We have seen Microsoft bringing in many services focused on consumers and enterprises. Sometimes it becomes difficult for us to keep up with different services on different devices. Microsoft launched Windows Phone way back – and failed. People expected better connection and communication between mobile devices and the PC. I am not saying that Microsoft did not do it. They did it perfectly. The PC and the Phone made a great pair. But for a modern smartphone, you need something more. This is when the Apps come into the picture. A smartphone needs to have great app support. Unlike Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS, Microsoft’s Windows Phone did not get great support from the developer community. I know and appreciate Microsoft’s efforts to get more developers to build apps for their mobile platform. Still, after various Windows Phone platform reboots, it lagged far behind the competitors. However, with the new strategy that comes with the new Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, Microsoft is moving in a different direction. They call it Mobility of Experience.
As I understand from Satya’s book, Hit Refresh, the world did not need a third mobile phone ecosystem. Rather, he wanted Microsoft to work on the path of Mobility. Making things easily accessible, making people more productive, and keeping a connection between their devices so that they work together for the person and the company. He visions the future of computing to be natural and more interactive. Hence, we all are seeing Microsoft moving towards bringing together and making a Windows powered PC and an Android phone or an iOS device work together. Here is where Microsoft Graph plays an important role as the crux of this vision.
What is Microsoft Graph Explorer?
Microsoft Graph works on the principle of the Data Structure named 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 with the help of various APIs from different product groups inside of 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 to 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 is able to 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 helps the app developers make a piece of software that will influence their customers’ productivity very deeply. Some of the major features of Microsoft Graph are listed below:
- Scans the next engagement in the user’s calendar and helps them to prepare for it by providing various 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 helps them schedule 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 based on their location in OneDrive for personal files and OneDrive for Business for work files.
Some requests invoked using Microsoft Graph
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.
