Speaking at SharePoint Fest Denver in May

I am honored to speak again at one of the best SharePoint events in North America – SharePoint Fest! I actually spoke at the last 7 SharePoint Fests in a row, and hope to keep going as it’s one of the conferences I love!

I will be very active with two workshops, as well as two sessions during the conference. Even better, for both workshops I will be co-presenting with my good friend and Microsoft Regional Director Gokan Ozcifci! Here are some details about the stuff I will be speaking about!

[Full Day Workshop] WS 102 – SharePoint 2016: Design, Deploy, Configure and Manage a stable and performant SharePoint On-Premises or Hybrid Farm

A hybrid SharePoint deployment isn’t a marketing stuff from Microsoft. With SharePoint 2016 just released, many organizations are looking for ways to combine their existing SharePoint business productivities with the bright future of Office 365. But before going on a hybrid topology, you need to create the ultimate SharePoint farm.

In this full day workshop, IT Professionals will learn how to install and configure SharePoint Server 2016 per Microsoft’s best practices, and how to adapt them to their client’s budget. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 provides a broad array of hybrid capabilities enabling you to cloud-accelerate your on-premises deployment. Learn more about the capabilities in SharePoint Server 2016 and how to best implement hybrid scenarios.

In this workshop; presented by Vlad Catrinescu (MVP) and Gokan Ozcifci (MVP) you’ll learn about:

• A comprehensive introduction into SharePoint 2016 architecture.
• The whole new Concept in Server Roles (with the MinRole Concept) and with Architectural possibilities in Hybrid deployments.
• Guidance, Best Practices and lessons learned from the field with SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016 versions, covering MinRole, high availability and common topologies scenarios.
• A clear focus on patterns, topologies, features, stacks and deployment techniques, providing useful information to understand how and when to implement hybrid scenarios with Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft SharePoint.
• Learn how to manage your Microsoft SharePoint Online (SPO) and Microsoft SharePoint environments in the browser (the SharePoint Online Admin Center) and by using the SharePoint Online Management Shell. We will cover numerous scenarios and demos for both seasoned SharePoint admins and new SPO admins.
• How to optimize SharePoint Server, SQL Server, Windows Server or the Application domain to successfully implement a new SharePoint 2016 farm or improve the performance of the existing SharePoint platform.

[Half Day Workshop] WS 501 – SharePoint 2016 Powerclass for IT Professionals

The ultimate SharePoint Infrastructure / IT Pro workshop by two SharePoint MVPs: Vlad Catrinescu (MVP) and Gokan Ozcifci(MVP) about SharePoint planning, configuring, deploying, architecting and hybrid deployments – all in one – half day workshop.

This infrastructure workshop will cover the key architectural considerations for SharePoint Server along with operational management tips and tricks. Critical planning aspects of upgrade to SharePoint 2016, core infrastructure, security, performance optimization and high availability will also be included.

Coverage on the core infrastructure enablers and core configuration for Hybrid deployment will be covered as well.

[Track Session] OFF 103 – PowerShell for Office 365

Take your Office 365 Administrator skills further by learning to automate repetitive tasks using the magic of PowerShell. In this session, you will learn how to use PowerShell for Office 365, and we will focus on SharePoint online.A basic understanding of PowerShell is recommended to get the most out of this session!

[Track Session] SIA 201 – Deep Dive into designing a SharePoint 2016 Physical Architecture

SharePoint Server 2016 is the latest release of SharePoint Server and includes awesome features for business users, but quite a few changes for SharePoint IT Professionals. New features such as MinRole, combined with new requirements such as mandatory Office Online Server configuration for Business Intelligence, will change the way that SharePoint Administrators will design their SharePoint farm.

Hope to see you all there!

The post Speaking at SharePoint Fest Denver in May appeared first on Absolute SharePoint Blog by Vlad Catrinescu.

by Vlad Catrinescu via Absolute SharePoint Blog by Vlad Catrinescu

Rencore Tech Talks - Episode 007 - SharePoint Client Side Development experiences with Mark Rackley

Note. This episode was recorded 2017-02-14

This time I'm catching up with an old friend and fellow Microsoft MVP, Mark Rackley. We're talking about some of his experiences and tips around Client Side Development for SharePoint.

Episode Guest, Mark Rackley

Mark is Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at PAIT Group and an Office Servers and Services MVP with more than 20 years of experience designing and developing software solutions. Mark has been doing JavaScript development in SharePoint since 2009 as is considered one of the pioneers of Client Side Development in SharePoint. As a globally recognized SharePoint geek, Mark is an active blogger, presenter, author (and bacon aficionado) who is eager to lend his real-world knowledge of SharePoint to all who need it.

