Getting Started With SharePoint Online course

If you are struggling to put the pieces together when it comes to SharePoint and OneDrive for Business then I have created this course especially for you. Hi, I’m Robert, a technology trainer and SharePoint veteran who is also a Microsoft MVP that has been helping people for years when it comes to understanding and working better with SharePoint.

I understand that SharePoint seems really daunting and you’re not sure where to begin. Well, I’ve made that easy for you with my course. The lessons here take a complex topic like SharePoint and break them down into small pieces. They focus on a single topic that takes only a few minutes to complete and include a video tutorial showing you exactly what to do as well as providing you downloadable notes you can keep and review at anytime. There are also links to additional information if you want to extend your knowledge further.

My aim is to make you as productive as quickly as possible with SharePoint and that’s why the first lessons show you how to get your documents into SharePoint Online. From there you learn how to use common tools like calendars, tasks lists, and more. I’ll then show you how to recover deleted information as well as use the powerful built-in search functionality that comes with SharePoint Online to find anything! There are over twenty lessons you can work through at your own pace. You are free to return at any point to review all the content at your leisure. You are also free to jump to any lesson that takes your fancy, allowing you to learn at your own pace and in your own way.

The course contains over three hours of video tutorials, 200+ pages of documentation and 30 additional web locations to extend your knowledge. I’m confident that by the end of the course you’ll be using SharePoint like a pro. I’ve worked really hard in creating this course to pass on my knowledge and experience of SharePoint to people like you who need it to do their job. People like you who need to learn SharePoint but don’t know where to start. This course has been built for you and the many others who struggle coming to grips with SharePoint. Read their testimonials below to see how this course has helped them.

Testimonials

“Great introduction to the vast array of capabilities offered by SharePoint via Office 365. Really demystified SharePoint for me in a very easy to follow and practical manner. Thanks heaps Rob!” – Darren Chapman (Pivotal Data Solutions).

“Robert, you’ve done a great job of providing bites size chunks of relevant information to get me on the road to using SharePoint” – Nathan Oldfield (Cybercomp)

“As a user with no/very limited SharePoint experience, I found this course extremely helpful. As course notes have been included it makes referring back to something very easy. I would recommend this course” – Ursula Kriel (Multotec)

“The material is easy to understand and follows a logical sequence that makes learning fun! I would recommend these courses to anyone and they should come out with a better understanding in using all of the tools available to the share point user. Thanks for such a well designed course!” – Charles Perry

“The best training I have been to in recent memory – very practical, customer-focused exercises and loads of great information and resources.” – Tristram Morgan (365 Architects)

“Robert Crane from CIAOPS has created an incredible resource for anyone wanting to get into Sharepoint for Office 365. They are well presented and laid out for users on any level from beginner to advanced. If you follow through the steps and examples you are guaranteed to learn something new even if you think you know it all. Roberts learning academy online should be a go to place for anyone who wants to get serious about their IT.” – Craig Young (Greendata Pty Ltd)

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 131

Some news and opinions to start the show from Marc and I. We discuss some of the new learning offerings from Microsoft and why they are so important for IT Professionals to use to upskill the knowledge. We then dive into another discussion with a Microsoft Ignite Australia presenter, Elaine van Bergen whose topics are:

How to build a modern portal with Office 365 and on premises data

See how you can build a modern portal on Azure PaaS by leveraging the API’s and out of the box elements available from Office 365. We’ll showcase a modern portal on Office 365 including use of the Graph API, Office 365 Groups, OneDrive and the Video Portal all combined into a compelling and responsive design with full level of control over customisation. Also we’ll discuss options for utilising the SharePoint framework for smaller customisations and how elements of the solution can be integrated with on-premises data via Azure Hybrid Connections.

Deploying and governing Office 365 Groups

Office 365 Groups is one of the best ways to get wide adoption and usage of Office 365. It’s a fundamental building block of many of the newer features of Office 365 including Planner. Explore how to get Office 365 Groups deployed and setup and how to do this with the most common Hybrid setups of Exchange. In addition, we will also go through the various governance and control options to help keep groups well controlled in a large organisation. Finally, we will briefly cover the API’s that can be used to pull Office 365 Groups into custom solutions.

Don’t forget to send us your feedback at feedback@needtoknow.cloud

You can listen to this episode directly at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-131-elaine-van-bergen/

or on Soundcloud here:

Subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

Microsoft teams gains steam

Flow updates

Why developers (And IT pros) need Azure skills

Microsoft OpenEdX

Sharing files with external users using OneDrive for Business

Here’s a bright shiny new video detailing how to share files with external users from OneDrive for Business. You’ll see how to share with external users via email address and via a direct URL. Nice and easy.

If you wish to share with external users via email (i.e. they have to actually login to view the document), then they’ll need a free Microsoft account which they may already have or can easily set up using their own email address.

If you wish to share the document without the need for a login you can also do that easily via OneDrive for Business.

Sharing your files via OneDrive for Business means that you retain the source and control of the files. It also means there is a single point of truth when it comes to the document. That alone is worth using OneDrive for Business to share personal business documents.

January webinar resources

January 2017 Need to Know Webinar—Robert Crane Docs.com

https://docs.com/d/embed/D25191743-6640-8940-4220-000669904411%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

Welcome to 2017. The first webinar of the New Year is now done and dusted. You can see the slide above or download directly from:

January 2017 Need to Know Webinar

If you are not a CIAOPS patron you want to view or download a full copy of the video from the session you can do so here:

http://www.ciaopsacademy.com/p/january-2017-need-to-know-webinar/

you can also now get access to all webinars via:

http://ciaops-academy.teachable.com/courses/need-to-know-webinars

for a nominal fee.

