Microsoft pitches developers on building apps for Office users

Microsoft Executive Vice President Qi Lu had an interesting pitch for developers Thursday: Build applications that use data from Microsoft Office.

Microsoft's crown jewel for building apps that integrate with Office is its Graph set of APIs, which let developers build applications that know how users work with one another. Lu, speaking at the company's Build developer conference, announced six new APIs to improve the Microsoft Graph, including one that allows developers to see when a group of users is available to meet.

That functionality will let developers build more intelligent applications that help people who use Office to work together, which can help Microsoft tie customers deeper into its productivity ecosystem. According to Lu, API calls to the Microsoft Graph have been growing 420 percent month over month since it was released last year.

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