I am proud, and a bit stunned, to announce that I been awarded the Most Valuable Professional award by Microsoft for my contributions to the community in the area of Office Apps and Services for the 15th year. For me, this is a huge milestone. With the global pandemic and the shutdown of so many in-person events I could not be happier for the recognition.

I never feel like I have done enough for an award like this. I am not bragging or being fake humble, it’s just how I feel.

I am proud to announce that I been awarded the Most Valuable Professional award by Microsoft for my contributions to the community in the area of Office Apps and Services for the 14th year. The MVP Award is Microsoft's way of saying "Thanks!" to community leaders for their contributions.

This year the award is particularly special as it falls during a time when the global pandemic is forcing people to learn, to adapt to new roles, while the adoption of Microsoft 365 is sky rocketing. I never feel that I have done enough for the award, so it is a delight to see that my focus on the community, through YouTube and support forums like Stack Exchange are helping people.

Why Room Lists

When planning and preparing for an Office 365 deployment you can often get lost in the weeds of features and services and forget about the user experience of the individual services. I like to ensure that we plan for delighters when the service affords me the opportunity. The are several things about Microsoft Teams that drive me bonkers, like the client not respecting Windows 10 Focus assist settings, even Slack does that.

I am proud to announce that I been awarded the Most Valuable Professional award by Microsoft for my contributions to the community in the area of Office Apps and Services for the 13th year. The MVP Award is Microsoft's way of saying "Thanks!" to community leaders for their contributions.

For me giving back to the community is part of my passion. I love to teach and help folks learn how to realize their goals through the application of technology. Microsoft technologies exceed their users needs and help us all work more effectively. When I am asked about how I am challenged I usually explain that Technology today is moving at an incredible pace. End users are tasked with getting their jobs done, not learning the latest widget. I try to help users by teaching them how new features change the way ‘they always used to do it’. That’s the challenge, improving our daily processes by effectively using the software. Not jumping to the next thing just because it’s new.

Introduction

If you have not heard of Hugo Static Site Generator then I am happy you are here. Static site generators are the “new black” in web site development. If you are here to read how I did it then you might want to skim over this post and jump into the next one (once I write it). I have been planning on blogging about Hugo SSG for a while (according to the draft date on this post, over 8 months) because I want to share my excitement for a very cool way to create and host a beautiful, modern web site for pennies a month. There are many different approaches to how you build your web site with Hugo. I am going to demonstrate how I put together the site for my “other” company AbleBlue.com, where my personal blog is hosted. (I am no longer consulting through AbleBlue as I currently work for Spanning Cloud Apps in Austin.)

In my former life as a consultant, I was constantly aware of the impact that the pace of cloud technology evolution has on IT professionals. Recently, while moderating a panel at Office and SharePoint Live! 360 in Orlando, I asked the question: “IT Pro vs. Developers, is it time to bury the hatchet?” The panel consisted of four great friends of mine, Eric Shupps and Ben Curry, representing the IT Pro side of the house; and Rob Windsor and Paul Schaeflein, representing the Developers.

After working out the messy details of my previous post series “Microsoft Graph Delta Query from Microsoft Flow” a great friend of my pointed out “It’s probably not a best practice to expose the application secret in plain text in your Flow.” Good point! I was more focused on the “transaction” of the Delta Query. So, how do you create a secure connection to your applications? You create a [Custom Connector in Flow] (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/custom-connectors/).

The Three Part Series

We’re in the home stretch! If you are reading this post without reviewing the two previous posts, beware, we have covered a lot of configuration to get to this point. Make sure you’ve completed Part 1 and Part 2 before you get started on this last part. In this post we’ll add the final plumbing to use the Delta Query that we stored in SharePoint in Part 2 of the series. As I said before, this is a long detailed post, but this one brings it all home. If you get lost in the details don’t despair and don’t panic! I captured the entire flow in a single graphic at the end of this page so you can use it as a map if you get lost.

The Three Part Series

Since you made it to this page I assume that you read and followed the first article. If you didn’t, stop and go do that. Even if you aren’t using the SharePoint parts, you will need to configure your App in Azure to access the Microsoft Graph. Once you do that, come back here.

Next, this is a long, detailed post and there is even a Part 3 that makes it all work. If you get lost in the details, don’t despair and don’t panic! I captured the entire Flow in a single graphic at the end of this page so you can use it as a map if you get lost.

What is a Delta Query?

Have you ever wanted to create a Flow that could monitor something in Office 365 (like a group) and do something if that thing changed? Well, that is what Delta Queries are for. The word “Delta” will refer here to the difference, or change, in a certain quantity - not to the outflow of a river! The Microsoft Graph supports Delta Queries on certain objects, like Azure AD Security Groups. The concept is pretty easy to understand and is very well documented. The pattern is: