Microsoft 365 Community Microsoft 365 PnP Weekly, 21 Feb 2022

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From YouTube: Microsoft 365 PnP Weekly – Episode 154 – Vardhaman Deshpande (Valo Solutions)

Description

In this installment of the weekly discussion revolving around the latest news and topics on Microsoft 365, hosts – Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft) | @vesajuvonen and Waldek Mastykarz (Microsoft) | @waldekm, are joined by London/India - based Developer, Product Owner, Technical Architect, MVP, Vardhaman Deshpande (Valo Solutions) | @vrdmn. The group’s discussion focused on Vardhaman’s role at Valo, his focus on tabs, bots, meeting extensions and on Valo’s development tool stack. Importance of multiple profiles for testing across multiple tenants and of real-world use cases delivered by community. Microsoft and PnP Community delivered 12 articles last week! This session was recorded on Thursday, February 17, 2022.

References:
• See the full blog post for this episode at https://aka.ms/m365pnp/community/blog
• Download the podcast for this episode at http://pnpweekly.podbean.com.
• Learn more about the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community at: http://aka.ms/m365pnp
• Visit the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community YouTube channel: https://aka.ms/m365pnp/videos

A

And action and welcome everybody: this is baby weekly episode, 154, uh which is pretty mind-blowing actually. um So. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome also helping on scheduling these meetings um or things you know like.

B

Yeah, absolutely for a thing that we just started doing without a bigger plan like we're holding strong strong. I guess.

A

Consistency brings trust because people know that stuff is happening consistently and every single week. So almost every single week, except for the holiday.

B

Exactly so we're here every week, except the weeks that we aren't here, that's true and.

A

Now, that's being super consistent now uh on this episode, we have warchaman uh joining us from balo solution and a great discussion actually related on the microsoft teams and microsoft. Resistive platform development he's really been focusing on microsoft, team, side of the house and investigating and building scenarios. um He represents swallow solutions which recently got actually acquired by the staff-based company and and basically designing and building experiences in inside of markzware 365.. Well, valois is doing that staff base has their uh other offerings as well, but really really cool setup and discussion.

A

Now uh in the bmc weekly, I always talk about the latest on microsoft, 365 platform and focusing on a platform site. We always have to be both always typically. Typically, we have a visitor in these shows as well, and we talk in english.

B

So, yes, we always have a guest, except when we don't yes. Thank you. Thank you for.

A

Translating that my name is a program manager in the microsoft resource platform side and with me as a co-host uh waldek.

B

Hi everybody, my name is valdik mastikas and I am cloud developer advocate for microsoft, 365 at microsoft, excellent.

A

Today is 17th of february and we're recording this jubilee record on monday and popped us out on tuesday, but now we're doing this a bit earlier, because I will have a family vacation next week and we'll be taking some time off, which is good. So I I didn't have a tight time to take a time off in during holiday season. So I guess this is now fine to have.

B

You this is a holiday. Well, I mean it's school holiday season.

A

Yeah, it's called holiday, it's the in the northern hemisphere uh across different countries. It's the the uh winter break time. Basically, so right now ready, I don't know. Well in finland it's called winter, it's still winter yeah, because it's still.

B

Windy, it's not spring.

B

You yes, winter, like from september to april right.

A

That's actually a good point. It's called spring trading break in in some countries that that is actually important anyway. So, let's jump on the on the interview with vartaman, which we just recorded before uh recording this one and then we'll do the articles right after that.

A

Welcome back, everyone add to our pfp weekly, show, 154 and uh you're actually, second time on the show. But um before we start on the topic of this show and and deep diving on what we've been doing lately, can you do a quick intros who you are? What do you do for a living.

C

Yeah sure, so what the mondesh month is uh I've been in the microsoft 365 space for over 10 years. Now uh I remember I started like 2011 or something right right from like you know: sandbox solutions and silverlight client.

B

C

That so good old days, remember all that painfully.

A

But that was the right that was the at least from our perspective. That was the thing what we were pushing as the is a new thing, yeah.

B

A

Exactly yeah yeah.

B

C

Yeah so yeah uh mostly been as a developer uh uh up until, like few years ago, then kind of moved into, like you know, technical architect, uh lead architect, role and couple of years ago joined value uh with, for which I've been. Since then I've been focused, mostly on teams uh and most recently I have the lead architect role where I focus on all of the valor products. All the common infrastructure needed uh the platform uh common libraries sdks.

C

You know uh gdpr stuff, so all all of that uh I'm responsible for that, but uh also worked on a product at wallow for all, based on mostly teams um and then most recently, I have been also looking at. You know, teams, meeting extensions uh which uh I think we discussed a few few in another call. So what happened? You know that so.

A

C

That's a bit uh that's a bit about me.

A

Yeah you're based in uh london uk, wasn't that the case.

C

Correct yeah, so I live.

A

C

Yeah, so I I lived there so, but uh I for the last five months I have been living with family in india uh that we had a baby whose first birthday is tomorrow. So that's why we had a had this call today, not tomorrow. uh Thank you.

C

Thank you, uh so yeah for we have been visiting family and uh living with the grandparents for the last four or five months, and we can do that because of you know, teams and remote working and things like that, so really happy that we could do this so next next month we are going back again in march uh back to the uk.

B

Yeah, which is just exactly on time when the sun comes back and you can see some light exposure- hey you mentioned. You mentioned that that um you're building, primarily teams apps. Can you tell like what kind of apps do you build? What what do they do? How do they help users.

C

uh Right so the first product which I worked on for teams was uh it used uh so it it. It was essentially an ideation solution. uh People are using teams, someone posts, an idea. uh People don't want that idea to get lost in the team's chat. The conversation, so there was a way to you know pick that up pick that message and promote it as a as an idea, and then people can collaborate on it and and so on. So it was basically an ideation solution, uh so there was like a team spot involved.

