When a standard users clicks on Sites within the Office 365 portal they will see something like the above. Across the top are a number of ‘Promoted Sites’ that provide quick access to different URLs (typically SharePoint Online sites).

An administrator can control these ‘Promoted Sites’ via a number of different methods. The first is to access the Office 365 portal as themselves and select the Sites option from the toolbar across the top.

The difference when they do this from an ordinary user is that administrators will have the link Manage the promoted sites below as noted above.

Selecting that link will place the bar into edit mode as shown above. All you need to do to edit an existing entry or add a new ‘Promoted Site’ is select the appropriate tile.

Doing so will pop up a dialog box like shown above where you can makes changes including setting the Title, Description, URL (which can be any valid URL including one outside Office 365 if desired) and even the background image. You can also remove the link if you don’t want it to appear.

Once you have finished editing you can select the click here to stop editing option to save and update the changes for all users.

The other way that you can manage these promoted sites is via the SharePoint Admin center. To access this select the Admin option from the options across the top of the page and then select SharePoint.

In the SharePoint Admin center select user profiles form the menu that appears on the left.

Then select Manage Promoted Sites from under the My Site Settings in the middle of the page.

You’ll now see a list of the ‘Promoted Sites’ as shown above. Press the edit icon (the small icon with the pen, just under the check box at the left) to make changes.

You can now again make any changes you require to the entry. However, using this method you will see that you have an additional option available to you, that being Target Audiences. This allows you to show certain promoted site only to a certain set of SharePoint users determined by the audience feature. To learn more about this feature have a look at the following article:

Manage audiences

You can of course add and remove ‘Promoted Sites’ using the option on the menu bar at the top.

So there you go, two easy ways to manage the ‘Promoted Sites’ that users see when they select Sites in Office 365.

When your users press the Sites button in Office 365 they will be taken to a list of SharePoint sites they can access. However, as you can see from the above they also, by default, have the option to create a New Site.

You may not want all users to have this option since it can result in many, many unwanted and unused SharePoint site in your environment. To remove this option, login as a global administrator to the Office 365 Administration Portal.

Select Admin then SharePoint from the menu that appears.

From the bottom of the list on the left select Settings.

Scroll down the left hand side until you find the heading Start a Site. Then select Hide the Link on the right. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select OK to apply the changes.

Now when users view that same initial page they will no longer see the option New Site.

One of the major misconceptions may people are under is that SharePoint is simply another files and folders repository. SharePoint is a collaboration solution and therefore a very different beast from what many may be familiar working with.

A good example is the issue around the modified field. Let me explain.

One of the many things that SharePoint allows is the mapping of a document library using Windows Explorer as you can see above. You can easily drag and drop files into a SharePoint library using this interface.

In this case let’s pay special attention to the Date modified for each file shown above

If you now look at the file listing in the web interface of SharePoint after copying the files across using Windows Explorer you will see that the Modified field is different in the web interface from that in the Windows Explorer view. Why is that?

The reason is that SharePoint is a collaboration system not simply files and folders storage as I said before. What does that mean? What it means is that when a document is copied to SharePoint it is now only part of an item in a list of items that together constitute a Document Library.

What that means is that in SharePoint an item is not only just the file but also things like previous versions, workflows, additional metadata, check in status and so on.

If we take a look at the properties of another item in another SharePoint Document Library that includes some of these additional elements you’ll see what I mean.

So for example, the above item includes a file called 0 – general index.docx and Title but it also contains an additional field called Customer. Thus, this Document Library item is composed of a file AND metadata. So if any of these elements of the item change then the Modified field for the whole item will change.

Thus, in a SharePoint Document library the file inside an item can remain unchanged but other information around that file in the item can change. These changes can trigger things like workflows so it important that a change anywhere in the item is reflected by SharePoint.

So in summary, remember SharePoint is not simply a files and folders replacements, it is a collaboration system and therefore different. Uploading a single file into SharePoint adds that file to an item in SharePoint that contain additional information such as metadata. Thus, any uploaded file is only part of the item in SharePoint. The Modified information you see in the web interface for SharePoint refers to the whole item, whereas the information you see via Windows Explorer (which is a much simpler client than a browser) refers directly and only to the file because it can’t read any of the additional item information from SharePoint.

I hope all that makes sense.

