Latest Office 365 MVPs

In keeping with previous posts, here is a list of all Office 365 MVPs as of 6/10/2015 (update coming July 1st)…At the bottom is a powershell script that you can run to follow all the SO365 MVPs in one go!

Some quick stats…

  • 108 (non-anonymous) Office 365 MVPs

Country breakdown:

  • 15 United States
  • 12 Not Shared
  • 7 Japan
  • 7 Sweden
  • 6 Australia
  • 6 Canada
  • 5 Brazil
  • 5 France
  • 4 Germany
  • 4 United Kingdom
  • 4 Netherlands
  • 3 Croatia
  • 2 China
  • 2 New Zealand
  • 2 Italy
  • 2 Switzerland
  • 2 Malaysia
  • 1 Mexico
  • 1 United Arab Emirates
  • 1 Vietnam
  • 1 Norway
  • 1 Peru
  • 1 Philippines
  • 1 Poland
  • 1 Portugal
  • 1 Russia
  • 1 Spain
  • 1 Bulgaria
  • 1 Austria
  • 1 Belgium
  • 1 Bosnia-Herzegovina
  • 1 Denmark
  • 1 Korea
  • 1 Latvia
  • 1 Hungary
  • 1 India
  • 1 Indonesia

New MVPs (within last year):

  • Chris Goosen
  • David Petree
  • Elio Struyf
  • Erwin van Hunen
  • Haylee Fox
  • Johan Dahlbom
  • Knut Relbe-Moe
  • Matthew Green
  • Michael Blumenthal
  • Naohiko Maeda (?? ??)
  • Naomi Moneypenny
  • Nathan OBryan
  • Paolo Pialorsi (Paolo Pialorsi)
  • Ravikumar Sathyamurthy
  • Robert Dick (Robert Dick)
  • Samantha
  • Sébastien Levert
  • Susan Hanley
  • Tung Pham
  • Vasil Michev
  • Victor Meirans (Viktors Meirans)
  • Vitaly Vedenev
  • Wellington Agápto
  • Yoan Topenot
  • Yvette Watson

Longest runningmost awarded SharePoint MVPs:

  • Cindy Meister 19
  • Arnaud 12
  • Goran Husman 12
  • HeeJin Lee (Hee Jin Lee) 12
  • Nitin Sadashiv Paranjape 11
  • Tomislav Bronzin (Tomislav Bronzin) 11
  • Maarten van Stam 10
  • Scot Hillier 10

The list (data comes from your MVP profile, you don't see it, go update it):

