How to manage office 365 accounts in windows azure web site

Question

I'd like to deploy a Office 365/Exchange Online management portal in the WAWS(Windows Azure WebSite) which could create new user/group/mailbox or change some property of specific user, etc. Is it possible to deploy this kind of web application in the WAWS environment? Should I call PowerShell and Office365 cmdlet in the ASP.NET environment? Or there are any better way to do this?

Answer 1

As the @Matt alludes to in his comment, there is already a web-based management portal for both of these. However, since you ask this question, I'm going to assume that you want additional functionality/customization.

The short answer is yes, you can.

User accounts in Office 365 are, behind the scenes, accounts in Azure Active Directory. So, for creating users, contacts, security groups and adding licenses, you will need to use the Azure Active Directory Graph API:

• Getting Started With Windows Azure Active Directory Graph

For managing Exchange Online, you will probably want to use the Exchange Web Services Managed API 2.0. You'll probably only need this if you need to create distribution groups or manage individual users' contact folders (mailboxes for users get created when you assign an Exchange license from Azure Active Directory).

• Get started with EWS Managed API client applications

Update: the Office 365 APIs were recently announced, and are now in Preview. They are a RESTful API, which can be used to manage (for now), mail, contacts and calendar items. Depending on your use case, this may be easier to deal with than the EWS Managed API 2.0.

• Using the Mail, Calendar, and Contact REST APIs to work with emails, calendar items, and contacts