2nd Microsoft Flow Template – Send Push Notification & Slack Message for a WordPress post #MicrsoftFlow #SharePoint #Office365

I was able to get my second Microsoft Template published in Microsoft Flow

Template can be used from here

Send Push Notification & Slack Message for a WordPress post

Functionality in this template is quite simple, when a WordPress post is made a push notification is made and also a Slack Message is posted in a particular group

To learn how to publish a template you can read my below blog about it

How to submit a Flow in template Gallery ?

To learn more about Microsoft Flow you can read below blogs

My tryst with Microsoft Flow!

Microsoft Flow – Create from blank

Microsoft Flow – Advanced mode options #SharePoint #MicrosoftFlow

Microsoft Flow template published #MicrosoftFlow #SharePoint #Office365

So finally my first Microsoft Flow template has been published, I am quite excited about it! It took sometime for Microsoft to add in the list of templates but better late than never.

Template can be used from here

Send email and add item in SharePoint List when WordPress Post is created

Functionality in this template is quite simple, when a WordPress post is made, you can get an email and same information can be added in SharePoint List.

To learn how to publish a template you can read my below blog about it

How to submit a Flow in template Gallery ?

To learn more about Microsoft Flow you can read below blogs

My tryst with Microsoft Flow!

Microsoft Flow – Create from blank

Microsoft Flow – Advanced mode options #SharePoint #MicrosoftFlow

Checklist for configuring eDiscovery in SharePoint Online #SharePoint #Office365 #eDiscovery

There are multiple steps which needs to be done to configure eDiscovery successfully in SharePoint Online or Office 365. To perform this you need to be Office 365 Tenant Admin.

Here is a checklist to confirm the set up for eDiscovery

  1. Have you created a Site Collection with template as eDiscovery Center?
  2. Have you configured Exchange Online as one of the Result Sources in eDiscovery Center?
  3. Have you created a Security group called eDiscovery Managers in Exchange Admin?
  4. Have you given access to security group eDiscovery Managers to Site Collection as Admin?
  5. Have you given Admin access to all Site Collections to security group eDiscovery Managers?
  6. Have you given read permissions to eDiscovery Managers to Crawl Log permissions in Search settings in SharePoint admin?
  7. Have you given access to Role Discovery Management in Exchange Admin to eDiscovery Managers?

If your answer to all above questions yes then you are ready and your eDiscovery Managers can create cases now.

 

Hybrid Architecture Office 365 (SharePoint Online) and SharePoint 2016 On premise #SharePoint2016 #SharePoint #Office365

If you like my blog post please subscribe to my YouTube Channel “SYNK Ventures – Let’s talk about Microsoft 365” as well https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6vLzWN-3aFG8dgTgEOlx5g?sub_confirmation=1

Best thing which has happened during the introduction of SharePoint 2016 is that Microsoft is convinced that Hybrid Architecture is the way forward for bigger organizations and all the data cannot be moved to cloud. At least this is the current reality with lot of companies but such fast changing technologies you never know what’s the future

In this post we will review architecture of SharePoint 2016 on-premise and Office 365 (SharePoint Online). Here we are assuming that you already have a SharePoint On-premise set up and you will add SharePoint Online.

Basic architecture looks like below

hybridarchitecture

Image source Download

To start with you need an Office 365 license and Azure subscription as well. To start with we need to set up server to server trust and certificates like STS.

We need Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) which is used to share information securely and seamlessly. SSO (Single Sign on) is also facilitated via this and also makes sure that there no duplication of accounts.

Azure active directory tenant is used to authenticate to Office 365. It’s quiet powerful with variety of features like identity management, multifactor authentication etc. Since authentication occurs via Azure active directory we will have copy of all user account of organization in this as well but we will use Azure Active Directory connect  for directory synchronization so that for end-user it looks like only one account.

More about Azure Active Directory Connect can be read here Azure Active Directory Connect

Azure Access control services is used to provide users authentication and authorization to web application and services. You can read more here Azure Access Control Service

There are multiple steps to do the complete set up, if you need very detailed steps I will recommend below online books from Microsoft press store

Planning and Preparing for SharePoint Hybrid

Configuring SharePoint Hybrid capabilities

Once the set up is done your users will experience various benefits, but you need to be sure what you are getting into and be clear about it

  • Integrated search: You get integrated search so you can search in both SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2016 on-premise. Everything will be indexed in SharePoint online. Note that since index is stored in SharePoint some customers need to be wary of it they might not want part of secret data also in cloud. How to do set up can read here Configure Cloud Hybrid Search
  • Unified user profile where users can see both on-premise and SharePoint online followed sites together
  • Other services like Delve, Video and App launched will now be available on SharePoint on-premise as well
  • You can redirect users to SharePoint Online OneDrive for Business from SharePoint 2016 on-premise OneDrive. Before you do this make sure that all documents are migrated as it’s only a redirect. Steps to redirect are very simple and can be used read here How to redirect users to Office 365 for OneDrive for Business . Best way to migrate data is to write a tool for migration, there are various way to implement this but best is that you can access OneDrive for Business using SharePoint APIs which you might be familiar with else you have to register an App for OneDrive for Business to access data / folders programatically. I am assuming you already know how to access OneDrive in SharePoint on-premise programatically.

To access OneDrive for business SharePoint online via REST API you can below url

https://O365DomainHere-my.sharepoint.com/personal/     UserName_O365DomainHere_onmicrosoft_com/_api/web/GetFolderByServerRelativeUrl(‘/personal/UserName_O365DomainHere_onmicrosoft_com/Documents’)/folders/

You can read about data operations here REST API Data Operations SharePoint

So this is a basic overview of Hybrid architecture and also my take on the things you need to consider, if you have further questions just leave  a comment

In case you need more help on this or other SharePoint issues please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter

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SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Data Migration #SharePoint #Office365

After building the strategy and planning for it, next step is Data Migration from SharePoint 2013 to Office 365. We are going to look into native import / data migration service provided in Office 365, you need to be an Office 365 Administrator or at least have someone to help with initial set up.

Before we start actual migration we need to do some set up. Login to Office 365 and go to menu Users –> Migration.

datamigration

Once there scroll to see Onboarding and migration guidance, click on SharePoint and new window will open.

onboardingmeny

This will guide to Onboard you and create migration jobs, I am just capturing relevant steps here

onboardingsteos

Step 1 is just some text about SharePoint online

Step 2 is very important as you need to define what kind of deployment you will have, in our case we will select on premise to cloud.

oboarding-step-2

Step 3 explains PowerShell option we have selected On-premise to cloud migration

Step 4 is to prepare for PowerShell, first it download and install SharePoint Online Management Shell, download it from here SharePoint Online Management Shell.

Second is to create Azure Storage account if you don’t have already one.

Go to https://portal.azure.com and create a storage account

storageaccount

Also get your location and details

step-4

sponlinepowershell

Step 5 is creation of Content package, we need to use classic Export Web command in SharePoint onpremise server to create an export package

Export-SPWeb [-Identity] -Path [-ItemUrl ] [-NoFileCompression ]

Step 6 is coversion of package so that it can be imported

ConvertTo-SPOMigrationTargetedPackage -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -SourcePackagePath $sourcePackage -OutputPackagePath $targetPackage -TargetWebUrl $targetWeb -TargetDocumentLibraryPath $targetDocLib -Credentials $creds

To read more about ConvetTo-SPOMigrationTargetedPackage you can read here Click here

Step 7 is creating Azure Containers and uploading content package

$al = Set-SPOMigrationPackageAzureSource -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -SourcePackagePath $targetPackage -AzureQueueName $azureQueueName -AccountName $azureAccountName -AccountKey $azureAccountKey

$al|$al|fl

Step 8 is submitting a migration job, sample code is here

Submit-SPOMigrationJob -TargetWebUrl $targetWeb -MigrationPackageAzureLocations $al -Credentials $creds

Note that some parameters variables were created in earlier steps and needs to be used here

Step 9 is to check Migration Job Status which can be done Azure account storage queue

Sample source code

# Example file share packaging, conversion, upload and job submission script
# Queue is only container specified as new containers are automatically generated
# All container URIs get populated into $al variable output from Set-SPOMigrationPackageAzureSource cmdlet
$creds = (Get-Credential admin@contoso.com)
$sourceFiles = ‘\\fileshare\users\charles’
$sourcePackage = ‘C:\migration\CharlesDocumentsPackage_source’
$targetPackage = ‘C:\migration\CharlesDocumentsPackage_target’
$targetWeb = ‘https://contoso-my.sharepoint.com/personal/charles_contoso_com’
$targetDocLib = ‘Documents’
$azureAccountName = ‘contosomigration’
$azureAccountKey = ‘Insert Azure Account Key string Here’
$azureQueueName = ‘migrationqueue’
# Create new package from file share without security (faster)
New-SPOMigrationPackage -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -OutputPackagePath $sourcePackage
# Convert package to a targeted one by looking up data in target site collection
ConvertTo-SPOMigrationTargetedPackage -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -SourcePackagePath $sourcePackage -OutputPackagePath $targetPackage -TargetWebUrl $targetWeb -TargetDocumentLibraryPath $targetDocLib -Credentials $creds
# Create azure containers and upload package into them, finally snapshotting all files
$al = Set-SPOMigrationPackageAzureSource -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -SourcePackagePath $targetPackage -AzureQueueName $azureQueueName -AccountName $azureAccountName -AccountKey $azureAccountKey
# This displays the return Azure location
$al|$al|Format-List
# Submit package data to site collection to create new migration job
Submit-SPOMigrationJob -TargetWebUrl $targetWeb -MigrationPackageAzureLocations $al -Credentials $creds

So this completes all steps for data migration. Next we will look into Hybrid scenarios which will come in next post

To check earlier two posts click below

SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Planning #SharePoint #Office365

SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Strategy #SharePoint #Office365

 

 

 

SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Strategy #SharePoint #Office365

This post is written as step 2 that is strategy. Step that is planning can be read here SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Planning #SharePoint #Office365

Once we have filled in the excel template and also found out all issues via SharePoint Migration assessment Tool we need to formulate a strategy to find solution to issues and customizations.

As an outcome of the first step you should have a list of categorization of issues / customizations for which you need to strategize. I am listing down some if it, note that these are just examples and it totally depends on what you have done in your farm before and how much customizations have been done.

customizationcategory

For more reading about above topics and in text format use below link to download an excel Customization / Issues Categorization

Note that any solution will be based on what kind of Office 365 license you have, whether your organization will have PowerApps or Flow or not? Also whether you will have SharePoint Add-in model in place or not

If you have any questions with specific customization solution you can ask in comment section and I will try my best to provide a solution to that.

After we define a strategy for customizations we need to find a strategy to migrate data from On-premise to Office 365. This will be our third step and we will define that in next post. Before we do data migration it’s important to list down how many Web Applications we have, size of Content Databases.

In case you need more help on this or other SharePoint issues please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter

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SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Planning #SharePoint #Office365

This post is written as step 1 that is planning.

When SharePoint 2010 was launched Microsoft wanted to move everyone to cloud and they were trying to convince everybody that cloud is the future but they soon realized everything cannot be moved to cloud due to local data regulations and customers apprehensions about data security. Now Hybrid architecture is promoted quite a lot which makes sense and also more practical.

In this post I will try to outline how to prepare for Migration from SharePoint 2010 / 2013 to Office 365. We also discuss Hybrid architecture later in other posts.

We will discuss different aspects of migration, in this post we will understand SMAT tool provided by Microsoft and also excel template created by me to analyze customizations.

Microsoft has introduced a SharePoint Migration assessment Tool called SMAT, you can download it from here SMAT.

The zip file downloaded needs to be run on a SharePoint server, file contains below files, some of them are important to understand

smatfiles

File SiteSkipList.csv is important as you can mention which sites needs to be skipped during assessment, like you can mention MySite to be skipped as in general they don’t have any customizations and many sites under it.

SMAT Read me have more instructions but to run it you need run the exe file via command prompt

SMAT.exe -0 D:\Outputlog

where D:\Outputlog is the destination where logs will be created, do not out the log destination as SMAT folder as it tries to clean up and will end up deleting files.

While its running you can see what it will be scanning, below is a screenshot while it runs. You can see it’s analyzing FullTrustSolutions, LargeExcelFiles, Wokflows etc.

Since we know that no server side code is allowed in Office365 it’s important to have this kind of analysis to understand what things needs to reimplemented.

smatcapture

Once the assessment tool finished it will generate reports for each topic in detail and list down all site details, issues about it like below

smatreports

Each report has very detailed information, if you want to understand meaning of each report you can refer to this link SMAT Report Definitions. Although I think names are self-explanatory.

These reports will help you understand what issues you will face if you need to migrate but for planning I have created excel template where you can list all customizations and also strategize around it. This is needed because I believe that no one understands your farm better.

You can download the excel template from here, each column has some explaination.There are two sheets. First sheet is for listing all customizations and categorized them. Second sheet is to write down solution details of each category. This way you can have common solutions for each category and it can define how your developers should approach re-implementation

SharePoint 2013 to Office 365 Migration Template

So the migration assessment tool and excel template will help you analyze your farm in great detail and plan for the migration.

Tech Tip : Are you in search of a remote working technology? Access your online private workspace on any device(PC/android/iOS) with remotely accessible citrix vdi from CloudDesktopOnline with enterprise Add-Ons like Hosted SharePoint and Exchange. If you`re a MS Azure user looking for managed azure services visit Apps4Rent.

