Paul King, Senior Application Development Manager, introduces Microsoft Graph API as the unifying endpoint for many APIs

As Microsoft’s cloud services has evolved, so have the APIs used to reference them.  When Microsoft first offered cloud services like Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive and others, and API to access that service was launched too.  There would be little use for a cloud service if developers could not access the content.  This brought us to a huge list of new SDK’s and REST endpoints to service each of these individual technologies as they were released.  Each of these endpoints required Access Tokens and returned status codes that were each unique to each individual service.  As we continue to improve the developer experience through customer feedback, we are now offering a single endpoint for all developers to interact with our online services in a consistent, simplified way:  Microsoft Graph.

Microsoft Graph exposes multiple APIs from Office 365 and other Microsoft cloud services through the https://graph.microsoft.com endpoint.  This single endpoint now supports retrieving data and querying relationships between:

• Azure Active Directory
• Exchange Online – including Mail, Calendar and Contacts
• SharePoint Online including file storage
• OneDrive
• OneDrive for Business
• OneNote
• Planner

Developing against these APIs can be done from any development environment including iOS, Android, and Visual Studio; any platform that supports REST interfaces can be used.  To see how to use the API, we have plenty of samples available as well as an Explorer that will allow you work against a sample tenant or your own Office 365 tenant.  In addition to simplifying the multiple APIs into a single endpoint, we have streamlined our documentation and error conditions as well.

I have had several opportunities to work directly with Microsoft Graph lately.  The most recent has been working with files in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint.  This combined API makes it much easier to work with assets across all three of these services.  I’ve also been working on an internal project with some of my peers and it’s been very exciting to see how easily this API can be used to surface organizational information as well.

Microsoft Graph has v1.0 and beta interfaces for you begin working with today.  There is also a changelog that shows all of the activity going on within the interface on a monthly basis.  For more information on how to incorporate Microsoft Graph, reach out to your Premier Support Application Development Manager or check it out here.

Premier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support coverage, and a range of essential services to help teams optimize development lifecycles and improve software quality.  Contact your Application Development Manager (ADM) or email us to learn more about what we can do for you.