All Demo Downloads will be on Github - blog housekeeping

I've taken a short break from writing blog posts - I haven't been idle, I have been writing something.  Hopefully to be able to share it with everyone soon.  Anticipation is killing me.

As we roll into a new month September!  There are a few planned updates I'm doing for the rest of the year...

1. Several old blog posts that was in Draft will be merged and published.  These are summary posts from the Office 365 Saturday events I've been going to.
2. I've been in several SharePoint Sydney user group sessions and that needs summaries too.
3. SPFx is announced, and now Developer Preview.  Posts there too.
4. I'm looking around to see what's the best way to record some video sessions as I retire them to the archives.

First big announcement.

All future demo downloads will be on Github!

The download files for my demos on Upskill Your Javascript - from building JS WebParts for SharePoint to Office Add-ins and Azure Functions is up first.

https://github.com/johnnliu/demo-upgrade-your-js

The main driver for this is that the files are updated overtime, and Github really provides a much better place for me to point people to and say the latest files are over here.  Check it out, and if you have Issues - tag them directly on the lines.

So that's the first of the big news.

Seems obvious now...

Hype Level Insane - #FutureOfSharePoint

I wrote this as an email to colleagues.  But it got so long and exciting with pictures I decided to publish it.  There are no spoilers and I don't know any secrets.

#FutureOfSharePoint event is a keynote follow by sessions

There are more sessions after the keynote by Jeff Teper on whatever they will announce, so if you are a SharePoint guy you might be up for a looooonnnnng day.

A sneak peek between behind the scenes at #FutureofSharePoint in SF! pic.twitter.com/oHkeY6egcQ

— Microsoft SharePoint (@SharePoint) May 3, 2016

Venue setup.  Small invite only place.

A lot of SharePoint MVPs have invitations to be physically at the event – there’s a significant gathering of them.  Perhaps Microsoft will consider giving our SharePoint MVP titles back 😉  Office Server and Services is nice.  But being a SharePoint MVP was special.

Cheers to the #FutureofSharePoint - join tomorrow live at 9:30pm PDT https://t.co/6D1iywWBUE #SharePoint #Office365 pic.twitter.com/Wk0GIZo5rf

— Benjamin Niaulin (@bniaulin) May 4, 2016

A group of SharePoint MVPs.  A murder of SharePoint MVPs?

There are times I really think about moving to America.  This is one of those times.

Australian Timezone

I’m debating whether to sleep really early and wake up at 2am.  Or just read it tomorrow – I’m pretty sure there will be Sway, liveblog, twitter coverage #FutureofSharePoint, yamjams and a number of MVP impression videos after the event.

I do hope the event will be broadcasted via Skype-broadcast.  Eat your own dogfood Team Office.

Next week Collab365 is broadcasting from MS HQ.  I hope they are setting up with MS and will utilize Skype to run their online conference.  In the past years we have used YouTube.

There is a PowerBI livequery dashboard set up with MS’s new Microsoft Flow

http://whitepages.unlimitedviz.com/2016/05/integrating-microsoft-flow-power-bi-real-time-reporting/

SharePoint Can't Be "Dead"

Reading the tea-leaf from what’s public:  To people that says “SharePoint is dead”...

Jeff Teper would not have returned to this role and be “Corporate Vice President of OneDrive and SharePoint” only to tell the world SharePoint is dead.

MS would not invite 20+ SharePoint MVPs to a physical event to tell the world SharePoint is dead.

My expectation is that the news will be really positive.  But my personal hype level is already far too high.

Key MS people to follow:

https://twitter.com/jeffteper  Father of SharePoint, Corporate VP.

https://twitter.com/mkashman

https://twitter.com/williambaer

https://twitter.com/AdamHarmetz 

https://twitter.com/danholme   Founder of IT Unity and MVP, recently joining Microsoft to continue Office evangelism. 

This rant is already too long and with pictures I might make this a blog post.  But no guesses from me.  Things will either get released with much fanfare, or they won’t.  😊

SharePoint Events and news catch up for Australia - April/May 2016

I was preparing this list for our April Sydney SharePoint Usergroup event.

