SharePoint911 Blog Feed

Podcast 261 - I Charge Mine in the Shower

Todd O. Klindt — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 20:46:54 +0000

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Tonight's Podcast has all the makings of a great podcast. It's got Search! It's got Patching! It's got Azure AD! I even threw in some Band and Office 365 content to really make it pop.

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Running Time: 29:35

Links:

06:45 - Worst conference prize ever
07:48 - Cloud Hybrid Search Service Application
14:09 - Russ Maxwell's script/blog
15:11 - Azure AD Premium Dashboard is in preview
17:33 - Band 2 leaks
24:56 - Office 365 Import Service—migration to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business just became easier
25:00 - Office 365 Import Service for SPO Migration

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ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/Podcast261

Category: Netcast

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Podcast 260 - The Guy with the Sad Trombone

Todd O. Klindt — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 19:49:05 +0000

Body:

Tonight's Podcast talks about the great new movie coming out, The Martian, and why you all should see it. Then we move on to some Office and SharePoint topics. I talk about the new Office 2016 clients that are coming out, as well as the new Office Online Server preview. Then I lament about how the August 2015 CU kicked my butt, but how I found redemption with insanity. I finish up with some Windows 10 content.

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Running Time: 42:09

Links:

12:11 - The Martian
24:06 - Office 2016 is rolling out
24:59 - Office Online Server Preview
34:14 - Windows 10 mobile preview update

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Workflow Lazy Approval

Laura Rogers — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 14:01:16 +0000

Body:

What is lazy approval? It is the ability to reply to an approval email with the word "Approved" or "Rejected", without need for the approver to go to a site in SharePoint. With the mobile workforce, this is a feature that is in high demand, for people to quickly be able to read an email and approve or reject instantaneously. In this blog post, I'll show how this can be done with SharePoint 2013, specifically with SharePoint 2013 workflows. This is only an on premises solution, and is NOT available in Office 365, this specific solution also cannot be done with a SharePoint 2010 workflow. Office 365 does not have the functionality that SharePoint on premises has, where you can turn on "incoming email". On premises, this is something that your SharePoint server admin had to have set up at the server level.

Incoming email can be used for Document Libraries, Announcement lists, and Calendars.

When you turn on incoming email in a list or library, you assign it an email address. In this solution, this will be useful for lazy approval, because the approval email that they send can arrive in a SharePoint list, and then a workflow can go out and complete the associated task automatically.

The components of this solution:

A request form that needs to be approved. My example is a very simple travel request form. This has been created as a custom list.
A task list. In this example, I'm just letting the workflow use the default "Workflow Tasks" list on my SharePoint team site.
An Announcement list. When I created this list, I used the "Announcements" list template. I named this list "Approval Email".

Two workflows:

Approve Travel. Running when new items are created in the travel request list (1)
This is a site workflow, and will wait for emails to arrive in the announcement list (3)

Some of the trickiest workarounds we'll be dealing with in this solution are the lack of list relationships. First of all, task lists are inherently not related anything. There is no lookup field that connects a task to the thing that is being approved. So we'll have to use the task name as a unique field. Also, when we receive incoming emails, they will not be related to anything either. Another challenge is that when you create a workflow ON the list where the emails are arriving (3), the arriving items do not trigger a workflow. This is why our workflow will be triggered in a different way. I've heard about people making configuration changes on the server or doing something with PowerShell to make this work, which would also make it work in 2010, but this solution is NOT going to make you do server changes.

My associated video:

SharePoint Power Hour Episode 97: Workflow Lazy Approval

Here's how to build this.

On the approval email (announcement) list (3), go to list settings, and click Incoming Email Settings. I used the following settings. In this case, I only need simple information as to whether or not something is approved. The subject and body of the email will automatically fill in the Title and Body fields in the list. I don't need any email attachments, and I don't need the original *.EML email file. Also, I chose the email security policy to accept messages based on permissions. That way, I can let only a certain group of approvers have Contribute permissions on this list, and no one else. That way, I won't get random other people trying to send email here, or approve things they're not supposed to approve.
Create the SharePoint Designer workflow, Approve Travel, on the list of travel requests. Set it up to run when new items are created.
For the first action, use "Assign a task" or "Start a task process". I usually prefer the first one for several reasons, one to point out for this solution is that the task name will be identical for all tasks that get assigned for any given travel request. I named my stage Assign Task. Click the blue this user.
For the participant, pick a user or group. For the task title, pick just the ID of the current item. Yes, in real scenarios that is not a feasible task title, but we will make this more complex later as we go along.
Expand Email Options, and click the first Open email editor button, for the task creation email.

Don't forget, you may want to modify the task overdue email in the same way, if you use these and if you want your users to have lazy approval links in these emails as well. Notice it in the screenshot above.
This standard email tells the task assignee some info about what they're approving, with a link to the task and a link to the item needing approval. For a scenario where you want the approver to have all of the info they need, right in the email, it will help to insert some additional fields. You could insert every field from your travel request if you wanted to, but for demo purposes, I only inserted the start and end dates of the trip. This is also where we are going to insert links to let the approver click to do the lazy approval. Type the words Approve via email, and Reject via email. We will create the hyperlinks next, but here's the general idea:
We will put all of the info that we need into a mailto URL. Here's the mailto Link Syntax guide that I found. Select the word Approve, and click the hyperlink button (the little globe). Click the little ellipsis next to the Address box, to bring up the string builder. For now we're going to keep this super simple, and only put the ID of the travel request in the email subject. We'll get it running that way, and then we can get more advanced with various string actions. What email address did you create at step 1? We'll use that here.

mailto:wonderlauratest@atrackspace.com?subject=[Current Item ID]&body=Approved
Click Ok twice, and then select the Reject text, so that you can make this a hyperlink also. Repeat step 7, and the only difference is that instead of Approved, the mailto syntax will have &body=Rejected
Click Ok on all screens.
This workflow is going to be pretty simplistic, and of course in the real world you will have other things going on in it. For example, I'm just going to log whether the travel was approved or not, but realistically you'd be using the Send an email action to notify people that something has been approved or not, etc. Add two more stages to the workflow, call them Approved and Rejected. Here's the whole thing:
Finish out the Create the Approve Travel workflow as above, and publish it. Make sure it's set to run when a new item is created.
Create a new SharePoint 2013 Site Workflow, and call it Wait for Email. The important thing to remember about this workflow is that it will be running and perpetually looping each time an email arrives in the Approval Email list (3), so each time you change it and publish a new version, you have to go terminate the currently running one, and start it all over again. This will mostly just happen during testing and the workflow creation process. Once it's being used, it will just run and stay running.
For the first action, add Wait for event in list item. If you are not using a SharePoint 2013 workflow, you will not have this action available. No, I'm not sure how you'd do this in 2010. I named this first stage Waiting. Click the blue this item event.
Choose Event: When an item is added, and for the list choose Approval Email. Click OK. This means that when a new email arrives in the approval email list, this action will be triggered on the already running workflow, and will also give you this variable called related item, which is the GUID of the item that was just created. (note that GUIDs are new to 2013 workflows and are not the same as the ID of the item)
For the next action, choose Log to History list. This step is not required for this workflow to function, but gives you some reference info when troubleshooting. Just log that the email arrived, and what the GUID is. On the string builder, click OK.
The only data that we have to go by in this arriving email is the info in the subject and body. To start off, we need to be able to match the arriving email with which task it needs to complete. In this simple example so far, we have created the task and the email to both equal the ID of the travel item being approved. After logging which item arrived, create another stage called Complete Task. The Waiting stage will just go straight to the Complete Task stage for now. Here's the whole thing, and I'll show you what was done in each action. Note that the "contains" that I used is case sensitive.
Here's the Set Workflow Variable action (the 3^rd one). Set an integer variable called TaskID to this, which is the ID of the task WHERE the title of the task is equal to the email subject of the email that just arrived. This TaskID can now be used in several other places in the workflow, to reference the task.
Here's the Approval Email: Body (the IF statements). Basically, get the Body of the email WHERE the GUID of the item in the approval email list matches the related item variable.
The Update item in Workflow Tasks is the Update item action. Basically, set the status to completed and outcome to Approved for the task WHERE the ID of the task equals the TaskID workflow variable. Whew!
For the Else if part of the workflow where the rejection is, you can just use copy and paste in your workflow to copy the IF statement and also the update list item action. Then, all you need to change is the word approved to the word Rejected.
Notice that the last Transition to Stage is to go back to the beginning, to the Waiting stage. This way, the workflow will be waiting again for the next email to arrive. Once your whole workflow looks like step 15, Publish it. Go to your SharePoint site, and go to Site Contents. Click Site Workflows.
Click the name of your Wait for email workflow, to kick it off. Then you will see it listed under My Running Workflows, in the Waiting status (because that's what we called the first stage).
Okay, time to try it out and see what it can do so far, BEFORE making it more complicated. Go to your travel request list and create a new request. I think I'll go to Hawaii.
Wait for the task assignment email to arrive. I simply assigned mine to myself for now. This could take 5 minutes or so, because these run based on a timer job on the server. Here's the email
Try the Approve hyperlink. See that it opens up a new email. Click Send, without changing anything. (This can also be verbiage that we can add to the task and the email, telling users not to change it just click Send.)
Keep an eye on the Approval Email list on your site. The email will arrive here, which will trigger the workflow to complete the associated task (in Workflow Tasks), which will then display the word Approved next to my travel request for my trip to Hawaii (Travel Request list). You can change your view in the Approval Email list, to include extra columns, such as Body and E-mail Sender. The Title and Email Subject will have the same value.
You may want to try doing a couple of these. Also, take a look at the still running site workflow from step 20. Click on the Waiting status, to see the log of what's happened so far. If your workflow says "Suspended", that means that there's a problem, so click End Workflow. Then once you fix/tweak and re-publish (like I have done many, many times in figuring this out), you just have to remember to do step 20 again (start it again).
Okay, so now that you see that it works, you will probably want to make some tweaks, such as to have a better email subject, or to even make sure that the person sending the approval email is actually the same person that the task is assigned to. This is where it can get really tricky. In SharePoint Designer, open your Approve Travel workflow to edit it. Open your Assign a task action, so that you see the screenshot in step 4. Click the ellipsis next to the task title. I'm calling mine Travel Req: # Approval. Click OK. (I'm using the term "approval" as a generic term referring to the approval process. The actual outcome is approved or rejected, and it will be in the body.)
Now the task will look nicer, but now we need to make the email subject still match the task name so that step 17 will work correctly. I also use the URLEncode URLDecode website to help me with my syntax. I'm also throwing in some info about who is going and where they are going.

With the above syntax, when the approver clicks the Approve hyperlink in the email, it will create this email, and they just need to click Send.
If you want to check the name of the email responder to make sure it's the same as the person who the task is assigned to, this adds more complexity, but can be done. Here's the new, more complex workflow, with logging added as well:
Here's how to do the comparison between the person sending the lazy approval email and the person the task is assigned to. This is in the IF statement inside that first stage transition.

and

That's it! There are many different ways you could slice this, but I tried to break it down to the simplest way. If you need to extract specific info from within the body or subject after the email arrives, there are several utility actions that can be used:

Also, there's the possible complexity you may have when using the task process that involves more than one approver. All task names are the same for that one travel request when that happens. One thing you can possibly do, would be to run a workflow on the task list, so that when items are changed, and the status is equal to completed, it actually changes the task name. Another idea: When you send the lazy approval email, there is no task ID available to include in it, but there is a task URL, which will inherently contain the unique ID of the task. You could include that in the response email, and then use the utility actions to extract that ID, like extract substring from index of string. For example, my task url might be http://site.contoso.com/lists/tasks/dispform.aspx?ID=# so the index would be 54, which is where the ID is. As you can see, it could get much more complicated. For troubleshooting, don't forget steps 21 and 25.

Again, here are the requirements to be able to do this:

SharePoint 2013 on premises
Incoming email is set up on the server

No, I don't know how this could be done in Office 365, and yes, this type of solution is possible in SP 2010 I've heard, but there's something you have to do on the server to make the arriving email actually trigger a workflow, since it won't by default. I've never done it.

Category: workflows

Published: 9/15/2015 9:01 AM

Podcast 259 - I’m a Fast Kinda Guy

Todd O. Klindt — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 16:34:01 +0000

Body:

In this week's podcast I revel in all the fun I had at SPTechCon. I talk about the sessions I put on, and how I crashed the SharePoint Power Hour. Then I talk about a little thing called the SharePoint 2016 IT Preview and it is life-changing. I finish up by showing you how you can break Windows 10 by putting it in the Fast Ring, and the latest book I've read, The Martian.

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Running Time: 44:17

Links:

07:15 - Picture with Heidi and John
08:50 -Like Paul Simon skit on SNLs
19:50 - SharePoint 2016 IT Preview is Out!
26:00 - Creating and adding items to a SharePoint 2010 list with PowerShell
28:22 - All of my SharePoint 2016 Content
34:53 - Buy The Martian
39:40 - The Martian Official Trailer
41:45 - SharePointalooza
42:03 - Fancy SharePointalooza video
43:10 - Devintersections

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ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/Podcast259

Category: Netcast

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A New Look and a New Post.

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 17:50:56 +0000

2016 is almost here, both the year and the SharePoint 2016 product. As a result I have decided to change up the look of the site a little (let me know if you like/hate it) and to begin posting some very preliminary information about SharePoint 2016.

First. We have a technical preview! Get it here.

Second, what info is out there is all subject to change, but there is a lot even if it is incomplete right now. Here are a few links to get you started.

What’s new in SharePoint Server 2016 Installation and Deployment

Navigating List View Thresholds in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview

New and improved features in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview

Remember, ALL of this information is subject to change, but there is a lot of new stuff coming!

Podcast 258 - SharePoint 2016 Beta Watch Day 17

Todd O. Klindt — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 00:34:40 +0000

Body:

In this episode I lament that we still haven't seen the much anticipated SharePoint 2016 Beta. I took this as another opportunity to tell folks how they can get prepared. Then I talk a little about the August 2015 CU for SharePoint 2013 and some of the good and bad things it does. Then I transition into one of my favorite new topics, hybrid deployments.

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Running Time: 34:37

Links:

06:33 - 5 Things to do before the SharePoint 2016 Beta Drops
07: 39 - August 2015 CU Cloud Search Service Application
09:28 - Stefan Gossner's post on the August 2013 CU
13:04 - Simplifying Hybrid Configuration with the new Hybrid Scenario Picker
14:32 - Conquering Azure and Office 365 with PowerShell
16:46 - Azure PowerShell cmdlets updated
17:50 - The Converged Microsoft Account and Azure Active Directory Programming Model
27:31 - Microsoft Research Has Found A Solution To Improve Wearable’s Battery Life

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Category: Netcast

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SharePoint 2016 IT Preview is Out!

Todd O. Klindt — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 19:22:22 +0000

Body:

The day has finally come, SharePoint 2016 IT Preview is finally out. Our prayers have been answered. Before you get too excited, Microsoft has said that most of the changes were under the hood. This doesn’t look radically different. It doesn’t have any radically new features yet. But we can install it and we can play with it. Here are a few links to get you started:

Download SharePoint 2016 IT Preview (The Product key is under the Install Instructions section at the bottom)

User Voice link to give feedback

SharePoint 2016 Forums on TechNet

Hybrid Resource Center

SharePoint 2016 Feature Summary

I’ve already started working on some other blog posts about SharePoint 2016, so stay tuned. I’ve created a short URL http://www.toddklindt.com/SharePoint2016 where you’ll be able to find all my blog posts on SharePoint 2016.

ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/SP2016Preview

Category: SharePoint 2016; SharePoint 2016 Preview

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SPTechCon PowerShell with SharePoint Online Links

Todd O. Klindt — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 14:35:09 +0000

Body:

Tuesday at SPTechCon I did my award winning (my mom’s awards count, right?) session on using PowerShell to manage SharePoint Online. There were a ton of links in there, so I thought I’d put them all in one convenient blog post for easier clicking.

Download SharePoint Online Management Shell

Windows Management Framework 3.0 (needed for Windows 7)

Save Encrypted Passwords to Disk with PowerShell

Microsoft Online Service Sign-On Assistant

Install Azure AD Module

SharePoint 2013 Client SDK

Using CSOM in PowerShell scripts with Office 365

Office 365 Patterns and Practices PowerShell cmdlets

These are the links as of today. They will probably end up being stale at some point as the tools are updated. Let me apologize in advance for that and offer up this adorable picture of a sad bear in apology:

ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/SPOLinks

Category: SharePoint 2013; Hybrid

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What’s new for UI in the SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 16:00:57 +0000

If you haven’t heard the news, this week Microsoft released the SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview bits for you to download and try out in your on premises farm. Readers of my blog are probably most interested to know how this update affects the UI and customization story for SharePoint. The good news is that at this point, SharePoint Server 2016 looks remarkably similar to an Office 365 SharePoint Online site. The biggest difference you will immediately notice is the Suite Bar or Ribbon at the top of SharePoint has evolved to a more modern look with the App Launcher, affectionately known as the “Waffle Menu” (I’m still waiting for my royalty checks for bringing waffles to SharePoint, but that’s another story).

In fact, if you are used to customizing Office 365 master pages and CSS, you will notice that Seattle.master and CoreV15.css are identical between the SharePoint 2016 IT Preview and SharePoint Online. Of course, since O365 is always evolving they could deviate again before the next preview, but for now they match exactly.

Here is a screenshot of my homepage in the SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview:

Compare that to my Office 365 SharePoint Online site:

Looks pretty similar right? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter what you think about the UX direction that Microsoft is going with next version of SharePoint!

The post What’s new for UI in the SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview appeared first on Randy Drisgill.

PerformancePoint and ADOMD.NET

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 21:26:00 +0000

I was recently configuring PerformancePoint in SharePoint 2013 and had deployed the SQL Server 2012 AdventureWorksDW Multidimensional cube for testing purposes. It had been a while since I configured PerformancePoint so thankfully I had written this post previously. As luck would have it I ran into pretty much every roadblock mentioned in that post……and one additional “detour” that I had almost forgot about (that also had a new twist).

If you’re in PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer and trying to create a data source that connects to SSAS, but seeing nothing show up in your Database dropdown (as seen below…..sorta) you might need to install ADOMD.NET 11.

Not only install it, but install it on all servers that run PerformancePoint AND you’ll need to adjust the Web.config file to tell PerformancePoint to use it. This is of course assuming you’ve set everything else up properly. I’m taking for granted that you’ve already done stuff like

Associate an Unattended Service Account to the PerformancePoint Service Application and granted the appropriate users the right to use the unattended account in the Secure Store Service Application
Double checked that the service account you’re using for your Unattended Service Account actually has access to at least one db on the SSAS instance you’re trying to connect to

If none of that sounds familiar, check out my post on secure store for Visio Services or my posts on using data refresh with Excel Services…configuring PerformancePoint should be pretty similar to those.

Note that I wasn’t getting any error messages, but instead the database dropdown was just empty. If you’re getting any type of error on the screen shown above, your problem is most likely something else and not ADOMD.NET. Still with me? Is your database dropdown still mocking you at the very moment with its emptiness? Hopefully this will cure your PerformancePoint woes.

So….let’s do this

Go download ADOMD.NET 11 already will ya?….at the time of this writing you can find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29065
Install it on all the first farm devices that’s running PerformancePoint. (something like next, next, finish)
Once ADOMD.NET 11 is installed, navigate to \Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\15.0\WebServices\PpsMonitoringServer
Locate and make a backup copy of the web.config file found there. (Just in case you mess this all up…..I certainly don’t trust you.)
Open the web.config file and scroll on down to the very bottom. Once you get there you should see something like this:
Change the oldVersion from 9.0.0.0 to 10.0.0.0
Change the newVersion from 10.0.0.0 to 11.0.0.0
Save that bad boy
Repeat for every server running PerformancePoint

Completing the above had my database dropdown populating with an abundance of easily selectable db’s for as far as the eye could see. Some say it’s still populating new and wonderful connection options to this very day (results may vary).

I don’t recall having to do an iisreset or anything…although I think I might have closed Dashboard Designer and reopened it after making the changes. Hopefully this helps!

Simple Browser Settings for “Single Sign On”

Laura Rogers — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 16:28:16 +0000

Body:

This is a topic that I’m being asked about more and more frequently, so that’s a great reason to write a post! There are issues that crop up, multiple annoying authentication prompts, and even issues and errors with MS Office (and InfoPath) integration with SharePoint. The best part about this browser setting, is that it gets rid of your authentication prompts for SharePoint after the first login. First of all, I’ll show you the quick fix, and then I’ll let you know some of the issues that it solves.

This is really important for end users to know!

First of all, what Internet Explorer (IE) security zone is your SharePoint site in? Go to your SharePoint site in IE.
Open up the Internet Explorer Internet Options screen. Go to the Security tab:
What zone is selected by default? Mine has Trusted Sites selected, so that’s how I know that’s the zone my site is in. I like to leave my internet zone with pretty high security settings, so for any SharePoint site I go to frequently, I usually add them to my Trusted Sites zone. If you’re on a corporate network, you may notice that your SharePoint site is already in the Local Intranet zone, which makes sense.
For the zone that your SharePoint site is in, click the Custom Level button. (Again, I’m not recommending you do this for the Internet zone, but I’ll show you other options in a minute).
After you click Custom Level, scroll all the way to the bottom. In the User Authentication section, select Automatic logon with current user name and password. Click OK.
After you’ve done this, close and re-open your browser, then when you go to your SharePoint site, and when you log in at the authentication prompt, be sure to check the box to remember your credentials before clicking OK.

I use the trusted sites zone for SharePoint sites that I go to which aren’t necessarily on my intranet. To add sites to it, look at the screenshot at step 1 and click the Sites button there.

You don’t need to type the names of every single web app in the farm. You can simply use an asterisk. See in the example above, I put an asterisk there, and any site that has something.atrackspace.com will be covered. Notice that there are a couple of them in my list that I could have consolidated. So instead of my.contoso.com and rtm.contoso.com, I could just put *.contoso.com.

After you add your site to the list, click Close. Click OK on all screens. You also may want to go to the IE Compatibility View Settings screen, and add your SharePoint site there as well.

Why would you want to do all of this? Here are some issues that I’ve seen it fix:

Dragging files into SharePoint libraries. If you’re not able to, this fixes it.
This security prompt will go away. “Some files contain viruses that can be harmful to your computer. It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source.”
You’ll stop being prompted for credentials every time you open an Office file or create a new one directly from SharePoint.
Saving straight from Office programs to SharePoint. When you start a new file directly in an Office program, you can save it straight to a SharePoint library without having to go to the site in the browser. I’ve seen this not act properly when browser settings are not correct. When saving straight to SharePoint, it’s supposed to look like this. See, you can see the site branding at the top, and you can even navigate up a level, and navigate to another library, using the breadcrumb trail at the top.

This may look slightly different depending on your OS and/or version of MS Office.
Gets rid of this error when trying to publish an InfoPath form to SharePoint. I’m trying to reproduce it, to get the exact text, but haven’t been able to.

I’ll update this post if I think of any other issues and errors that this fix solves. In general, it improves your Office integration with SharePoint, dramatically.

What about those of you who are server administrators, who would like to apply these IE settings globally, using Group Policy? You can do that! Lori Gowin and I are actually presenting a session next week at SPTechCon, about ways that the server admin can help improve user adoption, and this is one of the things we talk about.

Group Policy

The value 1 = intranet zone, so intranet zone is selected here:

Have fun! I’m interested to see the feedback on this one, and if you server admins have anything to throw in that I missed.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Internet Explorer,Office Integration

Category: MS Office; InfoPath

Published: 8/20/2015 11:28 AM

Podcast 257 - Flapping of Gums

Todd O. Klindt — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 22:10:33 +0000

Body:

In this week's podcast I gush some more about Jason and I's webinar on Microsoft Identity. Then I talk some more about the impending SharePoint 2016 beta that all of our mouths are watering over. Since that's not out yet I'm spending my time playing with Windows 10. I tell you some cool things that I've stumbled across there. I wrap things up by talking about a new gadget I've bought, and how I hope it doesn't bring down the mighty Klindt LAN.
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Running Time: 31:16

Links:

05:58 - Making Sense of Microsoft Identities in a Hybrid World: Part 1 of 3
07:12 - The Hybrid On-ramp: Implementing Azure Active Directory Connect and More - Part 2 of 3
07:40 - The Hybrid On-ramp: Troubleshooting Hybrid Identity Issues - Part 3 of 3
10:06 - 5 Things to do before the SharePoint 2016 Beta Drops
11:54 - Microsoft releases free Windows 10 IoT Core for Raspberry Pi 2
17:26 - Buy Meegopad2
17:58 - Cortana can replace Google Now
20:28 - Microsoft's Project Astoria has leaked letting Windows 10 Mobile sideload Android APKs directly
24:48 - Shared Folder Sync is Now Available for (Almost) All OneDrive Users

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ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/Podcast257

Category: Netcast

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Podcast 256 - Every Box and 6 or 8 Toasters

Todd O. Klindt — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 13:41:04 +0000

Body:

Tonight's podcast covers a lot of ground. I talk about a webinar I'm doing on Azure AD with Jason Himmelstein, and why it's so important for SharePoint Admins. Then I talk about what you can do to be ready when the SharePoint 2016 Beta drops this month. Finally I talk about Windows 10 and some of the fun things I've done with it since it officially RTMed last week.

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Running Time: 39:20

Links:

05:39 - Making sense of Microsoft identities in a Hybrid World
07:00 - Webinar repo on Github
10:19 - Server and Domain controller configure video
11:27 - 5 Things to do before the SharePoint 2016 Beta Drops
27:38 - Windows 10 Media Creation Tool
33:33 - Activate God Mode in Windows 10

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ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/Podcast256

Category: Netcast

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5 Things to do before the SharePoint 2016 Beta Drops

Todd O. Klindt — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 17:00:54 +0000

Body:

If the rumors are on the Internet are to believed (and when has the Internet ever steered us wrong?) sometime this month (August 2015) the very first public beta of SharePoint 2016 will find its way into our eager little hands. There’s a lot to get excited about. I find a good way to deal with anticipation is to keep myself busy. I’ve already played about 1,000 games of Solitaire, and I’m all caught up on American Ninja Warrior, so I came up with this list of 5 things we can do to keep ourselves busy while we patiently (!) wait for the beta to be available.

1) Get An Office 365 Tenant

When we got our first glimpse of SharePoint 2016 at Microsoft Ignite in May it was very clear that the Hybrid story was going to be important. When you’re testing the SharePoint 2016 beta you’re going to want to pay a lot of attention to those new features. One of the things we’ll need to do that is an Office 365 Business tenant. If you’re already using Office 365 I would recommend using a different tenant for your tests. If you have an MSDN license that comes with an Office 365 test tenant. If you don’t, you can also get a Free Office 365 Business Trial. Of course it will expire eventually (30 days, I think) so make sure you don’t have any data in there you would miss if it were to evaporate into the ether. And once you hook your SharePoint 2016 up to your Office 365 tenant you’ll see the process isn’t so bad. So it will be easy to do with a different trial if you get another one. Having this tenant will help you get comfortable with Office 365 itself, but it will also help you see what great hybrid possibilities there are with SharePoint 2016.

2) Buy an Internet Domain

Another part of the full Hybrid experience requires an Internet domain. You’ll need it to sync identities from your on premise Windows Active Directory to Office 365. Like your Office 365 tenant, I recommend using a different DNS zone specifically for this. Don’t use one you’re using for something else, like your company’s main DNS zone. You will need to make some DNS record changes, and that might impact other things using that zone. If you’re like me you probably have 10 domains bought and paid for that were going to be The Coolest Thing Ever, but instead cost you $8 a year to keep and give you nothing in return. Now it’s time for them to earn their keep. I get my domains from GoDaddy (I know, I know) but any domain registrar will work. I don’t know about the other registrars, but Office 365 can make the necessary DNS records changes for you automatically if you have your DNS hosted with GoDaddy. I look at that as one less thing I can screw up. That has a lot of value.

3) Make some VMs

I know what you’re thinking, you probably thought this would be the first step, right? The reason it’s number three is because it will save you some grief if the Windows Active Directory you install SharePoint 2016 into is using the same DNS namespace as the domain you bought in Tip #2. I’m looking out for you. It’s not necessary that they be the same, but it makes things easier. Linking up your on-prem identities with Office 365 isn’t easy the first time, so you need all the help you can get while you’re learning it.

To test SharePoint 2016 I’ve got three VMs ready and rearing to go. They look like this:

A Domain Controller

I would not test this in a production domain, so I spun up a new domain controller. I installed mine on Windows Server 2012 R2. You can use this script to promote it to a domain controller.

A SQL Server

SharePoint 2016 requires SQL Server 2014, so you’ll need to spin one of those up. For now, I think SharePoint 2016 has the same demands of SQL that SharePoint 2013 did. MaxDOP has to be set to 1. The SP_INSTALL account needs to be securityadmin and dbcreator. Since mine is a test environment I also set all the databases to use the Simple Recovery Model and capped the amount of RAM the SQL engine can use. You can use this T-SQL script to do the same. Of course you’ll need to edit it to reflect your accounts and environment. Also, don’t forget to change the Windows Firewall to allow SQL traffic in. You’ll need to allow port 1433 UDP and TCP in. I always forget that.