C

There was messaging extension, so the missing extension could, like you know you could say with the messaging extension that you know this. This message can be a great idea uh where you click on the three dots and the uh you could submit it as, uh and obviously the dashboard was uh spf x-powered teams, app and and so on. So there was like a lot of the you know: teams extensibility points uh were uh involved in that app um so that that that basically was like my introduction to the you know: team's dev dev platform.

C

uh At that point, like there were so many different as even now like I'll wall deck I'll talk to you about this, like you posted the reference card even now, there's so many different things you need to know just for teams there, but two years ago, that list was even bigger uh like that. Okay.

B

C

So we are improving.

B

Yes, yes, which.

C

Is good uh yeah exactly so that, uh for one example I remember is the team's bot sdk was different to the bot framework. Sdk yeah, the teams bought sdk, wasn't part of the bot framework, but then later it was merged, and so so you had lots of issues like you know. Version mismatches, this version of adaptive card sdk doesn't work with this version of bot framework and this, and this doesn't work with this version of teamsport, so yeah you know finally was able to find the right. You know, puzzle, jigsaw, combination,.

B

C

And yeah I was able to do that, but yeah uh was fun. It was fun after a lot of uh doing spf x and for a few years moving into teams was, you know, a good good good uh trial by fire.

A

Well, isn't that always the case when you're learning kind of a new technology.

C

A

Trying to then figure out what's available and I guess you said already that we improved a lot on that area right.

C

Correct correct right, so um the teams uh at that point the app studio, was the way to configure the apps. But now the developer portal is is a very, very good experience and the team's toolkit is is also pretty helpful. It gives you, like, you, know, point and click uh way to configure your apps include tabs and stuff, um so that that is. That is a good uh good way that makes things easy uh nowadays, yeah.

A

And yeah and for sure the documentation has been improved a lot. So that's that's always great for sure. The key challenge is that, well, if the documentation is not up to date, it doesn't really matter what kind of tooling and capabilities you have, because you don't know how to use them so but yeah. I know that cloud advocates among the other people been really really focusing on the team's platform documentation, so yeah cut off. Well, that's for your team being involved there as well. For my.

B

A

C

You can claim it.

A

B

Can claim it come on? No, no, no! No! No! No! No.

A

Let it go recreational mommy and all of the other ones. So sorry about that.

C

A

C

To I have to mention that you know if, uh if there's any questions or something I just like, you know mention either wall deck or arabia on twitter and they are, they are responsive. So uh so you get at least something back like you know uh they can point you in the right direction or maybe connect you to the right people and then you're able to find it. So definitely uh you know, waldex team is definitely helping uh helping us out a lot in that sense.

B

Thank you um another thing that I wanted to ask right, so you said you, you build uh teams apps. How do customers look at them are there? Is that something they're asking for? Are they or already there or are they still in an in an early stage? Adopting teams like where do you see them be, and do you see that demand increasing over time or or not.

C

So uh what we have seen mostly is uh not the customers themselves, but like we work with partners and partners are entrusted with increasing teams adoption. So one of the ways they uh they kind of increase teams. Adoption is by, like you know, uh installing or provisioning these apps. So if people use uh the apps, uh then naturally they live more in teams, so they're. Definitely uh the partners who want teams to be adopted, adoption and stuff like that that that part definitely plays a role also like.

C

As far as like you know, valor specifically, is concerned. The the flagship product still is the intranet or the digital workplace, uh uh and and that, when the that has to also work in teams, then you can also, like you know, uh introduce other other other apps around it. Like you know, the internet is great news and everything that that works great, but then you, you can have other other comps solutions living there as well yeah yeah. It's definitely.

A

C

Though so it's definitely the the demand, for it is definitely growing, as uh as we go along.

B

And I guess that is also an interesting thing you mentioned now that being an isv, you have the ability to expose the customers to other areas that they wouldn't that I might not even think about initially otherwise, right like like being nsi or somebody who builds apps specific for a customer request, you might often have to work with things like envisioning environments like basically show customers what they can do so that they can use that when they ideate the solutions that they want to use in a workplace whereas isv you.

B

You already have that step because you introduce your product and, along with it, you can introduce okay. This is like this is the main way you can interact with us, but there's also a few other ways in which you can um bring the info that we offer into the context of your work. So you don't so our app doesn't need to be destination, but you can also expose pieces of that in other places where employees work right, correct.

C

Yeah, exactly uh and- and you know uh yeah so for for us, uh like we think of teams as just another uh front end to expose the application so mobile is one desktop is another and teams is like uh you know uh just another way, so it's not just yet. You know our product should work on the phone in the browser. uh They should also work in teams. It's like a natural uh front end for for the for the product. So that's definitely how we think about.

A

It and that's really the key on the partnership with the microsoft and partners and is as well because it actually benefits both sides, so yeah you're, then promoting the teams as well, and then you help to show how your your functionalities and your applications will help to show the best of the team's platform and then that actually will generate an interest among other partners as well, which obviously you don't want to do it.

A

But of course it's in the shared interest of everybody growing the ecosystem, because that helps on on growing the usage of the platform as well. So, of course, it would be awesome if there wouldn't be any other partners than follow right and well. It would be the only one.

B

Using that monopoly.

A

You don't want to go there.

B

Another thing that I'm interested in is because you mentioned you're building apps that are exposed on the web, standalone, apps, mobile and whatnot. What is the challenge that you see thinking about, building and building these apps across all the different experiences and places like? How do you is it hard like what are different things you have to take into account.

C

It is, it is definitely hard uh because, uh like you know, these small things, like uh maybe there's, there's a specific device which contains a specific version of teams where something specific is broken so, like you know to debug that you have to align so many different things and then kind of work together with our you know, customer support engineers to kind of finally figure out the right combination to replicate that.

C

So it's just like you know the uh the different um uh devices out there different like you know, configurations or uh that's just that that is so. It is definitely hard, um especially for uh especially for if, if it's not just a browser-based application, if it's like a teams tab, then that is slightly exactly uh more difficult.

