Introduction

I am currently involved in a SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 migration of a public website solution using SharePoint 2013. Despite WCM features in SharePoint have not evolved since SharePoint 2013, the option was to upgrade to SharePoint 2019 and take advantage of existing developments.

The solution uses Host Named Site Collections as the basis for a multi portal platform that can be used to create multiple public sites with the same platform, making it easy to create multiple portals with little development effort.

This post explains the configurations necessary to configure a Host Named Site Collection using HTTPS and how to automatically redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS.

To learn more on Host Named Site Collections, you can read the Microsoft official documentation or read a fantastic blog post about the topic.

In my case, I will assume the existence of a web application that acts as the container for the site collections. To simplify, lets assume the following configuration (web application and site collection were created using HTTP first).

• Web application URL (Default Zone): http://webapp.smartportals.pt, configured for anonymous access. This address will never be used by end users. This is the web application URL that was given to the web application when it was created. In this zone, we will automatically redirect HTTP to HTTPS in every page.
• Web application URL (Intranet Zone): http://auth.smartportals.pt, configured for Windows Integrated access only. This zone will be used as an authoring environment for content managers. However, this address will never be used by end users. This web application URL was created using a web application extension into the Intranet zone, which created a new IIS site for the same web application but to be used with different authentication settings. In this zone, we will also automatically redirect HTTP to HTTPS in every page.
• Web application URL (Internet Zone): http://search.smartportals.pt, configured for Windows Integrated access and anonymous access. This zone will be used only for search. This address will never be used by end users. This web application URL was created using a web application extension into the Internet zone. In this zone, we will NOT automatically redirect HTTP to HTTPS in every page since this will cause search issues when crawling the site collection (http://dev.site.pt) contents.
• Site collection URL (Default Zone): http://dev.site.pt, configured for anonymous access. This address will be used by end users to access the public website. The site collection was created a PowerShell script. To learn more on how to create a Host Named Site Collection, please read the Microsoft official documentation.
• Site collection URL (Intranet Zone): http://auth.site.pt, configured for Windows Integrated authentication. This address will be used by BackOffice users to manage content of the website.

How-To Steps

When configuring SSL in a SharePoint 2019 farm with Host Named Site Collections, the following topics are the most relevant:

• Install SSL certificates
• Configure Search
• Configure IIS bindings
• Configure Alternate Access Mappings
• Configure Anonymous Access for Public Web Site
• Configure Site Collection URLs
• Configure Web Application Authentication Providers
• Configure HTTP to HTTPS Automatic Redirect

Install SSL certificates

The SSL certificate must be a wildcard certificate for the same domain as the public address of the web site. I will not focus on this topic in the post since it is very well explained over the Internet. The SSL certificates will have to be installed in every SharePoint Frontend server. To learn more on this topic, please visit this blog post. In our case, we used a wildcard certificate issued by a known certificate authority.

Configure Search

As you remember, both in the Default and Intranet zones, we have automatic redirection between HTTP and HTTPS. The way we configured this redirect will be explained later in the post. In order for the Search Service Application to successfully crawl the site collection (http://dev.site.pt, at this point still in HTTP) contents successfully, we must set as the Search Content Source the Web Application URL for the Internet zone (http://search.smartportals.pt). The IIS site in the Internet zone WILL NOT have any automatic redirection between HTTP and HTTPS (only the IIS sites associated with the public website and the Authoring URLs will). For crawling purposes, the web application in this zone can use the HTTP protocol since, once again, the web application URL acts as a container and will never be accessed directly by end users. While crawling, the HTTPS address of the site collection (https://dev.site.pt) will be crawled successfully since it will later be the site collection URL associated with the Default zone of the web application. The reason, once again for this, is that in the Internet zone there is no HTTP to HTTPS automatic redirection in the IIS site associated with the URL used as a Content Source URL: http://search.smartportals.pt.

In our case, we created two content sources, one for the website and left the default Content Source with the remaining start addresses, used mainly to crawl user profiles.

Configure IIS bindings

In each frontend server, you will have to have two different IP Addresses. This is necessary since we need two IIS sites accepting wildcard certificates and the only way we can achieve this is having two different IP Addresses in the server, and have the bindings in the Public and Authoring IIS web sites to use different IP Addresses. These two IIS sites (Default and Intranet zones) will have automatic redirect between HTTP and HTTPS and will have both the HTTP and HTTPS bindings. We decided to stay with the default ports, even for the Public and Authoring web sites for simplicity.

Default zone (Public website, anonymous access):

Intranet zone (Authoring website, Integrated Windows Authentication):

Search zone (Search IIS site, Integrated Windows Authentication and Anonymous Access):

Configure Alternate Access Mappings

Alternate Access Mappings are an essencial part on any web application configuration and will play a very important role in our configuration. Each web application can have up to 5 different Public URLs that can be used to have users access the same web application using different addresses and potentially different authentication providers (Default, Intranet, Internet, Extranet and Custom). To learn more about Alternate Access Mappings, read the official Microsoft documentation.

Important Notes:

• Search IIS site address must be the default zone URL. To read more about the advantages of doing this, read the Official Microsoft documentation. With Host Named Site Collections, the Site Collection that we want to crawl must also be configured for the Default zone so that the search results will always return results starting with that URL (in our case https://dev.site.pt)
• The HTTPS web application URL set in the Authoring IIS site must be set to the Intranet zone since we will configure the Authentication provider in this zone for Windows Integrated Authentication only to ensure that only authenticated users can access this address.
• The HTTPS web application URL set in the Public IIS site must be to the Internet zone since this is the zone where we will configure the authentication provider with Windows Integrated Authentication and anonymous access so that users can access the site collection URL (in our case https://dev.site.pt).
• The remainder zones are for the HTTP addresses of the Public and Authoring IIS sites

Configure Anonymous Access for Public Web Site

To complete the configuration of anonymous access, you have to go to SharePoint permissions page (using the public address but as an authenticated user) and set anonymous access.

After anonymous access has been enabled, you have something like the below image in your Site Collection permissions.

Configure Site Collection URLs

In this section, we will configure the different site collection URLs for the relevant zones configured in the Alternate Access Mappings in the previous section.

To do this, we must use rename the http://dev.site.pt to https://dev.site.pt (Default zone) using old STSADM.

stsadm -o renamesite -oldurl http://dev.site.pt -newurl https://dev.site.pt

After that, we can set the remain zones URLs using SP-SiteURL PowerShell cmdlet as follows:

Set-SPSiteUrl (Get-SPSite 'https://dev.site.pt') -Url 'https://auth.dev.site.pt' -Zone Intranet
Set-SPSiteUrl (Get-SPSite 'https://dev.site.pt') -Url 'http://dev.site.pt' -Zone Internet
Set-SPSiteUrl (Get-SPSite 'https://dev.site.pt') -Url 'http://auth.dev.site.pt' -Zone Extranet

If you need to remove any Site Collection URL, you can set use the Remove-SPSiteURL as follows:

Remove-SPSiteURL -Url http://auth.dev.site.pt

After running the commands, we will have our HTTPS Public web site address (the one we want for Search) in the Default zone and the remaining zones set to allow the Public site web site access (HTTP and HTTPS) to be anonymous and the Authoring address to require Windows Integrated Authentication.

Configure Web Application Authentication Providers

Authentication Providers are associated with the security zones of the web application (Default, Intranet, Internet, Extranet and Custom). To learn more about Authentication Providers, please read the Microsoft official documentation.

For the Default and Internet zones, we set anonymous access and Windows Integrated Authentication. Default zone will allow temporarily Windows Integrated Authentication so that we can properly set Anonymous Access in the Site Collection (already explained above). The Windows Integrated Authentication setting should be removed in the end to prevent authenticated users to try accessing the Public web site as authenticated users. Internet zone must also include Windows Integrated Authentication so that the Search can properly crawl the Site Collection contents.

Configure HTTP to HTTPS Automatic Redirect

Since this is a migration from a SharePoint 2013 site using HTTP to a SharePoint 2019 using HTTPS we want to ensure if we have HTTP links in any page of the website and while Google is indexing the new site after migration is complete, that HTTP requests will be automatically redirected to HTTPS.

To achieve this, we installed on each of the SharePoint Frontend Servers, the IIS URL Rewrite module.

After installed, we must add the following XML configuration on the web.config on the IIS sites associated with the Default and Intranet zones (Public and Authoring web sites).

    <staticContent>
      <remove fileExtension=".dll" />
      <remove fileExtension=".exe" />
    </staticContent>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="Redirect to HTTPS" enabled="true" patternSyntax="Wildcard" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="*" negate="false" />
          <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
            <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}{REQUEST_URI}" redirectType="Found" />
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite>
 </system.webServer>

And that’s it! Hope that this can help anyone that needs to do something similar! Any feedback and suggestions to improve to the configuration we used is welcome!

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you want to learn how you can rename a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you want to learn how to save time time scheduling your meetings, click here.

If you want to learn how to enable Microsoft Teams Attendance List Download, click here.

If you want to learn how to create a dynamic org-wide team in Microsoft Teams with all active employees, click here.

If you want to modernize your SharePoint classic root site to a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you prefer to use the traditional method to update your farm and want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from Ignite and some more recent announcements, including Microsoft Search, What’s New to Build a Modern Intranet with SharePoint in Office 365, Deeper Integration between Microsoft Teams and SharePoint and the latest news on SharePoint development, click here.

If your organization is still not ready to go all in to SharePoint Online and Office 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to configure HTTPS with HTTP redirect in SharePoint 2019 using Host Named Site Collections appeared first on Blog IT.

Introduction

This two part blog post is the first part of a blog post series that will try to give you an idea of the advantages of moving to the Cloud and the benefits of adopting Microsoft 365 as a collaboration platform.

We live in a world that is rapidly moving towards Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions in several areas from collaboration, E-Commerce and many other areas, are moving from a reality where systems and respective data are deployed within the companies infrastructure (On-Premises) to the Cloud.

The goal of this two part blog posts is to give you an overview of the main features included in Microsoft 365 and how your organization can take advantage of them if you migrate to Microsoft 365.

In the first part of this post, I already discussed the following topics:

• Microsoft 365
• Collaboration with SharePoint and OneDrive
• Mobility
• Use Microsoft Teams as your Work Hub
• Easy and Secure External Sharing

To read the first part of this post, click here.

These are the main topics I will discuss in the second part of this two part blog post:

• Security and Reliability
• Business Applications Development
• Insights
• Migration Options
• Hybrid Scenarios
• Other Benefits

Security and Reliability

In the first part of this blog post, I already talked a little bit about Microsoft 365 which includes Windows 10, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security.