Box Itching for SharePoint 2016

Finally, the SharePoint box! It has to be Windows Server 2012 R2, patched within an inch of its life. SharePoint 2016 has the same hardware requirements as SharePoint 2013, so you’ll need to size it accordingly. If you want to play with things like the new Cloud Search Service Application or Minrole functionality, you’ll need additional SharePoint servers. But one server is all you need to get it installed, configured, and start poking around in Central Admin.

4) Create Some Users

After the Domain is installed and happy you’ll need some accounts. For now, I’m recommending the same service accounts I did for SharePoint 2013. They are outlined in this blog post.

And SharePoint is nothing without end users. You’re going to want to test the changes to the User Profile Service sync and identity syncing, so you’re going to need a bunch of users. This blog post has the PowerShell script I use to create AD users (both service accounts and user accounts) and has a file you can use to seed some users. I’ve since created another file that creates another 30 users or so. You can find it here. You’ll have to rename it to users.csv for my poorly written script to find it.

After your Domain is installed, and it has some users, download Azure Active Directory Connect and start playing with the syncing. I won’t get into the nitty gritty of that here. That should be its own blog post. Or 3.

5) A SharePoint 2013 Content Database

If you’re reading this blog, I assume you already have a SharePoint farm or two lurking around. And I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you’re going to want to upgrade some or all of that content to SharePoint 2016. In that case, there’s no time like the present to start playing with that. You don’t need an actual database from your Production environment if you don’t want to. If you’re creating a new database just for testing try to keep it small (makes those backup and restore times easier to swallow) and try to make it representative of what your Production site collections look like. If you have a lot of Publishing sites, make sure your test database does. If you’re feeling brave and you had your Wheaties for breakfast, consider trying to upgrade a Service Application database, too. It’s an advanced move, but I believe in you. If you’ve made it this far in this blog post you’re obviously quite dedicated (or bored). You can do anything!

Like you folks, every morning when I wake up I run over to Internet Explorer (or now Edge) and see if the Beta has dropped. When it has, I’ll be ready for it. And if you followed these steps, so will you.

ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/ReadyForSP2016Beta

Category: SharePoint 2016; SharePoint 2013

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Podcast 255 - Killer Game of Solitaire

Todd O. Klindt — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 02:37:55 +0000

Body:

Tonight I'm all giddy with anticipation about the public Beta of SharePoint 2016. We talk a little about what it will and won't contain. Then I talk about Windows 10 and what to expect when it comes out. Finally I talk about a change I made to my mobile phone.

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Running Time: 45:25

Links:

06:58 - Making sense of Microsoft identities in a Hybrid World
10:30 - SharePoint 2016 beta next month
19:00 - Bill Baer's Tech Talk on ITUnity
42:48 - Mississippi PowerShell User Group
43:10 - SPTechCon
43:44 - SharePointalooza
44:03 - Devintersections

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Category: Netcast

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Microsoft Identity Webinar Series

Todd O. Klindt — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 21:21:48 +0000

Body:

The last couple of years have been a rough time for us on-prem SharePoint Admins. We weren’t sure what the SharePoint future held for us. Was there going to be another on-prem version of SharePoint? (There is) Will we have to learn how to make good French fries? (I might) I believe I’ve seen the future, and its name is “Hybrid.” In order to make Hybrid environments work happily, your Identity house has to be in order. That’s where Jason Himmelstein and I come in. For the next three Thursdays (July 30th, August 6th, and August 13th, 2015) we’re doing a free, yes FREE webinar series called, Making Sense of Microsoft Identities in a Hybrid World at ITUnity.com.

Week 1 will be a lot of talking. We’ll cover where we come from in regards to Identity with Active Directory and SharePoint. Then we’ll cover what options we have around Hybrid SharePoint and Identity. Then we’ll assign some homework.

Week 2 we’ll roll up our sleeves and walk through setting up some Directory replication and Federation.

Week 3 there will be some tearful goodbyes and also some troubleshooting steps you can use when you’re using these tools.

This webinar is going to be a lot of fun. Go ahead and sign up today. See you there.

ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/IdentityWebinar

Category: SharePoint 2010; SharePoint 2013

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Podcast 254 - Seems Almost Offensive

Todd O. Klindt — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 21:14:48 +0000

Body:

Shane takes the helm this week while I'm travelling for business. He covers some recent data breaches and what they mean to you. He covers some Windows 10, and also explains how the cloud is different for us Microsoft types. It has to do with pets or something. Finally he talks about a great book, "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" and what he learned in it.

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Running Time: 29:01

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03:40 - Ashley Madison data breach
04:40 - Tinder to help you if you aren't a bad person
06:15 - Windows 10 Cortana has international flare
09:00 - Amazon's own Black Friday ends with a black eye
12:00 - Windows 10 on USB sticks
13:40 - Cloud at your pace WhitePaper
23:30 - "The hard thing about hard things: Building a business when there are no easy answers" Ben Horowitz

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Speaking at SPTechCon in Boston

Laura Rogers — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 02:08:03 +0000

Body:

Hi everyone, I’m really looking forward to speaking at the SharePoint Technology Conference (SPTechCon) August 24-27, 2015!

