A while back, I published a post on some most famous and important limits we have in SharePoint Online. These were limits that are most likely to be encountered by the users. Today, I want to introduce you to another limit that exists in SharePoint. Most of you will never experience it; however, for those who use lists or metadata on document libraries – you better not skip this article and read it to the end. Otherwise, you will join a very disappointed percentage of my blog readers after encountering the Lookup Column Threshold limit on a view and then desperately finding this post by googling for a solution. 😊

What is the Lookup Column Threshold limit on a view?

When you create lookup columns on a list or library, for performance reasons, Microsoft limits you to 12 (twelve) columns of that type of column in a single view. This is because when it is a lookup column, you are getting the data from either another list or another source. When you exceed the limit, you will get the following error message when trying to add the 13^th column to the view (this just proves that 13 is not a lucky number).

Something went wrong. The query cannot be completed because the number of lookup columns it contains exceeds the lookup column threshold.

And when you refresh the page and try to go to the document library, your library will go blank with the error message front and center.

What are lookup columns?

What is interesting here is that the lookup column in the content of this error message is not the same lookup column I blogged about some time ago.  In that post, I referred to the Lookup column type that we have in Lists and Libraries. Those Lookup columns were columns that referenced other lists and libraries on the same site.

In the context of the Lookup Column Threshold limitation, Lookup Column also refers to other types of columns! By lookup columns here, we imply the columns that obtain their data from other sources. Here is a complete list of the “lookup” columns that will cause the error message:

System Columns (Columns created and displayed out of the box)

• Created By Column (lookup against User/Employee Directory)
• Modified By Column (lookup against User/Employee Directory)
• Type Colum (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, etc.)
• Name Column (Filename)

Manual Columns (Columns created manually by users)

• Lookup Column (the actual Lookup column, lookup against another list or library)

• People Column (lookup against User/Employee Directory)
• Managed Metadata Column (lookup against the Term Store)
• Enterprise Keywords Column (lookup against the Term Store)

How to avoid the Lookup Threshold limit on a view

• The only way to avoid this issue is to limit your views to less than 12 lookup column types mentioned above. To be clear, you can have as many columns as you wish on a list or library, as long you do not exceed the 12 “lookup” ones in a single view. So, if you encounter the above limit, just hide some of the “lookup” columns from a view to fix it.
• Where appropriate, use other types of columns instead of the lookup columns (i.e., Choice instead of Managed Metadata) since those do not count against the limit
• If you do have many columns you need to display – create additional views on a list or library – just keep the number of “lookup” columns under 12 in any given view.

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Well, I guess these are trends of the modern world and social media, but some of its elements made it to SharePoint lists and libraries. If you work with Date type columns a lot, you probably notice the different styles of date format we have as options. In this article, I would like to explain the two types and how to change them if necessary.

Standard Date Type

The standard date type displays the dates in the form we are used to seeing: Date/Month/Year (or Month/Date/Year depending on the region you leave in).

Friendly Date Type

There is another style available now in SharePoint called Friendly. It displays the dates you often see on social media: yesterday, tomorrow, etc.

How to change data formats in SharePoint lists and libraries

The behavior and default display of date fields depend on the type of Date column you have. There is also a way to change it. The same functionality is available on lists and libraries.

System Columns

For system date columns (i.e., Modified, Created), it defaults to Friendly date type.

To change the format from Friendly to Standard, you must go behind the scenes.

1. From the document library, click Gear Icon > Library Settings
2. Click More library settings
3. Click on the Modified or Created column
4. Change the Radio button to Standard and click OK
5. Your system columns will now display the Standard date and time in the document library

Custom Columns

When you create custom date type columns, they default to Standard format. However, you can change the type to Friendly right when you create a column.

1. Click Add column > Date and time
2. Give your Date column a name. You will notice it defaults to Standard.
3. This is what it looks like with the Standard date type
4. To change the format from one type to another, you can just use the modern interface to do so
5. And this is what a custom column looks like with the Friendly date type

The post Friendly vs. Standard Date format in SharePoint lists and libraries appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

Since SharePoint sites in modern SharePoint are pretty visual, one of the common requirements on employee-facing sites and Intranet Homesites is to add graphics and images. There are a few options available in SharePoint Online, and one of my favorite ones I want to highlight is the ability to add an Image Gallery Web Part. So in this article, I would like to explain how it works.

What is Image Gallery Web Part?

Image Gallery Web Part is a web part that allows you to add multiple images to your page. Moreover, it allows you to change the display options of those images as well.

How to add images to your SharePoint page using the Image Gallery Web Part

1. Edit the Page, then find a web part called Image gallery, from the list of available out-of-the-box web parts
2. Once you add it to the page, you will notice a side panel where you can configure the settings of the Image gallery web part. You can either upload any images or source them from the document library on your site.
3. In case you oped to add images on the fly, you click the Add images button
4. Then, upload the images from your PC or any other location
5. You can also display the images from a document library on your site. This allows you to put all the images into that library, and this web part will draw them from there and display them on your page. You can optionally click the Include subfolders checkbox to include images from the folders within a document library. You can also specify how many images will be displayed on a page at a given time.
6. Finally, you can also choose from one of the three available layouts (Brick, Grid, and Carousel). If you choose Carousel, users must manually cycle through the images on your page.

The post How to add images to your SharePoint page using the Image Gallery Web Part appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

If you are a Site Owner and edit the pages, I am sure you noticed a new tab appearing within the page editing screen called Section Templates. In this post, I would like to explain to you what these are and how you can use them to help build and expedite the buildout of your SharePoint pages.

What are Pages?

Let’s start with the basics. If you are wondering what SharePoint pages are, here is a great article to check out.

Page Sections

Let’s also understand page structure as well. The Page is broken into sections and columns. Sections are areas on a page where you can add SharePoint Web Parts to. In addition, sections allow you to apply some color to that portion of a page + make them collapsible.

Section Columns

Sections are further broken into columns. Think of them as ways to split the screen into smaller chunks to help organize your web parts and spread or stuff as many web parts as possible. Below is a screenshot of all available section/column layouts.

Section Templates

Page Section Templates are essentially pre-built sections that are already broken into columns for you and already contain certain web parts. Below is a screenshot of available section templates containing the Image and Text Web parts. So if you need to quickly add a few images to your pages and carefully align them, you do not need to build stuff manually and can just choose one of the available layouts and add them to a page rather quickly, saving you time. So the only thing you would need to supply are images, add some text, and viola, your Page is ready!

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I had an interesting dilemma a few weeks ago with one of my clients. They created several retention policies and applied them to various SharePoint sites in their tenant. They now had a business need to delete one of the sites as they no longer used it. However, by design, they could not delete it because there was a compliance policy applied to that site. So they needed a way to determine which retention policies were applied.

Since they had so many different site and label retention policies created and applied, they wanted a quick way to find which policy affected a given site so they could exclude the site from it. Here is how we got to the bottom of this.

1. Navigate to the Compliance Center (Microsoft Purview)
2. In the menu on the left-hand side, click Policies
3. On the Policies/Data lifecycle management page, click Policy lookup tab
4. In the search wizard below, choose Site in the Find policies that include drop-down, then paste the URL of a site and click Search
5. You will now get the search results that match the above criteria. They will show all the policies applied to a given site.
6. You can then edit a policy and exclude it from a given site as necessary. By the way, this Policy lookup will find both site retention and label retention policies.

The post How to determine which retention policies are applied to a given SharePoint site appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

I documented the mechanism of OneDrive Sync quite extensively on my blog previously. However, one thing I did not mention before was the difference between syncing the whole library vs. just a folder within a document library. So in this article, I want to explore what will happen when you Sync a folder instead of a document library and some unexpected consequences that might occur.

What is OneDrive Sync?

If you are wondering what I am talking about, please check out this post, where I explain in great detail OneDrive Sync and how it works.

OneDrive Sync of a Document Library

When you sync the whole document Library (which is probably the most common occurrence), by clicking the Sync button at a library level, it syncs the entire document library to your PC, all the folders and subfolders inside of it.

Syncing the entire library from SharePoint

This is how the synchronized document library appears on the PC

The naming convention for the synchronized library on your computer is “Site Name – Document Library Name.” For example, in my case, it is HR Team – Documents, where HR Team is the site name and Documents is the name of a document library.

OneDrive Sync of a folder within a document library

If, instead, you decide to sync just a specific folder from your SharePoint site, by clicking the button at a folder level, it will only synchronize that folder and everything inside.

Syncing a specific folder from SharePoint

This is how the synchronized folder appears on the PC

The naming convention for the synchronized folders on your computer is “Site Name – Folder Name.” For example, in my case, it is HR Team – Clients, where HR Team is the site name and Clients is the name of a folder within the Documents library.

Syncing a folder and a library together – unintended consequences

Since nothing stops you from clicking the Sync button at both folder and library levels, I want to highlight a few unintended consequences that might occur as a result.

Scenario 1: Sync the document library first, then sync a folder

In case you sync the library first and then decide to sync the folder inside of that library – nothing will really happen. Since you are already syncing the entire library, clicking the Sync button at a folder level won’t do anything extra. So all is good in this case.

Scenario 2: Sync the folder first, then sync the entire document library

If you do this in the opposite order, this will lead to potential confusion for the users and even possible loss of information/track of changes. This only occurs when you disable Files On-Demand – in other words, physically download the files and folders on your PC.

Here is an issue:

1. In the example below, I have a document library with a few folders inside
2. I then sync one of the folders first (the Clients folder in my case). It syncs it onto my PC and makes it available from Windows Explorer (as expected).
3.  I then click the Sync button on the entire document library. At this point, it syncs the entire document library with all of its subfolders inside to Windows Explorer, but simultaneously, it stops the sync of the folder I synchronized previously.
4. It does not remove the folder from Windows Explorer. It just leaves it in place and synchronizes a document library next to it. It does remove the “green checkbox” over the folder, indicating that the folder is no longer synchronized to SharePoint. However, if the user continues to access files in that folder or update them, none of those changes will make it to the cloud! 😠
5. So to summarize, if you sync any folders first and then decide to synchronize the entire document library, you must immediately delete the folder from your PC to avoid confusion and possible data loss.

Alternatives to folder syncing

So the best practice to avoid the above-described headache would be to sync the entire libraries and not sync folders.

If you do need to sync just a certain folder or set of folders and not the entire library, I highly recommend syncing the entire library, but then doing the selective sync. I described it in this article.

The post Sync folder vs. Sync Library in SharePoint and OneDrive appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

If you own a SharePoint site, I am sure you followed all the best practices regarding the site security setup and permissions. However, you might also want to control the experience of the users who do not have access to the site just yet, but who might need one. Likewise, you might want to view pending access requests at any point in time and either approve or reject them. In addition, if you happened to share the site externally, you might want to track who accepted your invite and who did not. I know I listed a few different scenarios in this article, but they will all be answered by the wonderful feature of Site access requests. Buckle up and enjoy another sermon of wisdom from rabbi Zelfond. By the way, you might want to read this post till the end as I also cover some important and unintended consequences of SharePoint access Site Requests.

Default User Experience

By default, on any given site, when the users who don’t have access to that site, when clicking on its URL, will get this message.

Here they can add a personal message and press the Request Access button, and request access to the site.

You can customize this page and either disable this button or control who the requests go to. Let me explain.

How to disable Site Access Requests

If you do not want users to bother you with these requests, you can disable them altogether.

1. Navigate to the SharePoint Site, click Gear Icon > Site Permissions
2. Under Site Sharing, click Change how members can share
3. Toggle the switch next to Allow access requests to Off and click Save
4. Once disabled, the user will get a nasty message when navigating to the SharePoint site URL: Access Denied. The user does not have permissions to access this resource.

How to specify who the Site Access Requests will be emailed to

Alternatively, you can also specify who the Site access requests will be emailed to. By default, they are sent to the Site Owners. However, you can also designate an alternate email address. It can be an email address of any user, and can even be an external email address as well. And you can also add a custom message to the request access page if necessary.

What happens to the user when you approve or reject requests

When the user requests access to the site, here is what happens:

1. The Site Owners (or whoever you designated to receive these emails) will receive an email like this
2. The Owner can either Accept or Decline the request
3. In case the request is Declined, the owner will need to confirm the intention
4. When navigating the site again, the page will display a message: Sorry, your request has been declined.
5. The user will also receive an email advising that the request has been declined
6. In case the request is Accepted, the user will immediately be granted access to the site and receive a corresponding email

How to access pending and completed sites requests

If you ever want to see all the past and present, and pending SharePoint access Site Requests, this is how you do it.

1. Gear Icon > Site Information
2. Click on View all site settings
3. Under the Users and Permissions section, click on Access requests and invitations
4. From the page that will appear, you will be able to see pending requests, invitations sent to external users (more on this below), as well as the history of site access requests

View Status of invitations sent to external users

What I also really like about this page above is that it allows you to view the status of pending invitations sent out to external users. So if you shared your site externally and wondering if external users accepted the invite or not, this is the page to view this on!

SharePoint access Site Requests and Group-connected Team Sites

It is also very important to note what is actually happening to the site permissions when you accept the user request to access the site, as this might lead to some unintended consequences. Let me explain.

When you Accept a given access request, then navigate to Site Permissions (Gear Icon > Site Permissions), you will see the users automatically added to the SharePoint Site Members Group (those with Edit role)

Of course, you can change their role to Visitor or remove them altogether if necessary. However, this behavior can also lead to confusion and unintended consequences if your SharePoint site is connected to a Microsoft 365 Group (i.e., the site is part of Microsoft Teams).

One would expect that by requesting access to the site, they become a member of the whole Microsoft 365 Group (Teams, Outlook, Planner, etc.). But that is not the case. They are just given access to the site itself only. If you check the group membership, they won’t appear there.

So if you would like to add those users to the group itself and give them access to Teams, etc., you would need to add them as members of the group. By the way, I explained these two different models of security for a group-connected site in this article.

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A frequent request for company intranets is to display and share information about the Team Members. This could be a Welcome New Team Members Page on a Human Resources site, welcoming new employees, or a page to display a roster of external users, say a list of Board Members for a nonprofit organization. So in this article, I want to show you a few ways to display department or team Members on a SharePoint Site.

Option 1: People Web Part

The first option involves the use of the People Web Part. I blogged about it previously. The idea is that it automatically displays information from your Active Directory and shows you the user’s name, photo, role, contact information, etc. In addition, you can switch the layout to large and add additional information about the user. Once again, I covered it all in this post.

Pros

• Nice and easy to set up

Cons

• It only works for users in your Active Directory (internal users, it does not work for external users)
• This option assumes that Active Directory is maintained by IT and contains user photos and other relevant information
• Limited area to add a description about the user (255 characters max)
• Limited display options

Option 2: Image Gallery Web Part

If you want more control over the layout, you may try using the Image Gallery web part. This way, you are getting a nice visual photo of each employee and an area to add some text below the photo.

Pros

• Nice and easy to set up, visually appealing
• Multiple layouts available
• Ability to manually upload user photos or dynamically display them from the document library
• Works for both internal and external team members (since we are not relying on Active Directory)

Cons

• The Name and additional information (Title and Caption, respectively) do not appear under the photo unless you choose the Carousel layout. With the other two layouts, they will only appear after you click on a photo/image.

Option 3: SharePoint Pages and Quick Links

OK, this is my favorite option, because it delivers the best experience for you and the users. It does take a bit more time to set it up, but, hey, at least you will not need to pretend in front of your boss that you are doing some actual work 😊. Plus, your boss will think you are smart. Let me walk you through this option.

The idea behind this option is that every member gets their own page containing a photo and text/description of them. On the homepage, there will be a Quick Links Web Part to link to each and every team member’s page. I documented step-by-step instructions on how to set it all up in this article.

Pros

• Looks amazing. Visually appealing.
• Works for both internal and external team members (since we are not relying on Active Directory)

Cons

• It takes a bit of time to set up, but totally worth it

Option 4: Gallery View on a List

Believe it or not, there is another cool option that exists to display department/team members, and this one involves Microsoft Lists. The idea is that you would maintain the users in the Custom List and then present the data using the Gallery view. The setup is pretty simple, and I actually documented how to create a Gallery View in this article.

List View

Gallery View

Pros

• Looks amazing as well
• Works for both internal and external team members. If you just have internal members, you can rely on the People Column to draw the name of the members from the Active Directory. If you have external members, you can create a Text Column to capture their names.
• Ability to add additional information/metadata to a user “card” (by adding extra columns to a list). For example, you can add the date of birth or city/town they are from.
• Good options in terms of changing the order of the fields/format via the Gallery Card Designer

Cons

• It takes a bit of time to set up
• Limited area for the text on the cards; you have to click on the photo to get more information

The post 4 ways to display Department or Team Members on a SharePoint Site appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

As I work with my clients, assisting them with the build-out of the Intranet portal, a persistent question/request I get is what is the best way to organize company templates in SharePoint Online. So in this article, I decided to list a few options available.

I wrote a similar post back in 2020 where I shared a total of 5 ways to store templates. However, that post was more of a way to store department templates and those used by a limited group of users. In contrast, in this article, I am listing options for company-wide, global templates to be used by the whole organization.

Option 1: Read-only Document Library

The first option is pretty standard and most frequently used by many organizations. The idea is to create a read-only document library and have it prominently displayed/accessed via your SharePoint Intranet. You can also get creative and use metadata to organize the library as well.

Pros

• Easy to implement

Cons

• Users have to manually download, complete, and save the template in a separate, designated area

Option 2: New drop-down on a library

Another option is to utilize Add Template option available on the modern document library. This option allows users to navigate to a designated library, click the New button and complete the template “on the fly.” This will automatically save the filled-out document in a library as well. I described this option in great detail here (Option 5 in that article).

Pros

• No need for the user to save a template locally, rename and re-upload it to SharePoint

Cons

• It always opens the template in the browser mode, not the native application, which might limit some capabilities
• It might not be “evident” to the users to click on the New button

Option 3: Organization Assets Library

The other option available to organize company templates in SharePoint Online is to use PowerShell. This option essentially designates a certain document library in SharePoint as the formal library of templates and makes it available to use from the Office applications as well SharePoint itself when you browse for images/photos.

You can find the detailed instructions on how to set this up here.

Pros

• Templates are easily accessible from the Office applications

Cons

• Requires PowerShell + SharePoint Administrators to set up

The post How to organize company templates in SharePoint Online appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

As a SharePoint consultant, I work with hundreds of small to medium-sized businesses, assisting them with the transition to SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365. When they initially establish contact with me, they might share some basic business requirements, most of which are not an issue. However, once in a while, as I read through or we discuss requirements, I see or hear the following: “Our CEO wants to ensure that SharePoint will not look like SharePoint” WHAT??? 😕 In case you encounter the same sentiment in your organization, let me explain why this requirement does not make sense and should be removed from the list.

It never made sense to brand SharePoint

The first time I blogged about the topic was back in 2016. You can check this post here. This was back when we still had SharePoint classic, and SharePoint did not look like SharePoint today. This was also before Teams and many other applications we now have available within Microsoft 365. In that 2016 post, I did provide a few legitimate reasons why heavily branding SharePoint did not make much sense. I will be reiterating some of those reasons in this article as well.

Modern SharePoint is already beautiful!

Fast forward six years from that old post of mine, and modern SharePoint is nothing like it used to be. It is almost like two different applications. We now have a set of new site types (Team Site and Communication Site), built-in site templates to make your sites pretty, + a number of options to change the look and feel of your SharePoint sites (you can tweak navigation, headers, logos, apply built-in and custom themes, etc.).

Example of the ability to adjust the SharePoint navigation experience

Example of the ability to adjust SharePoint site logo

Examples of various themes/color palettes available in SharePoint out of the box

Built-in SharePoint Site Templates

Additional site templates available in SharePoint Lookbook

I think that most people who ask for SharePoint not to look like SharePoint simply are not aware of what modern SharePoint looks like and might have a bad taste in their mouth from their previous experience with classic SharePoint. As such, I recommend doing a SharePoint demo first to explain what modern SharePoint is all about, how it looks, and so on.

SharePoint Branding options

If you want to apply custom branding to SharePoint, you have several options available out of the box. I recently wrote a post that outlines all the available options.

The abovementioned techniques will help you make SharePoint prettier without hiring custom developers and designers.

Impact of trying to make SharePoint not look like SharePoint

If you have been following my posts for a while, you know that I am a huge advocate of an Out of the Box approach regarding SharePoint configuration and development. Most of the reasons that would apply to my OOTB business philosophy also apply to this article. I already listed a few back in that 2016 post. However, due to so many changes that have happened over the years, I would like to repeat them here again + add a few new ones to help get my point across on why you should stop making SharePoint not look like SharePoint.

1. Cost

This is an obvious one. Be ready to spend significant money if you want to deviate from the OOTB SharePoint design. You need to hire a designer and a developer or purchase third-party themes. No matter which route you take, it will cost you additional money on top of the Microsoft 365 licenses you already pay for.

2. Timeline

Another obvious factor missed by many. Your implementation timeline will be significantly longer when you engage in custom designs and themes. With OOTB SharePoint, you just configure the sites/pages and are ready to go live. With custom themes and development, you would need to spend extra time on the implementation, plus testing, to make sure custom coding/theme did not come into conflict with other features/customizations you might have.

3. Flat Information Architecture

When Microsoft modernized SharePoint back in 2017, the most significant change besides look and feel was the introduction of flat architecture. Instead of subsites, we now have modern sites and use Hubs to connect them all together. That change also made custom branding harder to implement. In the old days, you would create a custom theme/design, apply it to the site collection, and that theme would apply/propagate to all the subsites underneath. In the modern world, we do not use subsites anymore. We have sites that are independent of one another. So that means applying branding custom theme/design to one site does not propagate to another site. So that means it is unlikely you will have all your sites branded the same way in your tenant.

4. Lack of Additional Expertise

The other thing you need to worry about is the fact that you would need to maintain SMEs on staff who are familiar with the custom theme you purchased/acquired. And if you venture into custom development – you are going to be “married” to that developer for the whole time. So that means extra spending for every little change you want to make, not to mention you would need to assure the staff/IT you hire would have the ability to customize/get familiar with custom changes you made.

5. Teams Impact

With the introduction of Teams in 2017, we now have a completely new way of how users collaborate. In the past, users navigated SharePoint sites and used Outlook for email communications. Nowadays, everyone lives in the Teams application, accessing SharePoint using the teams interface. So they no longer navigate the SharePoint sites, but rather access files using the File tab in a given Teams channel. And Teams does not allow for any custom branding. On top of that, whatever you brand your SharePoint site does not really matter, because users won’t even see it when they click on the Files Tab.

Example of the Files Tab in Teams which shows the contents of a SharePoint Document Library folder

The only impact of custom branding you might get is if you set up Viva Connections which will allow embedding of your Intranet into the Teams App.

Viva Connections (embedding of SharePoint Intranet into Teams Application)

6. OneDrive Sync impact

Similar to the above, if your users are only after documents, they will most likely sync given libraries locally to Windows Explorer and will never visit your beautiful SharePoint site again. So whatever custom you have in terms of theme and look and feel, won’t matter much since users will not see it much.

Example of SharePoint and OneDrive files and folders synchronized using OneDrive Sync Client

7. Mobile Applications

Another important factor to consider is the fact that some users might access SharePoint sites via the SharePoint mobile application. If you have custom development, it might not be compatible or even render on a mobile device, so definitely something else to consider.

Example of a SharePoint Mobile Application which can’t be customized

8. SharePoint Online changes

One other significant thing you must take into account is the fact that you have no control over SharePoint Online changes happening literally ALL THE TIME. Previously, you would configure SharePoint on your servers and would not need to worry about changes until the next significant upgrade (i.e., going from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013). Not anymore. With SharePoint Online, you do not have control of the application – since it is in the cloud. Microsoft does. So you want to ensure that whatever customizations you make will not come into conflict with some new features or updates Microsoft rolls out.

One noteworthy example was the roll-out of the SharePoint App Bar back in 2021. It worked seamlessly for organizations that stuck to an OOTB configuration. However, for some who did custom development, this turned into a nightmare. The SharePoint App bar, which always appears on the left side of all SharePoint sites, ran into conflicts with the custom themes and custom navigation built for certain custom themes. As a matter of fact, and as a result of the above, Microsoft allows for temporary disablement of the SharePoint App Bar.

Message about SharePoint App Bar within the Microsoft 365 Message Center

9. Other applications within Microsoft 365

Finally, I want to mention that SharePoint is just one application in the sea of applications we now have in Microsoft 365. We also have OneDrive, Planner, Teams, Lists, and many others, and none of them allow for any branding or customizations beyond what you are getting out of the box. So it is yet another reason to stop making SharePoint not to look like SharePoint. I yet have to hear someone complain about the lack of branding capabilities within those applications.

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One of the primary goals of the Intranet portals is, of course, to share the news and announcements within the organization. SharePoint has some fantastic options available in this area, thanks to the mighty News Web Part. I blogged quite a bit about the News Web Part and various capabilities we have (i.e., the ability to schedule or expire news posts, etc. Today, though, I want to share some advice on a few ways to organize department news on your SharePoint Hub, especially if you are part of a larger organization.

Use Case

Most small organizations have just one area for news and announcements on the main landing page (Home Site). And most likely, you have just one person managing those announcements. However, if you are part of a larger organization, you probably have different categories of announcements managed and curated by different employees and departments. So the advice below is really for this situation described above.

Option 1: Organize department news via Metadata Categories

The first option would be to utilize multiple News Web Parts on the same site and filter them based on the metadata tags assigned to each news post. The idea is that you will create a Metadata Column called Category or Department on the Site Pages Library on the main Intranet Hub Site and tag each news post against that respective category (i.e., HR News, IT News, General News). Then, on the main landing page itself, you will add several news web parts, one for each category, and then filter the News Web Parts based on the corresponding page property (i.e., Category = HR News). If what I described above sounds a bit complicated, do not worry; I explained how to set this up in great detail in this post.

Tagging a News Post against a predefined category

Filtering the News Web Part for a specific Category (Page Property)

Pros:

• All the news posts reside in one site and one library (Site Pages Library), making it easy to maintain (i.e., add/edit/delete/schedule/expire)
• This option is great if you have different categories of news to publish but have one person to maintain them all

Cons:

• In the case of multiple authors, no way to split security since all news posts reside in one site/library (need to give all authors Edit access to the main Hub Site).

Option 2: Organize department news via separate sites on Hub

The other option to organize and publish the news on an Intranet is to utilize the Hub functionality of SharePoint. The idea is that each area/category of news gets its own site to create news and announcements, and then those news posts are rolled up on a main Home Site/Intranet Site thanks to the Hub news roll-up feature.

Pros:

• Allows each department/category own space to create news posts – separated with own security/permissions. For example, you could create a separate site called “CEO Corner” and have the CEO publish the posts on that site, which will be rolled up and presented in the specific News Web Part on a SharePoint page which will only filter for news posts from that CEO Corner site.

Cons:

• No way to pick and choose the specific news posts to publish from rolled-up sites – it is all or nothing
• In case certain news are to be expired on a Hub site after a certain period of time – the setup would require the use of managed properties (since each and every site will have its own Expiry date column)
• Less control for the overall aggregation of the news posts

The post 2 ways to organize department news on your SharePoint Hub appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

When you create a Managed Metadata column, you have to point the column to a term set within a Term Store. As I documented in one of my previous posts, you can either create term sets globally, within the tenant-wide term store or locally at the site level. Each option has its pros and cons, so today, I want to compare the two.

Tenant-Level Term Sets

Tenant-Level Term Sets are created within the Term Store that is accessible via the SharePoint Admin Center. It can also be accessed by the site owners as we; however, for site owners to be able to adjust the values within the terms sets or create new terms sets, they need to be granted Manager or Contributor roles within the Term Store. Below I would like to list the advantages and disadvantages of this option.

Advantages

• By design can be accessed and seen by all the SharePoint sites within a tenant

Disadvantages

• For the site owners to create new terms sets, they need to be set up as group managers or contributors (by the SharePoint Administrator or other Group Managers of the term group)
• Requires SharePoint Admin Role to be set up/configured

Site-Levet Term Sets

As described in a previous post of mine, site owners can also create site-level terms sets as well. This though, becomes the only option if they can’t get access to the SharePoint Admin Center (which is a headache in larger organizations).

Advantages

• The only option for site owners to use when they can’t access their company’s SharePoint Admin Center
• Pretty straightforward to use

Disadvantages

• By design, term sets created at the site level are not visible to other sites within a tenant. For other sites to see the term sets, they need to be shared with other sites (manually). I described the mechanism here.

The post Site-Level vs. Tenant-level Term Sets appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

If you recently navigated to a SharePoint team Sites, you probably have noticed an interesting breakdown of files and folders on that site. Suddenly, all the folders are grouped into two groupings: In Site Library vs. In Channels. So today, I want to explain why we have such a grouping in the first place.

The impact of Microsoft Teams

The phenomena described above only occur on Team Sites connected to Teams. As you probably already know from reading my blog posts, when you create a new Team in Teams, it also creates a SharePoint site behind the scenes.

The Teams application uses SharePoint for file management capabilities. You can read more about this here.

How folders are created on a Team Site

There are three types of folders you can have on a Team Site.

1. Folders that are created by virtue of the Standard Channels
2. Folders that are created manually by users
3. Folders that look like folders but are just links to Private and Shared Channels

I will explain all three types of these folders further below.

1. Standard Channels = Folders

As I described pretty extensively in this article, every time you create a Standard Channel in Teams, a folder is created with the same name on an associated SharePoint site. So when you click on a Files Tab inside a given channel in Teams, you are just viewing the contents of the channel folder on a SharePoint site.

Example of a Files Tab inside the Standard Channel in Teams

Example of the same channel folder on a SharePoint Site

2. Manually created folders

And, of course, the second type of folder you can create is the one you create manually within the SharePoint site/document library. Those folders are just a way to organize your files and folders outside of any channel.

3. Folders that are links to Private and Shared Channels

If you expand a drop-down under In Channels on a SharePoint site, you might notice folders corresponding to Private and Shared Channels on your Team. I say “might” because not all Teams have private or shared channels; you obviously will not see those folders if your Team does not have any.

The folders will have the same icons as in Teams, designating either a Private or Shared channel.

However, these Private and Shared folders are not really folders. As documented in an earlier post, every time you create a Private or Shared Channel in Teams, it creates a separate SharePoint site for that channel. So these “folders” are just links to respective Private Channel and Shared Channel Sites. For example, clicking on Financials “folder” above redirects you to the separate SharePoint site created to accommodate that Financials Private Channel.

Private Channel SharePoint Site created to store Private Channel documents

In summary: In Site Library vs. In Channels Folders

• In Channels – shows you the folders that correspond to Standard Channels in Teams + folders that link you to the Private and Shared Channel sites (if those types of channels exist in a Team).
• In Site Library – shows you the folders that correspond to Standard Channels in Teams + folders manually created by users at the root of the document library.

The post In Site Library vs. In Channels Folders appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

A frequent request from users collaborating in SharePoint/OneDrive/Team is the ability to bookmark specific files and folders and be able to come back to them at a later point. As of the writing of this post, there is no easy way to “save files as bookmarks” just yet. That said, I want to show you a few “workaround options” available for you to save bookmark files and folders in SharePoint.

Option 1: Pin to Top

There is a way to pin files and folders in a library, but that feature does not serve as a personal bookmark, but rather a team one. When you pin a file or folder within a library, it creates a prominent shortcut on top of the library to that file or folder.

1. Right-click on a file or folder and choose Pin to top from the menu
2. You will now see the files and folders pinned on top of all the other files and folders within a document library
3. If you need to change the order of pins or remove them altogether, you can do so via the same pop-up menu

Pros

• Easy to use
• Option available in both SharePoint and Teams
• Option available for both files and folders

Cons

• Bookmark is not personal – it is for all team members
• The bookmark is “per view” or “per folder.” If you choose another view in a document library or navigate inside one of the folders, you won’t see the pins there – they are unique to each view or folder. In the image below, I went inside one of the folders, and you can see pins I created previously missing there.

Option 2: Add Shortcut to OneDrive

If you want to go for a personal bookmark, you might want to consider “Add Shortcut to OneDrive.” It creates a personal bookmark/link to the content from your own OneDrive account. Reference this post to learn more about this feature.

Pros

• Unlike Pin to top, it is a personal bookmark
• Available in both SharePoint and Teams

Cons

• You can’t bookmark files, just folders
• Issues when used together with OneDrive Sync. All are documented in this post.

Option 3: Make this a tab

Another option available in terms of “bookmarking” files is the ability to create a Tab for a given file from within MS Teams.

1. To do so, right-click on a given file and choose Make this a tab option
2. This will make the file appear as a Tab next to the other tabs/apps inside of that channel

Pros

• Easy to use

Cons

• This option is only available in Teams
• This option is only available for files, not folders
• Bookmark is not personal – it is for all members of the Team

The post How to bookmark files and folders in SharePoint appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

When you store your company’s documents in SharePoint, a valid concern is data integrity. Is my data in SharePoint Secure? was one of the articles I wrote a while back. It addressed the concern of whether or not the data stored in SharePoint and OneDrive is safe and secure. The data loss can occur in one of two scenarios: security compromise at Microsoft data centers or a human (employee) factor (by accident or intentional). Most likely, each organization, large or small, is concerned about data loss due to rogue employees or inadvertent mishandling of its files and folders due to user error.

While user errors or intentional mishandling of documents can happen as a result of the mass download of company documents or external sharing to unauthorized users, probably the worst offense is when the files and folders are deleted in bulk from a given SharePoint site, which can eventually result in irreversible damage if there is no backup in place.

Luckily, there is a way to set up alert policies for such behaviors, so you are notified immediately after such issues occur.

How to enable Alert Policies to monitor for unusual activities in SharePoint Online

Policy alerts are available within the Microsoft Purview (Compliance Center). So you need to be either a Global Microsoft 365 Admin or be given a direct role to access the Compliance Center.

1. From the Microsoft 365 App Launcher, click Compliance
2. Once in Microsoft Purview (Compliance Center), click Policies > Alert policies
3. You will now be on a screen where you can create alert policies. You will probably note that some default policies for most common scenarios already exist. For example, you will notice two policies that could be of interest to you: Unusual volume of file deletion and Unusual external user file activity
4. However, those are built-in/default policies, and you will not be able to alter their logic/triggers. For example, the Unusual volume of file deletion policy assumes that the “unusual” number is based on AI/your company’s SharePoint usage, and you can’t really control it. You will be able to turn it off, if necessary.
5. To create a new custom alert policy, click New alert policy
6. Next, give it a Name. You can then choose its Severity and Category (those have nothing to do with the trigger and are just ways for you to categorize a given policy for your own benefit). Click Next.
7. On the next screen, you will set up a trigger. You can choose from a list of available triggers/activities; in our case, the activity is file deletion.
8. Just below triggers, you will need to choose the conditions for the alert. Please note that if you do not see this option, that means you do not have the proper license and will need to purchase a more expensive license to customize these settings. In my case, I am setting up an alert when a user deletes 15 or more files within 1-hour span.
9. On the final setup screen, you can specify to who the alert will be emailed to. You can also limit how many of these alert emails you want to get within a day. Click Next.
10. Finally, you can review the settings and enable the alert policy immediately by clicking Finish
11. You will now see the policy created, and it will be part of a table where the other alert policies are stored (default or custom)

Important Notes

• It does take up to 24 hours for the alert policies to take effect. (Image below courtesy of Microsoft)
• Some settings I describe might not be available in your tenant due to licensing. Make sure you have proper licensing assigned to the Admins. (Image below courtesy of Microsoft)
  
• As mentioned above, Default policies cannot be altered and are based on internal logic. (Image below courtesy of Microsoft)
  

Policy Alert in action

Once the suspicious activities match the trigger you specified in policy alerts, the recipients you specified during alert policy creation will receive an email similar to the one below

Example of the email received by an Administrator or designated recipients when the alert policy is triggered

Clicking Alert Details from the email above provides additional details on the Activity (in the use case above, it notified the Administrator that the user shared a document externally – this was another alert policy I set up in my tenant).

Alternatives to Alert Policies

The above-mentioned policy alert might be an excellent mechanism to be notified as soon as destructive activities occur in your tenant. However, you can also be a bit more proactive and set up other mechanisms that complement (or replace) the policy alerts.

Retention policies

Setting up proper retention or record policies will prevent content from being deleted in the first place. I explained this in a previous post.

Security and permissions

Quite often, things happen on a given site or team simply because users have access to the content when they should not have. So avoid oversharing and make sure proper security and permissions are set up.

Training

Finally, do not forget Training. Many things happen not because of bad intentions, but rather by accident and lack of knowledge and understanding of what happens due to certain actions in SharePoint and Teams. So do not ignore some basic training for your staff.

The post How to enable Alert Policies to monitor for unusual activities in SharePoint Online appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

One of the frequent questions I get from my clients when I build Intranet portals for them, is about the ability to brand the SharePoint application. Out of the Box, the ability to brand SharePoint is somewhat limited. And in all honesty, I prefer it to be like that. Many years ago, I published an article where I provided arguments for why you should not waste time branding the hell out of SharePoint. And while modern SharePoint offers simple ways to brand the sites and user interface, it is not what you are probably used to with other website authoring tools and systems. And that is on purpose. Keep in mind that SharePoint pages must render well on all sorts of computers, browsers, iPads, mobile phones, etc. From a collaboration standpoint, this is far more important than enforcing some custom-coded look and feel, font, and menu on your users.

I always advocate for keeping branding out of the box. Yes, it will be limited, but it will ensure your beautiful design will not conflict with new updates and features Microsoft will roll out in SharePoint overnight. A great example in recent history was the release of SharePoint App Bar a few years ago. Some organizations created menu customizations on the left-hand side of the screen, which were “overtaken” by the SharePoint App Bar, which now takes the place of this prime screen real estate. As a result, Admins need to run custom PowerShell commands to disable the SharePoint App Bar in their tenants temporarily. Oy Vey!

This article is not about venting off on the pros and cons of custom branding. In contrast. I want to highlight a few places where you can brand apply out-of-the-box branding in SharePoint. You are welcome!

Site theme

The first place to brand your site and make it unique to your brand/organization is to apply a site theme. Out of the box, there are only a handful of choices that exist; however, with a bit of PowerShell magic (not hard at all, trust me, if I could do it, you can do it), you can end up with a theme that matches your specific brand HEX colors. Here are instructions on how to achieve this.

Header & Footer Logos

The next obvious spot to brand the site would be to add your company logos. You can add logos to the Header on both Team Sites and Communication Sites, and you can also add a logo to the footer on a Communication Site. Here are detailed instructions on how to add the logo.

Microsoft 365 Bar

The above tricks take care of the SharePoint side of things. However, we also have another place to make the branding statement: the Microsoft 365 App Bar. This bar appears on top of most Microsoft 365 Apps (Outlook, OneDrive, Planner, etc.). You can change the color scheme + add your company logo there as well. And bonus, you can make that logo clickable too. Here are instructions on how to do this.

Viva Connections Logo

There is another tiny place where you can show off your branding power. If you have built a company Intranet, you can increase its user adoption by embedding it into the MS Teams app and allowing users to access it from the Teams app where they collaborate. To help identify the Intranet on the app sidebar, you can add a company logo. I explained more about Viva Connections and how to set it up here.

Microsoft 365 Login Page

All of the above tricks focused on making SharePoint branded after you authenticate into the application. You can also apply company branding to the Microsoft 365 login window as well. Here are step-by-step instructions on how to achieve this.

The post 5 places to apply branding in SharePoint appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

I got an interesting question from one of my clients the other day. The client created a SharePoint site for their Quality Department and wanted to display specific information in the browser tab. They wanted to display QMS by Company ABC in the browser. To ensure we are on the same page as to what we are talking about here – the image below captures the Title displayed in the Browser Tab for a SharePoint Page.

To understand how to change the Title displayed in the Browser Tab for a SharePoint Page, it is important to understand where the information is coming from.

The information in the browser tab in SharePoint has the following naming convention:

• For Home.aspx page (default homepage created when you create a site): Site Name – Page Title
• For any other pages created: Page Title

Since all sites by default have Home.aspx already set as the homepage, most of the time, you get to see Site name – Home in the browser tab (where Home happens to be the default Title of the Home.aspx page)

For example, if I create a new site called QMS, I am going to see QMS – Home in the browser tab

Sticking with Home.aspx

So if you are OK sticking to that naming convention (Site Name – Page Title), you can change the site name and Home.aspx page title. To do so:

1. Change the Site Name by navigating to Gear Icon > Site Information
2. Next, change the Site Name as necessary and click Save
3. You will now see the name reflected in the Browser Tab
   
4. To change the Page Title from Home to something else, you will need to click on Gear Icon > Site Contents
5. Click on the Site Pages Library
6. Next, click the checkbox next to Home.aspx, then “i” in a circle. This will open up a Document Information Panel on the right-hand side. One of the metadata properties of the page will be Title. You can change to something else.
7. After making the change, you will see a warning message asking you to republish the page (since a change was made)
8. To Republish the page, right-click on the Home.aspx page, then choose More > Publish
9. On the pop-up window, click Publish
10. You will now see the change reflected in the Browser Tab
11. By the way, if you erase the Page Title and leave it blank…
12. …It won’t display anything in the Browser Tab, so you are locked into this naming convention.

Custom Naming Convention

However, what if you do not want to stick to that naming convention? Like my client, I want to say “QMS by Company ABC” in the Browser Tab for a SharePoint page. In this case, you can’t use the default Home.aspx page, since it will lock you into the naming convention above. Instead, you will need to create a new Page and then make that page the Homepage. Here is how:

1. Create the new SharePoint Page by clicking New > Page
2. Give it a name you want to appear in the Browser Tab, click Publish
3. If you want to change that Title to something else, you can do so just as we did with the Home.aspx above
4. Next, make this new page the Homepage, by right-clicking on it and choosing Make homepage
5. You will now see the proper Title appear in the Browser Tab

The post How to change the Title displayed in the Browser Tab for a SharePoint Page appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

What I like about SharePoint is that sometimes it fills like a Swiss Army Knife. It can do it all; you just need to configure it properly. One of the common requests I have been getting over the years from clients and my loyal blog followers was the requirement to use SharePoint as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. I will be upfront; if you are looking for sophisticated functionality, workflows, etc., you will be better off using a third-party CRM. However, if you just want to store and organize basic information on your contacts, clients (customers), and deals/opportunities, you can use SharePoint, with a bit of configuration. So below, I would like to outline the steps on how to properly set up a CRM in SharePoint Online by using just the out-of-the-box features.

Step 1: Understand the limitations

For our CRM “solution” to work, the lists we will create in the next step need to reside on the same site. There is a reason for that since we will be connecting them together, and since we are only relying on SharePoint out of the box here, all lists need to be on the same site.

So go ahead and create a site that will house your lists; I recommend a Communication Site.

Step 2: Create lists of Clients, Customers, and Deals

Once the site is created, it is time to create lists. I documented lists extensively previously; here is a link to an article that describes different ways to create lists.

Go ahead and create three lists: Clients, Customers, Deals

Custom List of Clients

Custom List of Contacts

Make sure to use common columns in all lists

For our future CRM to work, we need to have the same column of information in any two lists to tie the two together later. For example, if you have a list of companies and then a separate list of contacts within a company, that second contact list needs to have a column that contains Client names as well (so we can tie it/associate it to the Client list).

Step 3: Create a Document Library for Client Documents

This step is optional, but if you also want to tie documents stored by a specific client or contact, we can do that too. Just like with the list above, make sure that the Document Library has a column containing the list of clients so that all documents can be tagged against a client name and this library can once again be associated with the other lists.

Step 4: Embed all the lists and libraries onto the same page

Not only do all the lists and libraries need to reside on the same site, but they also need to exist on the same page. This is necessary for the next Step (Dynamic Filtering) to work. So go ahead and add all the lists and libraries created above to the SharePoint page.

Step 5: Set up Dynamic Filtering

Next, the most exciting step – we need to set up the Dynamic Filtering feature. I explained it in greater detail here. This will allow our CRM to choose an entry from one list (i.e., Client from Clients List) and dynamically filter Contacts and Contracts based on our selection. Once again, check out this article for step-by-step instructions on how to set up Dynamic Filtering.

The result

When it is all set and one, this is what a CRM might look like.

The post How to build a simple CRM in SharePoint Online appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

In the past, I blogged about various technical capabilities of SharePoint Intranet and the vast possibilities when it comes to design and look and feel options. However, today, I want to explain two different ways to approach Intranet development/creation and discuss a few options regarding implementation strategy/philosophy.

There are two ways you can approach the SharePoint Intranet, and they differ in terms of timeline and involvement.

Option 1: Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

The first option to create a SharePoint Intranet is to create a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) and take it live as soon as possible. The idea behind this option is that you initially create something relatively simple in terms of design and content and then make gradual changes and improvements over time, often based on users’ feedback.

This option does not imply that you do not gather some initial requirements and content from the business users. It just means that you will spend less time doing so. The goal here is to develop something useful and functioning quickly so that you can realize ROI immediately and have a common place for employees to go to and access company-wide information.

To achieve this option, you can build from scratch or use one of the built-in templates. I listed a few options and shared some sample designs available in this article.

Example of an Intranet built from scratch using Out-of-the-Box functionality

Example of the Site Template selection available in SharePoint

The main driver behind this option is the fact that Intranet is a project without an end date – it is constantly evolving, and the design and content will change accordingly as time goes by. It also hinges on the fact that with modern SharePoint, you can easily adjust the design and architecture on the fly. For example, if you want to completely change your Intranet site’s look and feel, you can do so easily with page editing and a vast template selection. If you would look to re-reorganize navigation – once again – this is an easy task. Likewise, you can easily reorganize your hub architecture, and rename the site and URL on the fly.

So the idea here is to release something to the employees really quickly, even if it contains some minimal information. In other words, it grows organically and matures as time goes by. As long as the site is secure, you can promote your Intranet to your employees and then make further changes and improvements on the fly.

Pros

• Quick Timeline
• Minimal cost (if hiring an external resource to create one)
• A better option if you want to grow Intranet organically and gather feedback from employees

Cons

• It might not contain all the content
• It might not contain all the wishlist items or advanced capabilities

Option 2: Customized Intranet

As you probably already guessed, the second option is the opposite of Option 1. The idea here is that you go through the detailed business requirements upfront with your users/stakeholders and customize the intranet according to those requirements. The assumption here is that you go through many iterations/design changes to address the requirements, and the project is not completed until most of these requirements are met. Quite often, companies also opt for additional customizations and integrations often not available via the out-of-the-box functionality.

The Intranet development might often rely on some of the functionalities and business processes that might rely on automation (Power Automate) and custom apps (Power Apps).

Pros

• More complete than MVP (contains additional functionality)

Cons

• Much Longer Timeline
• More expensive (if hiring external resources and relying on 3^rd party themes and further customizations)

Verdict

You probably already guessed from the tone of this post that my preferred option is Option 1 – build a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) right away and grow it organically within the organization as the company matures in terms of technology and content. When working with clients, I do support both options, but I always advocate for a quick turnaround/timeline. In my opinion, this option provides lots of flexibility and gives power to Site Owners to adjust the look and feel as necessary.

I typically find this Option popular among smaller organizations, that do not have large budgets to spend on the Intranet. Larger/Global organizations, who might have specific communication, compliance, and country-specific legal requirements, and obligations, might often prefer the second option.

The post 2 ways to create SharePoint Intranet appeared first on SharePoint Maven.