C

But um the good thing about building a teams application for mobile is because teams is already going to be installed on on, like you know, user files, uh so you just add a new tab and that's that's it that you, you don't need to install a new app. You don't need to like if you're building a pwa, you don't need to redirect the customer to a new website, or something like that. So that's that's the one big advantage of like you know just building something right into teams.

C

It's already there you can pin it and then the customers can start using it. So that's this is like you know. uh It has advantages. Definitely.

A

Yeah and yeah and customers, depending just to recap, underpinnings so customer id organization, can be your application to be available directly in the microsoft teams, as the even the first application there, which is, which is, for example, what we do with. Quite often we have a connection and what we've done in microsoft as well so yeah, the viva connection, brings another dimension on top of it, which says in the viva connection experience, you can have your additional mobile experiences. Yes, this is an interesting additional dimension which are then linking back to your team's application.

A

So it's like yes, wait.

C

Which is the correct point of entry that that's the question: yeah um yeah and uh yeah I've for this team's product itself. I played around with an adaptive card extension based on spfx as well. I think it was like a slightly like, maybe a few months ago and uh yeah. It's like a quick.

C

You know a nice, quick glance of your ideas, like just for that, where you click on one and then you're taken to the actual application, so yeah, I think for what what it wants to do it adaptive card extensions work really well in that. In that case, like you know, uh like someone someone I was, I was showing it internally to someone and then someone said like you know, this seems really like you know, tick-tock or something where people just want. A quick, quick.

B

C

A

But that's that's. Certainly the idea, because of the well with the viva connection, mobile experience is that you can do the the quick operations and actions and quick clans in there, but then for the actual. Let's.

B

Say you're gonna focus work. You can go.

A

To the specialized application so making it easy for building those personalized experiences: okay,.

B

Yeah you mentioned, you mentioned a few benefits uh already, but I'd like you to recap like like how like what benefits do you see, building for teams and 365 like why not just build a web app like what benefits? Do you see with the fact that you can integrate your apps or even expose them inside 365.?

B

C

I mean that's uh it's it's again, the same thing like you know uh the the the partners, our partners and uh customers who we have been working with for a long time. uh They are like you know, deep into microsoft, 365 they're into teams, and it it's uh easy for them to. You know. Have that conversation with the customer that you know this. This is so. This app is based in m365, and it's not that we only work with that.

C

Like you know, we can use like the graph api or something and build it outside uh outside of uh teams or uh outside of so there's a our provisioning solution. Basically, is basically an electron app which we are building now and then that uses you know graph, api and bnp, powershell and stuff to talk to sharepoint as uh stuff like that. So it's it's like what is the right use case? Can this app?

C

What what is the point of this app? Can it live in teams or does it need to be outside teams or outside sharepoint? So that's the.

B

A

Case yeah, of course,.

C

Yeah yeah exactly it can be both uh that it can share the same set of apis and data and can be exposed and, as I said before, like you know, teams is another ex like uh like another front end uh for the apps.

A

Yeah so, rather than forcing people again move to the full screen mode of the application, you can surface that it there. But, of course, if you want to you can access the application directly as well so yeah.

C

Exactly exactly providing.

A

Additional, let's say views and perspectives on accessing the application and services whatever the isp is providing so yeah.

A

Now you talked about already about bots, you touch the bots and messaging extensions and personal applications. Can you talk about a bit on on what are the things? What you've built and and what is the moral? Let's say, but what's the most natural thing for you to build stuff in the in the microsoft teams and how you're doing that.

C

um I would say, I would say the most natural thing is uh its tabs uh because, like you know, this is the easiest easiest way to to build it, but like bots, are also like more more more fun uh like you know, you can.

C

You can uh uh and- and the thing I like about, the bot framework is like you know, once you build uh like your bot, you can then play around with, like you know, multiple extension points you can uh have it as teams, maybe have it as slack as well uh there's a what framework works with lack as well. So you can play around with that, but um yeah coming back to teams.

A

Yeah, you would only play with slack right: it's just a big player, so.

B

C

Exactly exactly.

B

C

But yeah the main, build it in production only for teams yeah, that's it, uh but but yeah uh it's uh uh tabs. uh I think uh I've been I've been working with uh meeting extensions more recently, I've been exploring them and I think tabs, if you, if, if you, if you build a tab, uh then you can use it across multiple contexts in in teams as well. So the site panel in the meeting extension is a tab.

C

Then, like you know, the pre-meeting post meeting experiences all the tabs, uh your personal tab, your uh channel tab. So if you, if you want to kind of you know if you are building your first teams application, I think tabs are are like you know, an easy, low hanging fruit where you can, depending on the context you can store, show different data um uh yeah. So I think yeah tabs would be the easiest thing. I think most natural thing and hits multiple uh scenarios as well.

A

Exactly it's just the configuration in the for the tab where it's actually gonna be then surfaced, and what adoption can you talk about bit without sharing any any info too much ip and all of that's related on meeting application? You mentioned that you looked into the meeting apps and how to extend in there what kind of scenarios um your your company is looking for if.

C

You can share.

A

B

C

I'm exploring it right now. uh um I've been checking it like the same thing which I did with like you know, bots and dabs uh uh one year ago, or something I'm just checking uh what all is possible. Can we use this to enhance any of our products? Not only our teams products but like maybe maybe some other products can they benefit by using the meeting apps or or do we need to create completely new products based on meeting apps?

C

uh That's that's the one of the things which I am kind of looking at right now,.

B

um And when you think about it, that way, do you also look in other things like? Could you, for example, use things like power platform or azure communication services or fluid relay basically to extend the scope of your apps beyond uh just teams and really make even even better use of the microsoft cloud.

C

uh Azure communication services- definitely uh but power platform is not uh our like. You know uh we it's not like. It's not the focus right now, uh so.

B

C

In case of uh acs, definitely we I've played around with the acs api for, like you, know, meeting participants and uh getting getting the uh so so that that part is definitely. uh We have explored that but like for now, the my exploration is just around, uh like you know, uh getting the samples seeing how it it fits into. The meeting experience like one thing I found out is that you know what is still to happen.

C

Is the meeting apps to work on the browser version of uh teams, uh so it only works in the desktop and the mobile version, which I think could be like you know, which, which is fair, because I think most people might use it in desktop and uh phones, but, like you know, uh for testing quickly, maybe the browser version could be helpful.

C

A

um Yeah the desktop switching with profiles and desktop is yeah.

B

A

Challenging, maybe that's the right word of saying that so.

C

A

C

Are used multiple tenants and all of us, like maybe most of the people listening to this use multiple tenants and have been through that.

B

If I look at the list of profiles that I haven't added, it's two yeah four, six, eight.

A

Ten, seventeen and half of those tenants have already expired, but you should clean it up. No.

B

B

No, no so I have one that is tied to the expiring one and like every single time. It expires. I will I'm out and then I did because like I can never memorize the url. Yes.

C

25 for me, I have 25.

B

There you go yeah.

A

I guess I'm in 22, so yeah.

B

There you go there, you go, I need to create a few more.

A

Ideas and for anybody who's wondering what are we actually talking so this you can create multiple profiles in edge, so you can do that testing across multiple tenants or multiple identities in the same tenant. So you can basically.

B

Isolate you don't need to sign out and in all the time, exactly yeah, which.

A

By the way, if you're not using this, this is the best thing ever so for.

B

Anybody who's watching listening. So, however, maybe you don't use it because you don't have a need for it, which is even better for your health.

A

Yeah, yes, yes, but yeah, I say as a developer or a person, who's testing things. That's that's for sure. uh Super super cool and and.

B

For us, as a microsoft, we can spin.

A

Up so many tenants as needed for testing and validation, so at least in my case, it's like oh, this is expired again. Oh, that's expired again, okay, fine! So I just need to be more structural, like you are well back on that. So.

B

Well, but is this like? We live in browsers and we have profiles, but if you think about like uh mobile devs like they would have device wall with 20 devices on them, so that you can see your your web app or your app or whatever you build like load across all of them right. Each device is different, different screen, different abilities, and you want to be able to test that too right. So it's just a different version, like virtual version of the device wall is the.

A

Android studio and emulators good enough already for that, but but the game so never mind.

B

Something for something, but you.

A

B

Might need to have like, like physical device right, yeah, yeah yeah.

C

I think sometimes I've seen things like you know something works in the emulator, but doesn't work on actual device. I've seen issues. Oh.

B

That's painful. These things are hard, and I guess, especially with things like touch like you need to feel like is the button big enough for you to work comfortably with that like does it know how it works on the device like if it scrolls or animates too quickly or too slowly whatever like these? Are these are things you can only see on on device, sure yeah for.

A

Sure for sure, so luckily, nowadays at least we are in a relatively well covered if you're checking android and the latest two version of the android and then ios rather than different.

B

And the windows phone right.

A

The windows remember: the symbian phone check.

B

It out yeah, okay, yes, oh good all day, no.

A

We're just again showing how old we are. This is not good, so.

B

I remember texting people in excel on nokia, phones,.

A

Yes, yeah kelly roll and the advertisement for.

C

Those who know.

A

That that's really good so because.

A

I think it was a super bowl advertisement where she was using nokia communicator, and you can see that she was using excellent.

A

Yeah, where she is sending an sms using excel, and then she got disappointed when nobody responded.

A

Yeah, but it's pretty awkward that you can see that it's excel.

B

Actually, the cool thing is right, like nowadays we can build in excel scripts yep. You could actually how.

A

Cool, would it be yes.

C

Yes, spfx vfx office add-in for, like you, know, testing if texting,.

B

Yeah yeah, then you can send it to teams and back like imagine, you can get a response and be in a2 from teams in your excel sheet.

A

That's the killer application, that's how we.

B

Yeah exactly the killer, app texting in excel and you could even then even indent, like a a1, b2 a3, you know like you could have thread.

A

No, what's wrong with that.

B

Excel is the best multi-purpose tool. There is well.

A

It's it's, it is for sure one of them so.

C

A chart like for texting, don't use excel use, something.

A

But the point to use one is: is actually a I'm doing a donkey bridge here, uh so um segue down give rich in dutch in phoenix actually the same thing, meaning yeah um so which is crazy anyway. So that's, that's interesting. uh Language is different, but use the right tool for right purpose.

A

It's an interesting discussion for sure in general, if we from a timing, perspective needs to start summing up as well, but you know microsoft 365, especially because there's so many tools, so many things and the ways of doing things yeah um what so related on that one. What would be? Let's say, what are the tools and and how is your company building your experiences? So what is the tool stack uh for teams and for uh for the polaroid experiences, so what kind of things are is follow using.

C

uh Right so for teams, development uh like like I myself, uh directly uh built the manifest directly. So there are, I know, tools like you know: yeoman generator and the devs dev level of a portal out there uh that that is something we have used before as well. uh Ngrok uh ngrok is also something we use quite quite a lot, which is a tunneling service.

C

uh So just those of you who who haven't used ngrok yet uh for the teams platform to connect to your local locally running website, you need to give a publicly available endpoint to teams, because the team's platform is running in the cloud it doesn't know what localhost is. So that's. Why, like you, uh ngrok, creates a public endpoint which points to your current local uh machine uh so that that is. That is essential, basically uh for doing any any team step locally, um then postman, obviously uh for for, like you know, testing, apis and stuff.

C

uh So with valo like we were recently, uh we merged, together with another company, called staff base, uh and then we are doing a lot of integrations and looking at their apis. They are looking at our apis, so postman has been really helpful in, like you know, testing out the apis and stuff uh other than that vs code with, like you know, lots of extensions uh visual studio for net stuff um is.

C

Is it something there's a few like extensions in in vs code, as well, mainly for uh azure azure related things like arm templates, which I use uh quite a lot? uh If I go to my like extensions tab.

