Beginning on December 7, 2023, we will begin the release of our new Microsoft 365 Consolidated inspector in two planned phases.
Phase One: December 7, 2023, marks the launch of the Consolidated Microsoft 365 Inspector. No configuration is required, and all Microsoft 365 inspectors will be updated automatically. These changes are additive and will not impact pre-existing metrics, reports, and alerts.
Phase Two: February 2024, encompasses the retirement of the standalone Inspectors for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Azure AD. Also included in the second phase will be the migration of metrics, reports, alert rules, and triggered alerts that are targeting the retired inspectors to the updated Microsoft 365 inspector.
This change will be a significant improvement in the reliability and accessibility of data for all of these Microsoft services:
Simplified Set Up: Requires only one inspector to be setup instead of five individual Inspectors
Improved Reliability: Fewer API calls significantly reduce the likelihood of inspector failures due to API rate limiting.
Centralization: Metrics queries will now reference a single Microsoft 365 data print, for less duplicative querying for Actionable Alerts, Reports, and integrations.
Data Print Optimization: Extraneous and duplicative data points that resulted in data bloat have been removed, allowing for more efficient data storage and querying.
Simplified Maintenance: The number of individual Microsoft Cloud Inspectors requiring maintenance and support by our Partners and Liongard decrease dramatically.
Path Forward: This transition provides a unified place for interactions with Microsoft 365, enabling faster development and improvement of the data we gather.
Key Areas of Impact:
Data: On December 7th, we are releasing the enhanced Microsoft 365 inspector, integrating the data from the Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Azure AD inspectors. In this update, we've streamlined and eliminated redundant information, ensuring that only vital data points that deliver maximum value to our partners, are retained. This will be an additive change to the Microsoft 365 data-print.
Inspector Deactivation: All active inspectors for Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Azure AD will be retired 60 days (February 2024) after the release of the unified Microsoft 365 inspector. No data prints or history will be removed; they will simply no longer run new inspection jobs. Historical data prints and associated data views from the retired inspectors will remain accessible.
Metrics: In February 2024, all Metrics associated with the retired Inspectors will be automatically migrated to the newly unified Microsoft 365 Inspector, with one exception for the Azure AD inspector noted below. If you are accessing data via our Metrics API and identifying Metrics by name, ID, or UUID, your integration will continue working as before for new inspections going forward. Since Metrics from the retiring inspectors are being re-associated to the newly consolidated M365 inspector, Metric queries for historic data prints will cease to function.
Azure AD Exception: A small amount of custom Metric queries that point to the SecureScore[] array will no longer work and cannot be automatically migrated due to some necessary restructuring of Secure Score data in the newly unified inspector.
Action Required during the 60 day transition period:
Any API Integrations that you may have written that specifically target the Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive or Azure AD Inspector data, should be reviewed and updated to target the newly unified 365 Inspector.
If you are directly extracting data prints (as opposed to Metrics) from our API, then you will need to update your integration to reference the Microsoft 365 data print (or to pull data more granularly via our Metrics API.) Historical queries will continue to work as before.
If you've generated Liongard Reports for Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, or Azure AD with specific timestamps you'd like to retain, please export and save these reports.
If you have any Azure Active Directory custom Metric queries that point to the SecureScore[] array will need to be manually updated to utilize the SecureScores object in the newly unified M365 data print.
If you still need assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Partner Success Team.