April 28-29 Digital Workplace Conference in Melbourne

This is the annual Australian SharePoint Conference / ShareThePoint Conference by Debbie Ireland.  The biggest Australian SharePoint show for the year.  A lot of opportunity for networking, user cases and physically meeting and talking with the community experts.  Lots of Australian and overseas visiting SharePoint experts across the spectrum (IT Pro, Business, Power User, Dev) at this event.  http://dwcau.com.au/  

April 28-29 Cloud Roadshow in Sydney

This is a Microsoft event for a developer audience.  Focused on Azure.

https://microsoftcloudroadshow.com/sydney

May the 4th - Future of SharePoint

This is an streaming online event with Jeff Teper, the father of SharePoint (and now OneDrive).  It would be live on May the 5th for Australians and probably very early in the morning.  Check timezones.

https://resources.office.com/en-us-landing-the-future-of-sharepoint.html

 

May 7 Office 365 Saturday Perth

The SharePoint / Office 365 Saturday events for 2016 kicks off again from Perth.

http://www.o365saturdayaustralia.com/perth

May 10-12 Collab365 Online Summit

The SP24 / Collab 365 guys are back again for 2016 with a huge lineup of streaming and recorded sessions.

http://collab365.events/collab365-summit-2016/

OneDrive for Business

There was a recent blog post was really good with information on 2016 roadmap.

https://blogs.office.com/2016/04/12/onedrive-for-business-recognized-as-an-efss-leader-and-continues-momentum-with-spring-updates/#wsEJ4t8xOHg24iYE.97

(Ignore the marketing intro about industry recognition… the roadmap items like Win 8.1, pause sync, and also Doc Lib sync in 3rd quarter 2016 is good info)

New Document Library UX went live

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-a-document-library-3b5976dd-65cf-4c9e-bf5a-713c10ca2872?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Almost universally, the reception is cautious.  We like seeing updates.  We don't like missing ribbons and hiding team collaboration features.  Robert Crane has one of the earliest pieces on this http://blog.ciaops.com/2016/04/this-seems-like-siloing-to-me.html that I really echo with.

Creating Multiple Custom Email-Alias Addresses with one Outlook account

Update thank you to Johannes in the comments.  This is called Email Sub-Addressing.

I was catching up with my brother, and he showed me a pretty cool trick with gmail.

If you mail [email protected] (not his real email address) with mark-liu+test@gmail.com - the email would arrive at his inbox.

Not to be outdone, I tested this with Outlook, and sure enough.  If you mail: john-liu+test a outlook dot com they'd arrive in my personal mailbox.  You can do anything after the + character.  +spam, +newspaper, +test1 etc etc.

I have no idea what this feature is called - for Gmail it seems to be called "Creating Multiple Custom Email Addresses with one Gmail account".  May be this is called Email-Alias? 

So this is just a short blog about an Outlook version of this feature.  This works for Hotmail as well.

What is this good for?

• Test throw away emails, e.g. testing your registration process code
• Spam emails and figuring out where they came from
• Easy to set up filter rule to get rid of emails you don't want
• You should definitely have a john-liu+spam alias for signing up to newsletters.

Notes

• Doesn't work for Exchange or Office 365 email addresses.

Thank you MS for MVP 2016

As I still see myself a newcomer in the SharePoint community compared to our many elders, I still hold my breath every year come Jan 02 when my MVP gets renewed.  I'm told "if they weren't going to renew you they'll break it to you early" I hope so.  I'm still holding my breath anyways.

I received my Microsoft MVP award for the 3rd year on the morning of the 2nd.  I wanted to say a big thank you to the community and Microsoft.  Cheers for Team Office and Friends!

2016 is the year where Microsoft tweaks the MVP award system - for IT Pros and Developer MVPs, it is no longer based directly on specific product, but on the product group.  Instead of SharePoint, I am now Office Servers and Services.  I think this is a good thing, in that I was already contributing in different areas - I love Sway, and love love Power BI, at the same time I want to see SharePoint's Sites even more embedded within Office Add-Ins.  Where will SharePoint go in 2016?  Will it end up on HoloLens?  Wow who knows.

But know this, SharePoint is not going away not by a long shot.  This is the year where I think we will see that MS is serious about SharePoint, and not just a service, but also a platform.  Trust me, I'm a dev...  A hopeful dev.

And as Microsoft moves forward with single purpose: unifying Azure, Windows, Office and Bing engine, as well as advancing the devices with IOT, Xbox, Surface and Band, I have this uncanny grin as I imagine what we could build, not in 5 years' time, but this year, in 2016!

Loving the ecosystem, loving the possibilities and loving the community.

/omg2016gonnabeawesome