OneDrive consumer space gets scaled back

In a world where we are use to seeing more it is surprising to discover that Microsoft is limiting the amount of space available in OneDrive consumer. That is until you read this blog post they recently posted:

https://blog.onedrive.com/onedrive_changes/

In essence what it says is that a small number of people have been ‘exploiting’ the amount of storage available in OneDrive consumer to use it for things that it wasn’t really designed for such as storing images of hard disks, entire movie collections and so on.

To prevent this and ensure OneDrive is used as a collaboration tool rather than just a free dumping ground for data Microsoft will start to limit the amount of space available to users of the service. If you want to know how that may affect you I suggest you read the above blog post from Microsoft.

The following quote from the blog post sums it up well and reinforces what I say about all versions of OneDrive:

“OneDrive has always been designed to be more than basic file storage and backup. These changes are needed to ensure that we can continue to deliver a collaborative, connected, and intelligent service. They will allow us to continue to innovate and make OneDrive the best option for people who want to be productive and do more.”

I see so many people trying to shoehorn their whole one premises file server into OneDrive for Business. It is not designed for that and you should not be merely copying all your data to a location that was designed for individuals not teams. You should also not be dumping all your data (much of it unused generally) into a single document library. SharePoint Online (which includes OneDrive for Business) is designed primarily for collaboration. If all you want is web storage then SharePoint Online is probably not the best solution.

I wrote the following article a while back to highlight the appropriate way to consider migrations to SharePoint Online:

The Classic SharePoint Online Migration Mistake

The important thing to remember here is that this recent control of the space available to OneDrive refers to the consumer version NOT OneDrive for Business (for now). However importantly, the takeaway for Office 365 users here is that OneDrive for Business is designed for individual users and is not designed as a general data dumping ground for data.

Go forth and collaborate.

Changing the default SharePoint list forms using InfoPath

In a recent post I showed you how you could access InfoPath with Office 2013. Even though Microsoft has deprecated InfoPath 2013 it is still supported for quite a while and is a quick and easy way to start customising the look and feel of SharePoint, especially forms.

When you enter information into a standard SharePoint list you get the standard ‘look and feel’ as you see above.

You can modify this ‘look and feel’ using InfoPath. To do this select the List tab at the top of the page.

Then in the Customize list section to the right, select the Customize in InfoPath button.

You should now see InfoPath launch on the desktop (you’ll obviously need it installed on the local desktop prior).

In the middle of the page you will see a form like the one you saw when in SharePoint but in a different layout, font, style, etc.

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Don’t make to changes to anything but simply select the Quick Publish button on the quick launch toolbar in the top left. It is the third button from the left as shown above.

You can also select File | Quick Publish if the quick start button is unavailable.

After a few moments you should receive a message that the form was successfully published as shown above.

If you now return to SharePoint and edit or create a new item you will see that that the form displayed has changed to match that from InfoPath as shown above. InfoPath has in effect has created new display, edit and create forms for this list in SharePoint.

The idea now will be to start customising these forms further using InfoPath and then ‘publishing’ them back to the SharePoint site. However, that will be the subject of upcoming posts.

Now what happens if you want to revert back to the original SharePoint forms and remove the InfoPath ones? To do this, select the Sites tab and then the List Settings button from the ribbon.

Then select Form settings at the bottom of the first column on the left which has the heading General Settings.

Select the option to Use the default SharePoint form (and optionally to Delete the InfoPath form from the server).

Now when you return to work with the list you should see the default SharePoint form displayed as shown above.

Accessing Infopath 2013 with Office 365

InfoPath is a Microsoft Office desktop application that you can use to create intelligent forms. These forms can then be published to SharePoint Online.

The InfoPath application is part of the Office Pro Plus subscription in Office 365. This means it is typically available for those with the E3 suite. The problem is that Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be continuing to develop InfoPath and thus it will remain at the current 2013 version. However, the Office desktop software has now progressed to 2016. Thus, if you download and install Office 2016 from Office 365 as part of your subscription you no longer get InfoPath 2013 installed. You can however still download InfoPath 2013 as stand alone product if you have an Office Pro Plus subscription. Here’s the process you need to follow to do this.

