Introduction

One of the most annoying things in Outlook, essentially when we have a busy schedule, is that we have to manually dismiss all reminders for past events since Outlook doesn’t do this by default. In this post, I will explain how easily you can automatically dismiss reminders from past events and avoid having to dismiss them manually.

How-To Steps

All you have to do is to follow the following steps:

1. Open Outlook for Windows 10
2. Go to File >Options > Advanced
3. In the “Reminders” section, check the “Automatically dismiss reminders for past calender events” option
   
   
   
4. Click OK to save your changes

And that’s it! Once you check this option, all past events in your calendar will be automatically dismissed!

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 Scheduling!

The post How to Automatically Dismiss Reminders from Outlook Past Events in Microsoft 365 appeared first on Blog IT.

Introduction

We are living challenging times with the current Covid-19 pandemic crisis and keeping teams together is more important than ever!

Org-wide teams have been around for quite some time, but these are quite inefficient since we don’t have any control on what users are added to the team (service accounts for instance are also added if they have valid licenses assigned to them).

This post explains how you can create a new team in Microsoft Teams containing all active employees in your company based on Azure AD Group dynamic membership rules. Unlike org-wide teams, this approach gives you complete control over what users are added to the team.

The “Team with all employees” scenario makes more sense for small and medium-sized companies. For larger companies, the steps provided in this post can be adapted to create smaller dynamic teams based on Azure AD dynamic membership rules (ex: department teams or any other type of dynamic teams based on valid Azure AD user profile properties).

Pre-Requisites and How-To Steps

Pre-Requisites

The steps described in this post require:

• Azure AD Premium P1 license for all users included in the dynamic team
• If you are using Active Directory, AD attributes have to be correctly configured and synced to Azure AD to allow the dynamic group to retrieve all active company employees (in our example, we are using the companyName attribute and all users with companyName = “Create IT” will be considered as active employees)

How-To Steps

Now it is time for the fun part! Follow the following steps:

1. Create a new Team in Microsoft Teams as you would to create a “normal” team. If the team already exists and you want to change an already existing Team to be dynamic, you can skip this step
2. Go to your Azure Active Directory Admin Center
3. In Azure Active Directory Admin Center, select “Groups”. This option will allow us to access all Azure AD Groups, that contain teams in Microsoft Teams (group type = “Microsoft 365”)
   
   
   
4. Select the group you want to edit and set as dynamic. Membership type should be at this time set as “Assigned”, meaning that all members are added manually.
   
   
5. The group details are now shown
   
   
6. Select “Properties” on the left menu and change the membership type to “Dynamic user” and click “Save”
   
   
7. Select “Dynamic membership rules” on the left menu and add an expression that dynamically retrieves the active employees in the company. In our case, the expression is “(user.companyName -eq “Create IT”) and (user.accountEnabled -eq True)”. Click “Save” to save your changes.
   
   
8. The Azure AD Group is now dynamic and users in the group will be retrieved using the expression set in the previous step
   
   
9. Select “Members” in the left menu. Now that the AD Group is dynamic, you will not be able to add or remove members from the group manually.
   
   

Testing The Results

To test if the configuration was successful, just follow the following steps:

• Add a new user to Active Active Directory, filling the attributes that match the dynamic membership group expression in the Azure AD Group
• Force Azure Active Directory to Azure AD synchronization

Everytime new employees are added to Active Directory and synced to Azure AD, a message in the “General” channel in Microsoft Teams will be shown saying that the user has been added to team!

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 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 Scheduling!

The post How to Create a Dynamic Team in Microsoft Teams with All Active Employees in Microsoft 365 appeared first on Blog IT.

Introduction

Recently, someone asked me if it was possible to export a Microsoft Teams Meeting Attendance List to Excel while in the meeting!

My first reaction was that I hadn’t seen that possibility in my tenant and that probably this wasn’t possible. The truth is that Microsoft Teams has added a new feature that allows organizers to download and view the attendees that are present in a meeting. However, this option is not enabled by default.

After googling a bit, I found a Microsoft support article that pointed me in the right direction.

Pre-Requisites and How-To Steps

Unfortunetaly, this configuration isn’t available in Teams Admin Center and in order to enable this meeting policy, we have to use PowerShell.

Pre-Requisites

The first step is to install Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business PowerShell modules:

• Microsoft Teams – just run the following command in a PowerShell console: Install-Module MicrosoftTeams
• Skype for Business: download and install the PowerShell Module (update 26/07/2021: no longer necessary)

How-To Steps

After installing the required PowerShell modules, we are ready for the fun part! Just run the PowerShell commands below (ensure that you run using the “Run as Adminstrator” option). In my example, I will change the Global meeting policy, that can make sense if we want to enable this policy for all users but you may want to create a new policy instead if we want to enable meeting attendance download to a restricted set of users. Check this Microsoft article for details.

1. Import-Module SkypeOnlineConnector
2. Connect-MicrosoftTeams
   
   This step will allow ask for credentials of a Global Admin user. This authentication method works fine if you have Multi-Factor Authentication enabled (MFA) in your tenant.
   
   
   
3. $sfbSession = New-CsOnlineSession
4. Import-PSSession $sfbSession
   
   Lines 3 and 4 are required to avoid an error saying Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy is not available in the next command.
   
5. Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity “Global”
   
   After running this command, we can see that the “AllowEngagementReport” property which enables/disables the meeting attendance download is disabled.
   
   
   
6. Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity “Global” -AllowEngagementReport Enabled
   
   This command will enable the the meeting attendance download
   
   
7. Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity “Global”

After running this command, we can see that the “AllowEngagementReport” property is now enabled.

Testing The Results

To test if the configuration was successful, just schedule a meeting and check if while in the meeting, you are able to download the meeting attandance list.

You now should have a new option named “Download attendance list” and you should be able to download the meeting’s attendance list. The list will contain all users that are effectively attending the meeting and will not contain the attendees that were invited that are not attending the meeting, even if they accepted the meeting request.

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 modernize your SharePoint classic root site to a modern SharePoint site, 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 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 Scheduling!

The post How to Enable Teams Meeting Attendance List Download in Microsoft 365 appeared first on Blog IT.

Introduction

In an increasily busy world, it can be challenging to schedule a meeting with several atendees. Taking a look at eveyone’s agenda and look for an available free time slot can be time consuming. Additionally, many meetings include atendees from outside the organization (the meeitng organizer only has access to the agenda of internal users), making it hard to find an available time slot for the meeting. To facilitate this process, I recommend using FindTime that greatly simplifies this task by allowing:

• The meeting organizer to choose a few date choices for everyone to choose
• Each meeting atendee to choose its availabilty on each of the proposed dates
• To automatically send the meeting request according to everyone’s choice

Scheduling a Teams Meeting using FindTime

Meeting Organizer

To create a Teams meeting using FindTime, the meeting organizer must follow the following steps:

1. Create e new email with all meeting atendees (a regular email, not a meeting request)
2. Create a new meeting pool and choose a few dates (the addin shows the availability of meeting atendees if they belong to the same organiztion of the meeting organizer)
   
   
   
3. Close dates and click on “Insert to email”. This will insert the meeting invite in the email body.
   
   
   
4. Send the email.
   
   

Responding to the Meeting Request (All Meeting Atendees)

All meeting atendees (including the meeting organizer) will now respond to the meeting request following the steps below.

1. Respond and share their availability (each atendee can choose their preferred date)
   
   
   
2. The meeting organizer is notified whenever someone votes
   
   
   
3. When everyone votes, Teams Meeting is automatically sent by FindTime to everyone’s agenda
   
   

Technical Considerations

FindTime will schedule your meeting according to your Teams upgrade coexistence mode. In order for FindTime to schedule Teams meetings (and not Skype for Business meetings), you have to configure Teams upgrade coexistence mode to Teams Only.

