SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

I am a Project Server and SharePoint consultant but my main focus currently is around Project Server. I have been working with Project Server for nearly five years since 2007 for a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in the UK, I have also been awared with the Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011. I am also a certified Prince2 Practitioner. This article has been cross posted from pwmather.wordpress.com (original article)

Following on from my last post where I published an example solution starter PowerShell script for adding project team users to the Project Site, here I mentioned about running the script in an Azure Function and even running this sync from a Project Online event. The blog post can be seen below if you missed that:

http://bit.ly/2uzis7i

Whilst I will use that example PowerShell script from my last blog post as an example, the concept will work for any PowerShell script.

I wont cover the details in setting up the Azure Function in part 1 as there is plenty of support out there for this – for this example I created an Http Trigger – PowerShell function.

I then uploaded the SharePoint DLLs and copied in the PowerShell script into the editor:

The project site user sync script didn’t work as is as I had to make some minor changes to get this to run from the Azure Function. This included change the way the SharePoint CSOM DLLs where loaded in. In the example script I used Add-Type to load the DLLs but in the Azure Function I had to switch this out to use Import-Module:

The next change I had to make was to comment out all of the feedback to the console, so all of the write-hosts. I also had to remove the functions within the script so that is was one block. After these changes I could execute the PowerShell script to add the project team members from my example project into the associated project site from the Azure Function. As this was an HTTP Trigger Azure Function, you can get the URL to the function and access that URL to execute the function.

This opens up lots of possibilities to easily execute this Azure Function from other applications that can make the HTTP call. For example you build easily execute this script once the project has been published either using a remote event receiver (RER) or a Microsoft Flow / Azure Logic App. The example script would need to be made generic and pass in a variable into the Azure Function for it to be a workable solution.

In part 2 of this blog post we will look at make a full event driven solution that is fired on project publish then executing the Azure Function and passing in a variable.