(this post was written using a SharePoint Server 2010 environment)
This is a variation on a theme and something I have used quite a bit over the years to change the link to the item display view from the default title or name field or another field of my choosing.
Changing the item link to another field or field(s)
Open SharePoint Designer
Enter the URL of your list or library site collection > Open
Navigate to the list or library you wish to change > Click to open it
in the Views section, open the view you wish to edit
You can add LinkToItem=”TRUE” to any, or as many of the fields as you wish, the end result will mean that each column in the list view you have added the above to will be click-able.
Add a link to the edit item menu
As I was writing this up, I came across the post below which also adds the extra option of creating a link to the item’s edit menu to, so full props go to the SharePoint Diary site for this one!
If you do want to extend this to have the drop-down item edit menu, just add ListItemMenu=”TRUE” to the field in SharePoint Designer. You can add this after the LinkToItem=”TRUE” and to multiple columns in the list view.
I’ve been suitably inspired by Andrew Warland’s fantastic two-part series documenting his approach and migration to SharePoint Online, so much so that I thought it would be a fun series to write about my own experiences.
It is’nt my intention to necessarily document Microsoft best practice in this series, rather just to explore some of the challenges, sucesses and experiences I notice along the way.
The current situation
My organisation has recently made the decision to move to to the cloud, with O365 being the naturally preferred destination. SharePoint has been well embedded, and heavily used within the business for several years, with on-premises SharePoint 2010 currently in production.
Finally, in terms of the SharePoint architecture and data volume, there are only three web applications to merge together as part of the migration effort. However, there are several site collections within our main intranet web app, plus many sub-sites nested within them, meaning the huge database sizes behind these site collections could prove difficult come migration time.
A note on the new, flat structure
Our current environment has a well established top-down structure in place that is generally consitent across the environment.
Having already made the investment in ShareGate, this will be the tool of choice for the migration. In the version 11.0 release of ShareGate, a new restructure option now allows you to promote sub-sites to top-level sites post inital migration from the source SharePoint environment.
The new restructure option in ShareGate 11.0
Considerations for a successful migration plan
One of the biggest issues to be resolved before we can start any sort of migration activity, is the fact that we have several content databases well over the 200GB recommended general use size limit.
Microsoft best practice suggests that any environment that has site collections, sites, content databases, libraries or lists that exceed the software boundaries and limits should be remediated prior to any migration activity. In this case, the main idea is to split each content database that exceeds 200GB into seperate content db’s, and where neccessary, move or promote sub-sites to site collections and attach new db’s.
Armed with the knowledge of the recent restrcuture functionality coming to ShareGate, plus my own personal feeling that any remediation activities to our current environment may in of itself carry adverse risk to the estate we proposed a different approach.
With all the reporting capabilities at our disposal via ShareGate, I was able to get a firm grasp of what resides within each site collection in our environment, in terms of:
The size of each sub-site underneath the top-level
Number/ size of libraries and lists
Number of items in each of the above
Any workflows running in any of the above
From this I ran a trial migration of a sub-site from SharePoint 2010 to a newly created team site in SharePoint Online.
Pre-migration
Before I kicked off the migration, I ran the source analysis tool within the Migration > Plan section of ShareGate. I noted the following obersavations:
The source analysis within “migration” in the ShareGate tool, although listed as only being able to analyze up to SharePoint 2013, does in-fact work for 2010
ShareGate source analysis
The source analysis cannot run at the sub-site level, meaning that you need to run it at the site collection level then just filter down to the sub-site in question through the report itself
Source analysis gives you a report of all checked-out files within a source site.From this, I created a simple view within each of the libraries that contained checked-out files to send to the site owners for action
Post-trial migration
The trial migration completed successfully as expected, however there were several interesting results I noted:
1. Everyone receieves a welcome email
If you migrate the permissions, once the source permission groups migrate each user will recieve a welcome email to the new SharePoint Online site.
Publishing sites seem to be the trickiest to migrate, especially those with custom master pages or page layouts. When migrating publishing sites, the Pages library is migrated wholesail, meaning the content won’t reside in the SitePages library (where new client-side pages are located).
3. Un-editable modern homepage
After the migration had completed, the new team site homepage threw up an error every time you tried to edit it.
I tried some of the documented resolution steps found here, but none of them worked for me. My solution was to just create a new page to replace the broken homepage, add all the relevant webparts and make this one the new default homepage.
Transforming classic publishing site pages to client-side pages
Publishing site pages will all be migrated as classic SharePoint pages, without the modern look and feel of a client-side page. My understanding is that for publishing pages with custom page layouts, additional metadata or custom content types will need to be transformed via PowerShell and creating a custom mapping file.
(I’m planning on writing a seperate blog post walking through an advanced publishing page transformation in the near future)
Its also worth considering that in the release notes for ShareGate 11.0 it makes mention of the fact they are researching the ability to transform classic to modern pages, so that could well simplify this process in a future release.
Conclusion
Overall, I was happy with our trial migration and believe it is a viable approach for us to move from on-prem to O365. Some lessons learned for myself would be to consider and SharePoint permissions audit prior to migration to remove any unecessary permissions, send an inventory out to site owners aswell as checked-out files, all in the name of reducing the migration effort.
This will be an ongoing series of posts, which i’ll focus more the on the nitty-gritty of the migration effort than anything else, but as always if there is any feedback or suggestions on how to improve this site, please let me know!
