Category Archives: SharePoint
SPO Sub-Sites are disabled. How to create a Sub-Site.
In Office 365 SharePoint admin can disable SubSites creation:
Well, agree, SubSites are not really disabled, but the button to create subsites is hidden: “This controls whether the Subsite command appears on the New menu on the Site contents page”.
Anyway, the result is: you are not able to create a SubSite (web) in SharePoint Online:
Actually there are at least 3 options to create a SubSite:
Option 1. Create a SubSite in Classic mode.
Step 1: Select “Site Contents” page
Step 2: Click “Return to classic SharePoint”
Step 3: Create SubSite
Option 2. Create a SubSite from “Sites and Workspaces” page
Step 1: Go to “Site Settings”
Step 2: Select “Sites and Workspaces” page (site/_layouts/15/mngsubwebs.aspx)
Step 3: Create a SubSite
Option 3: use PowerShell PnP
Step 1: Install PowerShell PnP
Step 2: Connect to your site with PnP
Step 3: create a SubSite
Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline Connect-PnPOnline -Url <your site Url> -UseWebLogin New-PnPWeb -Url "<new Web Url>" -Title "MySubSite" -Template "STS#3"
References:
See also: How to create a SharePoint Site in Office 365 if site creation is disabled
SPMT – SharePoint Migration Tool
Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) is installed under user profile, i.e. local administrator permissions are not required.
That means regular corporate user – site owner – can do self-migration from SharePoint on-prem to Office 365 SharePoint Online.
How to find a public team in Microsoft Teams
In Microsoft Office 365, under MS Teams, there are 3 team types:
- Private team
- Public team
- Org-wide team
Private team: you can only join the team if you are invited or know the team code.
You cannot see team name or description or content until you are team member (details).
Public team: you can join the public team if you wish. You can see public team name and description, but from MS Teams (desktop or web application) you cannot see public team content until you are team member.
Org-wide team: you join the team automatically (details)
From Teams – you can click on “Join or create a team” and you should be able to see some public teams (but not all):
But what if you are looking for a specific public team not in the list…
Scenario 1
You know exact team name or at least some first letters.
Solution: You are lucky. Just start typing team name in search bar at top right and hit “enter”- you will see shortened list of public teams matching your search criteria:
NB: do not use wildcards, it will not work:
NB: do not use top search bar, it will not work:
Scenario 2
You know (or guess) something about the team, like
- part of the team name
- part of the team description
- some keywords from team content files
Unfortunately, in this case both great Microsoft technologies – Search and Team – fail. You will not be able to find a public team:
Solution: use SharePoint search
SharePoint site is created once a team is created.
For public teams – SharePoint site has “Everyone except external users” by default in “Members” group:
which means literally “Everyone except external users” has access to the site with “Edit” permissions.
SharePoint search is security-trimmed, i.e. you will see the site content in search results only if you do have access to the site. So just go to the SharePoint or SharePoint search center and search for what you know or guess about the team:
You can use all the power of SharePoint search (wildcards, refiners, keyword query language KQL etc)
Once you found something – you can go to the SharePoint site:
Now from the site – look at the site name and hover the mouse over the site name – you’ll see pop-up window.
Now you know exact team name – and you can search for the team under Teams,
or, if you are so lucky you see “Join” button – just join the team.click site title or hove over the site title:
One moment – you cannot see team’s chat messages in SharePoint, as chats are kept in Azure. But you can search for chat content after you joint the team.
Somehow both – SharePoint Search and Teams Search are not working against site/team description. Hopefully this bug will be addressed.
You can also search for site Url in teams.
When you create a team – Office 365 generates a short team name (removes spaces and adds numbers if the team name is not unique; e.g. if the team name “Test” you might have “test381” as a short name, but if the team name is “This Is My Unique Team” – short name might be “ThisIsMyUniqueTeam”).
After you can change team name and/or SharePoint site name.
Team search under MS teams work for both names – short name initially assigned (kept as site specific Url) and new team name. But only starting with the beginning of the string.
How to create a SharePoint Site in Office 365 if site creation is disabled
In Office 365 under SharePoint Admin Center -> Settings -> Site Creation there is “Let users create sites from the SharePoint start page and OneDrive”:
Under classic settings page -> Site Creation it is called “Show the Create site command” with explanation “Display the Create site command on the SharePoint home page and in the sites list in OneDrive so users can create new sites”:
By default site creation is enabled and anybody can create a new site collection from SharePoint start page :
with two options: “Team site connected to an Office 365 group” and “Communication site”
SharePoint administrator might disable Sites creation, i.e. remove “Let users create sites from the SharePoint start page and OneDrive” or select “Hide the Create site command”. In this case user will not see “+ Create site” in SharePoint landing page:
The fun part is users are still able to create a new site collection from OneDrive, using “Create shared library”:
Direct link: https://changeThisToYourTenantName.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/CreateGroup.aspx is another option:
and worth to mention that from under Teams anybody can create a Team and a corresponding SharePoint site:
The only way to limit self-site creation is to create a security group for users who need to create Microsoft 365 groups and via PowerShell Set-AzureADDirectorySetting command set “GroupCreationAllowedGroupId”.
Microsoft: “Manage who can create Groups“
Office 365 retention labels and SPO
My notes for myself on how to create Office 365 retention labels at Security and Compliance Center (SCC) and use labels in SharePoint Online (SPO)
In SPO at each site collection level you can still work with retention policies the old way – create policies under Site Collection Settings (Content Type Policy, Site Policy) and apply policies at library level under Library Settings/Information Management Policy Settings.
But in Office 365 Microsoft implemented so-called labels. So you can specify retention policies in one place and apply them across all Office 365 content (not only SharePoint). That place called Office 365 Security and Compliance Center (SCC). Labels are applied to documents, documents are kept in libraries, and at each library you can “Apply a label to items in this library”.
Although SharePoint admins usually do not have access to SCC and do not go to Site content, we still need to know how it all works. And labels are recommended way to specify retention in SharePoint, so here we are.
Create Labels
Labels are created in SCC under Classification. The main part looks familiar to SharePoint people:
You can
- Retain Content forever or for a specified number of days/months/years and then
– delete it or trigger a disposition review or do nothing - Delete content if it’s older than specified number of days/months/years
after it was created/modified/labelled
Apply labels
Now you need to publish created labels – and that is how you create a policy. I.e. policies are where you specify which labels to which content (Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Office 365 groups)
You can also auto-apply labels based on conditions, like
- content that contains sensitive info
- content that contains specific words or phrases, or properties
- content that matches a trainable classifier
but as per Microsoft, “It will take up to 7 days to automatically apply the label to all items that match your conditions.”
Note: “trainable classifier” means an AI ML will be used, and as per Microsoft “Creating machine learning rules requires an Office 365 E5 subscription for your organization”
SharePoint admin center
You can do nothing with labels at SharePoint admin center. Labels are created, published and auto-applied at SCC. At each site collection levels site administrators can apply labels.
SharePoint site
At site collection settings you can still see “Content Type Policy Templates” and “Site Policy”, but that is not the case. Labels are applied at library level under Library Settings/Apply label to items in this list or library.
where you can select a label to apply for all new items in the library. With
You can also apply the label to items that already exist in the library.
You can also apply (change) label for each single item or multiple selected items under Details pop-up page:
or from under Contect Menu/More/Compliance details:
Project Cortex Overview Video
Click the link: Cortex Overview Mar 25, 2020, then
Cancel
Watch on the Web instead
Join anonymously
Cortex Overview
During the first meeting of the Project Cortex Office Hours series on March 25, 2020, Microsoft (Chris McNulty and Naomi Moneypenny) introduced the case for Project Cortex, gave an overview of the solution, and walked through demos of its knowledge, capture, and classification features.
Video recorded – can be viewed via MS Teams
Presentation (slides, pdf): https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ProjCortex-Office-Hours-Presentation-20200325.pdf
Next meeting – April 8: Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
OneDrive vs OneDrive vs Personal Site
Microsoft sells OneDrive as a personal cloud storage service… But There are actually two separate products behind the service, and each product provides more than “personal cloud storage service”…
What is OneDrive? What is the difference between OneDrive and Personal SharePoint site? Let’s see…
When you login to Office.com, you can click on OneDrive icon:
and you will found yourself at OneDrive site, so
one OneDrive is a SharePoint Personal site:
The other OneDrive is a desktop application
i.e. program that runs in the background and synchronizes files from your personal SharePoint site (“first OneDrive”) to your local machine and back:
Below is OneDrive desktop application in Windows File Explorer. Please notice how “test 01.txt” file and “test 02” folder are synchronized to first OneDrive.
Confused? No? Wanna more?
Here are some more confusing details…
Using OneDrive desktop application you can synchronize your regular SharePoint site library with your desktop computer.
Here is a regular SharePoint site (Test23) with a LibUnderSharePoint library. You can click on the “Sync” button:
and see the magic! Now you have another folder on your local Windows machine:
– but this time OneDrive synchronizes it to regular SharePoint site.
There is also a “Personal OneDrive” – the same as regular OneDrive but free…
(again, do not be confused: initially there was just OneDrive – free personal version and OneDrive for Business – version you could have with Office 365 subscription; now they are Onedrive and Personal OneDrive 🙂 )
OneDrive is a Microsoft thing.
Google has “Drive File Stream” (Google drive)
Dropbox – Dropbox sync
Search schema: Search for a crawled property name wildcard
If you are managing SharePoint search, specifically if you are customizing SharePoint search schema, especially in SharePoint Online (Office 365) – you know how slow it works and how tiresome it is to “Search for a crawled property name”.
Recently I found out that wildcard works. No, even two wildcards work!
In this example I need crawled property started from ows and contains doc and type:
