So! I’ve been talking about this for a little while now, and the series isn’t over yet! This is now the 25th post in my series on Microsoft Graph and so I thought I’d pause for a second to remind you of some things, and reflect on what we’ve looked at so far! 🤔
An introduction to Graph
So, first we started the series on a somewhat technical topic, talking about the Microsoft product / solution we can use to make a concept around contextual data when building with low code possible!
Effectively, Microsoft Graph is a single endpoint gateway to data and intelligence in the Microsoft Cloud. It provides access to a usable model to access data in Microsoft 365, Windows & Enterprise Mobility and Security and more. It’s effectively an API (application programming interface) similar to say the Dataverse Web API, which provides us access to a breadth of contextual data in our Microsoft Cloud environments which we can call and use in solutions as we see fit.
Read more about Microsoft Graph from an overview level here
A concept around Ecosystem Context
After a product introduction we started to move onto talking about a concept we can follow and use when building digital solutions. This is a concept that applies to solutions built on low code, or through traditional coding languages.
Effectively here I’m talking about using what we can describe as ‘ecosystem context’ or ‘contextual data’ which we can use alongside business data when building digital solutions to improve a number of aspects relevant to our solution such as…
- User Experience
- Impact such as business time saving
By ‘ecosystem context’ or ‘contextual data’ I’m talking about data we subconsciously create such as calendar events, messages we send, tasks we set ourselves and others and more. So this concept is around using that data contextually to deliver insights in our solutions or conditionally surface information or deliver different UX depending on that context.
Read more about my concept around ecosystem context and contextual data in the posts below…
Authentication and authorisation
Next in the series, we started to talk about a key fundamental of working with Microsoft Graph or any Azure AD secured API which utilises the Microsoft identity platform.
In these posts, we looked at an overview of what authentication and authorisation is, and the differences between them, we then started to look at the types of permissions we can work with when utilising Microsoft Graph, when to use the different types, and finally how we handle authentication when working with these different types of permissions.
Check out these posts on authentication and authorisation for working with Microsoft Graph to learn more about this before diving into building solutions using the API. These are fundamentals that are important to know when building solutions that use Graph, so get this bit learnt before jumping into building!
Performance when executing requests
Following the topic of authentication and authorisation which included all the different ways of achieving authentication against Graph whilst using the different types of permissions for authorisation, I published a couple of articles on performance when working with Microsoft Graph including things like batching requests to Graph. Check out the posts below.
Industry Specific Solutions
Now, in this series, I’m moving on to creating some basic examples of working with Microsoft Graph to build digital solutions that utilise ecosystem context and contextual data from the wider ecosystem our solutions sit in.
I’ve already started this next part of the series with a 5 post mini-series on building a solution for a healthcare scenario which utilises ecosystem context and Microsoft Graph to speed up calls for support from clinicians in hospitals and other healthcare settings.
Check out the full solution here which also includes links to the four posts on how to build it yourself!
Make your requests!
Have a basic solution you’d like me to build which utilises ecosystem context we can get hold of using Microsoft Graph? Let me know via the chat on my blog, or any of my other social channels and I’ll think about building it with posts on how you can achieve it too, as part of this series!
Make sure you’re subscribed if you have a request though… you don’t want to miss the posts where I explain how to build it, and then actually provide you with the solution… 😉
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