Several updates will soon be available for page and news authoring:
Drag and drop files to the canvas – authors will be able to upload images to the canvas using drag and drop. They will automatically add the file viewer and upload the file to the document library
Link preview – rich preview for links pasted into the text editor to embed videos from Stream/ YouTube links or images with title and description from other links
On-page anchors – support for anchor links, allowing readers to jump to a specific parts of the pages
Undo/Redo – authors will have the option to undo changes prior to saving/ publishing
Vertical sections – vertical sections will be able to be added to client-side pages
Communication sites will soon have an out-of-the box footer control, which can be controlled using the change the look panel or by using PowerShell [FooterEnabled]. The site footer supports following elements: 8 links or labels, logo and name.
New features available when in quick edit mode for libraries and lists such as filtering content, dragging & dropping column widths, showing all view and column formatting and improvement support for user/ choice fields
Improvements to quick edit mode for SharePoint libraries and lists
Soon will soon be able to select multiple items and have the ability to approve/reject them in one go. You can also add optional comments to the approved or rejected items and the Flow will send them out to stakeholders.
New 30-day grace periods are being introduced for the release of SharePoint Online holds, preventing the hold from being immediately released. Whilst within the grace period, any deleted item will continue to be preserved in the preservation library until the hold is removed.
Items in a preservation hold library are now moved into the “second stage recycle bin” before being purged.
Diagram of a preservation hold library process flow
Currently, anonymous sharing links can be set to expire after a set number of days (between 1 and 720). This new setting will allow admins to cahnge the expiration policy length on a per-site basis, overriding the tenant level policy.
This will only be available via the SharePoint Online Management Shell as part of the inital release, but will be apart of the SharePoint admin center soon.
OneDrive Azure Active Directory (AAD)
business-to-business (B2B) sync (preview)
Currently in preview, this integrates external sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive with Azure AD B2B. This includes external sharing of files, folders, list items, document libraries and sites.
When a user shares an item in SharePoint or OneDrive with an external user, a guest account is immediately created for that external user (if one does not already exist).
Added in July were read receipts and priority notifications to make sure time-senstive message are received and prioritised.
For a limited time, unlimited priority notifications will be made available for all customers. This promotion runs from July 2019 to December 31, 2019.
Now simply start typing a person’s name (starting with a capital letter) as to tag them by name. They will receive a notification, which they can click to go directly to the point in the conversation where they were mentioned.
Currently in preview, live captions and subtitles allow attendees to read speaker captions in real time – improving accessibility for meetings and live events.
The Network Planner calculates your network requirements for deploying Teams and cloud voice across physical locations. You only need to provide your network details and Teams usage.
The new time clock feature in Teams Shifts allows workers to clock in and out right from their Teams mobile app. Managers have the option to geo-fence a location to ensure team members are at the designated worksite when clocking in or out.
More updates are rolling out to the file card experience for both OneDrive and SharePoint:
Inside look – get even deeper information about a file such as “key points, and the average time to read. “Key points” is only available in North America and on Word documents
Activity highlights – shows relevant activities related to the files you’re working on. Includes edits, comments and @mentions
Announced in July 2019, Intune has released administrative templates. With the templates, admins can now configure over 2500 settings supporting the management of Windows, OneDrive and Office in a similar user interface to group policy editor.
Design refresh for iOS app – latest update brings the iOS app in-line withthe suite of other Office apps
Recent view includes PDFs and scans – uploaded scans and recently viewed PDFs automatically surgace at the top of the “recent” list
PDF annotation experience – more intuitive and touch friendly markup experience with lightweight notes, with other improvements to the annotation and signature experience
OneDrive powered file picking experience in Outlook for iOS – Consistent “recent” list of files and folders through the OneDrive app, email attachments and shared libraries
Revamped settings page – Improved usability of the settings page for OnDrive on iOS
First announced in July, the public preview for PowerApps Portal is now open to everyone. PowerApps Portals are low-code, responsive portals that allow external users access to interact with data stored in the common data service.
Also annouced in July was the public preview of the PowerApps ISV Studio, the Power Platform destination for independent software vendors (ISV) to monitor and manage their applications.
With the public preview annoucement of PowerApps Build Tools, this includes an Azure DevOps Build task (PowerApps checker service) that validates your app against the AppSource certification criteria.
The PowerApps design canvas now responds to right-clicks to perform key actions like copy, paste, reorder and align. This same menu is also available in the tree view.
Manage gateways through Power Platform Admin Center
If you are a gateway admin you will now see all data gateways (standard and personal mode) that you have admin privileges over. This view will allow you to manage gateway admins, as well as search on cluster names and contact info.
Share canvas app data using the common data service with Azure AD Security Groups
Canvas apps using the common data service can be shared with Azure AD security groups, and data permissions for these groups can be set using the PowerApps.com sharing experience. This streamlines the process of sharing apps with several users, rather than on an individual basis.
Sharing a PowerApps canvas app using the common data service with Azure AD security groups
The on-premises data gateway is now built using .NET 4.7.2 framework, so some operating systems may no longer be supported.
With July 2019 update, if you don’t have .NET 4.7.2 framework or higher but are using a supported OS version, the gateway install will prompt the .NET framework install. If you choose not to install the .NET framework, the installation will fail.
Several highly requested features have been added to the SharePoint connector:
Work with folders – you can now directly create folders in a document library. Extracting .zip files into a folder is also supported
Use check in / out – you can now use Check in, Check out and Discard check out when working with document libraries
Work with Permissions – you can grant access to an item or a folder in SharePoint to specific people, or delete all links giving access to an item or a folder and remove all people with direct access except owners
Modern Document Sets – Document sets will appear in the file picker for the When a file is created in a folder and When a file is created or modified in a folder action triggers.
Modern document set actions in Flow
Use Flow with Azure DevOps
Now in public preview, the PowerApps and Flow Build Tools are now available for download. As Flow expands across Microsoft 365, the automation of the lifecycle of Apps and Flows grows also, plus managing them through source control and versioning leveraging DevOps for deployments.
Now in public preview, guest access enables users to assign approvals to guest users who are not full members of the tenant. Support includes the SharePoint and Approvals connectors for building automated, instant or scheduled flows.
One powerful aspect of automating flows is that any action can use data output by any trigger or action above it in the Flow. This can be a challenge if you want to change a step earlier in the Flow, which other actions depend on.
Now, you are able to delete or rename actions one which other steps depend. Flow checker can be used to fix any issues that arise.
Previously, there were restrictions for classic CDS workflows around editing a running, automated flow – in which you had to first disable it. Now, this restriction has been removed, meaning you can now edit running flows.
New connectors
There were four new connectors released throughout July 2019, such as:
Corda Blockchain – Corda is a smart contract distributed ledger. With the Corda connector, you can perform actions such as submitting transactions and reading contract state.
LiveTiles Bots – Let people focus on the work that matters most. Automate mundane, repetitive tasks. Create personal, team, enterprise and external assistants with a range of abilities
Projectum Present It – Fill data dynamically into your documents
Serverless360 BAM & Tracking – ServerLess360 Custom connector helps you track your business processes
Now when you paste a link for a OneDrive or SharePoint file in a message, it will replace it with the name of the file and the corresponding Office app icon. That link will also allow you to manage permissions for the file using a new sharing dialogue.
New file sharing experience in Outlook for the web
Organization assets lets you register one or more document libraries via PowerShell as a special source for images, such as photos and logos, across all sites. The Organization assets libraries are available when you add images to page headers, galleries, or other web parts.
A hub site brings together numerous other sites, and now the number of hub sites you can create in your tenant has increased. As announced at SPC19, the number of SharePoint hubs that you can create per tenant will go up from 100 to 2000.
Adobe Document Cloud also now supports single sign-on with Azure Active Directory, dramatically the simplifying log-in process. Now you’ll be able to work with PDF files on the web and in the context of SharePoint & OneDrive, with features like inline commenting and drawing.
Inline commenting and drawing will now work in the context of SharePoint
Easily tell if a SharePoint document library folder is connected to Teams channel
It’s now easier to tell which folders within your library have an associated Teams channel. Chat capability associated to it is visible and actionable right from within the SharePoint user interface. SharePoint helps users understand that actions like delete or renaming a channel-connected folder need to happen through the Teams app.
Easily tell if a document library in SharePoint is connected to Teams
Teams desktop rolling out toO365 ProPlus & Microsoft/Office 365 Business/Business Premium
Starting in July 2019, if you’re using Monthly Channel, then Teams will be added to existing installations of Office 365 ProPlus (and Office 365 Business) on devices running Windows when you update your existing installation to the latest version.
If Teams is already installed in a user’s machine, they are not impacted by this change.
Information barriers will help avoid conflicts of interest within your organization. This can help limit the disclosure of information by controlling communication between the holders of information and colleagues representing different interests.
Admins and team owners can now control whether they want to allow private teams to be discovered by Teams users. When a private team is discoverable, it shows up in search results and is included in suggestions in the team gallery alongside public teams.
Launched in June, Microsoft releasued the Teams app for Azure pipelines. Azure pipelines allows you to automate customer builds and deployments, so you can spend less time with the nuts and bolts and more time being creative.
You now have even more control over the design of your meetings in Teams! Meeting organizer’s can now control the lobby setting of any scheduled meeting. Settings can be found in the “Meeting options” link from the “Meetings” tab.
Single toolbar for controls in Meetings and Calling
Teams session controls will now be unified into one toolbar at the bottom of the screen. This will affect Windows, Mac, and web clients. There is no impact for mobile or Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) devices.
While joining Teams Meetings on the Chrome browser, you can now share your own video and receive video of others.
Now in OneDrive, you are able to set custom passwords while sharing a file or folder with anyone links to their colleagues within or outside their organization.
You can share the password separately with your intended recipients and they will be required to enter the password in order to access the shared content. If they accidentally forward or re-share the shared link, anyone without the password will not be able to gain access.
Password protected anyone sharing links in OneDrive
The Azure Active Directory Business to Business (B2B) platform enables external users to exist in your Azure AD directory as “Guests” and can be managed in the way you are already familiar with.
External sharing with B2B integration joins external sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive with Azure AD B2B. It includes external sharing of files, folders, list items, document libraries and sites. The integration also expands the one-time passcode authentication experience to SharePoint sites and lists when sharing with external recipients who don’t already have a work, school or a Microsoft account (MSA).
With the integration turned on, when a user shares an item in SharePoint or OneDrive with an external user, a “Guest” account is immediately created for that external user (if one does not already exist). As a result, any sign-in or conditional access policies in place in your organization will take effect on those external users as well.
Mirosoft are adding capabilities to the OneDrive sync client that lets users sync libraries or folders that have been shared from other organizations. You can now can sync content shared not only by peers within your own organization, but also by partners outside your organization that you regularly collaborate with.