ADefWebserver

Name Blog Twitter
Agnes Molnar Blog molnaragnes
Alan Richards Blog arichards_Saruk
Alex Pearce Blog
Alvaro dos Santos Rezende Blog
Amin Tavakoli Blog amintvk
Arnaud Blog alcabeza
Ayman Mohammed El-Hattab Blog aymanelhattab
Ben Curry Blog
Benjamin Niaulin Blog bniaulin
Benoit HAMET Blog benoit_hamet
Brendon Ford Blog stewartisland
Brett Hill Blog bretthill
Brian Nøhr Blog bsnohr
Byeongguk Ku Blog
Chris Goosen Blog
Christian Buckley Blog buckleyplanet
Cindy Meister Blog
Dan Holme Blog danholme
Danny Burlage Blog dannyburlage
Darrell C Webster (Darrell Webster) Blog
David Petree Blog dmixx
Dean Howarth Blog
Diogo Dias Heringer Blog
Dragan Panjkov Blog panjkov
Elio Struyf Blog eliostruyf
Emre Aydin Blog
Erwin van Hunen Blog
Eunjoo Lee (Eunjoo Lee) Blog
Fernando Andreazi Blog fandreazi
Genki Watanabe Blog genkiw
Geoff Evelyn Blog
Gilles Pommier Blog
Goran Husman Blog < /td>
Haylee Fox Blog
HeeJin Lee (Hee Jin Lee) Blog
Igor Pavlekovic Blog igorpnet
J. Peter Bruzzese Blog
Jasper Oosterveld (Jasper Oosterveld) Blog jasoosterveld
Jeremy Dahl Blog
Jesper Ståhle Blog JesperStahle
Jethro Seghers Blog jseghers
Jian Chen (??) Blog loveunicom
Johan Dahlbom Blog daltondhcp
Jorge Castañeda Cano Blog xorxe
Juan Carlos Gonzalez Martin (Juan Carlos González) Blog jcgm1978
Kamil Baczyk (Kamil Baczyk) Blog KamilBaczyk
Kanwal Khipple Blog kkhipple
Kazuhiko ?? Nakamura ?? Blog
Kelsey Epps Blog kelseyepps
Kerstin Rachfahl Blog himmlischeit
Knut Relbe-Moe Blog sharePTkarm
Laurent Miltgen-Delinchamp Blog
Liang Tang (??) Blog
Loryan Strant Blog thecloudmouth
Maarten van Stam Blog aafvstam
Magnus Bjork Blog
Malin Dandenell Blog
Mario Cortes Flores Blog
Markus Widl Blog markuswidl
Martina Grom Blog magrom
Matthew Green Blog mattdgreen
Mauricio Cassemiro Blog
Michael Kirst-Neshva Blog ankbs
Michael Blumenthal Blog
Michael Washington Blog
Myles Jeffery Blog mjthinkscape
Naohiko Maeda (?? ??) Blog naohikomaeda
Naoki Osada Blog
Naomi Moneypenny Blog nmoneypenny
Nathan OBryan Blog MCSMLab
Nitin Sadashiv Paranjape Blog
Nuno Árias Silva (Nuno Árias Silva) Blog NunoAriasSilva
Paolo Pialorsi (Paolo Pialorsi) Blog
Patrick Lamber Blog patricklamber
Patrick Guimonet Blog patricg
Paul Schaeflein Blog paulschaeflein
Paul Woods Blog paulwoods
Poo Ching Loong Blog
Rahmat Zikri Blog zikr1
Raphael Koellner Blog ra_koellner
Ravikumar Sathyamurthy Blog ShakthiRavi
Rene Dominik Modery Blog modery
Rie Okuda (?? ??) Blog
Robert Dick (Robert Dick) Blog
Robert D. Crane Blog
Samantha Blog
Sara Barbosa (Sara Barbosa) Blog Sarabarbosa
Scot Hillier Blog
Sean McNeill Blog s_mcneill
Sébastien Levert Blog sebastienlevert
Seiji Noro (?? ??) Blog
Steve Noel Blog CloudItca
Susan Hanley Blog
Tomislav Bronzin (Tomislav Bronzin) Blog tbronzin
Tommy Clarke Blog itommyclarke
Tung Pham Blog
Ty Anderson Blog
Vasil Michev Blog
Victor Meirans (Viktors Meirans) Blog
Vincent Choy Blog
Vitaly Vedenev Blog vedenev
Wellington Agápto Blog
WenXing Liao Blog
Yoan Topenot Blog YoanTopenot
Yoni Kirsh Blog
Yoshihide Sakamoto Blog
Yvette Watson Blog yfwatson
Zeljka Knezovic Blog zeljkak

Latest SharePoint MVPs (Twitter Follow Script)

In keeping with previous posts, here is a list of all SharePoint MVPs as of 6/10/2015 (update coming July 1st)…At the bottom is a powershell script that you can run to follow all the SP MVPs in one go!

Some quick stats…

  • 219 (non-anonymous) SharePoint Server MVPs

Country breakdown:

  • 40    United States
  • 28    Not Shared
  • 22    Canada
  • 10    France
  • 8    Australia
  • 8    United Kingdom
  • 6    Switzerland
  • 6    Belgium
  • 6    India
  • 6    Japan
  • 5    Italy
  • 5    Netherlands
  • 5    Germany
  • 5    China
  • 4    Brazil
  • 4    Korea
  • 4    Spain
  • 3    Sri Lanka
  • 3    Denmark
  • 3    New Zealand
  • 2    Norway
  • 2    Pakistan
  • 2    Finland
  • 2    Costa Rica
  • 2    Sweden
  • 2    Czech Republic
  • 2    South Africa
  • 2    Taiwan
  • 1    Tunisia
  • 1    Turkey
  • 1    United Arab Emirates
  • 1    Uruguay
  • 1    Vietnam
  • 1    Croatia
  • 1    Colombia
  • 1    Guatemala
  • 1    Hungary
  • 1    Bulgaria
  • 1    Chile
  • 1    Bosnia-Herzegovina
  • 1    Argentina
  • 1    Macedonia F.Y.R.O
  • 1    Malaysia
  • 1    Jordan
  • 1    Philippines
  • 1    Portugal
  • 1    Romania
  • 1    Russia
  • 1    Singapore
  • 1    Slovenia

New MVPs (within last year):

  • Adnan    Amin
  • Albert-Jan    Schot (Albert-Jan Schot)
  • Amit    Vasu
  • Bijaya    Kumar Sahoo (Bijay Kumar)
  • Bin    Wang
  • David    Amenda
  • Dinusha    Kumarasiri
  • Erdem    Avni SELÇUK
  • Inderjeet    Singh Jaggi
  • Jan    Vanek
  • Jussi    Roine (Jussi Roine)
  • Lakshmanan    sethu (Lakshmanan Sethu)
  • Marco    Rizzi
  • Michael    Nokhamzon
  • Mike    Maadarani
  • Prasath    Chellappan
  • Rodrigo    Romano (Rodrigo Romano)

Longest runningmost awarded SharePoint MVPs:

  • Michael    Greth    17
  • Daniel    Wessels    12
  • Robert    L. Bogue    12
  • Spencer    J Harbar    12
  • John    Timney    12
  • Rob    Windsor    12
  • Fabrice    Romelard (Fabrice Romelard)    12
  • Fumio    Mizobata (?? ???)    12
  • Pierre    Erol GIRAUDY (Erol GIRAUDY)    12
  • Ai    Yamasaki (?? ? (?? ?))    11
  • Haarón    González (Haarón González)    11
  • Adams    Chao    11
  • Ted    Pattison    11
  • Andrew    Connell    11
  • Sahil    Malik    11
  • Eli    Z. Robillard    11
  • Ed    Musters    11
  • Shane    Young    10
  • Joris    Poelmans    10
  • Hilton    Giesenow    10

The list (data comes from your MVP profile, you don't see it, go update it):

Name Blog Twitter
"Michelle" Caldwell (Michelle Caldwell) Blog
Adams Chao Blog
Adis Jugo Blog adisjugo
Adnan Amin Blog adnan_amin
Adrián Diaz Cervera Blog AdrianDiaz81
Ai Yamasaki (?? ? (?? ?)) Blog ai_yamasaki
Alan Marshall Blog
Albert-Jan Schot (Albert-Jan Schot) Blog
Alberto Diaz Martin Blog adiazcan
Alexey Sadomov Blog sadomovalex
Amanda Perran Blog
Amit Vasu Blog
Anders Dissing Blog andersdissing
Andre Lage Blog aaclage
Andres Felipe Rojas Parra Blog arojaspa
Andrew Connell Blog andrewconnell
Andrey Markeev Blog amarkeev
Antonio Maio (Antonio Maio) Blog
Ashutosh Singh Blog ashutosh80
Asif Rehmani Blog asifrehmani
Atsuo Yamasaki (?? ??) Blog SharePointIssue
Becky Bertram Blog beckybertram
Ben Robb Blog benrobb
Benoît Jester Blog SPAsipe
Bijaya Kumar Sahoo (Bijay Kumar) Blog fewlines4biju
Bin Wang Blog
Bjoern H Rapp (Bjoern H Rapp) Blog bjoern_rapp
Brandon Atkinson Blog
Carlos Citrangulo Blog carlocitrangulo
Cathy Dew Blog catpaint1
Cheng Cheng (??) Blog
Chris Givens Blog givenscj
Chris O'Brien Blog ChrisO_Brien
Chris McNulty Blog cmcnulty2000
Christian Glessner Blog
Christopher Clement Blog ClemChristopher
Chuantao Duan Blog
Claudio Brotto Blog
Colin Phillips Blog itgroove_colin
Corey Roth Blog coreyroth
Dan Usher Blog
Daniel McPherson (Daniel McPherson) Blog danmc
Daniel Wessels Blog mosslive
Darko Milevski Blog
David Mann Blog
David Sánchez Aguilar Blog davidsancheza
David Amenda Blog
Debbie Ireland Blog debbieireland
Destin N Joy Blog
Devendra Velegandla Blog
Dinusha Kumarasiri Blog
Dmitri Plotnikov Blog dmiplo
Doug Ware Blog
Doug Hemminger (Doug Hemminger) Blog
Dux Raymond Sy Blog meetdux
Ed Musters Blog
Edin Kapic Blog ekapic
Elaine van Bergen Blog laneyvb
Eli Z. Robillard Blog
Erdem Avni SELÇUK Blog eravse
Eric Alan Shupps (Eric Shupps) Blog eshupps
Eric Riz Blog rizinsights
Fabian Imaz Blog FabianImaz
Fabian Moritz Blog FabianMoritz
Fabian G Williams Blog fabianwilliams
Fabio Franzini Blog franzinifabio
Fabrice Romelard (Fabrice Romelard) Blog fromelard
Fumio Mizobata (?? ???) Blog
Gaetan Bouveret Blog gbouveret
Gavin Barron Blog gavinbarron
Giuseppe Marchi Blog PeppeDotNet
Gokan Ozcifci Blog GokanOzcifci
Guillaume Meyer (Guillaume Meyer) Blog guillaumemeyer
Gustavo Adolfo Velez Duque Blog
Haarón González (Haarón González) Blog haarongonzalez
Hans Brender (Hans Brender) Blog HansBrender
Heber Lopes Blog heberolopes
Hemendra Agrawal (Hemendra Agrawal) Blog
Hilary Stoupa Blog
Hilton Giesenow Blog themossshow
Hiroaki Oikawa (?? ??) Blog HiroakiOikawa
Hirofumi Ota Blog hrfmjp
Igor Macori (Igor Macori) Blog imacori
Inderjeet Singh Jaggi Blog
Isha Kapoor Blog
Ivan Sanders Blog iasanders
Ivan Padabed (???? ???????) Blog sharepointby
Jake Dan Attis (J. Dan Attis) Blog jdattis
James Milne Blog JamesMilne
Jamie McAllister Blog
Jan Vanek Blog
Jason Warren Blog jaspnwarren
Jason Himmelstein Blog sharepointlhorn
Jason Kaczor (Jason Kaczor) Blog jjkaczor
Jean Paul Blog jeanpaulmvp
Jennifer Ann Mason Blog jennifermason
JeongWoo Choi Blog
Jianyu Yang (???) Blog
John Timney Blog
John D. Ross Blog johnrossjr
John P White (John P White) Blog diverdown1964
John Liu (John Liu) Blog johnnliu
Joris Poelmans Blog
Joseph Tu (???) Blog
Juan Pablo Pussacq Laborde Blog jpussacq
Juan Manuel (Manolo) Herrera (Juan Manuel Herrera Ocheita) Blog jmhogua
Juan Andrés Valenzuela (Juan Andrés Valenzuela) Blog jandresval
Julien Chable Blog
