Blog

Creating Visualizations Using D3 

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Creating Visualizations Using D3

Creating visualizations for applications can be overwhelming and difficult without using the correct tools. Recently, I faced a challenge where I needed to modernize a visualization from a legacy application that used a recursive function to display data dynamically. Creating visualizations for D3 allowed me to overcome that challenge.  What is D3?   D3 is a JavaScript library that allows you to create dynamic and interactive visualizations using built-in templates or creating completely custom visualizations. D3 makes use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) to allow it to work with HTML and CSS. This also makes it easier to customize and configure as you can do so directly in a CSS stylesheet.  … Read more

Idle Session Timeout: What it is and How it Affects Security & Productivity

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Idle Session Timeout

In today’s digital age, many organizations are now using cloud-based productivity suites such as Microsoft 365 to streamline their operations and enhance collaboration. While Microsoft 365 offers a wide range of tools and features, it also emphasizes security to protect sensitive data and ensure a safe working environment. One important aspect of security management in Microsoft 365 is idle session timeout. In this blog, we’ll explore what it is, why it matters, and how you can configure it to balance security and productivity.  What Is Idle Session Timeout?  Idle session timeout is a security feature that automatically logs out users from their Microsoft 365 accounts after a period of inactivity. … Read more

Adapting to Change: How to Do It and Why It’s Essential  

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Adapting to Change

Some organizations are risk averse which often means they avoid change to reduce risk. This is a false economy, in my opinion. Sometimes, clients ask Imaginet to help them with failed and delayed projects, and for us to be successful, often we need to facilitate cultural change within the organization. When we have the right support in the organization, adapting to change can happen.   When an organization avoids change, especially in software projects, they keep the same code and ignore technical debt, and continue using older versions of components, along with whatever workarounds (hacks) that have been put in place. At some point, they are forced to make changes … Read more

The Imaginet Difference: Boutique In Size with Big Results  

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Adapting to Change

Since 1997, Imaginet has been a proud Microsoft Partner. We offer a variety of Microsoft-related consulting, implementation, and design services for the Microsoft tech stack. Some of these services include enterprise content and records management, data architecture and engineering, application development, SharePoint migration, and more. Despite the numerous services we offer, we have always been boutique in size.   Our full-time staff is spread out across North America – we don’t hire contractors, nor do we ever outsource our work. Why is our boutique size important? How does this make us unique? We provide services similar to other Microsoft Partners across North America, yet our approach is completely different: we prioritize … Read more

QR Code Phishing Attacks: Are You Protected?

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QR Code Phishing Attacks

QR code phishing attacks or “Quishing” are on the rise, and it’s crucial to raise awareness about this evolving threat. Scanning these codes has become second nature to many of us, but have we fully considered the potential risks they pose?  The use of QR codes have become increasingly popular due to the events of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it is easier to access information, websites, and services all while minimizing the risk of spreading germs. Since QR codes are more common than ever, it has led to the rise of QR code scams. It’s essential to be aware of the risks they pose and to be able to identify … Read more

Virtual Workspaces Are Here! How Will You Use Them? 

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My YouTube feed has been full of reviews of the Apple Vision Pro since it became available in the US on February 2. In one of the videos, the content creator used the Vision Pro for working on his script, and several other tasks around his house (See video). This intrigued me and I wondered what it would be like to code in a virtual environment and create virtual workspaces. I don’t have $4k lying around and the Vision Pro isn’t available in Canada yet. So, my ability to try it was rather limited.  For Christmas 2023, I bought myself a Meta Quest 3 headset. Thanks in part to our … Read more

SharePoint Embedded: Full Featured SharePoint Inside a Custom Application 

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SharePoint Embedded

Custom applications that require a lot of document management have always been a challenge to build. Historically, we would build an ASP.NET application and then pass content back and forth to Azure blog storage or make the document available for immediate download (but not store the document in the application after the download is complete). Microsoft has released SharePoint Embedded, a new way to store and manage content in custom applications. SharePoint Embedded offers a headless, API-only pattern to build content apps that integrate management capabilities like collaboration, security, and compliance into any app by storing content inside an enterprise’s existing Microsoft 365 tenant.  Enterprises can use SharePoint Embedded to … Read more

CoPilot For Microsoft Teams: A Smart Assistant

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CoPilot For Microsoft Teams

How CoPilot can help you make the most of your online meetings  I’ve been using CoPilot within my Teams meetings for a few months and am really enjoying it. This might be the one-use case for CoPilot that on its own justifies the monthly cost of CoPilot for M365 (approx. $30). Let’s review the basics of CoPilot for Teams Meetings for those that are not using it yet.   What is CoPilot?  CoPilot is a smart assistant that integrates with Microsoft Teams and helps you manage your online meetings more effectively. CoPilot can:  What are the features of CoPilot?  CoPilot offers a range of features to enhance your online meeting experience. … Read more

Custom Global Navigation Using SPFx Application Customizers

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SPFx Custom Applications

Out-of-the-box navigation in SharePoint Online has come a long way over the last number of years. Hub sites and hub site navigation provide much more customizability and consistency for navigating around a hub. However, modern intranets in SharePoint Online are generally made up of multiple hubs. Maintaining a consistent experience across all those hubs and sites can become a daunting task. While infinitely better than what we’ve had in the past, it still falls short of a truly unified and engaging experience. The ever-expanding lists of links can make it difficult to keep organized and make it difficult for users to find what they are looking for. In this blog, … Read more

Imaginet’s Experience with GitHub CoPilot 

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GitHub CoPilot

GitHub CoPilot is a new tool that uses artificial intelligence to help developers write code faster and better. It is powered by OpenAI Codex, a large-scale neural network that has been trained on billions of lines of public code. GitHub CoPilot can generate code snippets, tests, functions, and entire classes based on natural language descriptions or comments.  I have been curious about GitHub CoPilot ever since it was announced in 2021, but I was also skeptical about how well it could handle the complex and dynamic nature of software development. We started testing it around the middle of 2023 and had a mix of developer skill level (jr, int, expert) … Read more