Our institution is looking at linking a cloud storage service with D2L and we were investigating the possibility of modifying the path of individual user's lockers to the cloud storage path using Valence.
The APIs appear to allow the creation/deletion/editing of files and folders within a users locker, however is there the ability to edit the location of the locker itself?
No, sorry, the root location of a user's locker is not modifiable through the Valence Learning Framework APIs.
Related
I need to upload files to a client's shared folder on OneDrive, however, there's no way I can get them to allow Files.WriteAll for my application (I'm using application permissions, not delegation) -- I've asked them. Is there another way to do that?
I have looked into multiple SO questions about this and on Microsoft's documentation, and I believe it is not possible, but I would like to know from people with more experience using Microsoft's service if it is indeed true.
Is there a query or data element accessible using the Graph API that will allow you to distinguish a shared mailbox from a normal user in o365? I normally want to only sync users if they have certain licenses but also include shared mailboxes (which do not require a license).
A User and a Mailbox are two different things. A User is an account managed by Azure Active Directory, a Mailbox is an email destination managed by Exchange Online.
If you're asking how to determine which users have access to a given mailbox, this is not available through Microsoft Graph. You would need to use a different mechanism to determine a mailboxes configuration; the most common being Exchange Web Services or PowerShell (which is most likely using EWS behind the scenes).
I have found some, but not all, pieces of the puzzle.
Using Graph APIs, when a user selects a document in my own web application, I can:-
Create a new temporary folder in their OneDrive account
Upload my.docx file to this location
Get the url for my.docx
Open the URL in a new tab, loading Office 365's MSWord editor (or viewer and editor after one more click)
This is where it gets a bit trickier. How can I get the edited content back into the location where my web application historically stored these documents?
Theorising, I can:-
Create a webhook subscription to the new folder I create
Implement a webhook listener (and validation) service
When the listener receives an 'update' notice for the document:-
Call the download(content) API, or from the driveItem metadata, download it from #microsoft.graph.downloadUrl
Persist it to my desired location within my web application
To me this sounds like it'll suffer from big delays. The webhook subscriptions typically send batches of changes and the frequency looks uncertain. It certainly wouldn't be great for versioning every individual save operation during the editing session.
Have I missed some more obvious path to Word as a Service? i.e. another API or a mixture of APIs?
Alternatives I've considered but haven't yet scoped: implement WOPI or WebDav within my own web application.
It sounds like you're only using OneDrive to take advantage of its built-in support for the MS-WOPI protocol. WOPI is basically an enhanced WebDav interface that is used by Office to work with remote document (i.e. files stored on OneDrive, Box, DropBox, etc.).
Your solution is generally fine and it is certainly easy enough to orchestrate. You can absolutely use webhooks to subscribe to changes to the file. You'll likely want some mechanism in your app to notify your system when they're "done" so you can clean up the file afterwards.
If you want a more robust solution, you'll need to look at WOPI. Implementing WOPI would allow you to keep these files on your system permanently. Office Online would use the WOPI interface to speak with your storage system and open/save/edit files in-place.
Keep in mind that implementing WOPI (or any protocol for that matter) is often a non-trivial endeavor. You will also need to get your final solution validated and whitelisted by Office before it can be used. Details on this process and how to request access can be found at the Microsoft Cloud Storage Provider Program website.
Today OneNote and Excel are the only office "document clients" that have API's exposed via a REST API publicly available in the Microsoft Graph.
The only other "publicly available options" I'm aware of are:
WOPI APIs, that kind of act like a REST API but muche older
The office add-in model (hosted in a client) with the JavaScript API
The word object library (old, relying on dcoms and needs to have office installed and licensed on the machine)
Is there a way to access files, such as those created by the CCB tool, that are placed into a specific directory in the Manage Files area of a course offering? I've tried the topic API, but the new /file path only returns a value when the file is attached to a topic - not if it's just "hanging out" in the files area. Is there a more generic way to access the entire file structure there - maybe even by using WebDAV)? If so, is there a way to turn WebDAV on?
Thank you,
-George
The Valence Learning Framework API does not currently offer direct access to the Manage Files area.
I believe that clients can engage D2L to provide WebDAV access to the Manage Files store; the D2L client should contact their account manager to work through the details of setting this up for their use. This is not a feature that a third party integrator can count on all clients having available though, as it does (I believe) require a special engagement with D2L around a client's service.
Can I use a Valence Learning Framework API to upload data into another LE user's locker?
Currently, you cannot; lockers are explicitly intended to be user-private storage spaces for Learning Environment users. Accordingly, the Valence Learning Framework APIs do not provide a way for calling user to upload data to another user's locker.