But Does It Work?

Microsoft Modern Libraries Have and Display "Secret" Information About Creation Dates

As most SharePoint/OneDrive Users know, on Office 365 there are ways of migrating files and folders from one location to another so that all the native metadata (Modified, Modified By, Created, Created By) is maintained and not altered.  There is now a way to detect when files have been touched with (moved, restored, or even tampered)

As an example, if you have a file that resides in a modern library, you can move that file to another folder in the same library or to a distinct library and the metadata values for Modified, Created, Modified By, and Created By will remain unchanged.  The picture below shows how one can initiate a file move without having these values changed.

 

I have discovered, thanks to one of my very sharp clients, that this works fairly well, but not perfectly.

In the figure below you can see that I have now opened the Information Panel that was not showing in the image above.  This picture reveals that the file was "created" 36 minutes ago, and not on or before November 20th.

For those of you who need to do careful forensic work on files and folders, this may be helpful to you.  The same behavior happens when you use tools like Sharegate or Metalogix for migrations or bulk meta data editing.  Furthermore AvePoint for Content restoration also leaves behind this-tell tail sign. 

 

Content Migration from BOX.com to OneDrive/SharePoint: Comparing the tools (Metalogix, Sharegate, and AvePoint)

I was recently asked to evaluate the thee tools (Metalogix [Essentials for Office 365], Sharegate [Migration], and AvePoint [Fly Migration]) for a migration from BOX.com to OneDrive and SharePoint.

This post is a really short and sweet comparison of the three tools.

Spoiler alert:  I liked  Sharegate Migration the best, by far.  Although you must use Powershell scripts, they are not too difficult and Sharegate does a good job explaining what you need to do.  If you are confused by the online documentation, Sharegate's support is superb!

Sharegate was robust, while Metalogix Essentials for Office 365 was not.  Metalogix felt like it was still under development and there were a number of show stopping bugs that I could not get around.

1. Metalogix failed on numerous file naming issues.  Something as simple as have three dots in a row: x...dcox.
2. Metalogix had trouble migrating all the various versions of a file with fidelity.  SOmetimes the versions failed to copy.  SOmetimes they copied, but they were ein the wrong order.
3. Metalogix was quite slow, slower than Sharegate's tool.
4. Metalogix was 6 times as expensive as Sharegate for the content we were migrating.  Furthermore, Metalogix charges you per megabyte of data transferred, Sharegate does not.
5. Sharegate's support was superb.
6. I did not kick the tires very hard on the AvePoint tool.  The major limitation that had me stop was that they only support a migration from BOX.com to OneDrive.  They do not support a migration directly to SharePoint.  AvePoint suggests that you migrate content to OneDrive and then use a different technique to get content over to SharePoint.

 

SharePoint (Office 365) & Microsoft Word - Issues with External Users

Over the years I have had many clients in the Pharmaceutical industry.  They use SharePoint (Office 365) heavily and one of the primary ways of using SharePoint is to collaborate with external partners on writing documents, using Microsoft Word.   Sounds straight forward, but it isn't.

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen issues with external partners not able to open and edit Word files directly from SharePoint.  4 out of 10 times I have to advise the partners to follow the steps:

1. Download the file
2. Edit the file that is on your local machine
3. Upload the file back to SharePoint.

The root causes vary, but there are two primary categories of issues:

1. There is a version mismatch between Microsoft Word and SharePoint  The partner is not using the latest version of Word.
2. 'The partner for some reason is logged into Word with a different account than the account that is logged into SharePoint.

As an example of #2, I just saw the following:  The external partner had a OneDrive and was logged into the OneDrive with a different account than the account used to login to our SharePoint site.  This meant that Word was also logged in with those credentials.

The number of hours lost on these issues is phenomenal.  Many of the companies I work with are ready to make a switch.  They do not experience these issues when the files are stored in BOX, Dropbox, Egnyte, etc...

Please Microsoft fix these issues!

 

EdX Has an Excellent Course on PowerApps and Flow...

For those of you that have been looking for a good way to learn PowerApps and Flow, especially if you were using InfoPath and Designer Workflows or NINTEX, I highly recommend the EdX course

Developing Business Applications with PowerApps and Microsoft Flow

If you want to get a certificate at the end of the course, it will cost you $100.00, otherwise it is free.

 

It is a well thought out course and the assignments are excellent.  The assignments are actually up-to-date and the features they ask you to use are all available on the PowerApps and Flow sites.

 

Links to Excellent Resources On PowerApps and Flow

o,

 

Microsoft has been touting PowerApps and Flow for a while now, but I have found it difficult to find good training materials about these.  As I find them, I will be posting them in this blog post  I hope that this helps.

