As we move to 2019 we asked some ESPC18 speakers for their top 5 tips, tricks and predictions for the year ahead.

5 top tips for using tools such as Microsoft Project and Office 365 Planner. – Ben Howard, MVP, Applepark Ltd., UK 

Ben Howard

1. Have realistic expectations for your toolset
   Be realistic with what your toolset can do – I’ve seen too many people create a project schedule and assume that the project will run itself.
2.  Use the right tool for the right job
   Excel is a great tool for financial management, but it’s not a great tool for creating and updating a Gantt chart, whereas Microsoft Project is the right tool for creating and updating a Gantt chart! Planner is a great Task Management tool but will never produce a Gantt chart in its own right.
3. Think about communications
   Any sort of plan/schedule is a communication tool, so think about what you need to communicate, to whom, and when. Think about the communications before you start writing the project plan.
4. Invest in Training
   Take time to think about what you need a tool to do for you, learn its scope and then use it appropriately.  Don’t be afraid to invest in training to learn how to use something like Microsoft Project; the training will pay itself back in no time.

5. Make use of the Timeline view
   If you’re using Microsoft Project, it’s worth having a look at the Timeline view – this is a great view to email executives because it gives a concise overview of the project schedule.

5 top tips for using Microsoft Teams – Maarten Eekels, MVP, Portiva.

Maarten Eekels

1. Don’t assume someone has read a conversation in Microsoft Teams unless that person (or the Team/Channel) has been @mentioned
   Not everyone is following all the same channels as you do or monitoring their Teams as closely as you do. When you did not @mention a person, a Channel or an entire Team, you cannot assume that someone has actually read the conversation. They might, but you are not allowed to assume so.
2. Start new conversations in Microsoft Teams with a title. 
   When you first see a new conversation in a Channel, it might not be obvious right away what the conversation is about. Titles really help when you are quickly scanning all the new conversations. A title gives a very good indication of the contents of the conversation and saves time in deciding if you want to join a conversation or not. Click the format button to add a title to a conversation.
3. Follow channels in Microsoft Teams to track activity in your Activity stream.
   There is a difference in Teams between favouriting a Channel and following a Channel. When you favourite a Channel, it will stay visible in your list of Teams and Channels. But you still have to visit that Channel to find out what is happening there. When you follow a Channel, you receive direct notifications in your Activity Stream when there is new activity in that Channel. And even better, you can then filter your Activity Stream to display all activity in all the Channels that you follow. Click the filter icon and then the ‘Following’ button.
4. When you enable guest user access in Microsoft Teams on the tenant level, you can still disable external user access for certain teams.

You can only do that through PowerShell though. Here’s the snippet to do that:

$template = Get-AzureADDirectorySettingTemplate | ? {$_.displayname -eq "group.unified.guest"}

$dirSettings = $template.CreateDirectorySetting()

$dirSettings["AllowToAddGuests"]=$False

$groupId = (Get-AzureADGroup -SearchString “<your group name>").ObjectId

New-AzureADObjectSetting -TargetType Groups -TargetObjectId $groupId -DirectorySetting $dirSettings

5. Through PowerShell, it is possible to show external guest users in the people picker in SharePoint Online
   By default, external guest users are NOT shown in the SharePoint Online people picker. This is to match legacy behaviour. You can enable this though, for example if you need a people column as a metadata field and you would like to choose external users too. You can enable this either on the tenant level or on a site collection level:

Set-SPOTenant / Set-SPOSite –ShowPeoplePickerSuggestionsForGuestUsers $true

Set-SPOTenant / Set-SPOSite –ShowPeoplePickerSuggestionsForGuestUsers $true

5 tips/tricks/predictions for 2019 – John P. White, MVP, tyGraph

John P. White

1. Stop Branding
   Yes, I know… but the customer wants branding. I have seen so much money wasted over the years on non-responsive, pixel perfect screen layouts. Microsoft is also making branding (as opposed to theming) increasingly more difficult to do. The harder it gets, the more expensive it is to maintain. We don’t brand Microsoft Word, and we don’t need to brand SharePoint.

2. Embrace PowerApps and Flow
   PowerApps and Flow are the present and future of business process automation both within, and outside of SharePoint and in the cloud or on premises. It’s time to ditch the old InfoPath forms and move to the new platform. It’s ready.

3. Get a Handle on Your Data
   Tools like Power BI bring advanced analytics capabilities into the hands of power users. There are insights hiding in your data, go ahead and unleash Power BI to find them. Usage data in Office 365 is an excellent place to start.

4. Start Leveraging OneDrive
   If you haven’t used it, or maybe especially if you have in the past, it’s time to give OneDrive another look. Its revamped sync engine is solid and Files On-Demand has made me completely rethink my approach to storage. I strongly recommend OneDrive for consumers up to heavy SharePoint document Users.

5. Get Ahead of AI and Machine Learning
   It may sound cliché, but Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies are changing our approaches to problems. You don’t need a ton of research to get started. Pre-bundled machine learning models and services like Azure’s Cognitive Services, Image Recognition, and LUIS let you get started right away, and you can pick up the ML skills as you go.

