Building Better SharePoint with PowerShell with Dan Adams

Dan Adams is a 13-year Microsoft 365 and SharePoint veteran who joined Andrew to talk about the often misunderstood world of SharePoint, the shift to Microsoft Graph, and his custom PowerShell module built to assess and benchmark M365 environments. Dan breaks down why SharePoint gets such a bad reputation (spoiler: it's usually about who built it, not the platform), explains why "everything in M365 is SharePoint" isn't just a meme, and digs into how the Microsoft Graph API is changing the way admins interact with the platform. He also shares his experience going from longtime podcast listener to first-time guest, and closes with some honest advice about reaching out to people in the community.

Key Takeaways:

• SharePoint's bad reputation often comes from poor initial architecture, not the platform itself. Getting the information structure right at the start has downstream effects on everything from Copilot to Purview to legal compliance, and PowerShell automation is only as useful as the metadata you've set up to work with.
• The Microsoft Graph API is consolidating how everything in M365 is accessed. Where older APIs like the SharePoint client-side object model might count a batch of 100 items as 100 separate API calls, Graph treats that same batch as a single call, which is a meaningful difference for performance and rate limiting.
• Dan's custom PowerShell module (SystemAdmins.M365Assessment) automates a full assessment of an M365 tenant against CIS benchmarks and Microsoft Secure Score best practices, outputting an HTML report. It's a practical tool for consultants and admins who need a fast, standardized way to evaluate a tenant's security posture.

Guest Bio:
Dan Adams is a Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Architect & Developer with 13 years of experience working exclusively in the M365 ecosystem. By day, he is a Senior Sharepoint Developer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He started his career as a business analyst before landing in SharePoint almost by accident, and has since built deep expertise in SharePoint architecture, Azure Entra, and PowerShell automation.

Resource Links:

• Dan Adams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-adams-10887650/
• Connect with Andrew: https://andrewpla.tech/links
• PnP PowerShell: https://pnp.github.io/powershell/
• PDQ Discord Community: https://discord.gg/pdq
• PowerShell Wednesday Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQT8lrn8hhU&list=PL1mL90yFExsix-L0havb8SbZXoYRPol0B
• The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OLsTaKC9GmM