List manager

Namespace: microsoft.graph

Returns the user or organizational contact assigned as the user's manager. Optionally, you can expand the manager's chain up to the root node.

This API is available in the following national cloud deployments.

Global service US Government L4 US Government L5 (DOD) China operated by 21Vianet

Permissions

Choose the permission or permissions marked as least privileged for this API. Use a higher privileged permission or permissions only if your app requires it. For details about delegated and application permissions, see Permission types. To learn more about these permissions, see the permissions reference.

Permission type Least privileged permissions Higher privileged permissions
Delegated (work or school account) User.Read.All Directory.Read.All, Directory.ReadWrite.All, User.ReadWrite.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account) Not supported. Not supported.
Application Not supported. Not supported.

When an application queries a relationship that returns a directoryObject type collection, if it does not have permission to read a certain derived type (like device), members of that type are returned but with limited information. With this behavior, applications can request the least privileged permissions they need, rather than rely on the set of Directory.* permissions. For details, see Limited information returned for inaccessible member objects.

HTTP request

Get the manager:

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

Get the management chain:

GET /users?$expand=manager
GET /users/{id | userPrincipalName}/?$expand=manager($levels=n)

Optional query parameters

This method supports the $select and $expand OData query parameters to help customize the response. When using the $expand query parameter:

  • The n value of $levels can be max (to return all managers) or a number between 1 and 1000.
  • When the $levels parameter is not specified, only the immediate manager is returned.
  • You can specify $select inside $expand to select the individual manager's properties: $expand=manager($levels=max;$select=id,displayName).
  • $levels parameter is only supported on a single user (/users/{id} or me endpoints) and not on the entire list of users.
  • Use of $levels requires the ConsistencyLevel header set to eventual. For more information about the use of ConsistencyLevel, see Advanced query capabilities on directory objects.

Request headers

Header Value
Authorization Bearer {token}. Required. Learn more about authentication and authorization.
ConsistencyLevel eventual. Required when the request includes the $levels=n in the $expand query parameter.

Request body

Don't supply a request body for this method.

Response

If successful, this method returns a 200 OK response code and a user object in the response body. If the user isn't assigned a manager, this method returns a 404 Not Found error code.

Examples

Example 1: Get manager

The following example shows a request to get the manager.

Request

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/{id|userPrincipalName}/manager

Response

The following example shows the response.

Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-type: application/json

{
  "id": "7d54cb02-aaa3-4016-9f9c-a4b49422dd9b",
  "displayName": "Sara Davis",
  "jobTitle": "Finance VP",
  "mail": "SaraD@contoso.com",
  "userPrincipalName": "SaraD@contoso.com"
}

Example 2: Get manager chain up to the root level

The following example shows a request to get the manager chain up to the root level.

Request

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me?$expand=manager($levels=max;$select=id,displayName)&$select=id,displayName
ConsistencyLevel: eventual

Response

The following example shows the response. Transitive managers are displayed hierarchically.

Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-type: application/json

{
  "id": "a97733ce-92a4-4e7e-8d45-8e1f3e6a69d8",
  "displayName": "Individual Contributor",
  "manager": {
    "id": "7d54cb02-aaa3-4016-9f9c-a4b49422dd9b",
    "displayName": "Alex Wilber",
    "manager": {
      "id": "343a3f95-377c-47a9-b697-480487bfcdf7",
      "displayName": "Bianca Pisani",
      "manager": {
        "id": "8e07b731-5ba7-4081-b482-15e6eca35c45",
        "displayName": "Patti Fernandez"
      }
    }
  }
}