The Baretta

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This post is related to a larger group of posts called  Migrate SharePoint to Office 365 - Planning & Steps ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've gone with a Publishing Site Collection so that I can use the 'Alternate CSS URL' in Site Settings > Master Page. First off, thanks to the following websites which helped get me started: http://blog.sharepointexperience.com/2015/02/sptechcon-austin-february-2015/#more-2766 http://blog.sharepointexperience.com/2015/01/to-brand-or-not-to-brand/ Here's what the end result will look like (if you have the same fonts): Now for the CSS... /* Design By : Brett Randall */ /*     Design Colours: Greens/Greys/Blues */ /*     Last Modified : 28/02/2017 */ /*     Description: CSS to rebrand SharePoint Online Publishing Site Collection that is...

What Nintex Workflow has an action to create a site automatically in SharePoint, but it's functionality is quite limited.  You can't create groups and you can't add staff to those groups.  This tutorial shows you how to create a Nintex workflow to automate the whole process using SharePoint Web Services. Why As most SharePoint administrators are aware, it's ALWAYS a bad idea to give staff the ability to create SharePoint sites.  They will end up creating them for the wrong purposes, will not maintain them, no retention policies will get assigned to them, etc. However, you don't want to restrict your users creative freedom.  You want to govern it in a manageable way. In order to keep track of all your SharePoint sites, we need to ensure that when we allow staff to create sites/content, it is being properly tagged with the right information.  As long as you are logging & tagging sites with extra data, you can easily govern and manage those sites far i...

This article stems from another article explaining how to  Automate Site & Group Creation with Nintex Workflow 2010 What Use Powershell to retrieve detailed data about the permission levels on a particular site Why I was looking for a way to automate Site & Group creation using nintex workflows.  In order to create groups, you need to call a SharePoint Web Service.  That Web Service requires an input value called 'permissionMask (int)'. This powershell script will allow you to find the correct permission Mask related to your particular environment & permission levels. How Jump onto your WFE, open up SharePoint Powershell as admin and paste in the following code (with the site you wish to retrieve data for: ## Get site permissions using SharePoint 2010 web service in powershell $uri=" http://rootsite/subsite /_vti_bin/Permissions.asmx?wsdl"  ## $siteName is a string which contains the site name for which you need to get the permissions [St...

What I've begun setting up the governance model for SharePoint Online and was working out the best way to ensure when I give someone SharePoint Administration Access that they automatically have full access to administer every Site Collection. My method is to use the 'SharePoint Service Administrator' Group.  This is the group that you are added to when your O365 User Account is assigned the 'SharePoint Administrator' Role. Why My reasoning is that way when a staff member joins the team you only need to get them added to one spot and they are good to get on with the work. Problem Occasionally you will want to check that the right staff have access.  How do you report on who is a member of that group!?  I searched high and low to no avail.  When that fails, there's only one choice...  Powershell. Here's the script you need to run in order to bring back a list of every user that has been given SharePoint Adminstrator Access: #Connection to Off...

Did you click the 'return to classic SharePoint' button in SharePoint Online and are unsure how to get the New Experience back? You need to clear all cookies from your browser and load up the site again. There doesn't seem to be any button in the GUI that allows you to switch the new experience back on for your specific profile. Update 27/07/2017 : Microsoft have advised that they are adding a 'return to Modern UI' button so people can quickly switch back and forth

WORK-IN-PROGRESS A repository of resources containing what you need to consider before you migrate your On-Premises SharePoint environment to Office 365 (SharePoint Online). This area contains in-depth detail around the planning stage for your SharePoint Migration and how to gather the data you need to be properly prepared come migration day (in no particular order): [[Measuring On-Premises SharePoint Bandwidth]] [[Gathering Storage Requirements for SharePoint Online]] [[Backup & Recovery Options]] --[[3rd Party Tools]] --[[Preservation Hold]] ----[[Calculating Storage Requirements for Preservation Hold]] [[Migrating Content]] Branding --[[Employee Experience]] [[Information Architecture]] --[[Data Retention & Versioning Policies]] --[[Archiving Data]]

If you need to export a list of staff from an Active Directory Group, follow these steps.  Allows you to gather all the names & usernames of staff in a particular group and save the information into Excel. Step By Step How To: Open up Excel > Power Query Tab Click From Other Sources > From Active Directory: (In Excel 2016 this is found under: Data Tab > New Query > From Other Sources > From Active Directory) screenshots from Excel 2016 on left, Excel 2010 w/ Power Query Add-on right A popup will ask you to enter your domain name.  It should already be populated with the correct information but if not, input your companies domain name & Click OK: In the Navigator that opens up, expand your domain tree and double click group: You should now see a list of all groups in Active Directory in the Power Query Editor: In order to find & filter for a specific Group, Click the Down-Arrow for the 'distinguishedName' column > ...

There is a lot of hype about businesses moving to Office 365, but what exactly is it and why is it so popular?  There are a waft of people (even in IT!) that have never heard of Office 365.  Over the next few months I will help demystify Office 365 & all the things great products that come with it. Question #1: What is Office 365 (O365)? O365 is a suite of products provided by Microsoft that can be purchased for a monthly or yearly fee. There are two basic types of subscriptions, Personal or Business. As part of a personal subscription , you are provided with the latest version of Microsoft Office (2016) which can be installed on any device. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Publisher, Outlook, etc. As part of a business subscription, in addition to a copy of Microsoft Office 2016 for all staff, you also get the option of using any of the list of products below which I will go into more detail on later: Yammer Skype for Business Exchange Online ...

On the 28th-29th April 2016, I attended the Digital Workplace Conference in Melbourne.  Here are my notes & thoughts about one of the sessions. Session:  From Intranet to Digital Workplace Speaker: James Robertson - @james_steptwo Session Takeaways: Intranets should achieve the objectives of the business.  Shouldn't be used for any one team to push their agenda or workload onto others. James' 3 simple steps for building a Digital Workplace: 1. Have projects to utilise the technology currently available 2. Develop a strategy for the technology that is on the horizon 3. Have a vision  to justify what paths you choose & that plainly explains what you are trying to achieve  6x2 Methodology - James' every-6-months approach to choosing the most critical & beneficial projects for the business.  As well as how to get executive buy in for your vision. A Week in the Digital Workspace  - A vision of how we will work in the...

On the 28th-29th April 2016, I attended the Digital Workplace Conference in Melbourne.  Here are my notes & thoughts about one of the sessions. Session:  Gather-Decide-Act: Three Business Process Case Studies That Transform Data Collection Into Inspired Action Speaker: Mike Fitzmaurice -  @MikeFitz Session Takeaways: Simple solutions using SharePoint lists and Nintex Forms to gather data easily Nintex Forms allow you to fill out forms in offline mode on a mobile device   Offline mode works like your email outbox.  It holds onto the data until there is an internet connection Mike's theory is that if you show a company how to collect data with a simple form, they will see the value of the solution & be inspired to act on building solutions for their other problems Tip: make data collection as simple as possible.  Don't build complicated forms Nintex Workflow also has the functionality to generate contract documents using the data captur...

Logged into DocAve today to move some content from one site to another, only to come across this error as soon as I logged in: "The timer service is down, which may cause the manager service stop working.  Please ensure your timer service is started." My first thought: Don't care, as long as I can still complete my task.  So went to Content Manager, tried to expand my farm in the tree-view, only to get this error! An error occurred while loading the data.  Please view the logs for details. I'm the kind of man that uses Logs as a last resort, so here's how I fixed it: Logged onto the server that is hosting the DocAve 6 Manager, then opened up the 'Manager Restart Service Tool' for DocAve from the Start Menu & restarted all three services: Once they restarted, tried logging back into DocAve, but turns out one of my Server Agents was still down:   View of Agent Monitor which can be found by navigating to Control Panel ...

Preamble  ------------------ We've all done it before, built a task list,  exported SharePoint list data to excel , created a pivot table & chart to show status in each column.  Below is a quick example of what you can get by doing something simple like that.  It's great for getting a snapshot of the task list, but terrible for reporting on team performance. export to excel Pivot-table & chart of a task list What  ------------------ Reporting isn't just about showing stats on how your tasks are tracking.  Sure, it gives you an idea of what you have achieved over a set period of time which is great information for upper management.  But it doesn't help you improve your customer experience. What if you could develop an automated report that could track every task individually?   What if you could see how long a particular task sat at a particular status?   What would happen if you found out that tasks spend...

What:  Surprisingly had some trouble with this simple task, so here's how you can avoid wasting 20 minutes of your life.  If you have a list column that is of type Date AND Time, it can be difficult to set it to the current date and time inside a workflow. Why:  You might like to do this if you were logging changes to items to a separate list for reporting on later. How (quick): Create a string variable called 'CurrentDateTime', set the string variable to equal 'CurrentDate[space]CurrentTime'.  Set your DateTime list column to equal the workflow variable CurrentDateTime. How (detailed): Create a Workflow Variable called ' CurrentDateTime ' of type ' Single line of text ' Create a 'Set Variable' step and set CurrentDateTime to equal value: Current Date[space]Current Time (these two values can be found under common variables tab). Update the field on the list item to equal the Workflow variable you just set.  In my ...

What is this?   A tutorial on how to set up a cool list on SharePoint where staff can manage their favourite links, ideally on the homepage of your intranet. This keeps all their commonly accessed web-stuff 1 click away, and it means you do not have to fill up your SharePoint navigation with 100's of useless links that only 5-10 people use. Woah that sounds sweet, how is that even possible!?   Well I'm going to show you how, in this tutorial we are using SharePoint Online, because then this post will be relevant for more than a year. Step 1:  Create a Custom List called 'Personal Shortcuts' by clicking Settings > Add an app , and selecting 'Custom List'. Step 2: Create a new column in your new list by clicking the List Tab > Create Column .  Call the new column ' Shortcut ', Set the Type as ' Hyperlink or Picture ' & make sure the column requires a value . Step 3: Now we need to remove the Title column from this list...

I'll make this real easy.   IF EVERY SINGLE USER NEEDS IT , then it can go on global navigation. Otherwise, you're wasting precious navigation space for links nobody wants. Still really need a selection of staff to have one-click access to something?  That's fine, you should look at implementing a personalised list of shortcuts on the homepage that each user can manage themselves.  That way that specialised safety system they access everyday takes up their screen space and no one else's. That brings me to : How To Set Up a Personalised Shortcuts List on a SharePoint Site This is almost a golden rule for me, what're your thoughts?

**UPDATE: This post is now outdated & I suggest using SharePoint Hub Sites to get Cross-Site Collection Navigation I will start by saying:   This solution sucks, but I've done my fair share of research/testing/swearing so you don't have to.  This is the best option you can currently achieve with OOTB (Out-of-the-box) functionality. Problem:  Many large companies moving to SharePoint Online have the same problem.  They have enough data that it needs to be spread out across multiple site collections.  How the data should be split up is a different story .  The fact is, they would like to have consistent Global Navigation across all site collections. Reasons why you would want the same global navigation across all site collections:  Visibility of everything that exists within the SharePoint Online Tenant Consistent navigation simplifies the User Experience, allowing them to be comfortable in any Site Collection without having to remember a ...