Sharepoint on Baywet's blog

Counting Down to ESPC20 Online

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 14:00:00 +0000

The countdown is on to ESPC20 Online – only 7 weeks to go!

ESPC20 Online is a new virtual conference offering you affordable, world-class Microsoft 365 learning at your fingertips, from wherever you are in the world. Tune in live Oct 14th & 15th or catch up on-demand across 100+ sessions from SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure experts.

Join me for my ESPC20 Online session: Build Responsive Applications at Scale using Microsoft Graph Change Notifications with Resource Data

Speaking at the European SharePoint Conference 2019 - SPFx & DevOps

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 18:14:00 +0000

The ESPC is one of the biggest technology events in Europe and the biggest with focus on Office 365, SharePoint and Azure.

An interesting particularity of this event, they move to a different European capital each year.

This years edition will be from December 2nd to 5th in Prague and I’m honored to be invited to speak again.

I’ll be presenting two sessions:

How to do DevOps with the SharePoint Framework and why it matters? This session will be an introduction to DevOps practices and an application of the core principles in a SharePoint Framework context.

SharePoint Framework and DevOps Practices: New Documentation, New Samples

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 15:00:00 +0000

TL; DR;

With the release of Azure DevOps, there’s some new SPFX documentation to set up your CI/CD pipeline in Azure DevOps. Have a look and share your thoughts. Your feedback is always welcome! The Patterns and Practices Initiative also includes a newly reorganized DevOps repository for tools and samples around SharePoint Framework Build and Deploy Practices.

The long story

My journey into the SharePoint DevOps world

I have been working around Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD) and DevOps practices in the SharePoint/Azure/Office 365 ecosystem for several years. In my experience, whether you’re working alone or as part of a team, adopting proper ALM practices is crucial if you want to produce high quality code.

Speaking at Granite State SharePoint Users Group

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 09:00:00 +0000

On January the 3rd I’ve been invited to speak (virtually) at the Granite State SharePoint Users group. I’ll be presenting the session “The Microsoft Graph and the SharePoint Framework on steroids with Azure Functions”.

This session will demonstrate how you can tap into a wealth of data and insights from the Microsoft Graph, interact with the user using the SharePoint Framework and extend components with complex line of business logic leveraging serverless Azure Functions.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New England 2018

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 05:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS New England.

I’ll give a speech about “Improving DevOps using Microsoft’s Business Productivity Tools and more” and I’ll be co-presenting the session with my friend Haniel Croitoru.

We’ll explore together how DevOps practices impact and improve solutions delivery for your customers and for the best. With real life scenarios and experience for the field we’ll show you how you can get started and what to expect out of it.

Speaking at the European SharePoint Conference 2018 and free discount for you!

Sun, 26 Aug 2018 08:00:00 +0000

I am delighted to announce I have been selected to speak at the European SharePoint Conference 2018. This event will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark from the 26th to the 29th of November.

I will be speaking about “Migrate your custom components to the SharePoint Framework”.

“It’s the 3rd model Microsoft has come with to customize SharePoint in less than 5 years. You may still have add-ins/apps or even solutions running in production and you’re asking yourself what to do about all that?

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Pittsburgh 2018

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 05:00:00 +0000

I Have the pleasure to announce I have been selected to speak at SPS Pittsburgh 2018.

I’ll give a speech about the graph “How to do Dev-Ops with the SharePoint Framework and why it matters”.

Together we’ll see why it’s important to follow the DevOps processes, methodologies, and philosophy and how to implement it for the SharePoint Framework with Visual Studio Team Services (or TFS). Go from the original idea to production automating as much as possible!

Speaking at SharePoint Fest Seattle 2018

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 08:00:00 +0000

SharePoint Fest Seattle 2018 is happening from August 20th to 24th. This event will feature 2 days pre-conference workshops and 3 days of conference. You can find more information about it on the website. I’ve been selected amongst 74 other speakers (including people from Microsoft product teams!!) to present this year two sessions:

AZR203 - Azure Functions In The Real World: Lessons Learned & Best Practices

“Azure Functions is one of the most powerful new solutions provided by Microsoft. Customers are leveraging it, and it has generally been available for a year now quietly delivering value across hundreds of projects. Many of you are probably asking yourself questions like “are functions mature enough?” or “are they production ready?” or even “is the right tooling here yet?” when considering this option for your projects.”

Not Office Servers and Services MVP anymore, becoming Office development MVP

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 08:00:00 +0000

Renewed as MVP and changed category

I have the pleasure to announce I’ve been renewed as a Microsoft MVP, for the fifth year in a row (time flies, I’m getting old). A slight change this time, my award is Office development.

Over the years I’ve been a SharePoint MVP, an Office Servers and Services MVP and now an Office development MVP.

Originally Microsoft had it’s MVPs organized by products, which made a lot of sense in a on premises world which required a deep knowledge in something very specific. Also, it allowed MVP’s to be connected directly with the teams at Microsoft on their product. However, over the last decade the industry transitioned to a cloud first model and somebody who was working with SharePoint (or Exchange, Skype…) is most likely to be working with Office 365 at large (and some Azure as well). A couple of years ago (3?) Microsoft decided to reorganize the MVP program to have award categories (Azure, Office servers and services, Visual Studio and Team Services…) which regroup contribution areas (e.g. OSS: SharePoint, Exchange, Office 365, …)

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New York City 2018

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 08:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS NYC.

I’ll give a speech about “Migrate your custom components to the SharePoint Framework”.

Together we will see how you can transition from either the server-side object model or the add-ins development fashions to the modern SharePoint Framework approach. This session is mostly meant for developers and technical architects who are curious about getting started on the new model and that might have legacy applications.

Less than three weeks before the #SPSMontreal 2018!

Wed, 16 May 2018 08:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the privilege to be part of the organizing committee for SharePoint Saturday Montréal 2018 taking place June the 2nd at Cégep du vieux Montréal.

It’s free, it’s the occasion to learn a lot, not only about SharePoint but also about Office 365 and Azure.

This year in a few numbers:

25 sessions (in English and French)
1 Keynote by the Great Serge Tremblay
16 Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional)
1 MSP (Microsoft Student Partner)
5 MCT (Microsoft Certified Trainers)
9 partners
200 attendees (planned)

Besides the content, it’s also the occasion to develop your network, eat some Schwartz (smoked meat) and “SharePint” (Share a pint) !

Internet Explorer compatibility mode is changing on SharePoint Online

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 08:00:00 +0000

The history being this situation….

Internet Explorer has been a corporate browser for two decades now. And many of us remember the dark ages of web development when we needed to have “IE compatible code” and “web compatible code”.

As many companies invested deeply in the browser building portals that worked with specific versions, Microsoft provided a decade ago a compatibility mode, allowing the browser to “behave” like a former version of itself and stay compatible with websites that had not been updated.

New SharePoint Framework PnP Samples available: using the Skype UCWA Web SDK to subscribe to people’s status

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 09:00:00 +0000

TL;DR;

I added two new SharePoint framework WebParts PnP sample to demonstrate how to use the Unified Communications Web API JavaScript SDK from Skype for business. This SDK allows you to do things like subscribe to a person status, start instant messaging conversations, calls…

To get a look:

The plain JS sample
The reactJS + Office UI Fabric React sample(persona card)

Long version

I recently had the occasion to make my first contribution to PnP (besides creating issues and helping investigate those). In these two new samples I show you how to you how to leverage the Skype UCWA SDK to subscribe and display people skype status.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Detroit 2017

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 17:26:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS Detroit.

I’ll give a speech about “Improving DevOps using Microsoft’s Business Productivity Tools and more” and I’ll be co-presenting the session with my friend Haniel Croitoru.

Using PnP PowerShell on Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) Hosted Agent

Mon, 09 Oct 2017 06:00:00 +0000

Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) provides great Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) functionalities you can leverage to implement DevOps pipelines and automation with your custom developments.

If your custom solutions rely on PnP PowerShell during their build and/or deployment processes, you will need PnP PowerShell to be installed on the agent. Unfortunately the Hosted Agents do not have PnP PowerShell installed by default. Note: that documentation only applies to the Hosted and Hosted 2017 agents, the Linux Hosted Agent is not supported at the moment

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Brussels 2017

Thu, 13 Jul 2017 08:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS Brussels.

I’ll give a speech about the Azure functions and Microsoft flow “Introduction to Azure Functions and Flow”. Flow and Azure Functions are two new tools you now have for rapid applications development. It’s a revolution that changes the way of building and delivering modern applications. Instead of shipping a monolithic bloc, which can take up to a few months, we’ll now deliver each feature as a part of the solution.

Re-awarded Microsoft MVP for year 2017 2018

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 08:00:00 +0000

You may not know it but Microsoft has changed the organization of the MVP program during these last few years. They used to nominate new MVP’s every 3 months and renew people every year on anniversary date. One of the changes the brought to the program is around the renew and nomination cycles. New MVP’s are awarded every month and existing ones are renewed all together every year in July. I used to be an “April MVP” and I was used to blogging about my renewal in April. I’m pleased to announce I’ve been renewed MVP for year 2017-2018 on the Office Servers and Services category. Let’s go for another year :)

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New York City 2017

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 08:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS NYC. I’ll give a speech about the SharePoint Framework and devops methodologies “Is it possible to do devops with the SharePoint framework?”. You had it all right with solutions and add-ins. Your release pipeline was set up. Do new technologies and methodologies mean starting over? Don’t panic I’m here to help! Together we’ll see how to set up a devops pipeline for SPFX developments with:

SharePoint Framework in my own words

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 17:30:00 +0000

If you’re following the SharePoint community, you’ve probably heard of the “SharePoint framework in his own words” video series. https://www.voitanos.io/ is behind that initiative

( @andrewconnell founded voitanos recently)

The idea is to get the thoughts from the community and people who have been around the SharePoint development for a few years. If you don’t know that series I’d encourage you to check it out and I also hope that the product team behind the framework is listening the that super valuable feedback.

Update to _spPageContextInfo type definitions - new properties available

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 07:07:00 +0000

If you’re building modern SharePoint components (Framework or not), there’s a high chance you’re using TypeScript.

In that case you’re probably using @types/SharePoint to provide auto-completion as well as some level of understanding for the compiler of what’s going on.

There’s one object in particular that SharePoint hydrates for us to give some understanding of where the user is and what he/she is doing: _spPageContextInfo.

A lot of properties were missing in those type definitions, old stuff like the web Id but also new things coming from SharePoint Online like canUserCreateMicrosoftForm.

Customizing page layouts, master pages and image renditions in SharePoint Online

Tue, 23 May 2017 14:00:00 +0000

Microsoft recently made changes around look and feel customizations for SharePoint Online.

If you create a new site collection and try to edit page layouts, master pages or even image renditions, there’s a high chance you’ll get an access denied error message. That even if you’re site collection administrator.

