Tag Archives: Microsoft 365

Who is Microsoft forms form owner

It is a very common situation in Microsoft 365 when someone creates a form and the form works perfectly, but then the form stopped working and nobody knows who was (or who is) this Microsoft form owner. Below is how to detect the form owner based only on existing form link. You can find out is it a group or a user.

How to find Microsoft forms form owner

the steps are:

Use form link

You can use collaborator form link that looks like:
https://forms.office.com/Pages/DesignPage.aspx?FormId=<formId>
or responder form link that looks like: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=<formId>
(or short one: https://forms.office.com/r/kDKaHDauj7)

so just follow the link (use it in your browser)

2. Open browser developers tool – just hit F12 in browser or select “open developer tool” from menu. Inspect the network traces.
You need to find a request Url that starts with
https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/…
(you can use filter as below for “formapi”).
You’d refresh your page, or complete and submit the form until this url appears under network traces like this:

Then copy request Url to notepad as text. Bingo!
In the url example below:
https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/tc05faac-c82a-5b9d-b0c5-1f64b6755421/groups/f28f8c19-52cb-435c-948c-4c5619c943b7/forms…

The “tc05faac-c82a-5b9d-b0c5-1f64b6755421” id is the form owner’s tenant id
“/groups/” indicates that this specific form is owned by group, and
the “f28f8c19-52cb-435c-948c-4c5619c943b7” is the owner group id in EntraId

In case the form is owned by user, the Url would look like
https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/tc05faac-c82a-5b9d-b0c5-1f64b6755421/users/f6351c57-e247-528e-90ab-5i3d50c235b6
where
“/users/” indicates that the form belongs to a user and
“f6351c57-e247-528e-90ab-5i3d50c235b6” is the id of the user who owns the form

This hack works also for users who already left the company (account is disabled).

Note:
If you have an SSO in your org and cannot find this call under network – try different browser or incognito mode or logging out before the call – as what you need appears at early stages – even before authentication or when you submit the form

Some other tricks:

Having a collaborator or long responder link – I can say the form is owned by a person if the form id is 80 characters length, and the form is owned by group – if the form id is 88 characters length

References

Vladilen: Troubleshooting Microsoft forms
Vladilen: Form blocked due to potential phishing
Microsoft: Microsoft Forms Admin guide

Microsoft 365 SharePoint Archive: deep dive

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Microsoft announced SharePoint Archive in 2023 and make the feature generally available in Apr 2024. Though there are good Microsoft’s articles on how to enable and configure SharePoint Archive, as well as some FAQ pages, there are still a lot of questions regarding behavior details, e.g.

what happens with Team content if the group-based site is Archived
is there an API or how do we archive/restore sites programmatically
would MS Graph Search API work for archived sites

I have just activated the feature and I’m planning updating this page with my gotchas and findings…

Reactivation fee

How much is to restore a site from Archive?
In the example below Microsoft charges me $1 to restore a simple OotB site with no documents:

This amount is based on the retail price for reactivations. Your actual charges may be lower, and can be seen in Microsoft 365 Archive bill

Microsoft says “This amount is based on the retail price for reactivations. Your actual charges may be lower, and can be seen in Microsoft 365 Archive bill.”

Another confirmation is requested:

Reactivate site.

You’ll be charged a reactivation fee. This reactivation fee is based on the retail price for reactivations. Your actual charges may be lower, and can be seen in Microsoft 365 Archive bill.

The site will move back to Active sites page and start consuming active storage. This action can’t be cancelled once it starts.
Estimated reactivation fee
$1

Reactivation request submitted
It will take up to 24 hours for the site to reactivate and move to the active sites page

After a few days I saw cost “<0.01$”

===========

To be continued…

The site is archived

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Microsoft recently (Apr 2024) announced general availability for it’s new SharePoint Archive feature (learn more). So if you are seeing “The site is archived” and “A SharePoint Administrator archived this site. If you need access, ask an admin to reactivate it.” error message and the page in your browser is “sharepointerror.aspx?scenario=SiteArchived” then… guess what… your site was archived.

And if you need this site – please reach your SharePoint admin as soon as possible, as reactivating the site within 7 days is free, otherwise it might cost your company some dollars.

Though the page Url is “https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepointerror.aspx?scenario=SiteArchived” and the page title is “Error”:

this is not an error but just a new SharePoint feature 🙂

You cannot use Power BI to visualize this list issue

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If you are working with SharePoint Online list and select Integrate – Power BI – Visualize the list, but it gives you error message “You cannot use Power BI to visualize this list”, “Looks like the feature for visualizing lists is turned off. Please contact your admin to enable this feature”:

The issue appears to be not in SharePoint, but in Power BI. Note it says “You cannot use Power BI to visualize this list” and “Looks like the feature for visualizing lists is turned off. Please contact your admin to enable this feature.”

Also the url of this page is Power BI Url:
“https://app.powerbi.com/sharepointlist?spListId=%7Bd3b56”, so you’d need contact Power Platform Administrators, not SharePoint administrators.

Power BI administrator would go to Microsoft Fabric Admin portal

and ensure “Integration with SharePoint and Microsoft Lists” is Enabled for the entire organization or for specific security groups. In the last case – ensure user who is getting “You cannot use Power BI to visualize this list” is added to at least one of the groups but not added to “Except specific groups”.

If the user is allowed under “Integration with SharePoint and Microsoft Lists” so “Users in the organization can launch Power BI from SharePoint lists and Microsoft Lists. Then they can build Power BI reports on the data in those lists and publish them back to the lists.” then, normally, user would see:

and something like:

Microsoft 365 retention policies: Static vs Adaptive scope

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Adaptive scopes are good, but what if both policies are implemented? Which one wins?
The scenario for two policies might be: static retention policy is implemented as default retention policy for all sites, and if site require different retention or deletion – it should fall under one of the adaptive scopes and an adaptive retention policy will be applied.

Using Path property in Microsoft 365 Search Query

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Using Path property in Microsoft 365 Search Query was kind of ambiguous. But now Microsoft implemented update and clarified some details. So below are some tips and tricks on filtering by site Url (path) in query field in Microsoft 365 Search verticals.

Path filter with trailing slash (“/”)

In November 2022 Microsoft rolled out an update for multiple search features, including checks on the path managed property for a trailing slash. Previously path filters were valid with and without trailing slashes.

Consider the following scenario.

Given the path filter with the contain operator (“:”)

Path:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite

These path could be matched with:

Path:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite
Path:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/subsite
Path:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite2
Path:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite2/subsite
Path:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite3

Obviously, the match intent is unclear. Adding a trailing slash clarifies that only MySite (and below) matches. So intended matches would be only:

Path:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite
Path:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/subsite

Using SPSiteUrl property

The other option – use the SPSiteUrl property with the full path:

SPSiteUrl:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite

SPSiteUrl and Path properties use different matching strategies. When using contains operator (colon sign “:”) – SPSiteUrl will match the full value, while Path will do a “starts with” match.

DepartmentId

DepartmentId is a search managed property used under Hub sites and propagated through all associated sites content.

That means if we want to scope down search to hub site with it’s content – we can use DepartmentId property, e.g.

DepartmentId=4965d9be-929b-411a-9281-5662f5e09d49

instead of iteration through all hub sites and using path: property.

Microsoft 365 Retention Policies SharePoint Adaptive Scopes Advanced Query

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Basic query is available as GUI:

where you can use objects: “Site Url”, “Site Name” and “Refinable String 0″..”Refinable String 99”. Conditions would be “is equal to”, “is not equal to”, “starts with” and “not starts with”. Or you can select “Advanced query builder” and enter KQL query.

Advanced query builder

Advanced query builder allows us to use more site properties then “Site Url”, “Site Name” and “Refinable Strings” and more conditions than “is (not) equal to” and “(not) starts with”.

E.g. we can use “Title”, “Created”, “Modified” site properties and “=”,”:”,”<“, “>”, “<=”, “>=” conditions.

Working queries examples:

created>=2022-07-21
modified>1/31/2023
created>12/31/2021 AND modified>=7/31/2022
created<=2020-11-15 OR modified>2023-02-06 (?)
created<=2020-1-15 OR modified>2023-01-31 (?)
created<=11/15/2020 OR modified>1/31/2023
title:test
SiteTitle:test
RefinableString09:Test*
RefinableString09<>Test
RefinableString09=Birding AND RefinableString08<>Included

Not working queries examples:

site:https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/test* 
RefinableString11 = Birds # (do not use spaces in advanced query)
Path:https://contoso-my.sharepoint.com
Template:STS
Template:"SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0"
Template:SITEPAGEPUBLISHING*
? RefinableString09<>Birding AND RefinableString08:Official
modified>31/1/2023 (should be like modified>2023-01-31
)

Query against custom site property (aka property bag value)

You can create custom site property and assign value to the property with
Set-PnPAdaptiveScopeProperty or Set-PnPPropertyBagValue.
Property must be with “Indexed” parameter. Once the property is set up, m365 search crawls site and creates crawled property. Then you map crawled property to some pre-created refinable string managed property. You can assign alias to this managed property.

In my test scenario I used RefinableString09 with alias SiteCustomSubject.

Site property value	Query	result
Birding	RefinableString09:Bird	does not work
Birding	SiteCustomSubject:Bird	does not work
Birding	RefinableString09:Bird*	works
Birding	SiteCustomSubject:Bird*	does not work
Birding	RefinableString09:Birding	works
Birding	SiteCustomSubject:Birding	does not work
Birding	RefinableString09:Birding*	works
Birding	RefinableString09=Birding	works
Birding	RefinableString09=Bird	does not work
Birding	RefinableString09=Bird*	does not work
Birding	SiteCustomSubject=Birding	does not work
	RefinableString09<>Birding	works
	RefinableString09=Birding AND RefinableString08<>Included	works

Query against multi-value property.

Site property value	Query	result
TestA TestB	RefinableString09:TestA	works
TestA TestB	RefinableString09 = ‘TestA TestB’	does not work
TestA TestB	??? RefinableString09=’Test10 Test5′	does not work
TestA TestB	RefinableString09:TestB	?
TestA,TestB	RefinableString09:Test*	works
TestA,TestB	RefinableString09=Test*	does not work
TestA,TestB	RefinableString09:Test	does not work
TestA,TestB TestA;TestB TestB TestA TestA TestB	RefinableString09:TestB	works
TestA, TestB TestB,TestA TestA TestB	RefinableString09=TestA	does not work
TestA,TestB	(basic) RefinableString09 starts with test	works

Some more findings

Modify adaptive scope

If you need to modify adaptive scope – you’d better delete it and create a new one. The reason – if you want to validate what sites are included in scope with GUI – via button “Scope details” – you want to see only sites that are in scope, but that’s not the case when you modify the scope, because if you modify the scope – you’d see sites that are not in scope with “Removed” status.

Alternatively you can use filter to filter out removed from scope sites.

what else?

What is the takeaway from this for SharePoint administrators? We would be asked to configure SharePoint the way compliance…

References

Adaptive scopes Retention Policies Data Lifecycle Purview

SharePoint Sites Lookup

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That’s a very common problem in SharePoint world. You are looking for a site owner but there is no tool available for regular user to find who owns the site.

Scenarios.

You get a link to some SharePoint site, but you do not have access to it. You requested access but nobody has responded. You need to find who is the site owner.

(To be continued)