B

How about the uh hey, why do you use react, angular view anything else so.

C

React react mostly. uh I think we've always used react uh together with like the fluent ui uh and also like more recently, we have been looking at, like you know, uh can we uh can we look at, like you know some other um other other front-end uh libraries as well, but like fluent uh fluent ui and react have been, are, like you know, brilliant, but uh you always always uh use that um uh yeah. That's that's more or less like you know our.

C

uh So we are focused on like you know, typescript react on the front end.

B

C

Then uh dotnet and uh some a few of our apps do also use node.js in the backend. So that's the uh that's. The oh.

B

Different angle, comfortable, yeah, exactly different angle, just to make it more uh dynamic, yeah yeah.

A

So that was my design, of course,.

B

Yeah yeah, of course, your computer broke again.

A

Yeah yeah- something like that anyway, so.

B

Luckily, we are just on time so, yes to rip up, yes, yeah.

A

Great yeah, but thank you bartoman for joining on this one really really good discussion um and it's always good. I I think one of the stories and cool things is always to hear about what people are: building and understanding the technologies that people are using and all of that, because that helps other partners and the people in community understand that. Oh, oh cool they're, using these things, maybe I'll have a look on that so sure sure really cool stuff.

C

A

I'm really happy to.

C

Have a chat, you know always fun talking to both of you. Thank you.

A

Thank you, but I guess um we'll start jump then, and next to the articles on the pmp side. uh So we'll say, thank you. Apartment um have a great thank.

B

A

Few weeks still in india and and um have a crusade, travel back to uk so.

C

Yeah yeah yeah I'll come come visit when I'm back back there, so hopefully it will be. You know, travel would be easier. Hopefully, yes, I think that's.

A

Right absolutely, but thanks for coming, I will be certainly in touch and and let's jump with wildlife to the articles.

C

All right, thank you. Bye.

A

Thank you, bye-bye bye and welcome back on the after the interview, so don't come. Thank you bartoman. Once one more time of joining us really really cool discussion, it's it's. I think it's super valuable for everybody in the community to know what other ones are doing um it.

A

It validates their thinking and and validates their assumptions, and- and it's always better to- I think one of the hardest thing is to be in the front of the the train or to learn the technology and so having the people who actually do that and share their learnings and and practices is super super beneficial. So thank you very much for helping out that.

B

Yeah and also the fact like when you, when you're by yourself, or you only talk to folks around you directly like you might think, do we lag? Are we ahead of the curve behind the curve like where are we and then you hear others and it's and it always, it might even help you to kind of get get some of that anxiety off because you're, like you, know what it's it's good like we're.

B

We're, okay like we're not behind, like other people, have challenges too or we're ahead of the game because we're we already went through this phase right. So it's always interesting to see to look around you really and see what others do, and I guess like like, like interviews like that, are a great way to get a peek basically into somebody else's kitchen in a way yep.

A

Absolutely absolutely yeah, I I still remember back in when I we always go back into this dinosaur discussion, but at some point, as we were shipping on-premises software, one of the most painful things- and this is almost the same thing as as with cloud- was the fact that you were doing uh alpha or beta testing or training material for alpha versions of the software, and you got a daily builds uh from engineering and you never knew if it's gonna work or not or if it didn't work, because the ui is changed, yeah or is it you can't get it configured or installed?

A

Is it now because of you or is it part of the product or the setup, or did somebody do a mistake and that's really really kind of a challenging thing? And I guess that's still the same, even with cloud because there's a lot of tooling which is released in preview. So you don't actually quite know. Is it now the problem of you or is it then in the products or in the tooling or where's?

A

The problem is so and that's why we need people, and luckily we have community people who are testing out and then sharing their learnings and also letting microsoft know.

A

What do we need so do we need documentation, set up guidance uh if there's issues finding out those those as well, because, even though engineering is doing a lot of a lot of testing and validation of what they're shipping it's still engineering, it's it's, not those people who built actual solutions on top of that tool or framework yeah.

B

Whatever and and that part is really invaluable right, because people they have in mind, I think they want to build and that thing might not be a part of the golden path. As it's called. You know the ideal path that was used like because when you build something you cannot building envisioning any possible thing thing there.

B

Is you pick a few scenarios, which are the main scenarios that you try to be as varied as as you can, but you cannot include everything and it's exactly the things that are that stray of this path that are trying to push the limits like these are really interesting because they give invaluable feedback like hey.

B

I want to do this or I want to use it with this external tool, or this other thing and it's hard it's inconvenient, it doesn't even work or it breaks, and these are the things that well, it's not possible for us at microsoft to know up front right and the feedback that we get. That way is really invaluable, because at the end it makes better product for everybody.

A

Yep yeah, I I remember one of the coolest thing in in the in-person conferences is the expo areas for microsoft, engineering as well. What is in person conference? That's true, good question, uh so that's when people actually meet in the same room and talk to.

B

Each other, so does that mean that you open your browser window, not an incognito, but in your profile is that a person in person? Yes.

A

Now, but in those conferences which we used to have, let's see hopefully we'll get there at some point back having engineering engineers, actual developers, building the tooling with you and talk to partners or building capabilities on top of it and and the lights when the when you see the engineers life is like wow, this is I never wow. This is the stuff right here. You're.

B

A

That's a reaction as well. It's like we never intended that to be used like that, but that's cool wow, so yeah.

B

A

The the assumptions in the pm and engineering organization versus the reality and there's this every now and then there's like like. Oh my god, I had no idea so.

B

But it's for everything you know. Like the other day I saw a movie about uh that was the uh behind the scenes of making a car premium brand.

B

You know, and basically at some point like they went through the stage where they make uh a model and all that and at some point they say someone said like like what, if a person that is taller than two meters like 210 would sit on the back seat and basically they realized that the roof would go like through the middle of the of their head, like nobody even thought about it at first, and these are people who build their who build cars for for living right like pros yeah right.

B

So so it doesn't surprise that, like there are always edge cases that you might not think of first, but they are still there and at the end of the day, you want to find a way to accommodate that.

