Microsoft Flow Virtual Summit – Demos

collab365-virtual-summitsToday was the first day of the Microsoft Flow Virtual Summit sponsored by Collab 365. I really enjoyed being able to sit back and watch my recorded session and spend my time answering questions from the attendees. The comments I got in the chat window were all very gracious and complimentary. It didn’t take long during the session for people to start asking if I would make my demos available after the session. I promised that I would export all seven and post them here on my blog and also send them to the Collab 365 folks to be posted on the Summit site. The demos have all been exported and sent via email to Collab 365.  Now I just need to upload them and post them here:

  1. Applying custom formatting to the approval email
  2. Recording approval results and comments
  3. Creating custom responses without premium licensing
  4. Forwarding an approval if the approver is out of the office
  5. Escalating an approval that hasn’t been responded to
  6. Periodic reminders about pending approvals
  7. Serial Approvals with dynamic list of approvers

12 years as an MVP

July 1st is always a day that I both look forward to and dread.  That’s the morning I find out whether my MVP status has been renewed or not. I was particularly worried this year since its my first year after I semi-retired. I’m still working as a consultant, but I’m letting business chase me rather than me chasing business.  So I’m not as busy as I used to be. That’s been both a good and a bad thing. Its a good thing because I have more time to spend with my family and doing things for the Office 365 community. Its a bad thing because I don’t feel like I’m doing as much as in previous years. But I have evidently been doing enough because I was renewed for my 12th year as an MVP this year. I’m looking forward to another year of learning new things and helping spread that knowledge throughout the community.

Last year as I contemplated retirement I made an offer to community leaders.  I would like to expand on that offer this year.

Community Leaders this is for YOU

If you are looking for a SharePoint, Office 365, PowerApps or Flow speaker for your event, and you can help me defray travel expenses, I will be willing to travel almost anywhere, at anytime to share what I have learned over the years. If you don’t have any funds I can also do remote presentations.

Over the last few years I’ve been spending my time working with SharePoint, PowerApps, Flow, and Office 365 Security & Compliance center.  I’m still working to learn new things in the industry and plan to keep  consulting and training for many years to come.  But if paying jobs don’t happen to come my way then I’ll live off my retirement savings and spend even more time speaking and answering questions.

So here’s to another year as an MVP. I’m really looking forward to it.

NACS 2019 – Wrap up and Slides

The North American Collaboration Summit (NACS) concluded last weekend in Branson, MO. This is one of the great small SharePoint conferences in the US and I always look forward to attending. It fell again this year on the weekend before the MVP Summit in Redmond at Microsoft, so travel arrangements were complex.  But it was well worth the effort. Most of my sessions were well attended and the one highly technical session that had a low turnout probably had the highest interest from the attendees who were there.  It was a pleasure to feel that I was sharing information that people really wanted to learn about.  It was also great to spend time with a number of long time friends who were also presenting.

I promised to make my slides available, so I’ve uploaded them here.  Sorry for the delay, but getting anything extra accomplished while at the MVP Summit is almost impossible. If you have any follow-up questions please email me at pstork@dontpapanic.com.  You can download a copy of the slides from each talk using the links below:

Intro to SharePoint 2019: What’s New

Desired State Configuration (DSC): Controlling SharePoint Deployment in Azure VMs

Intro To OneDrive NextGen Sync: What is it, how it works, and can I manage it?


Filter on a Boolean in PowerApps

PowerappsOne of the spots where I see a lot of people being challenged when they first learn PowerApps is the concept of delegation. Delegation comes into play when working with data sources larger than 500 records. By default PowerApps is designed to only work on a maximum of 500 records at a time. You can increase this default setting to a maximum of 2,000, but that usually results in a noticeable performance lag in your PowerApp. To avoid that problem you should always limit the number of records you are retrieving from a data source to 500 records or less. One of the most common ways to do that is by using the Filter() function to limit the records being returned by the data source to a specific subset that you want to work on.

Using Filter() to limit the number of records retrieved from a specific data source is a great strategy, but it doesn’t always work. This is where understanding the concept of delegation becomes critical. Delegation is the process of having the data source filter the records before they are returned to the PowerApp instead of having the PowerApp apply the filter directly. This is complicated by the fact that not all data sources support delegation and different data sources support different logical operators for delegation. You can find a list of delegable data sources and operators here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/canvas-apps/delegation-list. But even this documentation can lead to confusion.

