Skip to main content

Creating a Mailbox Search Folder based on a Message Category using the Microsoft Graph and Powershell

Searching on the Categories property of an Email can pose a challenge because this property is a Multi-valued String property (which aren't that common in email) eg in a Message the property may look like the following

image-20200917131803998

So this needs to be queried in a different way then a normal String or single valued property in an Email would, where you could use a number of filter options (eg equal, contains,startswith). In EWS it was only possible to query this property using AQS because of the way SearchFilters translated to the underlying ROP based restrictions used by the Exchange Mailbox Store. In the Microsoft Graph the Linq format in Filters does translate more favourably so can be used eg the following simple query can find Messages in a folder based on a specific category

https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/messages?filter=Categories/any(a:a+eq+'Green+Category')

you can create a SearchFolder based on this query which would search all folder in a Mailbox which would produce a SearchFolder Creation request like

{
  "@odata.type": "microsoft.graph.mailSearchFolder",
  "displayName": "Green Email",
  "includeNestedFolders": true,
  "sourceFolderIds": ["MsgFolderRoot"],
  "filterQuery": "Categories/any(a:a+eq+'Green+Category')"
}

Based on a previous post on creating Search Folders I have this script https://github.com/gscales/Powershell-Scripts/blob/master/Graph101/SearchFolder.ps1 which you can use to Create a Category Search folder as well as other SearchFolder CRUD operations eg

Invoke-CreateCategorySearchFolder -MailboxName user@domain.onmicrosoft.com -SearchFolderName CategoryTest -CategoryName "Category 1"

Popular posts from this blog

The MailboxConcurrency limit and using Batching in the Microsoft Graph API

If your getting an error such as Application is over its MailboxConcurrency limit while using the Microsoft Graph API this post may help you understand why. Background   The Mailbox  concurrency limit when your using the Graph API is 4 as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling#outlook-service-limits . This is evaluated for each app ID and mailbox combination so this means you can have different apps running under the same credentials and the poor behavior of one won't cause the other to be throttled. If you compared that to EWS you could have up to 27 concurrent connections but they are shared across all apps on a first come first served basis. Batching Batching in the Graph API is a way of combining multiple requests into a single HTTP request. Batching in the Exchange Mail API's EWS and MAPI has been around for a long time and its common, for email Apps to process large numbers of smaller items for a variety of reasons.  Batching in the Graph is limited to a m

Sending a Message in Exchange Online via REST from an Arduino MKR1000

This is part 2 of my MKR1000 article, in this previous post  I looked at sending a Message via EWS using Basic Authentication.  In this Post I'll look at using the new Outlook REST API  which requires using OAuth authentication to get an Access Token. The prerequisites for this sketch are the same as in the other post with the addition of the ArduinoJson library  https://github.com/bblanchon/ArduinoJson  which is used to parse the Authentication Results to extract the Access Token. Also the SSL certificates for the login.windows.net  and outlook.office365.com need to be uploaded to the devices using the wifi101 Firmware updater. To use Token Authentication you need to register an Application in Azure https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/add-common-consent-manually  with the Mail.Send permission. The application should be a Native Client app that use the Out of Band Callback urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob. You need to authorize it in you tenant (eg build a small ap

How to test SMTP using Opportunistic TLS with Powershell and grab the public certificate a SMTP server is using

Most email services these day employ Opportunistic TLS when trying to send Messages which means that wherever possible the Messages will be encrypted rather then the plain text legacy of SMTP.  This method was defined in RFC 3207 "SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer Security" and  there's a quite a good explanation of Opportunistic TLS on Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunistic_TLS .  This is used for both Server to Server (eg MTA to MTA) and Client to server (Eg a Message client like Outlook which acts as a MSA) the later being generally Authenticated. Basically it allows you to have a normal plain text SMTP conversation that is then upgraded to TLS using the STARTTLS verb. Not all servers will support this verb so if its not supported then a message is just sent as Plain text. TLS relies on PKI certificates and the administrative issue s that come around certificate management like expired certificates which is why I wrote th
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.