One of the main concerns of companies in choosing a Cloud collaboration platform, in which the Microsoft 365 is an example and leading platform, is the security of their information. One of the biggest challenges when organizations are deciding if they want migrate to Microsoft 365 is related to the demystification that having the information in the Cloud is less secure than if it resides on the premises of the organizations themselves.

To address these same concerns, Microsoft has made a very strong investment in security which provides users and system administrators with several features to address these needs and apply a set of best practices in four main areas:

• Security
• Privacy
• Compliance
• Transparency

In addition to security, Reliability is another major benefit of a Cloud solution (Microsoft 365 has a average 99,98% availability) and organizations don’t need to worry about maintaining their own infrastructure.

Below, are some of the main security features natively offered by the platform.

Security

Regarding Security, Microsoft 365 ensures the encryption of data in transit and at rest. At rest, Bitlocker technology is used to encrypt all information on the servers’ hard drives. In addition, all files are segmented (in small pieces called chunks) and each segment is individually encrypted and encryption keys are securely stored in a different physical location.
In transit, all files are encrypted with TLS using 2048-bit keys.

Privacy

Regarding Privacy, it is possible to define differentiated access policies based on 4 vectors: user, device, location and sensitivity of the information. Some examples include:

• Set a time bound window for external sharing or only allow sharing with certain domains
• Block access from insecure locations (example: open Wi-Fi networks)
• Enforce multi-factor authentication (ex: supply a PIN sent to a mobile device). You can enforce multi-factor authentication for all users, for a restricted set of users or based on conditions like the device being used or the access location (example: open Wi-Fi networks)

Compliance

In what regards to Compliance, the main concern is to define a set of rules that allow sensitive information to be protected and to prevent the leakage of sensitive information outside of the organization. These are some of the features Microsoft 365 includes to address this need:

• Data Loss Prevention: Allows organizations to create policies to protect their most sensitive information. Example: prevent documents with credit card information or citizen card numbers from being shared outside the organization. To read more about Data Loss Prevention, click here.
• Microsoft 365 Unified Labeling: Allows organizations to create policies that protect the content of documents stored in the Microsoft 365 platform (mainly SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange). Protection is based on the Azure Rights Management service and allows for administrators to configure sensitivity labels that can be applied to emails and documents to protect sensitive information. Labels can be applied automatically to all documents in a SharePoint document library, based on specific content types or based on the contents of the document (ex: documents containing credit card numbers). For protected documents, you can restrict access to a restricted set of users, enable encryption and apply a variety of document level protection such as:
  • Block copy and paste of email or document information
  • Block Print Screen of a document
  • Block document printing
  • Block email actions like Forward or Reply
  • etc

To learn about Microsoft 365 Unified Labeling and Information Protection, click here.

Transparency

Regarding Transparency, a very important note is that Microsoft does not have access to the organization’s data and the only occasions where this may be necessary is in resolving support incidents that require access to the data. In these cases, and using a feature called Customer Lockbox, the customer can approve or reject access requests, and access is only granted in case the request is approved. In addition, all accesses are audited to ensure the transparency of the process.

These are just a few of the examples of the vast set of features available to users and administrators to protect information residing on the Microsoft 365 platform. Security is such a huge topic that is impossible to summarize all features in this post. Stay tuned for my next posts where I will address security features in more detail!

Business Applications Development

Microsoft 365 has a very rich feature set and it addresses a very broad range of collaboration needs. The good thing is that is also highly extensible allowing for developers to build rich user experiences for pretty much any business requirement.

There are other powerful ways to extend SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 without the need of professional developers and the Rapid Application Development approaches are gaining more and more space in the development world, essentially to build business applications.

Microsoft’s vision for Rapid Application Development is composed by two main development platforms:

• PowerApps
• Microsoft Flow

PowerApps

PowerApps is a suite of apps, services, connectors and data platform that provides a Rapid Application Development environment to build custom business applications. Using PowerApps, “citizen developers” can quickly build custom business applications that connect to your business data stored On-Premises (accessible through a On-OnPremises Data Gateway) or to Online data sources.

Currently there are dozens of connectors that allow PowerApps applications to connect to data sources like SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, etc.

One of the great things about PowerApps applications is they are developed in a mobile-first approach and you can easy use business applications in any mobile device from your tablet to your mobile phone.

PowerApps is great to quickly build business applications and below are a few examples of business applications that could be developed using PowerApps:

• Expense Report
• Travel Request
• Vacation Request

To take a look at an example of what PowerApps can do, take a look at the Microsoft Expense Report sample.

To learn more about PowerApps, click here.

Microsoft Flow

Microsoft Flow is a Cloud-based service that makes it easier for line-of-business users to create workflows that help automate time-consuming business processes and help connect applications and services.

As in PowerApps, Flow currently there are dozens of connectors that allow flows to connect to data sources like SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, etc.

There are numerous examples of where Flow can be used to automate processes and Flow is great to be used together with PowerApps. A good example would be a Expense Report built with PowerApps with the Approval process handled by Flow, allowing you also for example to automate the integration of approved expenses with your ERP or financial system.

To learn more about Microsoft Flow, click here.

Other Development Options

If the business requirement is too complex and PowerApps and Flow may not be the best approach, SharePoint and Microsoft 365 offer a huge development platform, mainly trough the development of solutions based on SharePoint Framework (SPFx).

Insights

Microsoft 365 as a collaboration platform generates a lot of information, specially if you are a large organization. To help you get insights from the information stored in Microsoft 365, you can use:

• Power BI: Provides a business intelligence platform that allows you to generate reports and dashboards to get critical business insights from a variety of data sources.
  