Investigating further and checking your permissions on the master page gallery library, you will notice that every and each user has a “deny” permission for “Add and Customize Pages”. That permission level is not one of the originals we’re used to in SharePoint.

Speaking at Techorama Belgium 2017

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 14:00:00 +0000

Techorama is a 2-day event that takes place in Antwerp, Belgium from May 22nd to May 24th.

They lined up great speakers from Microsoft and other big industry players, checkout the agenda here https://techorama.be/agenda/

I have the pleasure to announce I’ve been selected and I’ll be giving two sessions:

Set up your DevOps process for SharePoint/Office365
Migrate your custom components to the SharePoint framework

Tickets are still available so if you are in the area or can travel there I would strongly suggest you check-it out! https://techorama.be/tickets/

Publishing SharePoint Image renditions with PnP Provisioning

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 14:00:00 +0000

A couple of days ago, I had to work again with Image Renditions in SharePoint. We’re developing a intranet for one of our customer and that solution partially relies on publishing features.

Just as a reminder, image renditions were introduced back in 2013 to help you serve the most optimized version of an image without having the information workers caring about sizes and whatnot or without you having to resize images with code.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Vancouver 2017

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 14:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS Vancouver.

I’ll give a speech about the SharePoint Framework and devops methodologies “Is it possible to do devops with the SharePoint framework?”.

You had it all right with solutions and add-ins. Your release pipeline was set up. Do new technologies and methodologies mean starting over?

Don’t panic I’m here to help! Together we’ll see how to set up a devops pipeline for SPFX developments with:

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Calgary 2017

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 16:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS Calgary.

I’ll give a speech about the Azure functions and Microsoft flow “Introduction to Azure Functions and Flow”.

Flow and Azure Functions are two new tools you now have for rapid applications development. It’s a revolution that changes the way of building and delivering modern applications. Instead of shipping a monolithic bloc, which can take up to a few months, we’ll now deliver each feature as a part of the solution.

Speaking at Aos Tours Ottawa and Toronto

Fri, 06 Jan 2017 14:00:00 +0000

I’ll have the privilege to speak at next AOS (Azure, Office 365, SharePoint) in Ottawa (8th) and Toronto (10th).

I’ll present in English: Introduction to Azure Functions and Flow

Troubleshooting load balancing issues with SharePoint

Tue, 13 Dec 2016 14:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I’ve had to get hands on a customer’s SharePoint farm showing performance problems. They also had inconsistencies with display data between multiple calls.

I quickly suspected a configuration issue for the load balancer dispatching calls between the front-end servers. However, I only had access to the SharePoint farm and I had to provide data so the network team so they could start investigating.

Hence the question: how can we determine which server served the request between multiple calls?

Old English posts migrated to this blog

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 14:00:00 +0000

Everything is in the title. My French blog has been running for more than six years now (gee, I’m getting old).

From 2013 to 2014, before I decided to open an English dedicated blog, I was posting every blog entry in English and in French.

Over time it got messy for both communities so I decided to open this blog. But I couldn’t move the old content to this new blog without having to spend hours doing so.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Brussels 2016

Thu, 22 Sep 2016 14:00:00 +0000

This year I have the privilege to speak at SPS Brussels

I’ll give a speech about “setting up your release pipeline for office 365/SharePoint”. (aka devops)

We’ll see together how you can leverage azure and visual studio team services to implement devops processes and increase quality and save time.

If you’re in the area on Oct the 15th don’t hesitate to register to the event. Just as a reminder SPS are free events organized by the community with lot of great sessions. This is a good occasion to expand your network, learn a lot of things and to spend a good day.

SystemUpdate method available in CSOM at last!!!

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 14:00:00 +0000

That’s good news for SharePoint developers, the SystemUpdate method is finally available in Client Side Object Model.

Indeed, Microsoft has recently released an update for nugget packages and the method is part of the new stuff.

https://dev.office.com/blogs/new-sharepoint-csom-version-released-for-Office-365-august-2016-updated

It’s an important method because it allows you to update a list item without changing modification date, author, publishing and versioning information.

Moreover, we’re numerous SharePoint developers migrating a lot of full trust solutions to SharePoint Add-ins, some of which were using this method and in some cases we have only an app-only context. Usage of this method instead of the regular update method will avoid having documents last updated by “SharePoint App”.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Oslo 2016

Thu, 15 Sep 2016 14:00:00 +0000

This year I have the privilege to speak at SPS Oslo

I’ll give a speech about “setting up your release pipeline for office 365/SharePoint”. (aka devops)

We’ll see together how you can leverage azure and visual studio team services to implement devops processes and increase quality and save time.

If you’re in the area on Oct the 22nd don’t hesitate to register to the event. Just as a reminder SPS are free events organized by the community with lot of great sessions. This is a good occasion to expand your network, learn a lot of things and to spend a good day.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Detroit 2016

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 14:00:00 +0000

This year I have the privilege to speak at SPS Detroit

I’ll give a speech about “setting up your release pipeline for office 365/SharePoint”. (aka devops)

We’ll see together how you can leverage azure and visual studio team services to implement devops processes and increase quality and save time.

If you’re in the area On Sept the 10th don’t hesitate to register to the event. Just as a reminder SPS are free events organized by the community with lot of great sessions. This is a good occasion to expand your network, learn a lot of things and to spend a good day.

