Microsoft 365

Upgraded Development Stack Improves Data Governance & Quality

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A leading real estate and financial services asset management company needed assistance migrating their legacy on-premises data environment that had become difficult to manage. Some key parts of the legacy system relied on Microsoft Excel and a web application. Loading data was complex and manual, and a lack of data governance needed to be addressed. The client asked Imaginet to upgrade the application using a more modern development stack to clean up and standardize how data was loaded and processed.  Using Azure Data Factory as the primary method for data integration (ETL) processes, the Imaginet data engineering team moved the data environment into Microsoft Azure cloud services, with a data … Read more

Modernized Application Results in Increased Productivity and Better Control Over Technology 

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A provincial agricultural services corporation had been using IBM Domino Designer to complete their organization’s projects. Designer is an outdated tool making it difficult to find someone who can support the maintenance of it. Very few developers are familiar with Designer due to its decrease in popularity. They approached Imaginet for assistance in developing a more modern application. Outdated applications and technology result in a variety of challenges. Making changes or adding additional requirements becomes almost impossible because of the lack of knowledge of these tools. Therefore, our client was experiencing outdated processes resulting in inefficiencies and a harm to productivity. In addition, the client could not see the developer’s … Read more

Modernized API & User Interface Optimizes Application & Performance

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A leading asset manager with an emphasis on real estate and financial services had been using an older REACT application to view and track data about loans and transactions. The user interface could have been faster, and the database on the backend more convenient to use. The client engaged Imaginet to modernize their API and user interface to increase team productivity and ease of use.  The Imaginet Application Development Team rebuilt the API in .NET 6 and C#, using a modern controller-based approach with a mediator pattern setup between the controllers, servers, and database layer. The old application had many different pieces working together, and we focused on keeping the … 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

Updated Parcel Tracking Portal Allows Customers to Access Most Recent Business Features

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A leading Canadian retail logistics provider had an existing parcel tracking portal based on a .NET 5 backend and a React frontend. However, these technologies had become outdated relative to their business processes due to a lack of resources to support them at the required pace. As a result, their customers had no access to the most recent business features. They contacted Imaginet to develop an updated portal for parcel tracking and to reduce the effort required for future support and development.  To fulfill the client’s requirements, Imaginet developed a new portal which included the following features:  With this project, we also introduced new Blazor technology and followed clean architecture … 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

Enhanced Site Structure and Document Libraries Improve Team Productivity 

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One of the largest trailer leasing and rental companies in the United States needed assistance building an intranet hub site and department sites for their organization with the goal of enhancing team productivity. While they already had a couple of SharePoint sites built, they weren’t being used and needed direction and guidance to make the most of their products. Phase two of the project involved assisting with the setup of document libraries for specific departments and two different department sites (Marketing and HR) within the hub site (where their internal team had already started to build out other sites and document libraries).  The Imaginet Business Productivity team configured the Marketing … 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

Teams Implementation Empowers Individual Organizational Teams to Collaborate Seamlessly 

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A well-established global charitable organization contacted Imaginet to assist in implementing Microsoft Teams across the organization, as well as creating separate teams for each department. The goal was to have an accessible space for team members to collaborate.   The organization expressed their desire to do the work themselves but wanted Imaginet to oversee their work to ensure they were implementing everything correctly and efficiently. The first step was to understand the client’s requirements for their Team site. We then produced a document outlining how to set up policies and create individual teams.   Our next step was providing training for each department. Imaginet created additional documents for training purposes and performed … 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