Spanning Backup MCP Server

An MCP server for the Spanning Backup for Microsoft 365 API. Spanning backs up a Microsoft 365 tenant's mailboxes, OneDrive, calendars, contacts, SharePoint sites and Teams channels every day. This server lets an AI agent read which users are licensed for backup, how each day's backup went per user and per service, and the tenant's license usage. It is read-only.

• Transport: MCP Streamable HTTP at POST /mcp, health probe at GET /health

• Stateless and multi-tenant: credentials arrive on every request as HTTP headers and are never stored; every tool is listed from the first tools/list

• Python 3.12, uv, FastMCP, httpx

• License: Apache-2.0, Copyright 2026 MSPbots.ai

Authentication headers

Where to get them:

• A Spanning administrator generates an API token in the Spanning Backup for Microsoft 365 admin console (its settings area). The token is tied to the administrator who created it, so send that administrator's email with it.

• The region is the one the account was created in. When it is not sent, the server tries each regional API once and remembers which one accepts the credentials (only the region code is kept, keyed by a hash of the email and token).

How credentials are sent to Spanning: HTTP Basic authentication (admin email as user name, API token as password) to https://o365-api-{region}.spanningbackup.com/external/....

A request to /mcp without the two required headers gets HTTP 401 naming the missing ones; an invalid email, platform or region gets HTTP 400.

Related MCP server: entraid-mcp

Tools

All tools return a JSON string and are read-only. Users are identified by their Microsoft 365 user principal name. Backup results are per day and per service type and count objects as successful, partial and failed; each row also carries an outcome word.

Errors come back as a JSON envelope instead of an exception:

{"error": {"code": "unauthorized", "message": "Spanning returned HTTP 401 for tenant", "retryable": false}}

code is one of not_configured, unauthorized, not_found, invalid_argument, rate_limited, upstream_error. Every call is a read, so 429, 5xx and network errors are retried with backoff.

Run locally

uv sync
uv run python -m spanning_mcp          # listens on 0.0.0.0:8080

or with Docker:

docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t spanning-mcp:dev .
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 spanning-mcp:dev

Configuration (environment variables, all optional): MCP_HTTP_HOST (default 0.0.0.0), MCP_HTTP_PORT (default 8080), LOG_LEVEL (default INFO). Credentials are never read from the environment.

Testing example

# list tools
curl -s http://localhost:8080/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -H "X-Spanning-API-Token: your-api-token" \
  -H "X-Spanning-Admin-Email: admin@example.com" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}'

# a user's mail backups for the last 14 days
curl -s http://localhost:8080/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -H "X-Spanning-API-Token: your-api-token" \
  -H "X-Spanning-Admin-Email: admin@example.com" \
  -H "X-Spanning-Region: us" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"spanning_list_backups","arguments":{"userId":"jane@example.com","service":"mail","days":14}}}'

Unit tests (no network access needed):

uv run pytest

Delivery notes

• Tool count (9). Kept as is because the tool names are an existing contract.

• What the API offers. Spanning's published API for Microsoft 365 (https://o365-docs.spanningbackup.com/swagger/json) covers the tenant, users with their daily backup summaries, and license assignment. Services and backup history are derived from those summaries. It has no restore, restore-status or audit-log operations, so those three tools change nothing and explain where to do it (the Spanning web app).

• Regions. The API is served per data region; the region is detected when not given.

• Platforms. Only Microsoft 365 accounts are supported; Google Workspace and Salesforce connections get a clear error instead of failing calls.

• Read-only. License assignment exists in the API but is not exposed as a tool.

License

Apache License 2.0 - see LICENSE and NOTICE.