Bill Baer /bɛːr/

File Storage Containers are the foundation of SharePoint Embedded apps.

SharePoint Embedded containers are an abstract concept, conceptually a document library containing files and folders. Only the consuming application will have knowledge of a storage container and its’ content. Containers are isoldated from other content such as SharePoint and OneDrive.

SharePoint Embedded mandates a 1:1 relationship between owning application and container type.

Only approved container APIs can access a container and its associated content, with the exception of certain compliance, auditing, and Entra tooling. For example, containers are not visible through the SharePoint Online admin UX, PowerShell cmdlets, and other existing APIs.

Types of containers

A container type is a SharePoint Embedded resource that defines the relationship, access privileges, and billing accountability between a SharePoint Embedded application and a set of containers. Also, the container type defines behaviors on the set of containers.

SharePoint Embedded exposes two container types to developers, a standard or otherwise “paid” container” and a trial or “free container”.

Standard

Standard container types are linked to an Azure Billing Subscription and subject to pay-as-you-go billing.

To create a standard container type you need:

• An Azure subscription and Resource Group must be present in the Azure portal
• An App registration must be created in Microsoft Entra ID
• Each developer tenant can create up to five container types in the standard status.

Standard containers can be created using the New-SPOContainerType cmdlet.

Example

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New-SPOContainerType –ContainerTypeName Foo -OwningApplicationId 8fda39e8-c713-4f2b-887f-706af3c95930 -AzureSubscriptionId 98e806af-623c-4b5d-b64e-ec8a0f4ea01d -ResourceGroup Bar -Region West-US

When a standard container type is created, it is subject to the standard billing model. With the standard billing model, all consumption-based charges are directly billed to the tenant that owns/develops the application. The admin in the developer tenant must establish a valid billing profile when creating a standard container type.

For standard billed container types, the Developer Admin (Microsoft 365 SharePoint Embedded Administrator) sets up billing in their tenant. Global Administrators can assign users the SharePoint Embedded Administrator.

For additional information on the Developer Admin refer to Developer Admin.

A new pass-through billing model (coming soon) will additionally be available to standard container types. With the pass-through billing model, consumption-based charges are billed directly to the tenant registered to use the SharePoint Embedded application.

In addition to specific billing models, standard containers are also subject to specific size limits:

NOTE Container types that a partner tenant can create, containers of a container type per tenant, and storage per container type per tenant are soft limits and can be increased upon request.

As well as size limits, standard containers also have specific API rate limits:

NOTE Requests per app per tenant is a soft limit and can be increased upon request.

Trial

Trial container types unlike standard containers are not linked to an Azure Billing Subscription and are designed to allow developers to explore and experiment with SharePoint Embedded app develop without a cost associated with their usage (unlike the standard container type). Developers are limited to a single trial container type per tenant. Each trial container is available to developers for 30 days and are limited to 1GB of storage.

Trial containers can be created using the New-SPOContainerType cmdlet with the –TrialContainerType flag.

Example

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New-SPOContainerType -TrialContainerType -ContainerTypeName Foo -OwningApplicationId d3288936-56af-4dbc-9265-99f68949a27d

Trial containers have specific size limits and restrictions that differ from standard container types including:

In addition, a trial container type expires after 30 days and access to any existing containers of that container type will be removed. Trial containers within the 30 day window are limited to the developers’ tenant and can’t be deployed in other consuming tenants.

In order to create a trial container type, all containers of a trial container type need to be deleted and only five active containers of the container type can be created.

Developers can enumerate all of the created container types in their tenant using the ‘Get-SPOContainerType’ cmdlet. Container types are listed by their Classification in the response.

• NOTE * Each SharePoint Embedded app can own a single container and a soft limit of 100,000 containers of a container type can be created per tenant.

Resources

To learn more about SharePoint Embedded containers see SharePoint Embedded Container Types.