Some of the topics we brush on are:

• Should we customize Master Pages?
• What about custom Forms?
• Modern Teams Sites vs. Classic
• Key takeaways from Mark's experiences around Client Side Dev in SharePoint
• And more

Listen

Check out the full post and the transcript on our Rencore Blog:
- Rencore TechTalks: Episode 7 – SharePoint Client Side Development experiences with Mark Rackley

All the best,
Tobias Zimmergren

by Tobias Zimmergren via Zimmergren's thoughts on tech

Notes from the Field: SharePoint Framework Deployments

Liam Cleary discusses the SharePoint Framework and how to get a super cool web part or control into SharePoint Online.

read more

by via SharePoint Pro

Sharegate to the Rescue – Getting Rid of Weird Taxonomy (Managed Metadata) Columns

Yet another entry for the “Things that make you go ‘Huh?’ in SharePoint” file.

We’ve got a Document Library in SharePoint Online (Office 365) that contains Document Sets. As per usual, each Document Set can contain several different Content Types, as we’ve defined. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, really. We’re using SharePoint capabilities the way they are intended, and it’s all “out of the box”.

One day last week, we started to see odd things when we looked at the documents using the list forms. Fields we didn’t create were showing up in between those we did. For example, we saw Sector_0 above the field Sector, ServiceArea_0 above Service Area, and a new field called Taxonomy Catch All Column. Obviously something was amiss. None of those red boxed fields should be there.

Turning to them InterWebz, I found a number of posts about this happening in SharePoint 2010 when the content was moved around using the Content and Structure UI. That was a long time ago, plus we were pretty sure we hadn’t used the Content and Structure page for anything. Even if we had, this was weird.

It turns out the fields are part of the [poorly built – please give it some love, Microsoft] Managed Metadata infrastructure. The fields are supposed to be there when you are using Managed Metadata columns, but you should never see them. The solution back in the SharePoint 2010 days was to use Powershell to hide the fields again.

Ok, so we didn’t know why or how this had happened, but Powershell seemed like a good bet to fix it. I headed on over to Gary Lapointe’s (@glapointe) most excellent SharePoint Online Custom Cmdlets, installed them (I don’t so a lot of Powershell – but perhaps I should do more), and adapted the old 2010-era Powershell examples from the forums for SharePoint Online. Here’s the important part:

Connect-SPOSite -Url http://ift.tt/2pWavXa -Credential "myCreds@$orgName.com"
$list = Get-SPOList -Web "/" -Identity "Proposals"
$fieldstoupdate = @("Sector_0","Taxonomy Catch All Column") #ENTER THE LIST OF FIELDS TO BE HIDDEN

if($list -ne $null) {
 Write-host -f black "List"$list.Title "on"$web.Name "at URL"$web.Url
 
 #GET ARRAY OF FIELDS TO UPDATE
 foreach ($field in $fieldstoupdate) {
  $fieldname = $list.GetFieldByTitle("$field")
  $fieldname.Hidden = $true
  $fieldname.update()
  Write-Host -f green "Updated field" $fieldname
 }
}
...

Basically, connect to SPO, find the list, and then loop through the fields which should be hidden and hide them again.

But that wasn’t getting me there. When I looked at the weird fields, I saw they were already hidden. Here’s the info about the ServiceArea_0 field, which I got by looking at $fieldname in the foreach loop. As you can see, Hidden is already set to True. Yet the field was showing up in the forms nonetheless.

So Powershell wasn’t going to solve it for us. What else could I try?

Well, Sharegate is definitely my Swiss Army Knife for SharePoint. (Yes, CEWPs and DVWPs are also Swiss Army Knives for me – I like great tools.) I use it just about daily for many things, most of which have nothing to do with migration. I looked in the main Sharegate app, wondering if there were some other settings for the fields I could look at. Great functionality from Sharegate, but I couldn’t find anything.

Then I wondered if simply copying the content into a new library might fix things. I set up a new Document Library named – aptly – Temp, and copied over one Document Set. Yay – everything looked fine!

Then I copied all of the other content from Proposals over to Temp, deleted Proposals, and then copied the Temp library to Proposals again, so I’d have the same URL.

Suffice it to say, all is well in Proposal land now. When I look at any of the documents, I see what we’d expect, which is certainly prettier and more useful.

