Microsoft 365

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an innovative tool that helps you get more out of your Office applications. Copilot understands your requests and offers relevant suggestions, tips, and solutions. You can also customize Copilot to suit your individual needs and requirements.

Plugins are extensions that you can add to Copilot to interact with your existing services. For example, you can install a plugin that allows you to translate your documents into another language with a single click or list tasks assigned to you as a developer in Jira.

Microsoft Graph connectors provide another way to extend Copilot. With these connectors, you can grant Copilot access to data from various internal company data sources, which will then be taken into account when generating responses.

With Declarative & Custom Engine Agents, you can also deploy specialized agents whose expertise can be enhanced through easily uploadable data.

My first experiences with SharePoint date back to 2003 when I developed my first Web Parts. With the 2007 version, many more artifacts of the ecosystem were introduced.

I became familiar with BPOS, the predecessor of Office 365, and in 2016, I created a course on client-side development, which was still hybrid for SharePoint 2016 and Online at that time. With the release of SharePoint 2019, I moved away from the on-premises world.

Regarding SharePoint app migration to the cloud from a developer's perspective, I possess extensive knowledge, although I wouldn't recommend customizing SharePoint as heavily as it was done in the past.

Some server-side artifacts have cloud equivalents, while certain approaches are fundamentally outdated. Thanks to my deep knowledge of Azure, I can showcase numerous new integration possibilities.

I have always had a passion for developing SharePoint solutions that seamlessly integrate into the existing environment.

Even before DevOps became a common term, I ensured that my SharePoint solutions were deployed cleanly with features, solutions, and their corresponding event handlers. My goal has always been to make a solution ideally deployable in a "Blank Site."

That’s why I’m excited to introduce you to the possibility of deploying Microsoft 365 solutions using Azure DevOps and the Microsoft 365 CLI. For larger environments, provisioning with Microsoft 365 Desired State Configuration is recommended, as it is available for the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

I am confident that you will benefit from this modern and efficient approach.

Microsoft Teams serves as the central integration point to provide your employees with a home office-optimized, AI-supported workplace. This makes your company more agile and enhances its appeal as a workplace.

The key design elements here are Teams, which act as security boundaries, and Channels, which are comparable to folders.

Channels include chats and tabs. Tabs are micro-frontends that reference data or represent mini-apps. Chats can be enhanced through actions (Messaging Extensions).

Teams extensions integrate your existing business data, and Custom Engine Agents assist your employees by handling tedious routine tasks using the Teams AI Library.

Microsoft Graph is a unified REST endpoint from Microsoft that provides access to various Microsoft 365 resources such as SharePoint, Exchange, Teams, OneDrive, Microsoft Planner, and many others. It serves as the central interface for integrating Microsoft 365 into your applications.

With Graph Change Notifications, you can respond to events occurring within these Microsoft 365 resources.

By connecting with Azure Event Hub, you can integrate these events into an event-driven architecture, making your applications more dynamic.

Access to Microsoft Graph is managed through Microsoft Entra ID app registrations and can be used in the context of the current user as well as for background services.

The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a client-side framework from Microsoft that allows for customization of the SharePoint user interface. With SPFx, you can create Web Parts (micro-frontends), extensions, libraries, and add-ons for Adaptive Cards.

Extensions are categorized into three types:

• Field Customizer (for customizing list views),
• Command Sets (for creating custom actions and context menus), and
• Form Customizer, which enables custom forms for lists.

Data access in SPFx is achieved via REST or through PnP Core SDK, a library that simplifies access to SharePoint or Microsoft Graph.

To achieve a consistent look and feel with Microsoft 365, you can use Fluent UI 2. SPFx packages can be distributed via the Microsoft 365 CLI or within the App Catalog.