Tag: SharePoint

How to share SharePoint Online sites with external users

I created a new SharePoint Online Communications site recently and I wanted to share it with someone outside my organization. Unfortunately, when I tried to share the site with them, I received an error!

External Sharing Error
External Sharing Error

The error, “Your organization’s policies don’t allow you to share with these users. Go to External Sharing in the Office 365 admin center to enable it.“, is pretty straightforward and to the point: external sharing is turned off for Office 365 and I need to enable it….or is the error wrong?!?

Check out my video below where I show the issue and how to enable external sharing in SharePoint Online.

Fix Project Site Timeline Web Part Error

I received an error when creating a SharePoint online site using the ‘project site’ template and thought I would share my quick fix to make it work. Check out the quick video below for the details!

Talking Microsoft Teams adoption with Erica Toelle

I had a chat with Erica Toelle [Twitter] at SharePoint Saturday (SPS) St. Louis and we talked about Microsoft Teams adoption. The video and some key highlights are below:

01:10 User categories for adoption
01:33 Erica’s number 1 tip for adopting Microsoft Teams
01:56 Video in Teams can be that ‘sticky’ feature
03:24 I ask: Is Teams flexible enough for all users in an organization
04:25 Teams can work organically with your working group

Planning is key for all migrations to Office 365

I had a chat with Mike Maadarani [Twitter] at SharePoint Saturday (SPS) St. Louis about SharePoint migrations and his strategies for helping organizations moving to the cloud. The video and some key points are below:

00:48 Big challenge when migrating SharePoint
01:15 Unlocking the new features in SharePoint & adoption
02:08 For SharePoint migrations, clicking the button is the easy part
03:43 First thing to do before migrating…
04:37 What are users often confused about with Office 365

 

SharePoint Conference 2018

I will be attending and speaking at this year’s SharePoint Conference North America happening May 19 – 23, 2018. This is going to be an amazing #SPC – you will have access to over 100 Microsoft product team members (the ladies and gentlemen who are building SharePoint, OneDrive, etc.), as well as dozens of Microsoft MVPs. Bring your tough questions and build your network at this amazing, unique conference.

You can register for the conference using my code GLENN to receive $50 off!! Register here: SharePointNA.com

Check out my video below describing why I am excited about the conference and the sessions I am giving:

SharePoint Fest Chicago 2017

[UPDATE]
I had a great time spending my week with the attendees at SharePoint Fest Chicago! The #SPFest team always does a good job organizing the events and this time was no different.

I had a great group of attendees who filled the room during my Thursday session.

The group had questions galore and it was great to see the excitement of using on-prem data with the cloud tools. My slides are available to attendees via the event app.

Here are some questions and the links I have so far to provide answers to questions that were asked during the session:

Microsoft Flow Known Issues and Resolutions

Can you somehow monitor the Azure Service Bus for requests that are in wait?

What are the feature comparisons of SSRS vs. Power BI? What are the scenarios where you would use one vs. the other?

 

[Original Post]

I will be speaking at SharePoint Fest Chicago this year and I can’t wait to get back to the Windy City!

My presentation, Use Your On-premises Data with PowerApps, Power BI, and Microsoft Flow, is all about how you can use your organization’s data with cloud tools. We will setup a data gateway, connect to on-premises data sources, and discuss how to use that data in Office 365 to create rich business solutions.

I am really looking forward to attending several sessions, including the keynote by Dan Holme [Twitter], Director of Product Marketing (SharePoint & Yammer) Microsoft – Accelerating your digital transformation with SharePoint and Microsoft 365. Dan will be sharing with us which tool to use when” and “where to share” – which should be a really good conversation!

 

 

 

Blockers for Moving to Office 365 with Vlad Catrinescu

There is a big push to get organizations to adopt Office 365 and many are encountering challenges with moving their existing processes “to the cloud.” I recently spoke with Vlad Catrinescu [Blog – Twitter], Microsoft MVP and author, about these challenges and his experience in overcoming them.

01:01 Challenges organizations are facing
01:31 Customization in SharePoint
02:00 Rewriting code
02:19 Regulations
03:16 Release schedule
05:01 How to mitigate challenges
06:36 IT Pro job changes
08:28 Training materials need to change

IT/Dev Connections 2017

[UPDATED]

It was a great week in San Francisco! The #ITDEVConnections conference is a high-quality event that focuses on real-world technical sessions and the conference delivered. Both of my sessions had good participation from attendees – I enjoyed answering questions and getting to know everyone.

My first session topic was how you can plan and execute a transition from SharePoint Designer workflows to Microsoft Flow. The slides are available via the IT/Dev Connections website, but there was a question regarding the functionality gaps between Designer and MS Flow – in the session I mentioned a website to keep track of the gaps and here is the link: https://ms.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/release-notes/#known-issues-and-resolutions

I also mentioned in the session that you can signup for the PowerApps Community Plan to gain access to PowerApps and Microsoft Flow for free.

On the same day as my first session, I participated on an expert panel discussion where we answered questions from attendees and via the moderator, Liam Cleary.

In my second session we looked at the business intelligence options in SharePoint, as well as Power BI. One of the great BI additions in SharePoint Online capabilities is column formatting that is currently rolling out. I demonstrated how you can easily use JSON code to style and enhance list views and how that can make a huge difference for your users.

There was also a great deal of conversation and questions from the attendees on how to share Power BI content and what licenses are required for sharing. As I stated in the session and is mentioned in the following article, “…to share a dashboard you need a Power BI Pro license, or the content needs to be in a Premium capacity.” If you have any questions or your organization needs help with Power BI implementation, please do reach out to me so we can get you started with secure collaboration and data insights: Contact Page

[ORIGINAL POST BELOW]
Please join me in San Fransisco for IT/Dev Connections! I will be speaking on October 24th and 25th – I would love to have you join me.

On October 2ad4th, I will be presenting Transition Your SharePoint Designer Workflows to Microsoft Flow and on the 25th my presentation will be all about Business Intelligence Using SharePoint and Power BI.

If you plan to be at the conference, please let me know so we can meet up!

You can register now and join us!

 

Talking SharePoint Management Console at SPS Charlotte with Cory Williams

I sat down with Cory Williams [Twitter] at SharePoint Saturday (SPS) Charlotte to get his thoughts on Office 365 administration. Cory is one of the organizers of SPS Charlotte and was a speaker as well!

00:44 Pay attention to the Office 365 Message Center
01:17 Shameless plug for the REgarding 365 web show Office 365 Message Center: The week that was
01:47 New SharePoint Console
02:04 More dates please!
02:35 Release schedule – when are new features showing up in my Office 365 tenant
02:44 Reminders for new features and changes
03:36 Let’s tie Microsoft Flow into the Office 365 Message Center

Memphis PASS User Group – September 14, 2017

On September 14th 2017, I will be speaking to the Memphis PASS User Group! I will present SharePoint Business Intelligence options, including out of the box features, Excel, and Power BI.

Find details on the topic, as well as register on the Meetup page.

[UPDATE]
Thank you to the great group tonight – I enjoyed presenting and I hope you will have me back to dive deeper into some of the technologies we discussed.

Here are my slides: Business Intelligence Using SharePoint and Power BI – Memphis PASS

There were a few questions during meeting that I answered but wanted to make sure I followed-up on them – the list of questions & my answers are below:

  1. There was a question about Microsoft Flow and if it was ‘on par’ with the features in SharePoint Designer for workflow. Here is the Known issues and resolutions page Microsoft is maintaining for Flow: https://ms.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/release-notes/#known-issues-and-resolutions
  2. When Adding a Power BI report to a modern SharePoint page, are filters and options taken into account when show on the page? Yes they are!
  3. Is the Power BI report show on a modern SharePoint page a snapshot of the visuals or live data? If live, how is the data refreshed? The visuals shown are ‘live’ and will be refreshed when the report is changed or data is refreshed (scheduled within the Power BI service).