The amount of information we create has grown exponentially, and more often is distributed across multiple sources, making finding the right information, at the right time, increasingly difficult. Large enterprises typically use 15-20 disparate systems to store their information- including popular industry standard applications as well as custom line of business applications.
Enterprises want to search across these data sources with minimal context switching. Microsoft Graph connectors help enterprises merge all these data sources with Microsoft 365 content, to surface the information across multiple endpoints using Microsoft Search. Microsoft Graph connectors help you seamlessly bring in data from all these applications through our catalog of connectors by following a few simple steps for configuration.
Occasionally constraints like lack of ready-made solutions to connect this data may limit the ability to merge or store this data in the Microsoft cloud. For example, Microsoft provides built-in connectors for popular data sources like file share, Salesforce, ServiceNow. However custom data sources or line of business applications (homegrown or otherwise) may not have available connectors built by Microsoft.
Figure 2: Microsoft built connectors available for data source types shown in Grey; Custom/line-of-business data sources shown in Blue
Custom connectors can be built today using:
The Microsoft Graph connectors SDK enables you to build custom connectors for your line of business applications and allow your information to participate in Microsoft 365 experiences like Microsoft Search. The Microsoft Graph connectors SDK is designed to simplify building high-quality, efficient, and resilient connectors that access Microsoft Graph. The SDK enables you to create custom Graph connectors directly within the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) or through your own project setup, guides you through the process and provides everything you need to build, debug, and deploy your custom connector.
The Graph connectors SDK provides 4 key benefits:
Solution |
Developer experience |
C# template available in Visual Studio Marketplace |
|
gRPC contracts for languages other than C# available in GitHub |
|
Figure 3: Custom connector option on the M365 Admin Center
The Microsoft Graph connectors SDK works with the following components:
Figure 4: Microsoft Graph connectors SDK components
Figure 5: Your LoB connector implementing methods with which the Microsoft platform communicates via the bridge.
You can get started with developing your custom connector using:
Figure 6: C# custom connector project template in Visual Studio
To get started, you can refer to the connector interfaces shared in the form of contracts. These are gRPC ( https://grpc.io/ ) protocol buffer files that contain the contracts for interaction between the Graph connector platform and your custom connector code.
Given below is a sample of how a gRPC contract for managing authentication of data source, validating configurations, and getting the data source schema looks like. These methods need to be implemented by the connector so that the platform can communicate through these interfaces as required.
Figure 7: A sample gRPC protocol buffer file containing the contracts
Figure 8: Microsoft Platform capabilities
The Graph connector agent comes with the following capabilities:
Note: Graph-based data source traversal (eg: traversing through folder structures) capability is not available.
Note: Search permissions based on access control from your data source is not available.
The Graph connector Agent also comes with an in-built SDK test utility. This includes pre-built test scenarios that you can use to test your custom connector code and communication with the Graph connector agent.
Figure 9: Test scenarios in Microsoft Graph connectors SDK Test Utility
You can get started with the Microsoft Graph connectors SDK and try out this new experience by following the documentation that provides a good overview of the SDK: Microsoft Graph connectors SDK overview - Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Learn.
You can also get started quickly with our sample connector documentation here: Build your first custom Microsoft Graph connector - Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Docs. We provide a sample connector which you can download from our GitHub repository (microsoftgraph/msgraph-connectors-sdk (github.com))and customize for your specific scenarios using Visual Studio IDE.
Figure 10: Sample graph connector project in Visual Studio
Once customized and deployed you'll be able to index your content from the data source into Microsoft Graph. When enabled, employees in your organization will be to search results from your custom data source alongside your Microsoft 365 information in Microsoft Search. This will also allow you to enable other content experiences from Microsoft Graph in the future.
If you need help with troubleshooting, you can raise an issue or start a discussion on relevant topics through our GitHub repository (microsoftgraph/msgraph-connectors-sdk (github.com)).
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.