For more technical considerations on changing Teams coexistence mode to Teams Only, click here.

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 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 Scheduling!

The post Save Time Scheduling Microsoft Teams Meetings using FindTime appeared first on Blog IT.

Introduction

Organizations are rapidly moving into the Cloud with Office 365, but some are still not ready to move completely to Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

Upgrading to SharePoint 2019, that has an improved support for a hybrid scenario, can be a valid solution to allow organizations to gradually take the path to the Cloud.

A hybrid scenario in SharePoint 2019 will allow you the following:

• Hybrid App Launcher
• Hybrid Sites
• Hybrid OneDrive for Business
• Hybrid Business to Business (B2B) sites
• Hybrid self-service site creation
• Hybrid auditing
• Hybrid taxonomy and content types
• Hybrid Business Connectivity Services
• Hybrid Search

With these scenarios, organizations can keep some of their workloads On-Premises and start taking advantage of all the innovations in SharePoint Online and Office 365.

Enabling Hybrid Experience

To enable an hybrid environment in a SharePoint 2019 farm, you will have to follow the following steps in Central Administration:

• Select the “Configuration Wizards” option

• Launch the Hybrid Configuration

• Select “Next”

• Select the SharePoint 2019 and Office 365 accounts that will allow the hybrid experience to be enabled. The Office 365 account must be of a global administrator. In the end, select the “Validate credentials” option so that both credentials can be validated.

• Next, the credentials are going to be validated

• The Hybrid Configuration prerequisites are going to be validated. In my case, some errors were found.

The errors that the wizard showed were originated by the fact the App Management Service was not configured in the farm. To solve this problem, I had just had to create a App Management Service service application. In my case, I used an automated way to create the service application using AutoSPInstaller.

• To confirm that the App Management service application was successfully created, go to the Service Applications page and check if the service application is listed

• After creating the service application, I started the Hybrid Configuration Wizard again and the prerequisites are now correcty validated.

• Select the features you want to use in your hybrid environment. In my case, I selected Hybrid OneDrive, Hybrid Sites, Hybrid B2B sites and Hybrid App Launcher.

• Wait until the Hybrid Configuration Wizard finishes configuration.

• After the successful run of configuration wizard, SharePoint server environment will be connected to Office 365. To finish the process, click “Close”.

• To complete the process, perform an IISReset on the SharePoint 2019 server.

Testing the Hybrid Environment

After the hybrid environment is configured, you can test it:

• Hybrid App Launcher: the App Launcher will now allow users to start using Office 365 (ex: OneDrive)

• Hybrid OneDrive: when users select “OneDrive” in the App Launcher, they will be redirected to OneDrive for Business in the connected Office 365 tenant

Technical Considerations

There a few important technical notes to consider:

• You have to register your domain with Office 365 (ex: contoso.com)
• You have to create a UPN domain suffix in your On-Premises Active Directory domain that matches the public domain
• You have to sync On-Premises Active Directory with Azure AD and Office 365

For more details on these requirements, click here.

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 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 a Hybrid Experience with Office 365 in a SharePoint 2019 farm appeared first on Blog IT.

Introduction

Site URL Rename has been one of the most popular requests via UserVoice and in SharePoint Conference 2019, in one my favorite announcements of the event, Microsoft finally announced the possibilty to rename a Site URL.

How It Works

Renaming a site can be done either using the SharePoint Admin Center or using a PowerShell script.

Important: This feature is currently on Preview (you can test it if your tenant is part of the Admin Center Preview) and should be available soon! You have to be a SharePoint Administrator to be able to rename a Site URL.

Using the SharePoint Admin Center

The easiest way to rename a site URL is using the SharePoint Admin Center. Select “Active Sites”, then the site you want to rename and click “Edit”.

A popup will appear and the only thing you have to do is to write the new URL and ensure that the new URL is not being used.7

Using PowerShell

The same thing can be achieved using a simple PowerShell script, using the Start-SPOSiteRename cmdlet.

The syntax of the Start-SPOSiteRename cmdlet is the following:

Start-SPOSiteRename [-Identity] [-NewSiteUrl] [[-NewSiteTitle] ] [[-SuppressMarketplaceAppCheck]] [[-SuppressWorkflow2013Check]] [[-Reserved] ] [-WhatIf][-Confirm] [CommonParameters]

The main parameters of the cmdlet are:

-Identity

Current Site URL.

-NewSiteUrl

The new site URL. This the URL you want to rename the site to.

Follow the steps below to do the magic:

1. Open a PowerShell console (as adminstrator) and type the SharePoint Online authentication command. In this command, you must use your tenant’s Admin URL
   
   Connect-SPOService -Url https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com
   
   
2. Supply your tenant’s administrator credentials
3. Run the following command:
   
   Start-SPOSiteRename
   -Identity https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/oldURL
   -NewSiteUrl https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/newURL

For more details in the Start-SPOSiteRename cmdlet, click here.

If all goes well, your site will be renamed. If the feature is not enabled in your tenant, you will get an error message like the one below.

The “This site address can’t be changed.” message means that the feature is not available in your tenant yet and you have to wait a little bit more.

Impact on Links

If you are worried if you are going to have broken links, stop worrying! The changes to the site URL will have no impact since access requests to the old URL will be redirected to the new URL, meaning that users will not need to update their links and bookmarks or reshare previously shared links.

Important: The redirection may take a few minutes after the site URL is changed and in that period is possible you can see a HTTP 500 error.

Limitations

The site cannot be a Hub Site – if the site is a hub site, unregister it as a hub site, rename the site URL and then register the site back as a hub site.

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and 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 Rename a Modern SharePoint Site URL in Office 365 appeared first on Blog IT.

Now, using the recently released Invoke-SPOSiteSwap PowerShell cmlet, you convert your classic tenant’s root site collection to a modern site collection (for example a modern Communication Site).

Introduction

In Microsoft Ignite 2018, announced that all new Office 365 tenants would start getting the modern Communication Site as the root site by default.

Microsoft will soon release the possibility for administrators to set a Communication Site as the experience for the root site of a tenant (should be rolled out in September, more details here) and until now, there wasn’t an easy way to convert a classic root site collection into a modern SharePoint site. Now, with this release, we will finally be able to get a modern SharePoint site as the root site collection even on an older Office 365 tenant!

The Solution

Dependencies

To be able to modernize your SharePoint homepage, you will first need to download and install SharePoint Online Management Shell version 16.0.8812.1200 or later. To get the latest version of the SharePoint Online Management Shell, click here or run the following PowerShell command:

Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -force

NOTE: If the Invoke-SPOSiteSwap PowerShell cmlet is not available yet in your tenant, just wait a little bit more, since it is currently being rolled out!

How It Works

In the steps below we are assuming the following:

• You have a classic root site collection at https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com
• You have a modern Communication Site already created in your tenant (for example at https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/modernintranet)

Important Note: the Invoke-SPOSiteSwap cmdlet doesn’t transform your existing classic root site collection into a modern site collection. Instead, it replaces the current root site collection (a class site collection) by another existing site collection, in this example, a modern Communication Site.

The syntax of the Invoke-SPOSiteSwap cmdlet is the following:

Invoke-SPOSiteSwap -SourceUrl <string> -TargetUrl <string> -ArchiveUrl <string> [<CommonParameters>]

The main parameters of the cmdlet are:

-SourceUrl

URL of the source site. The site at this location must exist before performing the swap.

If the target is the root site at https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com then the source site must be either a Team Site (STS#0), a Modern Team Site (STS#3), or a Communication Site (SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0).

