Table Topic: Microsoft 365 App Developers and Power Platform Community Meet-up

[Vesa Nopanen]

This is going to be a really exciting Table Talk on Wednesday and I am honored to be among it's crew. 

"Meet people from the Microsoft 365 Developer and Power Platform communities to explore what you can do with our powers combined!"

This calls for actions from your, yes you, part: let us know your opinions, questions and experiences in this thread beforehand. How both best utilize these both? 

Since Table Talks are Teams meetings you can unmute yourself and also turn your camera on and take part of the talk. Share your tips or ask questions live!

Reserve your place: https://myignite.microsoft.com/sessions/bceb3c1b-5d12-40c7-a8d3-55015528d6c2

Some key topics for this talk are: Microsoft Graph, Power Automate, SPFx, Azure Functions, Auth ... and more!

@Wictor Wilen @Bill Ayers @David Opdendries 

[#2]

I am going to lead a migration from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online. I'd like to do some researches as we prepare for the migration. What are some good resources to investigate? Thank you.

[#3]

Thank you for the question @lynnette1 !

I would start with Microsoft Docs article on migration.

Another often referenced article is found ShareGate. 

Have you looked at them yet?

When you think about planning there are of course lots of pointers to notice like

• what and how much you have data
• is it going to be cleaned up before or after, or is something just left behind (ie= what is relevant)
• Users and mapping
• Restructuring of data so you can take advantage of new capabilities better
• Are you going to recreate sites as Teams? 
• Document metadata
• Workflows
• Archiving processes 
• Schedule and depending on amount data: how long the migration will take (onetime or incremental)

Those are things that are from top of my mind. @David Opdendries surely have good insights on this one!

[#4]

@lynnette1  @Vesa Nopanen

A lot of good points from Vesa, A few pointers from myself:

• Avoid recreating subsites at all costs. Subsites should be site collections and hub sites should be used to create the site hierarchy. 
• Check out a few free tools such as mover.io and SharePoint Migration Tool. If they don't cut it start researching the paid ones.
• Take time to get the information architecture correct from the start.  Its not a 1 to 1 mapping in all cases. A lot more options in the cloud for different scenarios. eg. SharePoint Task list makes sense to be a plan in planner. 
• Think of it like moving to a new house.  Some stuff you will throw out, some stuff should be archived and the rest moved. Get people involved with this.

Anyone else have input?

[#5]

@Vesa Nopanen I have not reviewed those articles yet, but I will do so. Thank you!

[#6]

@lynnette1 I am glad I was able to help. And please mark either @David Opdendries or mine answer as Best Response. :) 

[#7]

Question on Office Add Ins guidance:

• Shifting and lifting existing on Prem ones written as Provider Hosted Addins\Apps (C# MVC), issues or recommendations
• Deploying Office Add Ins "automatically" in SP Online (scriptable?  Powershell ... how to have it where the user opens the document and the add in is already there?) 
• Authentication issues and how to work them for the new (or the old when shifted and lifted) so that it operates in the context of the user OR a service account.  

Thank you! 

[#8]

Looking for Guidance on Provisioning 1000's of site collections. 

• The case of the Central App Catalog App update (how it flows and how long it takes for the updates, perhaps how to get a status on the updates)
• Case of the Site Collection App Catalog Apps where the deployment is directly there
• Case of the "central CDN" for bits and then deploying the "apps" to the site collections (how much difference it makes?)  

In effect, the assumption is that this will be a long running process so how to manage it at scale is what guidance we seek thanks! 

Thank you! 

[#9]

Will PowerApps ever support exporting screens, galleries or data tables to excel or PDF natively or does anyone have any suggestions on easy ways to go about exporting these without having to write HTML code to export to PowerAutomate and then convert to PDF?  I have not had any luck with getting html formatting to work exactly as it should when looking on a web browser versus a PDF.

[#10]

@Vesa Nopanen - Great session!

How are requests counted on power platform? For example, if a flow is using an iterative step like a for each loop, does each pass count as a request or does the entire step count as only one request? Also, how can you monitor the request count in Power Platform?

[#11]

Are there any recommendations for consulting on PowerApps and how to do specific tasks within PowerApps for developers?  

[#12]

@Th3n3xtL3v3l 

In Power Automate the counting is done per requests as in this Docs-article.

The way I read that every loop and step in the loop counts. So you want to minimize the loops.

• Connectors – all API requests to connectors from Power Apps or Power Automate

• Microsoft Power Automate – all Power Automate step actions

• Common Data Service – all CRUD operations including user-driven and internal system calls required to complete CRUD transactions, as well as special operations like “share” or “assign.” 

From the same article: Usage reports and monitoring capabilities are expected by October 2020 in the Power Platform admin center and will be the best way to monitor/analyze usage for API requests

[#13]

@PTempleton I am sorry but I have to say I don't know. 

[#14]

@PTempleton I'd recommend you participate in the Power Apps community to find examples and answers.  Perhaps @David Opdendries or @Bill Ayers could take a more dev's look into this and suggest their point of view?

[#15 · Accepted solution]

@PTempleton PowerApps are really designed for no-code or low-code power users, rather than developers; but that doesn't stop them being a useful tool to have in the development armoury. It really depends on the requirements and target platforms - very difficult to generalise. Ultimately, if the expectation is for a 'professional' app with very stringent requirements, most of the time you will find PowerApps just doesn't do exactly what you want, and the devil is in the details. If it's a LOB app for internal use, and requirements are more flexible, you might find PowerApps can get you near enough, and in a fraction of the time.

Before embarking on your custom development, look at the PowerApps sample galleries. Even if it's not the solution, you might be able to build an initial prototype and get some feedback.

[#16]

Hi @Ralph Rivas 

First question, I'm not quite sure what you mean - are you talking about Office Add-ins or SharePoint Add-ins?

Second question: if you want your Office Add-ins to just be there in the applications, you need to use Centralized Deployment: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/publish/centralized-deployment

Third question: a couple of approaches - you can pop up a dialog to give an auth prompt: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/develop/authorize-to-microsoft-graph-without-sso, or if your user is already authenticated there is now support for SSO: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/develop/sso-in-office-add-ins.

[#17]

@Bill Ayers - yes talking Office Add Ins but behind the scenes they are created like Provider Hosted Add-ins\Apps The old way of doing Office Add Ins.  ... on the second question a follow up if there are powershell or CLI commandlets to do those operations (so we can do the good ol Infrastructure as Code Thingee :)    Thanks again Bill! 

[#18]

@Ralph Rivas Office Add-in model hasn't really changed, not in the way SharePoint Add-in model has been overtaken by SPFx. You can still build SharePoint Add-ins of course, and still supported and necessary in some cases, but SPFx is now recommended in most cases. Even then, there are still elements of the Add-in model in the SPFx deployment story. We now have SPFx as an option for Outlook Add-ins but only in preview for Outlook Web App, so very early days for this. So improvements to Office Add-in Model, but still fundamentally the same, so no lift and shift needed.

[#19]

@Ralph Rivas Follow-up question: yes, there are PowerShell cmdlets to do this: https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/enterprise/use-the-centralized-deployment-powershell-cmdlet...

[#20]

@Bill Ayers Thanks for that reply .... This essentially says we can "lift and shift" old PHA's as Add-ins over as apps, their appearance or functionality notwithstanding.  You reminded me about the Outlook functionality which we did not have before but has aroused a lot of interest and hope that gets in by the end of the year for the web. 

Again, thanks!