Determine whether or not a SharePoint library is running with the new experience

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:00:00 +0000

Microsoft just released the new experience for SharePoint libraries and I know a lot of you built custom look and feel and/or components on top of the library ui. (I’m thinking in particular about ScriptLink actions)

You might be in a situation where the code you need to run will be different depending on the experience being used.

After a little bit of research, here is an example of solution.

Building SharePoint 2016 WSP/FTC projects

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 14:00:00 +0000

WIth the release of SharePoint 2016 and the new MinRole feature, a lot of you would like to test migration of their custom solutions (Full Trust Code)

In order to do so, you need a 2016 dev machine (vs 2015 up to date with the latest version of the office sdk) and to install on top of that the office sdk preview 2.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=51683&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Then you only need to update references and targeted versions.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Calgary 2016

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 14:00:00 +0000

This year I have the privilege to speak at SPS Calgary (first time!!). I’ll give a speech about “Make Graph data useful for your company”.

We’ll see how we can leverage the new Microsoft Graph API and Machine Learning tools to build “clever” applications for our business.

If you’re in the area Saturday April the 23rd 2016 don’t hesitate to register to the event. Just as a reminder SPS are free events organized by the community with lot of great sessions. This is a good occasion to expand your network, learn a lot of things and to spend a good day.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Montréal 2016

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 15:36:54 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS Montréal

I also had the occasion to help organize the event this year, it’s been an interesting experience so far and I’d like to thank Serge, Nico, Luc, Seb and Fabrice for their implication in that project, it’s much more work than what we think!

This time I’ll talk about setting up your release pipeline for SharePoint/Office 365 developments in Visual Studio Online (Team Foundation Services). (In French)

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Vancouver 2016

Wed, 10 Feb 2016 14:00:00 +0000

This year I have the privilege to speak at SPS Vancouver (first time!!). I’ll give a speech about the importance of metadata in your company (therefore in SharePoint/Office 365)

If you’re in the area Saturday March the 12th 2016 don’t hesitate to register to the event. Just as a reminder SPS are free events organized by the community with lot of great sessions. This is a good occasion to expand your network, learn a lot of things and to spend a good day.

Automatically increment SharePoint feature version number during build with build 2015

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 14:00:00 +0000

A few months ago Microsoft released a new automated build system with visual studio online /tfs 2015.

This new mechanism is way more open than previous XAML builds, tasks based and easier to customize.

One of the available tasks allows you to run a powershell script.

Let’s say that for one reason you want to increment automatically the version number of your SharePoint features when building.

If you have a quick look at the “.feature” file you’ll notice that the version attribute looks like a serialized object (instead of simply being the version number), this is way more complicated than simply parsing a XML file.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Ottawa 2015

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 14:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS Ottawa. I’ll give a speech about the ALM capabilities for SharePoint/Office365 in Azure “Setting up your release pipeline for SharePoint in Azure”.

If you’re in the area Saturday November the 21st 2015 don’t hesitate to register to the event. Just as a reminder SPS are free events organized by the community with lot of great sessions. This is a good occasion to expand your network, learn a lot of things and to spend a good day.

Disabling SharePoint’s SEO features

Tue, 03 Nov 2015 14:00:00 +0000

I recently had a customer who wanted to disable SharePoint’s native SEO capabilities (Search Engine Optimization) including:

Sitemap generation
Canonical url generation
Metadata generation on pages
Explicit titles generation
Etc

The main reason was he had very specific needs and wanted to implement his own custom SEO features.

The thing is that feature is hidden and enabled by default for any publishing site.

The simplest way to disable it then is using powershell, here is the command in case anyone else needs it.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire 2015

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 14:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS New Hampshire. I’ll give a speech about the multilingualism capabilities of SharePoint “Translating SharePoint from beginning to ending”.

We’ll talk about how you can successfully implement an multilingual intranet, team sites or public sites using SharePoint.

If you’re in the area Saturday October the 24th 2015 don’t hesitate to register to the event. Just as a reminder SPS are free events organized by the community with lot of great sessions. This is a good occasion to expand your network, learn a lot of things and to spend a good day.

Programmatically add permissions to “everyone” in SharePoint Online

Wed, 07 Oct 2015 14:00:00 +0000

At some point you may want to add permissions to the “everyone” “groupe” of SharePoint.

Indeed this will allow you to set permissions to all users already having access to this site (because they are already members of other groups or already have permissions). This “group” is different of “NT AUTHORITY\authenticated users » which represents successfully identified users (bigger group).

The only thing is that “group” is in fact a user, so it’s helpless to iterate on every group of the site collection hoping to find it. It’s in fact a special user. To find it just use it’s login: “c:0(.s|true”

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Toronto 2015

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 14:00:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS Toronto. I’ll give a speech about the graph “Making Graph data useful to your company”.

We’ll talk about the Graph, delve, yammer, machine learning and a lot of other interesting concepts and the conversation will be aimed towards developers.

If you’re in the area Saturday September the 19th 2015 don’t hesitate to register to the event. Just as a reminder SPS are free events organized by the community with lot of great sessions. This is a good occasion to expand your network, learn a lot of things and to spend a good day.

unable to find version '3.1.2' of package 'appforsharepointonlinewebtoolkit'

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 14:00:00 +0000

With office development tools for visual studio 2015 (and probably with august 2015 update for vs 2013 too, but I haven’t tried it), you may run into the following error:

unable to find version ‘3.1.2’ of package ‘appforsharepointonlinewebtoolkit’

And so while doing an “update-package” in nuget console or if you have a restore packages step in your build process. (mandatory if like me you don’t include the packages folder into source control).

