Today Microsoft announced the next step for PowerApps integration with SharePoint – using PowerApps forms within the context of a SharePoint list or library. This is another way PowerApps is becoming a strong successor to InfoPath forms and will give your users a rich viewing, creating, and editing experience right within their SharePoint library or list. This feature will be coming to SharePoint Online & Office 365 this Summer and I expect we will immediately start using the functionality within my client organizations to improve the user experience. I highly recommend watching the new Microsoft Mechanics video “Zero code business process apps in SharePoint with PowerApps and Microsoft Flow” to…
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Microsoft Stream General Availability
Yesterday Microsoft announced via a message (MC101855) in the Office 365 message center that Microsoft Stream will be generally available soon. A few months ago, a preview of Stream was announced and you can view more information about the service on the Microsoft's site. The service will be on by default now and will be visible in the Office 365 app launcher. If you are using Office 365 Video to serve content within your organization, there is nothing you need to do at this time. The move to Microsoft Video will be a phased approach and Microsoft has promised that the move will include all your content and metadata. After…
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Creating & Upgrading SharePoint Workflows – April 9th 2017
I am excited to be speaking once again at the Nashville SharePoint Users Group. The meeting on May 9th 2017 is in-person and via online meeting and the topic is “Creating & Upgrading SharePoint Workflows”. The details of my presentation are below. For a long time, we have used workflow for automating business processes in every version of SharePoint, while using various tools to create them: out of the box workflows, SharePoint Designer, Visual Studio, & third-party applications like Nintex and K2. Now that SharePoint Designer will no longer updated and there is a push to move to the cloud, what are we supposed to do now to automate tasks…
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SharePoint Dashboards using Power BI – Nashville Excel & Power BI User Group
I am presenting at the Nashville Modern Excel user group on April 13, 2017 – come join us! My talk will focus on using SharePoint to build business intelligence dashboards with Power BI and Excel. Register on the user group site: Nashville Excel & Power BI User Group [UPDATE] Thank you to everyone who attended my presentation – what a great group!
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It May Be Time to Stop Building Access Web Apps
For years now, power users have created solutions using Access Services within SharePoint. These solutions have often been the backbone of many business processes for small to medium-sized organizations. Now that Office 365 is widely available and is fairly cost-effective for those organizations, we have new options to solve those business needs. Microsoft PowerApps is a new member of the Office 365 family and now that PowerApps is generally available within Office 365, Microsoft is recommending to organizations that solutions built with Access Services be migrated to the PowerApps service. Access Services & Access Web Apps shipped with SharePoint 2016 and will continue being supported as part of the SharePoint…
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Update – Postpone the SharePoint Online Public Site Deadline
Last December I posted the news that Microsoft will allow Office 365 admins to postpone the removal of their Office 365 public sites – which are special SharePoint Online site collections that can be used as an internet site for companies. There wasn't a big announcement on how to actually do the postponing, which is understandable as Microsoft would rather you not keep your public site so they don't have to support it. To postpone the deletion of your SharePoint Online public site, go to the SharePoint admin center – the URL location is in the format: https://[ReplaceWithYourTenantName]-admin.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/online/SiteCollections.aspx – and go to the settings page. For the setting “Postpone deletion…
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Securely Embed Power BI Reports in SharePoint
The business intelligence landscape in SharePoint has a new and improved story to tell with Power BI! Join me on April 13th at the Nashville Excel & Power BI User Group – I present a session on Power BI Dashboards in SharePoint Online. The presentation will be heavy on demos as I walk through the BI options in SharePoint – using list views, Excel, and Power BI – to tell great data stories. I will also show the awesomeness of the Power BI mobile app on iOS! The meeting is free and lunch is provided! Register: Nashville Excel & Power BI Meetup
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Postpone the SharePoint Online Public Site Deadline
In October 2012, Microsoft released a feature called SharePoint Online Public Sites, which allowed the creation of a public-facing, anonymous ‘SharePoint-ish' site. It wasn't a full-featured SharePoint site – public sites had limited features, including static pages and generic theme capabilities – enough to make it useful for small companies with no web development resources. Microsoft targeted small and medium-sized business with this feature and it promised an easy to use method for generating content and modifying the web pages. However, the feature wasn't used by a majority of Office 365 customers and caused an abnormal amount of customer tickets. So in early 2015, Microsoft announced that the SharePoint Online…
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Nashville SharePoint Users Group – October 11, 2016
I am excited to be presenting at our local SharePoint users group next week! I am presenting “Microsoft Flow: The Successor to SharePoint Designer Workflows”. I will introduce the service and give examples of how it is used to build workflows. I am also trying something new – I will pick out at least one suggestion from the audience to use as the example demo after my presentation! More information, including the registration link, is on the Nashville SharePoint Users Group website. [UPDATE] The presentation slides are here: Microsoft Flow The Successor to SharePoint Designer Workflows Nashville SUG Thank you to everyone who attended tonight & for the great interactive…
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Use Microsoft Flow to Send SMTP Email
Microsoft Flow is a new product from Microsoft and I am finding it to be a very useful tool. Flow can be a very convenient resource for sending email alerts when something I set as a ‘trigger' happens. It is also a superior product to ‘IF This Then That' products because of Flow's ability to have many steps and conditions. Flow can be used to send email in several ways, but today I will cover how to set up a custom SMTP connection. Flow is in Preview, so some screens or options shown on this post may change. NOTE: I am going to show how to set up an SMTP…
