Free SharePoint Online Email course

I am very happy to announce the availability of my new FREE 23 lesson Getting Started With SharePoint Online training email course that is based on my SharePoint template training publication.

To receive a lesson every day via email visit:

http://www.ciaops.com/templates

and scroll down the page. After all the template details, you will find the option to submit your email address to subscribe to the course.

Once you have submitted your email address you will be sent a confirmation email which you will need click on to confirm you wish to receive the course. Once you have done that you should receive the introductory email giving your details about the course.

From then on you’ll receive an email a day typically containing a video tutorial to watch (only around 7 – 10 minutes on average) as well a set of lesson notes you can download for reference.

By subscribing to this course you will also be subscribed to my upcoming monthly Office 365 and SharePoint newsletter where you’ll get load of information and news about these products.

The content in the email course is exactly the same that is contained in the Getting Started With SharePoint Online Team Site template. Hopefully, once you see the value via email you will purchase the template and install it on your Office 365 tenant so everyone in your business can use it.

The last incentive I have for you to sign up is that when you do you’ll receive a special discount code for a major discount when purchasing the Getting Started With SharePoint Online Team Site template.

Watch out for new SharePoint Online training courses coming soon!

Creating sub sites using SharePoint Online

SharePoint sub sites are a great way to segregate both information and security. A sub site is created from a parent site in a tree like structure as required.

Sub sites can use a number of pre-existing templates as a base or even a custom one that you have created. For information on creating a custom template see my previous video on the subject:

A sub site can also have unique permissions if required but by default they will inherit from their parent.

Sub sites in SharePoint are a great way to structure your data and security to needs of your organisation.

Change SharePoint Team Site logo, title and URL

A very common request when it comes to customising SharePoint Team Sites is changing the logo in the top left hand side of the site. This video will show you how to make that change along with changing the site title and URL if needed.

You’ll see how you can use either a logo you upload from your computer, from a location already in SharePoint as well as an image already on the Internet.

Customising a Team Site logo is the first step in branding and an important way for users to become more comfortable using it.

SharePoint Document Library check in tutorial

One of the features of SharePoint Document Libraries is the ability to check a document out. doing so provides you with exclusive write access to the document. Other can still view the document while it is checked out to you but can’t edit it.

You can check the document back in to update the version for everyone. It is also possible for an administrator to override a users check in if required.

All of this this plus more is covered in the video I created. Let me know what other sort of tutorial videos you’d like to see.

SharePoint Online Document Library versioning video

Each SharePoint Online Document Library supports the ability to have versioning enabled. Once enabled this automatically creates a new version of each document in that library every time a document is edited. This is really handy if you potentially need to recover a previous version of the document. Also using the ability to enable minor or draft versions of a document you can also control who can view any drafts.

This video will give you an introduction to versioning in SharePoint Online Document Libraries. You’ll see how to enable it as well as how to configure the different options. You’ll also see how versioning works between two users with different rights to the document.

You can find further information on SharePoint Online versioning here:

How does versioning work in a list or library?

Enable and configure versioning for a list or library

All template lesson suggestions receive a reward

You might be aware that I have created a Getting Started with SharePoint team site template that can be added to any Office 365 tenant that includes SharePoint. It is designed to help new users get up to speed with SharePoint. The template includes 23 lessons with downloadable documentation, training videos and further resources on each topic. There is also a free version that includes the basic content.

I have also now created a dedicated SharePoint templates page on my web site with more information. However, this is where I need your help. I am currently developing the next template which will be aimed at providing tutorials on SharePoint for intermediate users and I’d like to know from people what lessons they’d like to see appear in this intermediate template.

As an incentive to provide me with some feedback I’ll give everyone who sends me an original suggestion for a lesson with a discount code that provides a AU$25 discount off the cost of the Getting Started with SharePoint team site template. Importantly, any submitted suggestion must not already be something I have covered in the original template (so the hint there is to take a look at what the existing template covers before submitting your suggestion).

So, putting your thinking caps on and send me your ideas via email (director@ciaops.com) or via @directorcia on Twitter. I look forward to hearing from you.

Free SharePoint documentation

Around 2006 I started to document everything I could about SharePoint on Small Business Server, simply due to a lack of information from other sources. This grew into documentation about Windows SharePoint Services v 3.0, SharePoint Foundation 2010 as well as most SharePoint versions. The focus remained on the Foundation product rather than the full server versions and especially how SharePoint integrated with Small Business Server (SBS).

In 2007 I started to offer my document via a subscription known as as the Windows SharePoint Services Operations Guide or WSSOPS for short.

In 2014 I announced that I would no longer be taking new subscribers and in 12 months would be shutting down the Guide completely. The reasons for this are many but mainly I saw the fact that less and less people were working with SharePoint on premise and even fewer where utilising SharePoint Foundation 2013. The focus was now Office 365.

However, much of the information I have accumulated about SharePoint over the years in the Guide still is not readily available or in an easy to understand format. With the closure of WSSOPS and the migration of my documentation to Cloud Business Blueprint I have decided to make available for free a large majority of the information in WSSOPS. You can find this available for download at:

http://www.ciaops.com/wssops

and is made available under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike-4.0 Internation license. In essence means it free to distribute but can’t be resold.

Given the years of hard work invested in the Guide (over 1,000 pages is available for free download now) I’d appreciate the purchase of any of my publications or a donation if you find what I have made available helpful to you.

To join my new Cloud Business Blueprint community and gain access to all the documentation and training material I am now producing for Office 365, Azure and more please visit:

http://www.cloudbusinessblueprint.com/members-sign-up/

I am very proud of what I created with WSSOPS over the years and thank anyone who was a subscriber. I hope people continue to receive benefit from what I created for many years to come.

Need to Know podcast–Episode 68

Here I speak with SharePoint MVP John Liu about SharePoint workflows. John’s shares what workflows are, how to create them and what business uses these could provide. He discusses with me how workflows are an intelligent method of automating business process and boosting productivity by removing reparative tasks. The great thing is that you can use workflows with SharePoint on premise or via Office 365.

You can listen to the episode at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-68-john-liu/

or subscribe to this and all episodes in 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

Episode Resources

SharePoint Designer 2013
http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=35491

Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition (with Update 4)
http://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepointdesigner/

@johnnliu
http://johnliu.net

http://sharepoint-videos.com/video-categories/sharepoint-2013-training-courses/sp13-304-sharepoint-designer-2013-workflow-course/

http://www.lynda.com/search?q=workflow&f=producttypeid%3a2%094%092015%3bmeta_software_facet%3aSharePoint
http://www.pluralsight.com/search/?searchTerm=sharepoint%20workflow

Custom Activities – these can all be used on Office 365 or SP2013 OnPrem

Office Dev Patterns and Practices samples
https://github.com/OfficeDev/PnP/tree/master/Samples/Workflow.Activities

Codeplex
http://sp2013workflowactivities.codeplex.com/

Paul Culmsee has a 12-part multi series that’s very fun to follow
http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/2013/12/21/trials-or-tribulation-inside-sharepoint-2013-workflowspart-1/

Plumsail has a pack of custom activities that can be purchased (~$500) and more importantly, support.
http://plumsail.com/workflow-actions-pack/