Content:
Need more controls over the creation of Microsoft Teams? Have you ever wanted to allow users to request a Microsoft Team and have an automated process for their creation? In this session we’ll walk through the steps of setting up the process to allow users to submit a request for a new Microsoft Team through a custom SharePoint list form or Power App. The submission of the request will kick off our approval and creation process using Power Automate.
The key concepts covered:
Power Apps – creating a custom list form for SharePoint
Power Automate / Flows – the engine that builds the Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Graph – behind the scenes API used to create Microsoft Teams sites
Below are the questions and answers from the June 2021 Meetup Session.
Q. Tell us a bit about yourself? – City, family, hobbies, job title
A. Hello – Thomas Daly from NJ. I have a wife and 2 little girls [maci 6 and Teagan 3] a cat magnolia and Boston terrier nova. Hobbies – love to program and learn new things, studying Italian, cooking, gym, racing drones, crypto currencies. I am the Collaboration Director at SoHo Dragon. I work with our customers to solve business problems, delivery solutions across M365 stack. I also help internally with mentoring, working on internal products [charterdesk and pdfeditor] both in the MS store, and building up our team. I help run our NJ M365 User Group and M365 / O365 SP Saturdays- NYC and PA currently. Also Global Azure bootcamps + M365 Developer Bootcamps in NYC/NJ/PA area.
Q. Tell us something about yourself that not many people know about you?
A. I’m always business working on something, I don’t like to sit still. But I do enjoy peace and quiet – not everything is chaos.
Q. What does a typical workday look like for you?
A. Starts about 8:30 am Get up and commute downstairs to the basement office space. Meetings in the morning, lunch or gym, dev tasks until 4:30, dinner – family time. kids in bed. Finish up any dev work / prep tasks for next day.
Q. 1st job out of college
A. paid interned at Comp Tutor Computer Center [tongue twister] – small mom and pop shop to fix computers, build web pages. This is stuff that I’ve been doing since 13 years old. Job was fun, boss sucked sometimes paid me in Barter.
Q. Your 1st version of SharePoint that you experienced and what year
A. used SPS 2001 for my Masters Project for Monmouth University – I was in charge of the tooling and we use SharePoint to store our documents and version control. This is what we had access to at the time so it was what I used.
Q. Last challenging project and why? (this should relate to your demo)
A. I would say working on the provisioning was a challenge because the Microsoft recommendation was using powershell pnp v3 and azure functions v1.. this was end of the last year. Then Azure removed the support for v1 functions completely. –there used to be a toggle for legacy/classic languages. They took it away. SO learnging to use AZ fn v3 and the new PowerShell PNP v4 [release Jan 21] for .dotnet core. Was very challenging since there was no proper guidance and the MS articles all stated the old way which you could not do.
Q. What is the biggest mistake that your feel holds back your clients from the results they want (this should relate to your demo)
A. I would say the biggest shortcoming is staying on top of updates. It’s somewhat embarrassing when a feature is released that you don’t know about and the customer does. Why – because they are looking for a certain thing and I see so much news that it’s impossible to stay on top of it all. I listening and reading a good portion of my time to stay current. There is an unrealistic expectation that as MVP or ‘expert’ you know everything or you have some secret information.
Q. Describe a SharePoint train wreck project, and what did you learn?
A. This goes back a little. I was working on a public SharePoint website for AMD and we would need to update things with designer from time to time. I forget exactly but I think there were some webparts that were on the page.,..anyway I didn’t set it up I just had to maintenance it. This was very early on in my career. I was editing a page in Designer and it crashed. All the webparts fell off the page and disappeared. Couldn’t restore it. My heart stopped … once I recovered I just recreated the page and it was fine for the most part. I had to tell the client and they helped me adjust the webparts. I had a picture of the site prior to the crash so I new what had to go on the page just not all the settings.
Lesson learned when working with designer …. Always back up the page.
Q. Your favorite M365 feature/tool and why
A. I like teams on the phone because I can be a member of several tenants and get notifications. That’s the most useful thing because I have to participated in many teams and the desktop version just doesn’t work. I have to constantly sign in and out + MFA on top of that and it’s just tedious and annoying.
Q. Where do you think Microsoft is going with M365.. Be totally honest
A. Simple – take over everything. software to power productivity doesn’t matter the device
Q. What was your first job out of hire school
A. I worked in a Pizzaeria after high school – during college delivering, making subs / sandwiches, washing dishes, cooking dinners, register, making pies [not all the same time] mostly delivery / washing dishes.
Q. What’s your biggest nightmare project you have worked on … And what did you learn from this experience
A. I get throw into a lot of tough jobs, impossible tasks. I learned to to break it down into small chunks and set realistic check points to monitor progress and not to get overwhelmed.
My biggest nightmare is not having a proper pm to manager the client so we don’t get endless amount of requests for changes and fixes.
Q. What’s the best and worst tech advice you’ve been given
A. Best – don’t be afraid to fail. Success is not instant or overnight. The most successful people have failed over and over again. The difference is that they continue to brush of failures and continue on.
Be kind to yourself, we are our worst critics. Never talk yourself out of doing something that you want. Always put your out there.
Worst – follow your passion. This advice is not for everyone. Do something you like and get paid, take care of yourself and your family.
Q. What are you working on to become a developer/consultant / CTO
A. Working on maintaining my sanity with 2 small kids at home.
Upping my Azure game – want more Azure projects. But also moving from hands on Developer to more Architecture working with other members of our team to improve their technical skills
Q. Where do you want to be in 5 years?
A. Still where I am – but adding 5x more value to the team. Client out reach, technical strategy, improving our development side.
Must be working with customers to solve their problems, increase productivity and innovation.
Q. What’s your blind spot in your Microsoft knowledge? Pitfalls
A. my blind spot I would say not knowing SP / M365 / Teams governance, I’ve sat in on sessions and learn something every time. It’s just not something I’m well versed in per say.
Q. Where do you source your knowledge?
A. Blogs + Videos + Trial and Error + Forums
Q. In your mind, if there was 1 song that could describe SharePoint, what would it be? – David Bowie – Heroes
A. No idea
Q. Where can people find you?
A. @tomdaly
-https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-m-daly/