by Danish Ali Detho | O365 & Power Platform Solution Architect///

Troubleshooting and debugging are an integral part of building and supporting a resilient app especially when it is built using a low-code development platform because the logging information is not readily available to developers and requires some sort of admin access to retrieve it. This was a major issue for Power Apps especially when the app goes into the hands of users in order to make the troubleshooting of apps developer-friendly, Microsoft released a new feature called Monitor within the PowerApps Studio. In this blog, we will take a deeper look at Power Apps Monitor and how we can use it to troubleshoot issues with our canvas apps. Read more

by Danish Ali Detho | O365 & Power Platform Solution Architect///

Microsoft SharePoint has been the driving force for enabling virtual team collaboration and the modern workspace revolution over the last three decades which was heavily facilitated by the capability to use SharePoint as a development platform and build a line of business applications thanks to the low-code /no-code development paradigm. However, there has been a recent shift when it comes to choosing the low code /no code development platform due to the resurgence of Power Platform which is now become a market leader. While many organizations are still trying to make the most of SharePoint, others have shifted their attention to the Microsoft Power Platform due to its vast set of capabilities and the citizen–developer-friendly interface for developing no-code solutions that go beyond SharePoint. In today’s blog, we will take a look at how SharePoint stacks up against Power Platform and specifically Dataverse, and what the future looks like for SharePoint as a development platform. Read more

Hello Reader,

Welcome to the October issue of our monthly Newsletter!

Each month, we try our best to bring to you content that is relevant and beneficial for you. So, if you would like us to cover any specific SQList feature or if you want to learn more about any SharePoint feature then please do let us know.

What has AxioWorks been up to?

It’s been a while (our last newsletter was back in April) and it’s good to be back. But where have we been, you may wonder?

Well, like for many other companies in our industry, the effects of the Covid pandemic did not stop once we stopped wearing masks, the aftershocks went on for a bit longer. That forced us to temporarily cut some costs, which in turn limited available resources, which in turn limited the activities we could undertake, like this newsletter. You know the story.
But things are getting back to normal now, or shall we say the new normal, and so are we!

Apart for keeping our core activities up and running at the high standards we always strive for (we never, ever, compromise on the level or customer and technical support we provide), here’s some of the new things we’ve done.

We have launched SQList Online! Oh yes, SQList is now available as a cloud service, nothing to install, nothing to monitor, simply configure your replications and leave it to us to make sure they run smoothly. Click here to read all about it and give it a try!

We are working on the next update for SQList which will include some major improvements to the replication engine, mainly in the way large amount of lists scattered across multiple SharePoint sites are handled. Those of you with thousands of lists across your organisation know what we’re talking about…

And we have expanded our Sales and Development teams. Business is going back up and so it the workload, so it’s all hands on deck now!

Focus blog entry: AxioWorks SQList is now available online

We have launched SQList Online! The cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) version of SQList, our on-prem application that makes it extremely easy for organizations to store and synchronize SharePoint On-prem/SharePoint Online data into SQL Server databases, allowing them to efficiently generate reports using their preferred reporting tools like Power BI, Excel, or SSRS by connecting directly to SQL tables.

Read all about it: AxioWorks SQList is now available online.

SQList 30-second feature: Configure App Only authentication to SharePoint Online in AxioWorks SQList

Microsoft is slowly deprecating legacy authentication methods to SharePoint Online (namely, username and password) in favour of more modern methods like App Only or Azure AD. These newer methods may look complicated to configure but in reality they are pretty straight forward. The easiest one is App Only authentication.

One advantage of App Only authentication is that it can be configured directly in SharePoint (granted, you will need admin access to the SharePoint site you want to configure it for), it also only takes a few minutes. Once set up, you can use it in SQList as a permanent SharePoint connection that won’t be affected by changes to the way users log in, like implementation of MFA (Multi-Factor-Authentication) or custom authentication systems.

Click this link for a step-by-step guide or this link for a short video.

Featured articles

Here is a small selection of interesting articles from the net.

Why Power BI totals might seem inaccurate

A common question is why Power BI totals are inaccurate because they do not display the sum of individual rows. In this article, we explain the reasons why those totals are correct.
Read more…

Mastering DP-500: Identify Data Loading Bottlenecks in Power BI!

Unlike the poorly performing front end of the report (the area exposed to users), where you can bet someone will complain if the report renders slow, with data loading and data refresh you can’t rely on the end user alarming you. Simply, they don’t have any idea what’s going on behind the scenes, and it may be the case that the data refresh process takes a few hours, while the report works super fast.
Read more…

Dataverse: A one-stop-shop for your App data storage and management

Dataverse (formerly known as CDS) is a cloud-based storage space that organizations can use to store business application data securely. It is more than just a data storage platform since it provides some great features for data integration, security, and data management.
Read more…

That’s all folks, till next time.

by Danish Ali Detho | O365 & Power Platform Solution Architect///

Every organization utilizes various sources of data often scattered across cloud and on-premises systems. Over time, these data sources continue to grow and in the absence of an efficient data governance system, it can be quite troublesome for IT teams to keep track of all the data assets in cloud or on-premises utilized within an organization and that’s when an enterprise data catalog becomes a necessity.  Read more

by Danish Ali Detho | O365 & Power Platform Solution Architect///

MS Teams has become one of the most widely used tools for team collaboration and communication in organizations using Microsoft echo-system for their digital workspace. But when you need a quick and easy way to store and track some data, you probably turn to SharePoint Lists or Excel for the data storage. Although they are both tightly integrated with MS Teams but wouldn’t it be great if the solution completely lives within MS Teams. That’s where MS Dataverse for Teams comes in which is a cut-down and most importantly free version of Microsoft Dataverse that provides a low-code development environment for building Apps, Chatbots, and Flows all within Microsoft Teams.

Read more