You heard him right – a full day training, deep dive, one topic – for free! Global Office 365 Developer Bootcamps around the world:

Please join Microsoft MVPs Stefano Tempesta and Max Melcher for an all-day workshop in Microsoft Teams and Azure Bot Framework development!

To be successful in this workshop, you should have a general understanding of Office 365 and an ability to code in JavaScript/.NET. From there, you’ll learn the technologies Microsoft Teams and the Bot Framework are built on!

Based on that foundation, you’ll learn how to develop production-quality Azure Bots for use in enterprise solutions or product offerings. You’ll also learn to use and extend Microsoft Teams. The day will also include an overview of other development opportunities in Office 365, which can provide a tailored collaboration and productivity environment for end users.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn the latest Office 365 development technologies!

Global Office 365 Developer Bootcamp – Munich, Germany

Microsoft Deutschland GmbH | Walter-Gropius-Straße 5 | 80807 München | Germany
Saturday, 21. October 2017, 09:30 to 17:00
https://www.eventbrite.de/e/global-office-365-developer-bootcamp-munich-germany-tickets-38305243013

Go sign up quickly – tickets are almost gone!

Global Office 365 Developer Bootcamp – Hamburg, Germany

Microsoft Deutschland GmbH | Gasstraße 6A | Gebäude M | 22761 Hamburg | Germany
Thursday, 2. November 2017, 09:30 to 17:00
https://www.eventbrite.de/e/global-office-365-developer-bootcamp-hamburg-germany-tickets-38430298056

Go sign up quickly – tickets are almost gone!

Global Office 365 Developer Bootcamp – Berlin, Germany

Microsoft Deutschland GmbH | Unter den Linden 17 | 10117 Berlin | Germany
Friday, 17. November 2017, 09:30 to 17:00
https://www.eventbrite.de/e/global-office-365-developer-bootcamp-berlin-germany-tickets-38430185720

Some tickets are still available – go tell your friends and colleagues!

All events are kindly hosted by Microsoft – thanks for the great support! – we even get free lunch!!!

Agenda

The agenda is 99% finalized and will look like this:

09:30 – 10:00 Welcome
10:00 – 10:45 Introduction to MS Teams
10:45 – 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 12:00 Advanced integration scenarios in MS Teams – hands on!
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch break
13:00 – 13:45 Introduction to Bot Framework
13:45 – 14:00 Coffee break
14:00 – 15:00 Advanced programming of Bots with LUIS and Cognitive Services – hands on!
15:00 – 16:30 Hands-on Challenge – hands on, of course!
16:30 – 17:00 Sharing & Networking

Bring your own!

You have to bring your own notebook and a O365 dev tenant to be part of the action!
If you have questions, please let us know in the comments.

Looking forward to the events!

p.s. there are plenty of other locations available outside of Germany: https://dev.office.com/blogs/global-office365-developer-bootcamp

The script

The following script checks a folder for files – and opens them. Then each line will be uploaded to the specified SharePoint list defined by the provided mapping.
The mapping is kinda straight forward. The header (if present, skip it with -skipFirstRow flag) is not required, you have to provide it via the -mapping parameter.

If you have the following in your CSV:
Value 1; Value 2

and want those values in a list with Column1 and Column2, then provide the script -mapping Column1, Column2.

Please note: The types are currently not passed and I only tested it with text values – if that is something you need, it could be easily added.

And the rest of the parameters? They are of course documented in the script. Copy it to a file and do get-help -full <yourfile.ps1> to get it!

<#
.SYNOPSIS
This is a simple Powershell script to upload csv files to a SharePoint Online list - line by line.
.DESCRIPTION
To connect to SharePoint Online the script requires a username/password the url to the SharePoint site and the list title.
To extract the csv files you musst provide the folder location and if the csv contains a header.
Lastly the script needs a mapping to map the content of the csv file to the SharePoint list.
.EXAMPLE
The csv header is used to map the entries to the SharePoint list.
The mapping is provided in PowerShell string array notation, no quotes, separated by comma - in this case the SharePoint list has the fields Counter, Title, Datum, Uhrzeit1, Uhrzeit2, Uhrzeit3, Uhrzeit4 and Anzahl - they appear in that order in the csv.
In this order the columns are read from the csv and the csv should not have more or less columns than mapped to the SharePoint list:
.\csv2list.ps1 -folder C:\Users\Max\Desktop\csv -username maximilian.melcher@melcher.it -password xxx -url https://melcherit.sharepoint.com -list csv -mapping Counter,Title,Datum,Uhrzeit1,Uhrzeit2,Uhrzeit3,Uhrzeit4,Anzahl
.EXAMPLE
CSV has a header and must be skipped:
.\csv2list.ps1 -folder C:\Users\Max\Desktop\csv -username maximilian.melcher@melcher.it -password xxx -url https://melcherit.sharepoint.com -list csv -mapping Counter,Title,Datum,Uhrzeit1,Uhrzeit2,Uhrzeit3,Uhrzeit4,Anzahl -skipFirstRow
.EXAMPLE
CSV should be deleted afterwards
.\csv2list.ps1 -folder C:\Users\Max\Desktop\csv -username maximilian.melcher@melcher.it -password xxx -url https://melcherit.sharepoint.com -list csv -mapping Counter,Title,Datum,Uhrzeit1,Uhrzeit2,Uhrzeit3,Uhrzeit4,Anzahl -delete
.NOTES
Currently I only tried to upload plain text - if you want more sophisticated field types, that should be easily doable.
.LINK
https://melcher.it
#>

