What comes next is the future – Microsoft Prognosis 2018

The new year just started. Highest time to look at what 2018 will bring our way in the Microsoft ecosystem

This article covers:

• Hot topics and trends 2018
• Trend topics around collaboration and communication
• Teams will replace SharePoint as frontend in many places
• The renaissance of email
• AI, Machine Learning & Bots
• Is Hybrid the new on-prem?
• It has never been easier and more economical to integrate external users
• GDPR is coming
• Office 365, Dynamics 365, Bing for Business, LinkedIn and where else the journey is heading

Download the English version of the article for free: LINK

Das Jahr 2018 ist bereits einige Tage alt. Höchste Zeit, sich anzuschauen, was es im Microsoft Ökosystem tut.

Themen:

• Hot Topics und Trends 2018
• Trendthemen rund um Kollaboration und Kommunikation
• Teams wird SharePoint als Frontend an vielen Stellen ablösen
• Renaissance der Email
• AI, Mashine Learning & Bots
• Ist das Hybrid das neue on-prem?
• Nie war es einfacher und kostengünstiger Externe zu integrieren
• Die DSGVO kommt
• Office 365, Dynamics 365, Bing for Business, Linked und wohin die Reise noch gehen wird

Kostenloser Download der Deutschen Version des Artikels: LINK

(Eine online Version des Artikels gibt es auch hier: Teil1 | Teil 2)

Delve and the Office Graph Inside Out Part II

In addition to my first post about the insides of Office Graph and Delve (Delve and the Office Graph Inside Out) this article is focusing on which signals are used by the Graph to generate the individual Delve experience.

Signals used by the Graph

You can find all the information you need about signals used by the Graph in this msdn article: https://msdn.microsoft.com/office/office365/howto/query-Office-graph-using-gql-with-search-rest-api

Based on this article we have the following Action Types:

• PersonalFeed
• Modified
• OrgColleague
• OrgDirect
• OrgManager
• OrgSkipLevelManager
• WorkingWith
• TrendingAround
• Viewed
• WorkingWithPublic

As you can see in the msdn article the list of signals can be dived in private signals and public signals so that data privacy is respected all the time:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/office/office365/howto/query-Office-graph-using-gql-with-search-rest-api#available-action-types

In addition Mark Kashman published an article on Microsoft techcommunity about Understanding security and privacy of Delve and intelligent experiences in Office 365. In this article, we can find the following diagram:

So we can extend the list taken from the msdn article to this aggregated version:

• PersonalFeed
• Modified
• OrgColleague
• OrgDirect
• OrgManager
• OrgSkipLevelManager
• WorkingWith
• TrendingAround
• Viewed
• WorkingWithPublic

• Member of
• Created by
• Shared with me
• Direct reports
• Public

Some of this signals are clear like for example Modified, Viewed, Created by, etc. some others are a little bit mystic like TrendingAround. We can imagine what TrendingAround means, but we cannot get an information about how this signal is processed in all details.

Anyway, it is easy to understand how this signals are used to generate the individual Delve experience.

The myth about the People suggestion in Delve

It is easy to imagine how content suggestions are generated based on signals. But one of the most asked questions about the Delve experience is about the difference between People list on the left and Related People in my personal Delve feet. Based on the signals list we can definitely get a better understanding about this. People on the left are other users we visited in Office 365 respectively we have clicked on their Delve profile. Related People are based on signals like “Member of”.

So for example if you are Member of

• Member of a Distribution List in Exchange Online
• Member of a Office 365 Group
• Member of the same Manger or “Direct Reports” entity

this is processed by the Graph to generate the Related People overview in your Delve feet.

As we can see also in this scenario data privacy and data security is respected by the Office Graph and Delve. If you are a “Member of” the same Distribution List or Office 365 Group, you can see all the other members anyway.

More details about this and also about compliance in Delve can be found in Mark Kashmans article “Understanding security and privacy of Delve and intelligent experiences in Office 365” I mentioned above.

Related articles:

• Delve and the Office Graph Inside Out
• All articles about Delve in my blog

Opt-in as a default for Delve

UPDATE: Sinc Jun 2017 this methode will not longer work!