A

Yep, absolutely absolutely cool anyway, let's actually jump on the on the articles, um so we don't have a massive amount of new articles uh today, but- and that is our fault- yes, absolutely 100, and the reason for that.

B

Is that we're recording just a few days after the last episode? So it's just a few good days of time, so we're not playing fair. We didn't give people enough time to write and share their.

A

Findings? Yes, absolutely now, let's start with the microsoft side of the house, so in the microsoft 365 blog there was an interesting block, article related on measure, your cloud, carbon footprint with the emission impact dashboard in microsoft resistivity. This is actually super cool.

A

Let's say way of showing how the cloud is using its recovery emissions and how you can actually impact on those and versus the on-premises side of the house, so estimate emissions saved by moving to the cloud.

A

So you can basically have some sort of a high-level view on the emissions which are getting saved, and this is actually really really cool because of course, as we move from dedicated data centers and hosting in on premises to centralized, hosted capabilities in cloud, it's much more cost efficient and it has less emissions because we can centrally save those emissions by using solar power or wind power and and think about other ways of saving. That thing really really cool is.

B

This is this based on research, or is it based on the real time usage of in your farm or.

A

In your to be honest, I do not know right now that that is a really really good uh question.

B

One thing that I'd love to know like you, deploy all kinds of apps like you use things. Oh.

A

It's actually just a footprint.

B

Yes, that's brilliant. This is so cool.

A

Yeah, that's actually really really cool so and then you can actually see the the trends related on that in the organization didn't work that well, so uh it zoomed out wow, okay, but you can see the trend um and how things are moving. That's actually ridiculous. So yeah.

B

huh Yeah, and especially, if you think about it like if that would include additional apps, you add on top and then combine it with tips like here's, how you can make them more efficient, yeah that'll be brilliant. I think that.

A

Would be really cool ultimate goal of that one is heading to that direction. Because again, if you have super resource intensive application, it will of course consume more energy and power, and then that will have more emissions. It's actually really cool that we are and already at this level on thinking uh how to how to save planet or or make it make our life cleaner, so really really cool stuff.

A

So yeah awesome on the developer blog site, we had a blog post from nick around learn how to create secure identity solution using microsoft's identity platform, and this is really around reminding on the assets which we have available uh in the docs platform and and how to actually start using the msal, how to start using identity platform. The basic on the authentication of that and all of this has evolved so much within the past years uh to make it easier to consume and and access and to get started so documentation is so much better.

A

I guess at some point it was quite hard to understand, edel and then or no. I will not use any of these libraries because I will do the http dance by myself and nowadays it's yeah, probably not the wisest thing to do.

B

Yeah I mean it's. The key part here is right that whenever you build an app on microsoft, 365 identity is centerpiece like it's. It's prerequisite for any of your work and it's the first thing and it's not necessarily the easiest thing, because it's done the thing that that we do that much. You typically do it once it works, and then you don't do anything more about it.

B

So with that, like we, don't we don't get enough cycles to train the muscle to build the muscle, which is why exactly it's extra important for everybody really to understand how it works, because you need it in every single app you're going to build on microsoft. 365, you need identity right, it's really necessary yep.

A

And, of course, we want to make it as easy as possible to anybody to just onboard that and not worry about it. It's like taking care of cool, let's focus on the business case, so what it should mean now related on the business cases and related on surfaces which we have.

A

This is actually a cool update from the team's javascript sdk version 2, and so there's an update on the public preview, so themes apps in office.com and office apps for windows- and this is really again recapping on on the fact that this is the fact that you can actually take a teams, applications and surface them also in office.com and office in windows. So really really cool stuff, so sucky is is really the he's.

A

The principal bm lead on the team of bms uh working on on this one and extending again the reach of those teams, application uh in multiple new locations, so really requested of outlook and android and and so on and excel. So so and and of course, the team is always looking for feedback. So please report any issues in a github and and engage. Let them know what works. What doesn't work and and if there's any issues for you to get started, so it's super super important, so.

B

Yes, and also interestingly, like if you think about this ability, what would you like to see what scenarios does this enable you to to to do? What else could you envision with that and what the team should take into account to perhaps introduce at some point? Yes, like the things that would help you build more compelling apps.

A

Yeah and that comes back on the discussion which we had just before, we started uh going through the articles, which is the engineers and vms in written and in microsoft. They don't necessarily build real world scenarios. They built a platform for real network scenarios and, yes, we do research and yes, we investigate, and, yes, we do interviews but still having the input from the real world is, and partners is the key for because that's where tooling is getting built for so everything.

A

What we do in microsoft, 365 platform is getting is intended to help our customers, our customers and partners. So we need to know, what's needed so in a constructive way, so telling something that that doesn't work different discussion. But what doesn't work?

A

How can I make it work for you and I understand, and anyway so moving on on the the list of new articles, so icobus from the cloud advocates team and waldex teammate had the weekly blog posts related online from the community and a chatbot for microsoft, teams, personal apps and group chat and again a video explaining the case and having discussion with the community members building experiences for microsoft teams. So these are really good and coming back on even on the discussion today with barton.

A

So coming back on understanding what other people are building, how they're building that? What's the scenario um to kind of spark ideas and being like? Oh that's, actually really cool. What? If we would in our case do this? Oh that's worth of billions and yeah, and hopefully that's the case.

A

Now. We also had a blog post related on the viva connection, uh custom design, guidance updates for custom cars and quick views, and- and this is basically something which we've been working- I think the first update game during the holiday season and then we've been working on adding additional samples available uh on the viva connection card, and this really focuses on the fact that uh quite often, the first impression with the viva connection might be that well, the ux and vivo connection cards is based on adaptive.

A

Cards can adapted cards, look nice and the answer is yes, and they can actually look.

B

A

Pretty nice that requires some level of a work to make it happen. But what we've done is that we provided samples and ketones, which you can download and reuse and they're all being presented in the documentation as well for the viva connection, and it basically demonstrate the power of adaptive cards as well um and.

