Microsoft 365

Enabling BitLocker Encryption with Microsoft Intune 

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Enabling Bitlocker

In today’s data-driven world, safeguarding sensitive information is paramount, especially with the increase in remote work following the pandemic and the rise in cyber threats. BitLocker, a robust encryption tool, plays a pivotal role in protecting your data from unauthorized access. In this blog post, we’ll explore the significance of enabling BitLocker, utilizing Microsoft Intune for deployment, and important information before implementation.  Why BitLocker Matters BitLocker is a built-in encryption feature in Microsoft Windows, designed to strengthen data security by encrypting disk volumes on devices like laptops and desktops. This encryption serves as a safeguard, ensuring that even in cases of device loss or theft, the data remains protected and … Read more

Microsoft Loop: Seamless Co-Working in One Place

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Microsoft Loop

Years ago, Microsoft introduced digital collaboration with MS Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook, and most significantly, MS Teams. Microsoft continues to push the boundaries with its innovations that reshape the way we work and communicate. Recently, Microsoft rolled out The Loop – a new application that will provide further organizational connectivity. Microsoft Loop (or Loop) was specifically designed to redefine how an organization’s teams collaborate.  Imagine your teams, tasks, and content all being centralized in one place – that is Microsoft Loop! It is made up of workspaces, pages, and components that make it a hub for seamless content creation and collaboration.  To highlight some of the exciting features of … Read more

Benefits of Power BI: Unlocking Your Data’s Potential 

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Your organization’s data can be a valuable tool for making informed business decisions. Quality data can assist in understanding customer needs, increase employee satisfaction, provide insights as to the effectiveness of certain processes, and more. Harnessing the power of your data is crucial, yet often organizations engage in ineffective data collection practices. The benefits of Power BI are numerous and can easily provide data insights that may currently be unrealized.   What is Power BI?  Power BI is a Microsoft solution that turns your organization’s data into visually engaging and interactive reports. Power BI also lets you connect multiple data sources and automates processes, eliminating manual work.   Benefits of Power BI  … Read more

Migrating to Azure Data Factory Leads to Improved Security and Improved ROI

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A major Canadian oil & gas company reached out to Imaginet to rewrite some of the old infrastructure they currently had in place and pursue an Azure Data Factory migration. Imaginet had built their data warehouse 10 years ago, but changes in technology prompted the client to make changes to their existing data loading processes. We had previously used SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to build their data factory, however, migrating to Azure Data Factory had become the better option for their business needs, as they wanted to move from on-premises servers to cloud services in Microsoft Azure.  Our client had started to experience issues with their current on-premises SQL … Read more

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