Office Graph and Microsoft Graph

Clear and consistent product naming remains a challenge, certain also in the Microsoft domain. An example is the reuse of phrase 'Graph' in Office Graph and Microsoft Graph aka Graph API. What do these names entail, and what if any is the relation?

Office Graph

Office Graph is the oldest name, and originates in 2014 as the foundation underlying Delve. "The brains behind Delve is the Office Graph. The Office Graph continuously collects and analyses signals that you and your colleagues send when you work in Microsoft 365. For example, when you and a colleague modify or view the same document, it’s a signal that you’re likely to be working together. Other signals are who you communicate with through e-mail, and who you’ve shared documents with, who your manager is, and who has the same manager as you."

Microsoft Graph aka Graph API

Microsoft Graph is a giant proxy, it takes requests in, validates authentication token, optional does validation and transformation, and then passes / forwards to the specific inner layer in Microsoft 365 landscape; and returns the inner responses, optional after transformation to the Graph API caller. Graph API provides consistency over all the different inner services, on level of authentication, property naming and casing, exception handling, singular shared object types (eg consolidate on one definition of ErrorDetails object type). Important to understand is that Microsoft Graph itself does not provide services, it simple delegates to the actual services in the Microsoft 365 landscape.

Actual the same?

Microsoft: "The Microsoft Graph models activity in Microsoft 365 services, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Yammer, Skype for Business, Azure Active Directory, and more, and in external services, such as other Microsoft services or third-party services. Microsoft Graph components are used throughout Microsoft 365. The Microsoft Graph represents a collection of content and activity, and the relationships between them that happen across the entire Office suite. It uses sophisticated machine learning techniques to connect people to the relevant content, conversations and people around them. The Microsoft Graph contains information about enterprise objects, such as people and documents, as well as the relationships and interactions among these objects. The relationships and interactions are represented as edges."

Office Graph renamed into Microsoft Graph

The Office Graph has evolved to become exposible via the Microsoft Graph. Thus they have conceptual morphed into same offering, Office Graph as backend collects and analyses signals that you and your colleagues send when you work in Microsoft 365; and the Graph Api provides central gateway access to this collected information. And also to all other services within Microsoft 365 landscape.

Used resources

• Customizing Privacy Controls for Microsoft Graph Insights with the Graph Explorer, Tony Redmond
• How does Office Delve know what's relevant to me?, Microsoft
• What is the Office Graph?, Michael Holstee
• Microsoft 365 Tenant Isolation in the Microsoft Graph and Delve, Microsoft
• Microsoft Search 101 - What’s the relationship between the Microsoft Graph and Office Graph?, Bill Baer
• Overview of Microsoft Graph, Microsoft

Graph API on top of Microsoft Graph administration of collected signals in Microsoft 365 landscape and services

The Microsoft Graph Insight APIs expose relationships generated by Office Graph services (source: Microsoft Search 101 - What’s the relationship between the Microsoft Graph and Office Graph?, Bill Baer)