Hands On Labs for Creating Microsoft Graph apps on iOS, Android et al

Hey! If you've ever been interested in creating iOS, Android or Windows Phone apps that utilize data from Office 365 through the Microsoft Graph interface, but don't know how or where to get started you're in luck! Microsoft has made available some Hand's on Lab experiences for you to learn how to use, consume and really make your apps sing.

What is Microsoft Graph you say? Well, it's a one-stop shop endpoint for getting data out of Office 365 and into your app. Or as Microsoft likes to say: "One Endpoint to Rule Them All!" You might know it by another name, Office 365 unified API. No more having to find that specific oData feed url. Microsoft Graph takes the heavy lifting out of Azure AD authentication, getting ( and creating) calendar events, using O365 groups and so much more. And it's all right here.

So take a look, have some fun and jump start your development.

Links: Microsoft Graph Home Page

Web Tiles and Much Needed Microsoft Band SDK Updates

Since they were previewed at //Build earlier this year, I've been waiting for Web Tiles to really hit the Microsoft Band world. Their appeal is easy to comprehend... be able to write the code once for your Band App as a Web API using any data source available on the web, included authenticated data sources like Office 365 now, and push it to all devices that are supported by the Band (aka iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows) without having to know anything at all about how to write code for that particular mobile platform. Get immediate expose across multiple devices for your App. The Microsoft Health app does all the heavy lifting for installing the app on the Band, formatting it and then pushing the content from your app to the Band, all from a simple 6-10 line (typically) XML zipped manifest file. Also included in this SDK release is support for the five new sensors that are on the Microsoft Band 2. They include: galvanic skin response (electrical conductivity of the skin in kohms), barometer, altimeter, RR interval (time between heart beat peaks), and ambient light. Additionally, the number of tiles is now upped from 8 to 13 on the Microsoft Band 2 as well as support for PDF 417 barcodes. That means more ASCII characters are now supported for use when creating bar codes for your apps.

Links:

Microsoft Band Development

Microsoft Web Tiles

//Build 2015 Session: Web Tiles Dev Preview