Power Apps has shortened the development life cycle of many projects due to the quickness with which you can get connections to your data up and running, no matter where it's stored. But that doesn’t mean you should throw typical software development processes to the wayside when building your apps.

We've recently helped our clients build applications quickly during these times to communicate crisis management news and updates, report on resource utilization, and facilitate work from home solutions.

If you are starting build or in the process of evaluating your next need, keep these important steps and milestones in mind when building your next app, whether it’s a Crisis Management app, or the Sales App that has been in the backlog since before Covid-19 happened.

Tailor Security to Business Needs

Sometimes administrators need to access the SharePoint Access Request list outside of the SharePoint Page.

For those who don't know, whenever a user asks for permission to view your SharePoint site, whether it be access to a file, a team site or folders, that request gets stored in your environment at this location.

Have you seen some of the Intranets out there? If you haven't, let me summarize the appearance of standard an out of the box Intranet like SharePoint, Jive or Office 365: Meh. Meh is okay. Meh isn't terrible or great. It just is.

So far I have touched upon two vital principles of intranet success: Governance and Information Architecture. Continuing onto Part 3, I will discuss the importance of search capabilities.

Search is that crazy cousin of Information Architecture. Related but not really a descendant or a sibling. It also represents the most significant change in Intranet design since Intranets became a thing.

There’s a gap between deployment and adoption when it comes to SharePoint. Everyone who knows what SharePoint is, knows what I’m talking about… Let’s start with the easy part – deployment.

Recently I have been reading a lot about the World Cup stadiums in Brazil and noticed that Brazil is facing the same issues that every country faces when hosting a worldwide sporting event. The minute a country is chosen to host the Olympics, they start breaking ground for years to come in order to support the event. Countries pour billions of dollars into infrastructure; they build roads, hotels, stadiums, upgrade rail/traffic systems. The sad story however, is for many countries after the event… The stadiums are no longer used and slowly crumble. Money that could have been spent to build up and maintain an infrastructure was instead put into an event and subsequently lost the years following.

I know this is old news, but I’ve recently rediscovered how much end users dislike Microsoft. I spend a lot of time at client’s offices and there is always a contrarian who suggests that Google Docs is a much better approach than SharePoint. Or Mac guy speaks up to make sure you aren’t swapping out his iPad for a stupid Surface!

If it were high school Apple would be Slater, Google would be Zack, and Microsoft would be Screech. Apple is so cool and Google is so easy to get along with but when you get stuck on your homework who do you call?

Normally I’d be the last guy to make a point with a 90’s era Bill Clinton political reference. But hey, if the shoe fits…

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton strategist James Carville, was struggling to keep staffers and the campaign itself on message. In an effort to keep everyone aligned, Carville hung a sign in Clinton’s Little Rock campaign headquarters that outlined their platform in three simple phrases:

1. Change vs. more of the same

2. The economy, stupid

3. Don’t forget healthcare

All politics aside… not bad Mr. Carville. I like the approach and think I’ll borrow it. So here it is – James Carville’s 1992 Clinton campaign strategy sign re-engineered by Aerie Consulting: