Two Vantage Points(11/28/2017)-I just returned to Microsoft after a six-year adventure at a startup, BlueMetal. It was a great experience, but I was ready for a change, and I was fortunate to secure a great position as a Partner Technology Architect in Microsoft’s new One Commercial Partner (OCP) organization. I’m thrilled! Now that I’m back, I’m able … Continue reading Two Vantage Points
Office Developer Bootcamp Sponsors on Board(10/10/2017)-Some readers may already know that Scot Hillier and I are presenting an Office Developer Bootcamp focused on the SharePoint Framework on Friday, October 27, 2017 at the Microsoft office in Burlington MA. This is a great opportunity to learn SharePoint Framework development, including related technologies, Typescript, WebPack, and React. There are still openings, and … Continue reading Office Developer Bootcamp Sponsors on Board
New Release of Widget Wrangler(1/31/2017)-When you’re writing a widget in Angular 1.x, it’s possible to pass configuration information into the widget using the ng-init directive, as shown in this example. (Angular 2 isn’t ready for widgets yet since there’s no way to put multiple copies on the page; Microsoft is working with Google on a fix. Here’s a sample.) … Continue reading New Release of Widget Wrangler
Roadmap to the Future of SharePoint(5/7/2016)-(cross-posted to the BlueMetal Blog) This week Microsoft mapped out a bold new plan for SharePoint. Microsoft is investing heavily to modernize the product to make it work as well in the Device and Cloud era as it once did in when the Web was still shiny and new. This article will explain how these … Continue reading Roadmap to the Future of SharePoint
Learning TypeScript: A Code Camp Adventure(4/4/2016)-Last weekend I had the pleasure of presenting a couple sessions on TypeScript at Boston Code Camp 25, one on my own and one with my good friend and colleague, Bob Goodearl. We’ve just posted the materials, which may be useful beyond the presentation. TypeScript 101 This session covers the basics of the language. I tried … Continue reading Learning TypeScript: A Code Camp Adventure
A Brand New Vantage Point(1/30/2015)-Welcome – you have arrived at my new blog! After nearly a decade blogging at MSDN, it’s time for me to strike out on my own. Microsoft was really nice to let me keep blogging after I left their employ to work at BlueMetal Architects, and Chris Bortlik was good enough to sponsor me (thanks Chris!) But … Continue reading A Brand New Vantage Point
Architecture
Branding SharePoint: The New Normal(9/4/2018)-Modern SharePoint is catching on, and sites are looking better than ever right out of the box. With mobile-ready pages and easier editing, customers and partners are starting to ask for it. And as SharePoint 2019 brings the modern experience on premises, the demand is likely to grow even more. Yet even as sites look … Continue reading Branding SharePoint: The New Normal
Teams and SharePoint: Better Together(5/14/2018)-Collaboration Silos Traditionally, our collaboration tools have been divided into silos based on the mode of communication. In the Microsoft space, we’ve used Outlook and Exchange for persistent messaging, Skype for Business for real-time communication, and SharePoint to provide a place to share documents and other information. These tools work together to provide for our … Continue reading Teams and SharePoint: Better Together
Roadmap to the Future of SharePoint(5/7/2016)-(cross-posted to the BlueMetal Blog) This week Microsoft mapped out a bold new plan for SharePoint. Microsoft is investing heavily to modernize the product to make it work as well in the Device and Cloud era as it once did in when the Web was still shiny and new. This article will explain how these … Continue reading Roadmap to the Future of SharePoint
SharePoint As a Service(7/2/2015)-NOTE: For more on this topic, please check out this episode of the Office 365 Developer Podcast where I discuss these topics with Microsoft’s Jeremy Take; it was a great discussion! For many years, Microsoft and others in the SharePoint community promoted SharePoint as a Platform. The idea was to develop business applications within SharePoint … Continue reading SharePoint As a Service
Branding SharePoint: The New Normal(9/4/2018)-Modern SharePoint is catching on, and sites are looking better than ever right out of the box. With mobile-ready pages and easier editing, customers and partners are starting to ask for it. And as SharePoint 2019 brings the modern experience on premises, the demand is likely to grow even more. Yet even as sites look … Continue reading Branding SharePoint: The New Normal
Building Compliant Team Sites(9/24/2017)-This is a companion article to my talk at Microsoft Ignite 2017, Building Compliant Team Sites. It contains details and links to resources that can help you put the ideas from the talk into action.
ALM for Widget Solutions(11/11/2016)-Colleague and fellow SharePoint developer Brian McCullough asked a great question on Twitter: This is such an important topic I thought it was worth more than a 140-character reply; hence this article. Whole books have been written on Application Lifecycle Management,and there are many facets beyond simple software deployment, but this article will focus on the baseline … Continue reading ALM for Widget Solutions
The Well-Tempered AngularJS Web Part(3/21/2015)-Listen while reading … The mathematics of music isn’t as simple as you might think, and early musical instruments often didn’t get it right. Keyboard instruments were especially susceptible to this. On a particular organ, for example, the fifth interval in the key of C might sound harmonious, but the fifth above Ab might be sour … Continue reading The Well-Tempered AngularJS Web Part
Vantage Point Puzzler: Drive Synchronicity(10/25/2016)-Here’s a little puzzler based on a personal experience I had a recently. I had finally outgrown my backup drives, so I purchased two identical new ones online. When they arrived, I set about backing up my home server to both drives. I use Beyond Compare to make backups; while this is a wonderful file synchronization … Continue reading Vantage Point Puzzler: Drive Synchronicity
Idempotent Site Scripts for SharePoint(3/7/2019)-Image by geralt on Pixabay As you probably are aware, SharePoint site scripts are used to set up content and settings in SharePoint sites. They’re applied using site designs, which allow the same script to be reused with different names and permissions. Site designs can be applied when a site is created, when it’s added to … Continue reading Idempotent Site Scripts for SharePoint
HTML Templates and CSS in SharePoint Framework Apps(12/12/2016)-“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of template files, cascading styles, And bundles made of strings, And why SharePoint is boiling hot, And whether pigs have wings.” Like many SharePoint developers of late, I’ve been exploring the SharePoint Framework (SPFx), doing experiments, and porting code over to the new web … Continue reading HTML Templates and CSS in SharePoint Framework Apps
Understanding Javascript Promises(3/16/2015)-I have to admit I found the concept of Promises difficult to grasp at first; once I understood, I’ve been looking for a good way to explain it to others. This article is my attempt to make Promises easy to understand through a simple metaphor. Imagine you’ve entered a crowded restaurant. You force your way … Continue reading Understanding Javascript Promises
How to: Display the name of the Windows user logged into your ASP.NET Site(2/5/2015)-This is really pretty simple but I was surprised not to find it in any one blog posting. It's easy to display the Application Pool account rather than the logged in user. Some articles said to turn on Impersonation, but that's often a bad idea for other reasons. This is what worked for me just now.