In our example, this will be our modern Communication Site at https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/modernintranet and it represents the site that will replace our old classic Team Site.

-TargetUrl

URL of the target site that the source site will be swapped to. The site at this location must exist before performing the swap.

The target site must be the either:

• The root site at https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com; or
• The search center site at https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/search

In our example, this will be our classic Team Site root site collection at https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com that will be replaced by our modern Communication Site.

-ArchiveUrl

URL to where the target site will be archived. There should be no existing site, including a deleted site in the Recycle Bin, at this location before performing the swap.

In our example, this will the URL where our classic Team Site root site collection will be archived to.

Pulling the Trigger

Follow the steps below to do the magic:

1. Open a PowerShell console (as adminstrator) and type the SharePoint Online authentication command. In this command, you must use your tenant’s Admin URL
   
   Connect-SPOService -Url https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com
   
2. Supply your tenant’s administrator credentials
3. Run the following command:
   
   Invoke-SPOSiteSwap
   -SourceUrl https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/modernintranet
   -TargetUrl https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com
   -ArchiveUrl https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/oldroot

Making the swap will take about one minute and it is pretty straightforward. After the swap, you should have a brand new Communication Site as your homepage.

Limitations

Making the swap will take about one minute and it is pretty straightforward, but you must take some restrictions into consideration. Neither the source or target site can be:

• Neither the source or target site can be connected to an Office 365 Group
• Neither the source or target site can be a Hub Site – if a site is a hub site, unregister it as a hub site, swap the root site, and then register the site back as a hub site
• Neither the source or target site can be associated with a Hub Site – if a site is associated with a hub, disassociate the site, swap the root site, and then reassociate the site
• Only sites within the same domain, for example, https://contoso.sharepoint.com can be swapped
• The source site must be a modern team site (STS#3), a communication site (SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0), or a classic team site (STS#0)
• All subsites contained with the source and target sites will be swapped
• Any sharing links or bookmarks will need to be recreated after the site swap

Conclusion

If you want a modern experience in your existing Office 365 tenant and convert your classic team site into a modern SharePoint Modern Experience, this is the easiest way to go.

Before doing the swap, there are a few things you need to consider:

• Assign permissions to the new Communication Site so that users can access the new site
• Plan navigation (ex: Mega Menu navigation) to ensure navigation to your existing content
• Configure your new Communication Site homepage to show the most relevant content you want to show to your users
• Migrate content from the old classic root site collection to the new Communication Site

Another great thing about this approach is that if you don’t like the result of the swap, you can always swap back using the same PowerShell command.

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and 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 convert a classic root site to Modern SharePoint in Office 365 using Invoke-SPOSiteSwap PowerShell cmdlet 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.

The requirement was to show images and videos in a grid, with the possibility to download images and see all the files in carousel.

The images and videos are located in a SharePoint Online library and the size of the files are large, 12MB or plus for image and 40MB or plus for videos.

The Challenge

The challenge was to build an application, which was easy to use and works on any device, and was quick to view files.

The Solution

For the building of the application for the UI I used the components of the Office UI Faric and for accessing the data, reading files from the SharePoint library, I used the PnPjs library.

To create the thumbnails of the images for the grid, I used the Microsoft Graph API’s to resize the images. These API’s allows you to read several pre-defined formats or set the size we want.

Here is an excellent article from @VelinGeorgiev that explains how to use these Graph API’s https://blog.velingeorgiev.com/resize-sharepoint-image-by-using-microsoft-graph-api

For Carousel I used a React Component called React-Slick and for the rendering of the video, the component React-Video. All files used in Carousel, are loaded in lazy mode, progressively.

The Web Part has as properties:

• Site Url – Url of site to get libraries
• List of libraries, by default is select the first
• number of files to load, maximum is 200

The Application

This SPFx will soon be available in sp-dev-fx-webparts.

Thank you for reading!

The post Multimedia Gallery – SPFx App appeared first on Blog IT.