  
  To learn more about Power BI, click here.
  
• Delve: Allows you to browse and discover relevant content for you, including your recent documents, content based on who you work with and trends in the organization
  
  To learn more about Delve, click here.
  
• My Analytics: Allows you to measure Personal and Organizational Productivity Indicators, time spent in meetings and focused work or track your response and email read times
  
  To learn more My Analytics, click here.

Migration Options

If you have information On-Premises, either using an old file share or an On-Premises version of SharePoint Server, the path to SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 is achieved using a content migration approach to migrate content to SharePoint Online and typically a 3rd party solution is necessary to do the migration. A few 3rd party solutions that can do the job are ShareGate, AvePoint and Metalogix. Microsoft has also released sometime ago the SharePoint Migration Tool that also does the job but with less options than the 3rd party solutions.

The great thing when you migrate to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online (specially if you are using SharePoint Server) is that this should be the last migration you have to do! If you are using SharePoint Server and instead choose to do a SharePoint version upgrade, you will always have at least one more migration ahead of you (assuming you want to have Microsoft support, MS support for SharePoint Server will end after a few years, you can find more information here).

Migrating to SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 has another clear advantage: reduction of IT costs and probably reduction of overall licensing costs since you don’t have to be worried about paying SharePoint Server licenses (and also SQL Server licenses if SharePoint is the only reason why you use SQL Server). In Microsoft 365, licensing is paid in a subscription based model where you can choose the best subscription model that fits your organization’s needs.

Hybrid Scenarios

If your organization is still not ready to migrate to Microsoft 365 entirely (one of the strongest reasons is in the case of data residency requirements where highly sensitive may not leave the country and there is no Microsoft 365 data center in that country, like for example in Portugal). In this case, a hybrid scenario may be your best option.

There are several hybrid supported scenarios and a possible approach could be to keep the most sensitive information On-Premises (for example in SharePoint 2019 that has improved hybrid support) and take the less sensitive information into the cloud and start taking advantage of the cloud innovations from SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365.

Other Benefits

Microsoft 365 is a huge productivity suite and there are other applications in the suite that are relevant:

• Yammer: Corporate social network where you can promote discussions and ideas and promote employee engagement across your organization. To learn more about Yammer, click here.
• Microsoft Stream: Microsoft 365 streaming platform where you can store and tag relevant corporate videos, assign videos to channels and share videos across organizations allowing you to promote employee engagement. To learn more about Microsoft Stream, click here.
• Microsoft Forms: Allows you to quickly create surveys and get feedback from users in your organization. To learn more about Microsoft Forms, click here.
• Dynamics 365: CRM platform included in Microsoft 365 where you can manage customers, relationships and create dashboards to help you make better decisions and help your business grow. To learn more about Dynamics 365, click here.

Conclusion

Knowing where to take your business and choose the right collaboration platform is a critical business decision. Microsoft 365 is a very comprehensive collaboration and productivity suite that can help your organization to work smarter and take advantages of the constant innovations that Microsoft keeps adding to the suite.

If you still are in On-Premises scenario (either using file share, SharePoint Server or any other collaboration platform), you should carefully evaluate the options you have and evaluate the Pros and Cons of keeping your organization On-Premises or move to the Cloud (to SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365).

One thing I have no doubt: Microsoft is putting all the innovation and best collaboration features in SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 and the gap to SharePoint Server is getting bigger and bigger, leaving companies that are not taking advantage of Microsoft 365 in a clear disadvantage with the ones that do.

One last argument: if your are still On-Premises, most probably you already have Microsoft 365 licensed and probably not using it or not taking full advantage it. If you are already paying, why not start taking full advantage of the innovations in Microsoft 365?

To finish, and to get a broader vision of SharePoint and Microsoft 365 evolution over the years, don’t miss Jeff Teper “Hitting Refresh on SharePoint” articles:

• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 1
• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 2
• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 3
• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 4

To read the first part of this post, click here.

Related Articles

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you prefer to use the traditional method to update your farm and want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Microsoft 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Microsoft 365 or thinking to migrate to Microsoft 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Microsoft 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Microsoft 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

If your organization is still not ready to migrate to Microsoft 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post Why You Should Migrate To Microsoft 365 (Part 2) appeared first on Blog IT.

Introduction

This two part blog post is the first part of a blog post series that will try to give you an idea of the advantages of moving to the Cloud and the benefits of adopting Microsoft 365 as a collaboration platform.

We live in a world that is rapidly moving towards Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions in several areas from collaboration, E-Commerce and many other areas, are moving from a reality where systems and respective data are deployed within the companies infrastructure (On-Premises) to the Cloud.

The goal of this two part blog posts is to give you an overview of the main features included in Microsoft 365 and how your organization can take advantage of them if you migrate to Microsoft 365.

These are the topics I will discuss in the first part of this two part blog post:

• Microsoft 365
• Collaboration with SharePoint and OneDrive
• Mobility
• Use Microsoft Teams as your Work Hub
• Easy and Secure External Sharing

To read the second part of this post, click here.

Microsoft 365

First things first! What is Microsoft 365?

One of the main concerns of companies in choosing a Cloud collaboration platform, in which the Microsoft 365 is an example and leading platform, is the security of their information. One of the biggest challenges when organizations are deciding if they want migrate to Microsoft 365 is related to the demystification that having the information in the Cloud is less secure than if it resides on the premises of the organizations themselves.

Microsoft has launched a licensing model that includes an impressive security feature set called Microsoft 365. This is a bundle that includes:

• Windows 10
• Office 365
• Enterprise Mobility + Security

This bundle comes in three different flavors:

• Microsoft 365 Business
• Microsoft 365 Enterprise
• Microsoft 365 Education

The way I see it, Microsoft 365, in which Office 365 is a big part, has two main branches that are closely linked:

• Collaboration
• Security

The main purpose of Microsoft 365, is to empower business to collaborate in a secure way.

If you want to know more about all the security features included Microsoft 365, click here.

Below, is a summary of the top reasons why you should move to the Cloud and start using Microsoft 365. The summary is mainly focused on Microsoft 365 features.

Collaboration with SharePoint and OneDrive

Besides email, Microsoft 365 information will be stored either in SharePoint Online or OneDrive:

• SharePoint Online: the heart of collaboration in Microsoft 365 and where shared information in your organization should reside
• OneDrive: based on the same technology as SharePoint, it is a private space that allows each employee in the organization to store their personal documents. Each employee gets from 1 TB to 5 TB depending on your licensing model.

Office Web Apps (SharePoint and OneDrive)

With Microsoft 365, each Office application has a corresponding web app that allows you to collaborate on documents directly from the browser without the need of its corresponding Office client applications. These are the available Office Web Apps in Microsoft 365:

• Word Online
• Excel Online
• PowerPoint Online
• Visio Online
• OneNote Online

Each of this web apps allows you to open and edit documents directly from the browser. The experience is similar to the Office client application and there are just a few restrictions in edit experience (ex: you can open but not edit macro-enabled Excel files).

Real-Time Collaboration and Co-Authoring (SharePoint and OneDrive)

Are you tired of reviewing documents sending successive copies of the same document back and forth by email and not knowing what the latest version of the document is? Mee too and this is where co-authoring is a huge help!

When documents are stored in SharePoint or OneDrive, co-authoring allows you to share a document with users inside or outside your organization and have them collaborate on the document in real time without the need to save multiple versions of the same document and loose track of the changes that were made by each contributor. All contributions are merged into the same document and you can see who else is editing and what changes each contributor has made.

This allows you to have full real time collaboration over the same document instead of having multiple copies going back and forth by email, having the added advantage to significantly reduce the size of your mailbox and making you much more productive.

SharePoint and OneDrive take advantages of secure sharing, allowing you to choose who can access and edit the document.

To learn more about real time collaboration and co-authoring, click here.

Stop Sending Attachments by Email

Another advantage of using SharePoint and OneDrive for collaboration is that instead of attaching a copy of your document in the email, you can simply share a link to the document that is stored in SharePoint or OneDrive.

For users, the attachment looks exactly the same as a normal attachment with the difference of a having a small “cloud” symbol near the document icon.

This way, we also significantly reduce the size of user’s mailboxes since what we are sharing is the link do the document in SharePoint or OneDrive and not a copy of the file. Sharing documents this way also enables users to use real time collaboration by allowing them to co-edit the “attached” document. The document can be edited either in the browser or using the appropriate Office client application.

To learn more on Cloud Attachments, click here.

Offline Access

Documents in SharePoint and OneDrive are stored in document libraries. You can sync any SharePoint or OneDrive files to a folder on your computer where you can work directly in the files using File Explorer and you can even access and work on the files when you’re offline.

Once you get back online, any changes that you or other users make will be synced automatically.

To learn more on how to sync a SharePoint or OneDrive document library, click here.

Microsoft 365 Groups

Microsoft 365 groups are the preferred method for team collaboration in Microsoft 365. When created, an Microsoft 365 group provides the following for its members:

• A Security Group (Azure AD)
• A Shared Group Mailbox (Exchange)
• A Shared Team Site (SharePoint)
• A Shared Notebook (OneNote)
• A Team in Microsoft Teams (if created through Teams or if later a Team in Microsoft Teams is associated to an existing Microsoft 365 group)
• A Teamwork Planning Space (Microsoft Planner)

Microsoft 365 Groups can be created from a variety of ways in Microsoft 365 (among others: SharePoint, Outlook and Microsoft Teams) and its main purpose is to facilitate teams inside the organizations to collaborate. For instance, the Shared Group Mailbox that is created is not a distribution list but a shared mailbox in Exchange Online and it allows for a new member in the group to have instant access to all emails sent to the shared mailbox prior to his addition to the group!

To learn more about Microsoft 365 Groups, click here.

Mobility

One of the strongest advantages when you migrate to Microsoft 365 is mobility. You will be able to access your documents, emails, business processes from any device and from any location.

Below, are a few examples of what you can do directly from your mobile phone or tablet:

• Access your email and contacts using Exchange Online and Outlook Mobile App
• Open and collaborate on shared documents in SharePoint Team Sites using Office mobile apps (there is a mobile version for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc)
• Share and access important news with your team using SharePoint Communication Sites
• Access your organizations dashboards using Power BI
• Access important business processes (example: approve your team’s expenses) using PowerApps
• Join a meeting directly from your phone using Microsoft Teams mobile app
• Access relevant corporate information using the mobile SharePoint app

All of this can be achieved in a secure way. I will talk a little bit more on security later in the second part of the blog post.

Use Microsoft Teams as your Work Hub

Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform that was launched on March 14, 2017 and it combines workplace chat, audio and video based conference call meetings, notes, attachments and all that relates to digital team work. This service integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 including Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online and can also integrate with non-Microsoft products.

Microsoft Teams is already the fastest growing business app in Microsoft’s history and is rapidly growing to be the work hub for collaboration in Microsoft 365. In summary, Microsoft Teams provides:

• 1-to-1 and Team Chats: You can chat with any internal users in your Microsoft 365 tenant and also guest users (for more details, about internal users and external users and Pros and Cons of Single Tenant vs Multiple Tenants in Microsoft 365, click here)
• Channels: By default, a single channel called “General” is created for every Team but new channels can be created. The most common approach is to create a few channels, one for each relevant topic within the Team. For now, all channels share same security settings as the team but in the near future it will be possible to have private channels (with specific permissions)
• Meetings: You can organize and attend online meetings (audio and video) and you can even start your meeting using your PC and continue attending it using your mobile device. All you need is a stable internet connection!
• Files: You can open your files directly in Teams without the need to go to SharePoint where the files are stored. Soon, Teams will have the full SharePoint files experience and the user experience to interact with files will be even better than it is today (if you want to know more about the recent announcements on Teams, SharePoint and Microsoft 365, click here and here)
• Tabs: Tabs is a great way to add content to your Team or channel. It allows you to add new tabs that show content from Microsoft 365 (ex: a shared calendar, the Team Planner, a PowerBI dashboard) or relevant external content (ex: an external web page)
  
  
• Connectors: Similar to tabs but it allows you to get content from a variety of content sources directly into a channel (ex: a relevant RSS feed, Twitter account activity, etc)
  
  
• Bots: Microsoft Teams also has the ability to communicate with Bots that are artificial intelligence applications which can complete simple or complex tasks using chat-based commands
• Mobile App: All the above can be done using the Teams Mobile app, which is a rich feature set app, available for IOS and Android

To learn more about Microsoft Teams, click here.

Easy and Secure External Sharing

For organizations to be able to share content from an On-Premises SharePoint installation, it involves some complex IT configurations to be set in place. If you migrate to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online, it gets much easier to share information with external users, allowing information to be easily shared in a secure way.

SharePoint Online makes it possible to easily share:

• Sites: Share a whole site with an external user
• Document Libraries: Share only the contents of a specific document library
• Folders: Share only the contents of a specific folder
• Documents: Share only the contents of a specific document

To be able to share with external users, external sharing must be enabled on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and from a security perspective it is possible to control for which domains external sharing is allowed (either by using black or white lists).

To learn more about external sharing on Microsoft 365, click here.

To read the second part of this post, click here.

Related Articles

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you prefer to use the traditional method to update your farm and want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Microsoft 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Microsoft 365 or thinking to migrate to Microsoft 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Microsoft 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Microsoft 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

If your organization is still not ready to migrate to Microsoft 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post Why You Should Migrate To Microsoft 365 (Part 1) appeared first on Blog IT.

Recently, I migrated a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016 and used an automated installation process using PowerShell and AutoSPInstaller to install the new SharePoint 2016 farm that ensured that the latest updates where applied, leaving the SharePoint 2016 farm updated and working properly (if you want to learn more about how to install a SharePoint farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here).

After installing the farm and migrating the web applications, new updates were installed in the farm (if you want to keep up with the latest SharePoint updates, click here) but when I ran the SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard to ensure the new updates were properly installed (to know more about the need to run SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard after a SharePoint farm update, click here), I got an error that was preventing me to finish the update process.

Important Note: Both source SharePoint 2010 and target SharePoint 2016 farms have Standard SharePoint licenses.

The Problem

After installing the updates and after running the SharePoint Products and Configuration, I was getting the following error:

The error details:

An exception of type Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.PostSetupConfigurationTaskException was thrown.  Additional exception information:

Feature (Name = [SharePoint Portal Server Status Indicator List template], Id = [065c78be-5231-477e-a972-14177cc5b3c7], Description = [SharePoint Portal Server Status Indicator List template], Install Location = [BizAppsListTemplates]) is referenced in database [Content_DB], but isn’t installed on the current farm. The missing feature might cause upgrade to fail. If necessary, please install any solution that contains the feature and restart upgrade.        (EventID:ajxkh)

Feature (Name = [SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Features], Id = [0806d127-06e6-447a-980e-2e90b03101b8], Description = [Features such as the Visio Services, Access Services, and Excel Services applications included in the SharePoint Server Enterprise License.], Install Location = [PremiumWeb]) is referenced in database Content_DB] but isn’t installed on the current farm. The missing feature might cause upgrade to fail. If necessary, please install any solution that contains the feature and restart upgrade.        (EventID:ajxkh)

Feature (Name = [SharePoint Portal Server Report Library], Id = [2510d73f-7109-4ccc-8a1c-314894deeb3a], Description = [SharePoint Portal Server Report Library], Install Location = [ReportListTemplate]) is referenced in database [Content_DB], but isn’t installed on the current farm. The missing feature might cause upgrade to fail. If necessary, please install any solution that contains the feature and restart upgrade.        (EventID:ajxkh)

Feature (Name = [InfoPath Forms Services Support], Id = [c88c4ff1-dbf5-4649-ad9f-c6c426ebcbf5], Description = [InfoPath Forms Services Lists and Related Pages to Enable Presentation of Forms on the Server.], Install Location = [IPFSSiteFeatures]) is referenced in database Content_DB], but isn’t installed on the current farm. The missing feature might cause upgrade to fail. If necessary, please install any solution that contains the feature and restart upgrade.        (EventID:ajxkh)

Feature (Name = [Data Connections Feature], Id = [00bfea71-dbd7-4f72-b8cb-da7ac0440130], Description = [], Install Location = [DataConnectionLibrary]) is referenced in database Content_DB], but isn’t installed on the current farm. The missing feature might cause upgrade to fail. If necessary, please install any solution that contains the feature and restart upgrade.        (EventID:ajxkh)

Upgrade [SPContentDatabase Name=Content_DB] failed.        (EventID:an59t)

Exception: The upgraded database schema doesn’t match the TargetSchema        (EventID:an59t)

Upgrade Timer job is exiting due to exception: Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPUpgradeException: The upgraded database schema doesn’t match the TargetSchema

There are two main problems here:

• There are references in the content database to SharePoint Enterprise Features (InfoPath Form Services, Visio Services, Excel Services, etc) – my guess here is that sometime along the way, the source SharePoint 2010 farm had an Enterprise SharePoint license and was downgraded to a Standard license, leaving behind however references to Enterprise features in the content database
• There is a mismatch between the content database schema version and the version of SharePoint updates installed in the farm

One additional symptom that confirms there is an upgrade issue is the Upgrade Status page in Central Administration that showed the upgrade status as Failed:

The Solution

The solution to this problem was a two part solution, both applied in the target SharePoint 2016 farm:

• Fixing the missing Enterprise features references in the content database
• Fixing the content database schema version mismatch

Fixing the missing Enterprise features references in the content database

To fix the problem with references to Enterprise SharePoint features, I used the SharePoint Feature Administration and Clean Up Tool, which basically enables us to delete from the Farm, Web Application, Site Collection and sub sites any references to features that are not installed in the farm. The version I used was the version 2.4.8 that you can download here, that supports SharePoint 2016. The version 3.0, for some reason, didn’t detect the farm, which made it useless (maybe a beta version, not sure).

In this case, to remove the missing feature references, I used the SharePoint Feature Administration and Clean Up Tool to:

• Remove the missing features from the farm
• Remove the missing features from the sub sites

First, I removed the missing features from the farm, by removing the features marked as “Faulty” in the “Farm Feature Administration” tab, using the “Uninstall” button for each missing feature.

After that, I removed the features marked as ERROR in the “Remove / deactivate features in the selected sites” tab, by selecting all the site collection faulty features and using the “Remove from selected SiteCollection” button.

Finally, for each site, I selected the faulty site features and removed them by using the “Remove from selected Site (SPWeb)” button.

Fixing the content database schema version mismatch

To fix the version mismatch between the content database schema version and the version of installed SharePoint updates, I executed the following PowerShell command (executed with “run as administrator”):

Get-SPContentDatabase | Upgrade-SPContentDatabase

After this, I ran the SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard again, and this time, it ran successfully:

To confirm if everything was OK, I checked the following pages in Central Administration in the target SharePoint 2016 farm:

• The Upgrade Status page
• The Database Upgrade Status page

In the Upgrade Status page, there is now a Succeeded upgrade status:

In the Database Upgrade Status page, there is an indication of “No action required” for all content databases in the farm, meaning that all databases were properly upgraded and the respective schema version is the same as the installed SharePoint updates:

Hope this helps!

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

In the meantime, SharePoint 2019 RTM is already out there! If you want to know all about the new features available in the new SharePoint Server release, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If you want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated and be ready to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you are involved in a SharePoint upgrade and want to learn more about the upgrade process, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post SharePoint 2016 Upgrade: How to solve the “Feature is referenced in database but isn’t installed on the current farm” error appeared first on Blog IT.

Today i will talk about Storage Metrics in your SharePoint Site Collection!!!

Everyone knows what is the main feature on SharePoint that you could interact with and Structure of SharePoint Site Collections! right!? Site Content and Struct (/_layouts/sitemanager.aspx)!!!

Site Content and Structure page, give you a great overview about all your Site Collection structure. This feature, available since Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, give the capability to navigate dynamically on your site collection hierarchy, it is familiar to Windows Explorer in fact. You can see the site collection hierarchy in the navigation pane as a tree view on the left of the Site Content and Structure page.

But, if you need know more details about storage, probably don’t help you as you expect, so in this case you case access to Storage Metrics (/_layouts/storman.aspx).

Storage Metrics underneath Site Collection Administration, access to your all sub-sites and libraries in SharePoint Online ( also available for SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016) and give you the information about how much storage they are consuming.

It is great!!! Because Storage Metrics allows you to drill down to each site, library and even folder to show a very granular report on your storage consumption, this is very important if you need migrate a large lists or even you are planning an migration between SharePoint Versions without any 3rd Party tool.

Take a Look:

Thanks

Fábio Carvalho
SharePoint Consultant
|create|it|

The post SharePoint Online – Storage Metrics – Monitor storage usage in your Site Collection appeared first on Blog IT.

Today i’m going to talk about SharePoint Scenarios and what are the main difference between this three types of scenarios and what scenario should be the option for your environment…

So, the three types of architecture scenario that you can have on your SharePoint environment are the following:

What should you choose?! Well in fact there are so many question that you need answered before take an decision!?

It isn’t easy take a decision, let’s analyse what are the main benefits each architecture:

SharePoint On-Premises:

• Private Cloud
• Dedicated environment
• Internally hosted
• Internally managed
• Internal designed

• Migration Flow:

SharePoint Online:

• Public Cloud
• Partially or fully dedicated
• Externally hosted
• Externally or Internally managed
• Internally managed
• Minimal customization

Cloud benefits according to cloud users?

