How do I get a user reference in Microsoft Graph Groups API? - microsoft-graph-api

Question

From the Group API and /Conversations endpoint you can get a list of conversations and when looking in the Groups App you can see the user with image.
But data returned from API doesn't have any good data to use for a user lookup.
I would expect an email address at least, not just the name which is far from unique. Is there a efficient way to get the user without traversing all the threads and posts?
Data from API:
{
"#odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#groups('{id}')/threads",
"value": [{
"id": "{id}",
"topic": "Test main thread",
"hasAttachments": false,
"lastDeliveredDateTime": "2017-10-20T11:35:04Z",
"uniqueSenders": [
"Jonas Stensved"
],
"preview": "{message preview content}",
"isLocked": false
},
{
"id": "{id}",
"topic": "The new Test group is ready",
"hasAttachments": false,
"lastDeliveredDateTime": "2017-10-13T10:33:03Z",
"uniqueSenders": [
"Test"
],
"preview": "{message preview content}",
"isLocked": false
}
]
}
How a group in the Groups app looks:
[]

Answer 1

It might help to break down the object hierarchy here:
Group - parent to a collection of Conversation resources
Conversation - parent to a collection of Thread resources
Thread - parent to to a collection of Post resources
Post - the actual content sent to the Group by a User
In order to see which User resources map into a given Thread, you need to drill down another level to find the Post resources contained within the Thread.
You can do this using the $expand=posts parameter to expand the Posts collection. You can also a ($select=from) the $expand so you only return the properties you need to map back to the User resource.
So this query:
/v1.0/groups/{group-id}/threads?$expand=posts($select=from)
will provide you a Thread result like this:
{
"id": "{thread-id}",
"topic": "New Training Plans",
"hasAttachments": false,
"lastDeliveredDateTime": "2017-07-31T18:59:05Z",
"uniqueSenders": [
"HR Taskforce"
],
"preview": "{thread-preview}",
"isLocked": false,
"posts#odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#groups('{group-id}')/threads('{thread-id}')/posts(from)",
"posts": [{
"#odata.etag": "W/\"CwAAABYAAADE9kXbLjqkSJUGeLzs6eumAAAAAA0/\"",
"id": "{post-id}",
"changeKey": "CwAAABYAAADE9kXbLjqkSJUGeLzs6eumAAAAAA0/",
"from": {
"emailAddress": {
"name": "HR Taskforce",
"address": "HRTaskforce#M365x214355.onmicrosoft.com"
}
}
}]
}
You can try this yourself using this Graph Explorer example.

Answer 2

You can get group members list and iterate over them. Depending on the size o the group this might require paging. You can find more information in the docs: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/docs/api-reference/v1.0/resources/group
I hope this helps.