There was a time when SharePoint lived in your server room.
Back then, you provisioned farms. You managed patches. You deployed custom solutions directly to the server. If something broke, you knew exactly which machine to log into. It was powerful, flexible, and occasionally nerve-wracking.
Many of us built our careers in that era.
So, when Microsoft began shifting SharePoint to the cloud, it did not feel like progress at first. The customization model changed overnight. Full trust solutions disappeared. Guardrails tightened. For developers like us, we had to rethink how we built from the ground up.
It felt like losing control.
In reality, it was the beginning of something more sustainable.
The move to SharePoint Online, the introduction of the SharePoint Framework, and the steady expansion of Microsoft Graph forced a new discipline. Extensions became API-driven. Solutions ran inside the tenant. Security was inherited from the platform instead of bolted on afterward.
What once felt limiting turned out to be liberating.
Because once the foundation stabilized, innovation accelerated.
Yet, over the past decade, we have seen organizations across multiple sectors wrestling with the same kinds of friction inside SharePoint and Microsoft 365. Not because the platform is weak. But because no platform, no matter how mature, solves every operational gap out of the box.
That is where thoughtful extensibility comes in.
And that is exactly how two of our most widely adopted SharePoint apps, Calendar Overlay and Staff Directory, came to life.
SharePoint Calendar Overlay: Solving Fragmented Event Data Across Microsoft 365
Time and again, we saw the same challenge surface. Businesses across all sectors struggling with fragmented event data.
Critical dates were scattered. Outlook calendars lived in one place. Teams channel events in another. Planner plans somewhere else. SharePoint lists tracked departmental activities. Third-party platforms introduced iCal feeds into the mix.
Everyone assumed there must be a way to bring it together.
There is not.
Microsoft 365 does not natively provide a unified calendar view that overlays all of those sources inside SharePoint or Teams. So, in-house teams improvised. Events were duplicated. Calendars drifted out of sync. Communications departments rebuilt consolidated views manually. Leadership never quite saw the complete picture.
We encountered this pattern so often that we decided to solve it and our SharePoint Calendar Overlay app was born.
How Do You Overlay Multiple Calendars in SharePoint?
The SharePoint Calendar Overlay app aggregates events across Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, Planner, and external iCal feeds into one centralized, searchable experience. Users can toggle sources on and off, filter by calendar, switch between views, and create new events directly from the interface.
It works inside SharePoint and Teams. It runs entirely within Microsoft 365.
Today, with integrations into Asana, BambooHR, Basecamp, Canvas, Monday.com, Smartsheet, Trello, and Zoho, it has become one of the most popular SharePoint apps in Microsoft MarketPlace.
What customers consistently tell us they value is clarity.
Instead of asking which calendar is correct, they have a single source of truth. Instead of copying events between systems, they manage visibility once.
The feedback we’ve received has been resoundingly positive. With customers telling us…
– “This does everything we wished for and then some.”
– “Flexible, easy to use. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while.”
– “I can now aggregate different calendars from different sources and make room and asset scheduling across the enterprise an easy task.”
When we recently demoed Calendar Overlay to Microsoft’s Vesa Juvonen in his Partner Showcase series, he said he thought it was, “really cool… and looks really clean.”
He then added, with a smile:
“We should have something like this in the product.”
That reaction reflects what customers already experience.
When event data is unified, visibility improves. When visibility improves, coordination improves. And when coordination improves, organizations move faster without adding complexity.
“Cloudwell’s Calendar Overlay has transformed our team’s approach to scheduling and collaboration, resulting in increased efficiency, productivity, and overall satisfaction. We highly recommend this app to any organization seeking to streamline their calendar management and enhance teamwork.” Source: MarketPlace Review
That is the real value.
SharePoint Staff Directory: Making Entra ID Data Work for Your Organization
Similarly, we saw the same kind of pattern playing out with people data.
Organizations invest heavily in identity management. Entra ID contains rich information about employees, departments, managers, and roles. Yet when teams try to find the right person in SharePoint quickly, the experience often falls short.
Filtering by department or location can feel limited. Searching by responsibility or expertise is inconsistent. Highlighting new hires or anniversaries requires manual workarounds.
The data exists. The usability gap remains.
That recurring frustration led us to build Cloudwell’s SharePoint Staff Directory app.
A SharePoint People Directory Solution
The app pulls directly from Entra ID and makes that data actionable. It enables configurable filtering across job titles, managers, departments, locations, and custom attributes. It supports intuitive search. It provides flexible layouts that feel native to modern SharePoint. Celebration widgets automatically surface new hires and milestones without additional administrative effort.
During the recent Partner showcase, Vesa commented, “I love how polished the experiences are,” highlighting the attention to detail in the user interface. He also called out the depth behind the scenes, saying, “Awesome work on the configuration options.”
That feedback speaks to something important.
A directory only delivers value if people actually use it. If it feels rigid or clunky, adoption stalls. If it feels intuitive and flexible, it becomes part of daily workflow.
“Cloudwell’s Staff Directory app has transformed our SharePoint intranet into a hub of employee information and collaboration. I love the search functionality because it is lightning-fast, and the interface is incredibly user-friendly. We’ve seen a significant increase in employee engagement since implementing this app, and it’s become an indispensable tool for our entire organization.” Source: MarketPlace Review
The real impact is not in adding more data. It is in unlocking the value of what you already have.
Built on Microsoft 365. Aligned with Security from the Start.
For many of the organizations we work with, especially in regulated sectors, security is paramount.
– Where does the app run?
– Does data leave the tenant?
– Are we introducing new risk?
Both the SharePoint Calendar Overlay and SharePoint Staff Directory apps are built using the SharePoint Framework and operate entirely inside our customer’s Microsoft 365 tenant. They use delegated Microsoft Graph permissions and do not require external servers or third-party data routing.
This alignment with Microsoft’s architecture is intentional.
Innovation should sit inside your existing governance, compliance, and identity model. Not alongside it.
As SharePoint has matured, so has the extensibility model. That evolution allows us to build purpose-driven solutions without compromising security.
The Future: Infusing SharePoint Apps with Copilot Intelligence
The next chapter of SharePoint is not just about collaboration. It is about intelligence.
Microsoft’s continued investment in Copilot and AI extensibility opens the door to more contextual, natural interactions inside everyday tools.
We are actively exploring how to infuse Copilot capabilities into both the SharePoint Calendar Overlay and SharePoint Staff Directory apps. That could mean natural language calendar queries, intelligent event summaries, expertise discovery based on context, or AI-driven insights surfaced directly within the interface.
The goal is not to add AI for novelty. It is to make the data already living in your tenant more discoverable and actionable.
The foundation built over the past 25 years makes that possible.
Watch the Full SharePoint Partner Showcase and Product Demos
If you would like to see both Cloudwell’s Calendar Overlay and Staff Directory apps in action, including live demos, you can watch the full SharePoint Partner Showcase below.
You can also read Vesa Juvonen’s write up of our solutions.
If fragmented event data or limited people discovery is slowing your organization down, those challenges are solvable within the environment you already trust. Take a 15-day free trial of our SharePoint Calendar Overlay and Staff Directory apps. Deploy it in your tenant, connect your data sources, and evaluate the experience yourself.
Want to talk through your challenges? Reach out to talk…