Review of QIPoint SharePoint Broken Link Manager

Product overview by Vlad Catrinescu – requested by QIPoint, but thoughts are my own.

As SharePoint is becoming the central hub of information and publishing in enterprises across the world, employees rely on it daily to find required information for their day to day job. After numerous migrations, organizational changes and URL changes, your SharePoint might have broken links, which can cause frustration among your employees. Those links can be everywhere in ASPX pages, quick launch navigation as well as directly inside documents. Scanning the thousands of documents and pages and testing every link is impossible, but luckily, some SharePoint third-party vendors created tools for us to make sure we find those links with just a click.

In this blog post we will talk about one of those tools by QIPoint called SharePoint Broken Link Manager. Before continuing, here are a few words directly from the SharePoint Broken Link Manager Website

• No server side installation
• Scan site pages, web parts, master pages, navigation links, css, JavaScript, list item metadata…
• Supports scanning within file contents such as PDF, Text, HTML, MS Word, MS Excel, etc..
• Export report to SharePoint List, MS Excel, CSV, Essentials Lite Client (ClickOnce) Application [NEW!]
• Automatically Email Reports with a Built-In Scheduler
• Automatic Find & Replace
• Find & Replace supports Exact/Absolute URLs, Relative URLs, UNC File Share Paths, and wildcard/partial string replacements
• Inclusion & Exclusion Rules to fully customize what gets scanned
• Enhanced Caching of URLs to improve performance
• Customize Timeout Values
• Built-In mechanism for Site Owners to import user-defined list of URLs to fix/replace
• For SharePoint 2010/2013/2016 on-premise, Office 365/SharePoint Online, and hybrid environments

QIPoint SharePoint Broken Link Manager Review

The SharePoint Broken Link Manager is a client side application, meaning that there is nothing you need to install on the SharePoint Server itself, and the application can be installed on any computer. This is great because there is less risk for your SharePoint Farm, and a department can decide to buy and use this tool, without affecting any other site other than the ones they have access to. The Installation is a simple Next, Next Finish, and once you finish installing it, you get to a dashboard similar to the one in the screenshot below. The first thing we will have to do is add the Site Collections we want to manage.

The Site Collection Adding Process is pretty straightforward, and you simply need to specify the URL, Authentication method as well as Username and password.

Once the site is added, it’s added for the whole “SharePoint Essential Toolkit” suite, which includes more than Broken Link Manager. In this review however, we will only focus on the Broken Link Manager tool. Simply Right Click on the site, and select “Broken Link Report”

A new tab will open, and you need to select the Scan Options, such as what items to scan, do you want to scan the List Item Attachments as well or not and more.

A bit lower on the Scan Options, we can also select to Find and Replace certain links. This could be useful right after a Migration from “oldurl” to “newurl”. However on this first scan, I will simply scan and not replace anything.

When replacing links, you also have the options to require versioning before replacing, as well as to preserve the important Author and Date. This is very important for all companies.

After running the job, we get a report of all the links in our Site Collection, what the URL is, what the display value is, when it was last modified, as well as the Author of the item where that link was found. The level of detail included is awesome, and very useful.

I love the fact that there is a lot of information in this report, however I think it could be a little more user friendly. As an IT Pro, I know what HTTP Status code 200, 503, 404 and they do help me know what is really happening, this might not also be valid for a SharePoint Intranet Manager without a more technical background. All the codes are explained in the user manual which helps, however I wish there was a view called “Broken Links” which only showed me the stuff needing fixing. I did filter on Error 503, and saw my two broken links.

I did find that there is an option you can select in the first page to ‘Only Show Broken Links’ in the report, this will then remove all valid ‘OK’ links and only show broken ones. Also, I discovered that I could drag and drop the HTTP Status Code column which would then group all the erroneous links in groups and also I could group by SharePoint Item Title, so then it was easier for me to locate the files and SharePoint Items that contain the broken links.

Once you know the broken links, you can open them to validate it’s broken directly from the report, and you can also open the SharePoint item (page, document, list item, etc.) where it was found, directly from the report! This can be really useful for a fast check before fixing it.

This is the reporting part of SharePoint Broken, now let’s look at how we automatically fix them. To test this, I have added links in the following locations:

• ASPX Page
• Link List
• Word Document
• PDF Document

In the Report Settings I have added the old value “oldhome” , and asked it to switch to “newhome”. If you just want to see what the change looks like, you can use the “Flag Only” check box, and that will show you in the report what it would have changed it to, but not actually change it.

I will also select “Preserve Author and Date”, so it doesn’t mess up my company metadata.

The tool was able to replace my links, in all the locations, inside the SharePoint pages, as well as the documents, which is pretty amazing. Other cool features include being able to export reports both in Excel, as well as in a small standalone application offered by QIpoint that doesn’t require an install. You can also schedule the jobs to run every week for example, and email you the report.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have reviewed the SharePoint Broken Link Manager tool, part of the SharePoint Essentials Toolkit by QIPoint. This tool is aimed at Site Owners who want to make sure their Sites do not have any broken links that can cause a loss in productivity and user frustration. The SharePoint Broken Link Manager tool is a client side application, meaning that it’s installed on a client computer, and not on the SharePoint Server, therefore making it easy for a Site Owner, or Department to purchase it, without affecting other sites in the SharePoint farm.

During the review, I found the QIPoint tool to have all the features I would expect, and all the features worked great. What I would have loved is a bit more user friendliness for less technical users on the broken link report. Having the HTTP Status code is very useful, however a view called for example “Broken Links” that includes a filter on HTTP 404, 503, etc… Out of the box would have been amazing!

Other than that report, I really see this tool as being extremely useful right after a migration, as well as running on a schedule to make sure your SharePoint links always get to the right information. If you’re looking for a way to find and fix your SharePoint Broken links, make sure you check SharePoint Broken Link Manager by QIPoint! To find out more, click the logo below to go to the product site.

The post Review of QIPoint SharePoint Broken Link Manager appeared first on Absolute SharePoint Blog by Vlad Catrinescu.

by Vlad Catrinescu via Absolute SharePoint Blog by Vlad Catrinescu

Review & Approve on the Go | Email Approvals with DynamicPoint

 

Does your company have an expansive traveling workforce? Are your employees constantly living in Outlook? DynamicPoint is bringing an added level of convenience to the review and approve process with EMAIL APPROVAL! DynamicPoint’s SharePoint applications for Expense Reimbursement, Requisition Management and Invoice Automation allow employees to stay where they are -likely tackling lots of emails in Outlook – to review, approve, reject, view attachments and even make comments directly from email. You read that right! This means that there is no need to even enter the SharePoint application to complete the workflow process with all the line items details and even attachments being shared via email. Watch our short online video to see the process in action!

By: Mike Marcin
SharePoint Expense, Invoice & Requisition Management applications built exclusively for Dynamics GP & NAV.
DynamicPoint | www.dynamicpoint.com
office: 844.396.7646 x700
info@dynamicpoint.com

The post Review & Approve on the Go | Email Approvals with DynamicPoint appeared first on SharePoint Blog.

Related posts:

1. Compare Dynamics GP 2015 Workflow Options vs. Third Party Requisition Applications With the release of Dynamics GP 2013 R2 came the...
2. DynamicPoint Prepares for SharePoint 2016 Like so many others out there, DynamicPoint is anxious for...
3. Automate Your Billable Expenses with DynamicPoint For many businesses, racking up charges on behalf of a...

YARPP powered by AdBistro

Powered by

by Mike Marcin, DynamicPoint via SharePoint Blog

Review of Netwrix Auditor for SharePoint

Product overview by Vlad Catrinescu – requested by Netwrix, but thoughts are my own.

With companies getting hacked every day, security is becoming a more and more important part of every IT department. An important part is being able to know what happens in all your systems and be able to monitor it for security flaws. While every product has a way of logging information, it’s impractical to analyze each log individually, especially when you have hundreds, or even thousands of different servers, systems and applications to monitor. This is where an enterprise user activity monitoring can come in handy. In this blog, we will talk about Netwrix Auditor, a visibility and governance platform that that enables
control over changes, configurations and access in hybrid cloud IT environments, in most of the Microsoft Stack such as SharePoint, Exchange, SQL, Windows Server, File Shares, AD and Office 365.

As we will focus mostly on the SharePoint features of Netwrix Auditor, here is an introduction about the product directly from the Netwrix Auditor site.

 

 

Gain deep insight into all changes that impact compliance, security and availability across your SharePoint sites, including changes to farm configuration; changes to security, from the farm level down to single document permissions; and the creation, deletion and modification of any SharePoint content.

Netwrix Auditor for SharePoint Review

The Netwrix Auditor platform comes split in two. You have the Administrator Console in which you can define what systems you want to connect to as well as the credentials to connect to those systems.

To connect to a SharePoint Farm, you will need to connect to the SharePoint Central Admin site, and specify an account that has the required rights!

After the Admin Part is setup, you can consume all the auditing from a Netwrix Client. And I think the way they built it is very smart, because the Netwrix Auditor Client can be installed on an unlimited number of computers, and you can delegate access to audit data to different teams when they need it. For example you could give access to a team doing a Compliance Report. The Netwrix Auditor client start screen looks like the screenshot below, and it provides you with a quick access to the Overview dashboards for each System.

The SharePoint Overview dashboard gives you a quick glance at how many changes were done on your SharePoint Farm(s), on what Site Collections as well as what types of items were changed.

The overview dashboard can be useful to present to a Manager, and even measure adoption. They are pretty laconic, but if you need more details, you can get them by clicking any specific graph in the dashboard. Luckily, Netwrix has a dozen out-of-the-box SharePoint reports that you can easily run to get more detailed information.

Some of the ones I liked most are finding all the SharePoint Changes done by a certain SharePoint User. Being able to run this report across multiple SharePoint Farms from one client is pretty useful!

You can also do reports on what users accessed, and even filter on a certain user, or an object type.

Another feature of Netwrix Auditor is out-of-the-box Compliance Reports. While I am not a big compliance guy and don’t know what all those standards mean, Netwrix Auditor has out-of-the-box reports that are mapped to specific regulatory compliance standards including PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX, FISMA/NIST800-53 and ISO/IEC 27001. If you are a company that needs to respect any of those compliance standards, it’s a real perk to have them created by people who know those standards, and easily available to generate data.

Lastly, Netwrix Auditor also has an Interactive Search that allows users to search either on a system, or on all audited systems. You can filter by User, Action, Date, System and a lot of other filters.

I wish that it was a bit more like Power BI, and using artificial intelligence to understand Simple Langue Queries like “Show me all the users who modified a SharePoint Group in the last 10 days”, but I understand that for security software, being accurate is a lot more important than having that consumer AI in place. It’s still pretty easy to build Search Queries and find what you need from all your connected systems.

Conclusion

In this blog post we reviewed Netwrix Auditor, a visibility and governance platform that that enables
control over changes, configurations and access in hybrid cloud IT environments, and focused only on the SharePoint related features. I would say that I am pretty impressed with the software and how easy it makes it for users to do view logs from all your SharePoint Farms, which you wouldn’t be able to do without a custom solution looking in the SharePoint Audit database. The point I think I found the most useful is separation of the Admin Console and Client.

Having all of the Reports that Netwrix Auditor has out-of-the-box as well as all the compliance reports can save you hundreds of hours of work, and I think that if you run an enterprise with hundreds of services, and thousands of servers, you need a tool like this to make sure you respect your compliance standards, and keep your network safe.

If you’re interested in visibility software for enterprises that also integrates well with SharePoint, make sure to check out Netwrix Auditor by clicking the logo below.

The post Review of Netwrix Auditor for SharePoint appeared first on Absolute SharePoint Blog by Vlad Catrinescu.

by Vlad Catrinescu via Absolute SharePoint Blog by Vlad Catrinescu

New-OfficeWebAppsMachine - Unable to find the specified certificate

This will be a quick post.

Issue:

When joining a new machine to Office Web Apps an error is returned "Office Web Apps was unable to find the specified certificate." The certificate is installed on the machine but the error persists.

Cause:

When joining a machine to the OWA farm it checks for the certificate to use in IIS site. In this check it does NOT look for the certificate 'Issued To', it actually looks for the friendly name.

Resolution:

Open up MMC

Add in Certificates and select Local Machine

Make sure your certificate is listed in 'Personal'

Edit the properties and give it the same friendly name as the Farm has.