Param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="Username to connect to SharePoint Online")]
[string]$username,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="Password to connect to SharePoint Online")]
[string]$password,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="The folder where the csv files are stored")]
[string]$folder,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="The mapping of the csv to the SharePoint list - in PowerShell string array notation, e.g ColumnA, ColumnB")]
[String[]]$mapping,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="The Url of the SharePoint site")]
[string]$url,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="The List title")]
[string]$listtitle,
[Parameter(HelpMessage="Flag if the csv files should be uploaded after processing")]
[switch]$delete,
[Parameter(HelpMessage="Flag if the csv files have a header that should be skipped")]
[switch]$skipFirstRow
)

#CSOM installation required!
Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll"
Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll"

#check if the folder exists
if (![System.IO.Directory]::Exists($folder))
{
write-host -ForegroundColor Red "Folder $folder does not exist"
return
}

#check if there are files
if ((Get-ChildItem $folder | Measure-Object).Count -eq 0)
{
write-host -ForegroundColor Red "No csv files in folder"
return
}

#get the files
$files = Get-ChildItem -File $folder

#connect to sharepoint online
$secure = ConvertTo-SecureString $password -AsPlainText -Force

$context = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($url)
$credentials = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($username, $secure)
$context.Credentials = $credentials
$context.ExecuteQuery()

Write-Host -ForegroundColor green "Connected to SPO"

#get the list
$list = $context.Web.Lists.GetByTitle($listtitle)
$context.Load($list)
$context.Load($list.Fields)
$context.ExecuteQuery()

Write-Host -ForegroundColor green "List loaded"

#get the list fields
$fields = $list.Fields | ? {!$_.Hidden} | select -ExpandProperty StaticName
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "Fields: "
$fields | foreach{ Write-Host "`t $_"}

foreach ($h in $mapping)
{
if ($fields -notcontains $h)
{
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red "Mapping incorrect - Field $h is not available in the SharePoint list"
return
}
}

#now iterate over the files
foreach ($file in $files)
{
write-host -ForegroundColor Yellow "Reading file $file" -NoNewline

#get the csv
$lines = Import-Csv -LiteralPath $file.FullName -Header $mapping -Delimiter ";"
write-host -ForegroundColor Yellow " ($(($lines | Measure-Object).count) lines):"

$i = 0
#iterate over
foreach ($line in $lines)
{
#skipping the header row if there is one
if ($i -eq 0 -and $skipFirstRow)
{
write-host -ForegroundColor Yellow "skipping first row"
continue
}

#preparing the item
$create = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ListItemCreationInformation
$item = $List.AddItem($create)

foreach ($col in ($line | Get-Member | ? {$_.MemberType -eq "NoteProperty"} | select Name))
{
#using the header to specify the column name
$item[$col.Name] = $line | Select -ExpandProperty $col.Name
}
$item.Update()
$context.ExecuteQuery()
$i++

if ($i%100 -eq 0)
{
write-host -ForegroundColor yellow "`t$i"
}
}
write-host -ForegroundColor Green "file $file done"

#deleting the item if specified
if ($delete)
{
Remove-Item $file.FullName
}
}

 Feedback

So is it working for you? If so, please leave a comment!

Magic Mirror – the idea

taken from https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/magicmirrormain.jpg

“It’s called a ‘Magic Mirror’, but a more accurate name would be a ‘Smart Mirror’,” Bradley tells us. “It’s a mirror that displays the information you need to know at a quick glance: the time, the date, the weather, and of course a compliment!” — https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/magic-mirror/

And then I talked to Heino at a SharePoint conference who told me that he had one and how easy it was to build one, getting the mirror and all that  – thanks Heino…!!!

My initial goal was to build a small mirror to show off at the office – show some personalized things like appointments, news, twitter feed, weather, nothing fancy, right?

Getting started

I never thought that getting the first thing to work was so easy. Actually it took me 1 hour to have the first mirror up and running:

1. Order a perfect starter kit [ref] at Amazon – with a RasberryPi3, a case, adapters,
2. Plug it in and connect it to a monitor
3. Boot up noobs and install raspbian
4. Setup the magicmirror² software with one line of shell script:
   

   curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MichMich/MagicMirror/master/installers/raspberry.sh | bash

4 easy steps and ~1 hour later – the result looked like this:

A promising start with a calendar, some nice descriptive text about the viewer and a weather forecast (that did not work on the screenshot) – except no SharePoint, right?

But it doesn’t look like a mirror yet…

Building the frame

I was a little bit afraid of building something out of wood, putting a mirror in front of it – so I decided to make my life as easy as possible:

Step 1: Get your old monitor out of the basement (for free!)
Step 2: Remove everything from the mirror (the foot and everything that you do not need) to get the panel as flat as possible
Step 3: Measure the width and height of the screen
Step 4: Go to building supplies store and get the wood for the frame, some screws and mirror glue
Step 5: Assemble the frame
Step 6: Order a double-sided acrylic mirror with the exact size of your frame
Step 7: Glue everything together

Followed by being super happy about the result:

Wow, you look hot!

Lots of glue and some red color

OK – that was a little abbreviated and sounded too easy – I followed this guide and got a lot of help from the building supplies store guys – and I am thankful for that

But the quality of the mirror combined with my 10-year-old monitor is really good – if I cover the backside so that it’s entirely dark inside, the monitor is not visible on the front and the display magically appears.

The software

I tried to create some modules for a SharePoint integration – but at that time node.js and the module felt odd – so I took another road and installed Windows IoT core on my Pi – but that’s not done yet and I will follow-up with a blog post once I have something to show.

For just basic stuff the magic mirror software really looks mature, lots of modules and plugins ranging from webcams, Alexa integration, stock ticker – it’s all there and ready to use.

If the weather outside would be nice right now, I would happily accept what I get there for free – but I want to build something by myself – My version of a magic mirror

For this article I assume that you have your SharePoint App up and running on Azure – and I assume that you have a domain to use.

Register the custom domain on Azure

3 easy steps to register a new hostname

First things first – tell the azure website that it will have a new hostname to respond to. Therefore go to the azure portal, open your website and click on “custom domain”. Then add your domain or subdomain that should be the new entry point of your app. Once you have done that, you need to validate the websites by adding a txt record to your nameserver with the value * mapped to .azurewebsites.net – full guide is here.

domain validation via nameserver entry. The @ symbol was not allowed, but with * it worked.

After validation was successfully it should look like that:

new entry was added successfully

For the custom domain you need at least a shared instance tier for your azure website.

New name – new problems

Ok, now we have setup the new hostname and we can open up the site with that – but that creates some problems:

1. The app registration (/_layouts/15/appregnew.aspx) needs to be updated
2. The app manifest and the app points to the old site
3. There is no SSL certificate for the new name

1 & 2 are easy solvable: Open the app in Visual Studio, change the app domain, upload it to the app store, trust it and re-add it to your sites. But if you open the new app – you will either redirect to http:// and have all you traffic sent over an encrypted connection – or you send it to https:// and will be greated by a security warning in your browser because there is no SSL certificate present for your new domain.

Free SSL certificate

In the past I heavily used free SSL certificates from StartCom because they were trusted in all browsers and were free for 1 year – but they lost trust in google chrome and firefox recently so that is no longer an option. Not using a ssl certificate is no option at all – business apps need security and trust – therefore I needed another option, preferably free so no long discussion with customers, CSRs and all that to request a certificate for your needs. I want easy.

Let’s encrypt for the rescue

There is a really great organization that provides free SSL certificates – Let’s Encrypt – and I use them for this blog with ease, too. So why not use them for my Azure websites? The let’s encrypt certificates only lasts 3 months and should be renewed automatically (way better than certificates that lasts 1 year and have to be renewed manually…) – so there should be some sort of integration right into the azure websites for that – and there is! Thanks to the awesome work of Simon J.K. Pedersen there is a Azure Website Extension for Let’s Encrypt.

The installation was really straightforward for me and is well documented here – I added the extension (choose the correct version for 32 or 64bit!), register a new service principal and give it contribute permissions – open the extension site https://.scm.azurewebsites.net/letsencrypt/ and enter all the required values:

Once you save it the magic happens – two webjobs will be registered that request a new certificate, register them and two weeks before expiry renew them automatically for you. Awesomesauce!

For the custom ssl certificate you need at least a basic app service plan.

Summary

So once you have done all that you will have a nice domain for your app – giving your users trust and easy to recall entry to your business application – and all that is free with zero maintenance. And all your browsers love it, too:

trusted in Google Chrome

trusted in IE11

So if you create a new app – register the domain first, follow the guide above and you are good to go – the secure way: customer happy, developer happy, security guy happy!

Hosted directly in the Microsoft headquarter in Munich (awesome office!) – with more than 400 attendees this will be fun!

1/4 of the agenda – right next to each session room.

My agenda and some brief notes are below – the full agenda and the list of awesome speakers is here.

#SPSMUC00: Keynote: SharePoint Futures – Field and Engineering Perspective – Aligned or Different?

with Eric Shupps(@eshupps) and Veza Juvonen (@vesajuvonen)

I was not in the same room as the two speakers because of room capacities – and I watched (better listened) to the keynote that has been broadcasted to two other rooms. It was a different experience for me because it was hard to follow some of the jokes without seeing what is going on the stage – but it was still fun

It almost felt like Veza and Eric did a good cop, bad cop theme what is good and bad about SharePoint and Office 365 as of now – there is lot to come, many internal changes of how things will be

#SPSMUC01: The key to a successful Office 365 implementation is adoption

by Jasper Osterveld(@jasoosterveld)

Adoption is key! Jasper gave some really great tips that will definitely be considered in my company for my customers! The room was quite packed, more than 75 people in the room – awesome!

Launch card, launch video and launch party: Well, that’s a cool starting point to promote the new technology, the options and possibilities – what sounds easy for all of us, might not be for some others. So be honest about what the new tech can do for you and be integrative.

Well, what could be worse of a great portal and nobody uses it, right? So I will keep lots of those tips and tricks in mind!

Office 365 adoption session – very fun to watch!

#SPSMUC03: Pushing the Boundaries – A Deep-Dive into Real-World SharePoint Add-In

by Eric Shupps(@eshupps)

Eric shared a lot of his experiences with apps – from expiring tokens, to expiring apps – and where can host your apps. All those options come with different possibilities (!!!) , but great overview to get started.

Apps on Azure

Provider Hosted Apps

You don’t control the costs

Well, that quote is perfectly describing the situation of many devs – I had a customer project that was stuck for months because nobody was able to create a Azure SQL database (4€/month!) because nobody was defined to provision and in the end pay for the database…

Eric showed a nice demo from Office PnP about throttling and REST – cool stuff, need to check it.

Another one: Think and play through the removal of your app – there are some missing pieces.

If you don’t wanna sleep at night – build your own provisioning engine!

Apparently there was no applause for that brilliant quote – but he is sooooooo right!

Cool stuff – great session – Eric can definitely talk faster than I can take notes

#SPSMUC22: SharePoint Patching demystified

by Stefan Goßner (@stefan_gossner)

Whops, I missed that one because I talk too much – hopefully I find his slides online to get demystified, too!

#SPSMUC13: Level up with PowerApps and Microsoft Flow

by Mikael Svenson (@mikaelsvenson)

PowerApps – I absolutely love what I am seeing. Responsive, fast, slick design – the future of business forms is bright. For Power Users it could be tricky tho build everything that Mikael showed us. Even tho Mikael made building cascading drop down look easy!

Autocomplete for the control bindings, every InfoPath dev or PowerUser would love that – but lets focus on the future, right?

PowerApps and Flow – Mikael in action!

Full house!

Rename all the controls!

I see a lot of interesting projects that will use that in the future – SharePoint as business platform sounds familiar, right? Mikael’s slides are already available here.

Good session, I had good fun!

#SPSMUC17: Implementing SharePoint hybrid search, start to finish

by Thomas Vochten (@ThomasVochten)

Search Search Search – I just cant get enough of it. I gave a similar talk in Brussels last year, but its of course totally interesting how Thomas presents that topic, whats important for him and then of course “steal” all the good parts

Thomas gave a very concise overview of the search architecture and the options – and then compared the functionality of the past with all we get by using hybrid search: unified index, ranking, refiners and unify everything from remote repositories to one index. Awesome! If you want to check all the tiny details, check this post.

Legacy outbound hybrid

eDiscovery and Compliance benefit of the hybrid search (cool) – and a big chapter about security especially security trimming.

And a neat display template to visualize that the search result sits onPrem – awesome!

And then there was a nice live demo of configuring hybrid search on stage – I crossed my fingers – and everything worked! Cool stuff.

Good session by Thomas – thanks!

Summary

Top session, top speakers, super professional and awesome organization, free community event and full house – how could you top that? Even the weather was perfect! I enjoyed all the sessions, learned a bit here and there – and had many good chats with old friends, new friends and vendors!

Kudos to Matthias Einig (@mattein) , the team of Rencore and all the awesome sponsors for making this happening!

