Ensuring Continuity for ICC FES: Essential Migration to Microsoft Graph

Author: Dhanusha Elangovan

Co-Author: Soumya R Dash

Support for Azure AD PowerShell modules was discontinued by Microsoft as of March 2025. This change is significant for organisations leveraging ICC FES (IBM Content Collector for File, Email, and SharePoint), especially for customers integrating ICC with Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

Historically, the core process of Azure app registration—which is used to generate Client IDs, secrets, and tenant details—has been heavily reliant on Azure AD scripts. With this deprecation, continuing with the old approach became a potential "showstopper" for many customers.

The Impending Challenge

Without the scripts being rewritten, significant operational disruptions were anticipated:

• New Tenants: The ability to register and connect ICC with Exchange or SharePoint would not have been possible for new tenants.
• Existing Tenants: Functionality would be lost for existing tenants once their client ID and secret expired, as renewal would no longer be possible.

Failing to adapt these scripts would have meant customers losing the ability to establish or maintain Exchange Online and SharePoint Online connections, effectively halting ICC functionality in many environments.

Our Modernisation Approach

To ensure continuity, a Proof of Concept (POC) was performed. This POC was used to validate that the existing Azure AD-based approach could be adapted to Microsoft Graph, which is Microsoft’s preferred method for managing Microsoft 365 resources.

The results were encouraging. Building on the POC, ICC FES scripts that handle the Exchange Online connection setup have been updated and modernised. This work ensures that both new tenants and existing customers who rely on credential renewals can continue operating without interruption.

Scripts that have been rewritten for this modernisation effort include:

• ConfigureICCApp: Used to register an app and assign required permissions.
• Cleanup: Used to remove stale or unused app registrations.
• Register_ICC_SPO_AzureADApp: Used to register an app and assign required permissions for SharePoint.

High-Level Modernization Flow

Significance of the Migration

This migration ensures several key outcomes for ICC FES users:

• Customers can continue registering new tenants with ICC.
• Existing tenants can renew their client IDs and secrets after expiration.
• ICC remains fully compatible with Microsoft’s evolving cloud ecosystem.

With this update, customers can confidently onboard new tenants, renew credentials, and maintain seamless integration with Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

Conclusion

With support for Azure AD PowerShell being phased out by Microsoft, the adoption of Microsoft Graph was not just a modernisation step; it was critical for continuity. This effort future-proofs ICC FES, aligning it with Microsoft’s cloud-first roadmap.