Insights

Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Azure Analytics with Power BI

October 17, 2019

A recent Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study published by Forrester, claims that Azure Analytics technologies and Power BI achieve a 270% return on investment for customers […]

Get Started with Microsoft Azure Internet of Things (IoT)

September 27, 2019

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)? IoT is a network of physical objects – computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, vehicles, machines, home […]

PowerApps Component Framework for Canvas Apps

September 26, 2019

Microsoft just recently announced an important milestone for PowerApps and D365: an experimental release of the PowerApps component framework for canvas apps. With PowerApps component […]

Move and Modernize your Microsoft workloads with Azure

September 11, 2019

Microsoft applications and Azure have been built to work better together with flexibility, high compatibility and hybrid capabilities. With Microsoft Azure, you can improve […]

Do More with Microsoft Teams

September 6, 2019

59% of workers are unsatisfied with meetings, and 57% feel meetings are unproductive. That’s a lot of dissatisfied employees. If your team is feeling […]

Exposing the Top 4 Myths of Cloud Security

August 20, 2019

One in five organizations have lost customers as a result of a cyberattack. Nearly 30% have lost revenue, with the average cost of a […]

Why a Modern IT Infrastructure is the Foundation of Data-Driven Organizations

July 23, 2019

A solid IT platform is crucial for data-driven businesses. IT infrastructure, the foundation upon which datasets run, is key to the most basic and […]

Using SharePoint and Teams as a Modern Dashboarding Platform

July 22, 2019

SharePoint has a proven history of supplying a first-class platform for business intelligence dashboards. SharePoint pages, as well as lists, can now be integrated […]

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in our Society

July 17, 2019

Technology is advancing exponentially. With the all-encompassing applicability of AI, what does that mean for the next 20 years? While there is no way […]

Microsoft Announces AI Builder for Power Platform

June 19, 2019

Microsoft just announced exciting artificial intelligence (AI) investments in the Power Platform (Power BI, PowerApps, Flow) called AI Builder. AI Builder is a low code, […]

Introducing SharePoint Home Sites

June 18, 2019

By implementing an intelligent intranet, employees are given the tools they need to do their jobs well, empower teams and individuals, and offer rich […]

AI Adoption For Everyone

May 29, 2019

With AI technology being integrated into so many facets of our lives, here are some new and exciting breakthroughs recently announced by Microsoft: Simplified […]

5 Reasons to Partner with a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP)

Cloud services make many things easier, but it’s important to find the right solutions for your organization. Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners can […]

Calgary-based Technology Firm Convverge, Inc Announces Microsoft Silver Partnership

May 28, 2019

CALGARY, May 28, 2019 – Convverge, Inc. is excited to announce that they have been awarded a Microsoft Silver Partner competency in the Small […]

Introducing the Microsoft Power Platform

May 22, 2019

At Microsoft Build 2019, Microsoft’s annual developer conference, the company showcased new technologies for developers to create intelligent and productive solutions. Announcements included new […]

What’s New in Microsoft Teams

May 9, 2019

Microsoft Teams, the hub for team collaboration, continues to evolve in teamwork – helping your organization to achieve more. Here are the top 3 […]

Prevent Data Loss with ‘Files Restore’ for SharePoint & Microsoft Teams

May 1, 2019

Microsoft announced a new significant feature launch for Microsoft 365: Files Restore for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams! Files Restore for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams […]

Azure Files: What Is It, and Should I Use It?

April 30, 2019

Microsoft claims Azure Files as the only public cloud file storage that delivers a simple, secure, and fully managed file share in the cloud. […]

Private Channels in Microsoft Teams

April 16, 2019

Microsoft Teams just turned 2! Over the past two years, Teams has grown significantly in both new capabilities and customer usage as the hub […]

Microsoft Invested, So You Don’t Have To.

April 9, 2019

Microsoft invested over $1 billion into developing top-notch security for their cloud so you don’t have to. However, these savings do not come at […]

What SharePoint Hub Sites Offer Your Organization

April 3, 2019

As SharePoint enthusiasts, we’re excited to talk about SharePoint hub sites and what they are. So what do SharePoint hub sites actually offer and […]

Benefits of Microsoft Azure SQL Database

March 28, 2019

When you think about switching from running and housing your SQL Server on-premises to Azure, the first thing that comes to mind is probably […]

Interact with Power BI in Microsoft Teams

March 27, 2019

Did you know you can interact with Power BI in Microsoft Teams?  Business intelligence is the key component in the drive to be agile, competitive […]

Modern Experience in SharePoint

March 18, 2019

What is Modern SharePoint? Modern SharePoint is a whole new user experience. It’s more than a fresh look; it’s designed from the ground up […]

Move from Excel to Power BI

March 9, 2019

The beauty of Microsoft Power BI as a platform is that it makes analytics accessible for those who aren’t data scientists. With the latest […]

Streamline and Connect Business Processes with Dynamics 365

March 5, 2019

In a world of instant gratification, customers expect more from the businesses they work with. That’s why you need a CRM solution that’s more […]

Transforming Business Process with Microsoft 365

February 27, 2019

Have you been wondering what an investment in technology can do for your business? In this white paper published by Microsoft, you’ll discover what […]

Four Benefits of PowerApps

January 15, 2019

Businesses rely on forms to collect data from employees in the field or in the office. Following the retirement of InfoPath several years ago, […]

Christmas greetings from Convverge

December 20, 2018

As the holiday season is upon us, we find ourselves reflecting on the past year and those who have helped to shape our business. […]

10 processes you can automate using Microsoft Flow

November 12, 2018

If you’re thinking about using technology to reduce manual processes, you have many options to do so. For those with Microsoft 365 licenses, you […]

Microsoft Ignite: Convverge’s Top 5 Trends

October 3, 2018

Even if you weren’t in Orlando last week you’ve probably already heard, Microsoft’s Ignite conference took place. Microsoft has been innovating at lightspeed over […]

Export to PDF – Power BI’s leveling up

August 20, 2018

For anyone using Power BI and still looking to take, store, and share snapshots in real-time as PDFs, your life is about to get […]

Introduction to Process Automation

August 13, 2018

Creating the Foundation for Work Process Automation Let’s talk executive to executive. You need work process automation.  Have you heard the term before? Does […]

Microsoft Teams is now free!

July 12, 2018

If you’ve been wondering about the new collaboration tool giving Slack a run for its money called Teams and you work at an organization […]

Calgary-based technology firm REFINECO Inc. announces rebrand as Convverge

May 28, 2018

CALGARY, May 28, 2018 /CNW/ – Software development firm REFINECO Inc. is excited to announce its official rebrand as Convverge Inc, – a venture […]

Power BI Desktop Update – April 2018

April 18, 2018

The month of April brings with it some great Power BI news! For those of you who are using Power BI as your self […]

Power BI + SharePoint Online: Integration made better

February 13, 2018

As part of Power BI’s regular updates to their product, they have updated the Power BI Service to now have some well desired features, […]

Power BI – What’s the BIG deal?

January 31, 2018

By now, most people are aware of BIG data terms that are out there in industry. Most organizations are finally gaining traction in the […]

Mainstream support for SharePoint 2013 ends in 3 months!

January 25, 2018

For those who still have SharePoint environments running on SharePoint 2013, per Microsoft, mainstream support for SharePoint 2013 will end on April 10, 2018. […]

What is Office 365…..really?

July 10, 2017

If you ask people what Microsoft Office 365 is all about, they’ll likely say Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. But did you know that […]

Why is ERP Software Popular Again?

November 8, 2016

If you have spent any time online in the past two years, you are starting to see a solid trend emerging: the clear resurgence […]

ASC Listed as One of Top SharePoint Sites!

November 4, 2016

Alberta Securities Commission public website was listed as one of the top SharePoint sites in Canada by topsharepoint.com! We are proud to say that’s our baby! REFINECO was […]

Hiring of an Engagement Manager

June 24, 2016

REFINECO is actively recruiting for an engagement manager. Full details of the position are available here.

Node.js gaining ground at Microsoft

February 26, 2016

We have started to use Node.js alongside of a number of Microsoft stack technologies in the Application model within SharePoint and Dynamics. Talk about […]

Here is the new face of REFINECO

January 15, 2016

Well folks, it took us a while to get this to you, but we finally did it. We’ve been so busy with our customer […]

Site Refresh

December 1, 2015

It’s always a challenge to get the old corporate site refreshed. Our development team put their heads together to come up with a design […]

Bringing User-Friendly To A New Level

January 20, 2015

As published in New Technology Magazine (November 2014) Tailored solution allows companies to chart their way through mountains of disparate data. Calgary-based REFINECO, Inc. […]

International Programmers’ Day – A Day To Celebrate

January 7, 2015

Happy International Programmers’ Day! The internet has conflicting results about when International Programmers’ Day is – some say January 7th and others say the […]

RefineCo, Inc. Makes Debut on Alberta Venture’s 2015 Fast Growth 50 Rankings

January 6, 2015

Winners recognized for strong business growth and ambition. RefineCo, an Alberta-based technology services and solutions firm, is proud to be named one of Alberta’s […]

Some Interesting Things Coming for Workforce Software

November 28, 2014

Empowering Users vs Industrial Software Software designed to empower workers rather than forcing workers to use software (I’m looking at you, SAP) isn’t exactly […]

How to Build a Modern User Interface For Intranets and Sites

November 17, 2014

I’ve spent most of my career working for Ad agencies learning everything about customer service, design and ideas. In fact, I would say this […]

Mobile-friendly SharePoint Intranets? Save Your Money, for now.