B

By the way, really nice.

A

Really really cool that from the sample in the kit hub is you can find it. You can download the chase and all of that, but you can actually open it in designer, so you can actually go. Then the adaptive card designer and see it in there and then you can actually preview that.

B

A

The right thing so.

B

We're really working.

A

With adaptive card theme of making things happen and now, if I go to preview mode, I can actually say that there's a nice person, yeah yeah.

B

This is, you can.

A

You can do image results in adaptive. Cart, that's insane! Well! Yeah kind of today I learned yeah exactly so really really cool stuff cute. uh Then we had a new uh intro zone, podcast uh with mark cashman um and talking with michelle and and ben, and really focusing on the microsoft lists uh mf. uh What is microsoft list and.

B

A

Msa, okay, so there we go. So that's the the the msa discussion now, even for me, as a microsoft employee, I was like microsoft list msa. What is it msa again accounts.

A

Microsoft list for personal accounts or microsoft list for uh consumers, maybe uh yeah. I don't.

B

Know would it be the same account that you have for hotmail from way.

A

B

A

Trying nowadays.

B

Yes, that also doesn't say.

A

Yes, exactly the same account as xbox. Yes, that is true. That's actually.

B

I don't have an xbox, so I don't know but yeah.

A

But that's your basically non-work account because quite often your hannah has done school.

B

A

Yes, unschooled, that's not work and then your personal account where at least in my case, all of the the games with saket is buying hours, xbox installations. All of that is based on that account. So and now you can actually start using microsoft lists for those cards as well for free. So then it's in preview so really really cool. Just you.

B

Can keep track of all the games you bought in a list? That is true.

A

Rather than necessarily doing that,.

B

A

Well, maybe you'll actually see them from the account at microsoft.com, but anyway, so that's several discussion, but really very cool. Now you can create lists and share those with your let's say, um loved ones or family and then access all of the lists together and then share information, so maybe we're using, for example, on onenote with my wife for shopping notes and shipping.

B

A

So maybe we'll move to.

B

A

Microsoft list, for that.

B

Exactly and the cool thing is right that the first impression people get when they talk about lists like to do so. What is the difference between to do like? Well, lists aren't necessarily only for tasks. Yes, basically, anything that you can have. It can be a list of people list of whatever any kind of list you can think of. It can be that right. It doesn't need to be a task.

B

So yes- and the cool thing is- is that when you create a list, there are a few templates from which you can choose which are kind of inspiring of what you could use it. For so with that, like give it a try, have a look what is available, and I bet that, probably over time there will be more or templates available right. Absolutely.

A

Yeah, absolutely so um additional templates in this site and then, of course, the enterprise site. There will be a, but there is already an opportunity of creating custom templates and simple examples would be something like you're getting prepared for a holiday trip um in your country or outside of country. You need to make a notes on what are the things which we need to take into account.

A

What are the things which we need to back to the backs and all of that stuff, so just having a location where you can collaborate with other people in a constructive means, so constructive ways. English is so hard.

B

Efficient efficient way quickly, you can you need to easily you know you can just easily collaborate with others. Now you start sounding like a marketing.

A

Person now um we're all in marketing kind of that's true now, uh so this one now connecting to sharepoint online using manage identity with credible access permissions- and this is really really cool uh from st uh and really focused um on the granular permission on the azure ad application, so using the site, selected craft scope um and how that actually works and explaining the details and creating the application and then creating those permissions.

A

So this is already getting us towards the back on what we used to have with oauth and sharepoint adams in some level, so you can actually create permissions of an application in a site, collection level in specific sites, and that's that's already a really good step forward. Maybe one thing to go out, though, is that you need to be an administrator to actually grant those permissions still. So you as a site collection administrator. You cannot grant permission to that site collection so, which is then maybe potentially the next step forward in the future.

A

So we'll see. But again this is already enabling us to have an applications which have a permissions not cross the whole tenant, but rather on a specific site which is really really cool. Exactly.

B

And also do you you don't need to use a service account, no credentials playing alarm, no secrets that expire like so. These are basically the two things like why this solution is really really key. Yep.

A

Absolutely and and and I want to call out jeremy kelly uh from my team uh who's been pushing on this he's the bm and not about jeremy, fake or burst lane crash site has been pushing odsp team to make this happen, and then jeremy kelly is the one who's been behaving on this one. So there are so many ceremonies.

A

Now uh then uh peter winstra, I have a new blog post uh on the copy, sharepoint files from one tenant to another, using power automate and that's actually pretty cool as well. So um if you need to transition or publish things across the tenants, you can actually do that with power or domain, and peter actually works through that scenario and how it can be done with power, automate and automate, and peter is really sharing a lot of a lot of great tips related on power.

A

Automated in his plug with a weekly or even daily process of new stuff and and findings which.

C

A

Super super cool. Thank you peter and dan.

A

Now we also had a new videos from the cloud advocates uh team, uh so dan walling, uh it's he's one of the key cloud advocates for microsoft, resistive and he had a nice cool video related on building real-time collaborative in the real-time collaborate app series, and this video is about using the fluid framework. So uh how do you actually use that within your application for real-time collaboration in the same document?

A

So um the fluid framework is really the technology behind of the microsoft loop and those loop components as microsoft teams, but you can actually take that into account uh into using your custom application as well, so really really cool 20 minutes on that. That's a great lunch break time to watch and learn while you're eating. So but that's what I do in my lunch, because this is my lunch room.

B

A

Matter of a preference I go out with the dogs on the morning, so you look there, you go exactly. I don't have a dog. Even there you go right, yeah, dude, okay, I highly recommend, never mind. Now um we have two dogs and two cats. You want one so anyway,.

A

So tom morgan had a really cool video as well uh nine to 20 minutes again actually from a timing perspective which is actually showing. How would you take your team's application and get it actually exposed also in outlook, so this is really around what zuzaki was showing us in the previous site and so the team's javascript, sdk v2 and then tom morgan who's, an mvp uh focused on the team's development, is showing how that can be done in practice and in real world.

