Hands On Labs for Creating Microsoft Graph apps on iOS, Android et al

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Hey! If you've ever been interested in creating iOS, Android or Windows Phone apps that utilize data from Office 365 through the Microsoft Graph interface, but don't know how or where to get started you're in luck! Microsoft has made available some Hand's on Lab experiences for you to learn how to use, consume and really make your apps sing.

What is Microsoft Graph you say? Well, it's a one-stop shop endpoint for getting data out of Office 365 and into your app. Or as Microsoft likes to say: "One Endpoint to Rule Them All!" You might know it by another name, Office 365 unified API. No more having to find that specific oData feed url. Microsoft Graph takes the heavy lifting out of Azure AD authentication, getting ( and creating) calendar events, using O365 groups and so much more. And it's all right here.

Microsoft Graph

So take a look, have some fun and jump start your development.

Links: Microsoft Graph Home Page

 

Office 365 API Tools for Visual Studio Announced

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During the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas last month, attendees were introduced to the new Office 365 APIs. Today, some of those API were released into preview for Visual Studio, as was announced on the Apps for Office and SharePoint Blog. Only some of the APIs were made available such as the mail, calendar and contact REST APIs and then only for C# and VB.net apps.

There are some good sessions on the APIs from the March 2nd - 6th SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, NV. If you are thinking of trying out the new APIs then you should definitely go over to Channel 9 and check them out. Also below is the link for the preliminary/preview documentation for the APIs over on MSDN.

Link for the MSDN API info:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn605892(v=office.15).aspx

As a Windows 8 Store App developer who primarily writes those types of apps in HTML/JavaScript, the release of the APIs for VB, but not for JavaScript is a bit of a rub. Though most developers I know don't do both, I do write in C#, just not typically for Windows 8 Store Apps. But it's been this way with the SharePoint / Office team for awhile now. None of the SharePoint App or Office Task  Pane Visual Studio App templates use JavaScript, only C# even though there are new JSOM libraries that a developer can use. Sometimes I think the product team can only program in C#. But I guess there's always VB. I used to write in VB... in the 90s.