Set your app’s name in Office Graph queries

When building Office Graph queries pass the name of your app in the ClientType parameter.

The recently released Office Delve comes with an API that we can use to leverage the information stored in the Office Graph. Although that API is currently in preview it already allows us to build powerful solutions.

Currently the API is made available as an extension to the existing SharePoint 2013 Search API. By leveraging our existing knowledge, whether it’s REST, CSOM or JSOM, we can access the information stored in the Office Graph from within our solutions. In order to query the Office Graph all we need to do is to issue a regular Search query with some additional properties set.

When building Office Graph queries, one of the parameters that we can set is the ClientType parameter. In all queries issued by Delve it’s set to PulseWeb. When issuing your own Office Graph queries you should pass the name of your app as the value of the ClientType parameter. This will allow Microsoft to track how the different apps are using Office Graph. Although this is purely a speculation, it could theoretically also help them shape the future releases of Office Graph providing us with a better API.

So the next time you will build an Office Graph query, be a good citizen and pass the name of your app in the ClientType parameter.