SharePoint Archives

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

Nintex User Group: Simple workflows can use simple approaches

Sometimes technology makes some scenarios worse. At our last Nintex User Group in Detroit, I presented an approach for solving small scale static approval processes (it was met with raving reviews – and lots of questions). The issue: The use of Nintex Flexi-tasks and Approval tasks are the standard tools to notify and gather approval feedback. They are feature-rich, scalable, and easy to use. However, they present a few barriers: Reporting: The SharePoint list item and process data are not in the same data-set. Since approval tasks are stored in a separate list, and their comments, in order to get a consolidated view of both the SharePoint list item and process approval history, you have to combine the one to many data sets either on the SharePoint list form or through some tricks with excel. User Experience: Users have two locations they will need to access the SharePoint list item or document that ...

Clay Osborn2023-02-16T16:01:28+00:00

Use Report Builder 2012 to Visualize Your SharePoint Data

Quick and Dirty Reporting for SharePoint 2013 Applications - Part 1 Good restaurants are hard to come by. The combination of tasty food, atmosphere, price, and service is a mix many owners never master. The same is true in using SharePoint as a platform to develop a department sized application. Microsoft Access, Excel and Lotus notes have traditionally played in this “no-code” space. However, SharePoint offers: tables, forms, a workflow engine, but lacks a little in the reporting area. A simple tool I have been using to resolve this shortcoming is Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Report Builder (you can download it for free here). Report Builder is a free graphics interface tool that visualizes data in table or chart formats. Report Builder can connect to numerous data sources, but what I like about it is that a SharePoint list is one of them. One of the core benefits of this ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:29+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

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

Use Report Builder 2012 to Visualize Your SharePoint Data Part 2

Quick and Dirty Reporting for SharePoint 2013 Applications - Part 2 Last week I shared with you how to build a report with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Report Builder. This week we will dive into how to get these reports to display in your SharePoint environment. Part 2: Display the report in the SharePoint Navigate to a library within your SharePoint site. It can really be anywhere users who have access to the report data also have access. I like to use a library within the site where the source data is stored. Upload the report you just created and saved locally. Click the button: Open For a quick test, click on the report that just got uploaded. It should open and display live data. Note: this might be good enough, however you can also display it in a part of a page through a web part. Click the breadcrumb link to ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:39+00:00

3 Pillars of the High-Performance Digital Workplace

Ask any random group of employees how they’d characterize their company’s intranet and chances are their responses will be less than enthusiastic. Usually, there are good reasons: The intranet is a confusing labyrinth where vital information seemingly goes to hide; it’s a drab top-down exercise in one-way announcements; or it’s a rarely-viewed, seldom-updated ghost town. In other words, it’s neither the best business tool nor the best representation of a digitally-empowered business. But why does it matter? It is the cornerstone of your digital workplace that consolidates your organizational information and connects your employees. Red Level knows that a better digital workplace is not only possible, but it’s also easy to create and administer, provided companies take the right approach and use the right tools. On August 21, digital workplace architect and Microsoft MVP, Vlad Catrinescu will share “Three Pillars of a Great Digital Workplace Strategy” in a live webinar ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:40+00:00

SharePoint Migration and History

I have a client who asked me “Will I lose historical content approval information if it is disabled, migrate in some files and then enabled it?” Specifically, can I... Migrate in new files to a library with the SharePoint Content Approval and publishing workflow configured. Don’t trigger the publishing workflow. There would be so many new approvals Default new files to the status of Approved Don’t lose historical versions and approval status. A simple test example was needed to try this out. Create a Document Library: I created a new Document Library with the following: SharePoint Version: SharePoint Online App: Document library Experience: Classic Library Settings > Version Control > Content Approval: (Yes) Library Settings > Version Control > Version Settings > Major and Minor Drafts: (Yes) Library Settings > Workflows > Approval – SharePoint 2010 > Triggered on: Start this workflow to approve publishing a major version of an item. (Yes) Create Historical Data: Uploaded three test files They all start ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:40+00:00

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