Sharegate: it’s not just a migration tool.

References

• SharePoint 2010 – Managed Metadata: In Depth Look into the Taxonomy Parts by Andrew Connell (@AndrewConnell)
• Why Do Hidden Taxonomy Catch All Columns Become Visible? by Doug Allen
• What is the significance of “Taxonomy Catch all Column” Lookup column?

---

This is blog post 1000 for me! I considered making some big deal or some special post out of it, but I decided I should just keep chugging along posting stuff that might help people. It’s just a number and today is just another day. If you want to, go out and celebrate for me.

Image from http://ift.tt/2pcUXke

 

by Marc D Anderson via Marc D Anderson's Blog

CommentBox for SharePoint – small update

I have updated CommentBox for SharePoint to add support for auto-subscribe to replies on your new comments.

See change log for a bit more details.

Please post any feedback in the forum.

Alexander

**********************************************************************
I also want to say thanks for my award as one of the “Top 50 Sharepoint Blogs and Websites for SharePoint Administrators, Architects, Developers and Business users” by linking back to http://ift.tt/2nYKUuD

 

by Alexander Bautz via SharePoint JavaScripts

SPJS Charts for SharePoint – small update

Hi,
I have released v6.1.5.4 of the SPJS Charts for SharePoint solution. There is only two small changes in this release. I have removed an alert in the code that prevented the use of jQuery v2.x, and fixed an issue with drilldown when no items was found in the drilldown result.

Alexander

by Alexander Bautz via SharePoint JavaScripts

Dear Microsoft: In Office 365, Groups are Groups are Groups – Unless They Aren’t

One of the problems with using common English words for things like “groups” or “teams” is that we end up trying to figure out the difference between things with very common names. When Sue Hanley (@susanhanley) and I were building our session Lions and Tigers and Teams, Oh My! – Sorting through the options to connect and collaborate in Office 365 for SPTechCon Austin recently, I realized just how confusing this could be – yet again.

The Problem

On the SharePoint home UI, when I want to create a “group”, I am told I will “Get a team site connected to Office 365 Groups”. So based on that one sentence, I might quite reasonably assume I’m creating a “Team” and a “Group” – which it so happens I am – sort of.

In the Groups UI in the Admin Center, we see these options:

• Office 365 Group
• Distribution list
• Mail-enabled security group
• Security group

In the Exchange admin center when we start to create a “group”, we’re given these choices:

• Office 365 Group
• Distribution group
• Security group
• Dynamic distribution group

But don’t fret. When you go to create a “group” in the Azure AD UI, you can create a “group” with Membership type of:

• Assigned
• Dynamic Device
• Dynamic user

We can also check a box to “Enable Office features?”, which *seems* to mean that we’ll get an Office 365 Group, but the help text isn’t totally clear:

Selecting ‘Yes’ will turn on Office 365 features for this group

I can even try to add the “group” – it’s not clear which type of “group” I’ve actually created – to the membership of another “group”. “Group Type” seems to be one of the following:

• Distribution
• Security
• Office
• Mail enabled security

When I create a Team in Microsoft Teams, there’s not even a clue that I’m also creating an Office 365 Group behind the scenes. Maybe that doesn’t really matter to an end user, but the fact that a “Team” is also a “Group” is another terminology SNAFU.

So What?

Some people might say that as an “IT Pro”, one should always understand all of these terms intrinsically, but I doubt that it’s often the case that this is true. The terms cross different “workloads” in Office 365 and can vary in terminology from their on premises counterparts, especially across server versions. Add to that the fact that many “admins” are the lone SharePoint/Exchange/Office 365/Chief Cook/Bottle Washer in their organization, and there is little hope they will understand the nuances. Heck, I do this stuff for a living and I find it confusing. Sometimes things are hard for no good reason.

Let’s assume we have an organization which is totally sold on the value of Office 365 Groups (note the capitalization of “groups”). If they have been using SharePoint and Exchange either on premises or in Office 365, they probably already have a mix of all the different types of “groups” shown above. When someone in that organization tries to create an Office 365 Group for – say – the Executive Team, it’s highly likely they will get an error like:

Note that “group alias” is not one of the terms used above, nor does the error give even an inkling of how to solve the problem. Not even a worthless “Contact your administrator” as a fine how-do-you-do. So, what is the user likely to do?

Well, I’ll posit that they will create a Group named “Executive Group” or “Executives” or something else spelled a little differently. That Group won’t be linked to any of the previous artifacts and thus will begin the route to more chaos that we had before.

