As far 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, keeping a connection between their devices in such a way that they work together for the person and the company together. He visions the future of computing to be natural and more interactive. Hence, we all are seeing Microsoft moving towards an aim of bringing together and making a Windows 10 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
Microsoft Graph works on the principle of the Data Structure named Graph. Now, Microsoft defines it as,
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 DirectoryOffice 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 10 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 kind of model, Microsoft is able to sync in your app data like notifications and Continue on PC feature from your Android Phone, iOS device or a Windows 10 Mobile phone to your Windows 10 PC.
Features of Microsoft Graph
Microsoft Graph helps the app developers make a piece of software that will influence the productivity of their customers 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 schedule of the user and helps them in scheduling 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.Helps the user to differentiate between their work and personal files on the basis of their location in OneDrive for personal files and OneDrive for Business for work files.
Some requests invoked using Microsoft Graph
If you are interested to learn more about Microsoft Graph or if you are a developer who wants to build their services with compatibility with Microsoft Graph, head to the official documentation for Microsoft Graph here. These services can be implemented and used with the Graph Explorer. You can learn more and get your hands on the Graph Explorer portal here.
