Microsoft Graph Toolkit overview

Article
07/01/2022
3 minutes to read

Microsoft Graph Toolkit is a collection of reusable, framework-agnostic components and authentication providers for accessing and working with Microsoft Graph. The components are fully functional right of out of the box, with built-in providers that authenticate with and fetch data from Microsoft Graph.

Microsoft Graph Toolkit makes it easy to use Microsoft Graph in your application. In the following example, a signed-in user and their calendar events are displayed with just two lines of code by using the Login and Agenda components.

Open this example in mgt.dev.

What's in Microsoft Graph Toolkit?

Components

Microsoft Graph Toolkit includes a collection of web components for the most commonly built experiences powered by Microsoft Graph APIs.

The components are also available as React components.

Component	Description
Login	A button and a flyout control to authenticate a user with the Microsoft Identity platform and display the user's profile information when they sign in.
Person	Displays a person or contact by their photo, name, and/or email address.
People	Displays a group of people or contacts by their photos or initials.
Agenda	Displays events in a user's or group's calendar.
People picker	Provides the ability to search for people and renders the list of results.
Person card	A flyout used on the person component to display more profile information about a user.
File	Represents a file or folder with an icon, a file name, an author, and more.
File list	Displays a list of multiple files or folders.
Get	Lets you make a GET query to any Microsoft Graph API directly in your HTML.
Channel picker	Provides the ability to search for Microsoft Teams channels to select a channel from a rendered list of results.
To Do	Displays and enables adding, removing, completing, or editing of tasks from Microsoft To Do.
Tasks	Displays and enables adding, removing, completing, or editing of tasks from Microsoft Planner or Microsoft To Do.

Providers

Providers enable authentication, provide the implementation for acquiring access tokens on various platforms, and expose a Microsoft Graph client for calling the Microsoft Graph APIs. The components work best when used with a provider, but the providers can be used on their own.

Providers	Description
MSAL	Uses msal.js to sign in users and acquire tokens to use with Microsoft Graph.
MSAL2	Uses msal-browser to sign in users and acquire tokens to use with Microsoft Graph.
Electron	Authenticates and provides Microsoft Graph access to components inside of Electron apps.
SharePoint	Authenticates and provides Microsoft Graph access to components inside of SharePoint web parts.
Teams	Uses msal.js to sign in users and acquire tokens on the client on Microsoft Teams tabs.
Teams MSAL2	Uses msal-browser to sign in users and acquire tokens on Microsoft Teams tabs. Supports single sign-on (SSO) with a custom backend.
Proxy	Allows the use of backend authentication by routing all calls to Microsoft Graph through your backend.
Custom	Creates a custom provider to enable authentication and access to Microsoft Graph by using your application's existing authentication code.

Why use Microsoft Graph Toolkit?

Microsoft Graph Toolkit enables you to quickly and easily integrate common experiences powered by Microsoft Graph into your own application. The toolkit:

Cuts development time. The work to connect to Microsoft Graph APIs and render the data in a UI that looks and feels like a Microsoft 365 experience is done for you, with no customization required.
Works everywhere. All components are based on web standards and work seamlessly with any modern browser and web framework (such as React, Angular, or Vue).
Is beautiful but flexible. The components are designed to look and feel like Microsoft 365 experiences but are also customizable by using CSS custom properties and templating.

Who should use it?

Microsoft Graph Toolkit is great for developers of all experience levels that want to develop an app that connects to and accesses data from Microsoft Graph, such as a: