Have you ever changed the name of a SharePoint Online site and tried to re-use the old URL for a new site? If you have you have probably encountered an issue where SharePoint admin center will tell you that URL is still in use. Well this is because the URL is, in fact still in use in the form of a redirect.
Old site URL is unavailable after renaming a SharePoint site.
In 2019, Microsoft introduced the site rename feature within the SharePoint admin center, which also updated site URLs too. Once a URL is updated for a given site, or moved to a different geo location, or as part of a site swap – a redirect is automatically created to ensure any links that were pointing to the prior URL continue to work.
How to use an old site URL
To use on old site URL you need to run the following PowerShell command. Note: You will need the SharePoint administrator role to run this command:
Open the SharePoint Online Management Shell and run the following command:
Check your URL has been deleted by trying to browse the URL, if you get a 404 error it has been successful.
More information
The Remove-SPO site command is actually defined as “Sends a SharePoint Online site collection to the SharePoint Online Recycle Bin” in the Microsoft documentation reference guide.
Microsoft documentation says that a redirect template (Template type: REDIRECTSITE#0) is applied when the site URL is updated, which contains special headers and logic to redirect your browser requests to the new site.
This post describes a change to how site designs/ templates are applied to sites in SharePoint Online.
Intro
Microsoft published MC249248 in the Message Center on 7 April 2021 stating the following:
This new SharePoint release of scenario-based site templates will help you expand what’s possible with content, pages, and web parts while helping you quickly get started building your own site. Each template contains pre-populated content and web parts that are fully customizable to meet the needs of your organization. This is rolling out on SharePoint Online and mobile.
This was updated on 23 July 2021 with a new timeline stating that this will be complete for Standard Release in late August 2021. What the message doesn’t detail is how this affects the current process for applying site designs to sites you are creating via the SharePoint admin center.
This change landed in my Standard Release environment around the week commencing 16 August. We first noticed it because we no longer had the ability to apply site designs in the admin center!
Before this change you applied your site designs at the point of site creation:
Before the recent site template change, site designs were applied to SharePoint sites at the point of creation.
Following this change the “choose a design” option is no longer present for team or communication sites through the SharePoint admin center. In order to apply designs you now have to apply a site template within the sites settings after you create it.
How to apply a site template
Navigate to the site you wish to apply the template to
Press the cog > then select apply a site template
Here you are able to choose from Microsoft pre-built templates, or those you have created and deployed into your SharePoint Online environment (from your organization). The experience is slightly different depending on whether you are using pre-built or your own templates.
Using Microsoft pre-built templates
Under From Microsoft > select the template you wish to use > press use template
The wizard below will show you a progress bar as the template is applied
When applying a Microsoft template, a progress bar will appear as the template is applied.
This wizard will disappear once the progress bar reaches 100% and your template will be applied to your site.
A SharePoint site with a Microsoft template applied.
Using custom site templates from your organization
If like me you had already deployed site designs, these are now shown as site templates available from your organization.
Press the cog > then select apply a site template
Select From your organization > select the template you wish to use > press use template
Once you press use template, an orange message bar will appear letting you know that the site template is being applied.
The orange message bar will change to green once the site template has been applied. You have to refresh to see the changes
In this post we detail how to assign roles to enterprise applications in Azure B2C, issues with assigning via PowerShell and troubleshooting.
The issue
So this is just a super quick post to document an issue that stumped me recently. I had been asked to assign the Helpdesk Administrator role to a custom enterprise app in an Azure B2C environment. The steps I had been given to follow were from this blog post and got me most of the way there.
I had issues with using MSOL initially, but managed to get around that but every time I ran the Add-MsolRoleMember cmdlet I kept getting the same error:
Error adding Service Principal to Role: This role does not exist. Check the name and try again.
The solution
As always, the simplest solution is often the best and in this case that was true again! I was able to assign the role to the enterprise applications through the Azure B2C AAD GUI. The way I did it was to:
Open Azure Active Directory
Select Roles and administrators
Select the relevant admin role (e.g. Helpdesk Administrator)
Under Assignments > press + Add Assignments
Once you have selected the relevant admin role, press Add Assignments.
Search for the name of the enterprise app you want to assign the role too > select it > press Add
That’s it, no need for PowerShell you can just assign the roles direct from Azure AD.
As a general rule I’ve found that most users who are in your M365 tenancy should have OneDrive irrespective of whether they are using it or not.
During a project I was involved with, we were compiling a list of all our M365 users home drive source locations to migrate the data into their respective OneDrive’s. Completing this exercise we found that not everyone in our organisation actually had OneDrive provisioned.
Information online as to the reasons why was scant, with much of what others describe around licensing issues not being applicable in this situation.
When you look at a user’s OneDrive information within the M365 admin center, you will see this:
If a user in your tenancy doesn’t have OneDrive, you will see this message.
I’m not 100% sure why these users are without OneDrive as the accounts checked hadn’t been blocked. However they have not had any sign in activity for the last 30 days – although we have set our retention for OneDrive to be 90 days before deleting so it’s still a bit of a mystery.
The solution
Microsoft have provided documentation on how to pre-provision OneDrive for users in your organization which is exactly what we needed. The documentation details two ways in which you can approach the problem:
Pre-provision OneDrive for users – Create a list of users who need OneDrive > save as a txt file > run PowerShell to provision OneDrive for those users
The script should loop through until it completes for all users in your tenancy. You should see it looping through like in the example screenshot below:
Example of once the PowerShell script has been run, the script looping through each user in your tenancy.
Issues & resolution steps
Before I start describing my experiences of running the script, I am a relative PowerShell novice so forgive my ignorance if some of this is elementary. I had some trouble getting the script to run, which I think was more to do with the cmdlets I had installed (I’ve had a new laptop recently) rather than the script.
Issues with Connect-sposervice
I had issues connecting to the SharePoint admin center, I was receiving an error like this:
Issues connecting with the sposervice cmdlet.
I found this post on koskila.net that is really helpful and may help others with similar issues. In the end I got the script to run by removing the $credential variable at the start of the Microsoft script and connecting to the msolservice and sposervice directly.
With the $credential variable removed, I was prompted to login twice, once for msolservice, and again for sposervice, which then authenticated moved on to the next stage of the script.
Example of my changes to the script to allow me to run properly.
Update: The SharePoint Starter Kit is now a solution that’s available to apply from the SharePoint Online Provisioning Service: https://provisioning.sharepointpnp.com/
This is second part of my two-part series on how to provision and deploy the SharePoint starter kit into your SharePoint tenant. You can read part one below:
At this point all the pre-requirement steps should be completed, our Office 365 tenant should have an app catalog site, a dev site collection and a custom user profile service property.
Download the SharePoint Stater Kit
In order to deploy the SharePoint Starter Kit to your tenant you will need to clone or download a copy of the repository. I downloaded a copy of the repository and followed the steps below:
Save the files locally and make a note of their location
Downloading the SharePoint Starter Kit
Deploy the SharePoint Starter Kit
Now for the fun part…deploying the SharePoint Starter Kit to your tenant! Before you begin, make sure you have run the following cmdlet to connect to your tenant:
Deploying the SharePoint Starter Kit in PowerShell
Once the SharePoint Starter Kit has concluded it will provision 3 site collections as well as other tenant level settings like themes, site designs and taxonomy term sets. You will be able to access all the site collections and web parts deployed through the starter kit in your tenant either through the new SharePoint admin center or through the SharePoint app in Office 365.
SharePoint Stuff 