Jussi Roine (Jussi Roine) Blog jussiroine
Jussi Mori Blog JussiMori
Justin Liu (???) Blog FoxdaveJustin
Kamil Jurik Blog KamilJurik
Keith Tuomi Blog keithtuomi
Kevin Trelohan (Kevin TRELOHAN) Blog ktrelohan
Kris Wagner Blog SharePointKris
Lakshmanan sethu (Lakshmanan Sethu) Blog
Laura Derbes Rogers (Laura Rogers) Blog wonderlaura
Liam Cleary Blog helloitsliam
Lionel Limozin Blog limozinlionel
Mahmoud CHALLOUF Blog
Marat Bakirov (????? ???????) Blog
Marc D Anderson Blog
Marco Rizzi Blog marcorizzi
Margriet Bruggeman Blog margrietvuur
Marianne van Wanrooij Blog mariannerd
< a href="https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/mvp/Marius%20Constantinescu-5000240" target="_blank">Marius Constantinescu Blog c_marius
Mark Rhodes Blog
Mark Stokes Blog MarkStokes
Martin Harwar Blog point8020
Masaki Nishioka Blog
Matthew McDermott Blog MatthewMcD
Matthias Einig Blog mattein
Melick Rajee Baranasooriya Blog MelickRajee
Michael Nokhamzon Blog mickey75019
Michael Greth Blog mysharepoint
Michael Noel Blog michaeltnoel
Michal Pisarek Blog
Miguel Tabera (Miguel Tabera) Blog migueltabera
Mikael Svenson (Mikael Svenson) Blog
Mike Maadarani Blog
Mike Smith Blog TechTrainNotes
Mirjam van Olst Blog mirjamvanolst
Mohammed A. Saleh Blog mohkanaan
Muhammad Imran Khawar Blog msdev_Pakstatus571218277298348033
Nabil Babaci Blog nabilbabaci
Nguyen Hoang Nhut (Nguyen Hoang Nhut) Blog nhutcmos
Nick Kellett Blog
Nicki Borell Blog NickiBorell
Nicolas Georgeault Blog ngeorgeault
Noorez Khamis Blog nkhamis
Patrick Yong Blog
Paul Olenick Blog
Paul Papanek Stork Blog pstork
Penelope Coventry Blog pjcov
Peter Holpar Blog
Peter Carson Blog carsonpeter
Pierre Vivier-Merle Blog
Pierre Erol GIRAUDY (Erol GIRAUDY) Blog EROL_MVP
Prasath Chellappan Blog
Radi Atanassov Blog
Randy Drisgill Blog
Reza Alirezaei Blog
Ricardo Jose Munoz Blog rmunozcr
Riwut Libinuko Blog cakriwut
Rob Foster Blog
Rob Windsor Blog robwindsor
Robert Voncina Blog R0b3r70SP
Robert L. Bogue Blog
Rodrigo Pinto Blog ScoutmanPt
Rodrigo Romano (Rodrigo Romano) Blog
Roger Haueter Blog techtask
Romeo Donca (Romeo Donca) Blog romeodonca
Ruven Gotz Blog
Sahil Malik Blog
Samuel Zuercher Blog sharepointszu
Sangha Baek Blog SanghaBaek
Scott Jamison Blog
Sean Wallbridge Blog itgroove
Seokhyi Han Blog
Serge Luca Blog
Serge Tremblay Blog Sergepoint
Seung-Jin Kim Blog jincrom
Sezai Komur Blog sezai
Shai Petel Blog shaibs
Shane Young Blog
Shuguang Tu Blog
Sohel Rana Blog
Sonja Madsen Blog
Spencer J Harbar Blog harbars
Stanislav Vyschepan Blog gandjustas
Stéphane Eyskens Blog stephaneeyskens
Steve Smith Blog
Steve Curran Blog spsteve
Susitha Prabath Fonseka Blog
Symon Garfield Blog symon_garfield
Ted Pattison Blog
Thomas Vochten Blog ThomasVochten
Thorsten Hans Blog ThorstenHans
Thuan Nguyen Blog nnthuan
Tobias Zimmergren Blog zimmergren
Todd Klindt Blog
Todd S Baginski Blog toddbaginski
Toni Frankola Blog tonifrankola
Trevor Seward Blog NaupliusTrevor
Usama Wahab Khan (Usama Wahab Khan) Blog usamawahabkhan
Valy Greavu Blog valygreavu
Veronique Palmer Blog veroniquepalmer
Vielka Rojas Blog vkrojas
Vijai Anand Ramalingam (Vijai Anand Ramalingam) Blog
Vincent Biret Blog baywet
Vlad Catrinescu Blog
Waldek Mastykarz Blog waldekm
Wei Du Blog
Wes Preston Blog idubbs
Wesley Hackett Blog weshackett
Wictor Wilen Blog wictor
Wonbae Kim Blog
Yaroslav Pentsarskyy Blog spentsarsky
Yasir Attiq Blog

