In the first of a three part series of ‘How-to’ guides, MSDN has introduced Office Graph and Delve features for Office 365, and gives advice on using the Office Graph API.
As users of Office 365 may know, Delve and Office Graph are two new visualizations tools that have been introduced in order to bring greater flexibility to the program as a whole. Delve revolves around the concept of ‘machine learning’, allowing users to render activity across all forms, for example the number of documents that have been accessed and who has accessed them, all in a glance-able format. Delve is the first app to make use of Office Graph.
Office Graph is the representation of the social side of all of this, that is to say, showing what people are doing across the network. If a document it changed, it will show who by and when, allowing for real-time monitoring of the workplace in an easy to digest format. The program allows third-party software to work with it, which creates a number of opportunities for both developers and businesses to expand upon its capabilities.
Although a great deal of information is collected by these two programs, it has been stated by Microsoft that:
“We cannot see in the Office Graph that the information to which we have access. Security is fully implemented, we can see that information which have shared us through SharePoint sites, OneDrive, Office Video, Yammer, etc. This service is not used for advertising purposes. This service fully fits in the Office 365 contractual constraints in terms of compliance & privacy”
The capabilities offered by this software to the office environment are quite numerous. Information can be ‘profiled’ to different users, allows teams to work together in projects via an array of innovative new techniques and allows for real-time reactions to situations as they occur, meaning that communications throughout the office (particularly in large spaces) can be improved considerably.
The Office Graph API allows users to make queries on the graph using the REST protocol ( which is close to existing methods for searching SharePoint 2013 meaning that there isn’t too much of a jump), in addition to being able to use GQL (Graph Query Language) to interact with the graph and refine the results, allowing for greater flexibility. Throughout 2015, the abilities of the API will continue to be improved, allowing for a much more powerful service in the future.
For more information on how to work with and manipulate these two programs, the guide can be accessed here.
Will you be using Office Graph or Delve? Let us know in the comments below.
