(this post was written using a SharePoint 2010 environment)
So here’s the scenario, we have a document library that contains agendas, minutes, reports and other files related to meetings. The document library has a custom column called ‘Meeting Date’, a date column that is mandatory for all files that are uploaded.
We are required to create a view that is grouped by meeting date, sorted chronologically. Let’s give it a go!
Step one – prerequisites
My setup to achieve this was as follows:
A document library
An additional date column ‘Meeting Date’
Step two – configure the library
Navigate to the document library
Create a new calculated column called ‘Month of Meeting’
NOTE This formula basically states that if Meeting Date is blank, show Empty, if the meeting date has a value format it as MONTH (0 in front of the month number) / YEAR (yyyy).
Make sure the data type returned is ‘single line of text’
Press OK
Test your changes!
Now we have created a calculated column, we can test our changes by adding the column to a view and checking the Month of Meeting column has values.
Step two – create the view
Now we have verified our formula is working, we can start building out our view based on the requirements.
Navigate to the document library
Under Library Tools > Library > Create View
Scroll down to Group By, then group by Month of Meeting in ascending order
Press OK
NOTE In the Group By section, you can set whether the groups are open or closed by default by choosing either collapsed (closed), or expanded (open).
You can also change the default number of groups to display from 30, but beware of slower page loading if you set it too high.
Now our view is configured we can take a look at it in all its chronological glory!
Even though this is November’s 365 update, it’s most definitely a Christmas edition so happy holiday’s everyone 🙂 I’ve included the round-up of the announcements from Microsoft Ignite in this month’s update that are either generally available or scheduled for release this year.
This is a take on my a previous post on creating an a – z page in classic SharePoint, but this time using modern SharePoint pages. If you want to take a look at the classic SharePoint example, please click on the link below.
So this is a real world example of something I was asked to do recently. There was an existing a – z page which I was tasked with updating, so I’ve written about how I did it in both classic and modern SharePoint…
With so much news coming out of this years’ Ignite for my own sanity as much as anything else I thought it would be useful to catalog as many of the announcements coming out of each day as I can, and provide useful links to the relevant Microsoft articles for further reading.
Slightly shorter than usual 🙂 but with Microsoft Ignite imminently upon us, I wanted to break down all of October’s release info prior to the big announcements coming out of Ignite.
(this post applies to SharePoint 2010, 2013, 2016 classic sites)
So in this scenario, a user was unable to get new SharePoint 2010 sites to show in the top navigation, even though some where hidden. If this happens to you try the following:
Navigate to Site Actions > Site Settings
Under Look and Feel > Navigation
In Global Navigation > update the maximum number of dynamic items
Update the maximum number of dynamic items to show all your sites
That’s it! now all your sites that haven’t been hidden will be displayed in the global navigation.
The diagnostic tool is a browser extension for Chrome and Microsoft Edge that helps identify modern/ classic Site Pages in SharePoint Online that may not be delivering optimal performance.
By comparing characteristics of a site page to known best practices, the tool provides remediation guidance, leading to suggested fixes across three analysis results: Attention required, Improvement opportunities and No action required.
Adding the Page Diagnostics browser extension, to seeing it work in action
Lots of new and updated web parts are coming to SharePoint Online, here’s a look at them:
Button & Call To Action – engage your page viewer by providing focused text on and above a button
World Clock & Weather – add individual cities or a group of locations to highlight local times and weather
Divider – put a line in between sections and web parts, choosing the width and thickness
Highlighted Content adds Custom Query – use custom CAML or KQL queries to display precise sets of content, with the ability to combine filters using AND, OR, and NOT operators
The file card now shows relevant file activities, like if someone you work with edits, comments, or @mentions you, that activity is displayed with a link to take action.
Manage sharing/ access request settings from site permissions panel
Sharing and access requests for a SharePoint site have moved. Now located in the “Change sharing settings” link, site owners can use the new panel to allow only owners to share files, folders, and the site – restricting everyone else from sharing.
Admins will now be able to customize the expiration length on a per-site basis for Anyone or anonymous sharing links. Admins can now override the tenant policy and set a more or less restrictive expiration policy for specific sites.
Note: This functionality will only be available via the SharePoint Online Management Shell.
Site owners can now get a CSV file report to see all the items in their site that have been shared with any user, both inside and outside the organization. Useful for providing external sharing reports, the export can be filtered to only show content from the “Shared with External Users” option to view every unique user, permission, link, and item that has been shared externally.
From the site usage page, you can see recently shared items, with an option to run a report
You can now add more storage to your existing Office 365 subscription (Personal or Home) in 200 GB increments, starting at $1.99 per month.