First, login to your Office 365 web portal.

Select the COG in the top right hand corner of the window. This will reveal a menu as shown above. From this menu select Office 365 settings.

In the middle of the page select the hyperlink Install and manage software under the Software heading.

From the menu on the left select Tools and add ins.

In the middle of the page that appears now you should see a hyperlink to download and install under the InfoPath heading.

That will then take you the following Microsoft download page:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48734

Where you can download the InfoPath 2013 software and install on your desktop. When you run the software you will be required to activate it using your Office 365 credentials. Note, unless you have a valid Office Pro Plus license from Office 365 you will not be able to activate and use InfoPath.

Once you have downloaded, installed and activated InfoPath 2013 you can start using to customise SharePoint, which I’ll cover in upcoming blog posts.

Using the SharePoint Online Term Store

One of the benefits that SharePoint provides is the ability to ‘tag’ information using metadata. This can greatly reduce the structure you use, especially when it comes to documents. Thus, instead of creating a deep and complex folder structure you use metadata to tag the files into the same categories as you would typically use for folders. Doing so make navigation and searching much easier.

The easiest way to achieve this to simply add a column to the location in a SharePoint site as the above video of mine demonstrates.

The draw back to this is that column is only available in that SharePoint item, it can’t be used in other lists and libraries.

The next option is to create a Site Column, which is exactly the same as an individual list column EXCEPT it can be used anywhere throughout the whole SharePoint site. I’ll cover that in another blog because I want to focus on a solution that is even more available and powerful than Site Columns.

The Term Store provides you the ability to have nested metadata fields across every SharePoint Site you are using. As you can see from the above screen shot, the Term Store is not just a one dimensional list like an added column is, it is hierarchical.

You get to the Term Store but logging into the Office 365 web portal as an administrator and then navigating to the SharePoint admin center. Then, from the menu on the left, you should see a option term store. When you select that, you should see the screen shown above.

Like many things in Office 365 no user has the ability to edit the Term Store, so the first thing you need to do is add your user details to the Term Store Administrators box in the lower right of the screen and save the changes.

If you don’t do that then you won’t be able to edit or add to the Term Store. You know you are able to do this when you hover over an entry and a small down arrow appears to the right. Selecting that arrow will then reveal a menu like that shown above.

The example that I’ll user here is creating a standard taxonomy (i.e. metadata structure) to cover locations (i.e. countries, states, cities, etc).

At the very top level of your Term Store, select the down arrow and from the menu that appears select New Group.

That will create a folder at the bottom of your. In this case give it the name, Locations.

Select the arrow to the right of this and then New Term Set from the menu that is displayed as shown above.

In this case I will call the New Term Store Country.

Keep repeating this process to build out the taxonomy (i.e. tagging structure you desire).

Now go into a item in SharePoint, in this case a Document Library. Add a column and when asked for the Column type select Managed Metadata at the bottom of the list of options, as shown above.

Scroll down the page and locate the Term Set Settings area. You should now see the hierarchy you saw in the SharePoint admin center.

You can now expand the structure and locate the term to select the place to start the selections for that field from. Here I have selected Australia so I get all the states below this only.

Now if you edit the properties of an item in that list you will see the new field and a tag icon to the right indicating that it is using managed metadata.

This is where it gets cool. If I type n.s.w. in it gets rejected. Although n.s.w. is ‘correct’ as value for the state it isn’t in the format we defined in our taxonomy, so it is unacceptable. This can ensure that the data that is entered into SharePoint is consistent.

If I however start typing the name of a state I am automatically prompted with the correct value. I just need to click on the suggested entry to complete.

Alternatively, if I select the two tags to the right of the selection field I am given a view of my hierarchy from the initial location I selected previously when creating the column.

Again, all I need to is select the option I want from the list.

Now you’ll see the file has been tagged appropriately for with a location as shown above. I can sort and filter as I normally would on this field inside the SharePoint list.

If I now for example change the term from NSW to N.S.W.

I see the term has also changed for that document.

Hopefully this article gives you some idea of the power of the SharePoint Term Store and managed metadata. There is so much more you can do with the Term Store than I have been able to show here, so I encourage you to go and do some exploring and see how the Term Store can be used to create flatter and more organised structures in your SharePoint Online environment.

