![\"\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2018\/09\/Image-1-640.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for Ignite 2018. Over 20,000 Microsoft employees, customers, and partners are converging in Orlando to learn, share, discuss, and experience what\u2019s new and what\u2019s next in our business. Many of us who\u2019ve worked hard to create the tools and technology that power the Office 365 Ecosystem have arrived at the Orange County Convention Center, excited to show off what we\u2019ve built and show you how customers and partners can build solutions that unlock creativity, generate new insights, and improve teamwork.<\/p>\n
A lot is going on with Microsoft Graph \u2013 enough to warrant its own developer blog<\/a>, where you’ll find details and links to documentation. We\u2019ll highlight a few things here.\u00a0Microsoft Graph Data Connect, in private preview since Inspire 2018, is now in public preview. This solution is designed to help developers and data scientists create insight and analysis applications built on large data sets. We\u2019re also previewing a notifications API that distributes and retrieves notifications across endpoints, allowing developers to create richer, more consistent experiences for users. We’re also introducing new Microsoft Graph endpoints and capabilities in SharePoint, Microsoft\u00a0Teams,\u00a0and Identity. Finally, we\u2019re introducing the first data set from Dynamics 365 Business Central, meaning that Microsoft Graph now reaches every major commercial Microsoft cloud solution.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Microsoft Teams continues to grow as the central hub for teamwork, with over 200,000 organizations now using the service.\u00a0 Customizations that are hosted within Microsoft Teams have the power to transform how teams work together by integrating key tools into the flow of conversation and providing direct access to knowledge, metric,s and insights. The Microsoft Teams engineers are delivering the capabilities you’ve asked for to maximize the power of your customizations, adding Microsoft Graph endpoints that let you provision teams, manage membership, create tabs, manage calls, and more.<\/p>\n Just about every company experiences a gap between the definition of strategy and its execution. WorkBoard<\/a> has created tools designed to close that gap. New integrations with Microsoft Teams, including custom tabs, help track progress toward strategy execution goals. Detecon, the rapidly-growing consulting practice at Deutsche Telekom, uses WorkBoard and its deep integration with the Office 365 app ecosystem to fully engage and work with results at high velocity. This allows Detecon to align on outcomes and make progress toward objectives with efficiency and confidence. Watch\u00a0the video case study<\/a> to get the whole story.<\/p>\n Virtual Agent, from ServiceNow, provides every employee with access to a chatbot where they can ask questions and resolve common IT, HR, and service requests. Staff can lower costs and handle an increasing volume of routine tasks with a customizable conversational interface. Because Virtual Agent is now available within Microsoft Teams, help for everyday issues is just a quick chat away, across devices, 24\/7.<\/p>\n Outlook is driving a lot of excitement. We\u2019ve continued to add richness to the Microsoft Graph APIs for Outlook \u2013 for example, you can now add custom headers to emails, get free-busy data, and post mail tips. Adaptive cards play a huge role in the excitement around Outlook. We\u2019ve deployed adaptive cards internally at Microsoft, where they\u2019ve significantly improved our email-based accounts payable approval processes. Partners have also embraced these new efficiencies and we\u2019ve seen some terrific solutions emerge.<\/p>\n Sage is also using adaptive cards to improve response times. For employees, a timesheet is key to measuring how and where work is done. Sage is harnessing adaptive cards, within Outlook, to gain quicker insights via streamlined timesheet approvals.<\/p>\n ServiceNow will soon improve response times by streamlining request workflows. Through adaptive cards for ServiceNow in Outlook (coming soon), staff can take quick approval actions on pending requests, and respond to surveys to measure effectiveness.<\/p>\n Zoho uses adaptive cards to summarize expense reports for approval \u2013 right within Outlook. Approvers can review line items and even export expense report details to a PDF file with a simple click \u2013 without ever leaving their email client.<\/p>\n We\u2019re also doing a lot of work with Excel. We\u2019ve significantly accelerated the pace of JS API development, expanding the depth and breadth of available endpoints. We announced \u00a0Excel JS 1.7 APIs moving into GA at Build, and now at Ignite we are moving JS 1.8 APIs to GA<\/a> and announcing hundreds of new APIs in Beta<\/a>. We have never been closer to full parity of COM APIs. In addition to sharing the news about new JS APIs, as we near GA, we\u2019ll also show some of the great work going on with custom functions, including solutions built by a couple of our launch partners.<\/p>\n High street retailer John Lewis sells just about everything and naturally, sees a lot of returned items. With large stores located across the UK, managing and tracking those returns is complex. For items like cell phones and consumer electronics, it\u2019s not just complex, it\u2019s critical. These items are valuable and often contain personal information that John Lewis must ensure remains secure. Enter Hanhaa<\/a>, a UK-based firm that builds an IoT device called Symbisa that connects seamlessly with Excel at the press of a single button. Deployed in their supply chain, Symbisa helps John Lewis\u2019 corporate operations team ensure that devices move securely from retail locations to places where they\u2019re refurbished or recycled.\u00a0Watch the video case study<\/a> to get the whole story.<\/p>\nMicrosoft Teams<\/h3>\n
Workboard: Closing the strategy-execution gap<\/h3>\n
ServiceNow: Resolving common IT & HR issues with a virtual agent<\/h3>\n
Outlook<\/h2>\n
Sage: Streamlining employee timesheet approvals<\/h3>\n
ServiceNow: Creating more efficient request workflows<\/h3>\n
Zoho: Expense report approvals made easy<\/h3>\n
Excel<\/h2>\n
Hanhaa: Tracking and analyzing real-world data in Excel<\/h3>\n
OneDrive and SharePoint<\/h2>\n