---
title: "Authenticate against Micrsoft Partner Center API using Powershell"
description: "Microsoft Partner Center API autentication usin PowerShell"
date: 2017-09-07
updated: 2025-01-07
author: Martin Ehrnst
section: powershell
categories: [Azure, CSP Monitoring, DevOps, Powershell]
tags: [api, Azure, CSP, Powershell]
url: "https://adatum.no/powershell/using-powershell-against-micrsoft-partner-center-api/"
canonicalUrl: "https://adatum.no/powershell/using-powershell-against-micrsoft-partner-center-api"
---

**Update 04.01.2019:**
While the method described in this post still work. Microsoft are moving to what they call [secure app model](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/develop/enable-secure-app-model). Meaning that password grant is deprecated and you will need to use a refresh token model. [I have written a new blog post, explaining the new model.](https://adatum.no/azure/microsoft-csp/microsoft-secure-application-model)

If you’re not familiar with the [Microsoft Cloud Service Provider](https://partner.microsoft.com/en-no/cloud-solution-provider) program it’s in short a program to easier let service providers manage their customers tenants and subscriptions within Azure and Office 365 from a centralized platform.
Apart from a very limited web portal it have a set of API’s and SDK’s to build your own solutions – wich I assume is prefered from Microsoft and the service provider. For a project I needed to authenticate against the REST API using Powershell and then retrieve some information about each tenant, who would have thought that could be so much work
Here’s what I said.
> 
That’s fine, I will have it to you in an hour.

For your reference, this is the API I am working with: [Partner Center Swagger](https://apidocs.microsoft.com/services/partnercenter#/)
An hour later I did have authentication in place, but I was unable to retrieve any information from our customers. After digging through [the documentation](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/partnercenter/mt667943.aspx) I found that the customer endpoints required[ “App + User Authentication”](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/partnercenter/mt634685.aspx) where I had only authenticated with AppId and App Secret.
After spending too much time [decifer the C# examples](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/partnercenter/mt634709.aspx) on how you authenticate with app and user against the CSP Rest API i finally had a working Powershell function.
These are the steps required

- Generate a token from Azure AD by calling https://login.microsoft.com/tenant-name/oauth/token
- 

Specified with the resource you want to access (partner center api), client id, username and password, correct grant type and scope

- Use the AAD token to authenticate against partnercenter/generatetoken and recieve a correct User + App jwt_token
- Use the jwt token to further authenticate against endpoints you preffer

If you ever find your self in a situation where you need to authenticate against the CSP REST API as app + user, here is a function to do it.
Be aware that the function does require a credential object, but when you atuhenticate against AAD the password is decoded and sent in the post request.###