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Getting Started with the Office 365 SharePoint On-Demand Assessment

The On-Demand Assessment - Office 365 SharePoint is a proactive service delivered by a Microsoft engineer to analyze and provide guidance on operations, configuration, and usage within an Office 365 subscription. This service is recommended to help get the most out of your Office 365 investment.

Key pillars of the Office 365 SharePoint Assessment:

  • Operational processes
  • Microsoft 365 Security
  • SharePoint Site Settings
  • SharePoint Site Configuration
  • Usage of InfoPath Forms*
  • Usage of Classic Workflows*
  • Modernization of SharePoint Sites*

Note

Items noted with an asterisk (*) represent info collected using SharePoint modernization scanner tool which is integrated into the assessment now. This tool uses the same permissions as the assessment to collect all the information. Based on the feedback received due to the time it takes to complete scans, the modernization scanner tool by default will be run only on the classic sites which had activities for last 90 days (number of days is customizable), refer to the appendix of the prerequisites document. But if you decide to run on a specific list of sites, we added the capability to add custom list of sites for the scanner tool to pick up dynamically on each run. For more information about the setup, see the appendix of the prerequisites document.

Prerequisites

To take advantage of the On-Demand Assessments available through Services Hub, you must have:

  1. An active Azure Subscription linked to Services Hub and the Office 365 Exchange Assessment added. For more information, see Exchange Server Assessment: Prerequisites and Configuration or watch the How to Link Services Hub to Azure Log Analytics video.

  2. An Office 365 Global Administrator account is required for setting up the assessment.

    • MFA is supported.
    • Sovereign Cloud Supported

  3. The Microsoft Assessment Azure AD Application that is created in the prerequisites (step 4) for your assessment to have the Sites.FullControl.All permission. The application is necessary for you to identify classic workflows in the tenant and the modernization scanner tool.

    The Sites.FullControl.All permission isn't set up by default for the assessment; if you want to understand the usage of classic workflows, you have to set up the permission manually.

  4. The Sites.Manage.All permission for the Microsoft Assessment Azure AD Application, so you can gather the SharePoint Online Tenant configuration/Tenant restriction settings.

    The Sites.Manage.All permission isn't set up by default for the assessment; for instructions on setting it up, see the "Setting permission to show Classic Workflows" section of Prerequisites for Microsoft 365 SharePoint Assessment. Assign the Sites.Manage.All permission rather than the Sites.FullControl.All permission.

  5. Review the Prerequisites for Microsoft 365 SharePoint Assessment. This document explains the detailed technical documentation of the Office 365 SharePoint Assessment and the preparation needed to run the assessment. It also documents the various types of data collected by the assessment.

  6. Set up the Microsoft Assessment Application

    Note

    On average, it takes 30 minutes to initially configure your environment to run an On-Demand Assessment. Once you run an assessment review, the data appears in Azure Log Analytics. This provides you with a prioritized list of recommendations, categorized across six focus areas. This allows you and your team to quickly understand risk levels, the health of your environments, act to decrease risk, and improve your overall IT health.

Set up the Office 365 SharePoint Assessment on your data collection machine

Install PowerShell Cmdlets

On your designated data collection machine:

  1. Ensure all other PowerShell sessions are closed.

  2. Create the working directory for the Assessment data. For example C:\SPOA (or any other folder you want besides C:\ODA, which is reserved by the system).

  3. Open a Windows PowerShell (Ensure its PowerShell 7) command prompt with [Run as Administrator].

  4. On the shell type the following commands:

    Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
    Install-Module MSOnline
    Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Graph -SkipPublisherCheck -allowclobber 
    Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Graph -SkipPublisherCheck -allowclobber 
    Install-Module PnP.Powershell -RequiredVersion 1.12.0 -SkipPublisherCheck -Allowclobber

    Import-Module MSOnline -Verbose
    Import-Module Microsoft.Graph -Verbose
    Import-Module PnP.Powershell -Verbose

    $dir = "C:\SPOA" #The location for the working directory for example "C:\SPOA"

Set up the Scheduled Task

    Add-SharePointOnlineAssessmentTask –WorkingDirectory $dir

Note

This configuration uses PowerShell variables to help facilitate the setup process.

  1. You're prompted to enter an account that will can run a scheduled task on the machine. Provide the required user account credentials to run the Scheduled Task. These credentials are used to run the SharePoint Online Assessment.

    ScheduledTaskUsername:
ScheduledTaskPassword:
WorkspaceId:

    Note

    The account used to set up the assessment task needs to be a local admin for the machine; it can be a local account or a domain account with local admin right on the machine. If you're using a local account just enter the account name and password; if you're using a domain account use the format Domain\Account. -The account needs to be the same as the sign-in account on the machine.

    <WorkspaceID> provides ID for the Log Analytics workspace that will be used to store the uploaded data.

  2. When the set up is complete, you should see the following output:

    [SharePointOnlineAssessment]Task Creation Successful.
[SharePointOnlineAssessment]SharePointOnlineAssessment setup successful.
[SharePointOnlineAssessment]Detailed log at: C:/\****.log
[SharePointOnlineAssessment][2804]To receive continued assessment updates, please close this PowerShell Windows

  3. Close the PowerShell window.

  4. Open the Task Scheduler.

  5. Expand [Task Scheduler]-[Task Scheduler Library]-[Microsoft]-[Operations Management Suite]-[AOI-***]-[Assessments]-[SharePointOnlineAssessment].

  6. You confirm the "SharePointOnlineAssessment" task on the right pane.

  7. Data collection is triggered within an hour of you running the previous script, then again every seven days. You can modify the task to run on a different date/time, or even force it to run immediately.

  8. Right-click on the task, then select Run.

    During collection and analysis, data is temporarily stored under the WorkingDirectory folder that was configured during setup, using the following structure:

    [WorkingDirectory]
|-- SharePointOnlineAssessment
     |-- [Numbered Folder] ==> The data is stored
     |-- Logs
     |-- Omsassessment

  9. Data collection is triggered by the scheduled task named SharePointOnlineAssessment within an hour of running the previous script and then every 7 days. The task can be modified to run on a different date/time or even forced to run immediately from the task scheduler library

     |-- Microsoft
    |--
        |-- Operations Management Suite
            |-- AOI-[XXX]
                |-- Assessments
                    |-- SharePointOnlineAssessment

  10. During collection and analysis, data is temporarily stored under the Working Directory folder that was configured during setup

  11. After a few minutes, your assessment results will be available on your Log Analytics and Services Hub Dashboard. You can navigate to see the results by going into:

    |-- Services Hub
    |-- Health
        |-- Assessments
            |-- View All Assessments