Application Development

Secret Manager to Protect Sensitive Data in App Development

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Secret Manager

Secret Manager to Protect Sensitive Data in App Development   How you deal with sensitive data is critical to your organization’s success. If you are not careful with sensitive company or client data, you risk losing trust between you and your employees or customer base. But how do you protect sensitive data when developing a new application where you may need access to said data? Secret Manager provides a solution for protecting sensitive data during application development.  What is Secret Manager?  Secret Manager is used to store sensitive data during the development of an ASP.NET Core application development project. It keeps the “secrets” out of the source code and stores them … Read more

SharePoint Add-Ins to be Retired in M365 

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SharePoint Add-Ins

In Microsoft’s effort to provide modern, evolved digital solutions, they will be retiring SharePoint Add-Ins and pushing SharePoint Extensibility Models instead – such as SharePoint Framework.   SharePoint Add-Ins will stop working for new tenants in November 2024 and will be fully eliminated in early 2026. You will no longer be able to update, purchase, or acquire SharePoint Add-Ins.  How Does the SharePoint Add-In Retirement Affect Me?  Many people are unaware of this new change, and it will greatly impact those who have used SharePoint Add-Ins or made custom Add-Ins in the past. If you made a purchase from the Microsoft Store or downloaded a free application, they will stop working.   … Read more

Increasing Productivity with Microsoft PowerToys  

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PowerToys

Microsoft PowerToys is an application aimed to increase productivity by providing the user with a set of tools and offerings.   Originally introduced in the 1990s and resurrected for Windows 10, PowerToys are a collection of free, open-source utilities designed to enhance your Windows experience. Whether you’re a power user or simply looking to streamline your workflow, PowerToys offers a suite of tools that can make your computer usage more efficient and enjoyable.   There have been a few new tools and updates showcased in the Microsoft Build 2024 conference. Here is a list of the most notable features with PowerToys so far:  PowerToys – Mouse Without Borders  If you use multiple … Read more

How the Bushcraft Rule of Threes Helps Me Think about Project Management 

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Project Management

Using survival skills can help with project management. Yes, you read that right.   What is the Bushcraft Rule of Threes?  The bushcraft rule of threes is a simple guideline that helps campers and survivalists to prioritize their needs in a wilderness situation. It states that you can survive:  The rule of threes helps you prioritize what will cause you to fail fastest first. When you follow the rules, it prevents you from wasting time and energy on less urgent matters. For example, if you are in a cold and wet environment, finding or building a shelter to keep you warm and dry is more important than looking for food … Read more

Staying Current with Technology: The Benefits & Drawbacks

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Staying Current with Technology

Recently Microsoft announced several updates for their flagship technologies. These updates included a new version of .NET, .NET 8, as well as updates to Entity Framework Core, .NET Maui, and more. These updates are not limited to Microsoft either – Angular recently released Angular 17. Every year there are new updates and versions released for many development technologies, but should you be updating your applications every year? Here are a few points to consider:  New Features  The first and most obvious benefit is the new features updates provide. Generally, these features introduce benefits like quality-of-life changes for developers, which help development go faster, easier, or become more streamlined. Sometimes, new … Read more

Application Update Leads to Improved Performance and Functionality

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A provider of real estate advisory services contacted Imaginet to assist them with an application we had previously developed for them. Most of the application was developed using .Net framework 4.8, which is now outdated. The application’s front end was developed with version 8, but now Angular 16 is the most updated and recent version. An application update would improve the overall use, performance, security, and functionality of the application itself.   Our Solution  The application required an update so it would use .Net core and Angular 16 as the frontend. The client also requested other fixes that would improve the performance, such as moving some data processing from the Angular … Read more

Different Selection of .net Data Structure Has a Positive Impact on Performance 

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.net Data Structure

Today, programmers often fail to consider the performance impact of certain programming choices. Computers have, and continue to, advance and their seemingly unlimited memory results in a programmer’s lack of programming considerations. In one of my recent projects, I had to search reference data from multiple large lists of data (between 500 – 4000 entries in each list) from a numeric ID field in another large list of objects. In this blog, I will explore the positive impacts a different selection of .net data structure can have on performance.    Adopting the standard naive approach of storing the reference data in a List and then using a LINQ query to … Read more

Understanding Microsoft Syntex: The Power of Intelligent Document Processing

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Organizations deal with vast amounts of information in the form of documents, emails, and other structured or unstructured content. Unraveling valuable insights from these data sources can often pose a significant challenge. In today’s digital age, with the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, organizations have powerful tools like Microsoft Syntex to streamline document processing and enhance productivity.   Microsoft Syntex is content AI integrated in flow of work. Content AI transforms how content is created, processed, and discovered. Microsoft Syntex is a solution built on Microsoft 365 and SharePoint and powered by Artificial Intelligence. This helps organizations automate content processing, extract valuable information, and increase … Read more

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

New Application Provides Online Hub for Neurodiverse Individuals to Collaborate

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A major Canadian university reached out to Imaginet to create an application that provided an online resource for neurodiverse people and their families. The goal was to provide a space where neurodiverse individuals could share stories or provide insight into the practices that have helped them overcome challenges in their day-to-day lives. This online resource would give people facing similar challenges a safe space to communicate with one another.   The Imaginet Application Development team used C#, ASP.NET, JavaScript, and Orchard to build the entire website and application from scratch. Orchard is a CMS service with several built-in tools, which allowed Imaginet to streamline the whole process and ensure end users … Read more