Note: the 200GB incremental additional storage plans are only available for Office 365 subscribers. The Basic plan is free and offers 5GB, and non-subscription paid is $1.99USD/mo. and offers 100GB.
Differential sync brings the ability to sync only the parts of large files that have changed, not the entire file. The ability to leverage differential sync to all file types, stored in OneDrive and SharePoint is being rolled out this month.
Note: differential sync is already available for Office file types.
The OneDrive mobile app already has built-in scanning capabilities for scanning documents, whiteboards, business cards to name a few, as well as converting them into an easy-to-read PDF format. Scans taken for iOS 11.1.5 or later are now available for optical character recognition.
Newly released filters added in Chat and Teams help you filter more than just your activity. In chat, type a person’s name to filter for every group, meeting, or one-on-one chat you have with them.
Now you can mute a conversation in a channel. Alternatively, when you want to follow a conversation in a channel you’ve hidden from your list, all you need to do is turn on notifications.
You can now directly transfer a call to Cloud Voicemail. You can also now configure call answer rules, choose the greeting language, customize the TTS for the standard greeting and the ‘out of office’ greeting, and choose when you want your ‘out of office’ greeting to be played.
Now when you receive a call, Teams will display the PSTN Caller’s name based on Azure Active Directory data and/or the Telco provided display name. Available now on the desktop, and coming soon to Teams mobile.
Calling in Chrome
If You use Teams on the web, you can now add Google Chrome to your list of browsers that support making calls from your web browser.
Several updates are coming to Microsoft Government Community Cloud (GCC) this month, such as:
Call Handling Enhancements, Teams Calling improvements for VOIP users, Group Call Pickup (GCP), phone number blocking, Multiparty Calling without Conference License, Call Park (CP), and Shared Line Appearance (SLA).
The “Meet Now” feature on desktop allows you to skip the invitation and instead go straight to in a new meeting. All you need to do is go to Calendar on the left side of Teams, then select Meet now in the top right corner and add the people to the meeting.
Pin a meeting participant
You can now choose which meeting attendees to “pin” to create your own personal view. Right-click on a meeting participant and select “pin” (or unpin) to create your own custom layout of meeting participants. Note that this view is your own and does not impact other meeting participants.
Pin a meeting participant in Teams
Missed meeting-add notifications
Now you will see a notification in the Teams activity feed to notify you that someone tried to add you to a meeting, and if the meeting is still going on you can join directly from there.
Light weight meeting capabilities for Internet Explorer, Firefox & Safari
With the new light-weight meeting join capabilities, users can jump straight into a Teams Meeting in Internet Explorer 11, Safari, and Firefox browsers. Meeting audio is delivered via Audio Conferencing, so meeting organizers will need the respective license.
Microsoft unveiled a new version of To Do this month with a new look and new features. You can change the experience and background (includes dark mode) to suit your needs. To Do can now integrate with other Microsoft 365 apps to create a central view of your tasks.
Now you can easily create new flows in Visio and export them as a fully functioning workflow to Microsoft Flow. Built-in Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) stencils have sharing and commenting capabilities, simplifying development and collaboration.
You can now create and use a template to save time when adding multiple users. Templates are particularly useful if you have users who share many properties, like those who work in the same role and the same location.
My organisation has started to use Microsoft Teams, albeit not globally but in small pockets there are groups of users with access to the product and are using it in anger interally.
Getting setup correctly and granting external, or guest access can be not such a simple request in my experience, so I thought it useful to document what I have observed, and some of the resolution steps applied to get Teams set up and working correctly for internal users, and how to make sure external access is enabled for guests.
To enable Teams for individual users, they will need need to be assigned a Teams product license from the O365 admin center. Depending on your own policy for rolling out Teams, you can either do this at the tenant level or at the individual user level (for example, we turned off the Teams product at the tenant level, but assigned licenses at a user level).
Turn on Teams at the tenant level
Navigate to the O365 admin center, click on Services & add-ins
Search for Teams > under Settings by user/license type select the product license used in your tenant (for example E3)
Make sure the ‘turn teams on or off for all users of this type’ is set to On
Turning Teams on at the product license/tenant level
Turn on Teams for individual users
Navigate to the O365 admin center, click on Users> Active Users
Find the user you wish to turn Teams on for
Under Product licenses > press edit
Find the relevant product license (for example Office 365 E3) > press the drop down icon
Find Microsoft Teams from the list of options, and make sure it is switched on
Turning Teams on at the user level
I believe that by default when an enterprise product license is switched on that by default all the apps and services will be set to on. However, if your organisation is within a managed service agreement, you could well be in a situation where some of these apps are switched off as part of the product license.
