What is sideloading an Outlook add-in? This is the process of installing a modern web-based add-in directly from an add-in manifest file rather than from the store (AppSource). Sideloading is a common practice for developers during the development and testing of their add-in. It can also be used for Enterprise applications which are developed in-house and therefore don’t get acquired/deployed through the store. How sideloading used to work (prior to Sep 2023) The approach to sideloading Outlook add-ins has historically been through the same UX flow as adding an add-in from the store. This invo ..read more

So nice to see this conference return to Melbourne – I have fond memories of the last time it ran back in 2018. The highlight of the event for me was the conversations and interactions that happen so naturally at in-person events. It’s refreshing to be able to network, meet new friends, catch up with old ones, and speak to experts and thought leaders. My key takeaways came from the amazingly talented Dux Raymond Sy on the topic of governance in Microsoft 365. Meet people in their onlyness (one size does not fit all) Empower people with the right tools and trust them (rather than locking thing ..read more

When making calls to get user centric data from the Microsoft Graph API the documentation tells us we can use either the users (Graph) id or the users UPN (Active Directory User Principal Name) For example, to get the details of a specific user GET /users/{id|userPrincipalName} To get mail messages for a specific user GET /users/{id|userPrincipalName}/messages The user id is the most reliable to use if you have it available. Usually, you will only have this if you have obtained it through previous calls to the Graph API. The UPN is something that you may have more readily have available, thi ..read more

I was recently interview by Microsoft’s Ayca Bas on this podcast of the Microsoft 365 Developer Podcast series where Ayca and Jeremy & Paul talk to developers who are building awesome solutions on Microsoft 365. In this episode, I had a chance to talk about how OnePlace Solutions started as a small company in Australia and grew into a global leader in email and document management solutions for SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive. I also shared some insights into how we leverage the latest technologies and tools from Microsoft to create engaging, easy to use and compliant business systems that ..read more

I joined industry experts Andrew Jolly and Max McNamara for a hybrid breakfast event in Sydney to discuss digital employee experience, employee engagement and share tips on how to improve knowledge sharing and knowledge management in Microsoft 365. We also chatted through the common trends within the industry and gave some actionable takeaways on our top things to concentrate your efforts on for maximum return. Plus I outlined how to determine your most troublesome core processes using the airport toilet satisfaction rating system Watch the recording on YouTube ..read more

In this episode of the Microsoft “Learn from the Community” series with Ayca Bas, Mathieu Rebuffet and myself discuss our career paths that led us to developing and running commercial products at scale on top of the Microsoft 365 platform and leveraging the Microsoft Azure cloud. We demonstrate some key features of the OnePlaceMail App (Outlook Add-in) and then take a peak behind the curtain to discuss the underlying design and how we use specific Azure resources to deliver the app as a Software as a Service offering. More Resources Microsoft Graph Fundamentals: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-u ..read more

Lately my VS2022 (17.2.x) Azure Functions projects started failing to run locally. The local console had errors related to not being able to start any of the Timer Triggers. The errors take the format The listener for function 'function name' was unable to start. This error is related to Azurite (the local Azure Functions runtime environment). The version of Azurite used by VS2022 is causing the problem. I was able to fix the issue by: Closing Visual Studio Installing the latest version of Azurite globally npm install -g azurite Open Azure Storage Explorer and delete the azure-webjobs-hosts b ..read more

Using Azure Blob storage to host static website files has been around for many years, it’s cheap, effective and fast to setup. It gives you the ability to effectively create a directory with a unique public URL that you can upload your static files to and have them hosted (no need for any web server). Microsoft has great documentation available that steps you through how to do this: Static website hosting in Azure Storage Tutorial: Host a static website on Blob Storage This works well if your static website files are a bunch of html files (that contain links to each other to provide navigation ..read more

I’ll be giving two developer oriented sessions at the free Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon conference May 4-6 2022. Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon is a free, online, 60-hour event happening May 4-6, 2022. We will have content going the whole time with speakers from around the globe. This event is free for all wanting to attend. Join us as we talk about the many different pieces of Microsoft 365, including Azure. Get Started Building Apps using the Microsoft Graph Toolkit The Microsoft Graph Toolkit is allowing Graph powered apps to be created incredibly quickly. Leave this session knowing what ..read more

The Problem The reason for writing this post and creating the accompanying simplified proof of concept github repo was that I was struggling to find a documented way to achieve getting the end user to consent to both Graph and SharePoint permission scopes without being presented with two consent prompts. The reason I wanted this is that I have an application that needs to make both Graph API and SharePoint REST calls before it is of any use and it is a really bad experience for the user to have to see a prompt for Graph permissions followed immediately by a second prompt for SharePoint permiss ..read more