Predictions for 2019 from a SharePoint and Office 365 perspective – Gokan Ozcifci

Gokan Ozcifci

1. A Rise in the Usage and Integration of Business Apps
   The rise in usage and integration of Business Apps into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem will create a new utopic wave in a seamless and unified experience. Business Apps will break down silos and barriers between different ecosystems and propose a centralised experience for Citizen Developers into organisations. People will easily get/modify any data from any data source and publish those results into Microsoft 365 which can be OneDrive, SharePoint or Power BI…
2. Citizen Developers taking over end-user development 
   More and more Citizen Developers will take over the end-user development which was typically done by a limited workgroup or even a single-user. However, today, Power Users can build departmental, enterprise and even public applications using Microsoft Business Applications such as Microsoft Flow, PowerApps, etc.
3. Watch this Space! – for SharePoint Spaces
   I would not bet into SharePoint Spaces in 2019 as the project is still not mature yet for organisations although I believe it’s a very big step into the AI and VR world – but, as it stands today, I can’t see the use cases around SharePoint and VR.
4. There’s a new King in the development model
   From the Farm Solution Model to Sandboxes and WSPs. From the Cloud.JS, Apps, Add-ins to SPFx. SharePoint developers (and admins too) have seen a lot of changes in the development model; but in 2019, from a developer’s perspective I can conclude the whole scenario and past into one sentence; The king is dead, long live the new king SPFx.
5. More will realise the benefits of the security API in Microsoft Graph
   More and more Developers and Citizen Developers will use the security API in Microsoft Graph to simplify management of security alerts, enrich them with business and threat context, automate security operations to speed up response, create intelligent and powerful apps by providing all the information from a single unified endpoint: The Microsoft Graph

5 nuggets of wisdom from Martin Laplante   

MartinLaplante

1. Stop relying on Variations 
   There have been deprecation announcements about Variations for SharePoint 2019 and for SharePoint Online.
2. Switch from Classic to all Modern all at once
   Switch your organisation from all Classic to all Modern all at once, and treat it like a migration. Besides, the added training and support required if you opt for gradual or optional switching, any add-in or customisation would have to support both models simultaneously and that is difficult.
3. Get to know Site Regional Settings
   If your tenant spans time zones, get to know site regional settings and the ability to override them with personal regional settings. Everything with a time or a date will be affected by the time zones and the local date/calendar formatting in those settings.
4. Use Office 365 CDN
   Set up the Office 365 CDN for static files and SPFx solutions, especially if you have users around the globe. Why wouldn’t you want everything to run faster at no cost and for very little effort?
5. Localise SPFx web parts
   If you create SPFx web parts, localise them sooner rather than later. Microsoft has guidance on how to do this microsoft.com

Top 5 Tips on SharePoint and Office 365 Adoption from Asif Rehmani, MVP, VisualSP

Asif Rehmani

1. Have a good change management strategy
   SharePoint and Office 365 adoption is mostly about changing business processes and existing work habits. To make the transition successful, implement a sound change management strategy.
2. Scrap training programs
   End-users tend to forget things they learn in classes within weeks. To successfully drive SharePoint and Office 365 adoption, don’t run training programs! Instead, install a contextual help system that automates training, help, and support for your end-users.
3. Encourage employees
   To make sure that employees actually use SharePoint and Office 365, influence and personal involvement from executives is needed. Leaders should at least help to remove roadblocks, become exemplary users, and initiate conversations around the benefits of using the platform.
4. Anticipate the Slowdown Phase
   At a certain point during every SharePoint adoption process, there is always a temporary drop in productivity. To minimise the negative impact of this slowdown, ensure that end-users fully understand the benefits of embracing the platform, anticipate the slowdown phase, and make sure help is available to them at the moment-of-need!
5. Remove time-consuming governance policies
   Many of the roadblocks that end users face when trying to adopt SharePoint and Office 365 come from rigid, complex, and time-consuming governance policies. To make using the platforms easier and facilitate adoption, don’t impose and prohibit, instead suggest and guide.

5 Top SharePoint & Office 365 tips from Michał Rykiert, Senior Consultant, WEBCON

Michal Rykiert

1. Focus on communication between IT and business
   The key to a successful project is to understand the needs of business users and being able to “translate” them into IT requirements. Hence, proper communication and understanding between end-users and delivery team is crucial.

2. Think long term
   Today’s fast-paced environment requires applications that will always keep up to the reality. Therefore, before approaching an implementation, it’s heavily advised to look not only at short-term requirements, but also those that may and will emerge in the future. Both IT departments and the software they implement must be ready for it.

3. Stay flexible
   Use hard-coded applications where you must. In other cases, choose no-code/low-code platforms to ensure delivery of applications that are easy to configure and maintain. Such an approach will save you a lot of time and trouble in the future.

4. Give end users some love
   Providing a solution based on requirements is one thing. The other, is to turn it into something that users love and appreciate on a daily basis. Keep that in mind and provide as much “love” for the users as you can, in the form of; default values, leveraging already existing data from other systems, automatic calculations, tooltips, etc.

5. Off-the-shelf or platform? Think twice.
   Purchasing off-the-shelf solutions is tempting as they require low effort to be launched and typically are less expensive compared to platforms. However, after a while integration tends to be more and more painful. Additionally, having multiple solutions from different vendors means you’ll be spending a lot of extra time on evaluation and procurement, which tends to be quite time-consuming.