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Aura: My SharePoint Hackathon Entry and the Best Excuse I Ever Had - Part 2

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Aura Part Two: How I Actually Built It Part One was about the why behind Aura, this one is about the how. Some of these details were originally supposed to make it into Part One, but last week was a bit of a blur and apparently I edited them straight into the void. So Part Two has the missing pieces, plus a few more. And before I get into the details, I want to say something that really matters to me: everything in Aura is buildable. By you. Right now. With what you already have. You need a plan, some creativity, and a willingness to push the tools a little further than you normally would. That was the whole point. Start with the experience, not the page Before I touched SharePoint, I spent time thinking through what I wanted the experience to do, what it should feel like, what problems it needed to solve, and how the pieces should fit together. That planning mattered more than any individual feature. It helped me stay clear on the point of the site from the beginning. This was n...
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Aura: My SharePoint Hackathon Entry and the Best Excuse I Ever Had - Part 1

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Honestly? The hackathon came at the right time. I spend a lot of my days doing the work that makes SharePoint function for organizations. Metadata strategy, information architecture, governance, the stuff that is not always flashy but makes everything else possible. It is work I love, but it lives mostly in the practical lane. Client needs, timelines, what is realistic, and so on. The hackathon gave me an opportunity to get out of that lane for a little while. So I took the things I do every day and asked a different question. Not "what does this client need" but "what could this actually become?" That question is where Aura came from. What I built Aura is an AI-ready SharePoint knowledge hub built around user intent rather than content categories. Instead of the usual "here is a library, good luck" approach that a lot SharePoint sites end up becoming, Aura guides users through four paths: Ask, Understand, Resolve, and Act. You land on the site knowi...
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Comfort Isn’t Strategy

Every time I suggest moving away from folders in SharePoint Online, someone laughs. And I understand why. Folders feel organized. They feel grown up. They feel like the responsible way to structure information. The digital version of labeled drawers and neat rows. If you grew up in file shares, folders were the system. They mirrored filing cabinets. They created hierarchy. They gave you something concrete to click into when you were not sure where to start. They feel mature. But comfort, even grown up comfort, is not strategy. A shared SharePoint library is not a filing cabinet. It is collaborative. It is indexed by search. It feeds Copilot. It supports knowledge experiences that depend on structure being interpretable, not just clickable. That difference matters more than we want to admit. Folders can work beautifully in your personal OneDrive. If you are the only one navigating that space and you understand your own logic, number things however you want. Build your maze. Save FINAL_v...
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Full circle

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  The Most Rewarding Part of My AI and SharePoint Journey Every career story has a quiet moment that reminds you why you started. This one is mine. After years of helping organizations modernize with SharePoint, AI, and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, I’ve learned that technology success stories are rarely just about platforms or data. The most meaningful outcomes are always human. For me, the most rewarding part of this journey is not a project or a certification. It is being able to help my son. He is a junior at Duquesne University , studying Data Science , on the same campus where I once studied Beowulf in Old English and took Shakespeare from one of the world’s foremost scholars on Milton and Shakespeare. My background was firmly rooted in the liberal arts. Back then, I had no idea that analyzing literature and writing essays would one day prepare me for a career in technology. I chose English because I didn’t want to pick math or science like my dad, simply because I was good ...
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Copilot vs. My 2 A.M. Brain

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Copilot vs. My 2 A.M. Brain I’ll be honest: I didn’t think much of Copilot at first. I was all-in on ChatGPT, and Copilot felt like a lightweight version of something I already used. And because this is my job, I couldn’t exactly slam it, but I wasn’t impressed at first. Over time, though, I’ve found small but meaningful ways Copilot has made a difference for me. This is one of them. As a Gen X’er, I remember when the internet was going to “take all our jobs.” It didn’t; it changed them. AI feels similar: bigger, faster, closer to the work we do every day. And for me, Copilot has shown up in one very personal way: helping me manage social anxiety. I’m not shy. But I do live with social anxiety. Which means my brain can take the smallest moment in any interaction and spin it into hours of second-guessing. And it’s not just in the moment. Anxiety is the kind of thing that gets you at 2 a.m., lying awake, replaying a comment you made in a meeting two days ago , convinced it sounded ...
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SharePoint: The Most Powerful Tool You’re Still Undervaluing

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Stop Underestimating SharePoint Online You’ve seen the infographics. You’ve read the blogs. Every other post in your feed talks about optimizing SharePoint for Copilot, implementing robust governance, and getting your data “AI-ready.” They’re all making really valuable points. But... None of it matters if your organization still underestimates SharePoint. Until you recognize and understand that SharePoint is foundational to how Microsoft 365 works, no amount of governance checklists, security policy overhauls, or AI excitement will get you across the finish line. Stop the SharePoint Hate You’ve heard (or maybe said) it all before: “I hate SharePoint.” “It’s confusing.” “Why can’t I just recreate the same folder structure we had on the file share?” “It’s dumb.” This mindset is where transformation efforts go to die.  💀 SharePoint powers more than you think : Microsoft Teams file sharing OneDrive’s document backend Viva Connections home sites Copilot’s conte...
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So You Want to Rename Your SharePoint Online Tenant? Read This First

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So You Want to Rename Your SharePoint Online Tenant? Read This First Let’s be honest, choosing a tenant name isn’t always a carefully considered decision. Maybe it was chosen in a rush during initial setup, or maybe it made perfect sense at the time but no longer reflects your organization after a rebrand or merger. Whatever the reason, the good news is that Microsoft allows you to rename your SharePoint Online tenant. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should jump in without a solid plan. I’ve performed several tenant renames since this feature became available, and where it fits as a solution, it’s a great alternative to migrating everything into a brand-new tenant just to change the name. I recently worked with a client to rename their tenant, and while the technical steps were fairly straightforward, the overall impact reached much further than many expect. I thought it was a good opportunity to share what I’ve learned after managing multiple renames over the years. At ...
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