Standard option for Delve in Office 365 is an opt-out option for each user. Details can be found in this Microsoft support article: Office Delve for Office 365 admins

A lot of scenarios with customers focusing on an option to not have Delve active per default for each user. In this scenario, an opt-in behavior for the end-users is the expected experience.

The high level requirements:

• Initially disable Delve for each and every enrolled O356 User
• For all new enrolled users Delve should be opt-out by defaul

This can be done disabling the access to the Office Graph in SharePoint Online Admin portal:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Office-Delve-for-Office-365-admins-54f87a42-15a4-44b4-9df0-d36287d9531b#bkmk_delveonoff 

To enable the access to Delve only for some users we can use the property “OfficeGraphEnabled” in the UserProfile Service of SharePoint Online.

Default this property is not set which result in Delve is visible for every user.

Using CSOM or CSOM with PowerShell we can set this property to “FALSE”. The result is:

• Every user sees Delve in his App Launcher in Office 365
• If he clicks on Delve he only gets his Delve profile page. No “Suggested People” or content cards etc. is shown
• The user can opt-in Delve on his own
• General access to the Office Graph must be enabled in this scenario

Doing this the result for the user looks like this:

Write and Get User Profile Properties in SharePoint Online with PowerShell

To Write and Get of User Profile properties in SharePoint Online via PowerShell with CSOM you can use that script: Script to Write and Get User Profile Properties in SharePoint Online with CSOM

Based on this the command to set the property OfficeGraphEnabled to FALSE is:

.\Set-SPOUserProfileProperty.ps1 -PropertyName OfficeGraphEnabled -AccountName %USERNAME%@%YOUR DOMAIN%.onmicrosoft.com' -Value "FALSE" -SPOAdminPortalUrl 'https://%YOUR DOMAIN%-admin.sharepoint.com' -UserName %ADMIN ACCOUNT%@%YOUR DOMAIN%.onmicrosoft.com -Password xxxxxxxxx

To avoid the users to opt-in Delve we can set the property “OfficeGraphEnabled” in the UserProfile Service of SharePoint Online to “cannot be edit by user”.

Doings this the user cannot opt-in Delve on his own to see “Suggested People” or content cards etc. Only a Admin can opt-in Delve for the users.

NOTE that Delve and the Office Graph is based on user interaction with content and other people in the Office 365. So if only some users use it the results can be disappointing.

Delve and the Office Graph in a real World scenario

Short video interview about Delve and the Office Graph in a real World scenario

In this customer success story Delve is a main part of the new Intranet built on Office 365. More details can be found in this article: Natural cosmetics company cultivates holistic culture and collaboration with Office 365

Sessions von der ShareDev Cologne 2015

Meine Sessions von der ShareDev Cologne 2015 sind online bei Channel 9 zu sehen:

Getting Emails with Attachments from Office Graph using REST API

Email attachments are now also covered by the Office Graph and Delve

Since a couple of days Delve is showing Email attachment:

More details about this, the Delve card for “Emails with Attachments” and its functions can be found in this blogpost: Delve starts to add emails with attachments to results

Using the REST API we can get this data, too. Getting all emails with attachments for the signed in user we can use this call:

_api/search/query?querytext='contentclass:exchangeattachment'&properties='GraphQuery:ACTOR(ME)'

The contentcalass filter 'contentclass:exchangeattachment’ is scoping the result only to mails with attachments.

This query only returns result for the user who runs the query. Because of Email contentclass results are only shown in the Home Feet in Delve it is a private signal. In Detail every person who received the mail and within the mail also the attachment gets it in his Delve Home Feet:

Delve and the Office Graph for IT-Pros & Admins

There are a couple of really good post from Richard Dizerega, Elio Struyf, Mikael Svenson  and Waldek Mastykarz. But everyone is talking about dev. stuff or end-user perspective.

In this article I will show the idea of Delve, the Graph and how it is working and what can be done from an IT-Pro / Administrator perspective.

Basics

We can enable or disable Delve and control access to the Office graph in SharePoint Online administration. To do this we had to navigate to Admin > SharePoint > Settings. Under Office graph, select one of the following options:

-          Don’t allow access to the Office graph

-          Allow access to the Office graph

Delve can also be disabled or enabled per user. To do this the user must go to Office 365 > Delve > Delve settings.