Of course, this is a real use case I’ve run into at an actual client, as is often the case with my beefs. As far as I can tell, there is no way to convert a “Mail-enabled security group” to an “Office 365 group” without some sort of Powershell tomfoolery. That’s just bad. I’ve reached out to my MVP network for help here and I’ll update this post if I’m wrong – and I’d love to be.

This is where the old Microsoft line would have been that it’s a great “partner opportunity” or that there are “$9 spent in consulting for every $1 spent on server products”. Those were always crappy answers, and they were often driven by confusing things just like this. The “avoid a mess” or “clean up the mess” roles fell to partners who were more than happy to lap up the dollars agonized organizations were willing to toss them to fix things.

The new Microsoft doesn’t want to work this way, but in many cases, their own large size and competing teams (small “t”, generic use) still lead us to these sorts of problems.

One of the things we as consultants spend a *lot* of time doing is working with organizations to build a common set of terminology. Sometimes you may hear this called taxonomy or ontology, but the bottom line point is to get everyone to agree to a set of words and phrases that they can use consistently to express the same thing. If I came out of one of those efforts with as many terms as I’ve listed above, I’d consider the effort a failure, especially if several terms meant essentially the same thing.

The Ask

So, Dear Microsoft, please tighten up the terminology as quickly as you can. Next we need to know how to convert each of the old, legacy types of “groups” to an Office 365 Group – without resorting to Powershell. Ideally, we should just be able to click a button on any of the old things to make it a new thing, which would take us through a process (if we need one) to get it done.

Even better, when I try to create that Executive Team Office 365 Group, walk me – as a user – through fixing the issue. In other words, help me solve the problem BEFORE I’ve created the mess, so I don’t need to call a consultant to fix things. (Yes, nose, face, etc., but I think most of us consultants would rather be building valuable functionality than cleaning up messes. If your consultants relish this type of work – beware.)

Make it easy for us to help ourselves. Cut down on those support calls. Stop making your customers hire expensive consultants to clean up messes. Make Office 365 the best it can be.

---

Post 999! Sadly, I may have just used up my allotment of quote characters for any future posts.

by Marc D Anderson via Marc D Anderson's Blog

Security and Compliance in Office 365: Administration

The purpose of the Security & Compliance center is to provide a central location for advanced administration of Office 365 service components and services. The core menu is broken into separate menu items (blades) that link off to separate administration or services that are only available within the center.

 

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by via SharePoint Pro

Security and Compliance in Office 365: Security and Permissions

The new Security & Compliance center uses and requires specific permissions with roles for any access to anyone other than Administrators. The security follows a similar model to how Exchange has handled administration. Within the Security & Compliance center click on the Permissions blade.

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by via SharePoint Pro

Rencore Tech Talks - Episode 006 - Office 365 PnP Provisioning Engine with Mikael Svenson

Note. This episode was recorded 2016-12-08.

I'm catching up with Mikael Svenson, and in this episode Mikael gives us some insights into how he's been using the Office 365 PnP Provisioning Engine in a few of his projects.

Episode Guest, Mikael Svenson

Mikael Svenson is a principal consultant for Puzzlepart, an Office 365 consultancy. He has worked in the search field for over 15 years implementing solutions for major international corporations and for several Nordic governmental institutions.

Some of the topics we brush on are:

• What benefits does PnP provisioning engine give your project?
• A few examples of how Mikael uses the provisioning engine
• Using Microsoft Flow for approval
• What about using PnP Partner Pack?
• Decoupled templating with PnP Provisioning (no onet.xml, hallelujah!)
• And more

Listen now:

• Rencore TechTalks: Episode 6 – A take on the Office 365 PnP Provisioning Engine from the field with Mikael Svenson

All the best,
Tobias Zimmergren

by Tobias Zimmergren via Zimmergren's thoughts on tech

Security and Compliance in Office 365: Reporting

Within the navigation for the Security & Compliance center, you are able to view extensive reports for Office 365. To access the reports, expand the Reports blade and then select Dashboard.

Once the dashboard opens you will see that currently it does not contain many items at all.

 

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by via SharePoint Pro

Security and Compliance in Office 365: Data Loss Prevention

With the release of the Security and Compliance Center within Office 365 you are now able to manage complex features that have been missing for some time. One of these core features is Data Loss Prevention. Data Loss Prevention within Office 365 allows you to define polices that will capture and perform actions on content that meets some rules, along with providing notifications to the end user that the content has violated some rule.

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by via SharePoint Pro