Working with Graph Explorer for first time

            

       Microsoft graph is a collection of APIs available in office 365. The idea is to have a single common way for accessing communicating with all the office 365 data. At this moment sharepoint rest APIs are superior in accessing the sharepoint data, which may change in future. 

Graph explorer is an online web tool which can analyze what data is available and its responses. The graph explorer can be accessed from the URL https://graph.microsoft.io/

Once visiting the link select on the , select the "Graph Explorer" from the top navigation bar to get a screen like below.

It is showing a sample query with the URL https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/ which will return the data about the current user on clicking the "Run Query" button, since I have not used my credentials it will show a sample data. The URL text box will show a good number Graph APIs available. 

 Once I sign in with my credentials by clicking on the left side button "Sign in with Microsoft", I will be able to see my real time data, I was prompted to login with my microsoft account which will have access to the tenant.( It would be advisable to use a non global admin account, even though the graph explorer is from MS). It will ask to accept the permissions needed by the Graph Explorer.

Once logged in , I just the ran query to fetch my information and it retreived as below.

To fetch information about my site collection I ran the below API query,

syntax: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites/{hostname}:/{sitecollection relativepath}

For example if my hostname was mytenant.sharepoint.com and site collection url was mytenant.sharepoint.com/sites/xyz then my query needs to be as below

https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites/mytenant.sharepoint.com:/sites/xyz  The output to my query is as follows.

More queries for sharepoint and other office 365 components  are available in the following msdn link

 https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/docs/api-reference/v1.0/resources/sharepoint

Creating App Catalog in sharepoint online

1.       If you already have office 365 account you can proceed to step 2 , if not you can set up a trial version in office 365 in the below link

https://signup.microsoft.com/Signup?OfferId=B07A1127-DE83-4a6d-9F85-2C104BDAE8B4&dl=ENTERPRISEPACK&culture=en-US&country=US&ali=1

This will take a couple of minutes to configure the setup, it will be showing a screen similar to this while setting up

2.       Once the SharePoint setup is done we can navigate to the Admin center by selecting the “Admin” tile on the logged in page.

3.       Once you are inside the Admin page you can open the sahrepoint admin area by selecting the “SharePoint” under “Admin Centres” in the left pane.

Or you can directly access the SharePoint Admin Center by accessing the below URL : https://{tenant}-admin.sharepoint.com

4.       Once we are inside the SharePoint Admin Center the next step will be create an App Catalog, click on the link “app” on the left panel and select the “app catalog” from the new page.

5.       This will prompt an option to create a new app catalog or use an existing app catalog. If you are already having an app catalog you can proceed to select the second option provide the URL for the same. Here I will be setting up a new app catalog.

6.        In the next window the app catalog site Title and the web URL needs to be provided along with the administrator details. My window will look like this, I have used “myApps” suffix for my app catalog site.

Clicking OK will create the app catalog in 1 to 15 minutes depending on the server details. The site can be seen in the Sharepoint Admin Center.

Introduction to Microsoft forms

Microsoft Forms

1.       This is a new feature added to the office 365, this is available in your office 365 account.

2.       On selecting the link will take you to the Forms home screen ,there are two options  “New Forms” and “New Quiz”.

Lets just start on the New Forms

a.       First you need to create a category/ title  for the form, I am creating a “Tell us about yourself form” (I know I am very innovative 😉 )

You have an option to add a thumbnail image for your form.

b.       Now let us design a basic input form by clicking on the Add Question button.

c.       My form is going to Contain “Name”, “DOB”, “Gender”, “Do you Like Windows Forms” and “You availability”

Name  - Text

I have made this field Required and not a long answer. On the top right of the field we have the options to copy, delete, move the sequence up or down etc.

Gender  - Choice

Once I typed Gender system automatically prompted me with the suggestions, it understands few other things like “which day”, which month” etc.  I have selected “Add all” and it added all the options. Choice field do have an option of multiple answers, since it is not suitable for the context I am leaving it, once selected radio buttons will give way for check boxes.

DOB – Date

Availability – Likert

If we want to add additional feeling(options) we have a plus button. If your content is different you can add additional statements

How do you like windows forms -  Rating

We have multiple option to show rating as numbers or the stars, anyway I prefer the stars so I go with the stars.We have the option to select the rating out of 10 or 5.

Once you are done with the form we have the option to set who can respond and whether they can respond . The option is available from the “setting” on the menu on the right corner.

In the settings menu you have the option to Who can fillout the form and the timer period for accepting the results.

So  I am done with my form, so now we are good for sharing the form before that we can see the preview the of the form, how it looks.

Not Bad though 😉 . Now we are good to share it with others to get the feedback. We have multiple options to share the form with audience like QR code, send the link, send in email and iframe to embed in your page. Once the users starts giving responses you can see it from the Responses tab. The response screen is auto updated with the responses, we have the provision to export it to excel.Here is a sample response.