• Increase efficiency (55 %)
• Improved employee mobility (49 %)
• Increased ability to Innovate (32 %)
• Freed current IT staff for other projects (31 %)
• Reduce IT operation costs (25 %)
• Enabled us to offer new products/ services (24 %)

• Migration Flow:

SharePoint Hybrid Solution:

What is Hybrid SharePoint?

“Productivity services in SharePoint Online (Office 365) which are securely integrated with on-premises SharePoint Server 2016 to provide unified functionality and access to data.”

Why considering a Hybrid SharePoint Solution?

• Large existing investments (customized SP deployments w/lots of data and settings,custom solutions, LOB systems, etc…)
• Functionalities I can’t do in the Cloud that i can do on premises;
• Keep Sensitive Data on Premise
• Collaboration with External Partners
• Capacity Flexibility
• Intranet – Extranet
• Geo Location

Same Benefits of Hybrid SharePoint Solution?

SharePoint Business to Business Collaboration: Extranet for Partners with Office 365

“on-premises extranet site involves complex configuration to establish security measures and governance, including granting access inside the corporate firewall, and expensive initial and on-going cost….SharePoint Online, partners connect directly to a members-only site in Office 365, without access to the corporate on-premises environment or any other Office 365 site. Office 365 Extranet sites can be accessed anywhere…”

SharePoint hybrid sites and search

“A hybrid environment can help your company get started in the cloud, taking a first step to explore the cloud functionality at own your pace. It also enables enterprise users to be connected from almost anywhere to the resources and content they need… SharePoint hybrid features, you can consolidate search results between SharePoint Server and Office 365, consolidate user profiles in Office 365, and offload your users’ personal storage to the cloud…”

• Migration/Interactions Flow:

Thanks

Fábio Carvalho
SharePoint Consultant
|create|it|

The post SharePoint Scenarios – Online, On-Premises or Hybrid!? appeared first on Blog IT.

Today i will post a script very helpful when you are on Migration steps and you need export all wsp solutions.

 

$dirName = "C:\WSP"
if (!(Test-Path -path $dirName))
{
New-Item $dirName -type directory
}
Write-Host Exporting solutions to $dirName
foreach ($solution in Get-SPSolution)
{
    $id = $Solution.SolutionID
    $title = $Solution.Name
    $filename = $Solution.SolutionFile.Name
    Write-Host "Exporting ‘$title’ to …\$filename" -nonewline
    try {
        $solution.SolutionFile.SaveAs("$dirName\$filename")
        Write-Host " – done" -foreground green
    }
    catch
    {
        Write-Host " – error : $_" -foreground red
    }
}

Thanks

Fábio Carvalho
SharePoint Consultant
|create|it|

The post SharePoint – Export all solutions wsp using PowerShell script appeared first on Blog IT.

Today i will talk about SharePoint Migrations, a complex process that requires an extra efforts depending the version of SharePoint.

Why should I upgrade or migrate to SharePoint 2016?!

1.SharePoint Farm of company is old! If it’s SP2003, SP2007 or SP2010, Microsoft do not give more support and updates for that versions, so you can’t expect more features our updates for your infrastructure.

SharePoint Product Lifecycle

2.SharePoint 2016, it’s more stable and fast than the other version even is a version more close to the cloud, all the innovation and experience hosting SharePoint Online brought that knowledge and innovation to SharePoint 2016, also that, new version use MinRoles a significant improvement in terms of infrastructure.

3.FIM is no more a component of SharePoint, it was replaced by Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM).

4.Data Loss Prevention is now part of SharePoint.  You can now identify, monitor for, and protect sensitive data across SharePoint 2016, SharePoint Online, and One Drive for Business using SharePoint 2016.

5.Hybrid Solutions between SharePoint 2016 and Office 365,  now you can easily integrate with Office 365 using SharePoint 2016. Taking the advantage of Cloud Hybrid Search, Delve, Hybrid Sites, Groups, Profile Redirection and more running SharePoint in hybrid mode.

6.Durable Links,move files wherever you like and your link remains valid. It may seem like a small thing but to end users this is a big deal.

7.Cloud Hybrid Search in the cloud you can display all of your results from O365 and on-prem will be listed happily together, by relevancy, and it’s all encrypted by the crawler.

There are many other new features offered by SharePoint 2016 you can read more about in this link.

Which approach should I take, to upgrade or migrate?!

What questions should I ask before upgrading or migrating?

It’s important understand what is the main processes and data that you what migrate for your new version of SharePoint, this will be essential to define the process and success of the operation. Ask questions about the current solution and success criteria you can define the scope of the migration or upgrade, this type of process not is fast but is really importance is be precision.

Are you now ready to migrate or upgrade?

The  success of  migration or upgrade is planning, then some more planning, and organizational buy in. Moving to SharePoint 2016 will deliver better security, collaboration, content management, mobility, compliance and cloud connectivity features. But the migration or upgrade warrants a much more care and attention to detail in planning, you need to lay out every step needed to get there and  engage all the stakeholders in your organization in all aspects of the selected process.

New and improved features in SharePoint Server 2016

Create the SharePoint Server 2016 farm for a database attach upgrade

Thanks

Fábio Carvalho
SharePoint Consultant
|create|it|

The post SharePoint 2016 – Essential Migration Steps and Considerations appeared first on Blog IT.