Speaker at Collab365

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 14:00:00 +0000

I’ve been greatly honored being selected to be speaker at collab 365.

This event directly comes from the sp24 with the spbiz which happened a few months from now. It’s a free online event which will take place on October the 8th during 24 hours all around the globe.

Adding to the fact I’ll be speaking at this event among other great speakers, I also have the great privilege to give 4 sessions (oh yeah!).

Provisioning custom services for SharePoint

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 03:24:37 +0000

This article is targeting SharePoint full trust developers who have (will) developed a custom service (SPService) for SharePoint.

Indeed, if you are building a product for SharePoint like we’re doing at Negotium (www.oceanik.com www.theattributesolution.com ) you probably built a custom service application within your solution.

If that’s the case your custom service application probably relies on a dedicated custom SharePoint service to run its code (it can be a service within IIS or a windows service).

Shared dependencies resolution and SharePoint full trust development

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 20:03:42 +0000

Hi everybody,

At Negotium we’re building multiple SharePoint products (www.oceanik.com www.theattributesolution.com …)

We’ve recently had a complex issue. Let’s say these two products have a common dependency (newtonsoft.json in our case). Now let’s say both products are installed on a single farm and that for some reason you have to uninstall one of them.

When SharePoint will retract the wsp, it will retract all dll’s that were included within it. Including the common dependency the other product still needs. That is going to break the other product.

SharePoint apps (add-ins) JavaScript disappeared

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 04:09:37 +0000

At Negotium we recently came across a weird problem.

Let’s assume you previously built a Provider hosted app for SharePoint.

Now let’s assume you updated to the latest version of the SDK (April/May update)

Finally let’s assume your tenant has been updated recently (v16.0.4121.1212 or above)

It’s likely that you are loading SP.*.js files and MicrosoftAjax.js the way it used to be recommended by Microsoft per say: <HostWebUrl>/_layouts/15/jsfile.js or <AppWebUrl>/_layouts/15/jsfile.js.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New York City 2015

Mon, 25 May 2015 01:11:00 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS NYC

https://www.spsevents.org/city/nyc/nyc2015

My session will be about the importance of metadata in your company.

We’ll start by some reminders around the theory and describe what are the advantages and disadvantages of different types of each. Then we’ll see what’s currently supported by SharePoint and what are the available tools. Finally we’ll talk about why it is so important that you set this up in your companies, how it can improve findability of content and how it will help you to move to the Graph.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Montréal 2015

Thu, 21 May 2015 00:50:33 +0000

This year again I have the opportunity to speak at the SPS Montréal

/montreal-sharepoint-saturday-2

I also had the occasion to help organize the event this year, it’s been an interesting experience so far and I’d like to thank Serge, Nico, Luc, Philippe, Seb, Fabrice and Alain for their implication in that project, it’s much more work than what we think!

My session will be about the importance of metadata in your company. (In French)

Speaking at SPBizConf

Tue, 19 May 2015 22:58:08 +0000

The SPBizConf (https://www.spbizconf.com/ ) will happen on June 17th and 18th of 2015.

This conference is mostly oriented towards business users (with a bit of technical content) and is free and online.

Don’t wait to sign up!

I’ll have the opportunity to give a session about the Graph. We’ll have a theoretical part to ensure everybody has got basis, a part talking about Microsoft’s Graph and Microsoft’s vision around the Graph to wrap up with a part with real business cases and explain how you could use it in your company.

Maximum provided results to generate refiners

Sun, 08 Mar 2015 15:41:45 +0000

Since SharePoint 2010 you have the ability to improve the search experience in adding custom search refiners. Even better you can develop new ones if you want. As a reminder search refiners (or facets) are located on the left of the search result page and allow you to filter search results to have a faster access to relevant items. (file type, author, modification date…)

Here is some documentation if you’d like to know more about it.

Montreal SharePoint Saturday 2015

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 23:17:50 +0000

Montreal will have a SharePoint Saturday this year too!

Just as a reminder SharePoint Saturdays are:

Free events
Happening all around the world
Dedicated to SharePoint/Office 365
On Saturdays
With great sessions and awesome speakers

Practical information

This year’s edition will be on May the 23rd at “college maisonneuse”. You just have to register here https://www.spsevents.org/city/montreal/montreal2015

Last year the SPS MTL brought together 200 persons. This year will try to have even more people with 4 tracks (20 sessions total).

Automated build for SharePoint 2013 full trust solutions – Where are my solutions?

Thu, 04 Dec 2014 01:12:13 +0000

Another episode of my series about automated build of SharePoint full trust solutions with tfs 2013 and visual studio 2013.

/automated-build-for-sharepoint-2014-10-29-02-22-54

If you followed my posts you must have noticed you dll’s were built but you didn’t have any wsp.

This is because by default msbuild doesn’t package your solutions. That’s pity isn’t it?

Here is some documentation telling us to add IsPackaging=true to the build definition as a parameter.

Visual studio 2013 Update 4 and SharePoint full trust solutions automated build

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:11:00 +0000

Quick update on my serie about automated build for sharepoint full trust solutions.

If you take a look at the second error I’m describing hereyou will notice that you have to replace two lines in order to make it work.

