Microsoft Teams Graph API have been there for a quite a long time and it can be beneficial in various ways to perform Teams related tasks in API operations. In this article we will go through the Teams Graph API overview and API calls available as of now.

Using Graph API developers have a unified Rest API to access Teams underpinned components. For instance, using Graph API we can post a survey notification to a channel with option to vote for the survey. With this we can create a Team, add members and owners ,configure team settings and even archive a Team.

The overview of Graph API can be explored by navigating to the below URL.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/graph-explorer

Before consuming the Graph API we need the required permissions on the Graph API to run the query. So we need to consent the required permission based on the action that will be performed from the Graph API. In below example have granted the below permissions to execute the Graph API operations for Teams.

Once logged in initially we can check for the basic me option which returns the user information as below.

As of now while writing the blog post the Teams has below graph options 9 general and 4 beta versions. So if any issues identified on beta while pulling from the applications, powerapps , logic apps or other APIs it will be fixed sooner.

Now moving to the Teams part below query shows the teams where im member of

https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/joinedTeams

So now trying with the post request to create a channel on a Team called Test Team.The prerequisite of creating a channel is to mention the Teams ID under which the channel needs to be created.

Upon a successful post we can see that the new channel called architecture discussion have been created.

Interestingly we have an option to send a channel message. Example below message.

The test post message we set have been received in Team Channel.

When attempted the get message present in a channel we get the actual messages present in them.

Now we have tested the API operations from the Graph explorer there are multiple ways to access them from different programs. In our example we will try to access them from the powershell and create a Team. The first prerequisite for Creating the Teams from Graph API is they need to be as an Office365 Group. The Office365 group is created as a Post Operation

Once the Office365 Team is created we can use the Put operation to enable Teams in them. While there are lots of samples available on the internet to create the teams i found this video which is very helpful start the graph API operations for Microsoft Teams via Powershell.

As a initial prerequisite we need o install the SharepointPNPPowershell online and connect to them.

Below is a sample script that can be used to create a Team from the Graph API via Powershell.

#connect to graph API
Install-Module SharepointPNPPowershellOnline
connect-pnponline -scopes "Group.ReadWrite.All"
$accesstoken = Get-PnPGraphAccessToken

#Prepare generic OAuth Bearer token header
$headers = @{
"Content-Type" = "application/json"
Authorization = "Bearer $accessToken"
}

#Create the Office 365 Group - Post Request
$NewGroup = @{
Description = "Team Fun Friday"
DisplayName = "Fun Friday"
groupTypes = @("Unified")
mailEnabled = $true
mailNickname = "teamfunfriday"
securityenabled = $false
}
$creategroupbody = ConvertTO-Json -InputObject $NewGroup

$response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups" -Body $creategroupbody -Method Post -Headers $headers -UseBasicParsing
$groupid = $response.id

#Create the Team - Put Request
$NewTeamRequest = @{
membersettings = @{
allowcreateupdatechannels = $true
}
messagingsettings = @{
allowusereditmessages = $true
allowuserdeletemessages = $true
}
funsettings = @{
allowgiphy = $true
giphycontentrating = "strict"
}
}
$createTeamBody = ConvertTo-Json -InputObject $NewTeamRequest
$response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups/$groupid/team" -Body $createTeamBody -Method Put -Headers $headers -UseBasicParsing
Write-Host $response

Upon a successful execution of the above script we will get the below message on the powershell session.

On verification could see the associated office 365 group and the Team have been created.

Also the team is automatically created and visible from the Teams client

With the Microsoft Graph APIs it becomes a unified REST API experience and it helps us to perform multiple Teams operations and automate the Team management life cycle.