Knowledge Graph
The Knowledge Graph is the semantic catalog that powers the license recommendation engine — every recommendation is validated against the catalog before it is shown to a user. The graph stores Microsoft 365 plans, the service plans they bundle, the capabilities those service plans provide, the constraints between them, and the personas that consume them. Use this page to refresh the catalog from local data, import the latest Microsoft licensing references from the internet, browse the catalog visually, and audit the rules driving recommendations.
Catalog Status
A status panel at the top of the page reports the health of the catalog and its size.
- Status —
healthywhen the catalog is up to date and consistent;shadowwhile a re-apply is in progress - plans — Total Microsoft 365 plans (SKUs) currently in the catalog
- capabilities — Distinct capabilities exposed across all plans
- service plans — Service plans bundled into one or more SKUs
- constraints — Rules and inclusion relationships defined between plans, service plans, and capabilities
Catalog Tabs
The catalog content is organized into four tabs.
- Overview — Snapshot of the catalog, refresh actions, and visual map (described below)
- Rules — Generated and authored redundancy and inclusion rules used by the optimizer
- Capabilities — Catalog of capabilities and the service plans that provide them
- Personas — Persona definitions used to align users with appropriate plans
Local Actions
Local actions re-apply data that already lives in the backend. They are fast because no external network call is involved.
- Re-apply local catalog — Replays the bundled YAML and relational catalog data into the live graph. Scope can be set to All tenants or a specific tenant from the adjacent selector. Use this after upgrading the platform or to reset a tenant's catalog to the shipped baseline.
- Auto-derive redundancy rules — Scans the current catalog and generates redundancy rules — used by the optimizer to detect overlapping entitlements — without requiring manual authoring.
Internet Imports
Internet imports refresh the catalog from authoritative external sources. They require outbound HTTPS connectivity from the platform.
- Sync M365maps.com — Pulls Aaron Dinnage's M365 Maps feature matrix from
m365maps.comand merges every(SKU, Feature)inclusion into the catalog. Use this when Microsoft adds new features or rearranges existing plan bundles. - Sync Microsoft SKU — Pulls Microsoft's authoritative licensing CSV from
download.microsoft.com, covering all commercial SKUs. Use this when new SKUs become available or pricing changes. - Upload Product Terms PDF — Manual upload path for Microsoft's Product Terms document. Useful when terms data has not yet been published to the downloadable CSV.
Note: Internet imports take several minutes for a full pull. Local actions complete in seconds and are the right choice when you only need to reset to the bundled baseline.
Disabling the Knowledge Graph
The Disable Knowledge Graph action turns off catalog-backed validation across the platform. Recommendations will continue to surface, but they will no longer be cross-checked against the catalog before being shown. Use this only when investigating catalog issues — re-enable as soon as the investigation is complete.
Catalog Map
The Catalog Map is a force-directed visualization of the catalog, rendering plans as central nodes connected to the service plans they bundle and the capabilities those service plans provide.
- Category — Filter the rendered graph to a single category bucket
- Plans rendered — Slider that caps how many plans are drawn at once; the default keeps the graph readable even for large catalogs
- Refresh — Re-render the graph with the current filters
- Reset zoom — Return the view to the default zoom and pan position
The summary chips beside the graph show how much of the catalog the current view is displaying — categories, plans, service plans, and capabilities visible.
Selection
Click any node in the graph to populate the Selection panel with details for that node — its category, the plans it appears in (for service plans and capabilities), or its bundled service plans (for plans).
Legend
- Category bucket — A grouping of related plans (e.g., Business, Enterprise, Frontline)
- Plan (Microsoft SKU) — A specific Microsoft 365 SKU
- Service plan bundled into a SKU — A service plan included in one or more SKUs
- Capability the plan provides — A capability exposed by the underlying service plans
Note: The full catalog contains hundreds of plans. Use the category filter or the slider to zoom into specific segments rather than rendering the entire graph at once.
Best Practices
- Refresh after Microsoft licensing changes — Run Sync Microsoft SKU and Sync M365maps.com whenever Microsoft announces new SKUs, feature rebundling, or pricing changes so recommendations reflect the latest reality
- Re-apply locally before raising a catalog issue — Many "catalog looks wrong" reports are resolved by re-applying the local catalog; do that before reaching for the internet imports
- Keep the Knowledge Graph enabled — Catalog-backed validation prevents the engine from recommending plan changes that would strand a user without a needed service. Only disable temporarily for investigation
- Filter the map before rendering — Start with a single category and a modest plan count, then widen the view; rendering the full catalog at once produces a dense, hard-to-read graph
- Use Rules and Capabilities tabs to audit recommendations — When a specific recommendation is questioned, inspect the rule and capability data that drove it
Related Pages
- Recommendations — Recommendations validated against this catalog
- Plan Catalog — Browsable inventory of plans surfaced from the catalog
- Feature Comparison — Side-by-side plan comparison driven by catalog data
- Beak M365 License Optimizer Overview — Platform overview and navigation structure