servicePrincipal: Add owner

2025-07-05

Namespace: microsoft.graph

Important

APIs under the /beta version in Microsoft Graph are subject to change. Use of these APIs in production applications is not supported. To determine whether an API is available in v1.0, use the Version selector.

Add an owner for the servicePrincipal. Service principal owners can be users, the service principal itself, or other service principals.

This API is available in the following national cloud deployments.

Global service	US Government L4	US Government L5 (DOD)	China operated by 21Vianet
✅	✅	✅	✅

Permissions

Choose the permission or permissions marked as least privileged for this API. Use a higher privileged permission or permissions only if your app requires it. For details about delegated and application permissions, see Permission types. To learn more about these permissions, see the permissions reference.

Permission type	Least privileged permissions	Higher privileged permissions
Delegated (work or school account)	Application.ReadWrite.All and Directory.Read.All	Directory.ReadWrite.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account)	Not supported.	Not supported.
Application	Application.ReadWrite.OwnedBy and Directory.Read.All	Directory.Read.All and Application.ReadWrite.All, Directory.ReadWrite.All

Important

In delegated scenarios with work or school accounts, the signed-in user must be assigned a supported Microsoft Entra role or a custom role with a supported role permission. The following least privileged roles are supported for this operation.

Hybrid Identity Administrator
Cloud Application Administrator
Application Administrator

HTTP request

You can address the service principal using either its id or appId. id and appId are referred to as the Object ID and Application (Client) ID, respectively, in app registrations in the Microsoft Entra admin center.

POST /servicePrincipals/{id}/owners/$ref
POST /servicePrincipals(appId='{appId}')/owners/$ref

Request headers

Name	Description
Authorization	Bearer {token}. Required. Learn more about authentication and authorization.

Request body

In the request body, supply a JSON representation of a directoryObject object.

Response

If successful, this method returns a 204 No Content response code and a directoryObject object in the response body.

Examples

Request

The following example shows a request.

POST https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/servicePrincipals/{id}/owners/$ref
Content-type: application/json

{
    "@odata.id": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/{id}"
}


// Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 5.x

// Dependencies
using Microsoft.Graph.Beta.Models;

var requestBody = new ReferenceCreate
{
	OdataId = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/{id}",
};

// To initialize your graphClient, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=csharp
await graphClient.ServicePrincipals["{servicePrincipal-id}"].Owners.Ref.PostAsync(requestBody);

Important

Microsoft Graph SDKs use the v1.0 version of the API by default, and do not support all the types, properties, and APIs available in the beta version. For details about accessing the beta API with the SDK, see Use the Microsoft Graph SDKs with the beta API.

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.



// Code snippets are only available for the latest major version. Current major version is $v0.*

// Dependencies
import (
	  "context"
	  msgraphsdk "github.com/microsoftgraph/msgraph-beta-sdk-go"
	  graphmodels "github.com/microsoftgraph/msgraph-beta-sdk-go/models"
	  //other-imports
)

requestBody := graphmodels.NewReferenceCreate()
odataId := "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/{id}"
requestBody.SetOdataId(&odataId) 

// To initialize your graphClient, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=go
graphClient.ServicePrincipals().ByServicePrincipalId("servicePrincipal-id").Owners().Ref().Post(context.Background(), requestBody, nil)

Important

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.


// Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 6.x

GraphServiceClient graphClient = new GraphServiceClient(requestAdapter);

com.microsoft.graph.beta.models.ReferenceCreate referenceCreate = new com.microsoft.graph.beta.models.ReferenceCreate();
referenceCreate.setOdataId("https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/{id}");
graphClient.servicePrincipals().byServicePrincipalId("{servicePrincipal-id}").owners().ref().post(referenceCreate);

Important

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.


const options = {
	authProvider,
};

const client = Client.init(options);

const directoryObject = {
    '@odata.id': 'https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/{id}'
};

await client.api('/servicePrincipals/{id}/owners/$ref')
	.version('beta')
	.post(directoryObject);

Important

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.


<?php
use Microsoft\Graph\Beta\GraphServiceClient;
use Microsoft\Graph\Beta\Generated\Models\ReferenceCreate;


$graphServiceClient = new GraphServiceClient($tokenRequestContext, $scopes);

$requestBody = new ReferenceCreate();
$requestBody->setOdataId('https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/{id}');

$graphServiceClient->servicePrincipals()->byServicePrincipalId('servicePrincipal-id')->owners()->ref()->post($requestBody)->wait();

Important

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.


Import-Module Microsoft.Graph.Beta.Applications

$params = @{
	"@odata.id" = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/{id}"
}

New-MgBetaServicePrincipalOwnerByRef -ServicePrincipalId $servicePrincipalId -BodyParameter $params

Important

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.


# Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 1.x
from msgraph_beta import GraphServiceClient
from msgraph_beta.generated.models.reference_create import ReferenceCreate
# To initialize your graph_client, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=python
request_body = ReferenceCreate(
	odata_id = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/{id}",
)

await graph_client.service_principals.by_service_principal_id('servicePrincipal-id').owners.ref.post(request_body)

Important

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

In the request body, supply a JSON representation of a directoryObject object.

Response

The following example shows the response.

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

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servicePrincipal: Add owner

Permissions

HTTP request

Request headers

Request body

Response

Examples

Request

Response

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