Microsoft Archives

SharePoint Modern Gets a Facelift With Branding Features

SharePoint Modern gets a facelift with new branding features. Have you noticed? Modern SharePoint got a facelift with new branding features that you can now customize. There are four new branding features: themes, headers, navigation, and footer. Let’s take a quick tour. Note: To change and customize your page, you will find the four features under the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner. Themes - You can pick from predefined color themes in SharePoint Modern. The color schemes have been designed for better readability. In addition to the predefined color themes, you can add and customize the supplementary color themes to enhance the color contrast based on your preferences. Header - You now have the option to change the header and the overall look of your page. For the standard header, you have the logo, site title, and navigation. With the new branding feature, you now have the option to ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:26+00:00

Developing and Deploying SharePoint Framework on a Mac

Developing in SharePoint Framework (SPFx) or any Microsoft technology on Mac is new to .Net Core and highlights Microsoft’s shift to becoming open source. The value of developing SPFx on a Mac? You don’t need to a setup windows machine or virtual desktop to be able to build, compile, and deploy SharePoint Framework. Microsoft’s shift to being Mac and Linux friendly opens the field for developers to use their preferred system and still produce Microsoft based products. Development of SPFx on a Mac is simple, and the basic setup is straight forward. You’ll first need to have Node Package Manager installed, as that is the tool we use to pull from the Microsoft repositories to get the generator. The generator is an SPFx Yeoman generator. With the basics set up, you’ll also want a code editor, such as the Sublime Text. Pro tip: Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code is free. The step ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:26+00:00

Excel Automation Add-In

Today we are going to cover Excel Automation Add-In which allows you to set your own User Defined Functions. Now, before we jump in, I had a desire to write functions using C#. And I wanted them to be deployable, so not just linked to an excel macro worksheet. With those two requirements, there are a few ways to write Excel Add-Ins which allow User Defined Functions (UDF’s). There are COM add-ins, Automation Add-ins, and XLL Add-ins. For the sake of not using a library to build the XLL Add-In, I was sitting between using a COM Add-In or an Automation Add-In. When researching, I discovered Automation Add-Ins are simpler to set up initially, and also are extensible to the full feature functionality of a COM Add-In. Thus I settled on building an Automation Add-In. Now, to dig into how to get the ball rolling. Getting Set Up Firstly, you’ll ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:26+00:00

Upgrade Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams

On July 30th Microsoft formally announced that Skype for Business Online was going to be retiring and a lot of our clients have been reaching out to us wondering how this will impact them. “We aren’t ready for Microsoft Teams.” “We don’t know what Teams is.” “We use Skype, what do we do?” We can help you answer those questions and concerns. Microsoft has shared that Skype for Business Online is going to be retired on July 31st, 2021. Which gives you plenty of time to learn and implement Teams into your organization. However, after that date, the Skype for Business Online Service will be completely inaccessible. As of September 1st, of this year all new Office 365 customers are going to be directly using Teams for chat, meetings, and calls. A disclaimer that we want to make sure you know is the Skype consumer brand, product, and Skype for ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:26+00:00

Best From SharePoint North America Conference 2019

I have been involved in the technology industry, in the SharePoint community since 2007, just about the same time when SharePoint gained its popularity. This year, I got my first big chance to attend the 2019 SharePoint North America conference in Las Vegas and it was PHENOMENAL. There is a whole variety of things the SharePoint Conference covers, which made choosing what session to attend difficult. Every track really applied to me as I am a developer, a configure-er, an admin, and a user adoption and collaboration specialist. I went through a lot of different sessions at the conference and I would love to share my key take aways from the conference and what stood out for me from the keynotes. https://youtu.be/v9N72pzeMX0 1. SharePoint SharePoint Home Site: Built in the SharePoint modern interface, it mirrors a lot of the same functionality that we saw in previous on-prem versions and ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:27+00:00

Phase out, Check-in and Check-out?

With shared storage of documents, overwriting other author’s work has historically been a concern. Two people would open the same document and made changes to the same content and whom over saves last wins and the other work is lost….. So as good technicians we have historically fought that scenario by requiring Checkout before editing. SharePoint would do this for us as soon as a user edited the file. A lock would be placed on the file until it is closed. Brilliant! I know those were good days. Question: With SharePoint online and the co-authoring options, is check-out and check-in a required default. I am sure there are still scenarios when you need to check out the file for exclusive access and control. Like you want to format the whole thing or apply document-wide content or settings. What is the process and best use of the document check-in and ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:30+00:00

Teams button is missing in Outlook… What Do I Do?

The Issue: You do not have the icon to add Teams connectivity to your Outlook appointments (see below). The Solution: 1. Open the Teams Client application Start > Type the word Teams > Press enter 2. Click your profile picture in the upper right corner 3. Click the button: Check for Updates Look close for Messages in Teams Note: Teams will display a few messages to you to let you know when the updates are complete. 4. Close Outlook 5. Reopen Outlook 6. Create a new appointment and the Teams connectivity button will be there. …. </Boom> A full computer reboot may be needed if you have not installed windows updates in a while.

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:31+00:00

Check and Configure SharePoint User Permissions

Ever have a SharePoint gotcha problem before? It’s highly likely that your answer is yes and you are not alone. SharePoint has lots of gotchas and it can be difficult to troubleshoot sometimes. However, there are some really simple yet powerful features that are built right into the interface. Site collection administrators will find these features easily accessible and usable to trouble shoot why somebody doesn’t have access to certain resources. This blog covers the features that allow you to check guest permissions in SharePoint. Scenario 1: Problem - Users are granted access to a site and they start navigating until they can’t add or update items. Solution - Bring up list setting and check permission dialog Type in the user name in question and check their permissions to the list Review all the permissions that the user is assigned throughout the site Alter and modify the additional permission and ...

Clay Osborn2023-02-16T16:01:31+00:00

Reduce Noise Level and Manage Membership in Microsoft Teams

If you have a large family as I do, you know that sometimes the holiday party gets really noisy because there are just a lot of people. Same goes for Microsoft Teams within, especially in a large organization. Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can focus on in Microsoft Teams to effectively manage the membership and reduce the noise level. Let’s begin with reducing the chatty noise. There are two settings that you can add into your large scoped teams: General channels - Change the post permission setting to allow just the owner to post, or, create an alert so posting will notify everyone (which is recommended for large teams). @ Mentions - Configure what type of mentions are allowed or enabled within the team. Mention @ a person: Mention someone by name Mention @ an app: Do an app mention for a channel, then everybody within that ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:32+00:00

Microsoft Teams Naming Convention

Let’s start with a question. What do you call a fake noodle? ........ An IMPASTA How does this dad joke relate to this blog topic? I get into that below. Does this ever happen to you: The proliferation of groups or teams in Microsoft Teams or Office 365 is so vast that you don't know which one you should join? The nature of Teams or Groups aims to foster collaboration within organizations. As an administrator, you want to provide a certain degree of autonomy to your users to foster collaboration across or among themselves. This degree of autonomy leads to a “self-service” scenario where people can just create any kind of groups as they seem fit. As a result, a lot of groups can be created with very similar names. This is a major issue from a user’s perspective if there are a lot of Office 365 Groups or Microsoft ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:32+00:00

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