Subnet masks are important…SharePoint Is Up…err Down

We had this awesome situation the past 5 days.  Another team wanted to use ElasticSearch to index SharePoint.  They would attempt to connect to SharePoint, but were not able to.  Of course, the SharePoint Servers were in fact up as demonstrated by my ability to connect to them from my laptop and from other servers in the farm.  I therefore wrote them off as crazy and put down as a firewall/F5/Linux issue.  But they kept nagging at me and eventually escalated to the higher powers that be and I was forced to deal with it.  Here's how it played out:

Quick Facts:

  • ElasticSearch on its own /28 subnet
  • SharePoint on its own /28 subnet (more on this later)
  • F5 VIPs for load balancing on both sides (both SP WFEs and ElasticSearch queries)
  • Both subnets part of a larger /24 subnet allocation pool

The process (after 5 days of back and forth):

  • Can you ping our server IPs?  Yes
  • Can you hit our SP URLs?  No
  • What happens when you ping via DNS?  We see the F5 VIP IP
  • Change your hosts file to point to a WFE directly, can you hit our server?  Yes
  • Oh, we need a bounceback iRule for the SP servers to talk to each other, let's add that now
  • Maybe we need a reverse proxy on the VIP?  Let's add that?
  • Remove your hosts file, can you hit our servers?  No
  • Fire up wireshark on all the servers, do logging on the F5
  • Traffic flows from the ElasticSearch, through the F5 and does arrive at our SP WFE however the WFE kills the TCP connection and no IIS request is logged – WTF…
  • Chris – "OK guys, let's start at the bottom and work our way up the OSI layers…"
    • Ethernet adapters good? – Yup
    • Level 2 ok?  Yup
    • Level 3 – got IPs? Yup – Chris – "Hey, what is your guys subnet?".  Them – "255.255.255.240".  Chris – "Ours is "255.255.252.0"….FUCK

5 hours over 5 days wasted, frustrated, starting to think they were crazy F5 guys…all because the network guys didn't setup our subnet properly.  What was happening is the SharePoint servers had a huge subnet configured.  This caused the SP servers to think that the ElasticSearch servers were on the same subnet but weren't.  Therefore when it couldn't connect to them using layer 2, it would kill the TCP layer.  Awesome.

Enjoy!
Chris

Stop Killing Yourself Drop Kerberos – Go Claims!

Why…why put yourself through the agony?  To be fair and relatively speaking, kerberos is easy to setup and manage, but its old and stupid.  The whole design is to keep you from tagging the auth controllers each time you login and be able to "delegate" your credentials to some other system so it can do something "on your behalf". 

Hmm…that sounds familiar….claims based auth with auth tokens anyone?  Not a single Saas App uses kerberos…so why are you still using it?  Its just stupid.  If you have a product that relies on Kerberos, then you are living in 1999.  Fast forward 16 years later….

YOU SHOULD DROP ALL THINGS KERBEROS.

Drop those old apps that you don't need anymore for ones that support claims auth and have so much more functionality than the old ones you have.  It's time.  Really.  You can let go now.

BUT CHRIS I CAN'T CUZ…THE VENDOR HASN'T UPDATED THEIR SOFTWARE….

Well…time to drop that vendor's software.  Yeah…tell the Microsoft SQL Server team (isn't that the only reason you still use Kerberos?) to get with the times.  Its ridiculous that they don't support claims based auth and delegated auth based on Claims based tokens. 

Time for software vendors and engineering teams to step up.  It's freakin 2015…I want my sharks with lasers damn it.

 

Chris

 

Building Your Own Push API for O365 (Ingesting Twitter)

Yes, it can be done.  You have to play by the O365 system's rules, but you can do it.  Here's how it can be done…

The high level steps:

  • Find a data source (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whatever)
  • Createconfigure an O365 account with access to Azure AD instance for your tenant
  • Ingest the data, transform to format that O365 will accept (Word, PPT, Excel, PDF)
  • Upload the data into O365 (document library)
  • Update the metadata on the doc/item after upload, this includes:
    • Create necessary user
    • Tag the user
    • Create hashtags
    • Share with those users involved
  • Wait up to 15 minutes for your results to display

So let's walk through these steps in a bit more detail shall we?