LepideMigrator for Office 365 file migrations

A while back I wrote a post about migrating from Companyweb (SharePoint on SBS) to Office 365. You can review that post at:

Migrating from Companyweb to Office 365 SharePoint

which concluded that using third party tools to do the migration to SharePoint Online is a much easier process that any other option. The drawback with most third party tools is that they are quite expensive, especially for smaller businesses (generally talking thousands).

I have always been on the hunt for a suitably priced SMB SharePoint migration tool and recently was contacted by Ajit from Lepide who kindly provided me with a copy of the LepideMigrator for documents software.

You basically set up your source locations.

Then your SharePoint destinations, which can include SharePoint Online.

You can then migrate or copy from source to destination. What you might also notice here is that there is a Migration Analyser option.

SharePoint does have some limitations around certain file names, file lengths, etc. This can prove frustrating if you are trying to a bulk move of files and one of these conditions causes your traditional file copy via a mapped drive to bomb.

The built in migration analyser will test your source for all these known condition and alter you if problems exist. That way you can identify and take action on problem files BEFORE you migrate.

If you need to do SharePoint to SharePoint migrations, say from previous versions of SharePoint to SharePoint Online it will do this as well. It can also read and display things like the permissions of your destination as well as match securities during SharePoint to SharePoint migrations which is really handy.

Now for the best part. The cost of this tool is only USD $349 for a one year subscription of a single seat license. You can add additional seats for USD $175 and each subscription includes free support and maintenance. That is outstanding value for what the tool does, especially when compared to other offerings.

I think the LepideMigrator for documents software is an excellent choice for small and more cost conscious businesses looking to move data into SharePoint online, whether from a file system or from something like Companyweb. They also have a reseller program that provides further benefits.

With the LepideMigrator for documents software I successfully migrated files from a local hard disk to a SharePoint Online Document Library, a complete site from a SharePoint 2010 hosted environment to SharePoint Online and finally across different SharePoint Online tenants. That probably covers the majority of what most smaller business need when they move their files to Office 365.

Lepide also have a number of other products that, based on what I have seen with the SharePoint tool, I also suggest you go and check out.

Once again, thanks to Ajit from Lepide for reaching out and letting me test a full version of their software so I could report to you.

So, if you have a need to migrate information to SharePoint Online I really suggest you check out the LepideMigrator for documents. It is the most cost effective tool I have currently found, especially for smaller, and more budget constrained, businesses.

CIAOPS SharePoint Guides on Docs.com

At the beginning of the year I decided to ‘open source’ my documentation from my SharePoint Guide. It contains a significant amount of information around Windows SharePoint Services and Windows Foundation 2010.

I have now placed a copy of all this information on the updated Docs.com from Microsoft. This provides more flexibility around sharing the information and allows more feedback as well as letting me see how popular the content is.

https://docs.com/c/e/windows-sharepoint-services-guide_COWMZJVMRaAZAEAAghyGGJw%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

https://docs.com/c/e/sharepoint-foundation-2010-guide_CNGMZJXKJVTCVcAAXCVg0gA%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

So if you are after information on Windows SharePoint Services v3 or SharePoint Foundation 2010 check out these new repositories and watch my Docs.com for more free content.

Creating custom default templates in SharePoint Online

Many people think that the only way to get documents into SharePoint Online is to upload them. Not so. You can actually create a new document directly in the Document Library.

The most common way to do this is to select the New button just under the library name as shown above.

This will then display a menu like you see above that allows you to create a range of Office documents as well as a new folder.

If you select any of these, you will simply be taken to a new blank Office document as you see above.

Another method of creating a new document is to open the Ribbon Menu by selecting the Files tab at the top of the page and then selecting the arrow under the New Document button at the left as shown above.

You will then typically see a single option New Document as shown above.

If you select this you will be prompted to open you desktop Office application and when you do you will see a blank document again as shown above.

If you instead want to have your own document templates displayed in a Document Library you can do that a number of ways.

If you simply want to edit the New Document template that you see from the Files tab you need to use SharePoint to edit this.