To store this setting we have a new property in User Profile Store: OfficeGraphEnabled.

The OfficeGraphEnabled property is only used when a user actively turns off Delve for themselves.

The property also results in a crawled and managed property which can be used in Search.

So the Administrator can query that property in Search to find out all people within his organization who turned off Delve.

This can be useful to get an overview about Delve usage in you organization.

We have several other properties in the User Profile service used by Delve.

·         SPS-UserType

·         SPS-HideFromAddressLists

·         SPS-RecipientTypeDetails

The SPS- properties are there to help the Office graph to determine if user in Exchange Online is a non-person entity such as a meeting room.

Source: https://support.office.com/en-us/Article/Delve-f%C3%BCr-Office-365Administratoren-54f87a42-15a4-44b4-9df0-d36287d9531b

Users aren’t able to set these properties directly in their SharePoint Online profiles.

Working with Delve for IT-Pro´s and Admin

From IT-Pro & Administrator perspective Delve is a kind of service we have to write code to tweak it. Actually there are no out-of-the-box WebParts etc. we can use to work with Delve.

But we have a bunch of preconfigured code snippets, examples, SharePoint Apps and tools which can be very useful also for Admins and IT-Pros.

SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool

The SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool support with version 2.2 also GQL (Graph Query Language). For more details about GQL follow this link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/query-Office-graph-using-gql-with-search-rest-api

Office graph queries within your SharePoint search center

Elio Struyf did a great job with his code sample to use SharePoint search center to visualize Graph Queries.

All you need is a Script WebPart, a Search Box WebPart and a Search Result Webpart. The script is overriding the default Srch.U.fillKeywordQuery function, manipulating some parameters and doing a call to the original fillKeywordQuery function. The scripts and details can be found here: http://www.eliostruyf.com/office-graph-search-queries-sharepoint-search-center/

The result looks like this:

We can use this script to fire queries against the Graph. Modifying the “Me or Actor ID” field give us an option to impersonate the query. The Graph always respects your privacy so we cannot see private object from another person. Details see here:  Privacy in Delve and Office Graph

But we can see all public objects for a given Actor ID to verify our security concept works well.

In my example I fire the query as user “Oliver Hardy”:

SharePoint Apps around Delve

In the SharePoint App store we can find a bunch of useful Apps around Delve and the Graph. Most of them are from Mavention / my MVP colleague Waldek Mastykarz. To test Delve and work with the Graph the most useful is the Office Graph Query Tester

This app showes the query which is used to get a result. This query can then be used and modified in the SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool.

SharePoint 2013 Search API Results Webpart

I have a codeplex project for an experimental SharePoint 2013 Search API Results Webpart. This WebPart is visualizing the JSON result comming from search service as a simple list. Modifying the query in the script you can use this script to show Graph results where ever you have to.

Here I use the script in a Script WebPart to visualize the following query: ACTOR(ME)

This can be useful to show Graph results as part of you intranet landing page which is maybe not SharePoint etc.

Further information and events

·         More and further information about Delve can be found at IT-Unity: http://www.itunity.com/delve

·         IT-Unity also hosts a survey about delve: First Impressions of Office Delve

·         and there is a upcoming webinar series about Delbe at IT-Unity homepage: http://www.itunity.com

First version of Delve is available

The first version of Delve formerly known as “Project Olso & Office Graph” is now available.

So what exactly is Delve? Here is what Microsoft says:

Delve (Codename Oslo) & Office Graph

Delve (Codename Oslo) is the first experience to use the power of the Office Graph. Delve is a new way to search and discover content across Office 365 based on personalized insights. Delve will be available as a Windows 8 app, on mobile devices, and integrated in the Office 365 web experience. Office Graph is an underlying technology and a suite-wide intelligence fabric that will help you discover content and make new connections. The Office Graph analyzes signals and applies machine learning. Personalized insights are built up for each user, based on their behavior, their relationships to content, topics and one another. Content and signals are captured from Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Yammer.

Source: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/office-365-roadmap-FX104343353.aspx

The Delve feature is located in the Office Bar at the top of the O365 site. Delve is only available for O365.

Here are some additional useful links:

·         https://support.office.com/Article/Office-Delve-for-Office-365-admins-54f87a42-15a4-44b4-9df0-d36287d9531b?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

·         http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/11/introducing-codename-oslo-and-the-office-graph/

·         http://blogs.office.com/2014/09/08/milestone-office-delve/

Delve shows content from SharePoint team sites and OneDrive for business content. In the future, we will see more content sources to push content to the Office Graph, such as email attachments, meetings, group content, video portal content, Yammer signals/shares etc. We will also see an API for Delve in the future. The API will probably be a REST-based API supporting CRUD operations.

Delve looks like this:

Going to Query Editor in a search result webpart we can see a new Result Source:

This result source is not shown under SharePoint online administration or in the site settings menu. It’s only visible in the Query Builder. The Office Graph gets its own index. We can assume that this new result source is mapped to the new Graph Index. The new result source is not showing any results using it in a search result web part.

Is Delve only another content aggregation?

In SharePoint / SharePoint Online, we have several sites and web parts showing content based on search and social indicators:

·         My Documents

·         Recent Documents

·         Docs I'm following

·         Suggested documents to follow

·         Documents Shared with Me

·         Documents we have in common

Aggregating all this in one page shows that the content is mostly related:

So is Delve only an aggregated view of all this? No it is not! Delve is based on the Office Graph, which is a kind of machine learning to map the relationships between people, content, and activity that occurs across Office 365.

To give you an idea how this works, let’s have a look at the following example.

As part of Google, we have an Analytics engine called Google Trends. http://www.google.com/trends/

I use this engine to get the following report.

• Search term 1: Hangover
• Search term 2: Vodka
• Entity: Time

That means: Item1=Hangover Item2=Vodka

Item to Item recommendation shows a correlation between this to search terms / items at the end of December every year – at New Year's Eve ;-)

There is a correlation between these search terms and the date New Year’s Eve. In Delve it would be two people who are working both on the same document and because of this correlation, the system (Delve) is showing that document in the context of “trends around me.” The backend logig, algorithems and ranking models of Delve respect those correlations based on so called “signals” A signal for example is generated whene a user clicks on a document etc.  SharePoint Analytics works in a similar way. In SharePoint Analytics we talk about “events” which is the same like a “signal” in Delve / Office Graph. Both techniques are collecting, aggregation and analyzing what user are doing and is generating correlations  between content and content and users. Both solution Delve / Office Graph and SharePoint Analytics doing similar analytics but Delve is going a step forward and will soon also integrate Yammer and other components from O365.
To complete this, let’s have a look at how the SharePoint features like Items “Related to Current User” or “Suggested documents to follow” works.
“Items related to current user” is based on a result source. This result source can be used in a content search web part:

“Suggested documents to follow” is based on the managed property “recomendetfor”

Roundup

So the following features are based on SharePoint Search and SharePoint Analytics. They are part of SharePoint on-prem and can be used without Office Graph and Delve.

• My Documents
• Recent Documents
• Docs I'm following
• Documents Shared with Me
• Documents we have in common
• Suggested documents to follow (with social impact)
• Items related to current user (based on a system result source)

Delve is based on search driven solution and the Office Graph, but this is not SharePoint Search or SharePoint Analytics. Delve has its own index and its own backend system as part of Office 365. Delve is not available as part of SharePoint search-driven solutions or WebParts. Also the Office Graph can not used as a result source in SharePoint Search Querys or Search WebParts. It’s a separate and independent solution.

• Delve

When you add Delve on top of the traditional search results, this all can be a little bit confusing for end users and decision makers; a company needs a strategy for all of this. I think that Delve is the future of all these ideas and techniques. Delve will get an addition push with the upcoming Phone and Windows Apps, which allows us to get access to all this using mobile devices and without using the web interface of Office 365.

Again, you need more description here. How is this related to the bullet list above?

Belonging to comment NB5: Delve is new and not based on SharePoint Search or SharePoint Analytics feature. Delve had its own index and its own backend system the Office Graph. All this is not available in std. Search Driven Solutions build with  regular SharePoint Features like in the “Search Based” bullet list.