With update 4 it looks like Microsoft is preparing full 64 bits support for visual studio. New fix lines are now

<Import Condition="'$(Language)' == 'C#'" Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\Windows Workflow Foundation\v3.5\Workflow.Targets" />

<Import Condition="'$(Language)' == 'VB'" Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\Windows Workflow Foundation\v3.5\Workflow.VisualBasic.targets" />

Notice the appearing of 32 in the parameter name (the previous parameter doesn’t seem available anymore).

Office developers tools november 2014 update

Fri, 28 Nov 2014 01:56:00 +0000

If you work in SharePoint development you probably already have noticed that the tools are getting a new update.

With previous versions Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search and Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search.Applications dll’s were not included (it most likely has been forgotten)

You then had two solutions:

Ensure that all developers had SharePoint binaries installed on their machines
Embed a copy of the dll taken from a SharePoint machine

Both solutions were not very practical.

These dlls are now included for version 15 and 16 located here C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\

Automated build for SharePoint server (fulltrust) solutions with visual studio online

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 02:22:54 +0000

Introduction

It has been a few articles I’ve been mentioning the fact that we (Negotium, the company I work for) have migrated to visual studio online (TFS Online). This service offers most of the features offered by the on premises version of Team Foundation Server 2013 and even some exclusive features.

If you have only a vague idea of what can do TFS2013/VSO and you want to learn more I very highly recommend Professional Application Lifecycle Management from Wrox.

Q&A with the SharePoint MVP Experts Chat On Oct 29th @1pm EST or 10am PDT

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 22:50:27 +0000

Hello everyone

Microsoft is launching a SharePoint MVP Expert Chats again! Have questions about SharePoint 2010 or 2013? Or SharePoint Online? Office 365? Please join us October 29th at 1pm EST or 10am PDT where you can have your questions answered live! We will be using the Reddit Ask Me Anything format. This is new to us but many of Microsoft teams are using this medium now. Please create a Reddit account beforehand so you can be ready to ask questions. More information on the chat and room location will be available on Oct 29th in the SharePoint forum. Hope you can join us!

Speaking at the SharePoint Saturday Ottawa 2014 !

Wed, 08 Oct 2014 23:40:00 +0000

I’m proud to announce I’ll be speaking at the SharePoint Saturday Ottawa 2014. The event will be held close to Ottawa on November the 18th and you can get all the details here https://www.spsevents.org/city/ottawa/ottawa2014

I will be presenting this session with Fabrice Vaxelaire (AKA Great Venerable) and we’ll be talking about building your business portal in Office 365: Nowadays we have business tools and portals everywhere in the company, what are the benefits of having everything at one place? How can we bring core business applications to Office 365? Etc…

Converting a protected by password certificate (pfx) to an unprotected one (snk)

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 01:06:37 +0000

At work I am trying to implement automated build for SharePoint (full trust) projects on visual studio online. (Expect to have several articles about this as and when I meet and solve errors)

When doing SharePoint development we have to sign assemblies with a certificate. When the project is initialized there are two options:

Certificate is protected by a password: (pfx extension) that was with first versions of SharePoint tooling, or if you have created the structure of (visual studio) solution yourself with several assemblies.
Certificate is not protected: (snk extension) default option of the tooling for a few years

In my case the certificate was protected by a password which causes the following problem: that you have to type this password when you want to build the source on a new machine for the first time. This is really not convenient when doing automated build (no human to type a password when building). This gives us this error message.

Speaking at the SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire 2014 !

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 23:34:03 +0000

I’m proud to announce I’ll be speaking at the SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire 2014. The event will be held in Nashua on October the 18th and you can get all the details here https://bit.ly/spsnh2014

Localizing JavaScript of a Full Trust solution

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 03:58:16 +0000

Introduction

We, SharePoint developers of ancient times when “full trust” solutions ruled, have understood one thing: using JavaScript improves by far our solutions.

Indeed this allows to reduce the load of the servers and makes the user experience more “responsive”.

But what if you want to display messages in different languages depending on the user? In .NET (understand server-side) it is quite simple, just use of resources. (see one of my posts on the subject)

Why should you not include telerik controls in your SharePoint products?

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 03:32:04 +0000

First and foremost this article is a feedback from the field of a very particular case of SharePoint development. Telerik products and components are very good and accelerate your developments (SharePoint or not) providing you advanced and customizable controls.

Some of you already know it, I work in a team that develops products for SharePoint (www.oceanik.com and the others one do not have yet dedicated sites, we still have work on the marketing).

The roadmap for Office 365 is available

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 04:29:22 +0000

For those who are interested in knowing what’s upcoming on office 365, Microsoft recently shared publicly the roadma.

You can see what Microsoft’s teams are developing directly from this page, which will be updated on regular basis https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/office-365-roadmap-FX104343353.aspx

Selected for SharePoint Saturday New York City

Fri, 06 Jun 2014 03:43:34 +0000

Hi Everybody!

I’m pleased to announce you that I’ll be speaking at SharePoint Saturday New York City.

The event is free and will occur at Microsoft New York City’s office, on time square.

Check it out, is a very good opportunity to learn plenty of things if you can be there.

https://www.spsevents.org/city/NYC/NYC2014/sessions

See you soon!

Auto-hosted applications are deprecated

Sat, 17 May 2014 19:31:16 +0000

Reminders

Auto-hosted apps are only available for SharePoint online (office 365), it bundles and provisions at each installation an azure web site(and eventually a sql azure database).

That made hosting, tenancy management (isolating customers’ data) and authenticationway easier because most of the configuration part was automated.