Note:

To check what the current friendly name is in the farm go to a machine that is part of the farm and either a) Open MMC>Certificates and check the friendly name or b) In Powershell type in 'Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm | ft CertificateName'

by Jeff Adkin via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community

User Profile Synchronization Service issue

Last week I experienced major problem which took me more than two days to resolve. On one of our SharePoint farms User Profile Synchronization Service was stopped, and nothing I tried could not help to start it. And believe me, I tried almost everything I read on internet. But no, service was stubborn, not wanting to start. Then after two days of wall hitting I noticed following entry in ULS log file:

Failed to set the new Service Broker on database User_SyncDatabase on server SQL. Exception: The operation cannot be performed on database "User_SyncDatabase" because it is involved in a database mirroring session or an availability group. Some operations are not allowed on a database that is participating in a database mirroring session or in an availability group.  ALTER DATABASE statement failed.  ALTER DATABASE statement failed.

It turned out that the reason for all this mess is because all SharePoint database are in SQL High Availability group, despite the fact that Microsoft is claiming that this is allowed (http://ift.tt/291xETQ).

Just by removing User_SyncDatabase from High Availabilty group User Profile Synchronization service was started without a glitch. Go figure!

After starting the service, I returned database to HA group, and everything is working without further issues.

Of course, documentation regarding this strange behavior does not exist, there is only one blog explaining this, and it is on Russian. For those who can understand it, here it is: http://ift.tt/28XXRQw

I hope my blog post will help some poor soul, who lost all hopes that User Profile Synchronization Service would start ever again. For sure, I needed one.

 

by Krsto Savic via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community

Continuous Maintenance: Does SharePoint Really Need It?

There is just a thin line between love and hate. Translating the saying into the software language, it’s not hard to understand that a reliable solution that satisfies the needs of employees today can be easily rejected tomorrow as soon as serious troubles occur. SharePoint is that kind of software that is constantly living in this love-or-hate reality refilled with both users’ recognition and hostility. Even when implemented according to a well-elaborated plan, a SharePoint solution can lose its popularity when a bad experience comes to the fore.

Instead of waiting for the tragic end, let’s see which core SharePoint problems can cause users’ dissatisfaction and how a thought-out maintenance can help to save the platform’s reputation.

Face of a bad experience

SharePoint is largely used by companies representing a wide range of industries from manufacturing to healthcare. However, by the end of the deployment stage, users often face 3 major problems:

Poor UI. Boring, plain, unattractive, unfriendly – unpleasant adjectives siege the system’s interface. The debate on the SharePoint’s better appearance never ends, neither do users’ irritation nor the public wish to see the solutions’ stylish look. The poor UI’s danger is in its ability to plant the seeds of chronic disaffection that will be very hard to eradicate even if the system shows its great performance.

Insufficient functionality. Usually a SharePoint solution comes to an organization to solve particular tasks (e.g. to ensure workflow or document management). However, a bit later, employees may need new features to cover their current tasks or just want their portal to afford wider functionality, so they require the solution to be adopted for collaboration, social activities, etc. If the new features are not provided on time, users’ dissatisfaction isn’t long in coming.

Scarce information. If isolated from other enterprise solutions, SharePoint can hardly satisfy users’ constant need in information replenishment. A simple example: employees involved into a procurement workflow managed in SharePoint should be provided with a direct access to their ERP system.  With no integration, they will definitely continue working in an ERP and abandon SharePoint as switching between different platforms only takes time and adds confusion.

The list of these most common problems can be extended with other numerous issues that arise after the platform’s implementation. A piece of good news: all of them can be solved.

Timely assistance as the alternative to the platform’s deterioration

Just as physicians recommend to responsibly care of our bodies before serious diseases appear, SharePoint also needs timely improvements before it becomes a source of annoying troubles. That’s why even if you are only at the starting line of a project and addressing your requirements to SharePoint developers, we recommend to think of maintenance services based on the following principles:

Solving, not accumulating. The common habit of accumulating user requests and fixing all the troubles at once will not work out for SharePoint. Both minor configuration issues that can impact users’ activities and acute performance problems (e.g. slowly uploading pages) should be solved immediately. If no…can you hear the annoyed users sighing deeply right now?

Ensuring post-deployment maintenance. Frequently, companies want SharePoint maintenance services to be provided right after the solution’s implementation. Standard packages (covering a period from several months up to a year) enable employees to get used to a new system and address their questions to developers. However, the practice shows that sometimes the number of issues doesn’t decrease but even grows by the end of the fixed period. If the system is left with no assistance, troubles can come quickly. A continuous maintenance is the only remedy that helps to deal with performance issues, necessary upgrades, redesign and much more.

Respecting timeframe. Making their requests to a maintenance team, users should not wait for a SharePoint administrator’s good mood to see the change. Improvements are to be made as quickly as possible. We advise to establish a timeframe of 1-2 days for fixing problems and 1-2 weeks for delivering improvements.

Thinking of users’ comfort. The platform itself allows to handle multiple issues without disrupting users’ activities.  First of all, the SharePoint’s modular character allows to carry out pointed works on particular sites or site collections without affecting the entire system. Secondly, both latest versions of SharePoint (2013 and 2016) are created according to the client-side object model (CSOM), which means that there is no server code to deal with. All the necessary improvements can be made via JavaScript and CSS files upgrades, which allows to avoid prolonged interruptions in the system’s operation.

Yes, It Does

This is the answer on the question put in the headline. The system does require careful assistance even in the post-deployment period. SharePoint maintenance is a much larger notion than a simple troubleshooting and it goes far beyond fixing performance issues. Quality and continuous maintenance focused on the system’s UI and UX improvement is about ensuring users’ satisfaction and longevity of your SharePoint-based solution.

by Sergei Golubenko via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community

DFFS and new form layout in SharePoint

This is a little status update on the new layout in document libraries that are starting to roll out in SharePoint online.

DFFS will currently not work with this new layout. I’m working on a new version that will support it, but until this is ready you must change a setting to keep the classic view.

Read this article that describes how to keep the classic view: http://ift.tt/1rot0mW

I’ll post updates as soon as I have a BETA ready, but it will most likely be a few months. In any case, it will be ready well before the classic view option is deprecated.

Please post any questions in the forum.

Best regards,
Alexander

by Alexander Bautz via SharePoint JavaScripts

Search Service application components in SharePoint Server 2013:

               Search Service application components in SharePoint Server 2013:

 

As you’re all aware, there has been a major change in the search architecture on SharePoint Server 2013 when compared to SharePoint server 2010 and in this post I’ll be discussing on the six different search service components in SharePoint 2013 .It’s very important that all these components are running fine without any issue for the Search service to function seamlessly and surface the results in the search page when a user executes a query in the search center. 

Listed below are the six components available in SharePoint 2013 search service:

 1.       Crawl Component

2.       Content processing component

3.       Indexing component

4.       Query processing component

5.       Analytics processing component

6.       Search administration component

 Now, let’s take a look on all these components separately …

 1. Crawl Component :

This component takes care of crawling the content sources such as (SharePoint sites, websites & file shares etc…) and extracts the crawled properties and metadata and sends that to the content processing component.

 2. Content processing component:

This component receives the information from the crawl component and then processes and sends it to the indexing component. It also interacts with the analytics processing component and is responsible for mapping crawled properties to the managed properties.

3. Indexing Component :

This component takes care of receiving the information from the content processing component and writes it to the search index. It also takes care of handling the queries and sends back the results to the Query processing component.

4. Query Processing Component:

This component handles incoming query requests and sends them to the indexing component for results. It also takes care of query optimization.

5. Analytics Processing Component :

This component takes care of analyzing what users are querying on and how they interact with the results.  This information is used to determine relevance, generate recommendations and also used for generating search reports.

6.Search administration Component:

This component manages administrative processes as well as changes to the search topology, such as adding or removing search components and servers.

 Please note that these 6 search components can be distributed across multiple servers to provide high availability as well as improve performance as shown in the image below.

Search service application databases:

• Search Administration: The Search Administration database hosts the Search service application configuration and handles crawl state orchestration, including the content source crawl history.
• Analytics Reporting: The Analytics Reporting database stores the results for usage analysis reports and extracts information from the Link database when needed.
• Crawl Store: The Crawl Store database stores the state of each crawled item and provides the crawl queue for items currently being crawled.
• Link: The Link database stores the information that is extracted by the content processing component and the click through information.

 Thanks for reading this post. Happy SharePointing!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

by Vignesh Ganesan via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community

Invoice Automation | Zonal and OCR Scanning Made Easy!

At DynamicPoint, we are all about making your life easier, saving you time, and most importantly,  saving you money! Today we feature a scanning and OCR application that can be used in conjunction with our Invoice Automation product.  In this video, we illustrate how this app enables a user to scan, upload and perform OCR on a document directly from SharePoint and when used in conjunction with our application, an automated, time-saving way to upload vendor invoices and auto create the invoice for approval. Check out just how we plugged this app into our solution to access even greater business automation!

By: Mike Marcin
SharePoint Expense, Invoice & Requisition Management applications built exclusively for Dynamics GP & NAV.
DynamicPoint | www.dynamicpoint.com
office: 844.396.7646 x700
info@dynamicpoint.com

The post Invoice Automation | Zonal and OCR Scanning Made Easy! appeared first on SharePoint Blog.

Related posts:

1. Real-time Management of Check Requests Check requests are one of many processes DynamicPoint tackles when automating your...
2. SharePoint Applications Integrate with Legacy Systems: Video Have you run into a situation where customers are interested...
3. DynamicPoint’s Integration with Projects and Jobs | New Video!  In our latest video, we highlight the ability for our SharePoint...

YARPP powered by AdBistro

Powered by

by Mike Marcin, DynamicPoint via SharePoint Blog

SharePoint 2016 Beta Exam now available for free

Microsoft learning announced today that the 70-339 exam for SharePoint 2016 is now available for free, as long as you take it before July 11, 2016. There are only 350 vouchers available! Here is the official description from Microsoft:

Are you an IT professional who installs, configures, deploys, and manages SharePoint 2016 installations in a datacenter and in the cloud. Do you have more than four years of experience in planning and maintaining SharePoint and other core technologies upon which SharePoint depends, including Windows Server 2008 R2 or later, Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server 2008 R2 or later, Active Directory, and networking infrastructure services. If so, here’s your chance to start down the path to the MCSE certification for free AND help us improve the quality of this exam!

We are opening up 350 beta seats for this beta exam (exam number: 70-339)… This means you can take the exam for free!! BUT… the seats are limited to first come, first served basis. Registration is now open with the first seats available on June 20. Note that these codes will only work through July 11, 2016, meaning you have to register AND take the exam on or before that date)–and we need you take the exam as soon as possible so we can leverage your comments, feedback, and exam data in our evaluation of the quality of the questions. The sooner you take the exam, the more likely it is that we will be able to use your feedback to make improvements to the exam. This is your chance to have a voice in the questions we include on the exam when it goes live.

Check out the official exam skills and register from the following link: http://ift.tt/1OvJij4 . Use code BETA339MCP at checkout to get it for free! Here is the official Microsoft Learning announcement.

If you want to prepare for the Hybrid Questions for the exam, make sure to listen to my Pluralsight course on implementing a Hybrid SharePoint 2013/2016 Infrastructure! Access it by clicking the picture below!

Don’t got a Pluralsight Subscription? Check out this blog post to get a free one: http://ift.tt/1Q7illv . Make sure to tweet this blog post to share it with your friends!

Follow me on Social Media and Share this article with your friends!

#SharePoint 2016 Beta Exam now available for free https://t.co/m7lMeqaGM9! Only 350 vouchers available! http://pic.twitter.com/nVT0VD9yWW — Vlad catrinescu (@vladcatrinescu) June 21, 2016

Leave a comment and don’t forget to like the Absolute SharePoint Blog Page   on Facebook and to follow me on Twitter here  for the latest news and technical articles on SharePoint.  I am also a Pluralsight author, and you can view all the courses I created on my author page.

The post SharePoint 2016 Beta Exam now available for free appeared first on Absolute SharePoint Blog by Vlad Catrinescu.

by Vlad Catrinescu via Absolute SharePoint Blog by Vlad Catrinescu

SharePoint mobile app for iOS now available

Michael Morisy

Last week, Marcia Parker previewed the upcoming SharePoint iOS app, which brought a focus of "better-easier, friendly, intuitive." Well, the app is no longer upcoming, but available starting today in the Apple app store (it will be coming soon to Android as well).

read more

by via SharePoint Pro

Data Loss Prevention for SharePoint On-Premises and Online

One of the core features that many organizations need before looking into a cloud service, is the ability to protect data they own. Knowing that you as an organization can control the flow of data in and out of the company, will not only ensure that content is controlled but also ensure that IT are being more proactive than reactive.

 

One feature that has been around for quite some time within Office 365 is Data Loss Protection.

 

What is Data Loss Prevention (DLP)?

read more

by via SharePoint Pro

Today the SharePoint Mobile App Comes to iOS

One of the big May 4th announcements comes true today, with the release of the Microsoft SharePoint app on iOS. (Yes, we iPhone folks get to have most of the fun!) Read all the details about the release on the Office Blogs.

In case you missed the details, the Microsoft SharePoint app for iOS puts “your Intranet in your pocket” – though it’s probably more useful in your hand. Here are a few views of the app from the Office Blogs post. 

The version they’ve release today looks a little bit different, but the basics are all there: Sites, Links, and People. I expect we’ll see continuous and rapid improvement on the app going forward, so keep an eye on it!

Learn more about the new SharePoint mobile app in this video, which was released for the May 4 event:

by Marc D Anderson via Marc D Anderson's Blog

Auto populate Nintex form fields with a check box

So I was asked to improve the user experience for users filling in a Nintex Form for travel request. The improvement centred on having the return journey or inbound fields auto populate with a tick of a check box with the data entered in the outbound fields. This is not easily done with out-of-the-box Nintex forms features. I had to write a script in JavaScript to achieve this functionality. Firstly, you’ll have to create the following fields.

Create form, adding the following fields to the “Title”; 

1. Outbound Departure – a single line text
2. Outbound Arrival – a single line text
3. Same as Inbound – a tick box (Yes/No)
4. Inbound Arrival – a single line text
5. Inbound Departure – a single line text

I left the Save and Cancel buttons as default.

Figure 1: Simplified Travel form

For each form field control settings;

For Outbound Departure, Click the “Advanced” setting, Select Yes from the dropdown for Store Client ID in JavaScript variable. In the Client ID JavaScript variable name, I entered and assigned “varOutboundDeparture” as the variable name. Leave everything else the same.

Figure 2: Control Settings for Outbound Departure

For Outbound Departure, Click the “Advanced” setting, Select Yes from the dropdown for Store Client ID in JavaScript variable. In the Client ID JavaScript variable name, I entered and assigned “varOutboundArrival” as the variable name. Leave everything else the same.

Figure 3: Control Settings for Outbound Arrival

For Outbound Departure, Click the “Advanced” setting, Select Yes from the dropdown for Store Client ID in JavaScript variable. In the Client ID JavaScript variable name, I entered and assigned “varSame” as the variable name. Leave everything else the same.

Figure 4: Control Settings for Outbound Arrival

For Inbound Departure, Click the “Advanced” setting, Select Yes from the dropdown for Store Client ID in JavaScript variable. In the Client ID JavaScript variable name, I entered and assigned “varInboundArrival” as the variable name. Make sure the “Not connected” dropdown option is selected for the “Connected to” setting. Leave everything else the same.

Figure 5: Control Settings for Inbound Arrival

For Inbound Departure, Click the “Advanced” setting, Select Yes from the dropdown for Store Client ID in JavaScript variable. In the Client ID JavaScript variable name, I entered and assigned “varInboundArrival” as the variable name. Make sure the “Not connected” dropdown option is selected for the “Connected to” setting. Leave everything else the same.

Figure 6: Control Settings for Inbound Departure

Now, in the form settings add the following JavaScript;

To add JavaScript to Nintex Forms, from the Form editor click the Settings button in the Ribbon and then expand the Custom JavaScript section at the bottom.

