Explore scenarios for developing with Microsoft Graph
You can use Microsoft Graph to enhance your app with the tremendous amount of data in Microsoft 365. In this unit, you learn about the components of Microsoft Graph and the types of user scenarios your app can support using Microsoft Graph.
Microsoft Graph components
Microsoft Graph is made up of three components that your app can use to access and/or expand the data and insights in the Microsoft cloud:
- The Microsoft Graph API offers a single endpoint, https://graph.microsoft.com, to provide access to rich, people-centric data and insights. You can use REST APIs or SDKs to access the endpoint and bring this data into your apps to support Microsoft 365 scenarios.
- Microsoft Graph connectors extend Microsoft Graph with data external to the Microsoft cloud. Connectors exist for many commonly used data sources such as Box, Google Drive, Jira, and Salesforce. You can use the Microsoft Graph connectors APIs or the Microsoft Graph connectors SDK to build custom connectors to bring your external data into Microsoft 365 experiences within your organization. Once indexed, that data can show up in Microsoft Search, Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, and for apps that use the Microsoft Search API.
- Microsoft Graph Data Connect provides a set of tools to streamline secure and scalable delivery of Microsoft Graph data to popular Azure data stores. The cached data serves as data sources for Azure development tools that you can use to build intelligent applications.
Microsoft Graph scenarios
Use Microsoft Graph to build experiences around the user's unique context to help them be more productive. Here are just a few examples of scenarios your app can support using Microsoft Graph:
- Help users prepare for meetings. Before a user's meeting, provide the profile information of the meeting attendees. This can include their job titles and managers, information about the latest documents they're working on, and people they're collaborating with.
- Provide calendar insights. Alert users when they're spending too much time in meetings, and provide recommendations to determine which meetings should be attended.
- Productivity with files. Allow a user to pull the latest sales projection chart from an Excel file in OneDrive and update the forecast in real time, all from their phone.
- Add organizational insights. Bring custom business data into Microsoft Graph, indexing it to make it searchable along with data from Microsoft 365 services. Your data can be used to ground Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 so that Copilot can use insights from your data to help users accomplish their goals.
Users you can reach with Microsoft Graph
Microsoft Graph exposes REST APIs and client libraries that you can use to access data on the following Microsoft cloud services:
- Microsoft 365 core services: Bookings, Calendar, Delve, Excel, Microsoft Purview eDiscovery, Microsoft Search, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook/Exchange, People (Outlook contacts), Planner, SharePoint, Teams, To Do, Viva Insights
- Enterprise Mobility + Security services: Advanced Threat Analytics, Advanced Threat Protection, Microsoft Entra ID, Identity Manager, and Intune
- Windows services: activities, devices, notifications, Universal Print
- Dynamics 365 Business Central services