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Using Configuration Files When Developing Projects with Xcode

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For most products, having separate environments for testing and production is common. If you’re building an iPhone application (which utilizes a backend API service) you’ll likely have a variable containing the environment endpoint value. For simple applications, configuration changes could be managed using a debug conditional compiler directive. However, with larger projects or when targeting several environments, a more robust solution is required due to the project’s complex nature. In this case, we would use configuration files.   Configuration Files:  Xcode utilizes a simple file format, xcconfig, to manage application configuration externally from the project file or source code. These files consist of a collection of key-value pairs and can be … Read more

Incorporating Microsoft Tools to Create a Better Employee Experience  

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Enhancing internal communication is important for both the growth of an organization and ensuring employees are satisfied with their organizational culture. Providing employees with the proper tools to better communicate with one another has several benefits. It leads to lower employee stress levels, increased productivity, and can solve an organizational crisis more efficiently. In this blog, we will explore how incorporating Microsoft tools can provide employees and employers with better avenues for communication. With the rise of remote and hybrid work, having quality internal communication has never been more important. Microsoft has various tools that can lead to improved internal communication. In this blog, we will analyze a couple of those … Read more

Defending the Digital Realm: AI’s Influence on Security 

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The Changing Face of Cyber Threats through AI & AI’s Influence on Security Business professionals today use the term AI to describe a variety of advanced systems. The most common areas include image processing, natural language processing, recommender systems, or popular chat bots such as ChatGPT. These systems have a variety of uses from automating tasks and gaining data insights, to suggesting recipes given a list of ingredients! The techniques are often thought of as ‘intelligent’ because they enable machines to mimic human-like cognitive processes. Yet, there is no actual thinking happening. These are complex models which use techniques like backpropagation, statistics, and non-linear relationships. These tools can recognize patterns invisible … Read more

Customized Modern Search Experiences with PnP Search Web Parts

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Today, PnP Search is often used in SharePoint to create customized search pages and result displays. This results in a fully custom modern search experience. It is equipped with features such as Refiners, Pagination, Sorting, and Highlighting, which make it easier to refine and present search results. PnP search is made up of four web parts: 1. PnP search results 2. PnP search box 3. PnP search filters 4. PnP search vertical.  Below is an example of how to tailor the search experience: To create a search page such as the above example, the first step is to include a search box. Search box allows you to type in search … Read more

The Imaginet Difference: An Exclusive Look at Imaginet’s Onboarding Process   

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Most new developers are familiar with the dread of “onboarding.” Onboarding refers to the first few weeks or months of work, where new employees are expected to set up their workstations, learn about the company and its expectations, and graduate from being brand new to being a valuable member of the team. From my experiences and the experiences shared by other industry professionals, this sensitive period in one’s employment is often mismanaged by a variety of companies, no matter the size or industry. In this blog, we will explore why onboarding is such a minefield, and how Imaginet leveraged their expertise to ensure a positive onboarding experience for new consultants.    … Read more

Application Modernization: A Roadmap to Success  

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Do you know how many organizations have their own custom line of business applications? Do you know how many of those applications were built by someone innovative and savvy enough to produce a tool that made certain tasks easier, to then share that tool company-wide, where it slowly became central to day-to-day operations? At Imaginet we have seen this situation countless times. Often, these tools start out as Microsoft Access database apps. At other organizations, there is usually an individual in-house with a software development background or education who can create a desktop or web application and maintain and update it. This approach can lead a business to evolve into … Read more

Co-Develop in Power BI Desktop: Creating an NHL Draft 

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In May 2023 Microsoft announced Fabric, an end-to-end, human-centered analytics product that brings together all an organization’s data and analytics in one place. Accompanying the announcement of Fabric are features that improve Power BI’s relationship with Developers. One such feature is the improved co-development experience.  How Are Several Developers Able to Work together in Power BI?   Until these recent announcements, it was difficult for more than one developer to work on reports or datasets in Power BI, and it was easy to overwrite someone else’s changes, resulting in lost work. Furthermore, when searching for a previous version of a report or attempting to re-deploy an accidentally deleted report on the … Read more

Extending SharePoint Using SharePoint Framework (SPFx) and Custom Development 

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While SharePoint’s modern experience provides impressive functionality updates and improvements, there are still several reasons why clients may want to further extend those features or add new features that will better facilitate their organizational needs. This can be as simple as adding a new web part displaying calendar events differently to more complex full custom solutions that integrate multiple 3rd party systems to push and pull data in and out of SharePoint.  We can perform these tasks using the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) to customize existing features or build new features of our own. This framework allows us to keep it simple using only JavaScript or provides the option to combine … Read more

Converting Angular to Blazor: What is Blazor, and Should You Make the Switch? 

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Blazor is a somewhat new web framework used to create interactive web applications with ASP.NET and build web UIs using C# as the primary technology. The option to use JavaScript remains, but the primary language is C#. It’s recently had a bit of buzz in the tech world and people are interested in what it can do. The purpose of this blog is to highlight some of the benefits and why you might want to consider converting from Angular to Blazor.  Benefits of Blazor:  Drawbacks to Converting to Blazor:  Because Blazor is relatively new there are going to be some drawbacks. It’s important to consider these limitations to choose the … Read more

Are You Cyber Safe? Protect Your Microsoft 365 Products from Online Threats – Part 2

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Last week, we published a blog that provided tips for protecting your Microsoft 365 products against malicious cyber threats. Cybersecurity is not something to take lightly, and with technology constantly evolving, it is important to understand how you can protect your organization’s sensitive information.   There is no such thing as being overly cautious or engaging in too much cyber security. We recommend doing everything you can to protect your organization’s online information. Online threats are lurking everywhere, and far too many people adopt an “it will never happen to me” mentality. The reality is it can happen, and it does, so it is always best to diversify your safety … Read more