Announce

We’ve been wondering how these apps were going to evolve for a while. Indeed SharePoint 2013 came out more than a year ago in production on office 365 and we still were not able to:

The former MSP becomes MVP

Sun, 27 Apr 2014 01:37:58 +0000

SharePoint MVP

You may already have heard about it on social network, I’m a SharePoint Server MVP since April the 1st.

I’m really proud to be a part of this awesome community counting Microsoft technologies best professionals and great communities’ contributors.

This incoming year will be full of events, community activities and projects.

I would like to thank:

Jean-Sébastien DUCHENE: Enterprise Client Management French MVP for his advises and for encouraging me to become an MVP (I thought I was not good enough to make it).

Write a review on infopath’s replacer!

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 03:41:00 +0000

Microsoft announced at the SharePoint Conference 2014 infopath’s discontinuity. They have not yet announced a successor to this technology since it is still under development on their side. (or maybe not even started to develop).

In order to better match SharePoint users’ expectations, Microsoft is conducting a major survey to find out what you want to see in SharePoint around forms.

If you have ideas / opinions, feel free to submit these.

Outstanding announcements of the SharePoint Conference 2014 for Office 365

Tue, 25 Mar 2014 02:38:09 +0000

Microsoft has given much information during the SharePoint Conference 2014. It is sometimes difficult to not miss something, so I made a summary of information that marked me.

Storage evolution 1 TB and beyond!

During the SharePoint Conference 2014 Microsoft announced a significant change in the limitations of SharePoint Online Storage: 1 TB Max per site collection (including the “mysite” or onedrive for business) and unlimited storage (understanding billed per GB) by tenant.

Anonymous access for SharePoint autohosted apps

Wed, 12 Mar 2014 17:03:38 +0000

These days I’ve been working on an auto hosted app for SharePoint (office 365 actually).

I had to grant an anonymous access to one of the pages without requiring clients to give anonymous access to their SharePoint site. But I still needed to read a few properties from the App Web web site (the SPWeb provisioned by SharePoint when installing an app)

I had to play around a lot but I finally found the solution:

Operating system compatibility of SharePoint 2010/2013 has evolved

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 02:40:21 +0000

Service pack 2 for SharePoint 2010 and Service pack 1 for SharePoint 2013 recently came out.

A support of 2012R2 at last !

Both service packs bring support for Windows Server 2012R2. This is a recurrent problematic for IT services. How to reduce the number of different versions of an operating system in order to make maintenance cheaper and easier?

Warning: “in place” upgrade of operating system for SharePoint 2013 is not supported by Microsoft. You need to reinstall the farm and migrate the content. See section “overview of improvements” in this article https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2817429

Repackaging of SharePoint 2010 language packs

Sat, 08 Mar 2014 19:57:13 +0000

SharePoint 2010 service pack 2 came out a few months ago from now. It brings lot of new things, I’ll blog about that in further posts.

One of these new things is the repackaging of language packs.

Indeed you may have missed it but it is not required anymore to do a progressive installation in order to support MUI in SharePoint 2010 when setting up a new farm.

Before, when one wanted to install language packs (let’s take for example French English and Spanish), one had to:

March Update of Visual Studio tools for Office

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 03:20:11 +0000

Microsoft recently publishing an update for Office development tools.

This update integrates SP1’s benefits. It also allows you to develop app for PowerPoint and Access, enhances/add creation/configuration wizards for projects elements and includes more data sources types.

You can find the detailed description of the update here https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dn610877.aspx

It’s very simple to update your installation, open Visual Studio, tools, Extensions and updates.

Have fun coding!

Managing Resources, how to make your SharePoint solutions “globally deployed”

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 03:39:00 +0000

Introduction

I wanted to publish this article months ago, back to the time I found this solution. But I did not mostly because of a lack of free time. Sebastien LEVERT, a top SharePoint developer and a member of Montreal’s SharePoint community, recently published a post about the same subject. Read it (sorry it’s in French), I’ll write my post so it is complementary. https://www.pimpmysharepoint.com/2014/01/09/deployer-des-fichiers-de-ressources-simplement/

Reminders

To quickly summarize, when you develop SharePoint solutions and you want to support multiple languages (localize it) you need to use .net resources. These resx files are a mechanism coming from asp.net and work as a dictionary (key/value). You have to create one file by supported language. Instead of writing texts in the code (which is a bad practice anyway), you now reference these by defined keys.

Help me to speak at SP24 the first SharePoint (web) conference all around the world!

Sun, 19 Jan 2014 22:05:00 +0000

Some great SharePoint MVP’s are organizing an amazing event on April the 16th/17th : the SP24.

The idea is:

Amazing speakers
Amazing conferences
All around the world
2 tracks
48 sessions
A few thousands attendees
24 hours straight
You even get to choose the sessions!
And it’s free

Translating SharePoint 2013 from beginning to ending

Really motivated by this great concept I decided to apply for a conference. Please help me to speak to this great event and vote now! (Details on the link bellow)

Boost your SharePoint solutions with distributed cache!–Part 2–Explanations tips and warnings

Sun, 15 Dec 2013 12:06:00 +0000

Explanations, tips, tricks and warnings

Explanations

This cache cluster is in facts made of appfabric hosts (caching services). One of the advantages is that hosts not members of the cluster but clients of it keep a local copy of objects. And this copy is automatically maintained up to date. The result is you do not need to implement a lazy loading pattern to avoid back and forth on the network.

