My musings on Office 365, search, programming and technology.
(June 1st, 2019, I started as a full time employee of Microsoft, thus any post before that date are solely written on my own behalf)
I’m really honored to be allowed to speak at the biggest SharePoint event for the third time in a row. Previously it was Microsoft SharePoint Conference, now it’s Microsoft Ignite!
Previously I’ve spoken on extending people search and search relevance, and this time I’ve been allowed back for two sessions. One on Office Graph and one on Office 365 Video. Both related to search in their own ways.
If you haven’t signed up for this all encompassing event which covers most of the tech Microsoft has to offer, head over to http://ignite.microsoft.com/ and book May 4-8, 2015 in Chicago in your calendar today!
I stumbled upon the following jQuery code by another team member (not a Pzl guys as we know better). I challenged him to figure out what was “wrong” with it and he did sort of clue himself in so I’m not outing him here :)
function showMoreButton(className) {
var alteringDiv = $(className);
if (!$.isEmptyObject(alteringDiv)) {
//DOM changes to Search Navigation
alteringDiv.prepend('<h2 class="ms-displayInline moreButton"></h2>');
$('.ms-srchnav-overflow>a').detach().appendTo('.moreButton');
$('.moreButton>a').text('Other');
$('.moreButton>a').attr('id', 'moreSearchCategories').addClass('collapsed');
alteringDiv.removeClass('ms-srchnav-overflow');
$('.moreButton>a').removeClass('ms-srchnav-more-glyph');
}
}
SharePoint has a nifty search box above a list or library which can be used to quickly filter items for that library. So how do you make sure it doesn’t work?
..and I will do a re-test with a newer version of the hardware in the near future. So, when reading the original post, keep in mind that the bttn I had might not have been what you see today.
[Update end]
….and at €69.00, perhaps one of the worst deals you can make(?). Luckily for me I borrowed it from a colleague, so his loss.
Basically what you have is a plastic fantastic big red button which hooks up to a WiFi network. When you hit the button it sends a signal over to bt.tn where you can configure the click to call some other service. For example a REST end-point.
The button is powered by 4xAA batteries and can easily be moved around.
Theoretically, this sounds pretty good. In practice not so much. Why? Read on!
I’m doing an assessment for migrating a 2010 solution to 2013, and one of the custom solutions installed was an RSS reader web part. We all know the RSS web part which came with 2010 is a bit limited, and it’s still there in 2013. So if you don’t have any requirements to do authentication on the RSS and you’re in love with XSLT, the web part is there for you my friend!
Another options is to use the Content Search Web Part. Yes CSWP indeed! SharePoint 2013/Online supports the creation of Result Sources using the OpenSearch 1.0/1.1 protocol. And the beauty of this protocol is that the response is in Atom or RSS format.
If you’re using OSX and Office, you might not be the happiest person in the world as you’re still using the 2011 version. It works, sure, but not as well as Office 2013 for Windows. Even the iPad works better for the Office suite.
Last year a new version of Outlook was launched for OSX which was a great improvement over the 2011 version, and now the rest of the suite will follow – at least in preview. This will make it heaps easier to work against OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint as well as an updated client program feel.
The Arctic SharePoint Challenge was held for the 5th year in a row in Oslo Norway on February 26th-28th. It’s a three day hackathon where teams battle to win the reindeer antlers trophy, together with fame and glory. This was my forth time attending the event, where I’ve been a participant three times, a judge one, and this year also part of the organizing committee.
If you want to know more about the event and how teams are scored, head over to the ASPC web site.
As with previous years we had four judges, where we invited a couple of new guys this year – all the way from the U.S.
My team the Puzzlepart Appsters ended up in 4th place this year, an all time low :-(, with the Infozurgs team taking home the trophy. But we’ll be back next year I’m sure!
That said, it was an awesome event and I want to mention the Swedish team from Altran in particular who really brought their game with costumes and awesome team spirit. Make sure to check out their Yoga Word App video.
SharePoint World Champion
For the third time a quiz was hosted in the evening where contestants was divided into random teams where they had to pick the right answer on a whopping 31 questions. It was a difficult quiz indeed and the team I was part of scored the most with 18 correct answers. In Microsoft terms that is NOT a passing score, but the judges let it slide *phew*. The members of the top two teams where then set to battle each other in A/B questions – standing on the correct side of a white line which had been taped to the floor.
That proved quite interesting as people where thinking I knew it all and followed the side I chose. When we were three people left, that proved a smart thing for me, as we all got it wrong and I was still in the competition. I then switched tactics and stood with one foot on each side of the line and barely lifted one foot when the time ran out – and in the end I was crowned the SharePoint World Champion of 2015 – following my colleague Kim Damsleth who won in 2012. Want to beat me? Join next years ASPC 8-)
What we created
The Appsters team did a lot of new fun stuff we hadn’t before. Personally I created a 7zip file preview handler for Office 365 based on the newly released preview API, a fun solution using a big red button from bt.tn as an input device for Word (I’ll do a separate post on that *beep* hardware later - The solution was fun to create as this was my very first attempt at using WebAPI, SignalR and creating a Word App), and I also tested out some Office Graph queries – being the only team to get the Delve 2 badge.
All in all I have to say I’m very pleased with the event as one of the organizers this year. As a contestant I’m also happy, although I realize Puzzlepart have to put in more than 30 minutes of preparations next year if we want to be in the top 3 teams – and also party less the first night of the event. I’m blaming Chris and Lidiya for that :), but boy did we have a good time!
All things considered I think Puzzlepart Appsters did a good job ending up in tied 3rd place before the final four 500 point awards was handed out. (I’m convincing myself 4th is not that bad ;-)
Thanks to everyone who participated and the sponsors who made it possible!
SPSSthlm was a truly great event and I had a blast doing it. Thanks to Matthias Eining and Erwan van Hunen who organized the event for the 2nd time. There was also a panel debate at the end which proved to be quite fun… at least to the ones up on the stage :)
