project-rome/MSGraph

Cross-device experiences powered by Project Rome in Microsoft Graph

In today's multi-device world, the way consumers use devices spans different platforms and form factors: they might read the morning news on their tablets, check email during the morning commute on their phones, and use their desktop PCs when at work. At night, they might watch movies on their home media consoles and use smart speakers to catch up on news from the day. The average customer engages with multiple devices and platforms throughout the day.

In the past, form factor drove distinct types of behavior differences among consumers. However, today, multi-device consumers conduct all their activities across all their devices. The tasks performed on a daily basis (whether at home with family, or at work with colleagues) are not inherently device-centric, but rather human-centric. Consumers want to be able to use whatever screen is available, independent of where the input comes from. In reality, they often find that each device has a clear boundary and getting things done across devices requires unnatural actions such as sending oneself an email or using USB sticks. Customers see friction when moving between their devices and sometimes important tasks get lost because of this context switching. This is also a challenge for developers because when customers feel friction using an app, customer engagement with the app goes down.

Microsoft is building a platform for creating experiences that transcend a single device so they can harmonize across devices – empowering you to create human-centric scenarios that move with the user and blur the lines between their devices, regardless of form factor or platform. Microsoft Graph provides a single unified endpoint to give you access to data from Azure Active Directory and Office 365. Now through Microsoft Graph, you can also access the activities and devices that belong to your customers, and enable rich human-centric experiences that cross devices and platforms.

Why invest in cross-device experiences?

Let customers pick up where they leave off with the activity feed API

With activities, you have a way to capture the unique tasks for users of your app that flow seamlessly across any platform and device, allowing them to quickly resume working on their preferred screen. Using the activity feed, you can create a human-centric view of the tasks most important to users, helping reduce friction when switching from web to mobile to PC and beyond.

Build rich cross-device experiences by using the device relay API

In addition to Microsoft devices (PCs, Windows Phones, Xbox, IoT, HoloLens, and more), the device relay API also exposes Android and iOS devices. This enables you to truly break down boundaries between your users' devices. You can build apps that utilize the user’s environment and create rich experiences that transcend a single device in real-time.

Next steps

Project Rome features can be implemented through REST API calls with:

• Activities on Microsoft Graph.
• Devices on Microsoft Graph.