And now, let’s SharePint!

a simple script to empty a SharePoint Online List

So here is an updated version of the script:

<# 
.TERMS 
No terms - use on your own risk! 
.SYNOPSIS 
This script efficiently empties are large list and is approximately 30 times faster than deleting item by item. 
You need to have the SharePoint Online SDK (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42038) installed to run this script. 
.PARAMETER weburl 
SharePoint Online web URL, for example 'https://contoso.sharepoint.com'. 
.PARAMETER listname 
Name of the list that should be emptied 
.Author Max Melcher (@maxmelcher) - more on my blog https://melcher.it 
#>

param([Parameter(Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipeline=$true)]$weburl,[Parameter(Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipeline=$true)]$listname, $username, $password)

function empty-list($weburl, $listname)
{
    $clientContext = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($webUrl)
	$credentials = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($username, $securePassword) 
	$clientContext.Credentials = $credentials 
	 
	if (!$clientContext.ServerObjectIsNull.Value) 
	{ 
		Write-Host "Connected to SharePoint Online web: '$webUrl'" -ForegroundColor Green 
	}

    try
    {
		#global counter
        $counter=0
 
        $spQuery = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.CamlQuery

        #create a simple batch. I received the best results with 500 items per batch. 
		#5000 is the maximum, but i received so many timeouts.
        $spQuery.ViewXml = "<QueryOptions><RowLimit>500</RowLimit></QueryOptions>"
        
		#track the performance
        $watch = [System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch]::StartNew()
		
		#get the list
		$list = $clientContext.Web.Lists.GetByTitle($listname);
        do
        {
			
            #get the current batch of items
            $items = $list.GetItems($spQuery);
            $clientContext.Load($items)

            #get a batch and delete the previous items in one go
            $clientContext.ExecuteQuery()

            $count = $items.Count
            Write-Host "...deleting $count items" -ForegroundColor Yellow

            while ($items.Count -gt 0)
            {
                $counter++
                $items[0].DeleteObject()
                
                if ($counter%500 -eq 0)
                {
                    Write-Progress -Activity "Empty List '$listname'" -status "Item $counter of $total marked for deletion"
                }
            }

			#iterate the collection
            $spQuery.ListItemCollectionPosition = $items.ListItemCollectionPosition
        } 
        while ($spQuery.ListItemCollectionPosition -ne $null)

        #delete the last batch
        $clientContext.ExecuteQuery()

		#stats
        $seconds = ($watch.ElapsedMilliseconds/1000)
        $secondsf = "{0:N0}" -f $seconds
        $ips = $counter / $seconds

        write-host -ForegroundColor Green "Done! deleted $counter items in $secondsf seconds. $ips items per second"
    }
    catch
    {
        Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red $_.Exception.ToString()
    }
}


# change to the path of your CSOM dlls and add their types
$csomPath = "c:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI"
Add-Type -Path "$csomPath\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll" 
Add-Type -Path "$csomPath\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll" 

if([String]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($username)) {
	$username = Read-host "What's your username?"
}

if([String]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($password)) {
	$securePassword = Read-host "What's your password?" -AsSecureString 
} else {
	$securePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString $password -AsPlainText -Force 
}

Empty-List -weburl $weburl -listname $listname -user $username -password $securePassword

Or download the script from here.

You can call the script with the following parameters:

.\empty-list.ps1 -weburl [WebUrl] -listname [Name of the list] -username [username] -password [password]

I tried it several times on my tenant (and I even created a script to create thousands of items): Once I got rid of all the timeouts I got a delete performance of 11,84 items per second. Not great, but still faster than the Quick Edit View, right?

Disclaimer

There is no way back – if you start the script there is no “ARE YOU SURE?” – all data is gone in a very short time.

SPSBE

Fun from the start at 9:00am until the official end of SPSBE (SharePoint Saturday Belgium) at around 19:30!
I apparently had to optimize my session on this Saturday (50 minutes slots instead of 60!), tests my demos and pimp my slides – so I could only attend one full session (Deep Dive building solutions on the SharePoint Framework by Waldek Mastykarz @waldekm), but there was enough time for me to talk to friends, community members, BIWUG board members and other speakers – good times, good fun.

Deep Dive building solutions on the SharePoint Framework by Waldek Mastykarz

Great venue, great speaker lineup – everything was great! I am leaving Belgium the second time – impressed!

Great venue!

Thanks again to all the sponsors who made the event possible!

Speakers & Sessions

300 attendees not only from Belgium. In general the conference covered all kind of different topics, but the main themes were Office 365 with topics like development, governance, adoption, best practices, workflows, search, apps and solutions. 24 sessions in 4 tracks – lots of stuff:

Developer
Get typing with TypeScript by David Opendries
Deep Dive building solutions on the SharePoint Framework by Waldek Mastykarz
Extend your Office 365 environment to cross-platform apps by Alexander Meijers
Introduction to SharePoint PnP by Bert Jansen
PowerApps for developers by Adis Jugo
Azure Active Directory for developers – from A to Z by Stéphane Eyskens

IT Pro
Long live On Premises, the reality of SharePoint in the Enterprise by Spencer Harbar
Preparing to Migrate from SharePoint (On-Prem) to Office 365 by Andy Talbot
Microsoft BI demystified : should we go for SharePoint 2016 BI or for PowerBI v2? by Serge Luca & Isabelle Van Campenhoudt
Exploring identity management options for Office 365 by Paul Hunt
The State of the SharePoint PowerShell Nation 2016 by Spencer Harbar
Hybrid Search – Everything you need to know! by Max Melcher