First Step – get twitter data

This is done by simply using the HttpWebRequest class of .NET and getting the html of a user's feed (provided they have not locked it down, in my case…Christophe ain't indexable when logged in…LOL).  This is a GET request to http://twitter.com/{username

Parse the HTML – I have provided a Util class to help you with this.  ParseValue is super helpful…call me king of html parsing if you will…

You can then use the twitter html response to parse out the tweet feed of the user.  This would include for each tweet:

  • Mentions
  • Text
  • Hashtags

Great, now you have the tweet data into some class structure (such as a hashtable).  Next is to grab a screen shot of all the tweets.  This can be done using the IE Browser control of .NET: 

Bitmap docImage = new Bitmap(width, height);
webBrowser1.DrawToBitmap(docImage, new Rectangle(webBrowser1.Location.X, webBrowser1.Location.Y, width, height));
docImage.Save("c:\temp\" + this.id + ".png");

You can now take that tweet image and import it into a word document using the System.IO.Packaging namespace.

From there, you now need to upload the word document with the tweet image to your O365 instance.  This can be done using the CSOM libraries.

Now that the word doc with the twitter image is loaded, you now need to update the metadata using the CSOM api.  Now this is a bit more advanced in the fact that hashtags become MMS terms and mentions become sharing links:

Sharing an item can be done via some hidden HTML post apis…this ensure that the shared item shows on the other user's feed.

However, if the users doesn't exist…you need to add them to your Azure AD tenant…this can be done by calling an obscure undocumented api…check out the "CreateUser" method.

If you wait a while…UPS will pick up this new Azure AD user and you will be able to tag the user as the creator and modifier of the new word document…errr..umm…tweet.  Which means you might have to run this more than once for each tweet (ah…the life of a lazy Saas app).

In 15 minutes…the document will be indexed properly, the users will see it on their feed and the users' that it is shared with will see it too…Office Graph at its finest…

The code is now posted to codeplex…@williambaer rejoice…however I did not publish the Word doc generation project (OfficeXml) for patent reasons, so you'll have to figure out that part, its not hard, but also not easy:

https://pushapi.codeplex.com

Easy breezy…MVP for another year…boom

CJG 

 

 

Wait What?!? Chris is Joining ShareSquared as CTO?

Yeah, personally, its a bit hard to believe, but I'm going to work for a company again.  It has been a very long time since I have actually reported to someone other than my customers!  To be more specific, since my Avanade and startup days in Seattle back in 2004!  So why do it now?  Quite a few reasons…

#1 – David Kruglov, Jim Duncan, John Honeycutt/Jeff Gunn and the crew

I have know David for over 8 years
now.  I have watched him through his ups and downs, MVP after MVP and
intimately know the details of every person that walked through his
company.  Through it all, he has maintained a level of energy and
integrity that I have not seen in any other owner of a company that I
have met in our little consulting space.  David works hard and plays
hard, but not as crazy as some of the other CEO's I know out there
(especially you ones from down under)!  David has worked his ass off to
get to a point where he has learned how to play this game.  It has
definitely not been without some missteps that he undoubtedly learned
from.  He has some pretty amazing things in the pipeline and he did a
great job selling me on what he has going on.  Right now, everything is going to plan and I
will be calling some of you to see how happy you are where you are [:D]

Jim Duncan is a just simply a rock star. It has truly been a pleasure watching him work for the past two weeks.  He's technical, he's a great manager and leader…and he just simply does an amazing job at managing the projects.  I'm looking forward to continue to work with him and hopefully automate many of the tasks that are…less than pleasurable!

John Honeycutt and Jeff Gunn are on it. It is simply amazing to watch them close deals.  They have some insane close rate that even the guys and gals at IBM would be envious of!  They will be keeping Jim and I busy for a few years to come!

So far, the guys are awesome.  They work hard, they want to do good and they ask questions.  Everything you'd want from a team. We will be bringing on two more people in the coming weeks and I'll let them announce their "move".

