In this article, let us see what is Graph Data Connect and how to configure the Graph Data Connect in our tenant.
Graph Data Connect – Is nothing but, pull the entire office 365 tenant information and keep it in a separate data storage, from where we can do any sort of Application insights.
For example, I am going to Pull the entire organizations mail box metadata and keep it in a Azure Blob Storage, from where I can utilize those data to do any sort of BI application.
In the above diagram, it is clearly explained that, the data from the Office 365 can be extracted and kept in the Azure. With this, since the data of the customer resides inside their Azure tenant itself, the security of the data has been taken care of.
From Azure, we can utilize the data for any kind of BI applications.
In simple words, Graph Data Connect is
1. Creating a new model, which will extract the Users Centric data from Office 365 and push it to Azure with in their tenant.
2. Allows the developers to build intelligent applications using the Office 365 and Azure Resources.
3. When we try to pull the customers data, we are seeking an approval from the customer.
Comparing the Graph API and Graph Data Connect
| Graph APIs | Graph data connect | |
| Access scope | Single use / entire tenant | Many users / groups |
| Access pattern | Real time | Recurrent schedule |
| Data operations | Operates on data master | Operates on cache of the data |
| Data protection | Data is protected while in Microsoft 365 | Data protection is extended to the cache of data in your Azure subscription |
| User consent | Self; resource types | None |
| Admin consent | Entire organization; resource types | Select groups of users; resource types & properties; excludes users |
| Access tools | RESTful web queries | Azure Data Factory |
What we are going to do?
a. Data Resides inside Office 365.
b. Create a Pipeline, which will extract the data from O365.
c. Keeps the data on the Azure Blob Storage.
d. From there, the Developers can build intelligent applications.
How to configure Graph Data Connect for our Tenant?
It is a very simple step, which we need to enable at the tenant level.
1. Create a Group by landing in https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/Home#/groups
The Group should be “Main Enabled Security Group”
2. Go to the Services & Add Ins.
Select the Graph Data Connect
Enable it and select the Mailer security group which we created.
Ensure that, we need at least two users with admin privilege on that user group. Let us discuss further about this on the upcoming articles.
Happy Coding,
Sathish Nadarajan.
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