A

So um just the same use case example uh in both applications so really really cool, if I'm not mistaken. Actually, the the to-do list is one of the samples in the themes toolkit v3, which actually has this kind of a starting point for showcasing the power of the v2 sdk, so yeah so into them. Stool, kit, v3. You can actually go and create a new solution based on a sample and it's available there as a okay, so cool. I can have a starting point based on this sample, so really cool.

A

Now we also had we wanted to talk about some uh scripts, so so, just to point out so uh paul bullock uh is is leading the effort uh with all the the awesome contributions from the community of collecting microsoft, 365 specific script, samples into a single uh repository. So this is really intended to make sure that the really cool, useful samples are not stored across the world in a key top and nobody finds them, let's actually surface them in one location.

A

So I can come in here and say: uh I'm looking for stuff around migration and I will find uh scripts related in my creation or I'm looking into doing something related on product and in microsoft graph, and I will have access on microsoft, craft, specific script or capabilities or automation, and all of that so authentication with and call with microsoft graph and all that. But you have samples available to take advantage. That's really the key in here now in here.

A

uh Just a good example of a great collaborative community driven work is the list of all external users in all site collections, which have been provided in cli for microsoft, 365 with sharepoint online management cell and pmp powershell. So it's a great example of multiple people, so albert jan paul and chandani working together, one by wykon contributing an individual sample, so really really cool stuff again, and it's then matter of an opinion and preference. Do you want to use cli, sp management, cell bmp publisher, so exactly yeah um also related on these samples?

A

So we do do also have other samples. So this one is is for the vivo connections, so we do have sp dev fx acs, really focused on the viva connection out of the card sample repos and one of the new samples there this week. So this is first of all managed by derrick and david warner. So this repo has a submission signed and then one of the new samples this uh in this reaper was from misumi, so rav and so madip.

A

I do apologize for the pronunciation, um but basically, let's see if I can get this zoom in uh football stuffs in an ace, so really kind of a showcasing uh the integration of an ace to an external api- and this is actually not really that somebody would necessarily use this in their real world, commun, ux and real world mobile experience, but it showcased connecting to an external api and then surfacing that the information using adapter card technologies uh in an ace which we tend to have all of these samples shown in the desktop.

A

But the primary use case obviously is in a mobile side of the house, so now you're accessing that cart and the information quickly using the mobile, so great work over there and that's it for now. So what's happening this week, I have a pretty relaxed week coming up. Oh.

B

Really this moment, as this one goes.

A

Live this one goes live. uh uh I should have gone already to spa, cross-country, skiing and yeah hanging somewhere else. So.

B

Yeah, I might have answered a few emails met, a few people. On the other hand, if you are not there, then I will half.

A

B

Yeah, exactly like half of my time is like yes, what will I do right? So one of the things that I'm currently working on is trying to see how we can integrate amsoil angular with teams right, I'm trying to build a web app with sso for teams that works both inside teams, as well as outside teams, just as a web app, and ideally I want to see if there's a way to do it in a way that you don't need to basically rebuild the app twice and do all the calls twice do authorize them.

B

Let's funnel the different ways in which we obtain a token into a single place and from that just have app like one consciousness, about a user okay. So I'm working on that. um Another thing that is interesting is also thinking more about the angular part. Is I'm working with few other guys in our bigger team to see like how could we uh improve the development experience for angular devs around teams? Like imagine you are an angular dev you use angular cli like that, is your tool chain.

B

How could we plug into that to let you easily create a teams tab with sso enabled and with all the artifacts like having an aadm, deploying the app to teams and whatnot, so we're experimenting around that we're making some good progress there. So I hope that in the next few weeks, or so, I hope that we will be able to share more so definitely stay tuned for it. For that and other than that, we're working on a few concepts for cli for microsoft.

B

365., like the other day, we released a preview version with cli with an api so that you can use cli as dependency in whatever you're building to call commands. You don't need to go through shell and then back, but you can just call it as an api as dependency and then another thing that we're working on together with alex tarentier from the spfx team is to offer a command that allows you to verify integrity of your spfx project. So are your dependencies set up correctly?

B

Do you have anything defined twice or in a way that might be not the best way around it? So we want to find ways like how can we check the project you build and verify that it's built the right way? Yeah yeah.

A

It's actually awesome to have alex on the team, because alice has a real world isv experience, building on top of spfx for microsoft, teams and and, of course, for sharepoint. So now that he's inside of microsoft, helping on things he's really making a big difference, so really really cool for that. Now, in my case, of course, right now this week, uh as this goes live we're having a family vacation. But last week we released a shipment framework 1.14 which, at the time of this recording, hasn't yet happened. But it's going to happen within so.

B

You're, taking a bet you're going there on a limb like oh.

A

B

We do because otherwise we need to cut it. No.

A

No and let me be clear, it's ready to get released. We pushed out for a just the scheduling uh and uh scheduling reasons uh one day forward, so it was basically a decision made and a late wednesday evening to push it on on thursday morning, pacific time, so just basically marketing reasons, so nothing more than that. So it's ready to go.

A

It's just a matter of clicking a button yay, but that's really cool so 1.14 is out and then 1.15 is coming still this half so before scheduled to to get out in by end of june, uh with additional capabilities and then hopefully, two more versions playing of this here in spfx and really focusing again on the improvements in microsoft, teams, microsoft, v1 and, of course, sharepoint absolutely as well so cool but cool. I think that's it for now. So thanks everybody for watching listening and we'll be back with the new pmp weekly within a week.

B

Cheers yes well! Actually! Nick! Yes, when you listen to this, it's gonna be a week. I'm like we're, not gonna, be back next week because you're not there but yeah, it's gonna, be by the time you listen. This is it's gonna be next week. Definitely stay tuned, exactly stay tuned. Thank you.

A

Cheers bye-bye bye.