App roles that are assigned to service principals are also known as application permissions. Application permissions can be granted directly with app role assignments, or through a consent experience.
To grant an app role assignment to a client service principal, you need three identifiers:
principalId: The id of the client service principal to which you are assigning the app role.
resourceId: The id of the resource servicePrincipal (the API) which has defined the app role (the application permission).
appRoleId: The id of the appRole (defined on the resource service principal) to assign to the client service principal.
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)
AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All and Application.Read.All
AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All and Directory.Read.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account)
Not supported.
Not supported.
Application
AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All and Application.Read.All
AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All and Directory.Read.All
In delegated scenarios with work or school accounts, the signed-in user must be assigned a supported Microsoft Entra role or a custom role with a supported role permission. The following least privileged roles are supported for this operation.
Directory Synchronization Accounts - for Microsoft Entra Connect and Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync services
Directory Writer
Hybrid Identity Administrator
Identity Governance Administrator
Privileged Role Administrator
User Administrator
Application Administrator
Cloud Application Administrator
HTTP request
You can address the service principal using either its id or appId. id and appId are referred to as the Object ID and Application (Client) ID, respectively, in app registrations in the Microsoft Entra admin center.
POST /servicePrincipals/{id}/appRoleAssignments
POST /servicePrincipals(appId='{appId}')/appRoleAssignments
// Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 5.x
// Dependencies
using Microsoft.Graph.Models;
var requestBody = new AppRoleAssignment
{
PrincipalId = Guid.Parse("9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e"),
ResourceId = Guid.Parse("8fce32da-1246-437b-99cd-76d1d4677bd5"),
AppRoleId = Guid.Parse("498476ce-e0fe-48b0-b801-37ba7e2685c6"),
};
// To initialize your graphClient, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=csharp
var result = await graphClient.ServicePrincipals["{servicePrincipal-id}"].AppRoleAssignments.PostAsync(requestBody);
// Code snippets are only available for the latest major version. Current major version is $v1.*
// Dependencies
import (
"context"
"github.com/google/uuid"
msgraphsdk "github.com/microsoftgraph/msgraph-sdk-go"
graphmodels "github.com/microsoftgraph/msgraph-sdk-go/models"
//other-imports
)
requestBody := graphmodels.NewAppRoleAssignment()
principalId := uuid.MustParse("9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e")
requestBody.SetPrincipalId(&principalId)
resourceId := uuid.MustParse("8fce32da-1246-437b-99cd-76d1d4677bd5")
requestBody.SetResourceId(&resourceId)
appRoleId := uuid.MustParse("498476ce-e0fe-48b0-b801-37ba7e2685c6")
requestBody.SetAppRoleId(&appRoleId)
// To initialize your graphClient, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=go
appRoleAssignments, err := graphClient.ServicePrincipals().ByServicePrincipalId("servicePrincipal-id").AppRoleAssignments().Post(context.Background(), requestBody, nil)
// Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 6.x
GraphServiceClient graphClient = new GraphServiceClient(requestAdapter);
AppRoleAssignment appRoleAssignment = new AppRoleAssignment();
appRoleAssignment.setPrincipalId(UUID.fromString("9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e"));
appRoleAssignment.setResourceId(UUID.fromString("8fce32da-1246-437b-99cd-76d1d4677bd5"));
appRoleAssignment.setAppRoleId(UUID.fromString("498476ce-e0fe-48b0-b801-37ba7e2685c6"));
AppRoleAssignment result = graphClient.servicePrincipals().byServicePrincipalId("{servicePrincipal-id}").appRoleAssignments().post(appRoleAssignment);
<?php
use Microsoft\Graph\GraphServiceClient;
use Microsoft\Graph\Generated\Models\AppRoleAssignment;
$graphServiceClient = new GraphServiceClient($tokenRequestContext, $scopes);
$requestBody = new AppRoleAssignment();
$requestBody->setPrincipalId('9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e');
$requestBody->setResourceId('8fce32da-1246-437b-99cd-76d1d4677bd5');
$requestBody->setAppRoleId('498476ce-e0fe-48b0-b801-37ba7e2685c6');
$result = $graphServiceClient->servicePrincipals()->byServicePrincipalId('servicePrincipal-id')->appRoleAssignments()->post($requestBody)->wait();
# Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 1.x
from msgraph import GraphServiceClient
from msgraph.generated.models.app_role_assignment import AppRoleAssignment
# To initialize your graph_client, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=python
request_body = AppRoleAssignment(
principal_id = UUID("9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e"),
resource_id = UUID("8fce32da-1246-437b-99cd-76d1d4677bd5"),
app_role_id = UUID("498476ce-e0fe-48b0-b801-37ba7e2685c6"),
)
result = await graph_client.service_principals.by_service_principal_id('servicePrincipal-id').app_role_assignments.post(request_body)
In this example, note that the value used as the service principal id in the request URL (9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e) is the same as the principalId property in the body. The resourceId value is the id of the resource service principal (the API).
Response
The following example shows the response.
Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.