Business
The Secrets of Engaging Employees Through The Digital Workplace by Symon Garfield
The key to a successful Office 365 implementation: Adoption by Jasper Oosterveld
The challenges of implementing document management in Office 365 by Peter Baddeley
Microsoft Flow and Azure Logic Apps by Penny Coventry
Power Users Guide to Office 365 by Chirag Patel
Office 365 Video – How and Why? by Maarten Eekels

Mix
The SharePoint Development Story by Karine Bosch
Leverage the power of Groups! by Albert-Jan Schot
Extending Office Add-ins with Azure Container Service by Rick Van Rousselt
Analyze Your ULS Logs in the Cloud with Azure HDInsight by Edin Kapic
Set up your release pipeline for your Office/Office 365/SharePoint developments with Azure by Vincent Biret
From Design to a modern Style Guide – Branding Strategies for SharePoint and Add-ins by Stefan Bauer

SPSBE 2016 Schedule

Impressive schedule packed with insights and speakers from around the world.

My Session: Hybrid Search – Everything YOU need to know!

I had a really good time presenting my content about hybrid Search – and the demo gods were with me, all planned demoes worked like a charm – I uploaded my slides, but the cool stuff is in the demos and I can’t make them available: SPSBE 2016: HybridSearch

Hybrid Search session has begun with hybrid voices #spsbe but it was really interesting #sharepoint pic.twitter.com/oX44fKbFny

— Christophe Raucq (@ChristopheRaucq) October 15, 2016

At the very beginning of my session we had some sound issues, another microphone was connected to my room – but well, we all had some fun!

During and after the talk there were like 5 to 10 questions (Data Privacy and regulation, Encryption of the content, Bandwidth requirements, implementation strategy)- but only the first 4 got a free beer from me

Good questions gives you good beer!

For every good questions you could get a German beer! Participation was high

And I closed my session right in time for the closing SharePint and raffle!

@maxmelcher going to finish on time for the raffle #spsbe pic.twitter.com/pFRe5CZXps

— Andy Van Steenbergen (@meligo) October 15, 2016

Summary

I had a blast, once more! The SharePoint community in Belgium is really enlightening – thanks for  a great weekend!

See you latest next year Belgium!

Office 365 and SharePoint Online

I took that one from the official source because it pretty sums up whats coming:

The next wave of innovations to achieve the SharePoint vision (simple and powerful file sharing, mobile and intelligent intranet, open and connected platform, commitment to security, privacy and compliance) contains the following highlights:

1. A significant update to the OneDrive browser experience, so that you can find, access, share and collaborate on all your files in Office 365
2. OneDrive sync preview for SharePoint Online document libraries and folders shared with you
3. Team news to keep your team up to date and informed of what matters
4. People cards in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business that intelligently surface content and details from your colleagues’ profiles
5. New integration with Microsoft Flow, PowerApps and Yammer
6. Preview of the SharePoint mobile apps for Windows 10 Mobile and Android
7. Enhancements for developers including new sites and lists APIs in Microsoft Graph
8. New security controls including site classification and conditional access based on location and device
9. Feature Pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2016
10. Expanded FastTrack services and tools to support hybrid configurations and migration

And the Roadmap for Q4 2016 and H1 2017 – I really like the transparency:

Modern Pages / Modern Document Library / Refresh to Teamsites

I really recommend you to watch the entire session – some pretty good stuff in it:

In the next month we will see lots of updates to the modern document library experience, modern pages and updates to our beloved teamsites (about time!).

Every teamsite get a “News”, “Activity” and “Links” section. Tighter integration into mobile apps (right side)

And “modern pages” looks awesome, too. The promise here is that they will render on desktop, mobile browser and in the mobile apps – more on the apps late in this post.

People card

What I really liked is the new people card – more user-centric experience are always great. “Who is that person? What is he doing in the organization and what is he working on?” – cool!

SharePoint People Cards – a more user centric experience

Security & Compliance

As part of the Office news the following new security and compliance capabilities in Office 365:

• Improvements to Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
• Threat Intelligence
• Advanced Data Governance
• Updates to Advanced Security Management

And more insights with lots of graphs:

More insights what our users are actually doing!

App Launcher

The new version of the Office 365 App Launcher gives you access to these new features:

• Additional customization options
• search across all the services and applications
• A tabbed layout
• You can resize, pin and organize tiles
• Support for Office 365 themes

And in a not so distant future it will list your recent Office documents:

OneDrive for Business

Major updates to OneDrive for Business – as mentioned in this post, OneDrive caused a lot of service requests in the past – but it will massively improve with the coming updates!

