View Tenant (ULS) Logs in SharePoint Online using CSOM

Even though the classes exist in the CSOM, the Microsoft Office 365 Engineering team has confirmed that this is something which is not possible right now. It is also something which is not currently on their road map. They have said that if there is high demand for this feature, they will look into implementing it. Please go to the Office 365 UserVoice site and vote this feature up if you are interested: http://officespdev.uservoice.com/forums/224641-general/suggestions/4578386-provide-a-way-to-view-uls-logs-on-sharepoint-online


Fast Forward to today and I was really excited about the SharePoint Conference 2014! I saw a lot of code samples and articles being published as a result of the new features introduced by the SharePoint Team. While exploring the Office App Model Samples (http://officeams.codeplex.com/) I came across the following DLL: Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.Client.Tenant.dll

You can refer to my previous post about using this DLL to create Site Collections in SharePoint Online:
http://www.vrdmn.com/2014/03/create-site-collections-with-csom-in.html

I opened up the DLL in ILSpy and immediately noticed the TenantLog class:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.online.sharepoint.tenantadministration.tenantlog_members(v=office.15).aspx

After playing around it a bit, I was able to retrieve Log messages from my Tenant. This seems to be a preview feature still in development and was not working on all the tenants on which I tested. In fact, it was working only on a newly created Tenant! That too only for the Developer Site.

Having a look at the MSDN docs for the SPO PowerShell cmdlet:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp161369(v=office.15).aspx

"This function cannot retrieve all SharePoint Online errors. It retrieves a subset of errors that happen due to external systems.
For Beta 2, the only logs available are for Business Connectivity Services (BCS)."

I will keep this post updated with any new information which comes along.

Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll
Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.Client.Tenant.dll

The first two assemblies can be found in the ISAPI folder of your SharePoint 2013 Server Box. The Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.Client.Tenant.dll is a part of  the SharePoint Server 2013 Client Components SDK which can downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=35585

So without much further ado, here is the code:

using Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.TenantAdministration;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Client;
using System;
using System.Security;
namespace ViewSPOLog
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //Open the Tenant Administration Context with the Tenant Admin Url
            using (var tenantContext = new ClientContext("https://yoursite-admin.sharepoint.com/"))
            {
                //Authenticate with a Tenant Administrator
                var passWord = new SecureString();
                foreach (char c in "password".ToCharArray()) passWord.AppendChar(c);
                tenantContext.Credentials = new SharePointOnlineCredentials("admin@yoursite.onmicrosoft.com", passWord);
                var tenant = new Tenant(tenantContext);
                var tenantLog = new TenantLog(tenantContext);
                var dateTimeUTCNow = DateTime.UtcNow;
                //Get 50 Rows of Tenant Log Entries starting from 5 days ago till now.
                var logEntries = tenantLog.GetEntries(dateTimeUTCNow.AddDays(-5), dateTimeUTCNow, 50);
                //Get 50 Rows of Tenant Log Entries of the specified CorrelationId starting from 5 days ago till now
                //var logEntries = tenantLog.GetEntriesByCorrelationId(dateTimeUTCNow.AddDays(-5), dateTimeUTCNow, 50, new Guid("ae2b1e34-12eb-4652-a0db-ce4ab916c74e"));
                //Get 50 Rows of Tenant Log Entries of the specified Source starting from 5 days ago till now.
                //var logEntries = tenantLog.GetEntriesBySource(dateTimeUTCNow.AddDays(-5), dateTimeUTCNow, 50, 1);
                //Get 50 Rows of Tenant Log Entries of the specified User starting from 5 days ago till now.
                //var logEntries = tenantLog.GetEntriesByUser(dateTimeUTCNow.AddDays(-5), dateTimeUTCNow, 50, "admin@yoursite.onmicrosoft.com");
                tenantContext.Load(logEntries);
                tenantContext.ExecuteQuery();
                foreach (TenantLogEntry logEntry in logEntries)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Timestamp:{0} | Message:{1} | CorrelationId:{2} | Source:{3} | User:{4} | CategoryId:{5}",
                        logEntry.TimestampUtc, logEntry.Message, logEntry.CorrelationId , logEntry.Source , logEntry.User, logEntry.CategoryId)); 
                }
                Console.WriteLine("Press Any Key to Exit...");
                Console.ReadKey();
            }
        }
    }
}

And here is the output I got after running the code:

I think the SharePoint team has done a really great job of listening to the community to add new features to SharePoint/Office365 and I am really happy!