contact by specifying its parent folder in the REST request URL, as shown in the 2 scenarios below.

  • Accessing a contact from a top level contactFolder of the user's.
GET /me/contactfolders/{id}/contacts/{id}
GET /users/{id | userPrincipalName}/contactfolders/{id}/contacts/{id}
  • Accessing a contact contained in a child folder of a contactFolder. The example below shows one level of nesting, but a contact can be located in a child of a child and so on.
GET /me/contactFolder/{id}/childFolders/{id}/.../contacts/{id}
GET /users/{id | userPrincipalName}/contactFolders/{id}/childFolders/{id}/contacts/{id}

As an alternative, you can simply get the contact by specifying its ID as shown below, since GET /contacts in the /beta version applies to all the contacts in the user's mailbox:

GET /me/contacts/{id}
GET /users/{id | userPrincipalName}/contacts/{id}

Messages

The comment parameter for creating a draft

The comment parameter for creating a reply or forward draft (createReply, createReplyAll, createForward) does not become part of the body of the resultant message draft.

GET messages returns chats in Microsoft Teams

In both the v1 and beta endpoints, the response of GET /users/id/messages includes the user's Microsoft Teams chats that occurred outside the scope of a team or channel. These chat messages have "IM" as their subject.

Drives, files and content streaming

  • First time access to a user's personal drive through the Microsoft Graph before the user accesses their personal site through a browser leads to a 401 response.

Query parameter limitations

  • Multiple namespaces are not supported.
  • GETs on $ref and casting is not supported on users, groups, devices, service principals and applications.
  • @odata.bind is not supported. This means that developers won’t be able to properly set the Accepted or RejectedSenders on a group.
  • @odata.id is not present on non-containment navigations (like messages) when using minimal metadata.
  • $expand:
    • No support for nextLink
    • No support for more than 1 level of expand
    • No support with extra parameters ($filter, $select)
  • $filter:
    • /attachments endpoint does not support filters. If present, the $filter parameter is ignored.
    • Cross-workload filtering is not supported.
  • $search:
    • Full-text search is only available for a subset of entities such as messages.
    • Cross-workload searching is not supported.

Delta query

  • OData context is sometimes returned incorrectly when tracking changes to relationships.
  • Schema extensions (legacy) are not returned with $select statement, but are returned without $select.
  • Clients cannot track changes to open extensions or registered schema extensions.

Application and servicePrincipal API changes

There are changes to the application and servicePrincipal entities currently in development. The following is a summary of current limitations and in-development API features.

Current limitations:

  • Some application properties (such as appRoles and addIns) will not be available until all changes are completed.
  • Only multi-tenant apps can be registered.
  • Updating apps is restricted to apps registered after the initial beta update.
  • Azure Active Directory users can register apps and add additional owners.
  • Support for OpenID Connect and OAuth protocols.
  • Policy assignments to an application fail.
  • Operations on ownedObjects that require appId fail (For example, users/{id|userPrincipalName}/ownedObjects/{id}/...).

In development:

  • Ability to register single tenant apps.
  • Updates to servicePrincipal.
  • Migration of existing Azure AD apps to updated model.
  • Support for appRoles, pre-authorized clients, optional claims, group membership claims, and branding
  • Microsoft account (MSA) users can register apps.
  • Support for SAML and WsFed protocols.

Extensions

Change tracking is not supported

Change tracking (delta query) is not supported for open or schema extension properties.

Creating a resource and open extension at the same time

You cannot specify an open extension at the same time you create an instance of administrativeUnit, device, group, organization or user. You must first create the instance and then specify the open extension data in a subsequent POST request on that instance.

Creating a resource instance and adding schema extension data at the same time

You cannot specify a schema extension in the same operation as creating an instance of contact, event, message, or post. You must first create the resource instance and then do a PATCH to that instance to add a schema extension and custom data.

Limit of 100 schema extension property values allowed per resource instance

Directory resources, such as device, group and user, currently limit the total number of schema extension property values that can be set on a resource instance, to 100.

Filtering on schema extension properties not supported on all entity types

Filtering on schema extension properties (using the $filter expresssion) is not supported for Outlook entity types - contact, event, message, or post.

JSON Batching

No nested batch

JSON batch requests must not contain any nested batch requests.

All individual requests must be synchronous

All requests contained in a batch request must be executed synchronously. If present, the respond-async preference will be ignored.

No transactions

Microsoft Graph does not currently support transactional processing of individual requests. The atomicityGroup property on individual requests will be ignored.

URIs must be relative

Always specify relative URIs in batch requests. Microsoft Graph then makes these URLs absolute by using the version endpoint included in the batch URL.

Limit on batch size

JSON batch requests are currently limited to 20 individual requests.

Simplified dependencies

Individual requests can depend on other individual requests. Currently, requests can only depend on a single other request, and must follow one of these three patterns:

  1. Parallel - no individual request states a dependency in the dependsOn property.
  2. Serial - all individual requests depend on the previous individual request.
  3. Same - all individual requests that state a dependency in the dependsOn property, state the same dependency.

As JSON batching matures, these limitations will be removed.

Cloud Solution Provider apps

CSP apps must use Azure AD endpoint

Cloud solution provider (CSP) apps must acquire tokens from the Azure AD (v1) endpoints to successfully call Microsoft Graph in their partner-managed customers. Currently, acquiring a token through the newer Azure AD v2.0 endpoint is not supported.

Under certain circumstances, pre-consent for CSP apps may not work for some of your customer tenants.

  • For apps using delegated permissions, when using the app for the first time with a new customer tenant you might receive this error after sign-in: AADSTS50000: There was an error issuing a token.
  • For apps using application permissions, your app can acquire a token, but unexpectedly gets an access denied message when calling Microsoft Graph.

We are working to fix this issue as soon as possible, so that pre-consent will work for all your customer tenants.

In the meantime, to unblock development and testing you can use the following workaround.

NOTE: This is not a permanent solution and is only intended to unblock development. This workaround will not be required once the aforementioned issue is fixed. This workaround does not need to be undone once the fix is in place.

  1. Open an Azure AD v2 PowerShell session and connect to your customer tenant by entering your admin credentials into the sign-in window. You can download and install Azure AD PowerShell V2 from here.

    Connect-AzureAd -TenantId {customerTenantIdOrDomainName}

  2. Create the Microsoft Graph service principal.

    New-AzureADServicePrincipal -AppId 00000003-0000-0000-c000-000000000000

Functionality available only in Office 365 REST or Azure AD Graph APIs

Some functionality is not yet available in Microsoft Graph. If you don't see the functionality you're looking for, you can use the endpoint-specific Office 365 REST APIs. For Azure Active Directory, please refer to the Microsoft Graph or Azure AD Graph blog post on the features that are only available through Azure AD Graph API.

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