NWF$('#' + Same).click(function(){     var checkBox = NWF$('#' + varSame);     if (checkBox.is(':checked') == true){     var OutboundDeparture = NWF$('#' + varOutboundDeparture).val();     var OutboundArrival = NWF$('#' + varOutboundArrival).val();     NWF$('#' + varinboundArrival).val(outboundDeparture);     NWF$('#' + varinboundDeparture).val(outboundArrival);     }     else     {     var nullValue = '';     NWF$('#' + varInboundArrival).val(nullValue);     NWF$('#' + varInboundDeparture).val(nullValue);    }  });

 

Figure 7: Control Settings for Inbound Departure

Nintex Forms uses a copy of the jQuery library that you can access through NWF$. So just adding SPServices to your form’s page won’t work, but since jQuery is already there it’s fairly simple to get it all hooked up through NWF$.                                                                                      

Finally, it’s time for testing. Testing is as follows;

1. Enter data for Outbound Departure and Outbound Arrival fields
2. Check the Tick box, the result should be;
   • Inbound Arrival populate with Outbound Departure
   • Inbound Departure populate with Outbound Arrival
3. Uncheck the Tick box, the result should be;
   • Inbound Arrival field is blank
   • Inbound Departure field is blank

Outbound Departure Airport and Outbound Arrival Airport with “Same as Inbound”: Unchecked

Figure 8: The form with Same as Inbound Uncheck

Inbound Departure Airport and Inbound Arrival Airport with “Same As Inbound”: Checked

Figure 9: The form with Same As “Inbound” Checked

by Larry Saytee via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community

Charts for SharePoint v5 is ready

After a long BETA, v 5.0.0 of SPJS Charts for SharePoint is finally out. There is still some work to be done in the user manual – I’ll update this shortly. In the meantime, please use the forum for any questions.

You find more information here

Alexander

by Alexander Bautz via SharePoint JavaScripts

Dear Microsoft: Please Listen to Us About the New Document Library “Experience”

One of the latest hubbubs in the Office 365 world is around the new Document Library “experience”. (I refuse to use the word “experience” in this sort of context without a little sarcasm and some air quotes.)

There’s a new “experience” coming to Office 365 that makes Document Libraries look a lot like the OneDrive browser UI that some of you must use. (I prefer to use a synced folder on my devices to interact with OneDrive – when syncing actually works.)

In case you haven’t see the new “experience” yet, here’s how it goes. Here’s a very simple Document Library in our Sympraxis tenant.

When you go to a Document Library for the first time after the functionality hits your tenant, you can choose to walk through a Motherhood and apple pie set of intro screens that show why the new experience is swell.

And after clicking on “Let’s get started”, you see the new “experience”…

 

Note the small link at the bottom left that lets you switch back to the “classic” view – for now.

The issue isn’t so much the new “experience”. I do think since people hate change, it’ll cause a lot of discomfort in many organizations, especially since it’s roaring into all tenants. In fact, the new capabilities are indeed swell. The issues are around existing customizations to the branding of functionality of Document Library views.

If you’d like to see what’s got people upset about it, you can check out the UserVoice item Allow Javascript customization and CSS branding/theming in the new Document Library Experience. There’s also a very long thread at the Office 365 Network in Yammer about it.

I do think the “Working on it” message in the UserVoice entry should give some hope. Microsoft knows there are issues. If they can’t address them and others like them, the flow to Office 365 will reverse back to on premises. What I think sows a lot of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about this is it feels – yet again – like it could be a slippery slope.

Document Library default views are often built into what amounts to applications, or at least launch pads into application. It can be anything from simply adding some explanatory text in a CEWP at the top of the page (which is, after all, a Web Part Page) to full fledged functionality provided by additions of JavaScript using jsLink, DVWPs, JavaScript, CSS, etc. In many cases, the view page ends up looking little like what it started out as.

There simply has to be a way to keep these view pages in the mix, as considerable investment of time and money have gone into them. One would hope “telemetry” will show many people *choosing* to stick with “classic” (in this case meaning “functional” and “useful”) mode pages, even if all the “Working on it” stuff happens.

What I’m asking for in this post (Are these Dear Microsoft posts of mine merely rhetorical? I hope not.) is for a sincere attempt to hear what the concerns are. There are many times where people are feeling like a change to something new risks removing some of the exact reasons why the SharePoint platform has been successful in the past. Running Office 365 as a service can indeed be at odds to the successful methods used in Document Libraries, but understanding how to continue the exact patterns of enhancement that were encouraged in the past – by Microsoft- is critical.  Change can be good, but not if it undoes past investment and successful implementation.

I like the image that Brent Ellis (@Brentless) posted in the Yammer thread:

Software development isn’t medicine, but still…

by Marc D Anderson via Marc D Anderson's Blog