2. How to enable guest access
OK so before I begin detailing the steps I followed, there is a pretty great guest access checklist that Microsoft has provided that covers all the steps plus explanation in order to enable guest access in Teams. You can take a look at that below:
Much of what I detail below were already turned on for me, so this just acts as a series of checks – much like the Microsoft guide, to run through to make sure guest access is set up correctly.
Select Azure Active Directory > Users > User settings
Under External users, select Manage external collaboration settings
These are the settings I used for external collaboration:
Guest user permissions are limited: Yes
Admins and users in the guest inviter role can invite: Yes
Members can invite: Yes
Guests can invite: Yes
Enable email one-time passcode for guests: No
Collaboration restrictions: allow invitations to be sent to any domain (most inclusive)
Check Office 365 Groups
In the O365 admin center, go to Settings > Services & Add-ins > Office 365 Groups
Make sure Let group members outside the organization access group content is set to On
Make sure Let group owners add people outside the organization to groups is set to On
Make sure Let group members outside the organization access group content is set to On
Check Teams guest access settings
In the Teams admin center, select Org-Wide settings > Guest access
Set the Allow guest access in Microsoft Teams switch to On
Press Save
Check O365 sharing settings
In the O365 admin center, go to Settings > Security & privacy
Under Sharing > select Edit
Make sure Let users add new guests to this organization is set to On
Press Save
Check SharePoint sharing settings
Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
In the O365 admin center, select SharePoint
In the SharePoint admin center, select Sharing
Under Sharing outside your organization, select Allow sharing with the external users that already exist in your organizations directory
NOTE: Basically, any of these options will work, outside of don’t allow sharing outside your organization.
3. Configuring user initiated Teams licenses
Something else you might experience as part of the rollout of Teams, is the prevalence of user initiated Microsoft Teams (Commercial Cloud) licenses. These are auto-assigned licenses that users recieve that do not currently have a Teams license.
If you wish to turn off this ability, you can by doing the following:
In the O365 admin center, go to Settings > Services & add-ins > User owned Apps and Services
Make sure that Let users install trial apps and services is set to Off
4. Troubleshooting tips for the Teams desktop application
Since rolling out Teams, along with the desktop app I have noted a few common issues and some simple resolution steps:
Tip #1: the Office version matters
Some users struggle to open files in Teams, and get issues that the file is locked or has to be saved locally and re-uploaded.
The build version of Office has an effect on the behaviour between the Office apps and Teams. For example, I noted that someone who had Office Version 1611 (Build 7571.2109) would be unable to open files in Teams, and were unable to open the file in edit mode. Where as myself running Office Version 1802 (Build 9029.2253) had no issues. When the user updated their Office version to 1802 or later, the issues were resolved.
Tip #2: turn it off and on again
Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one, and in these cases many times simply removing the Teams product license for the user > saving > then re-applying the license works wonders.
Along the same vein for this, having concurrent Teams licenses from your enterprise and commerical cloud user initiated licenses has also been promlematic for me, hence why we made the decision to turn off the commercial cloud licenses.
Tip #3: clear the cache
Tip #3 and tip #4 pretty much go hand in hand, but clearing the cache when trying to get Teams working is never a bad idea in my opinion.
Close the Teams app, and make sure the process has stopped in Task Manager
Go to Start > Run > and enter C:\Users\[YOUR_USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams
From here, delete all the files from the following folders:
\Application Cache\Cache\
\blob_storage\
\Cache\
\databases\
\GPUCache\
\Local Storage\
\tmp\
Then clear these files out from C:\Users\[YOUR_USERNAME]\AppData\Local\:
\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cookies
\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Data
Internet Explorer Temporary Internet Files
Internet Explorer Cookies
NOTE: Mark Vale also includes a PowerShell script on his post about this that will be much quicker way to do it. You can check that out here.
Tip #4 run credential manager
This final tip helps if you see authentication errors when users try to login to the desktop app.
Press Start, type Run
Enter rundll32.exe keymgr.dll,KRShowKeyMgr
In stored usernames and passwords, find the msteams_adalsso credentials and press remove on each one
Finally, you can make your root site a modern communication site or a modern team site! Using the new PowerShell cmdlet: Invoke-SPOSiteSwap, switches the location of a source site with another target site.
Note: the source or target sites cannot be “associated” with an Office 365 group or connected to a hub site.
Site owners can now associate their sites to a hub they have permissions to join. Previously this ability required site collection level admin privileges.
The activity highlights shows you if someone you work with edits, comments, or @mentions you on files you’re working on. This is displayed in the File Hover Card, with a link to the relevant activity.
