Seeing no sunlight for 3 days has never been more enjoyable. I know that sounds strange but let me explain...

My colleague João Ferreira and I flew out to SharePoint Saturday Helsinki from our hometown of Porto, Portugal at 5am (it was dark) and by the time we landed it was after 7pm (it was dark). Then we got an early start (it was dark) and by the time we finished the conference it was - you guessed it - dark.  We left bright and early the next morning (yes, it was dark).

So, you see we really didn’t get to SEE much of Helsinki, but, what an amazing experience. Held at Microsoft FLUX, a community space, it is an idea incubator. The entire facility is set up for networking, innovation and testing new ideas. In this setting, roughly 150 people gathered this past Saturday to innovate about SharePoint. As a Gold Sponsor of this event, we were pleased to participate with two speaking sessions.

My session focused on the work we’re doing for the Nokia Project Management Excellence Center. Part of the Nokia Networks division in Finland, this center needed a unified communications channel to service hundreds of clients around the world. With our partner DevScope, we have fully automated the creation of each Office 365 client portal.  In 5 minutes, our provisioning engine sets up a consistent and uniformly structured portal site for each of Nokia’s clients with asset collections and permission levels set, allowing management to easily roll up performance indicators for all of their clients.

João led the discussion on the basis of the PnP provisioning engine, a project that is supported by the community in GitHub. He demonstrated the differences (and limitations) of using the PnP Provisioning Engine  instead of the default "Save Site as Template". Aligned nicely with my session, Joao concluded his presentation by giving a demo of the BindTuning Provisioning Engine and how it can be used by any end user to quickly set up a site based on a template, without writing a single line of code.

So, you see our quick trip to Helsinki was productive in spite of the cover of darkness. The Nokia project will be the subject of a more detailed use case on our blog soon. As for the Provisioning Engine we built? It will be available on our website next month! Be sure to sign up for our email notifications to stay up to date on everything BindTuning!

Thank you to the organizers of SharePoint Saturday Helsinki event and thanks to all the superb speakers and attendees we had the pleasure to meet in person. Kiitos!