I’ve been speaking at this conference for about six years now, and I absolutely love it. It’s a nice size, so that you get a chance to network with others, but aren’t too overwhelmed. It’s also SharePoint/SharePoint Online specific, compared to other conferences that combine many different technologies.

When you register for the conference, use my code ROGERS to get a $200 discount off of a full conference pass!

Click here to see my speaker profile.

Click here to see all sessions on the site, with various filters to find sessions you’re interested in.

While you’re there, come visit us in Rackspace booth 400, meet us and get some cool swag! My co-workers who will also be speaking there are @ToddKlindt and @SharePointlhorn (Jason Himmelstein).

Here is a list of my sessions:

11:00 – 12:15

Creating an Approval Workflow

Forms and documents are everywhere in your organization, and a lot of them must go through an approval process. SharePoint is such a flexible platform, it provides us with multiple methods that can be used to build our processes. In this class, learn about these different out-of-box ways to create a workflow around a form approval process. You will see the various alternatives when creating an approval workflow: content approval, out of box workflows, and the task process designer in a SharePoint Designer workflow. Quickly create and implement intuitive workflows for your critical IT and business systems, with no programming involved! The concepts in this class are applicable to SharePoint 2010, 2013 and Office 365. This session consists of simple and purely out-of-box settings and functionalities, geared toward beginners.

4:00 – 5:15

Simplifying File Organization with Enterprise Keywords

When working with documents in SharePoint and Office 365, there are various challenges around categorizing and organizing documents. Most of the challenges are around end user understanding and training. Metadata, folders, and combinations of the two are used in order to keep documents where they belong and find them when needed.

In this class, you will learn about the flexibility of using Enterprise Keywords, and the many integration points with Office and Windows. With the end goal of being to remove complexity for end users, you will learn about tagging from within Office and OneDrive, automatic tagging, organizing metadata, and then how to make it easy to find what has been tagged.

11:45 – 1:00

Driving User Adoption, From a Technical Standpoint

Presented by: Lori Gowin & Laura Rogers

When IT professionals set up the infrastructure of SharePoint, the subsequent task of end user adoption is often left to the business unit. During this process, the business unit will often turn to “The SharePoint Person” for help and guidance. Good news, IT Pros, there are useful technical configurations in the administration console to improve and increase user adoption. Ultimately this will improve user satisfaction with SharePoint and increase productivity. The instructors both began as SharePoint Administrators 11 years ago. The real world experience of implementing these practices will be integral in this class. Among the topics covered will be defining user audiences, improving Office integration with SharePoint, and demonstrations of improving how users can quickly and easily get to the information they need. When leaving this class, you will possess a specific action list that may be used to optimize their technical experience and drive user adoption.

Category: conference

Published: 7/20/2015 9:08 PM

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Podcast 253 - Long Time Listener First Time Caller

Todd O. Klindt — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 02:29:44 +0000

Body:

In tonight's podcast I talk a lot about Windows 10. How to install it, where to install it, ways it won't let me install it, the whole gamut. Then I show you all a way to up your PowerShell game in Office 365. I end the show by bringing on a friend of mine, Gerry LaCanu, and we talk about some new Rackspace products that help you get the most out of Office 365 and Azure.
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Running Time: 47:56

Links:

4:46 - My author page at CMSWire
10:30 - Create Windows 10 USB boot media
19:00 - Upgrade a Small Tablet or Laptop to Windows 10
22:30 - Microsoft Temporarily Suspends Windows Insider Builds
25:30 - Office PowerShell site
26:30 - Rackspace Support for Office 365 is Now Available 24/7 in the US!
29:00 - Rackspace Fanatical Support for Azure!

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ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/Podcast253

Category: Netcast

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Podcast 252 - I Don't Actually Work for a Living

Todd O. Klindt — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 14:14:24 +0000

Body:

In this episode I bring in my friend, and all around good guy, Kirk Evans from Microsoft. We discuss Azure, the cloud, Hybrid, and all kinds of fun stuff. Kirk lends a real air of legitimacy to the show, I think. I round things out by talking about what's new with Windows 10, Windows Phone, and a crazy little thing called Groove.

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Running Time: 1:00:39

Links:

03:36 - Kirk Evans from Microsoft
09:03 - What is Azure AD?
15:00 - SharePoint on Azure
19:30 - Azure AD Connect
35:30 - Are there any features that Office 365 users will see value in Azure AD?
40:23 - http://Myapps.microsoft.com
41:40 - Azure AD Application Proxy
44:06 - Multi-factor authentication with Azure AD premium adds per-app MFA
46:10 - Is this all ITPro, or is there stuff for developers?
47:30 - Azure AD Graph API
51:27 - Microsoft reportedly finalizing Windows 10 RTM later this week
53:13 - Windows 10 PC build 10162 heads to Slow ring preview users today
56:00 - Xbox Music is now Groove
57:18- Picture from Rod Trent
58:40 - Mississippi PowerShell User Group
59:12 - SPTechCon
59:47 - SharePointalooza

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ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/Podcast252

Category: Netcast

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