November 8, 2014

Nearly every one of our customers asks us ‘Will this work on the tablet and my phone?’ Well guess, what, the answer is always […]

Finding a Great Screen Capture Tool

November 6, 2014

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and what better way to describe what you see than with a screen capture. In Quality […]

Handling Large Data with SharePoint 2010 Custom WCF Service

October 16, 2014

Calling your custom WCF web service successfully with a small, known and fixed amount of test data only to have it fail with large […]

A New Vector Toy for Designers

October 9, 2014

Adobe Illustrator has a formidable new opponent – meet Affinity Designer by Serif! Serif specializes in creating software as an alternative to high end […]

Paging with SharePoint Lists

October 2, 2014

Let’s say you have a SharePoint web part that displays data from a SharePoint list and you are running into performance issues, as you are […]

How to Hide the SharePoint Ribbon

September 25, 2014

When it comes to SharePoint there’s this menu called the ribbon. From my experience this menu is not really customizable and generally only used […]

RefineCo, Inc. Finalist for Calgary Chamber’s Breakout Business and Small Business of the Year Award

RefineCo, an Alberta-based technology services and solutions firm, has been listed as a finalist in the Breakout Business category of the Calgary Chamber’s Small […]

RefineCo, Inc. Wins Silver for Best Enterprise Solution at the 2014 CDN’s Channel Elite Awards

September 18, 2014

RefineCo, an Alberta-based technology firm, was honoured to win silver at the 2014 CDN’s Channel Elite Awards for the Best Enterprise Solution.  The awards […]

6.5 Reasons Why You Should Use Google Analytics

September 11, 2014

Google Analytics launched in 2005 and it has forever changed the way that people think about analytics. Being free of charge, there is literally […]

How to Overcome Slow SharePoint End User Adoption | Part 5: One Size Fits All Training Program

September 10, 2014

Having conducted SharePoint training for various organizations ranging from startups to large corporations, I have picked up a lot of tips and tricks in […]

How to Overcome Slow SharePoint End User Adoption | Part 4: Mismanagement of the Training Effort

September 9, 2014

In this five blog series, I will describe the top five obstacles that I have encountered on the SharePoint battlefield and share my recommendations […]

How to Overcome Slow SharePoint End User Adoption | Part 3: Lack of Governance

September 8, 2014

In this five blog series, I will describe the top five obstacles that I have encountered on the SharePoint battlefield and share my recommendations […]

How to Overcome Slow SharePoint End User Adoption | Part 2: Lack of Communication

September 7, 2014

In this five blog series, I will describe the top five obstacles that I have encountered on the SharePoint battlefield and share my recommendations […]

How to Overcome Slow SharePoint End User Adoption | Part 1: Preconceived Notions of SharePoint

September 6, 2014

About 80 percent of fortune 500 companies currently use SharePoint for web-based business development and document management. Over the years SharePoint has evolved into […]

The Business of Analysis

September 5, 2014

Look around. There you go, as easy as that was, you’ve just done some analysis. Now try it again but this time try to […]

Fun with :before and :after pseudo elements

September 4, 2014

For a recent client project I had to create an HTML/CSS template that would display a branched account linking structure. Instead of using background […]

What’s In Your Date?

August 28, 2014

So you’re developing a new enterprise application and everything is working. You have the clients talking to front end servers; front end servers routing […]

How to Enable WCF Trace for SharePoint

July 24, 2014

Troubleshooting when things go wrong with your WCF application in a SharePoint environment can be a nasty task. SharePoint tends to hide the actual […]

Overriding the SharePoint Modal Dialog Close Button

July 16, 2014

The close button in a SharePoint modal dialog is built into SP.UI.ModalDialog and simply closes the dialog. However, we would like to run some backend code […]

SharePoint 2010 Document Property Promotion

July 3, 2014

Creating custom solutions such as a custom upload to a document library in SharePoint exposes some features that are very useful out of box, […]

Marketing & Innovation: Key to Growth

We’ve known since the turn of the last century that marketing works. A good marketing approach with a solid campaign is truly the key […]

Why and How to Start a Company Blog

June 26, 2014

Starting a company blog is certainly easier said than done, but the fact that you are reading this now shows that we are succeeding! […]

Setting Reputable Expectations and 5 Mistakes to Avoid

June 24, 2014

If you’ve been involved in project management, then you’ve likely come across a scenario where expectations were missed or not met. Expectations have many […]