 

PowerApps	Flow
Audrie Gordon at Microsoft does a superb job of explaining PowerApps.   How to build cascading drop-downs using PowerApps: Cascading drop downs for single line of text in Power	I haven't watched this series yet: Guided Learning from Microsoft
Audrie has a guest presenter introducing PowerApps and how they will be used with SharePoint lists and the browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dCwg6wtViI Get started with gallery controls Register and watch now Get started with formulas in PowerApps Register and watch now Get started with forms in PowerApps by Audrie Gordon Watch now Top 5 Tips for Designing Apps that Mean Business Watch now Getting started with PowerApps controls Watch now   PowerApps Related Videos by other people	Developing Business Applications with Power Apps and ... www.edx.org
Get started with the Common Data Service by Jono Luk Watch now Pro Topics Deploying your PowerApps applications by James Oleinik Watch now Deep dive on PowerApps formulas by Greg Lindhorst Watch now Rebuilding an InfoPath Designer form in PowerApps by Daniel Christian Watch now Connecting to on-premises data from PowerApps by Archana Nair and Dimah Zaidalkilani Watch now Application Lifecycle with the new Save and publish options in PowerApps by Karthik Bharathy Watch now Pro Tips for Connecting to Excel on OneDrive for Business from PowerApps by Audrie Gordon Watch now Optimizing Connectors in PowerApps and Microsoft Flow by Theresa Palmer-Boroski Watch now Pro Tips for InfoPath Designers Transitioning to PowerApps - Part 1 by Audrie Gordon Watch now App Designer Topics Look behind the curtain with one of the PowerApps Developers - A closer look at templates: Marie Hoeger by Audrie Gordon Watch now Rapidly build applications with PowerApps Studio by Karthik Bharathy Watch now
Developing Business Applications with Power Apps and ... www.edx.org

 

 

Microsoft Support's Newest Phrase: "It's working as expected" - What we Used to Call Bugs.

Over the past three days I have clearly identified 3 SharePoint search bugs and written them up clearly.  To Microsoft Support's credit they have followed the steps and agreed with my assessment.  In each case, they have said "It's working as expected".   Uggg!  Come on Microsoft, can't you do better than that?

For my readers' benefit, I thought I would share the "expected" behavior, or as I like to say, the bugs.

 

1. Images stored in OneDrive do not display, until you visit OneDrive: In my last post, Using SharePoint to Find Pictures, I discussed how one can modify the LargeImage display template to show pictures that are stored in a Document Libraries.Once you have implemented this, you should be able to see pictures that are stored in OneDrive.  The bug is that if you do a search and find pictures that are stored in a OneDrive library (your ONeDrive, or someone that has shared content with you), the pictures do not render, unless you have visited OneDrive in the current Browser session.  What you see is:
   
   
   
   The problem is that SharePoint has not received proper authentication to OneDrive.  So, in the same browser session (you can use a new tab), if you now visit OneDrive and run the search again, you will see:
   
   
   
2. Showing a Refiner for Modified By in SharePoint Search is Buggy: So, you want to show a refiner for who was the last person that modified a file or its properties in a SharePoint library.
   
   There are a number of articles on this subject, but the best recommendation is that you use a RefinableString in the Search Schema, say RefinableString117, and you map the following three properties to it:  ows_Modified_x0020_By, ows_ModifiedBy, LastModifiedBy
   
   
   
   When you do this, it turns out that the refiner is based on Microsoft Office's Modified By property, which is not always the same as the SharePoint property.  So, if you open a PowerPoint file, for example, and you look at the last person who modified the file, this is the value that is used in the Refiner.  This might be the person who changed the file last year, but today I am uploading the file to SharePoint and I am the one indicated by SharePoint as the last person who modified the file.  The SharePoint refiner RefinableString117 gets this wrong. 
   
   Marc Anderson pointed out that instead of mapping RefinableString117 to the properties mentioned above, I should use the property: ows_q_USER_Editor, then that should work.  Marc is partially correct. The issue is:
   
   The text format of the names that appear are ugly.
   
   
   This can be remedied by adding a little JavaScript to the page and doing some text manipulation.
   
   
   
3. Using ows_q_USER_Editor to show the Modified By value does not show anything for documents that are stored in OneDrive: Yes, the title says it all.  If you expect to see the Modified By refiner for documents that are stored in a OneDrive library, you are out of luck.  Microsoft Support tells me that this is expected behavior.

Using SharePoint Search to Find Pictures...

