May 7th, 2018

Harness the growing network of apps and insights in Microsoft Graph

Introduction

Microsoft Graph is the unified API endpoint that offers developers a gateway to the rich data and powerful insights behind a large and growing set of Microsoft products. Based on consistent REST-based standards, tools, and features, the set of scenarios you can power with the Microsoft Graph grows exponentially as new products, datasets and capabilities are added to the endpoint.

New datasets

The power of the Microsoft Graph is enhanced by the ease with which developers can traverse datasets from across the spectrum of Microsoft products to create experiences that are rich, relevant and insightful. As the amount of accessible data grows, so does the potential power of the Microsoft Graph. Here’s what’s new then, for Build 2018.

Security

It’s essential that organizations have powerful tools to combat cyberthreats. It’s ideal when those tools are further enhanced with rich organizational context.  To this end, Microsoft is now previewing the Security API in Microsoft Graph, which eliminates the need for developers to individually integrate multiple security products. The Security API connects to the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph to power real-time protection for Microsoft and third-party products and services. With this API developers can unify and standardize alert management and stream alerts to SIEM solutions like Splunk and IBM’s QRadar via Azure Monitor. In addition, they can receive aggregated responses from Federated security providers and drive threat analysis and response.

Activities and devices

Microsoft believes developers create human-centric scenarios that move with the user and blur the lines between their devices, regardless of form factor or platform. To do this there are two key components, both exposed thru Graph-accessible APIs: the Activity Feed API and the Device Relay API.  Activities make users more productive by helping them resume important tasks in your app quickly across devices. The device relay API enables your app to register itself, and discover, command, and message your app on the user’s devices. By doing this, you can make the tasks your customers stay productive at work.  The Activity Feed APIs are now generally available, and the Device Relay APIs will follow soon. Developers can also get the client SDKs for Andriod and iOS here.

Access & authentication

Every organization must understand and manage how users access its data, and once access is granted, what restrictions they may place on that access.  We’re making several datasets available that help developers manage authentication and access within their organizations.  The Azure Active Directory team is making the Deleted User/Group Restore APIs and Office 365 Group Lifecycle Policy Controls generally available.  Additionally, APIs for accessing AD Terms of Use and Azure AD Audit Logs are available for Preview.

For developers building web-based add-in solutions for Office 365 canvases like Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook, we’re offering a preview version of integrated SSO (Single Sign-On) to make user authentication and access to the Microsoft Graph APIs easy.

It’s going to be a big summer for Microsoft Teams APIs.  Developers can expect to see several new features added to the Microsoft Graph beta endpoint in the coming months.  By popular demand, we’re adding a new Teams Messaging API that allows you to read the contents of messages in a channel.  We’ll also offer new APIs for cloning teams and managing Enterprise LOB applications.  Stay tuned for more details!

In addition to new features appearing on the beta endpoint this summer, the Microsoft Teams folks will move the current set of Teams Graph APIs, which allow you to create and delete teams, add members and owners, and add or delete channels, from the beta endpoint into production.

The Microsoft Outlook team continues to move new datasets into production.  For Build this year there are several additions: developers can now create even richer Outlook integrations with expanded access to mailbox settings like Working Hours and Access to Shared Calendars, mailbox server settings including SupportedTimeZones and SupportedLanguages and message data including Message RulesMessage CategoriesFlag Status and for network path details, InternetMessageHeader information.  We’ll also see a new Outlook Search Folders API added to the beta endpoint.

In other product news, developers working with OneDrive will find a few updates to those APIs, including support for additional formats in file conversion, and an update to the Permissions API.  We are also making a beta version of its File Preview API available.  We’ve put a lot of Intune resources into the Microsoft Graph this year, and most recently we’ve made additions for Android work profiles and VPN profiles, among a host of additional refinements to our device management resources.  If you develop solutions for Planner, the Planner beta API now includes the ability to query recent and favorite Plans.  We’ve released a beta version of APIs for Microsoft Bookings, our new online and mobile app that lets small businesses manage appointments.

New capabilities

Of course, as any organization changes and evolves, so does its data.  We continue to build out the capabilities developers need to detect and analyze changes so that they can create applications and services that react to the changing, dynamic nature of their customers’ businesses.

Delta queries, webhooks and batching

Delta queries are now available for the beta Planner API where developers can query for changes in tasks, plans and buckets.  Scoping filters, to filter by ID for Users and Groups are now in production, and SyncFromNow support for AAD allows the establishment of a “now” start-time value for querying changes against AAD datasets.  We’ve also made additional webhook updates, with webhooks for AAD Users and Groups moving into production, and the List Subscriptions API now generally available.  Finally, we’ve increased the JSON batching limit to 20 requests at a time, to help developers further optimize the performance of their applications.

OpenAPI

OpenAPI 3.0 (formerly Swagger) is a standards-based specification for describing web services to enhance interoperability.  There are hundreds of tools out there that already have support for OpenAPI.  We’re pleased to announce that this July, we will make the API description for Microsoft Graph publicly available for all Microsoft Graph versions.

Managed access to Microsoft Graph data 

We are also making it easier to work with Office data in Azure, with a more direct capability to manage and direct access to Graph data for Insights applications. Now in private preview, access to Microsoft Graph data in Azure provides easier connections to Azure tools with the compliance and security benefits of applications managed end to end in Azure. 

SDKs

It’s possible to consume Microsoft Graph data in applications built in many languages.  To make the process easier for developers of different stripes, we maintain a variety of SDKs and code samples.  We’ve just released a generally available SDK for Java and have additional SDKs in developer preview.  We’re excited to see the response to these tools and to see what kind of applications they develop as a result.

Tools for citizen developers

Last but not least, the PowerApps and Microsoft Graph teams have jointly released a set of ten Microsoft Graph-powered PowerApps templates.  Users can leverage professional app designs, learn proper techniques and find inspiration to build their own Office 365-connected PowerApps built with Microsoft Graph.  We are excited to have people use these tools, and are taking actions based on the feedback we receive from users.

Conclusion

Whether you’re attending Build 2018 in person or online, thank you for taking the time to read our blog.  We hope that the Microsoft Graph datasets, capabilities and tools we’ve discussed here help you build more powerful, intelligent, and connected applications.

We love to hear stories about how people are using Microsoft Graph, and your feedback is always appreciated.  You can join our community of passionate Graph developers a number of ways: join our Developer Program, attend our monthly Community Calls, Connect with us on Twitter by posting with #MicrosoftGraph, and send us your questions on Stack Overflow, tagged MicrosoftGraph.  Happy coding!