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Microsoft Ignite 2017

The Microsoft Ignite conference this year is being held in Orlando, Florida USA from September 25th – 29th. There will be tons of learning opportunities (1000+ hours of learning) on topics ranging from IoT to Office 365 and SharePoint.  The week is a great time of learning, networking, and finding new opportunities to get plugged into the community.

I will be part of the RE:Office 365 team doing various activities, including opportunities to broadcast live interactions with attendees, speakers, and experts from around the world.

I am also very happy to be presenting two sessions at Microsoft Ignite this year: How to use Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Office 2016 to achieve more and Create a compelling dashboard in 20 minutes. You can check out the sessions and add them to your schedule (login to MyIgnite to add the sessions to your schedule) by clicking the image below:

Microsoft Ignite Sessions
I hope you are able to join us in Orlando this year!

Solar Eclipse 2017

I am lucky enough to live in an area that was in the “path of totality” for the solar eclipse that took place August 21st, 2017. Being the largest city in the 100% coverage path, Nashville was expected to receive visitors from all over the world for the event and I had a front-row seat from my home!

The hour leading up to the event was plagued by clouds.


Thankfully, the clouds parted before the total eclipse happened so I could see it clearly and take some pictures!

This is a time-lapse video using my iPhone capturing the shadows and changes in light from before, during, and after the eclipse.

The pictures below were taken with a Canon Rebel with an EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III lens. Click the image for a larger version.

Right before totality - Solar Eclipse 2017
Right before totality – Solar Eclipse 2017
Explosion before totality - Solar Eclipse 2017
“Explosion” before totality – Solar Eclipse 2017
Totality - Solar Eclipse 2017
Totality – Solar Eclipse 2017
Return of the sun - Solar Eclipse 2017
Return of the sun – Solar Eclipse 2017
Clouds return - Solar Eclipse 2017
Clouds return – Solar Eclipse 2017

I hope you enjoyed the pictures! Learn more about the #SolarEclipse event by visiting the NASA page.

Office 365 Msg Center: The week that was

Keeping up with all the features and updates to Office 365 can be overwhelming. Microsoft is doing a better job of giving you insight into what is coming to your environment by posting to the Message Center within the Office 365 Admin Center. But if you don’t check in with the message center often, you might miss something very important that has huge impact to you and your users. What about the announcements that aren’t even in the Message Center – how do you stay informed?

To help you be in the know, Darrell Webster and I will be going through the Message Center every week and giving you the information you need to know – Live! at 12pm Pacific/3pm Eastern Time. If you can’t join us live every week, you can always go back to see the recordings on our Youtube Channel. Please take a moment and subscribe to the RE:Office 365 channel so you know when we go live and when recordings are available.

Nashville Modern Excel & Power BI User Group August 2017

I will once again be joining the Nashville Modern Excel User group to speak. On August 17th I will be speaking on “Using Your On-prem Data in a Cloud World” – walking through the benefits of using your on-premises data with cloud-based tools such as Power BI, Microsoft Flow, and PowerApps.

Details can be found on the Nashville Modern Excel Meetup page.

[I will update this page after the meeting]

SharePoint Fest Seattle 2017

I am once again happy to announce I will be speaking at SharePoint Fest – this time in Seattle on August 10th and 11th.

My first presentation will be Transition Your SharePoint Designer Workflows to Microsoft Flow on August 10th – with SharePoint Designer being deprecated, what are you supposed to do with your existing workflows? We will discuss how to transition your workflows to Microsoft Flow so you can begin to gain the benefits of the ever-expanding service.

On August 11th, I will present Business Intelligence Using SharePoint and Power BI – we will discuss all the Business Intelligence options we get out of the box with SharePoint and then look at how Power BI can rock your SharePoint BI implementation!

Register now – use my code GlennSeattle100 for an extra discount!

 

SQL Saturday Louisville 2017

Join me on August 5th in Louisville Kentucky for SQL Saturday!

There are some really great sessions lined-up for the event and I will be discussing how to use your on-premises data in the cloud with Microsoft Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow.

Register via the #SQLSatLouisville site.

Cincinnati SharePoint User Group – June 22nd

On June 22nd 2017, I will again be speaking to the Cincinnati SharePoint User Group and this time around we will be discussing workflow. I will present the options for creating workflows in SharePoint and Office 365, as well as look at the process (and potential pitfalls) for upgrading your SharePoint Designer workflows to Microsoft Flow.

Find details on the topic, as well as register on the Meetup page.

[UPDATE]
Thank you so much to everyone who came out tonight to the meeting – I had a great time and the group participation was wonderful.

I mentioned tonight the Known issues and resolutions page Microsoft is maintaining for Flow – here is the link: https://ms.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/release-notes/#known-issues-and-resolutions

There were a few questions about Flow during the meeting that I wanted to make sure I followed-up with – the list of questions & my answers are below:

  1. Can Microsoft Flow monitor list item changes while the Flow is running – meaning can another Flow instance start if a user updates a list item while the Flow is already running.
    • It is my understanding that if the Flow is currently running on a list item, another instance of the Flow will not start when a trigger occurs.
  2. Is there a trigger in Microsoft Flow for item deletes?
    • No, just like SharePoint Designer workflows, there currently isn’t a way to detect item deletes.
  3. Is there a particular patch level for SharePoint 2013 that is required for Microsoft Flow to connect?
    • I haven’t seen documentation noting a specific service pack or patch-level that is needed, but I will ask Microsoft for clarification and post the answer here.