30-second answer
evaluate gives you a report to read. assess gives somebody else a document
they can check without you.
m365-governance evaluate --evidence ./evidence/ --format markdownm365-governance assess --evidence ./evidence/ --out ./assessment.jsonRead the second line of the summary first
3 rules evaluated. **1 produced an answer.**
| Outcome | Count |
|---|---|
| Fail | 1 |
| Unknown | 2 |
| Pass | 0 |
2 rules could not be decided. That is not compliance: missing evidence is a
fact about collection, not about the resource.One failure out of three is not a third of a problem. One answer out of three is the number that describes the run, and the sentence under the table is printed by the engine rather than written by a person.
Six outcomes, and three of them are not about your tenant
pass, fail and not-applicable are claims about the resource. unknown is
about the collection, invalid-evidence is about the collector, and error is
about the engine.
A tool that reported unknown as pass would produce its cleanest reports
from its weakest collections. This one will not, and
explain prints the whole
distinction from the executable.
Severity is not urgency
Every finding carries a severity the rule's author argued for in writing, and that is not the order to read them in. Attention is computed from what a finding rests on: a failure against a limit Microsoft publishes outranks a departure from advice Microsoft gives, because one breaks and the other is a decision an organisation may have taken on purpose.
The report leads with attention for that reason.
When it refuses to assemble one
assess will not write a document whose manifest would claim something the
evidence does not support:
refusing to assemble an assessment: <what did not line up>A refusal, not a finding. The alternative is a signed document making a claim nobody can back.