Microsoft Graph Explorer Boosted by New Features

The Growing Importance of the Graph and the Graph Explorer

As time goes by, the importance of the Microsoft Graph APIs increases. Administrators who once were happy to know how to run PowerShell cmdlets to retrieve information about Microsoft 365 workloads now need to understand how to access data through the Graph. First, Graph requests are faster to retrieve data. Second, some workloads (like Planner) don’t have PowerShell modules, meaning that the Graph is the only way to interact with data programmatically.

The Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK is helpful in terms of bridging the gap between PowerShell and the Graph. The SDK cmdlets are essentially wrappers around Graph requests generated automatically using a process called AutoRest. The upside of the process is that literally thousands of cmdlets are available. The downside is that the documentation is poor unless humans get involved to improve the automatic text by correcting errors, adding examples, and so on. Sometimes the automatic documentation is so obscure and convoluted that it’s easier to read the documentation for the underlying Graph API to get an idea of how a cmdlet works.

Having a variety of solid code examples for each cmdlet is the big difference between traditional PowerShell cmdlet documentation and the automatic documentation. The lack of good working examples in what people regard as official documentation is a barrier to adoption for those who’d like to use the Graph but just can’t make head or tail about how the Graph works.

Enter the Explorer

Which is where the Microsoft Graph Explorer comes in. The Graph Explorer is an invaluable tool when it comes to understanding how to put together Graph API requests and the responses (and errors) that come back. When researching articles like those covering basic Azure AD group management with the Graph SDK or Basic Azure AD User management with the Graph SDK, I’ve often resorted to the Graph Explorer to make sure of syntax or to check the data returned from a call. The Graph X-Ray add-in for the Azure AD admin center is also useful for figuring out requests for user and group data.

The basis of the Graph Explorer web application has remained the same since its inception about four years ago.

• Open the application.
• Sign into your organization account to work with tenant data or use sample queries against test data.
• Perform GET, POST, PATCH, PUT, and DELETE requests against the V1.0 (production) or beta endpoints. You can input your own query or select from the set of sample queries available in the Explorer. This set grows over time to add coverage of Graph APIs and the requests supported by the APIs. After selecting a sample query, the Graph Explorer copies it into the query box. You can amend the request before running it.
• The Explorer takes care of fetching the necessary access tokens to authorize requests. You’ll probably need to give consent for permissions to be used for either your data or at a tenant level. It’s important to understand that the Explorer can only use delegated Graph permissions (this article explains how the Graph calculates the set of effective permissions from those consented to the app and those held by the signed-in account).

In Figure 1, I’ve used the request to fetch the items in a drive for a Microsoft 365 group. Drives is the Graph term for SharePoint Online sites, so the query is for items in the SharePoint site belonging to the group. The response preview in the response pane shows the data returned for the request, and the different items are listed, including a document library.

The form of the request (https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups/33b07753-efc6-47f5-90b5-13bef01e25a6/drive/items/root/children) shows that the request is against the Groups API for drive information for the group with the identifier 33b07753-efc6-47f5-90b5-13bef01e25a6.

Becoming acquainted with the syntax for Graph requests is one big reason why the tool is so useful. The syntax is consistent but is harder to understand at first than most PowerShell cmdlets are, but time and repetition makes the Graph syntax more familiar.

PowerShell Code Snippets

Some recent changes have made the Graph Explorer even more useful. First, PowerShell has joined the set of supported languages for code snippets. These are segments of code showing the query run by the Explorer in the selected language. Figure 2 shows the PowerShell code generated for the query https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users?$count=true&$search=”displayName:room”&$filter=endsWith(mail,’microsoft.com’)&$orderBy=displayName&$select=id,displayName,mail.

PowerShell code snippets are not available for every Graph API. However, good coverage exists for users and groups, which are the two APIs that might be of most interest to administrators.

The Resources Tab

The second recent change is that Microsoft has added a Resources tab to the Graph Explorer. These aren’t fully-baked requests ready to run. Instead, they’re more like starting points for Graph requests to make you aware of the APIs that exist and how to begin using the APIs. For example, there’s no sample query for the SKUs (products) licensed within a tenant, but a resource exists, and you can use it without altering the query to return the set of licensed products. In Figure 3, you can see the details of the EnterprisePack SKU (Office 365 E3) and some of its service plans. It’s possible to navigate from this point to access an individual SKU and so on.

Given that Microsoft 365 will soon (August 26) move to a new licensing platform that will stop the Azure AD licensing cmdlets from working, it’s a good idea to check any scripts that perform functions like licensing reports and update the code to use Microsoft Graph SDK cmdlets (or direct Graph queries to the licensing API).

Embrace the Graph

The Graph Explorer is getting better and better. It’s a tool I now use every day. That might be just because I know how to use the Graph Explorer better than I did in the past, but I suspect it’s also an indication of just how important it is for Microsoft 365 tenant administrators to understand how to use the Graph APIs to get work done.

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