Policies

Microsoft Purview Policies define governance rules, standards, and controls that apply to Microsoft Purview resources.

The current version of the Purview Unified SDK provides read-only access to Policies.

The SDK currently supports:

• List Policies
• Inspect Policy properties

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Before You Begin

The examples in this guide assume that authentication and client configuration have already been completed.

A configured client should be available as:

client

For complete setup instructions, see:

• Authentication
• Configuration

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List Policies

Use client.policies.list_all() to retrieve all Microsoft Purview Policies available in the current environment.

policies = client.policies.list_all()

The method returns a Python list containing Policy model objects.

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List Example

def list_policies(client) -> None:
    """
    List Microsoft Purview Policies.
    """
    policies = client.policies.list_all()

    print(
        f"Found {len(policies)} policies."
    )

    for index, policy in enumerate(
        policies,
        start=1,
    ):
        print("=" * 80)
        print(
            f"Policy {index}"
        )
        print("=" * 80)
        print("ID:", policy.id)
        print("Name:", policy.name)
        print(
            "Version:",
            policy.version,
        )
        print(
            "Description:",
            policy.description,
        )
        print(
            "Entity Type:",
            policy.entity_type,
        )
        print(
            "Entity Reference:",
            policy.entity_reference_name,
        )

Call the function using:

list_policies(client)

The complete runnable example is available in:

examples/policies/list_policies.py

The example retrieves all Policies and prints their primary properties. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}

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Policy Model

Each Policy is returned as a Policy model object.

Common properties include:

Property	Description
id	Unique identifier of the Policy.
name	Policy name.
version	Policy version.
description	Policy description.
entity_type	Type of resource associated with the Policy.
entity_reference_name	Name of the referenced Microsoft Purview resource.

Example:

print(policy.id)
print(policy.name)
print(policy.version)
print(policy.description)
print(policy.entity_type)
print(policy.entity_reference_name)

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Accessing Individual Policies

Because policies is a list, you can iterate through all returned Policy objects.

for policy in policies:
    print(policy.name)
    print(policy.version)
    print()

You can also access an individual item by index.

first_policy = policies[0]

print(first_policy.id)
print(first_policy.name)

Check the List Before Accessing an Item

Do not access policies[0] before confirming that the list contains at least one item.

If no Policies are returned, Python will raise:

IndexError: list index out of range

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Read-Only Resource

The current version of the SDK supports retrieving Policy information only.

Creating, updating, or deleting Policies is not currently supported.

Future SDK releases may add additional Policy management capabilities.

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Example File

File	Purpose
examples/policies/list_policies.py	Lists Microsoft Purview Policies and displays their properties.

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Common Issues

No Policies Returned

The list operation may return an empty list.

This may indicate that:

• No Policies exist in the current Microsoft Purview environment.
• The authenticated identity does not have permission to view Policies.

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Unauthorized or Forbidden

If the request returns 401 Unauthorized or 403 Forbidden, first verify that the SDK is using the Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog endpoint.

Then verify that the authenticated user or service principal has permission to access Policy resources.

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Next Steps

Continue with the Data Map guide to learn how Microsoft Purview resources are connected.

Next: Data Map→