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

MSPbots Connector

The MCP Gateway built for MSPs: visible, controlled, and your data stays where it belongs.

Get started at connect.mspbots.ai →

MSPbots Connector gives your AI clients one MCP URL to reach your entire MSP stack (RMM, PSA, documentation, security, finance), and gives you control over who can call which tool and a record of everything that was called.

Hosted service: connect.mspbots.ai · Free to use.

Why Connector

Quick start

1. Sign up at connect.mspbots.ai.

2. Connect your vendors. Pick from 150+ connectors and authorize each one on the vendor's own page, or bring your own API keys. No extra vendor accounts needed.

3. Set access. Create roles and decide which tools each role may call. Nothing is allowed until you allow it.

4. Add your MCP URL to your AI client. Copy the URL from your Connector dashboard into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini, Codex, or any MCP-capable client.

5. Ask your AI to do real work, and watch every call appear in the audit log.

Features

Unified gateway

• One MCP URL for all your AI clients

• 150+ connectors across the MSP stack

• Custom MCP servers supported, free

• Authorization happens on each vendor's own page; the AI never sees passwords or tokens

• Bring your own credentials: use the vendor API keys you already have

• Multiple accounts per app; connect once, reuse across AI clients

• Tool search: finds the right action for the task

• One sign-in; vendor credentials are injected behind the scenes and OAuth tokens refresh automatically

Visibility

• Audit log for every tool call (who, which vendor, when)

• Usage dashboard: call volume, top vendors, error rate, per-user activity

• Export audit logs to CSV, or stream to Loki, Graylog, or LogScale (SIEM)

• Optional recording of tool arguments and result summaries (off by default, enabled per organization)

Control

• Per-role, per-tool allowlist, deny by default

• owner / admin / member roles

• SCIM provisioning with Entra ID, Okta, JumpCloud, and Google Workspace

Security

• Credentials encrypted one record at a time (AES-256-GCM, per-record key)

• AI clients authenticate with OAuth 2.1 + PKCE

• Vendor responses are scanned for prompt-injection patterns and returned as structured data. This is one layer of defense, not a guarantee against every attack.

• Static egress IP for customer firewall and API allowlisting

Pricing

Free.

Links: connect.mspbots.ai · mspbots.ai

Related MCP server: entraid-mcp

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 does not block the request (so tools/list works with any values); tools that call Spanning then return an invalid_argument error naming the header.

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.