Overview Of Microsoft Graph - Part One

Introduction

 

Microsoft Graph eases the use of API’s and helps in the standardization of access to API endpoints. It uses a simple & single public endpoint - https://graph.microsoft.com, for accessing various Microsoft Cloud services using REST API calls.

 

Which Cloud Services Can I Consume Using Graph API’s?

 

Microsoft Graph covers API’s across multiple services like,

• Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
• Office 365 Services: SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook/Exchange, Microsoft Teams, OneNote, Planner, Excel etc.
• Enterprise Mobility and Security: Identity Manager, Intune, Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) etc.
• Windows 10 services: activities and devices
  
  
  Source: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph

How do I get started?

 

To explore the power of the Graph API and the many other scenarios it enables, navigate to the URL - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/graph-explorer or https://aka.ms/ge (“ge” for Graph Explorer). When you first access the Graph Explorer, you will be able to run commands against a demo environment (in the context of a sample user) without needing to log in, as shown in the below image,

 

 

On the left hand side, you will see several queries for getting started. Click on the queries you are interested in and then run it by clicking on the “Run Query” button on the top right-hand side of the page. The response preview box will reveal the data that your query execution gets back from the relevant Microsoft Cloud service.

 

 

Apart from getting started with sample queries, you can find many other queries (as shown in below image) which you can run to interact with Graph API.

 

 

If you wish to test particular REST calls against your own Office 365 tenant, you can log in using the “Sign in to your account” button on the upper left portion of the screen.

 

Request Syntax

 

Below is the syntax of Microsoft Graph requests,

 

https://graph.microsoft.com/{version}/{resource}/{id}/{property}?{query-parameters}

 

Version

 

Microsoft Graph currently supports the following versions,

• 0 – generally available APIs that can be used for production apps.
• beta – APIs that are in preview and may include breaking changes. Not intended for production apps. Only recommended for development or testing purposes.

 

Resource

 

This indicates an endpoint that shows the underlying services that your request will interact with. E.g. – Users, Groups, Sites, Drives, Me, Devices etc.

• ID
  Specifies a member of a collection such as an individual user, group, site, etc. This is an optional parameter.
  
  
• Property
  Specifies a property of the parent resource. This is an optional parameter.
  
  
• Query Parameters
  These are used to filter records, include / exclude properties etc. This is an optional parameter.

Summary

 

In the article, we discussed about how to get started with Microsoft Graph API’s which offers a lot of options to get better and faster information. Stay tuned for more articles on Microsoft Graph.

 

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