This feature works in tandem with the external sharing with B2B integration feature and requires recipients to have a “Guest” account in Azure AD to make B2B collaboration possible.
Microsoft Search is now in OneDrive. A new search box will appear at the top of the page in the OneDrive suite header and provide a consistent place to access the search functionality making it easy to discover all files and folders.
There are a few new features being rolled out as part of the improved File Card experience. Now you will see a “time to read” estimate, plus the “at a glance” feature which will show key sentences from within the Word document.
Automatically sync your SharePoint team site shared libraries with OneDrive team site automount
This feature offers admins the ability to automatically connect and synchronize specific SharePoint team site document libraries as part of a OneDrive deployment. To help configure a team site to sync automatically, Microsoft provide a new group policy (“Configure team site libraries to sync automatically”) for admins to deploy.
NOTE: these are the document libraries within group-connected team sites that appear under the “Shared libraries” list within a person’s OneDrive user interface.
Question and answer in Yammer enables you to start a conversation in the question format from the browser or mobile app. Unique styling helps everyone identify which posts need answers. In the coming weeks, you’ll also be able to filter to see only questions and unanswered questions.
Yammer now offers local data residency to help organizations in the EU meet data residency requirements. This feature is available to all new Office 365 customers associated with a tenant in the EU.
Coming soon, Yammer content will also show up in eDiscovery searches, bringing advanced security and compliance capabilities to Yammer groups connected to Office 365 Groups.
Discover the apps and services that are running on top of your IaaS and PaaS subscriptions, whether they are running on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud Platform. Gain visibility into those apps and services, including which users are accessing them, transactions, IP addresses, and how much traffic is being transmitted.
Annouced in June, Azure AD Conditional Access policies help you maintain control over your Office 365 environment and how your company resources are accessed. For example, you can define a conditional access policy that evaluates sign-in connections from mobile devices to Exchange Online, and requires employees use Outlook for iOS or Android to successfully access their work email and calendar.
Version History is coming to Office for the web, enabling you to see what changes have occurred and revert to an earlier version if necessary. Version History is rolling out now, starting with PowerPoint on the web.
(This post was written using a SharePoint 2010 environment)
Document sets are a pretty awesome way to convert people from traditional folders to using metadata in SharePoint, but retaining the ‘feel’ of a nice folder structure.
When you start using document sets you might want to play with the default view of your files, this isnt as straight forward as just setting a new default view. Here’s how to do it
Create and configure the view
Create your view
Under Folders > ensure show this view is set to In folders of content type: document set
Press OK
Select the document set content type in the view settings
Select the view for the Document Set Content Type
Navigate to the Library Settings
Under Content Types Select the Document Set
In Settings > Select Document Set settings
Document Set settings
Under Welcome Page View > select your view
Press OK
Now the changes made to your custom view will be present inside each document set!
A while ago I did a short series on how to provision and deploy the SharePoint Starter Kit. From this, I thought it would be fun to detail how to take one of the many, great spfx web part samples available in the SharePoint GitHut repository and go through the steps involved to deploy it end to end.
As with my last series on the SharePoint Starter Kit and generally with all my posts my aim is to simplify and detail every step involved to show that you can these things working without huge effort of developer expertise, I am not a developer by any stretch of the imagination so hopefully putting all the pieces together is useful 🙂
spfx client-side web parts
All the samples are available in the sp-dev-fx-webparts repository on GitHub from the link below. For the purpose of this example, I am deploying the Modern Experience Theme Manager web part, as I wanted to test out how easy it makes applying, removing and updating custom themes (it does).
All of the pre-requirement steps detailed in part one of my SharePoint Starter Kit series are also required for deploying web parts. Make sure you have followed all the steps here before continuing:
Before you can begin, it’s much easier to clone a repository from GitHub than downloading and extracting a zip file. I also couldn’t get the web part to open from the localhost workbench when I manually downloaded the code.
NOTE: I originally wrote this walkthrough a while back, when I came to finish it up I tried to update by cloned repo but it just wouldn’t work. I just removed the repo from Github desktop, then deleted all the files from the /sp-dev-fx-webparts/ sub-folder and cloned from scratch and it worked.
Make sure a developer certificate is installed
If you followed my SharePoint Starter Kit series, you can skip this step as you’ll of already done it, but if not run the following to install a dev certificate: gulp trust-dev-cert
Step 1: get the webpart working locally
Clone repository/ run web part on localhost
Now we need clone and build the repository to start using the webpart sample. Clone the repository by following the steps below:
Open cmd prompt, then navigate to the samples folder > then the web part samples folder you wish to use for example:
cd \sp-dev-fx-webparts\samples\js-theme-manager
Run the following command to install the npm packages to build and run the client-side project
npm install
Run the following command to preview your web part in the SharePoint Workbench
gulp serve
Your browser should now open and a localhost version of SharePoint Workbench will allow you to add the web part and access the properties:
(When I first wrote this I was using a different webpart as an example)
NOTE: I tried this using IE at first, it didn’t open at all, so i just switched to using another browser and the workbench loaded just fine.
Test the web part in your tenant workbench
Copy the URL of the localhost workbench, open a new browser window and paste the URL but update it to reflect your sharepoint tenant, for example:
Now we have tested our web part is working locally and within the context of our sharepoint tenancy, we can now package our solution and deploy into our SharePoint environment.
