Another M365 Conference in the books! I spent the week at M365 Conference at MGM Resort in Las Vegas. This was a joint venture between Microsoft Azure + AI, DEVintersection, and Azure Data Conference. It was fun to mix this group of people together. Though our session topics differ, there’s a common thread among us and I enjoyed having conversations that were more data focused.
While at the conference, I delivered two sessions. In my first session “Power Apps – Tips from a First Time User” the audience was a good mix of SharePoint Online and On-Prem users. As for form designers, there were a handful users making the transition from InfoPath to Power Apps. Together we covered my six-step process to creating your first Power App. It was my goal to make the users feel comfortable enough to build an application, but I also wanted to bring to light some of the potential issues they would run into – things like default mode and new vs. edit form customization. After we covered the basics of the form, the next logical direction is to layer in a workflow process – generally some sort of approval for the form submission and this led perfectly into my second session topic.
My second session “Transform your Request Processes with Approvals, Power Automate, & Power Apps” focused on that workflow process behind a form solution. We first looked at the out of the box approval options in SharePoint and pointed out the limitations. Next, we looked at Approvals in Power Automate, how to deliver them, how to format the notifications, and how to monitor those in progress. But, sometimes Approvals aren’t the best choice for the job so we also looked at a way to use Power Apps to simulate the Approval experience.
Overall, my audiences were engaged and asked great questions. A piece of feedback that I received from both sessions is the attendees enjoyed the content because it was directly applicable to a challenge they were facing in their current job. They appreciate the mix of application and troubleshooting for the topics I presented. This is what I aim to do in my sessions – not only will I introduce you to this application but I will tell you where you’ll run into issues and also demonstrate how to fix them.
Big thank you to the organizers of this event. I know it takes a lot of work behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly and those efforts do not go unnoticed. I also want to thank my fellow speakers for taking part in the event. It was great to catch up with some old friends and also make new connections.
The dates for the spring M365 Conference are May 2-4, 2023 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Stay tuned for registration details!