I am working with a client to setup an enterprise search center.  The search center allows users to pick the type of content they are looking for.
The Images option will search for jpg, png, bmp, etc in Image Libraries and Document Libraries.  We decided to use the out of the box display template, LargeImage, that can be found in the Web Parts folder of the Mater Pages/Display Templates library.

When we did do this, we discovered that images in Image Libraries displayed just fine, but images that were in Document Libraries did not render properly:

That was really ugly!  My colleague Matt Duval figured this out.

if you look at the LargeImage template you will see line 8 looks like:

<mso:ManagedPropertyMapping msdt:dt="string">'Picture URL'{Picture URL}:'PublishingImage;PictureURL;PictureThumbnailURL','Link URL'{Link URL}:'Path','Line 1'{Line 1}:'Title','Line 2'{Line 2}:'Description','SecondaryFileExtension','ContentTypeId','IsAllDayEvent'</mso:ManagedPropertyMapping>

It turns out that images that are in Document Libraries are not found in the three URL properties:

'PublishingImage;PictureURL;PictureThumbnailURL' 

Therefore we needed to add a property that did contain the URL of images in Document libraries.  This brings us to this slight variation of line 8

<mso:ManagedPropertyMapping msdt:dt="string">'Picture URL'{Picture URL}:'PublishingImage;PictureURL;PictureThumbnailURL;DefaultEncodingURL','Link URL'{Link URL}:'Path','Line 1'{Line 1}:'Title','Line 2'{Line 2}:'Description','SecondaryFileExtension','ContentTypeId','IsAllDayEvent'</mso:ManagedPropertyMapping>

The additional property DefaultEncodingURL has been added.  By doing this, you now get:

A very simple fix to a problem that took us a long time to figure out.

 

Have you Ever Thought That Office 365's Performance is Erractic, from One Day to The Next?

I have a client that has asked me to look into the performance of their Office 365 Tenant.  They have been getting complaints from users.

Just by luck, I happen to capture the network traffic using the Developer Tools in Internet Explorer on 7/25/2017 & on 7/31/2017.  I think you will be interested to see what I found.

I compared the same exact page, you can see that Microsoft is really changing things from one day to the next.

https://companyxyz.sharepoint.com/sites/perf/SitePages/Home.aspx

I did this on 7/25/2017 & 7/31/2017

Couple of things to notice:

1. The files changed from day to day
1. The files that are loaded by the browser on 7/25/2017
   Come from:  https://static.sharepointonline.com/bld/_layouts/15/16.0.6712.1210
2. The files that are loaded by the browser on 7/31/2017
   Come from: https://static.sharepointonline.com/bld/_layouts/15/16.0.6719.1208

1. The number of objects that are referenced on different days:
1. The # of objects that are referenced on 7/25/2017 is: 108
2. The # of objects that are referenced on 7/31/2017 is: 99
   
   
2. The load time over 0.5 seconds:
1. 17 Network operations that took longer than 0.5 Seconds on 7/25/2017 and the aggregate of these operations took  18.08 seconds
2. 5   Network operations that took longer than 0.5 Seconds on 7/31/2017 and the aggregate of these operations took  5.49 seconds

Microsoft! Microsoft! Microsoft! When Will You Ever Learn to Pay Attention to Details?

In this Post I list three lessons that I learned the hard way.  I believe these lessons will be helpful to people who are trying to use Office 2016 client applications in conjunction with SharePoint and OneDrive. I also think that Microsoft would be well advised to look at these issues and fix the issues. 

I am working with a new client.  It is a startup in the Bio Tech industry and they are trying to get used to using MS Word in conjunction with SharePoint Online (Office 365.)   Everyone is at a different skill level, but they need to collaborate in writing documents and it is extremely painful getting everyone on the same page (no pun intended.)  The company has a dozen people who have the following mix of environments:

• About 50/50 on PC vs Mac
• Numerous browsers are in use (IE, Edge, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari)
• Some external people, who brought their own version of Office to the party (Home & Business)

The people in the company were in crunch mode, so we decided to use a vanilla library with all the defaults, no special features selected on the library.  We decided to try to leverage Simultaneous editing.  A number of users had used this feature in Google Docs and they loved it.  Well it was a mistake to try to use it with MS-Word.  

• The first thing that we noticed was that the person who had the MS-Word SKU Home & Business could not participate.
  (It took me one entire week to verify with Microsoft Support that simultaneous editing is not supported by the Home & Business SKU)
  
  
• Second we noticed that the experience was not reliable for people who were on a Mac.

We finally decided to ditch it and not have people editing documents simultaneously.

