Adam Cogan

Help me quickly add the likely members of a new chat group

By Adam Cogan in Teams December 16, 2022 0 Comment

I have another fantastic idea 😊

We all love Microsoft Teams and I think this UI looks like it is about to be clever, but it is not.

When starting a new chat…
If I pick 1 person… please attempt to guess the 2^nd person I will add to the chat.
People are often related and I know it would be a nice for all Microsoft Teams users if the people picker showed the like people that I will chat with together.

Today, it doesn’t matter who I pick first in the chat, the search always shows the same people.

**Figure: I type ‘Gert’ it pops open people, if I pick ‘Bob’ it pops open the *same* people!**

Suggestion

Please pick who I will probably pick next … it should change the people based on who I am adding.

More info:
Delve tells me who I talk to a bit, that would be ok.
But when you talk to a manager, you probably are going to pick another manager.
When I talk to an Azure DevOps engineer, I am probably going to pick another Azure engineer (not a React developer).

Search suggestion – Help me be able to search an Emoji

By Adam Cogan in Outlook November 21, 2022 0 Comment

I often use Emojis in email subjects to signify certain things a warning ⚠️ or a bug 🐛

In Outlook search, why can’t I search for an emoji?

Curious… I’d love to know the technical reason, as I would have expected this to work without any additional effort.

Let’s add some emoji love to search.

Figure: In Outlook the search bar does not accept an emoji

Outlook – Anyone using “Focus time” appointments? (from Viva Insights)

By Adam Cogan in Viva Insights October 19, 2022 0 Comment

Hey Viva Insights Team,

I liked the idea of Outlook giving me time to do work without interruption. All these little appointments appeared in my calendar and I was going to focus and get work done.

Clearly I was dreaming. Does anyone successfully use the auto created appointments “Focus time”?

Figure: I had heaps of these auto created appointments. People interrupted me anyway, so with a heavy heart, I deleted them

Suggestion #1

> Microsoft Viva Insights has scheduled your focus time in accordance with your focus plan and work week settings.
> To edit your settings, visit your settings page at Protect Time Settings.

In an Outlook appointment, when I decide to click this link, I expected to see a button “Delete” or “Unsubscribe”

Suggestion #2

When using this people don’t think of it as a “Plan”… I reckon they think of it as a recurring appointment.

So testing it out, I click “Get Started”…

Figure: Try it out by clicking “Get started”

I am just looking, I should be able to click “Cancel”… I did not know what “Leave Plan” was about.

Also popping up these questions should only happen after I have been using it for more than 24 hours.

Figure: This was weird. You don’t want to be asking users questions this early. It is annoying to the user and useless data for Microsoft

Help me have Recurring Appointments

By Adam Cogan in Microsoft Bookings October 18, 2022 0 Comment

Microsoft Bookings – www.microsoft.com/en-au/microsoft-365/business/scheduling-and-booking-app

This looks to be a nice scheduling & bookings app.

It might work for prospects booking themselves for initial meetings.

I was hoping it might be a bit more powerful. We looked at it for some customer scenarios and discovered it does not support recurring appointments – an instant showstopper!

I guess an alternative to look at now is the Dynamics 365 Resource Scheduling… Anyone use that?

More on Tech Community – Microsoft Bookings.

Tesla needs to fix this issue at superchargers asap! 😵‍💫

By Adam Cogan in Tesla September 19, 2022 0 Comment

Video: Tesla needs to fix this issue at superchargers asap! 😵‍💫 (from Tesla Flex)

Help my menus have a nice way to customize them with images

By Adam Cogan in Sharepoint Online (Office365) August 26, 2022 0 Comment

For our customers we get their SharePoint site pointing to Teams and vice versa… I believe it is the right thing to do but the right emoji would cause this to be more UI obvious ✨

In SharePoint there is an issue with menu customization that blocks good UX. E.g. I want to have links to both the SharePoint portals and the right Teams in the menu.

Figure: Plain menu without icon/emojis is not very welcoming

Figure: Emojis make it a bit nicer in some cases. In this case they are the wrong UI… I want to emphasize the fact that these are links to Teams (rather than SharePoint) being https://teams.microsoft.com/l/team/xxxxx

Ideally we should be able to use SharePoint and Teams official icons, i.e.:

Teams

SharePoint

But there doesn’t seem to be any supported way to do so!

I assume it is a bad idea to inject HTML via a custom SPFX solution or some nasty CSS… It is better to stay within the framework and have easy upgrade.

In summary I am saying that emojis do not do the job every time (BTW I do love emojis). This is one example where emojis are not as good as images.

SharePoint is important to us. It is the intranet of almost all SSW’s clients. I am suggesting that SharePoint should not be making the job of putting images in a menu, hard. It should be simple.

The goal should be to make it the same as other webparts. I’m thinking of the ‘Quick Links’ Web Part. Please allow us to add a custom image or an icon to all of our menu items.

✅ Figure: Good example – Add a custom image in the Quick Links web part is easy

Help me have consistent short URLs

By Adam Cogan in Sharepoint Online (Office365) August 10, 2022 0 Comment

I think URLs matter and I prefer neat ones.

I’m experiencing a weird bug on our Intranet and cannot figure out why this is happening.

Everytime I click on one of the menu items the URL shows slightly differently.

We have several portals (Team Sites) linked from our Hub Navigation:

Figure: Each item links to a different portal, i.e. **https://sswcom.sharepoint.com/sites/XXX**

Every single link is setup using the short URL form – i.e. not linking directly to the aspx page.

However, sometimes/often/randomly, when clicking one of the menu items, the URL is somehow rewritten to https://sswcom.sharepoint.com/sites/XXX/SitePages/Home.aspx

Figure: URL being randomly rewritten to the “full” form (i.e. full page’s path)

Moreover, clicking the Site’s “home” tile (i.e. Site Logo) will almost always toggle – yes toggle – between the two URLs…

I have noticed that, before it flicks to the “long” form, there is a weird querystring parameter being added for a split second, and then the rewrite happens: