Tag Archives: Office 365

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.”

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

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$”

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To be continued…

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”:

You cannot use Power BI to visualize this list

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:

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.

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)

PowerShell scripts for Microsoft 365 SharePoint

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After many years working with SharePoint I wrote a lot of PowerShell scripts that help me support, troubleshoot, administer and secure SharePoint. So I’m sharing my scripts with you.

It’s here: https://github.com/VladilenK/Manage-m365-with-PowerShell

Manage result layouts for SharePoint results in Microsoft Search

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Microsoft is improving Search (MC489165):

Manage result layouts for SharePoint results in Microsoft Search

We’re making changes to Microsoft Search. This update will allow Microsoft Search administrators to change result layouts for select SharePoint content using adaptive cards with Result Type feature in Microsoft Search administration.

The default result layouts for SharePoint sites, pages, list items and Portable document format (PDF) results can now be replaced with layouts built using adaptive cards. The changes can be made for Organization level search applicable to Office.com and SharePoint home as well as site level search on SharePoint sites. Changes for Microsoft Search in Bing will be rolled out soon. Note that the feature does not support changing of Office file search results.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 81952

Before the change, when you add a new result type under “Search and intelligence” Customizations – it looked like this:

result type content sources

So there was no built-in “SharePoint” content source as an option – only custom “external” data sources.

But with the new feature implemented list of content sources for the result type will look like this:

SharePoint and OneDrive content source

If you choose “SharePoint and OneDrive” content source – the next option would be to select type of content:

Select type of content and set rules

You also can create different result types for different types of content based on properties-based rules (e.g. one result type for all sites – and a separate result type for a specific site or hub) with optional “Set rules for this type of content”:

Default site result experience would look like

Search results with modified SharePoint result type might look like:

When you modify template via Layout Designer – it is essential to know available object properties.

You can get properties from the “Available properties” below – there is also search through properties feature.

Or you can use SharePoint Search Query Tool to get metadata on search results.

It might take hours and even days for your search to start showing new layouts, but “&cacheClear=true” should help.

DepartmentId 

If your sites are organized in hierarchy under Hub site – you can use DepartmentId managed property to include all hub-associated sites content

DepartmentId is just a hub site Id

… to be continued …

References

clearCache or cacheClear

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Each time we need to validate a recent change in Microsoft Search configuration, we need to use query parameter that clears cache, and each time I’m not sure is it clearCache or cacheClear 🙂

So, correct is “cacheClear=true”, e.g:

https://www.office.com/search/sites?auth=2&cacheClear=true&q=bird*

Reference:

Microsoft 365 SharePoint: prevent throttling with RateLimit headers

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Bert Jansen (Microsoft) revealed some details on throttling when you access Microsoft 365 programmatically – via Microsoft Graph or CSOM and guided developers on how to regulate request traffic for optimized throughput using RateLimit headers (Here).

Demystifying SharePoint throttling

Throttling is necessary to ensure that no single user or application consumes too many resources compromising the stability of the entire system, which is used by many clients.

Throttling happens at

  • User (there are user request limits. Microsoft counts all requests linked to user
  • Application (Delegated or Application permissions)
    • Resource units per app per minute
    • Resource units per app per day
  • Farm – Spike protection

Very common reason for throttling – when an Application (Delegated or Application permissions) reaches “Resource units per app per minute” threshold.

Usually you catch HTTP errors 429 or 503, wait for some time (respect Retry-after header) and try again.

SharePoint provides various APIs. Different APIs have different costs depending on the complexity of the API, but Microsoft favor Graph API over SharePoint REST/CSOM. The cost of APIs is normalized by SharePoint and expressed by resource units. Application’s limits are also defined using resource units.

Quota depends on tenant size.

Resource unit limits for an application in a tenant (please refer to the Microsoft article)

Predefined costs for Microsoft Graph calls:

Assuming 2 resource units per request is a safe bet.

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