You can read the part 2 here SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Strategy #SharePoint #Office365

 

 

GigJam a first hand review and and how it works #Office365 #GigJam

GigJam is build on the philosophy of “Who sees what”, basically as Microsoft says “It’s your Gig”. You can share documents , information, calendar etc. with set of people, it’s different in the aspect that you can decide what part of a document you want to share with whom.

You can decide how much information, part of a document needs to be shared and also for how long. This is quite powerful if you want to take an opinion about something but you don’t want to share all the information yet or you want to share some part of a documentation with customer but not the whole document.

Let’s dive in to find out how it works, first of all to have GigJam it should have been enabled by your Office 365 Admin. Strangely in Microsoft documentation on this page Enable GigJam it says you need to go to Settings –> Services & Add.ins but in Office 365 Admin that is not the way it is.

You have to go to Settings –> Apps as shown below

enablegigjam

Once done you need to download GigJam, you can download it on Windows 8 or later, MAC and iOS devices from here Download GigJam.

Once download you can install and login via your Office 365 account, you will see blank canvas like screen as below

gigjamhomescreen

It has an add symbol on right bottom, speak button as you can also instruct GigJam to work for you and also hamburger menu on top left.

By default date is selected as GigJam title, plus symbol is used to add content (card) and you have variety of selection available viz Gmail, OneDrive etc. the list is extensive which is quite good.

plusgigjam In this case I am selecting OneDrive for Business and I will add some document from there, you will have to login as in when you select a Card or you can also predefined Sources.

carddetailsgigjam sourcesgigjam

Select a document which you would like to share as Gig and then use the G symbol at top to mark what you want to share. The document has multiple pages but I am gonna share only some part of it. You can send to any valid email address of Microsoft or Gmail, the user just needs to have GigJam installed. Here I am sending to Gmail addresses.

sharegigjam
Share GigJam with users and mark what you want to share

Once you click send button you can select if you would like to share for 24 hours or only view or work with you on this.

ShareOptions.PNG

Once sent user will get an email like below

gigjamemail When you Jump In the Gig will open, you will have option to put in comments which other user can see, it also shows that it will expire in 24 hours.

So this is how it works, it can very useful for business as we always get questions like this from business to share information from outside organization and also limited information. User Interface is intuitive and easy to use. Since it works with Google account as it’s a great plus.

 

 

How to submit a Flow in template Gallery ?

You can also submit a Flow as a template to template Gallery. Once approved it will be visible for everybody to use. What you need is a descriptive name and good description about it.

You can submit Flow created from Blank or a modified one created from template. Note that Microsoft may modify your template before it gets published.

To submit first you need to create a Flow first, you can learn how to do it from this post Microsoft Flow – Create from blank . Once done select “Done” and then you will see option to Submit to gallery.

submiastemplate

submittogallery

Once clicked you need enter good description and submit it. If Microsoft think it’s worthy enough they will make it available.

descriptiontemplate

PowerApps first look! Create a simple PowerApp

PowerApps is a new feature to create Apps quickly and with limited efforts. In this simple example I am going to create an App based on a custom list of SharePoint. List is as below

claimlist

Idea is to create an App for users to approve or reject claims logged by users, so we have a simple list which stores description and amount. In the App Approver has option to reject or approve claims.

Now in new version of SharePoint Online User Interface you have the option to create an PowerApp from the list so we will use that. Click on PowerApps and Create an app. Pick a name for the App, we have chosen ClaimApp.

createpowerapp powerappname

Once you click create, App creation will start a new window of browser will open. Note that now PowerApps can be created using browser based studio. Widows studio is still available which we will look later in other blog post.

This will create the basic App and show you in the web studio of PowerApp as below.

powerappstudio

The studio has different elements on top, right and left. First you will see the Browsescreen1 in which elements can be selected. As you can see I have selected an element which is visible on right side.

browsescreen

You can take away elements as we have taken away all except Claims title, there are other screens for Edit as well which can be selected from left side. Here is a screen shot for Detail Screen and Edit Screen

detailscreen editscreen

As you can see all the useful screens are already created. This can be published as is to work for end users. The other options of the studio will be discussed in another post. Now let’s see it in action.

You can do a preview by using F5 or play button at top right. You can save the App from File menu and then run it from List view option

runpowerappopenpowerapp

Click open and the App will open in a new tab.

appscreen viewappscreen EditScreenPowerApp.PNG

PowerApps can be downloaded to mobiles and Windows 10 laptops. Once downloaded it works as a mobile App. The main PowerApps mobile App will show all available Apps for your organization and you can download to run required ones

appspowerapp

Once downloaded it will work the same way as it was working the same way on web.

So this was a glimpse of PowerApps and how easy it is to create an App. Next we will explore studio more and perform customization.