There is little doubt in my mind that the need to know and understand SharePoint is imperative if you plan to work in a Microsoft and especially Office 365 world. With this in mind, one of best events for all the cutting edit information about SharePoint is the SharePoint conference, recently held in Las Vegas. I attended the event the year before and it was huge!
For those of us that couldn’t attend Microsoft has now made available much of the content online here:
SharePoint Conference 2014
There is a huge amount of content that will take many, many weeks to work through but kudos to Microsoft for making it available and doing so quickly!

This is the next in my series about SharePoint Workflows. Make sure you read my previous post before proceeding:

What are SharePoint Workflows?

I am going to use a test SharePoint site on my Office 365, as shown above, to demonstrate you how to use SharePoint Designer to connect up and start creating Workflows.

The articles after that will focus on how actually create a workflow.

You will firstly need to install and run the free SharePoint Designer 2013.

When you have done that select Open Site from the button on the left.

You’ll now need to enter the URL of the SharePoint site you wish to connect to as shown above and press the Open button.

If you see the above warning message about the server version being more recent firstly make sure you are using the right version of SharePoint Designer for the SharePoint you are accessing. Then make sure that all the patches and updates have been applied to SharePoint Designer on the desktop. See this knowledge base article for more information:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2767858

Failing that try using the Click to run version of SharePoint Designer that is provided with Office 365.

When you have opened you site you should see something like that shown above which displays the structure of your SharePoint site.

The third item on the menu on the left should be Workflows. Select this and the display will change to that shown above. Typically you will find no Workflows.

As I mentioned before, Workflows are normally attached to a SharePoint element, such as a Document Library. To view this option select the Lists and Libraries from the menu on the left (normally the item just above Workflows).

Now on the right you should see a complete list of every List or Library on your site. In this case select Documents under Document Libraries on the right.

You should now see a lot more detail about that particular Document Library on the right hand side.

If you scroll down the window on the right hand side you should find an area that says Workflows as shown above.

Pressing the Create button in the top right of this area will allow to create a Workflow attached to this SharePoint item (in this case a Document Library called Documents).

In the next post I’ll show you how to create a very basic workflow and what options are available. From there we’ll look at creating something a bit more involved as mentioned in my first post.

Workflows are a powerful component that is built into all current versions of SharePoint including those available in Office 365. Workflows allow you to automate processes in SharePoint. So, for example you could create a workflow that takes some specific action when a new item is created in a list.

All versions of SharePoint have a number, and it varies between SharePoint versions, of workflows that you can create using the browser. The most common of these is the three-state workflow which you can learn about here:

Use a three state workflow

The workflows in the browser are fairly limited in what they can do but you do have the option of creating your own customized workflow using SharePoint Designer.

SharePoint Designer is a free download from Microsoft that allows you to customize SharePoint in a variety of ways. You need to use a different version of SharePoint Designer for each SharePoint platform that you are using. You can download these versions using the following links:

SharePoint Designer 2007

SharePoint Designer 2010

SharePoint Designer 2013

Thus, if you plan to work with SharePoint 2010 and 2013 you’ll need the 2010 and 2013 version of SharePoint Designer.

If you plan to work with SharePoint Online via Office 365 all you will need is SharePoint Designer 2013.

You need to think of SharePoint Designer as a tool that lies between the browser customizations and full blown coding. Importantly, it has a number of limitations in what it can be used to create. SharePoint Designer basically uses a flow chart style to create workflows. This means you can only work with a limited set of programming tools which can be extremely frustrating at times.

SharePoint Workflows are typically attached to an object (or app) in SharePoint. This means you typically create a Workflow attached to something like a list or document library. The Workflow will typically be initiated when something in this SharePoint object changes, for example, an item gets added, edited or deleted. This leads to another important point about SharePoint Workflows, they are change based typically. This means that they only progress when things change state, they can’t be made to wait until a certain time and date, they wait until something changes and then proceed.

Now before you even start programming your Workflow you need to sit down and work out exactly what it is going to do. The best way to achieve that is using a flowchart. Getting the process down on paper and understanding what you want to happen beforehand will save you many hours of frustration later on when you start using SharePoint Designer.

Let’s say that we want to create a basic vacation leave request Workflow. We’ll need to use a calendar item to attach the Workflow to and then we want employees to be able to enter an item into the calendar for when they want leave. From there we need to notify a specific manager about this request and have them approve or deny the request and for that to be communicated back to the employee.

In the next topic I’ll look at how to go about making all this happens with SharePoint Designer.