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.
Posted at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.
Posted at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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:
The root causes vary, but there are two primary categories of issues:
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!
Posted at 07:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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
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.
Posted at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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: |
I haven't watched this series yet: |
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 Get started with formulas in PowerApps Get started with forms in PowerApps Top 5 Tips for Designing Apps that Mean Business Getting started with PowerApps controls
PowerApps Related Videos by other people |
Developing Business Applications with Power Apps and ...
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Get started with the Common Data Service Pro TopicsDeploying your PowerApps applications Deep dive on PowerApps formulas Rebuilding an InfoPath Designer form in PowerApps Connecting to on-premises data from PowerApps Application Lifecycle with the new Save and publish options in PowerApps Pro Tips for Connecting to Excel on OneDrive for Business from PowerApps Optimizing Connectors in PowerApps and Microsoft Flow Pro Tips for InfoPath Designers Transitioning to PowerApps - Part 1 App Designer TopicsLook behind the curtain with one of the PowerApps Developers - A closer look at templates: Marie Hoeger Rapidly build applications with PowerApps Studio |
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Posted at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.
Posted at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.
Posted at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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:
Posted at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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:
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.
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:
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:
Well Microsoft, guess what?
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.
Posted at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Modern SharePoint Library, Office Client and SharePoint