Latest Publication topics

Microsoft just published a self-paced module I’ve been working on the last few weeks to Microsoft Learning: learn how to create meeting apps for Microsoft Teams!

Meetings enable collaboration, partnership, informed communication, and shared feedback. The meeting app can deliver a user experience for each stage of the meeting lifecycle. Meeting lifecycle includes pre-meeting, in-meeting, and post-meeting app experience, depending on the attendee’s status.

This module will introduce you to leveraging your SharePoint Framework customizations in Microsoft Teams.

Hey developers! Got 15 minutes a day for the next week? Learn what the SharePoint Framework is, what you can build, & what the development experience is like! Get this FREE course delivered daily straight to your inbox!

Tabs are Microsoft Teams-aware webpages embedded in Microsoft Teams. They can be added as part of a channel or a group chat inside a team or as a personal app for an individual user. In this module, you’ll learn how to create tabs and add them to your Microsoft Teams app.

Office Add-ins can access information from anywhere on the internet, whether from the server that hosts the add-in, from your internal network, or from somewhere else in the cloud. If that information is protected, your add-in needs a way to authenticate your user. Office Add-ins provide a number of different methods to authenticate using single sign-on (SSO), depending on your specific scenario. In this module, you’ll learn how to implement single sign-on (SSO) and call the Microsoft Graph in Word, Excel, and Outlook Add-ins.

Developers can create Microsoft Teams apps to create new experiences for their users and integrate with existing business solutions. When custom applications need to access user information protected by Azure AD, and data from other services, apps will need to establish a trusted connection with these providers. In this module, you’ll learn about the different authentication flows supported by Microsoft Teams that you can use in your custom apps.

Microsoft Teams is the ultimate hub for teamwork & intelligent communications. Microsoft Teams delivers chat-based collaboration, meetings, calling, and enterprise voice features. Developers can tap into the power of Microsoft Teams with Microsoft Graph to integrate your custom applications. In this module, you’ll learn how to use Microsoft Graph to interact with Microsoft Teams.

SharePoint is an extensible platform you can customize and extend with the SharePoint Framework and multiple APIs available to developers. In this module, developers learn what customizations and extensibility points are available to them with the SharePoint Framework, and determine if it’s right for you.

In this course, another by me at Voitanos, you’ll get prepared to pass the MS-600 exam, the only Microsoft 365: Developer Associate certification prerequisite - includes 300+ practice questions!

In this module, you’ll explore various ways you can use add-ins to extend and interact with Office applications. You’ll also learn how you can customize your add-in by persisting state, use Fluent UI to create productive experiences and incorporate data with Microsoft Graph.

This module will address the topic of deploying your SharePoint Framework customizations to production environments.

Webhooks and connectors are a simple way to connect your web services to channels and teams inside Microsoft Teams. Outgoing webhooks allow your users to send text messages from a channel to your web services. Connectors allow users to subscribe to receive notifications and messages from your web services. There are two types of connectors available in Microsoft Teams: incoming webhooks and Office 365 connectors. In this module, you’ll learn about webhooks and connectors and how to implement them in Microsoft Teams channels.

In this module, you’ll learn how to create different types of messaging extensions in a custom Microsoft Teams app.

Conversational bots allow users to interact with your web service through text, interactive cards, and task modules. Conversational bots can be scoped to handling a few simple commands or complex, artificial intelligence powered and natural language processing virtual assistants. They can be one aspect of a larger application, or completely stand alone. In this module, you’ll learn how to create and add bots to custom Microsoft Teams apps.

OneDrive is the files hub for Office 365. OneDrive enables users to access and collaborate on files no matter where they’re stored. Microsoft Graph enables developers to use a single API to work with the files in OneDrive. Files in Office 365 are stored in drives. Users can store files in a personal drive, their OneDrive, or in a shared drive powered by a SharePoint document library. In this module, you’ll learn how to access files in OneDrive, both reading and writing files, and how to traverse relationships between files and users.

Task modules are modals that you can populate with either an Adaptive Card or an embedded web/content page for use in your custom Microsoft Teams app’s user experience for workflows that require data input. Task modules allow you to gather information in a Teams-aware popup. In this module, you’ll learn how to create and add task modules to your Microsoft Teams app.

Groups are collections of users who share access to resources in Microsoft services or in your apps. Developers can use Microsoft Graph to create and manage different types of groups. In this module, you’ll learn how to manage the lifecycle of groups, the different types of groups and obtain information about the users associated with a group using Microsoft Graph.

Users are the core of most operations in Microsoft 365. Microsoft Graph enables developers full control over the lifecycle of users in Microsoft 365 including creating, updating, and deleting users and to listing users in the organization. In this module, you’ll learn how to use Microsoft Graph to work with users in Microsoft 365 including the required permissions.

Microsoft Teams is an extensible platform you can build custom apps on. Understand what is possible with a Microsoft Teams custom app, and determine if it’s right for you.

Microsoft Graph provides a unified programmability model that you can use to build apps for organizations and consumers that interact with the data of millions of users. In this module, students will learn how Microsoft has implemented throttling to Microsoft Graph to limit the overuse of Microsoft Graph resources. Students will learn how to avoid requests from being throttled, and how to properly handle scenarios when Microsoft Graph throttles high user traffic in a graceful way.

Microsoft Graph provides a unified programmability model that you can use to build apps for organizations and consumers that interact with the data of millions of users. The Microsoft Graph REST APIs implements many of the OData protocol’s query parameters. In this module, you’ll learn how to manipulate queries using query parameters.

This is my first course self-published under my company Voitanos! Choose between three course bundles, including the entirely free STARTER bundle!

This module will introduce you to working with SharePoint content in SharePoint Framework projects. You’ll learn about the SharePoint REST API, do CRUD operations with SharePoint data, the local workbench, and creating mock data in SharePoint Framework.

Microsoft Graph enables developers to consume user information stored in Microsoft 365 in custom applications. Data is retrieved from Microsoft Graph through a REST API or using one of the various native SDKs provided by Microsoft. In this module, you’ll learn how to work with change notifications (webhooks) & track changes (delta query) in the Microsoft Graph.

Microsoft Office clients enable developers to create add-ins that extend Microsoft Outlook with custom functionality. Through a JavaScript API, developers can access and edit the contents in an email or calendar event in Outlook from an app running in the client. In this module, you’ll learn how to build an Outlook add-in that will render buttons in the compose message window, implement a button that invokes a function, and implement a task pane that inserts content into the body of a message.

This module introduces you to using external APIs in your SharePoint Framework projects. SharePoint Framework projects can incorporate data from anonymous APIs, those REST APIs secured with Azure AD, and Microsoft Graph.

Microsoft Office clients enable developers to create add-ins that extend Microsoft Word with custom functionality. Through a JavaScript API, developers can manipulate the content in a Word document from an app running in the task pane. In this module, you’ll learn how to build a Word add-in that inserts (and replaces) text ranges, paragraphs, images, HTML, tables, and content controls. You’ll also learn how to format text and how to insert (and replace) content in content controls.

Microsoft Office clients enable developers to create add-ins that extend Microsoft Excel with custom functionality. Through a JavaScript API, developers can manipulate the content in an Excel workbook from an app running in the task pane. In this module, you’ll learn how to build an Excel add-in that inserts (and replaces) text ranges, tables, charts, and dialogs.

Microsoft Graph enables developers to consume user information stored in Microsoft 365 in custom applications. Data is retrieved from Microsoft Graph through a REST API or using one of the various native SDKs provided by Microsoft. In this module, you’ll learn how to work with the Microsoft Graph .NET SDK to create an ASP.NET MVC web application to access data in Microsoft 365.

This 10-day email course explains what the SharePoint Framework is, what this new development toolchain is all about, and most importantly, provides clarity to setup your workstation so you can get up and running quickly. Get this FREE course delivered daily straight to your inbox!

This module will introduce you to the SharePoint Framework and walk you through getting your local & online environment configured for developing with the SharePoint Framework.

This module will introduce you to extending the SharePoint user interface with extensions.

This module will introduce you to leveraging the property pane for client-side web parts created with the SharePoint Framework.

