The OnePlace Solutions development team dedicate an amount of time each sprint to research. This usually involves education and learning around what is possible with new technologies, product extensibility and API's, often going as far as prototyping code to see the reality first hand and learn where the limitations are.
During a recent sprint the research effort was a lot more focused and was done jointly with Microsoft engineers. The dev team wanted to research what could be achieved with the new Microsoft Teams extensibility and Graph API options in the form of a week-long hackathon. If you haven't tried Teams yet, Microsoft have just announced they are introducing a free version - check it out.
Having the Microsoft team in the office, learning about and extending various parts of the OnePlaceMail code-base, while imparting their deep knowledge of the Microsoft products and tooling was great. As a direct result of the hack, items have been added to the OnePlaceMail and OnePlaceDocs backlog and will find their way into future releases of those products providing tighter integration with the latest and greatest features of Office 365 to provide even more compelling solutions for users.
While a lot of technical feedback was provided to Microsoft engineering during the hack, some learnings have been shared in blog posts from our developers visit the links below to read:
Using the Microsoft Graph to determine if an Office 365 Group has an associated Microsoft Team
View My Office 365 Apps (add-ins) and remove consent
Our Chief Technology Officer and Microsoft MVP, Cameron Dwyer commented after the event,
"The hack was a perfect environment that brought people together with a desire to work together on a common goal and to challenge and push each other to do more in a fun and supportive way. Having access to global Microsoft resources to get definitive answers quickly removed the amount of wasted time and frustration which allowed productivity, enthusiasm and energy levels to remain high."
In addition to his technical post, Cameron Dwyer, also wrote a blog post on the week long hack.
The continued strength of partnership with Microsoft is helping drive a higher level of innovation at OnePlace Solutions. Thank you to the Microsoft team that took the time to spend a week in the OnePlace Solutions offices it was a fun and productive week.... let's get the next one booked in?!
