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Configure Microsoft 365 services with the Microsoft Graph API in Visual Studio

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You can use Microsoft Graph to consume user information stored in Microsoft 365 in custom applications. By using Connected Services in Visual Studio, you can grant your application access to the following Microsoft 365 services:

  • Outlook: mail, calendars, and contacts
  • Microsoft Entra ID: users, groups, and directories
  • OneDrive: files
  • OneNote: notes and notebooks
  • SharePoint: sites, lists, and document libraries
  • Planner: tasks

This article describes how to configure Connected Services in Visual Studio to use Microsoft Graph in an ASP.NET MVC application that displays events from the currently signed in user's calendar.

Get set up

To use the Office 365 Connected Services with Microsoft Graph, you need to:

Get the starter project

Download the Microsoft Graph ASP.NET Connected Services MVC App Sample. This sample includes the references that you need to authenticate against Microsoft Graph. After you download the starter project, unzip, and open the graph-tutorial sample in Visual Studio.

Add the Connected Service

Visual Studio 2022

  1. In Solution Explorer, choose Connected Services to open the Connected Services tab.
  2. In Service Dependencies, click the + button to add a new service dependency.
  3. Scroll down and choose Access Microsoft 365 services with Microsoft Graph.

Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio 2019

  1. In Solution Explorer, choose Connected Services to open the Connected Services tab.
  2. Choose Access Microsoft 365 services with Microsoft Graph provider.

Configure Microsoft 365 data access

  1. Enter the domain of your developer account and choose Next.

    Go Microsoft Entra admin center to find your domain name. Sign in, expand the Identity menu > select Overview. The field Primary domain in Basic information section contains your domain name.

Tip: If your primary address is admin@contoso.com, your domain is contoso.com`.

  1. Select Create a new application registration and complete the process of creating an app registration.

  2. For this tutorial, select the following permissions:

    • Select the Calendars tab and check the box Read your calendars to grant your application the Calendar.Read permission.
    • Select the User tab and check the box Sign you in and read your profile to grant your application the User.Read permission.

  3. Choose Finish.

Update the app settings

  1. Double-click Web.config.

  2. Inside <appSettings>, insert the following code:

    XML 
    <add key="ida:RedirectUri" value="https://localhost:PORT/" />
<add key="ida:AppScopes" value="User.Read Calendars.Read" />

    Modify the PORT value for ida:RedirectUri to match the URL of your application.

Tip: You can find the PORT information in the project properties.

Run the sample

Save your changes and start the project. Next, select the Click here to sign in button that redirects you to https://login.microsoftonline.com. Sign in with your developer account and consent to the requested permissions.

The home page displays your name that indicates that you're signed-in. On the Calendar tab, a table of events displays accordingly to your account.

Select Sign Out on the avatar in the top-right corner to reset the session and return to the home page.

Explore the code

You can now explore the files and code in Visual Studio to learn more about this starter project.

Request to Microsoft Graph API

The Helpers\GraphHelper.cs contains the methods that use the GraphServiceClient to send requests to the Microsoft Graph service. This class implements the GetUserDetailsAsync method that uses the Microsoft Graph SDK to retreive user's information by calling the /me endpoint.

The GetEventsAsync method uses the /v1.0/me/events endpoint to request calendars data. The select OData query parameter limits the fields returned for each event to just those displayed in the view. The orderBy parameter sorts the results by the date and time they were created, with the most recent item being first.

The GetAuthenticatedClient method initializes a GraphServiceClient with an authentication provider and attempts to retrieve a previously obtained access token from the token store using the AcquireTokenSilent method. Notice that if the AcquireTokenSilent fails, the user is presented with an interactive login.

Authentication

The App_Start\Startup.Auth.cs configures the OWIN middleware with the values from Web.config and defines the following callback methods OnAuthenticationFailedAsync and OnAuthorizationCodeReceivedAsync that are invoked when the sign-in process returns from Azure.

The method OnAuthorizationCodeReceivedAsync wraps the default user token cache of the ConfidentialClientApplication with the SessionTokenStore class. The MSAL library handles the logic of storing the tokens and refreshing it when needed. The code passes the user details obtained from Microsoft Graph to the SessionTokenStore object to store in the session.

Token cache

The TokenStorage\SessionTokenCache.cs implements a token store class to serialize and store the MSAL token cache and the user's details in the user session. You can replace this with your own custom token cache. For more information, see Cache access tokens.

Sign in and sign out

The Controllers\AccountController.cs is a controller to handle sign-in that defines a SignIn and SignOut action. The SignIn action checks if the request is already authenticated. If not, it invokes the OWIN middleware to authenticate the user. The SignOut action invokes the OWIN middleware to sign out.

Views

The Views\Shared\_Layout.cshtml defines the global layout of the app. It adds Bootstrap for simple styling and Font Awesome for icons, defines the layout of the nav bar, and uses the Alert class to display alerts.

The Views\Home\Index.cshtml and Views\Calendar\Index.cshtml contain the UI to display the information retrieved from Azure.

Need help?

If you need help, post your questions on Microsoft Q&A. Tag your post with {microsoft-graph-identity}.