Boost your SharePoint solutions with distributed cache!- Part 1–Introduction

Fri, 13 Dec 2013 02:35:30 +0000

Prelude

I started to write this set of articles as one at the beginning, but I quickly realized that I had a lot of things to explain. Moreover, I’m a real chatterbox which does not help in that case. I finally decided to write a trilogy. I will publish one article every two days beginning today. The code sample will be delivered with last article so I ensure that you read everything ;-). Have a nice reading and do not hesitate to comment.

SharePoint Auto hosted app and ASP.NET MVC

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 04:16:32 +0000

Code apps they said, it will be easier they said…

Visual Studio 2013 comes with a new project model : SharePoint autohosted app ASP.NET MVC (Cool!)

I’m fond of SharePoint, I like MVC, why not mixing them?

Short reminder, SharePoint autohosted apps are only available for Office 365. Technically Office 365 will create an Azure website on demand when app is deployed. The potential cost overhead will be billed directly to the tenant owner.

Speaker at SharePoint Saturday Ottawa!

Fri, 25 Oct 2013 03:20:22 +0000

Hi everybody, I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be speaking at SharePoint Saturday Ottawa. On Nov the 23rd!

My session: translating SharePoint 2013 from beginning to ending. We’ll cover all multilingualism provided by SharePoint.

With lot of examples and demonstrations we’ll see what are the tools provided to IT pro’s, power users and developers. The goal of this session is to give you some insight about how to get your SharePoint environment in multiple languages seamlessly.

(English) The name 'InitializeControl' does not exist in the current context Controles utilisateur, SharePoint 2013 and Ressources

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 21:21:00 +0000

This article is written for SharePoint developers who already developed multilingual webparts.

It is a good practice to localize an application when you develop for SharePoint, which will make the adding of a new language easier.

When we developed for SharePoint 2010 we used to put resources files in hive/config/resources (and then run a stsadm –o copyappbincontent or automate it via a timerjob when activating features)

Or we used to create an empty SharePoint solution element in which we added our files and indicated that the deployment target was the appglobalresources folder (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/296003/deploy-a-resource-file-to-app-globalresource-folder-on-activation for more details)

Sharepoint on Baywet's blog

Counting Down to ESPC20 Online

The countdown is on to ESPC20 Online – only 7 weeks to go!

Speaking at the European SharePoint Conference 2019 - SPFx & DevOps

SharePoint Framework and DevOps Practices: New Documentation, New Samples

TL; DR;

The long story

My journey into the SharePoint DevOps world

Speaking at Granite State SharePoint Users Group

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New England 2018

Speaking at the European SharePoint Conference 2018 and free discount for you!

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Pittsburgh 2018

Speaking at SharePoint Fest Seattle 2018

AZR203 - Azure Functions In The Real World: Lessons Learned & Best Practices

Not Office Servers and Services MVP anymore, becoming Office development MVP

Renewed as MVP and changed category

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New York City 2018

Less than three weeks before the #SPSMontreal 2018!

Internet Explorer compatibility mode is changing on SharePoint Online

The history being this situation….

New SharePoint Framework PnP Samples available: using the Skype UCWA Web SDK to subscribe to people’s status

TL;DR;

Long version

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Detroit 2017

Using PnP PowerShell on Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) Hosted Agent

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Brussels 2017

Re-awarded Microsoft MVP for year 2017 2018

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New York City 2017

SharePoint Framework in my own words

Update to _spPageContextInfo type definitions - new properties available

Customizing page layouts, master pages and image renditions in SharePoint Online

Speaking at Techorama Belgium 2017

Publishing SharePoint Image renditions with PnP Provisioning

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Vancouver 2017

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Calgary 2017

Speaking at Aos Tours Ottawa and Toronto

Troubleshooting load balancing issues with SharePoint

Old English posts migrated to this blog

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Brussels 2016

SystemUpdate method available in CSOM at last!!!

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Oslo 2016

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Detroit 2016

Determine whether or not a SharePoint library is running with the new experience

Building SharePoint 2016 WSP/FTC projects

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Calgary 2016

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Montréal 2016

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Vancouver 2016

Automatically increment SharePoint feature version number during build with build 2015

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Ottawa 2015

Disabling SharePoint’s SEO features

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire 2015

Programmatically add permissions to “everyone” in SharePoint Online

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Toronto 2015

unable to find version '3.1.2' of package 'appforsharepointonlinewebtoolkit'

Speaker at Collab365

Provisioning custom services for SharePoint

Shared dependencies resolution and SharePoint full trust development

SharePoint apps (add-ins) JavaScript disappeared

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday New York City 2015

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Montréal 2015

Speaking at SPBizConf

Maximum provided results to generate refiners

Montreal SharePoint Saturday 2015

Practical information

Automated build for SharePoint 2013 full trust solutions – Where are my solutions?

Visual studio 2013 Update 4 and SharePoint full trust solutions automated build

Office developers tools november 2014 update

Automated build for SharePoint server (fulltrust) solutions with visual studio online

Introduction

Q&A with the SharePoint MVP Experts Chat On Oct 29th @1pm EST or 10am PDT

Speaking at the SharePoint Saturday Ottawa 2014 !

Converting a protected by password certificate (pfx) to an unprotected one (snk)

Speaking at the SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire 2014 !

Localizing JavaScript of a Full Trust solution

Introduction

Why should you not include telerik controls in your SharePoint products?

The roadmap for Office 365 is available

Selected for SharePoint Saturday New York City

Auto-hosted applications are deprecated

Reminders

The countdown is on to ESPC20 Online – only 7 weeks to go!