You will firstly need to select the Library tab in the top left (just to the right of the Files tab just shown). On the very right hand side of the Ribbon Menu that is now displayed locate and select the Library Settings icon.

Select the Advanced settings option under the General Settings column.

The second field now display shows you the template URL.

You will also see an option to Edit Template, which will launch the Office program on your desktop and allows to make any changes desired.

If you try and change the URL of the template to some other location in SharePoint you’ll be greeted with the above message basically telling you that this is not possible. So all you can really do here is edit the existing template.

There is however a further option that provides much more flexibility and that is using Content Types.

You firstly need to create the Office document you want to use as templates. Best practice is to save these in dedicated Office template formats.

Next you need to go to the SharePoint Online Site Collection you want these new templates added to and select the Cog in the top right corner and then Site Settings from the menu that appears.

Select the Site content types option from under the Web Designer Galleries section.

You should then see all the default Site Content Types list as shown above. For more information on Content Types in SharePoint see:

Introduction to Content Types

Select the New option at the top of the page.

Best practice is to create a new content type for each document template you want to use. It is also good practice to create a new Content Type Group to make it easier to identify the custom items that have been added.

Because Content Types are hierarchical you should select the option for Document Content Type as the parent content type to inherit from. You should select Document as the Parent content type in the field below.

As suggested you should also create new Content Type Group for new items you add.

When all these items are complete select OK.

You should then see a summary of the new Content Type as shown above. Select the Advanced settings option.

In the Document Template area at the top of the page you can select the file to be used. Best practice would be to locate this in another Document Library that everyone has read access to so you can change it easily. However, in this case we’ll select to upload the template files we previously created.

Once these options have been selected, update the Content Type by selecting the OK button.

Repeat the same process for every template file you want to use. The only different with subsequent files is that you will add them to the new Content Type Group you created with the first template.

If you now look at the list of content types in your Site Collection and use the Show Group filter option on the left to only display the new Content Type Group you created, you should see the Content Types you just created (here one for Word, Excel and PowerPoint).

You now need to go to each Document Library in your Site Collection where you would like these new templates to be available and then select Library Settings.

You then need to select Advanced Settings again.

At the top of the page you need to select Yes to Allow management of content types and save this change.

Now in the Settings for the Document Library you should see an additional section called Content Types as shown above. In there you will find one existing Content Type on which this library is based.

Select the option Add from existing content types.

Select the new Content Type Group name you created at the top of the page. This should filter the total list of Content Types down to the new ones you just created (this is ability to filter is why creating new Content Type Groups is best practice).

Add the new Content Types from the box on the left to the right and save the changes by clicking OK.

Back in the Setting for the library you should see that you Content Types are now listed as shown above.

Now select the link Change new button order and default content type.

Best practice is generally not to delete the default Content Type but just hide it.

Save your settings when complete.

If you now select the New button in the library you should only see the your template files and the New Folder option.

Likewise, if you also select the arrow under the New Document button you will again only see your new file templates.

If you then select one of these options, you’ll be prompted to download the Office document, which will open in the desktop version of the application and allow you to create a new document based from this template.

If you wish to remove the option New Folder in the list, return to the Advanced Settings in Library Settings and locate the Folders item and set this to No.

If you again return to the library and select the New button you will see that the New Folder item no longer appears.

Site Content Types are the best way to customise injecting your own default documents into libraries in SharePoint. They take a bit longer to set up but once they are they are easy to use anywhere within the site.

They also provide the bonus of when you update the actual file used as the template it will give you the option to update everywhere where that template is being used throughout your Site Collection. Content Types have a lot more functionality but that is for a future post.

Hopefully this show you firstly how to create your own custom library templates but also how powerful SharePoint is when it comes to managing content.

Using a template to migrate a SharePoint library

In a recent post I showed how to:

Create a template from a Document Library

In the above video I take that one step further and show you how to import this template into a completely different site collection. This could also be in a separate unique Office 365 tenant if desired.

The process is basically to create a template, including the content if desired, from the source library. You then download the template that this creates and upload to the destination Site Template Gallery. Once there you can create a new library based on this template. When you create the new library it should also contain the content from the source location if you selected that initially.

This is a quick way to not only copy the structure of a library from one location to another, also potentially the content.