If gulp serve is still running, press CTRL+C to stop it in cmd prompt
In cmd prompt, enter the following command
gulp package-solution
This command creates a package in the sharepoint/solution folder called something like “js-theme-manager.sppkg”
Navigate to your SharePoint Admin site, open the app catalog site, under apps for sharepoint, drag and drop your sppkg file
Drag and drop the sppkg file straight into apps for SharePoint
Press the deploy button on the pop-up window, notice the localhost domain is showing here, we will need to change this once we’ve tested our web part is working
Back to the console, run gulp serve to make the local assets available for the web part
Navigate to a site where you want to deploy the webpart, press the cog button, add an app
Select the webpart you just added (this might take a minute or two to be available)
Add the newly added app to your SharePoint site
Add your new webpart to a page!
Enable CDN for your tenant
Now we’ve deployed and tested the webpart in our SharePoint environment, we can update our solution to host the assets directly in our tenancy or a content delivery network .
Open PowerShell, connect to your SharePoint Online tenant using the following command:
Get the current status of public CDN settings from the tenant level by executing the following commands one-by-one.
Get-SPOTenantCdnEnabled -CdnType Public
Get-SPOTenantCdnOrigins -CdnType Public
Get-SPOTenantCdnPolicies -CdnType Public
spfx solutions can automatically benefit from the Office 365 Public CDN as long as it’s enabled in your tenant. When CDN is enabled, */CLIENTSIDEASSETS origin is automatically added as a valid origin.
Enable public CDN in the tenant by running the following command:
Set-SPOTenantCdnEnabled -CdnType Public
Confirm settings by selecting Y and then Enter
Step 3: ready for final deployment
Go back to the console, make sure you are still in the relevant web part project directory, end sure gulp serve by pressing CTRL+C.
Open explorer, then open the package-solution.json in a code editor, from the config folder and check you see the following:
"includeClientSideAssets": true,
Run the following task to bundle the solution:
gulp bundle --ship
Then, run the following task to package your solution:
gulp package-solution --ship
From the same sharepoint/solution folder, drag & drop the newly updated solution package into the app catalog again. As it already exists, press Replace
Check the domain now shows as SharePoint Online, rather than localhost
Make sure your updated app isn’t checked out, if it is – check it in
Navigate back to where you previously deployed the app, add it to a page and test that it works!
I decided to hold fire on posting a full write up from the SharePoint Conference to create a bumper edition of this month’s update.
I’ll include several of the bigger announcments coming out of SPC19, but ill include a full list of links to all the annocument recaps coming out of the event for more information.
One of the most requested features of the modern experience for SharePoint is the ability to have the default or ‘root’ SharePoint site in the full modern experience. Home sites can be any commication site in your environment, that come with ‘superpowers’ such as:
News from home sites becomes organisational news
Search from home sites becomes tenant wide
Shared branding with the SharePoint start page
Unique mobile app experience
SharePoint home sites are being targeted to be rolled out around Q3 2019.
Currently in private preview, Sensitivity Labels allow you to apply consistent security and access policies to SharePoint sites based on the sensitivity of the site.
Sensitivity labels with protection now supported
You can now experience the same collaborative capabilities for Office files protected with sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365 in SharePoint and OneDrive as files with no protection applied. Files with labels applied will be encrypted on upload by Azure Information Protection and understand the policies applied to the document by the label.
External access expiration
Tenant-scoped external sharing expiration allows admins to specify how long external users can have access to sites and their contents. Once the maximum period of time for external sharing links has been met, access if revoked unless extended by the administrator.
There have lots of improvements since the new SharePoint admin center was released to preview earlier this year. Here are some major updates from this month:
Classic features now available in new admin center
Support for performing bulk actions against a collection of sites
Ability to rename sites (GREAT NEWS!)
Improved sharing controls
Windows PowerShell cmdlet (invoke-spositeswap) that allows you to replace the root site within a tenant with an existing site (ALSO GREAT NEWS!)
A new security control (in private preview) that blocks external sharing of files in OneDrive and SharePoint until a DLP scan has been completed. This prevents overexposure of sensitive information and compliance with policies set by the tenant administrator.
DLP for restricted sharing
Another new security control (coming to private preview Q3 2019), that coincides with easy sharing with anonymous links, but once files are scanned by DLP and flagged as sensitive, anonymous access to the file is blocked.
Now in GA with SharePoint Framework 1.8, app pages make it possible to add full-page tools in SharePoint. Available through a new create page experinece, team members can add application pages to existing sites.
You can also add more Teams tabs directly into your SharePoint sites.
Out of the box sites (sites not utilising any code or 3rd party tools)
Navigation & icons
Site descriptions
SharePoint web parts (see supported web parts here)
Pages (including site asset library pages)
Managed metadata (including content types and term stores)
Additional language support
The migration tool is now localised for 11 different languages, support for Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish & English.
SharePoint 2010 migration support
Huge news for those of us still toiling away on SP2010 😀 with end of extended support for SharePoint 2010 less than 15 months away, you can now start to migrate content from SharePoint 2010 to Office 365.
Announced at SPC2019, SharePoint Server 2019 provides more flexible deployment options to include support for Azure Stack and SQL Managed Instances.
A managed instance in Azure SQL Database is a fully managed SQL Server Database Engine Instance hosted in Azure cloud. Support is also being extended for deploying SharePoint Server 2016 (SharePoint Server 2019) on Azure Stack so you can build and run SharePoint environments using consistent Azure services on-premises.
Proximity-based meeting join for Microsoft Teams Rooms means that the Teams app on your desktop or mobile will find a Teams-enabled room for you to use that is nearby and available. Available now for your desktop and mobile clients, and will start working automatically.