Thanks to everyone who attended and I hope to see you again next month.

OneDrive copy to Team Sites arrives

If you select a file in your OneDrive for Business and then select the Copy option you’ll find some new abilities.

You’ll now see that you get the ability to copy to a SharePoint Online Team Site. You can read more details about this ability at:

Copy files and folders from OneDrive for Business to a SharePoint Site

Note – Scripting must be turned off for personal sites If scripting is turned on for personal sites in your organization, the Copy command is restricted to copying within your OneDrive.

At this point in time the functionality is only available with Copy and not the Move command. Also, at this point in time the ability is not available in Team Sites.

Thus, for the time being, you can now Copy (but not Move) via a browser, files and folders from OneDrive for Business to a Team Site (but not the reverse). Hopefully, the other abilities such as Move and inside Team Sites also is not far away.

Providing admin access to OneDrive for Business

When a new Office 365 user is created they normally get provisioned with their own OneDrive for Business location. This is basically a dedicated SharePoint Site Collection per user into which they can upload and share their own private documents.

Each user is the only Site Collection administrator for their own OneDrive for Business location. This means, by default, even a global administrator doesn’t have access to a users OneDrive for Business location.

Of course, in a business, there can be the need for others to have admin access to a users OneDrive for Business, typically for compliance or even once the user has left the organisation. There are a number of ways of granting this access.

All of these methods will require you to have SharePoint administration rights in your tenant and then navigate to the SharePoint admin center.

Probably the easiest way to gain access to any existing user OneDrive for Business is simply to assign the appropriate administration user Secondary Site Collection rights to the site:

http://<tenant name>-my.sharePoint.com

You do that by firstly selecting the appropriate site in your list from the available Site Collections like so:

Once you place a check mark to the left of the OneDrive for Business Site Collections you will see a number of buttons become available to you on the Ribbon Menu across the top.

Select the Owners button.

Then select the Manage Administrators from the menu that appears.

As with any SharePoint Site Collection, you’ll see both the Primary Site Collection Administrator as well as any Secondary Site Collection Administrators. Remember, you can only have one Primary but many Secondary Site Collections administrators. So add the desired user in as a Secondary Site Collection Administrator field and then select OK.

The permissions for all the user OneDrive for Business sites will now update and when complete the added user will be able to access all users OneDrive for Business locations (typically by navigating directly to that URL).

Another way to achieve the same result, but for new or deleted users, is to navigate to the user profiles area from the menu on the left hand side of the SharePoint admin center.

This will take you to the following screen:

Here select Setup My Sites from the My Site Settings group at the bottom of the page.

Scroll down the list of options until you find My Site Cleanup

Here you can again effectively enter a Secondary Site Collection Administrator but for OneDrive for Business Site Collections where the user has been deleted.

If you continue to scroll down you will find a section called My Site Secondary Admin.

Here you can again effectively enable an automatic Secondary Site Collection Administrator to be allocated to a OneDrive for Business location when a new user is created.

Although really a double up from the first option shown is also worthwhile doing as a backup to ensure you cater for all new and any deleted users

The final way is of course to use PowerShell to enable permissions on users OneDrive for Business but I’ll leave that for a future article.

Beware that by adding additional Site Collection Administrators to a users OneDrive for Business users may see these additional admins as already having access as shown above when they go to share documents. It is recommended that you communicate this to your users in advance so they are aware of their compliance requirements.

So, in summary, remember that by default only the user has access to their OneDrive for Business location. You can easily assign rights for other users to access a users OneDrive for Business information using the methods outlined above. Once these rights have been assigned you can navigate to these locations using the URL for each users individual OneDrive for Business location.

Creating new permissions level in SharePoint Online [VIDEO]

Here’s a video to go with the article I wrote recently about

Creating a new permissions level in SharePoint Online

It is important to remember that you’ll need to be at top of the Site Collection to actually create the new permission level.

Creating a new permission level in SharePoint Online

When users are given access to SharePoint Online they are typically given the ‘edit’ permission. The ‘edit’ permission allows users to not only create and edit documents but also to delete them. In some cases it may not be appropriate to do this. Luckily, with SharePoint you can easily create a new permission levels that is exactly like the edit permission, just without the ability to delete. Here’s how to do that.

Firstly, visit the location where you wish to create the new permission and select the COG icon in the top right hand corner of the screen.

From the menu that appears select Site settings. If you don’t see this option then you most likely don’t have the appropriate permissions to make these changes.

In the Site Settings page under the Users and Permissions section in the top left, select Site Permissions.

From the menu that appears across the top of the page select Permission Levels on the right.

You should now see a list of all the different existing permission levels available as shown above.

You could select the Add a Permission Level option from the menu across the top but that would require you customising a new permission from scratch. It is much easier to copy and then modify an existing permission to the level that you desire.

Since the Edit permission is the closest permissions level to the one we desire, select that to display its current settings as shown above.

If you now scroll to the bottom of this screen you will find an option to Copy Permission Level, which you should select.

This will now create a new permission level for you but copy over all the existing permissions as shown above. Enter a new name a description for this permission. In this case I will call call it Edit no Delete.

Make the desired changes to the permissions listed by simply checking or unchecking the individual permission. in this case I have unchecked the options to Delete Items and Delete Versions as shown above.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and Create the new settings.

You should now see the new permission level displayed in the permissions list as shown above, here Edit no Delete. If you need to edit this further, simply select the permission name.

Now, when you visit a location and want to set the permissions you will see your custom permission level as shown above that you can select and apply.

SharePoint gives you the ability to create as many custom permission levels as you desire. The trick is that it is easier to copy and modify an existing permission, rather than create a new from scratch. This article has shown you how to do just that.