#67 External content on Microsoft 365
Recently, I’ve been looking into Microsoft Graph connectors. Graph connectors are pretty cool and allow you to bring external content to Microsoft 365. Now, why would I want to do that? - you might ask. Good question.
Why you should consider Microsoft Graph connectors
We often use many different apps that help us work productively. The price we pay for it though, is that the data is locked in each of these apps. To find what you need, you need to know where you stored the information. What makes things worse, is that often search isn’t the core feature of these apps, making it hard to find the information.
Using Microsoft Graph connectors, you can centralize information from your organization in one place: Microsoft 365. You’ll be able to easily find information using the powerful Microsoft Search features. And it doesn’t stop there:
- by keeping track of activities on the external content (eg. who last edited the content), you’ll help your colleagues discover new content in the Microsoft 365 app (office.com)
- you’ll be able to easily reference the content in Context IQ to easily share it with others
What’s the most important though is that when you get Microsoft 365 Copilot, you’ll allow it to reason over all content in your organization, not just the files you create on Microsoft 365. This is crucial if you want your organization to truly benefit from AI.
Try it
Microsoft Graph connectors can be as simple as a PowerShell script and as complex as a cloud app. The design depends on your needs for the particular content source that you want to index.
To help you get started, we’ve put together a few samples. If you’ve got a Microsoft 365 developer tenant, I’d strongly encourage you to run one of them. My personal favorite is the sample solution gallery one that allows you to find Microsoft 365 extensibility samples created by the community straight from your tenant! Recently, João Mendes extended it with a gorgeous adaptive card to visualize the results.
Try Graph connectors on your tenant and let me know how you like them and if you’ve got any questions. With Microsoft 365 Copilot around the corner, bringing external data to Microsoft 365 will be more important than ever.