This module will introduce you to creating client-side web parts using the SharePoint Framework. You’ll also see how to leverage both the local and hosted SharePoint Workbench & using different parts of the SharePoint Framework API.

This course is for Microsoft partners who are in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and who are interested in the Partner Center SDK, including both the managed API and REST API. This includes partners who have been using the initial CREST API.

This course, Office 365 APIs: Contacts, is the second in a series of courses I am publishing to the Pluralsight catalog on the the Microsoft Office 365 APIs.

Learn how you can use the Office 365 Contacts API to do all the typical CRUD-Q operations on your contacts in your Exchange Online mailbox in Office 365.

This course will introduce developers to the Office 365 APIs, a new set of APIs that will be constantly improved and updated by Microsoft. All four of the endpoints provided in the Office 365 APIs share common characteristics, such as tooling.

Learn how to implement a SharePoint-hosted App as a Single Page App (SPA) using the popular AngularJS presentation framework.

Today Pluralsight published a course dedicated on creating workflows that talk to various types of web services: SharePoint 2013 Workflow - Web Services.

Following up on a Pluralsight course I published in June 2013, SharePoint 2013 Workflow - Fundamentals, I’ve published a sequel called SharePoint 2013 - Workflow Advanced Topics. This course is available to all Pluralsight subscribers. Course Description Workflow changed quite a bit in the SharePoint 2013 release from previous versions of SharePoint. The new workflow platform is implemented with a new product called Workflow Manager 1.0. This course builds off what you learned in the SharePoint 2013 Workflow - Fundamentals course.

Building off the SharePoint 2013 Workflow - Fundamentals and SharePoint 2013 Workflow - Advanced Topics courses, this course will demonstrate how you can use web services within your SharePoint 2013 workflows.

I couldn’t think of a better gift for your loved one this holiday season, or just a treat for yourself! Finally the latest installment of the Inside SharePoint series is available for order and will start shipping in the next week or two according to Amazon! Inside SharePoint 2013 is a developer book for SharePoint 2013 & Office 365 that is a collaborative effort between myself as well as Scot Hillier, Mirjam van Olst, Ted Pattison, Wictor Wilen & Kyle Davis.

Two articles I contributed to MSDN have recently been published. They are related to SharePoint 2013 workflow: MSDN: Debugging SharePoint Server 2013 workflows Microsoft has taken a different approach to workflows in SharePoint Server 2013 than in previous versions of SharePoint. The workflow team worked with the Windows Azure team to create a new product called Workflow Manager. Workflow Manager hosts the latest version of the Windows Workflow Foundation runtime and all the necessary services in an available and scalable way.

This article touches on one of the things that Microsoft added to SharePoint 2013 to support the new style of creating custom workflow forms: the improvements to the CSOM and addition of the Workflow Services CSOM API.

Demonstrates how SharePoint now relies on Workflow Manager 1.0 for all workflow processing and management, and demonstrates debugging options.

Yesterday CMSWire published an article I recently wrote for them that you can find here: The Value and Future of SharePoint On-Premises. In this article I wanted to address the a topic that I feel gets confused quite a bit with customers these days. All the marketing message from Microsoft these days is about the cloud, specifically Office 365. The marketing push makes you think the cloud is where you should move to.

This month I had the opportunity to contribute an article for the online Dutch Information Worker Group (DIWUG) e-magazine. This is great publication and one you should have on your radar as it always has some killer content. It’s available as a PDF and a specially formatted PDF for eReaders. As you have likely noticed if you frequent this blog, my head has been in the SharePoint 2013 workflow space lately so with this article, I decided to write about something that was didn’t have a lot of guidance out there about it.

I’m thrilled to announce that today Pluralsight published my new course in their catalog… you can watch it right now! The course is called SharePoint 2013 Workflow - Fundamentals. This course is available to all Pluralsight subscribers. The goal of this course is to help people immediately get up to speed and productive in creating automated business processes as workflows in SharePoint 2013. The target audience for this course are developers and power users as I cover building workflows and assigning tasks using both SharePoint Designer 2013 and Visual Studio 2012.