“Meeting started” notifications on your phone
You can now receive “meeting started” notifications on your phone when someone joins a Teams meeting on your calendar. You can join the meeting right from the notification, and skip searching for the correct meeting in your calendar.
Busy on Busy is a feature that allows callers to know a user’s status when contacting them. When a user is already in a call or meeting, this setting alerts the caller that they are on another call by playing a busy signal. This feature is automatically available in your Teams experience.
New Calls App
Voice over IP (VOIP) enabled users will now see the Calls App in the App bar in the Desktop and Web Clients, with voicemal coming soon. There is no change in functionality for existing users or calling policy configuration.
Call Me functionality
You can now join meetings through a “Call me” functionality both from pre-join screen and during the meeting. To use this feature, you need to provide a phone number where you can receive a phone call.
The new Class Materials folder in the General channel of Microsoft Teams for Education allows you to share files with students, without the ability to edit.
Manage your team and add new members straight from the Teams app on your phone. Invite guests from outside your organization via their email address using your mobile app.
Export reporting data from the admin center
You can now export Teams usage reports to CSV files for offline analysis. After selecting a report in the Analytics and reports section of the Microsoft Teams admin center, click Export to Excel.
OneDrive
Full-fidelity experience for shared libraries
You can now view shared libraries with full-fidelity from the OneDrive UI on the web. This means you can create new documents, pin important ones to the top, create views, manage metadata, share and more.
You can now use native connectors to import non-Microsoft 365 data, like data from Facebook and Twitter into the 365 cloud for archival purposes. A new records management solution helps you easily manage business, legal, and HR records in a single location.
You can now add quizzes, forms, or polls directly into Microsoft Stream videos. The Forms integration into Microsoft Stream helps presenters interact with their audience and gives them a way to solicit feedback.
You can also now securely record, upload, and share video from the Microsoft Stream mobile app.
The new question and answer feature allows you toask a question, then you or a group admin can mark the best answer – making the knowledge easier to share and reuse in the future. Additionally, a group can feature intelligent, bot-like responses to frequently asked questions.
Geo-data storage capabilities in Yammer
Microsoft are accelerating availability of in-geo data storage for Yammer in the EU, available now. This means that now Yammer messages and files attached to Yammer messages will be stored at-rest in our EU datacenters, for new Yammer networks in the EU.
Microsoft search is now generally avalible, offering a unified, consistent search experience to help you discover relevant people, content, commands, and activities across all the Microsoft 365 experiences you use daily.
The sharing links feature that blocks downloads is being updated. The updated feature will block downloads, disallow printing, or copying of a file. Block download is now available when using the “Specific people” sharing link type.
Users will be able to create “block download” links from File Explorer, Office apps, and the rest of the apps which use the common Office 365 file sharing experience.
You can now see all your tasks across Microsoft 365 in To-Do, including flagged emails in Outlook and tasks assigned in Planner. View your tasks, deadlines, and details, and plan to get more done throughout your days.
Announced this month, the general availabity of Microsoft Graph data connect. This service helps bring together productivity data from the Microsoft Graph with business data and derive deep insights about effective work patterns.
If you’ve made it this far…wow well done! Apologies this was such a long update, I wanted to make sure I included all of the updates from the SPC19, plus the various pitstops and what’s new blog posts for each of the products we cover in our monthly update.
Finally, the main inspiration for this monthly update, Jim Naroski’s new in 365 video series seems to have changed – with no more Jim. This change for me is definately for this worst, as expressed in the comments section too by the looks of it. Hopefully its a one time thing, but if not Jim’s personal touch to delivering all the latest 365 news spurs me on to continue my own series.
How do I see what folders/ sub-folders my files are in at a glance
– all users everywhere
Out of the box, there aren’t any columns available that you could potentially leverage to display this information in a standard SharePoint 2010 library.
The solution
So, just by adding one value in SharePoint Designer, here’s how you do it:
Navigate to the library you wish to change, create a new view under Library Tools > Library > Create View
Choose the relevant format of your view, give your view a name and press OK
Open SharePoint Designer > Open the site > open the library you were just working in
In the Views pane > click to open the view you just created
In SharePoint Designer, clicking on the view name will open the view in edit mode
In the code editor window, scroll down until you see something like the following:
Add the following field reference in between the opening <ViewFields> and closing </ViewFields>
Add the field reference in the display order you would like it to appear in the view
Add the field reference to the View Fields list
Press the Save icon to save your changes
Press the Preview button to see your view in action in the browser
Now you will notice there is a new column being displayed “Path”, that is showing us the full location of the file or folder in the libary. You’ll also notice that this path will display data when at the library root, or in any folders or sub-folders in the library.
Library root displaying a files pathFile in sub-folder displaying relative location
Bonus
Taking this one step further, what if we wanted to show files of a certain type, then create a view that groups these files by their folder location? Guess what, that’s exactly what I did!
Navigate to your library > create a new view as before, this time base your new view off the one you just created
If you wish to only show files of a particular type, use the filter by settings (for example below is filtered to only shows Word documents)
Make sure “show all items without folders” is selected
Press OK
Filtering to only show word documents, also showing items without folders
Back in SharePoint Designer > Open up the view you just created
Scroll down until you see the opening <Query> tag and add the following beneath it:
With Microsoft retiring SharePoint 2010 designer workflows, plus the movement away from SharePoint Designer in general, a few readers have asked for a solution that works with modern SharePoint.
When researching this I considered whether suggesting to use SharePoint Designer 2013, as the above solution would still work in SharePoint Online using SPD 2013. But, as Microsoft say themselves although SPD 2013 remains supported, it’s depreciated – so I decided to go in a different direction.
The below example walks you through how you can create a flow in Power Automate to update a file after it’s been created to have the folder path shown in the document library view:
The solution
For this solution you will need to have access to create Flows in Power Automate, as well as an existing Document Library created in SharePoint Online:
Navigate to the document library you wish to show the folder path for
Add a single line of text column to the document library > give it a name (I called mine FolderPath)
Under the ellipsis, press Automate > Power Automate > Create a flow
In Power Automate, either use an existing, relevant template or start from blank
The trigger action should be When a file is created (properties only)
Set the Site Address and Library Name where you want to add the folder path
Insert a new step > select Update file properties.
Set the following values for the update file properties step:
Site Address: same as previous step
Library Name: same as previous step
Id: ID
FolderPath: Folder path
NOTE: The FolderPath within the Update file properties step is the custom column we created earlier. The Folder path (highlighted in red) is dynamic content available within the step in the flow. The folder path dynamic content is the path to the folder the item is in, relative to the site address.
Ensure you select the system Folder path dynamic content to pull the right data into the custom FolderPath column.
Here’s the flow in it’s entirety:
At this point test and save your flow to make sure it is working as expected 🙂
Bonus #1 – turn your folder path column into a hyperlink column
So if like me you want to take this one step further, wouldn’t it be good if we could easily make our newly showing folder paths, actual hyperlinks to the folders? Well the good news is you can!
Navigate back to your document library > click on the FolderPath column > Format this column
Under Apply formatting to make sure FolderPath is selected
Paste the following JSON into the custom formatting box:
NOTE: for more information on turning field values into hyperlinks, check out this awesome sample from sp-dev-list-formatting.
Press Save
Your FolderPath column values should now be legitimate hyperlinks that click through to the relevant folders
Bonus #2 – update existing files in the document library
This was another suggestion from a reader with regards to how to update files that existed in the document library before the flow was created.
Running a flow manually for individual files
When I began to consider how to do this I started by looking at ways to manually start the flow.
It appears the only real way to do this is to create a new column that adds a button next to each file, that allows you to run the flow. I’m not really enamoured by this approach as it doesn’t seem ideal to have an extra column to run a flow showing on every file in your library. If this is something you would like to pursue then I would recommend this great article by WonderLaura who has the process of creating a button to trigger a flow covered!
Update our flow to update all files if folder path is empty
My solution to this problem was to update the flow we created earlier to get the properties for all files in the library, then add a condition that checks if the FolderPath column is empty, then if yes runs our flow as before.
First, I added a Get files (properties only) action which gets all the files from the source library
Then I added a new Condition action, which simply checks if the FolderPath column we created is equal to null. You will also notice a new Apply to each action will be created
I then moved the previous Apply to each action into the “If yes” condition
Files restore offers a self-service recover solutionthat allows administrators and site owners to restore files from any point in time during the last 30 days. Look for a new “Restore this library” option within the library settings panel.
Files restore example for SharePoint document libraries
Long awaited modern document sets will update the user interface to bring them inline with modern sharepoint. Document sets allow you to group related documents together using shared metadata. Modern document sets also unlock the same intuitive user actions like drag and drop content, link to content that lives outside the document set, pin files and much, much more.
Audience targeting is a new feature within the news and highlighted content web parts that enables authors and site owners to tag news articles with Azure Active Directory groups to filter content through web parts to people within those groups.
Author reply emails for comments, replies and likes
Now when someone comments on your page or news post, SharePoint notifies you via email. Multiple comments will be batched so that you receive a single email. This feature will start rollout to targeted release in April, with worldwide rollout currently scheduled to be completed in mid-June 2019.
Coming soon are three new connected web parts for SharePoint Online that allow you to display data from list and library web parts. With the List Properties, File Viewer and Embed web parts you can now connect to a data source and interact with lists and libraries in new ways.
Multi-Geo in SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups
SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups now joins Exchange Online and OneDrive in having the ability to enable where SharePoint sites and their content is stored.
Multi-Geo in SharePoint and Office 365 Groups enables global businesses to control the country or region where shared resources like SharePoint Team Sites, Office 365 Groups content (associated SharePoint Sites and Groups mailboxes) are stored at-rest.
Autodesk AutoCAD integration for SharePoint and OneDrive
New integrations with Autodesk connect OneDrive and SharePoint to the drafting tools available through AutoCAD. As you work with DWG files across these applications, you can open and edit them in the AutoCAD desktop application, the AutoCAD mobile app, and the new AutoCAD web app.
Flexible image types for company logo’s in the Office 365 navigation bar
You can now use larger, more flexible image types to upload your company logo in the Office 365 navigation bar. You will be able to upload a custom logo of any file size/ format via a URL in order to improve the clarity of the logo image that your users see.
Improvements to the Office 365 group “hover cards” so that you can act on the group within the context of what you’re doing, rather than going to a separate page. You can search through all group members, renew the group per any set expiry, and approve pending members.
Praise in Microsoft Teams is the new way to show your appreciation and encourage each other at work. Send in a 1:1 chat or post it to a channel for the entire team.
You can now request on behalf of someone else to join a private team. Teams can be created as either private, where admins control membership, or public, where anyone in the organization is welcome to join.
Increased member limits
Organisation wide teams now have higher size limits, so they can have up to 5000 members in a team. Global administrators can easily create a public team that pulls in every user in the organisation and keeps the membership up to date with Active Directory as users join and leave.
Org-wide teams now have higher size limits
Show/ hide teams
It’s now much easier to keep your teams list tidy. What used to be Favorite and Remove from favorites is now Show and Hide. Choose which teams and channels you want to show in your teams list and hide the rest. You’ll still get notified when @mentioned, they just won’t clutter your teams list.
OneDrive is introducing golden folders with subtle, yet noticeable clues emblazoned on the icon to remind you of the contents and sharing status of each folder. Golden folders are being rolled out across mobile and web in OneDrive, SharePoint and connected experiences in other apps.
Golden folders in OneDrive and the OneDrive mobile app
The OneDrive sync client lets you can access and share all your files directly from your desktop in Windows File Explore or macOS Finder. Some new updates for the sync client include:
Self-help option: “Illegal files names not syncing” A new in-app resolution to sync errors – like when using an Asterix “*” symbol or any file name starting with “~$” – to help avert and solve naming blockers, to then rename the file and continue with upload
Request assistance Look for a new “Get Help” option in the OneDrive activity center on your desktop. This enables people to initiate a support ticket.
Prompt for pending uploads And one last “wait, before you go” feature… the OneDrive sync client will also notify users when they have pending uploads when the computer is shutting down or going into standby
Block download option for specific people sharing link
You are now able to use the “Block download” functionality that allows people to block recipients from downloading, copying and pasting shared content when using the “Specific people” style sharing links.
Users will now be able to save Office files with missing required properties. This change only applies to the Office files synced by the OneDrive sync client. Additionally, users can add, or update required properties for a document by navigating to the file in the SharePoint document library and entering the appropriate value.
The Yammer conversations wep part enables you to integrate topics, groups or users into SharePoint. This combines the social nature of learning across organizations with the content and knowledge management powers of SharePoint.
The Yammer Highlights web part, provides a quick overview of active conversations and a targeted portal to specific groups or conversations in Yammer.
Microsoft Search in Bing Preview includes Yammer conversations
Yammer conversations or conversations between co-workers will now start appearing Microsoft Search in Bing. Microsoft Search will only return information and files that you have permission to see.
Microsoft have updated their available icon set, with nearly 350 new icons being added to choose from. You are able to rotate, resize, and recolor the icons without any loss in the quality of the image. You can also separate the icon into its components and use only the pieces you want.
The Power BI web by example connector allows customers to scrape data from HTML pages. It supports ingesting any data element on the page, beyond just HTML tables. You can now automatically suggest Power BI tables based on HTML element repetition patterns.
Compliance Manager now allows you to create custom risk assessments of any application used in your organization. This customised assessments capability enables IT to import their own security and compliance controls into Compliance Manager, including those for corporate policy, local law, and industrial standards.
Office Security Policy Advisor is a new intelligent
service, now available in preview, that uses behavior-based analysis to help IT
admins to quantify the risks and benefits of applying a tailored policy, and
monitor policy health over time, for their Office clients.
Admins can now deploy policies with a single click and easily update, or even roll back, policies.
Data retention and deletion…I’m sure this is a something that anyone involved in Office 365, SharePoint on information management in general gets fed up of saying since the recent GDPR legislation!
Recently we have been rationalising and cleaning up our data in preparation for moving to Office 365. We are starting with SharePoint as the first target repository or silo of content.
The general consensus is to delete files and folders over 7 years old unless there is a pre-existing data retention policy to adhere to. So the next task is to identify those files that fall within our threshold, and ultimately delete.
Luckily, we have Tree Size Pro and ShareGate so I was able to relatively easily identify the files in question (there were a lot!).
The setup
As our SharePoint environment is a) rather full; and b) rather old, I made the decision to incrementally delete files rather than en-masse to mitigate risk, targeting the lists/libraries containing the most out of date content. I started by creating a view in the first library – library A with the following parameters:
Standard library view
Filtered by Created Date if less than or equal to 01/01/2011
Folders or Flat: Show items inside folders Show this view: In all folders
(all other settings are left default)
Results this returned looked good, I could see folders and files in this view that matched the criteria – brilliant! Based on my previous statement I decided to delete in batches out of working hours, again to mitigate risk. I deleted first from library A, then from the first stage and finally from the second stage recycle bin all in this fashion.
The problem
I had permanently deleted around 50% of the total volume of content to be deleted from library A when we started to receive reports of current files being ‘missing’ from library A…not a good day.
After these reports were investigated they were indeed true. It turns out that when folders are included within a library view, folders that match the filter will be shown in the view, regardless of whether the files inside match.
We tested the view exluding folders and all the files returned matched the filter criteria. The same results were demonstrated from a SharGate report of the same nature. The report of all files over 7 years old brought back folders over 7 years old, but they also contained files that were newer.
Conclusion
At present, we are not entirely sure as to why these filters are not able to drill down past a top-level folder. It appears to be difficult to specify via view settings to only show files within folders, including the folder itself that matches the criteria.
We have decided to omitt folders from our reports and views going forward and to solely focus on files as this is the most reliable way we can delete files.
Bonus: for those of you with ShareGate, heres an example of my report we created to bring back all files over 7 years old, excluding folders. I ran this report across the entire intranet application over a weekend and it worked a treat 🙂
SharePoint Stuff 