Microsoft is moving towards bringing together a Windows-powered PC and an Android phone or an iOS device. Here, Microsoft Graph plays an important role as the crux of this vision. Microsoft Graph Explorer is an interactive web-based tool that lets developers test and learn Microsoft Graph APIs directly in their browser. It’s essentially a playground where you can run queries against Microsoft 365 data (like Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, and more) without setting up a full development environment.
What is Microsoft Graph Explorer?
Microsoft Graph Explorer works on the principle of a data structure named Microsoft Graph. Now, Microsoft defines it as,
Microsoft Graph is the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365. Microsoft Graph provides a unified programmability model that you can use to take advantage of the tremendous amount of data in Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security, and Windows.
Microsoft Graph comes together through APIs from different product groups within Microsoft. The following APIs help the Microsoft Graph API to start working:
- Azure Active Directory
- Office 365 Services like SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook or Exchange, Microsoft Teams, OneNote, Planner, and Excel.
- Enterprise Mobility and Security Services like Identity Manager, Intune, Advanced Threat Analytics, and Advanced Threat Protection (ATP).
- Windows services like Activities and Devices.
- Education.
You can read more about how services are used and implemented in Microsoft Graph from the official documentation here.
What Microsoft Graph helps a user to do is to get connected. The user can now be connected to all the resources across the services that support Microsoft Graph. This is done by making the user a member of a group using the memberOf relationship. This is slightly developer-oriented, so if you are interested, you can read more about this memberOf relationship here. And a user can be connected to another user using the manager relationship. Read more about it here.
Using this model, Microsoft can sync app data, such as notifications and the Continue on PC feature, from your Android Phone, iOS device, or Mobile phone to your Windows PC.
How to use Microsoft Graph Explorer?
Microsoft Graph Explorer helps app developers build software that deeply influences their customers’ productivity. Some of the major features of Microsoft Graph Explorer are listed below:
- Scans the next engagement on the user’s calendar and helps them prepare for it by providing information for the attendees. This set of information includes their job titles, they workgroup, and information about the latest documents and team projects they have been working or collaborating on.
- Scans the user’s schedule and recommends the best time for a meeting.
- Fetches Office documents and files from a file stored inside of the Cloud Storage (OneDrive) remotely to any device connected in the graph.
- Studies your workflow and schedule so that it can provide insights to your time spent on meetings or provide recommendations for the ones that are relevant or important to you.
- It helps the user differentiate between their work and personal files by location: personal files in OneDrive for personal files and work files in OneDrive for Business.
Some requests invoked using Microsoft Graph Explorer
If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Graph or if you are a developer who wants to build your services compatible with it, visit the official documentation for Microsoft Graph here.
These services can be implemented and used with the Graph Explorer. You can learn more and access the Graph Explorer portal here.