5 Reasons to Attend a Conference This Year

June 5, 2014

After leaving the comfort of university and embarking on your career journey there aren’t a lot of formal learning opportunities. You no longer have […]

The Paperless Era is Here

May 29, 2014

Whether you like it or not, the world is slowly inching towards a paper-free workplace. I’ve been involved in a few projects recently where […]

Custom jQuery Confirm Dialog in ASP.NET

May 21, 2014

For one of our new SharePoint modal dialog forms, a button needs to prompt the user whether or not they want to check in […]

ASP.NET No Postback After File Download in SharePoint

May 15, 2014

We have an ASP Button control in SharePoint that allows the user to download a file. When the button is clicked, the file is […]

RefineCo, Inc. Expands Leadership Team and Aligns Organization to Support Growth

May 8, 2014

RefineCo is proud to announce that Shaun Stepanowich has been promoted from Chief Technical Architect to Director, Technology. May 2014 marks Shaun’s two year […]

How To Debug a FAST Search Pipeline Extension

April 28, 2014

Developing a FAST Search Pipeline extension for SharePoint FAST Search is a good way to get FAST to crawl custom properties for files that […]

Decoding HTML with jQuery

In many of our SharePoint modal dialogs, the back-end needs to send some JSON to the front-end when the dialog is closed.  However, this […]

RefineCo, Inc. Listed in the 2014 Branham300’s Next 50 Canadian Information and Communication Technology Companies

April 22, 2014

Results recognize RefineCo as one of Canada’s top technology companies. RefineCo, an Alberta-based technology firm, is proud to announce their debut on the Branham300. […]

The Importance of Quality Assurance

April 11, 2014

When a stunning software, system or application is released to the public, people only show their admiration to the creators and developers. Admittedly, without […]

Git 101

April 2, 2014

Here is a quick how-to on how to create a local Git repository and push to a remote repository. For those that don’t know, […]

IE8 Memory Leaks

March 27, 2014

One of our clients wanted us to create a media gallery webpart for them. The webpart allows you to page through a folder structure/gallery […]

A Day in the Life of a Front End Developer

March 14, 2014

Here’s a peek at an average day for a front end developer at RefineCo: 8:30am – Walk into the office and brew up a […]

Video.js not falling back to Flash with MP4 videos in Firefox

March 11, 2014

Having videos in your intranet/portal is a great way to interact and deliver content to your users. For our video player webpart, we use […]

FAST Search in SharePoint

February 21, 2014

Document sharing is a key benefit of SharePoint. But what good is this feature if you can’t find the document you are looking for? […]

How to Keep Employees Engaged in the Company Intranet

February 13, 2014

As a company, your intranet can be a powerful corporate tool or a stagnant place that employees visit when they must.  If properly structured, […]

ASP.NET Output Caching in SharePoint

February 6, 2014

So you’re developing your web parts and web sites and everything is working perfectly; a little slow, but, otherwise fine.  In comes the idea […]

How To Determine if Microsoft SharePoint Online Is For Me?

February 2, 2014

We hear the story time and time again: business likes SharePoint; company does not have adequate IT infrastructure to host it themselves; business looks […]

Customizing SharePoint OOB Forms

January 29, 2014

With my short time working with SharePoint, I have noticed that when you try to do any item creation of file uploading you always […]

Benefits of SharePoint 2013 for Business to Business (B2B) Document Sharing

January 17, 2014

Many RefineCo customers in the Calgary oil and gas industry share documents with each other or with their vendors. It’s how business gets done. […]

How ‘Metro’ is Microsoft?

November 1, 2013

I think everyone agree that Microsoft had a lot of fail recently in the consumer space. They continue to release peripherals – that very […]

SharePoint 2016 – What the future holds

October 14, 2013

First, I want to say that we’ve verified with a Microsoft resource that some of these details are indeed on their road map, however, […]

Why Skeuomorphism is Dead

October 13, 2013

So with SharePoint 2013 and Windows 8 we’ve seen a new “flat” design trend, right? Heck, even iOS7 “transformed” into a “funky new cybernetic” […]

SharePoint: jQuery 2 is not for you!

October 3, 2013

So the jQuery team released v2 a few months back and hopefully everyone had a chance to settle in. We have had much time […]

Alberta Securities Commission launches new public website

September 16, 2013

Congratulations to the Alberta Securities Commission with the launch of their refreshed public website. We’re proud to have played a part in launching it […]

We’ve moved

September 11, 2013

Due to our recent growth, we’ve moved into a larger office space. You’ll now find us hard at work at 420-602 11 Avenue SW.

Exciting New Initiatives

September 3, 2013

SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 gives us new opportunities  to explore different approaches when solving line-of-business problems: not only are we now storing business […]