Lesson # 1  Microsoft, please get the Simultaneous Editing Working Perfectly 

 

Next, we decided that we wanted to make people Check Out files when they opened a file for editing.  We did not want to make people go through the steps:

1. Check Out the File
2. Open the File
3. Save the File
4.  Check the file back in.

Instead we decided to have them click on the filename, which caused the file to open and show the famous yellow bar in Word, which presents a Check Out button.

How simple could it get?

We selected the following settings for the library:

• Open in the client application
• Require Check Out

Well Microsoft, guess what?

• By default the modern view is turned on.  When you click on the file name, it launches in Word Online.  It does not respect the "Open in the client application."   WHY NOT, MICROSOFT?
  
  
•  Okay, so we forced the library to open in classic mode.  Now when you click on the file name, it opens the files in the client application.  Um... Not so fast.  It does open it in the Client Application (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) if you are opening the file in Edge or Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari.  COME ON MICROSOFT! 

Lesson # 2  Microsoft, please get Modern View working better before you foist it on us and please deal with browsers in a consistent manner.

 

One more really annoying thing.  I have to confess that I do not understand Office's authentication model.  However I know a problem when I see it.  Occasionally, when people open an Office file from SharePoint or OneDrive,  the Office application launches and opens the file, but the application is not "properly logged in."  It shows that it is actually logged in, but it will not allow the user to save back to SharePoint or OneDrive.  The solution is to "Sign Out" of the Office application.  Once the user signs out, they need to sign back in.  Next the application needs to be closed and needs to be relaunched by opening the office file again from SharePoint or OneDrive.

This is particularly disturbing to my clients, because they open files and work on them for quite some time before they try to save them.  Suddenly when they try to save the file, they are told they cannot save the file back to SharePoint.  I must make sure to alert every user of this issue.  If I do not, and people run into this issue, they get incredibly angry, and I do sympathize with them. 

Lesson # 3  Microsoft, there is something strange going on with Office authentication.  I have worked with support and they do not understand the issues.  Please figure out the issues and fix this.

 

Office 365 (SharePoint Online) Search - A Eureka Moment: Files Not Being Found

I am developing and migrating a new document store for a client that is moving files from SharePoint On-Premises (2010) to Office 365.  As part of the new solution we are planning on being heavy users of search.  It is therefore not surprising that on every step of the way I have been testing search.  I was bogged down for 3 weeks focused on an issue: Search was not finding my files.  Almost every day I met with Microsoft Support and they were stymied, albeit it was over the Christmas and New Years holidays.

I am writing this post to explain what I found and hope that I can save you some time.  My work was focused on search being able to find files.  Interestingly enough, my friends and colleagues Marc Anderson and Julie Turner were working on a similar issue and they helped me figure out the issue.  In their case they were focused on lists and they were using REST calls, while I was using the SharePoint Search Center.  Marc has written his findings up and they can be found here.

Before I explain the solution, let me provide a summary of the issue.

The Issue

I have a set of old resumes that I use for testing search.  They have some unique things in them that I can search for.  I have doctored them up over the years so that they are particularly good files to use for search testing.  In particular, in some of them I have the value for pi appearing (3.1415926) and in others I have the value for e (2.178.)   Some files I have been named Resume 3.1415926 as well as Resume 2.718.

Now when I search for "3.1415926," I expect to find all of the various versions of my resumes that have the number embedded in it or as part of the file name.   When I performed a search for these files using the search center, I always got back a single result.  If I searched for these files using the local library search I got back all the files.

As you can see in the pictures below, the screenshot on the left shows the results when I search for 3.1415926 in the local library. I  find all four files. While in the search center I find only a single file.

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I tested this same scenario on 4 completely independent Office 365 tenants, and Microsoft Support uploaded the files to their own test environment.  In all cases we got exactly the same results.

Now to make things more interesting, if I created completely new files and embedded 3.1415926 in the new files, search finds all variations of these files.

The Solution

After weeks of investigation, we found out what is going on.  The Microsoft Support staff that I worked with had no idea about this.  The search engine has a concept of "duplicate results."  I was unable to find any documentation about duplicate results. The search engine has some concept of duplicate results, but it is not documented how they decide on duplicates.

If you look at the Search Results web part and  click on Change Query, you will be able to set options on duplicates.

 

 

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On the dialog box that pops up, click on the Settings tab.  The last choice on the page is "Remove Duplicates."  By default, all SharePoint search results are set to "Remove duplicates."   This is the root cause of our problem.  It is a mystery what Microsoft's Search Engine considers as duplicate files.  What has become clear to me is that files that started their lives as older formats (Word 2003) and have remained in these formats, or have been upgraded, are all being confused by the search pipeline as being duplicates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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When I change the Remove Duplicates option to "Don't remove duplicates," you can see that I now get all the results.