Blog

Microsoft Lists for EVERYONE (With MSA Preview)

I’ve been working with SharePoint for about 12 years now, and in those 12 years I have consistently said “my life sure would be easier with a list or two.”

Cascading Drop-downs in PowerApps

I probably don’t have to tell you this, but just in case, PowerApps are versatile no code or low code solutions you can create to simplify processes for your end users. One of the most common PowerApps is a personalized form for data entry or selection. PowerApps has a lot of built in controls that are a breeze to just click and add, but if you don’t mind getting your hands a little dirty you can really tailor your app and make it easy for users to put in data with integrity. One of my favorite ways to do this is with a cascading drop-down, or basically two drop-downs that have related fields. Whatever you select in drop-down 1 impacts the choices available in drop-down 2. For example, if you’re building an order form, you might have a drop-down for category, then a second drop-down for product. Let’s look at how you might put that together. 

Calling in Teams: Collaboration Made Simple

I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a wild ride when it comes to communicating with our coworkers. Instead of face to face meetings or cubicle chats, we’ve been in virtual meetings. Personally, I haven’t noticed an increase in the amount of instant messaging, but I have noticed that a lot of my messages end in a call, like this: 

Hey, I was just on a call with client ABC and we were talking about DEF. Do you have a minute to hop on a call and debrief with me? 

I’ve also been pulled into active calls as my expertise comes into scope. I’ll get a chat “hey we’re on the phone with this team and there’s a compliance question, can we loop you in?” I can join the active call immediately without having a meeting invite or starting a new call. What a world!

However, I’ve started to wonder if I am using the call features in Microsoft Teams as well as I could be? Are there features I’m not aware of yet? With so many people rapidly adopting Microsoft Teams, I can’t be the only one wondering this, so let's take a look at some of the features Microsoft Teams has when it comes to calling, including the new Collaborative Calling. 

Fellow PAIT Group colleagues, Joy Apple (aka JoyofSharePoint) and Richard Calderon, recently hosted a webinar focused on the basics of Teams Calling features. If you were not able to make the live webinar we have recorded the session.  When you have a moment in your day, please watch. It's worth it.

My favorite 5 Features of Microsoft Lists: A List

Microsoft Lists officially dropped in August, and now that we’ve all had some time to play around it’s a good time to create a list of our own: our favorite five (5) features or functions of Microsoft Lists.

To start, what is Lists? Didn’t SharePoint already have lists? Yes it did, but the custom list feature in SharePoint was pretty well restricted to SharePoint. You could create columns and content types and all sorts of views and pretty ways to present data and metadata and datadatadatadata, but the only ways to use that data out of SharePoint was an export, typically Excel. With Microsoft Lists you can take that same data manipulation power and use it in Teams, SharePoint, or as a standalone application. In addition, you can use Power Automate (formerly Flow) to crunch that data even better.

Before we dive in ....   We discussed this  topic in webinar form click here to check out the discussion.

Ok now lets dive in!

Real World Lesson On The Importance of Governance in Microsoft 365

This is my face when I read about the KPMG error deleting user’s private chats in Microsoft Teams.  For those who aren't familiar with the KPMG story 145,000 of the global user personal Teams chats were deleted.

How to Create, Publish, and Use Sensitivity Labels in Microsoft 365

We all want to know where our data is and who can see it, and most importantly we want to know without a doubt that people who shouldn’t see it can’t.