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I'm really pleased with the feature in Microsoft 365 that lets you add pronouns to the profile card! Pronouns are used to replace someone's name in a sentence, such as "she", "he", or "they". Adding pronouns to your profile can help you express your identity and show respect for others. It can also improve communication and trust among your colleagues in a hybrid multicultural workplace. Never set pronouns on behalf of someone else. To turn on pronouns: You need to be able to access the settings in your organizational settings for security and privacy Settings - Microsoft 365 admin center Select Pronouns Settings - Microsoft 365 admin center Check "Turn on and allow pronouns" To add pronouns to your profile: Open your profile card in Teams or Outlook on the web. On your profile card, select + Pronouns or the pronouns listed below your name. To add or change your pronouns, select from the examples (only available in English), or enter your

I stumbled across the DataFlows connector. And wow! Our organization used a custom javascript query embedded in Stratus Forms (kudos to Mark Rackley for that). The code was querying a third-party website API to pull in information to be collected as a choice option in a SharePoint field. But... custom development sometimes breaks and I'm just speculating but I don't think Mark supports Stratus Forms anymore - making it a tool we can't continue to use. Additionally... we're on our path to using PowerApps and PowerPlatform to replace custom web forms in SharePoint. I asked myself what connectors I could use to query API data and post them in a PowerApps gallery for use in a form to patch back to a SharePoint list. And I stumbled onto DataFlows . DataFlows are like the - easy to use - Get Data buttons in Excel and PowerBI. Yet, it creates an encapsulated table that you can pass to any PowerPlatform application. I couldn't believe I had stumbled across something so easy

Exams and certifications are a great way to learn and test yourself on standardized Information Technology terms. Even if one doesn't pass an exam, studying and taking exams demonstrates an individual's willingness to go the distance and learn more about their specialization. And even failing an exam is always an opportunity to learn from one's mistakes - sometimes the best learning. I recently started following another engaging Microsoft MVP after an M365 conference I attended and learned from him about practice exams and practice questions available on Microsoft's training. First -  Vlad Catrinescu | LinkedIn  is a fantastic Microsoft MVP. He is knowledgeable about the content he covers and distills it in a friendly, anecdotal way to make it engaging to a large audience - something helpful for all of us in IT to learn from. Second - almost immediately after following him, he posts this wonderful nugget of information to help me select and prepare for Microsoft exams.

One of the best ways to be a more successful Office 365 Administrator, Developer, or IT Ninja is to set up your own Microsoft 365 Developer Tenant. Within your tenant, you can perform many of the same activities that your Global Administrator or other specialized roles can perform at your company but from within your own private sandbox. Some of the many daily functions that are likely happening at your company in which you can gain real-world experience are: Using the admin portal Using the Azure portal Creating users and assigning licenses Managing guest access and tenant-to-tenant collaboration Administering Microsoft applications such as Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, the Power Platform, and more PowerShell Graph One of the common complaints I hear from junior IT staff is the need for access to advanced tools to know how to improve their skills. This is an excellent step to improving skills and understanding common terms amongst IT engineers, architects, and security professionals. An

I like to track activities . I have several workout apps and a Fitbit . Measuring things allows us to monitor our performance and journal our success. But not all activities have ready-made, easy to use apps - a problem measuring things that don’t fit into popular categories. Early in my IT career I was an IT procurement specialist for a large enterprise. Procurement specialists process 20-60 requisitions a day. It’s a lot of paperwork (even with a digital process.) I oversaw making it more digital and less paper based. I succeeded in reducing a typical requisition from 8 minutes to 2 minutes. The process allowed procurement to reduce person hours by almost a whole position. I’ve always said that computers allow us to do more and there was always more to do. Being able to measure that efficiency improvement is the impetus for having an easy-to-use timer. I have learned many times over the years that productivity is lost or gained in the moments between activities. I waste a lot

SharePoint App Registrations are incredibly useful for unattended tasks to read or update SharePoint sites. It's similar to a user service account but more secure. They cannot be used as a user sign-in. They are used in custom applications or automated scripted processes. They are made even more secure with a certificate, in which case, they may only run from the machine that owns the certificate. SharePoint Things to Do with App Registrations Read data and write the data to another process Write CSV, text, or XML files Useful for data for to import into report software Writing the data to other APIs such as ERPs, Project software, or work authorization systems Changing the data Check the data based on a schedule. Update the data based on constraints Change permissions of items in a SharePoint list once an item is past due Work with partners and vendors to provide just-in-time, specific access to necessary data Simple Process Create the application either in SharePoint or in App Re