New capabilities coming to the Microsoft Graph
Published May 20 2020 09:32 AM 12K Views
Microsoft

The Microsoft Graph is the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365, providing a unified programmability model that you can use to access the tremendous amount of data in Microsoft 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security.  Over the next several weeks we're excited to introduce new innovation to help you achieve more with Microsoft Graph capabilities.

Updated privacy controls…

In Microsoft 365 we’re committed to privacy and control – and we’re continuing to invest in those principals with new Microsoft Graph privacy controls of document-based insights.

 

Across Microsoft 365 applications and services, intelligence is pervasive – whether deep learning or reasoning across activities and relationships – intelligence in Microsoft 365 is designed to help its users achieve more…

 

At the center of Microsoft 365 is content, such as documents, email messages, conversations, and more.  With the amount of data expected to double year over year, information overload is often a reality.  This is where the Microsoft Graph shines.  Time is something we can’t make more of, but we can make more with it.  Document-, email-, calendar-, and user- based insights help save time and boost productivity, helping employees make more of their time.

 

One of the first applications to deliver these rich insights was Office Delve, powered by the Office Graph – technology which calculated relationships between people and content from Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and more. Along with the Office Graph and Delve, we also delivered shared set of privacy settings, which control both insights and Delve user experience.

 

Delve1.png

 

As the Office Graph continued to evolve, it has become a more independent, mature, and powerful service, and a part of every Microsoft 365 experience, eventually evolving to the Microsoft Graph. Given this evolution, we’ve disjoined the privacy story for two independent pieces, providing the flexibility to fine-tune item in the Graph and Delve.

 

Today we’re pleased to announce a set of robust new privacy settings which provides you the ability to configure the generation and visibility of Graph-derived insights, between users and other items in the Graph (such as documents or sites). This new setting will apply similar restrictions as the original Delve settings, but decoupled from Delve. This means that you can disable the Delve app through the existing controls, but allow other insights-based experiences such as Discover in OneDrive and Suggested Sites in SharePoint Home to still provide assistance.

 

For organizations that need to disable item insights for all its users, we are introducing a new "isEnabledInOrganization" parameter, which allows you to disable item insights across the entirety of your organization; however, if you only need to disable item insights for a subset of employees, we’re introducing an additional "disabledForGroup" setting - an ID of one security Azure Active Directory group. This new setting will allow security group administrators more flexible management options using the available tools in Azure Active Directory (nested, dynamic group, PowerShell scripts), disabling item insights for all members of select groups. Both parameters can be configured using new MSGraph methods.

 

We’ll be introducing these new privacy settings over the next several months, and we’ll respect both Delve settings and the new item-insights settings.  After this period ends pre-existing Delve settings will only affect the Delve app and new settings will only affect item insights in Graph.

This new beta experience will become available Summer 2020 – keep an eye out for availability by reading following this article or announcements in the Microsoft 365 Message Center.

 

Profile customization

In early March 2020 we shared our vision for profile customization via the Microsoft Graph which will become available with the new privacy controls in Summer 2020.

 

Profile card customization through the Microsoft Graph provides the ability to add custom information to a person’s profile card through the Microsoft Graph.  This allows an administrator to customize people’s profile cards by adding properties according to your unique business needs. 

 

For example, as illustrated below, you may want to add a custom property to the profile card, such as a person’s Cost Center or Employee Id.

 

Card1.png

 

To learn more about profile customization through the Microsoft Graph see also https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-search-blog/new-profile-card-customization-through-....

 

Let us know in the comments below if you have questions or feedback.

4 Comments
Silver Contributor

I know we’ve discussed this before Bill but what is the future for Delve? These changes will certainly lead to organisations disabling Delve. Is this another slow step to full deprecation or does Delve have a future?

Bronze Contributor

I thought it was announced Devle was going away...?

Steel Contributor

@Rob O'Keefe Delve Blogs have been deprecated. Delve itself is still pretty alive. Or undead, for that matter.

 

@Bill Baer How does profile customization look like from an administrative standpoint? Reading Graph API makes it hard to imagine how exactly that works. I have so many questions.

  1. Are profiles customized per user? Or do you use the Graph API to edit the profile company wide?
  2. In which case I need to ask: How is a sysadmin supposed to edit the profile company wide? The main tool of a sysadmin is still the PowerShell (or the GUI).
  3. If it's company wide, then is it also tool-wide? Profile cards exist in Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Yammer, Delve and so on. What are your plans on that?
  4. How do you add custom properties? Especially in hybrid environments. Azure AD does not have an employeeId or employeeNumber attribute like Active Directory (and I'm wondering about that to this day), yet you used that attribute in your examples, so I'm curious how this will work.

 

 

Copper Contributor

Thanks for the article Bill.  One of the biggest challenges most companies face is dealing with products/features within Office 365 that overlap with each other.

 

I was very excited about Delve about four years ago, but then it seems Microsoft paused on the project.  

 

The end-user experience of the User Profile service on SharePoint Online was worse than on premises.  We were unable to create custom properties and map them to Azure AD and then have them show in Delve, so for those customers that relied on custom user profiles properties, there was not an easy migration path from MySites to Delve.

 

I think MS is trying to break the relationship of the user profile service with Delve, which I don't blame them. I just would love to hear what as the direction of both.

 

I would love to be able to just manage the attributes in Azure AD and have the option to map them to any custom or existing field in Delve.  I just don't want to have to ask people to re-enter information that we already have.

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