• Ability to sync SharePoint Online document libraries and OneDrive folders shared with you (preview available here).
• An activity center has been added to the OneDrive sync client to allow you to view synchronization and file activity at a glance (preview).
• Notifications to your iOS or Android device when someone shares a OneDrive file with you.
• Access to SharePoint Online files in the OneDrive app on Android.
• Multi-page scan enhancements in the OneDrive app on Android.
• Ability to see over time how many people have discovered and viewed your files in OneDrive for iOS.
• Enhancements to integration with Office 2016 (First Release).
• Simple, flexible OneDrive user management in Office 365 (First Release).

SharePoint Online Sync Preview – finally you can sync the files from a teamsite

These new features are in the pipeline:

• Rich thumbnails and previews for over 20 new file types (rolling out before the end of 2016).
• Ability to access and edit all your files in OneDrive and SharePoint Online from the OneDrive browser client (rolling out before the end of 2016).
• Capability to download multiple files as a .zip file (rolling out before the end of 2016).
• Dedicated OneDrive administration console in Office 365 (rolling out before the end of 2016).

More of that in my “OneDrive for Business – key feature and roadmap” summary.

PowerApps & Flow

That’s what excited me the most – whats coming after InfoPath, lots of clients asked me about guidance here. And well, the answer could be PowerApps.

I attended 2 sessions to see whats coming for PowerApps and Flow – and I will soon play with it because there is so much demand in forms and simple workflows. Having the same functionality even in a mobile app will be awesome (try that with InfoPath…).

1. PowerApps works only if an internet connection is available
2. Its currently in preview
3. You can connect to data sources onPrem if you install a gateway service

Flow on the other side looks like the implementation of if this then that / IFTTT – simple workflows are possible here e.g. approval and all that stuff. The power of that come into play when you connect different tools with that (Salesforce, Twitter, Slack, SQL, etc).

Groups & Yammer

• Better integration of Yammer in Office 365 groups
• Uploading of files directly from SharePoint/OneDrive for Business sites, and edit them directly in the browser.
• Share content by mail with Yammer groups
• Manager Yammer within O365 admin center

Share files from SharePoint or OneDrive

More on that in the announcement blog post.

SharePoint Framework

Apparently I could not make it to any SharePoint Framework (SPFx) session at all – the conference was packed with so many good sessions that I had to make compromises. But lots of the Framework was already announced at May, 4th event.

My Analytics

Delve Analytics was renamed to MyAnalytics – the change of the name is already live in my tenant.

1. Pinning of important contacts so you can easily see if you are loosing touch with important peers
2. Share metrics with peers to get a review or opinion about your work habits
3. Adjust your priorities to get better results

More on that here: Create better work habits with MyAnalytics (formerly Delve Analytics)

SharePoint onPrem

Feature Pack 1 was announced and will available in November – and not in Q1 2017

• Logging of administrative actions performed in Central Administration and with Windows PowerShell
• Enhancements to MinRole to support small environments (see my post here for more details)
• A new OneDrive for Business user experience
• Custom tiles in the SharePoint app launcher
• Unified auditing across site collections on-premises and in Office 365
• Unified taxonomy across on-premises and Office 365
• OneDrive API 2.0

Q4 2016:

• Feedback driven updates to doclibs, lists, pages, sites and apps
• Team news
• Intelligent People Cards
• SharePoint mobile app WW Release (Android, Windows)
• Next generation sync of team sites
• Simple, fast site creation
• SharePoint Framework WW Release

First half of 2017:

• Feedback driven updates to doclibs, lists, pages, sites and apps
• More web parts
• Publishing Sites
• More Flow and PowerApps integration
• SharePoint Add-in improvements
• Modern team site extensibility
• Performance-focused CDN integration with publishing sites

SharePoint Mobile Apps

The mobile apps got a lot of love recently – and lots is on the roadmap for them. The “intranet in your pocket” with native apps on every platform is a great driver for user adoption.

SharePoint Mobile Apps Roadmap

More details in my summary post Explore whats new and whats coming with the SharePoint Apps

Spirit

SharePoint is alive! It was a blast to see how much attention (and love) SharePoint got at the Ignite 2016 – that hasn’t been always the case. The following PowerBI analyzed the hashtags on twitter during the Ignite – #SharePoint clearly ruled. I doubt that it’s because SharePoint people tweet more – the many announcements and huge amount of sessions must be the cause for that:

Microsoft Ignite 2016 delivered so many promising updates to current and planned developments nobody could doubt that SharePoint has a bright future! SharePoint ain’t dead!
If you want to see more about the general roadmap, visit https://fasttrack.microsoft.com/roadmap for more insights.

If you have questions about Ignite 2016, please let me know in the comments. If wrote about every session I attended at Ignite 2016, please see the archives if you want more details.

