In this session of PnP Weekly, hosts – Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft), Waldek Mastykarz (Rencore), and typically a special guest from the PnP Community, discuss the latest news and topics around Microsoft 365 development. This week, Vesa and Waldek are joined by Fabian Williams – Microsoft MVP – Visual Studios Development Technologies and Director for the Intelligent Process automation (IPA) practice at Withum located in Washington D.C.
In addition to Microsoft and Community activities and articles, the group focused on this question: Why should a Teams or SharePoint developer care about Azure Functions? Here are a few reasons:
- Deliver a POC in 5 minutes on your browser
- I can do C# in the cloud
- Modular architecture allows you to build today and easily update functionality in future
- Certificate authentication
- Language of your choice – .NET, Node, PowerShell, Python, etc…
- Capabilities for free like authentication, more bindings and triggers
- Global scalability
- Very extensible
If you are a SharePoint classic developer today and you are looking to get started using Azure Functions and you use C#, then start by: 1) Moving on-prem DLLs and NuGet packages into Azure Functions, 2) Learn about using Graph bindings and 3) Look at using CDS for storing data that can be exposed across M365 to Power Apps, Power Automate, Mobile Apps….
Ready to set up your first Azure Function? Have a look at the demo delivered days ago by Paolo Pialorsi (PiaSys) – focused on Getting started using PnP PowerShell within Azure Functions to automate operations in Microsoft 365. Paolo starts off by showing viewers how to create an Azure Function (App) based on PowerShell commands, how to connect to a specific tenant, and use certificates rather than login credentials of a service account for authentication.
It is agreed, Fabian needs to return for a conversation Part II focusing on how ML and AI are used to monitor exceptions in AAD and more.
As always, if you need help on an issue, want to share a discovery, or just want to say: “Job well done”, please reach out to Vesa, to Waldek or to your PnP Community.
This episode was recorded on Monday, March 9, 2020.
- Video at SharePoint Dev YouTube channel.
- Podcast format at http://pnpweekly.podbean.com.
These videos and podcasts are published each week and are intended to be roughly 30-45 minutes in length. Please do give us feedback on this video and podcast series and also do let us know if you have done something cool/useful so that we can cover that in the next weekly summary! The easiest way to let us know is to share your work on Twitter and add the hashtag #PnPWeekly (or older #SPDevWeekly). We are always on the lookout for refreshingly new content. “Sharing is caring!”
Here are all the links and people mentioned in this recording. Thanks, everyone for your contributions to the community!
Microsoft / PnP articles:
- Coordinate crisis communications using Microsoft Teams + Power Platform | Pete Daderko (Microsoft)
- 4 Tips for working from home with Microsoft Teams | Karuana Gatimu (Microsoft)
Community articles:
- spfx doctor | Waldek Mastykarz (Rencore) | M365 PnP Crew
- Microsoft Teams Application generator moved to M365 PnP initiative | Wictor Wilen (Avanade)
- Microsoft Teams App Project Generator – #YoTeams | M365 PnP Crew
- PnP Media Pack – PnP Parker and background pics | Stefan Bauer (n8d) | M365 PnP Crew
- Explore Microsoft Graph Subscriptions – Part III: Handle subscription lifetime | Yannick Plenevaux (PVX Solutions)
- Export Term group with PnP PowerShell | David Ramalho (Storm Technology Ltd)
- PowerApps: Masking First ‘X’ Characters | Piyush K Singh (Tata Consultancy Services
- Episode #91 – Working with Content Types and Fields in PnPjs | Paolo Pilorsi (PiaSys)
- First Bot: Building your first bot for Teams in JavaScript or C# | Bob German (Microsoft)
- React Reusable Custom Hooks in SPFx | Rabia Williams (Engagesq)
- Using .env files in SharePoint Framework development | Nick Sevens (delaware)
- Calling the new Presence endpoint in MS Graph API from SPFx | Luis Mañez (ClearPeople)
Additional Links:
- Microsoft 365 learning pathways
- Getting started using PnP PowerShell within Azure Functions to automate operations | Paolo Pialorsi (PiaSys)
If you’d like to hear from a specific community member in an upcoming recording and/or have specific questions to SharePoint/Microsoft 365 engineering or visitors – please let us know. We will do our best to address your requests or questions.
“Sharing is caring!”
SharePoint Team, Microsoft – 10th of March 2020