Now you can find relevant content at the top of the Shared with me view in OneDrive. Files which are recommended based on your working relationships will surface to help you find trending information faster and discover new content.
You can already comment on Office docs in Office on the web, but now you can comment on other file types in OneDrive on the web such as PNGs, JPGs, or PDFs. You can also comment while using the viewer in OneDrive.
OneDrive will be natively integrated into the Samsung Gallery app, providing automatic syncing of your photos and videos and enabling new protection and cross-device experiences. The Galaxy Note10 will be the first to get the OneDrive integration, with more Samsung devices to follow.
When you schedule “focus time” through MyAnalytics, Teams will automatically help you stay focused by changing your presence to “focusing” and silencing all notifications during the focus period (based on your priority access settings).
The Microsoft Teams Room app has been updated to include a “content camera” feature. This detects the whiteboard in the room, crops and frames it, and shares the content with remote participants.
Meetings First is a configuration mode that allows organizations to continue to use Skype for Business Server for their chat and enterprise voice needs, but move their meetings workload to the cloud.
Any version of Skype for Business Server is supported, though more recent clients will have a better coexistence experience. In addition, organizations need to be licensed for Teams, including Audio Conferencing if PSTN dial-in/dial-out functionality is required.
SoftBank has released their UniTalk calling plans to Office 365 customers in Japan. The Softbank Calling Plans enables SoftBank to sell and support PSTN calling services specifically for the Japanese market.
Audio Conferencing via Direct Routing for GCC High and GCC DoD
o Conferencing via Direct
Routing for GCC High and GCC DoD
This feature enables participants to join your organization’s meetings using a standard phone number. Configuring this feature requires your GCC High or GCC DoD organization to use its own numbers for dial-in access and all meeting dial-outs to phones are via Direct Routing.
Currently in developer preview, Personal apps can extend and customize Microsoft Teams for your organization. It provides a capability for people in your organization to use 3rd party apps within Teams.
Personal apps in developer preview has been rolled out, with a a broader target rollout in the last quarter of 2019.
The
enhanced Assignments tab now shows a clear view of what’s coming up next, when
creating a class assignment, educators can add resources from your Staff or PLC
team. Simply select Add resources on your assignment and choose it from the
file picker. You no longer need to move your content between teams.
In August the PowerApps team added videos to the release notes show casing upcoming innovations as part of the wave 2 releases. You can see the video below:
PowerApps Portals now uses the selective entity caching approach to improve reliability and performance of your portal. With this update, you can now see changes reflected on the portal immediately.
PowerApps component framework can now see changes in the test harness as they are made and push components directly into an org using the CLI.
The push capability will make you more efficient because it bypasses the custom component versioning requirements and does not require you to build your solution in order to import into your development environment.
The watch capability removes the need to reload your test harness after every change is made.
The SetFocus function gets data entered faster by having the app position the cursor in the input field where we should begin. When you go to validate, the app will take you directly to the offending entry, even if it scrolled off screen.
You can now simplify large formulas by dividing them into named sub-formulas, eliminate redundant sub-formulas, and easily work with functions that return records.
Inline navigate to all of our modern model-driven designers
To reduce the amount of clutter within your browser while building apps, Microsoft have introduced an option to open the modern view and form designers inline. To get back, you can simply press the back button in the designer.
Data source experience & Common Data Service views
New data source experience and Common Data Service views that allow adding data sources into the app, or creating new connections without inserting a control have been updated.
Also updated is enabling a Common Data Service entity view that can be selected in the property pane and the Items property. The property pane will update the Items property to add the Filter function taking the the view name as the filter.
Now in public preview, this feature enables canvas apps to be shared with guests of your organization! This enables teams of individuals made up of different organizations participating in a common business process to access the same app.
Sharing canvas apps with guests of your organization
Please note: there are also several updates for the PowerApps Unified Interface that I haven’t been able to list here, but you can find all the details from the link below:
Work-in-progress diagrams and slides in PowerPoint
You can now transform standard shapes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel into rough outlines that look handdrawn and convey a sense of in-progress work. Sketched Shapes is perfect for building wireframes, drafting designs, or adding an artistic touch.
Work-in-progress diagrams and slides in PowerPoint
You can now get a link to an individual slide from PowerPoint and share it with recipients. This will help others land on the most relevant information without having to find what you were trying to show them through a stack of presentation slides
Recently announced, a new Yammer mobile experience to iOS and Android devices. Some highlights include a modernized feed experience that reduces visual clutter and delivers improved readability, live events, and townhalls that you can view on the go; Seen Counts to let you know how many people have viewed your messages; and group search to cut down on search time and find the information you need.
SharePoint Stuff 