New SharePoint Online Sites page

If you fire up your Office 365 portal and select Sites from the menu bar across the top you now see your Sites home page is now different (see above screen shot).

Gone is the old format (above), with the new format doing away with the left hand column (which was basically a picture of the user who was logged in. And really how useful was that?).

It now also displays the logo from the individual sites you are following which helps identify these much quicker to users.
Remember the Sites page is the entry point for many users into all your different Site Collections in SharePoint Online so you should spend the time to make sure it is appealing as possible. This means you should not only add icons for all your sites so they easily identifiable but you should also go in and customise your promoted sites as the top with icons like I have done in the first screen shot above.
A much cleaner and simpler interface is always a good thing in my books, so I think update is a good move from Microsoft. What will be next?

Getting Started with SharePoint Online Tutorial Template

I am happy to announce the release of a new product from the CIAOPS. This one is called Getting Started With SharePoint Online Tutorial Template. It can be purchased from:

http://www.ciaops.com/publications

This is a SharePoint template that can be downloaded and installed on any Office 365 plan that includes SharePoint Online. This product will help your business learn about the different features of SharePoint Online by actually using it. There are over 20 lessons that users can work through to increase their knowledge.

The product includes:
– 3.5 hours of video lessons
– Links to over 30 additional content web sites
– Over 250 pages of downloadable documentation (excluding free version)
– Easy to install, customise, extend and update
– Premium edition permits editing/re-branding of content
– Annual Maintenance provides free updates of all content for 1 year

This product is aimed at users who have never used SharePoint Online and want to learn more. Download the User Guide for more details or watch the video.

You can download the free version to see what the product looks like. The free version excludes any downloadable content.

The Standard version includes videos streamed from YouTube which may contain advertising. This however, keeps the download size small and reduces the impact on the SharePoint site as well as bandwidth.

The Premium version includes the same content as the Standard version but you will receive all the source videos and documents as a separate download. The Premium version permits you to modify this content to suit your business needs. It also permits you to re-brand this content and make it available directly to your customers.

Please note you are not permitted to resell or give away this product.

There is also an Annual maintenance option that provides 12 months of free upgrades to both the template and content for Premium purchases. This ensures you always have the most recent and up to date version available as Office 365 changes.

Finally there is also free version you can download and install, however this version does not contain any content but includes all the links and the structure so it could be used as a starting point to build your own solution. Please note, there is no support provided withe free version.

Using this template will provide your business with an easy option to create a learning portal in your SharePoint Online environment. Your users can learn about SharePoint Online while actually using it, which is the best method to achieve fast adoption of the product.

Add the Discover SharePoint app to a Team Site

One of the biggest challenges around SharePoint is end user adoption. I have written about this many times including:

The classic SharePoint migration mistake

SharePoint Online migration – Pilers and Filers

SharePoint Online migration–Start up is key

End user adoption in the SMB space is more of a challenge but I get REALLY frustrated when I see resellers ‘implement’ SharePoint Online by simply copying user files to a single Document Library and then running away screaming that there is no opportunity with cloud services. SIGH.

One of the best sites you can point people to when it comes to learning about SharePoint is:

www.discoversharepoint.com

But I’ll bet you didn’t know that you can embed this content directly into a customers SharePoint Team Site. Here’s how.

Navigate to a SharePoint Online Team Site.

Select Site Contents from the Quick Launch menu on the left.

Select add an app

Select SharePoint Store at the bottom of the Quick Launch Menu.

If you get this warning select a language in the top right.

You should now see the store with apps inside as shown above.

Go to the search box in the top right and enter discover and select the magnifying glass to search.

Hopefully the first result should be Discover SharePoint BETA. Select this.

This will take you to a screen with more details about the app.

Select ADD IT on the right.

Select Trust It.

(You may need to use a Microsoft account to complete the purchase if this is the first time you have purchased from the store. These accounts are free. I have a previous post that cover creating such an account this if you need to.)

You should now see the Discover SharePoint BETA app listed in the Site Contents. Select this.

It will take a moment or two to set up.

You should then see the app displayed on the page as shown above.

If you select the Cog in the top right of the page you will see a menu as shown above.

The Settings option will allow you to determine whether analytics is sent to Microsoft to help improve the product. Note that it is enabled by default.

If you select Admin Panel you will be taken to a screen where you can select what content is displayed by the app. Maybe you just want to start simple with a limited amount of information so as to not overload your users, you can de-select what isn’t required initially and then return and add it later when ready.

When complete select the Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

You’ll then need to select Exit Admin Panel in the top right of the page.

This will return you to the app. To to return to your Team Site select Back to Site in the top left hand corner of the window.

On the Team Site you should now find the Discover SharePoint BETA item listed in Quick Launch Menu allowing anyone to access the app directly.

From here the Discover SharePoint BETA is just like any app in SharePoint, you can remove it at anytime if you want.

Don’t forget that the content in this app is being updated regularly so continue to visit it to see what’s new.

So hopefully, there is a nice simply way for you to add some information and training about SharePoint Online to help end user adoption directly into a Team Site.

Introduction to SharePoint Online Picture Library video

Images are a significant part of the data that resides on most hard disks. Getting this into SharePoint Online in Office 365 is a perfect way to make this information more visible and searchable.

In this video you’ll see how to add the Picture Library app to a SharePoint Online Team Site. You’ll also see how to upload images and edit their keyword and description fields for better searchability.

This video is part of my Getting Started With SharePoint Online playlist which will give you all the basics of how to get up and running with SharePoint Online in Office 365 quickly and easily.

Making an Office 365 calendar public

If you want anyone to be able to see your calendar by simply browsing to a web page and you are using Office 365 Exchange Online for your emails then simply follow this process.

Login to the Microsoft Online portal with your account details. Select Calendar from the menu options that appear across the top of the page. This will display your calendar as shown above.

Under the option My Calendars on the left, right mouse click on the calendar you wish to share (in this case Calendar).

From the menu that is displayed select permissions..

An options pane will appear from the right as shown above. The option should show Public Calendar Not shared currently.

From the pull down options select a calendar sharing option to suit your needs. In this case the selection is Full details.

Now select Save in top left of this pane to update your preferences and return to your calendar view.

If you then again right mouse click on the calendar you wish to share as before and again select permissions to reveal the pane, you will find two new hyperlinks as shown above.

The View Calendar link provides you a URL link you can send to an external contact they can enter in their browser.

When they do they will see a copy of your calendar (depending on the permissions you provided previously of course) as shown above. In my experience it may 10 – 15 minutes for a calendar to be accessible publicly via this URL as it obviously need to be ‘published’ securely in Office 365.

At this stage there does not appear to be a way to allow anonymous users to actually make changes to the calendar which may be handy in some circumstance. I am pretty confident that we’ll see that down the track very soon.

Getting started SharePoint videos

One of the most common challenges with SharePoint Online is actually getting started. That’s why I created these books:

which you can find over at my publications page. Purchasing one or more copies helps me to continue creating resources like these and my YouTube videos.

What I thought I’d start doing is take advantage of the playlist features in YouTube to start building lists of common videos to help people get up and running with SharePoint Online quickly.

That meant that I needed to create a few new videos which you’ll find here:

Uploading documents to SharePoint Online

Basics of working with Document Libraries

Basic calendaring in SharePoint

I have then combined these, along with an existing video, into a dedicated playlist:

Getting Started with SharePoint Online

where these, and the ones I add in future, can be played one after each other. This makes it a nice series you can get someone to work through to get them up to speed with SharePoint quickly.

The videos are generally 5 – 10 minutes and provide the main points you need to get up and running quickly.

As I said, I’ll keep working on creating new videos to add to this playlist as well as looking at developing new playlists on different Office 365 and SharePoint Online topics. Let me know what you’d like to see.

OneNote for Mac now opens OneDrive for Business notebooks

Another recent update Microsoft released, this time for OneNote for Mac, is the ability to open notebooks on OneDrive for Business in Office 365.
I know plenty of people that have been waiting for this.

Edit document directly in OWA

Here’s a handy little feature that has just been added to Office 365.

Let’s say that someone send you an attachment as shown above. if you now click on that attachment Office 365 will automatically show you that document side by side (provided of course it can be viewed in Office Online).

You’ll see the document on the left in Office Online and the email on the right. You can still download it to your desktop if you want.

At the top of the page you’ll also see the option to Edit a copy.

When you do it will create a new reply email on the right, take a copy of the attached document on the left and then place that copy into edit mode with Office online.