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

PhantomJS for SharePoint and Office365 at Collab365

/

Great news everyone!

Collab 365 Global Conference

Collab 365 is a free online conference that's just around the corner - this is run by the team behind last year's successful SP24 conference (which was the craziest 24hours - around the clock and around the world).

https://collab365.conferencehosts.com/SitePages/GlobalConference.aspx

This time, the guys are less crazy and will instead have 12hours spanning over two days.  (So a total of 24 hours).

PhantomJS: Headless Browser for SharePoint and Office 365

I have been having a lot of fun locally presenting this topic in the Office 365 Saturday events around Australia, and will be presenting this online at Collab 365. 

My session is scheduled for 08 October (day 1 - my time), 12PM-1PM.  Please check your local time.  In Australia, this conference spans 08-09 October. 

https://collab365.conferencehosts.com/sitepages/agenda.aspx

PhantomJS is an interesting tool.  It is free - and it is basically browser that you can script to automate many things, without a UI.  I cover scenarios and scripts that will allow you to use it effectively with SharePoint On-Premises and Office 365.

If you are a developer - this is a great tool to add to your toolset.  Even if you aren't - as long as you aren't scared of a bit of scripting, you will still find the scenarios for PhantomJS interesting and, well, different.

There are several other sessions I wanted to catch up on, and plenty of MVPs and Microsoft presenting on all things Office 365. 

I hope to see you at Collab 365!

 

 

Presenting "PhantomJS" at SPBizConf free online conference on June 18.

/

I will be presenting "Introducing PhantomJS: Headless Browser for your SharePoint/Online" in the SPBizConf on 18 June.

http://www.spbizconf.com/events/headless-in-sharepoint-phantomjs-will-blow-your-mind/

Despite the -JS in the name of the title, PhantomJS is not another Javascript library.  Instead, it is a headless browser that lets you automate many tasks involving a browser, and there are some very nifty tricks you can use this to build site directories or create PDF snapshot of documents and forms.

Timing

Technically, because of Timezone Differences, it will actually be the 19th of June at 7AM in the morning.  The session is pre-recorded and I will basically be watching it along with the attendees and replying to questions in the chat room.

More Online.  More content.

Online Conferences such as SPBizConf and Unity Online are a new thing for me, and has prompted me to start looking into setting up recording room at home for more, higher quality, recorded content to be made available from my local presentations.  I'm very excited to be able to participate in global conferences like this without the expense of having to do crazy travel - travelling from Australia to "anywhere" tend to get expensive very quickly.

Will it blow my mind?

The curious will see the old name of the session.  I've since calm down and renamed the title, but the old URL has to stick for link reasons.  You need to let me know if this session gave you great ideas about what sort of shenanigans you get up to afterwards.

A Hybrid Future for On-Premises

/

Hybrid - In Theory

I think it is no suprise for us watching from the SharePoint world (sometimes with a slight envy) at all the investments in the cloud.

Microsoft makes no secret about this - cloud is a massive growth area and an area that Microsoft is and will aggressively pursue.

SharePoint itself is a product born On-Premise. But many of the Experiences are now born-in-the-Cloud.

What I was very relieved to see though, is that in this mad push for Cloud-First, Microsoft reaffirms that they will not leave their customers behind. This is where I feel the Hybrid story that has came out is so refreshing.

What's coming down?

  • OneDrive for Business coming to SharePoint 2010
  • Delve coming to SharePoint 2013 first
  • Continue to evolve Hybrid Search

Hybrid in the Real World

The landscape "I" see.  This part is where I get yelled at, or perhaps I'm seen as a Fanboy.  I'll just say what I saw.

In the year 2013 - I saw the future that Microsoft wanted was all Cloud.  I was very dismayed - Australia is not particularly fast at going to the cloud.  Many of our enterprises aren't even migrating their SharePoint installations from 2010.  What about data sovereignty?  In the light of NSA spying case in 2014 it looked even worse. 

In the following year June 2014, the Australian Government modified its policy to say it is up to each Department Head to decide whether it is OK to store data offshore.  No doubt pushed by both budget cuts, internal push, external Vendor Pricing and a public statement of cutting out unnecessary Red-Tape.

Now, I hear cloud being implemented left and right.  Prime examples?

  • Exchange Online - much bigger mailboxes than on-prem.  Mobile friendly.
  • To get Exchange Online, a company pretty much has their Active Directory synchronized to Azure AD.  ADFS is nicer for SSO, but more servers.  Small and medium enterprises are pretty happy with DirSync.  That's another tick.
  • OneDrive for Business - relatively large personal storage space that allows Enterprise IT control
  • Office Client Licenses.  As part of the Office 365 package, the cheaper client licenses (and up to 5 devices, as well as additional mobile/tablet licenses) are also a huge win.
  • Yammer - Corporate-friendly, sanctioned "social platform".  Seriously, your youngster employees wants to talk, at least give them the right place to make that conversation heard.
  • Lync/Skype for Business - Lync Online took care of a lot of remote VOIP scenarios.  Lync Server worked well with Polycom and other On-Prem solutions.
  • Extranet Sites (SharePoint) where the company wants to share "some" content with an external partner.

There will always be companies that can't move everything to the cloud, but I think more and more companies are considering what they *could* move.  Most companies don't really want to host their own Exchange Server, unless they really have to.  And even for those rare cases, my Bank client is implementing Yammer as their Enterprise Social solution.

 

Reading the Tea Leaves

Oh my favourite activity.  I love doing this and yet I'm so bad at it.

I'm terrible at reading the future.  So I only wanted to mostly comment on the past.  Perhaps as a consultant that works across many different sectors (building, education, transport, mining and banking), and as a community person that loves to talk to everybody I meet, I do see quite a bit.

And what I see aligns with what Microsoft is doing.  So I think it's safe to predict this one:

Bet on the Cloud.  And if you can't do that yet, Bet on Hybrid.