Learn how SharePoint is introducing change faster than ever before, while still being extra sensitive to customer readiness and customer feedback. We are heavily investing in our technology to enable organizations to control and prepare for the changes in the experience. Come learn your role in this cloud evolution and what resources we provide to make you successful.

Here are my notes:

Changes to SharePoint Online

Massive updates and new feature have been rolled out to SharePoint Online this year, most changes to the product ever. The list since last ignite is really huge and they come in ripples instead of waves (as for onPrem).

And once they make it out of the lab, it will be tested in multiple stages before it arrives at the first customer (first release ring):

Interesting to see how they roll out updates and implemented “kill switches” – and all that with PowerShell.

Another thing is this slide  -its from a PowerBI dashboard were Microsoft monitors service requests and can react to early feedback:

It looks like more than 40% of all service requests in the first releease ring are because of OneDrive for Business…!!!

Modern UI Philosophy

Change fast and early. Lincoln explained that the goal of the modern UI is to optimize the experience for all customers with the new UI while still having the classic experience available.

The modern document library was rolled out and Microsoft learned a lot.

We got mixed feedback on this (Lincoln)

Oh yes, I can imagine…

Since initial roll out (6th April) there have been rolled out there was a massive wave of feedback.

Things that they wont do anymore:

1. Massive change without upfront notification
2. Roll out to all of the first release customers in one batch
3. Putting a big banner to show everybody that there is a change

Update awareness

The following describes what we should do be up to date and be ahead of the frequent changes :

Provide feedback

Uservoice and the feedback options in the message center are the places to provide feedback.

Questions from the audience

Q: How can we get notified once a feature arrives on my tenant? A: Currently not possible, investigation how to implement a kind of “tenant changelog” are running.

Q: How will breaking changes be announced ahead and how much time will we have to adjust? A: The intention is to give you months if not years to adjust.

Summary

Interesting facts and insights in this very last Ignite 2016 session – keep the updates coming, embrace the change!

Go watch the recording once its available!

No-code and low-code applications have been essential tools in Microsoft SharePoint for a long time, but we’ve added many other new tools to your palette. We review the roadmap and best practices for InfoPath, SharePoint Designer, Access Web Apps, Flow, PowerApps and more.

Start with a demo!

Always good to start with a demo – in this case Kerem started with a “vacation request” application that I have seen a couple of time in my career, too – but this time with PowerApps on a cell phone.

So we saw Corporate Design with a Logo and style, date pickers, text fields, a calculated field that shows the amount of days between the selected days – once submitted the status field (no visible from the edit form) was set and submitted to a SharePoint list. So that one triggered a Microsoft Flow to send out a simple approval mail to approve/reject the request.

Basic stuff – but a very promising start of this session!

Microsoft Forms

EDU only, no integration to SharePoint, no designer.

PowerApps

Connect to onPrem data via a bridge that relays your requests. In that way you can access and store data to SharePoint 2013/2016 onPrem.

Flow

Interact with tons of services from Twitter, SalesForce, SharePoint or simple stuff like sending emails. Dozens of templates are already available:

PowerApps Designer

The designer is a browser based (Chrome shown) to create forms.

When the PowerApp designer is started, 3 views aka screens (Browse, Edit, Details) will be created with all the fields that are existing. As of now you cannot create new fields because the SharePoint list is the master. Drag and Drop of controls, realignment – everything is there.

Search Control: You can bind a complex expression to it similar to what is possible in Excel. Here a filter condition was shown to only return items of the current user. There is an autocomplete feature for the expressions.

Controls: We saw textboxes, calendars with binding to different datasources.

Expressions & Binding: That looks powerful. You can even combine expressions like “open new form, then go to a view”.

Conditional formatting: Done with expressions

External validation & logic: Currently Azure Functions or webservices are possible. NO CODE-BEHIND and thats AWESOME.

Flow Designer

After setting up the form, Kerem added a simple workflow.

There are auto completes available if the action needs inputs e.g. from the submitted list item.

Connections: Interesting concept to link to onPrem environments through gateways. Need to fiddle with that.

Pricing & Licensing

Roadmap

More controls for images and attachments – multi-value fields

Flow integration for OneDrive and Document libraries

adhoc start for selected items

Embedding of PowerApps in new SharePoint pages

GA date is not yet available:

Further notes

Because I attended a theater session about that and crawled through the expo, I asked the experts addtional questions:

Multi Language support: is on the roadmap, implementation details were not exposed but it sounded almost like resource files.

Repeating fields: is on the roadmap. Apparently my question how the repeating data is stored in the list was not answered.

Summary

The expectations for the business applications on top of SharePoint are highest! The business productivity part of SharePoint is what made the platform so great and we need to see a modern solution for forms, requests and all the business needs.

This session was a great start that gave me confidence that PowerApps could be a great successor for Infopath – and luckily they do not try to seek feature parity with Infopath!

Cool stuff, watch the session once its online!