Wow! It has already been three weeks since Microsoft Ignite took place in Orlando!
We have taken this time to step back and summarize what we have learned at Ignite and what it means for Powell 365 and its evolution.
It was the first time that Powell Software sponsored this event. We had a booth that always stayed very busy. It was definitely a unique opportunity to meet with new people, existing customers, partners and the different Microsoft teams.
A special thanks to everyone who came to our Powell Software and Sogeti NL cocktail event. During the event, Coen Eskes, Senior Consultant at Sogeti NL, built a full-fledge mockup in one hour for a customer randomly selected at the beginning of the party! He really demonstrated Powell 365’s powerful capabilities as feedback was unanimously great!
From a market and technology perspective, Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint continue to experience a great momentum. This year product announcements were mostly focused on delivering better and smoother integration between all Office 365 features to the great benefits of all Office 365 users. We would like to highlight the following key announcements:
- Better integration between Teams and SharePoint
- Better integration between Yammer with SharePoint
- Skype and Teams are going to merge into one single solution
- Power app will be available in SharePoint lists
There was also a strong focus on governance and compliance with the following key features that got announced:
- Data geo-localization
- Data encryption
- Simple external sharing
- Improved analytics for SharePoint and OneDrive
All the announcements can be found here.
In the specific case of SharePoint, Microsoft continues to invest heavily in the modern experience and the new SharePoint framework by adding the following new capabilities :
- Header and Footer SharePoint Framework extensions got available at Ignite
- the new site template “hub site”
- new web parts
- new theming capabilities
- new deployment API to add and create your own site templates from the SharePoint home page
The SharePoint evolution is good news for Powell 365 and for our designer and deployment tool Powell Manager that are completely aligned to the Microsoft technological choices. It confirms all investments and hard work provided by our team over the past months.
We are very proud to support the existing modern sites (team site & communication site) and all the new SharePoint framework (SPFx) features within Powell Manager. Powell 365 has never been so open and aligned with the Microsoft strategy.
The best testimonial was provided by Microsoft which highlighted Powell 365 during the SPFx sessions presented by the SharePoint development teams. Daniel Kogan presented Powell 365 three times during his presentation! Watch his presentation now.
At the end of October, we will deliver a full fledge Powell 365 experience. This experience, completely based on the modern experience and SPFx, includes all Powell 365 widgets, branding, and navigation. Powell 365 will be one of the first intranet solutions to use all the latest SharePoint Online capabilities! Once this important milestone is reached, we will continue to integrate all the other features announced at Ignite. The first one will be the theming function followed by the hub site template and the new deployment API, depending on the availability of these Microsoft features.
As a conclusion, Microsoft continues to move forward at a good pace with technologies and features. Powell 365 and Powell Manager are fully aligned with it and will be able to easily embrace these innovations. Powell Software offers a unique value proposition, unbeaten by any of our competitors. Our customers are our best ambassadors and we are excited by all the evolutions ahead.