#2 – Envisioning My Product Ideas

It is very difficult to make time to build products that you know the world needs without other people helping you (albeit, new technologies help alleviate a lot of the time and effort that is used to take). There are several options to accomplish building your personal product idea such as:

  • Hire people (contractors, employees)
  • Get industry friends to help you build it combining our spare time in exchange for equity
  • Sell the idea to someone so they can build it

Each of these have advantages and disadvantages:

  • Taxes, Health Insurance, Disability…(although you can outsources all this admin stuff these days)
  • Capital to invest 
  • Trust
  • Loss of full potential earnings

ShareSquared offers a set of people that can provide some of the extra oompfh that I need to get some of these ideas out into the wild.  They also have a couple of products that have some potential with some real-world tender love and care put into them.

#3 – Location, location, location

Southern California (SoCal) is my home.  I love it and I hate being away from our lovely home in the "Ranch".  Lidiya and I have built quite the setup in San Diego.  The kids are awesome.  We have super smart, successful friends such that we all feed of each other to make and drive us to do bigger and better things.  Staying home or being able to hop on the train to LA, do a meeting or two and be back in my own bed the same day is priceless.  A laser focus on SoCal (the 8th largest economy in the world) is enough to keep me busy for quite some time.   So fret not if you live outside SoCal, but you should take notice now that we are coming after you if you are doing business in SoCal.  But no matter what the consulting and product battlefield brings, your always welcome in our house!

#4 – Equity

I know my value.  Let me throw some names
out there…IBM, Avanade, Microsoft, eBay, Intel, PayPal, Subway,
General Atomics.  Those are big names.  I rocked all of them.  And that
was all in a few years.  I have since had my own company for the last
10+ years working with people all over the world.  I have done very well (at least, I have kept the wife happy
so that must equate to some level of success)!  You will have to strive
to find a person that has been in these types of big companies, had
their own company, built products and achieved everything they have ever
put their mind too.  They do exist (and you guys and gals know who you are), but you'll have a hard time getting them and keeping them without
keeping us occupied with taking over the world or justifying why we make you 100s or 1000s of thousands of dollars and we don't get a significant cut.

I have a rule that I won't work
anywhere where I don't have skin in the game with a huge payout
involved.  I talked to several other companies exploring the possibility
of working for them, and the salary offers were quite large, but with no possibility of a big payout in exchange for building them something amazing. 

A tip…you don't get
anywhere significant in this world by working solely for a salary. 

#5 – Customers, Money & Value

I want to rule over SoCal with all my other SoCal CEO's and deliver
solutions that just rock it.  I want to drive the best solutions that
focus on the equation that drives everything I do personally……..

P = R – C (Profit =
Revenue – Cost)

I only enjoy talking to executives, I get
them after being one for 10+ years.  I want to make
them tons of cash (and myself in the process).  I want to save them
money in hard times. You may not like it, but the world we live in is
all
about money (<<<insert wife side remark here>>>).  I'm incredibly excited about the productivity "signals" that are about to be released to the world via Office 365.  You will be able to see exactly who is working and who is not.  Office is all about productivity (saving money).  I'm going to be focused like a hawk on value based solutions around the "C" part of the equation.  I'm not going to do any projects that are simply a "Cost" line item, I'm happy to pass those on to my competitors to bloody their name instead.

 #6 – Software Partnerships

ShareSquared has some incredibly strong software ISV relationships.  Some of these companies I have not been that close too, but have watched from afar as they have penetrated tons of accounts and made serious money for themselves and their partners.  A big part of our strategy will be to continue to focus on those partnerships.  Personally I am very excited to be able to implement some of the newer partner product offerings that ShareSqaured is selling.

#7 – M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) and Big Partnerships

Ruling SoCal will take some serious wheeling and dealing.  You can't fill up the CRM database by solely making cold calls. To be able to scale and grow the company means making some big moves.  I'll be involved in a lot of the growth and partnership strategy for ShareSquared and how we will make it to our "magic" number.  I can't share exactly how that will be done, but I definitely have quite a few things in the pipeline that I hope will get me that much closer to making my personal goals related to ShareSquared's future.

Summary

Starting a new company is not easy.  Growing a company is not easy.   Nothing you do in this world is easy.  I'm looking forward to the challenges that ShareSquared and David Kruglov is presenting me. 

I'm going to go at it just like I have everything else, hard and strong.  Just like my win tonight in my soccer league…it feels great to be number one!  See you on the SoCal battlefield…