Manage Users, Security Alerts And Team Plans In Microsoft 365 With Microsoft Graph

If your business runs on Microsoft 365, a lot of your day goes into the same handful of chores. Adding a new hire and setting up how they sign in. Checking whether a security alert needs attention. Keeping the team’s plans and tasks up to date. Making sure every laptop has the right apps. You can click through admin screens for all of it, or you can let software do it for you. Microsoft Graph is how that happens: it is an API, a way for one piece of software (or an AI assistant) to ask another to do something, and it reaches into most of what your Microsoft 365 tenant holds. Here is the Microsoft Graph profile on APIs.io.

What Microsoft Graph does

Microsoft describes Microsoft Graph as the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365, a single programming model for reaching data in Microsoft 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security. In plain terms, it is one front door for your users, groups, mail, files, devices, security signals and plans, instead of a separate door for each product. It is a hosted service, so you call Microsoft’s endpoint rather than running anything yourself. You can find more at microsoft.com.

On APIs.io we index 71 Microsoft Graph APIs and map them to 20 business capabilities. That is a lot of surface, so I am going to stay with the jobs most small and mid-sized businesses actually have.

What you can get done

Identity & Access Management

This is who can get in, and how. When someone joins, changes roles or leaves, you need their sign-in methods and access to follow. Microsoft Graph exposes 2,996 operations in this capability, which tells you how much of Microsoft 365 identity is reachable from software. A few of the basics:

• GET /users/{user-id}/authentication looks up how a person is set up to sign in.
• PATCH /users/{user-id}/authentication changes that setup.
• GET /users/{user-id}/authentication/emailMethods lists the email addresses a person can use to verify who they are.
• POST /users/{user-id}/authentication/emailMethods adds a new email verification method for a person.

Wire these into your onboarding checklist and the account setup stops depending on someone remembering every step.

Threat Detection & Response Management

Security tools raise alerts, and someone has to look at them, group them and close them out. With 263 operations here, Microsoft Graph lets you pull those alerts and incidents into whatever your team already watches, whether that is a ticketing system, a chat channel or a weekly report.

• GET /security/alerts_v2 lists current security alerts.
• GET /security/alerts_v2/{alert-id} pulls the detail on a single alert.
• PATCH /security/alerts_v2/{alert-id} updates an alert, for example to mark it as being handled.
• GET /security/incidents lists incidents, which are groups of related alerts.

Project Management

Microsoft Planner is where many teams keep their plans and tasks. With 216 operations in this capability, you can create plans and keep them in sync with the rest of your business, say, opening a plan automatically when a new client signs.

• GET /me/planner/plans lists the plans you are part of.
• POST /me/planner/plans creates a new plan.
• GET /me/planner/plans/{plannerPlan-id} gets the detail of one plan.
• GET /groups/{group-id}/planner reads the planner for a whole team group.

IT Application Management

Making sure everyone’s devices have the right apps is tedious work. These 471 operations cover the apps your organization manages and who they are assigned to.

• GET /deviceAppManagement/mobileApps lists the apps you manage.
• POST /deviceAppManagement/mobileApps adds an app to that list.
• PATCH /deviceAppManagement/mobileApps/{mobileApp-id} updates an app’s settings.
• GET /deviceAppManagement/mobileApps/{mobileApp-id}/assignments shows who an app is assigned to.

IT Operations Management

The same idea, applied to device settings. With 161 operations here, you can keep configuration consistent across company machines.

• GET /deviceManagement/deviceConfigurations lists your device configuration profiles.
• POST /deviceManagement/deviceConfigurations creates a new profile.
• PATCH /deviceManagement/deviceConfigurations/{deviceConfiguration-id} changes an existing one.

Getting started

Microsoft Graph is a hosted service you call over the web. I could not find a clear access model recorded in our profile, so start with Microsoft’s own documentation, beginning with the admin resources, the agreement resource and agreement acceptance. For cost, see the Microsoft Graph pricing section on APIs.io.

On APIs.io you can browse the full Microsoft Graph profile, and individual APIs such as Admin.service Announcement for Microsoft 365 service health and message center posts, Admin.edge, and Agreement Files for the terms people accept before getting access.

Pick the one chore that eats the most of your week, whether that is onboarding, alerts or plans, and hand the list of operations above to whoever builds your automations, or to your AI assistant.