The confusion comes in from some footnotes in the ‘Filter and LookUp delegable predicates’ section of the documentation. Footnote 3 on the logical operators reads, “For numeric columns, all operators can be delegated. For ID columns, only the ‘=’ can be delegated. Date columns can’t be delegated.” This would imply that all the operators should work with a Boolean value of true or false. But in my experience Boolean columns are treated the same way that ID columns are treated. The only operator that works is ‘=’. If you try to use a Filter statement where a Boolean value is not equal to something you will see that it issues a delegation warning. The following screenshot shows an example.

PowerApps1Blog

But if I change the formula to the Boolean being equal to true then the delegation warning goes away and the function becomes delegable. See the screenshot below.

PowerApps2Blog

The moral of the story is that understanding the intricacies of delegation is critical when building PowerApps.

Collab365 MicroJobs: I will build you a Dev Farm in Azure

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If you’re struggling to find help or keep up to date with Microsoft SharePoint then I will build you a basic SharePoint 2013/2016/2019 Dev farm in Azure.

I am now a registered Freelancer on Collab365 MicroJobs – the brand new marketplace dedicated to Microsoft professionals.

Here are 4 reasons that the Collab365 Team have spent months building the site:

  1. You often need expert Microsoft help just for a couple of hours.
  2. You can’t keep up with everything Microsoft is releasing.
  3. You find it hard to find Microsoft experts on other non-dedicated sites. There are just too many other subjects covered.
  4. You don’t have time to go through a lengthy interview process.

I personally love the concept and have actually just posted a MicroJob. Here are the details…

How I can help you …


Building out a SharePoint farm to use as a Dev/Test environment can be a long tedious process.  It also usually requires hardware resources that aren\’t always available.  Using Azure you can spin up new VMs relatively quickly, but installing and configuring SharePoint can still take a significant amount of time.  There are pre-built Azure templates, but these often don\’t provide the flexibility needed to configure a specific environment.
Using a combination of PowerShell and Desired State Configuration (DSC) we will design and build a basic  server farm consisting of three (3) virtual machines (AD, SQL, and SharePoint) to your specifications.  The farm will include the following:

  • One (1) Active Directory domain controller configured to the domain name of your choice containing ten (10) Service accounts to support installation of SQL and SharePoint
  • One (1) SQL server configured using a domain service account to support SharePoint
  • One (1) SharePoint 2013, 2016 or 2019 server
  • Up to three (3) Web Applications
  • Up to ten (10) Site Collections
  • Core Service Applications (Application Management, Managed Metadata, Search, Secure Store, State, Subscription Settings,  Usage, & User Profile)

Not included:

  • Configuration of Office 365 hybrid
  • Configuration of SQL reporting services
  • Configuration of Office Online Server

How does it work and what about payment?
Paying for online services with people that you don’t know can be worrying for both parties. The buyer often doesn’t want to pay until they’re happy that the Freelancer has completed the work. Likewise the Freelancer wants to be sure they will be recompensed for their time and commitment. Collab365 MicroJobs helps both the buyer and the Freelancer in these ways:

  1. The buyer pays up front and the money is securely held in the MicroJobs Stripe Connect platform account.
  2. The Freelancer can then begin the work in the knowledge that the payment has been made.
  3. Once the buyer is happy that the work is complete and to their satisfaction, the funds become available to the Freelancer.
  4. There’s even a dispute management function in case of a disagreement. But it won’t on my MicroJob! As long as we agree what’s needed up front and keep talking the entire way through, you won’t be disappointed.

Note: Once I’ve completed the work, I’d love it if you could write a review for me. This will allow others to see what a fantastic job I did for you.
What if we need to add extra’s to the job after I’ve started?
It’s really easy for us to discuss your extra requirement (using the chat feature on the site) and for us to agree a price and add it to the order.
If you’d like me to help you, here are the steps to hire me …

  1. View my MicroJob.
  2. On that page click the “Buy” button.
  3. You’ll need to register as a buyer on the MicroJobs site, but this only takes a minute and will also allow you to purchase MicroJobs from other awesome Freelancers.

If you need to contact me then please use the “contact” button and ask me any questions before purchasing.