Changes to Exchange Online APIs and how they affect Cayosoft Administrator

Published: 2/03/2023

Applies to: Cayosoft Administrator 10.1 or later.

Summary: This article describes the recent and upcoming changes Microsoft is making to its APIs and how this change is reflected in Cayosoft Administrator 

Overview 

Exchange Online PowerShell is the application interface used by Cayosoft Administrator to connect to Exchange Online to perform related administrative tasks. Over the past year, Microsoft has rolled out major changes to this interface in order to improve the security and performance. These changes have required significant changes to the way Cayosoft Administrator works with Exchange Online that may have an effect on certain operations. This article goes over some of the details around the changes Microsoft has implemented and how Cayosoft Administrator has integrated these changes. 

Exchange PowerShell V2 and V3

Version 2.0.5 and earlier is described in Microsoft's documentation as the Exchange Online PowerShell V2 module (abbreviated as the EXO V2 module). Version 3.0.0, released September 2022 and later is known as the Exchange Online PowerShell V3 module (abbreviated as the EXO V3 module).

Among many other changes, V3 now supports cmdlets backed by the REST API instead of the legacy WinRM API. REST-backed cmdlets offer significant performance and security improvements over their legacy counterparts, as shown in the table below:: 

See this article from Microsoft for details.

Cayosoft Administrator and EXO V3

Starting from version 10.1, Cayosoft Administrator fully supports and implements EXO V3 and REST API backed cmdlets. However, due to the massive amount of changes implemented by Microsoft for this API migration, certain operations or scenarios may not always work as expected. The new REST API cmdlets are not perfect copies of their legacy counterparts and will, for example, often use a different input and output format. Although Cayosoft has modified all existing rules to use the new commands and thoroughly tested all standard scenarios, the depth and complexity of the configurations made possible by Cayosoft Administrator means that you may encounter some compatibility issues. For example, if you have a rule configured with a dependency on the old format in the output or a custom script, this could cause an error. 

For these rare cases, Cayosoft Administrator has kept support for legacy cmdlets. You can switch between legacy cmdlets and new REST API backed cmdlets using an option called "Use legacy EXO commands" in Home > Configuration > Connected Systems Extensions > Microsoft 365:

Legacy commands deprecation  

Microsoft has announced deprecation of Remote PowerShell Protocol for Exchange Online on June 2023. After this time, the legacy commands and Cayosoft Administrator version prior to 10.1 will stop functioning. For details, see the announcement here.