Office 365 Groups what you need to know

Hello Community. With this post I would like to share some facts with Office 365 groups and administration of the them especially from the Office 365 Governance and compliance perspective. I hope this post provides some unified information. Believe me Office 365 groups is the NEXT BREED OF COLLABORATION

Microsoft defines the groups as "An Office 365 group is a space for team collaboration. It comes with a shared:
 Mailbox for group email communication(conversations)
Calendar for scheduling group meetings and events(effective shared calendar)
Library  for storing and working on group files and folders (SharePoint Type Library using OneDrive for Business type UI)
OneNote notebook  for taking project and meeting notes(real time changes seen with auto background refresh)
Planning tool for organizing and assigning tasks and getting updates on project progress (tasks.office.com - Planner)"

A SharePoint guy may "its just another team site". And he is probably right because it has the same modules that are usually included in the SharePoint Team Sites (which MS refers to as classic sites). However, the key difference is, Office 365 groups are part of Exchange Online code base and not SharePoint code base. User does NOT need SharePoint Online licenses to use Office 365 Groups only Exchange Online is good enough.

This is what I know is different. It uses a different template than STS#0 and not actually SharePoint although looks like one. It includes an extended set of API's which allows connecting the modules (lists and libraries) to other platform of Office 365 products and uses Exchange Online code base.

Here are come of the facts about Office 365 Groups based on my research

• Groups are more tied to Exchange rather than SharePoint and user does NOT need SharePoint Online licenses to use Office 365 Groups, only Exchange Online license is good enough.
• Office 365 groups and site collections with this naming "https://<tenantname>.sharepoint.com/sites/<name of group>"
• The groups site collections are NOT seen on admin portal, and you can only manage the groups through PowerShell only
• Groups are categorized to “public” and “private” type. This does not mean public groups will be accessing to general public rather it will be seen by non group members inside the organization.
• Any user can create a new group by default
• Admins can limit the storage and ability to create new groups and choose who will have permission to create groups (using PowerShell only)
• Groups can only be created from Outlook Web Access/Outlook 2016 for now for end users and from admin portal
• Admins cannot recover the deleted groups as the whole site collection is deleted without the ability to restore from SharePoint admin panel
• eDiscovery and in Place hold can be performed on its content
• IRM(Information Rights Management) on email messages to the groups can be controlled. Read more here
• No retention or other polices can be applied to its content. No use of SharePoint content types
• Integrates with Microsoft planner for project management (tasks.office.com)
• Ever team member of the groups needs to have mailbox on Exchange online/Outlook 2016 to use full features of the groups
• Group email address or group names cannot be changed after creation. No renaming of created SiteCollections
• Allows emailing the outside(external) users and get them into conversations
• No migration support for migration from another tenant to new tenant or merge groups together
• The group names will determine the URL of the Site Collection and may lock the URL not letting SharePoint admins to create a names site collection using the same URL
• MS is planning to integrate Yammer into groups as well. More features and ability will be provided in the future
• You cannot use the same SPO PowerShell commands on these site collections and currently imitated to the commands mentioned in bullet point 1
• You can view all you current Office groups by going to Admin Portal View Groups
• All groups come with a DL email address which members can also share with external users
• External users can currently jump into conversations but cannot browse the site collection content or download documents
• Custom branding or color palettes of the organization cannot be applied on them
• Document library (files) cannot have custom fields for now

Conclusion: Office 365 admins currently have very less control on what happens in these groups. Even the company administrator cannot view "private" group content unless the site owner adds them. As these sites are hidden and does not have a feature reach control UI; choosing an option with high control first may be the right step. Start with allowing few set of people to create groups and have a governance over the naming convention of groups more like "G-<Name of Group>" so you don't lock up a URL on SharePoint. Set storage quote on the groups.

Nintex New Upcoming Features

I was at Nintex Inspire X conference at Las Vegas and wanted to share some exciting stuff happening in the community. I have highlighted the new features which will be part of Office 365, So 2016 as well as 2013.

• Scripted Install/NWADMIN PowerShell
• Single CA Nintex Management Module
• Will work on any modern browsers. Both forms and workflow designers
• Help is integrated to Online help. Real and updated
• Improved Tool box and better UI on workflows
• Nintex Insight (Analytics UT Tool) connector OOB with WF
• External Start (Events triggered from outside). Integration to PowerApps/Logic Apps
• Drawloop will be available on Prem
• Workflow Metadata which on error can call/notify (Will be available on SP 2013 forms/Also cross browsers support on Sp 2013)
• More investments on hybrid
• Forms for document set metadata
• Multi page form/views
• Saving forms and draft
• Set default values to fields without scripts
• Managed metadata column will be supported

Most important of all Nintex Office 365 Workflows is moving towards cloud hosted workflow engine model. Means to saw the worklflows will run outside of SharePoint environment. No more worrying about SharePoint Worklfow Limits/Throttle issues.

List SharePoint subsites on SharePoint page using webpart

If you would like to rollup the subsites under a SharePoint site use the below script and paste on a script editor webpart on any page.

This rollup using REST query also looks at the permission and displays site that the current logged in user has access to. You can change the URL to point to any subsite where you want to roll up the sites from.

<div id="resortslist"></div>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>

$(document).ready(function () {

    GetSubSites();

});

    // function to check contract form status
    function GetSubSites()
    {

        $.ajax(
        {
            url: _spPageContextInfo.webServerRelativeUrl +
            "/_api/web/webs/?$select=Title,Created,Description,LastItemModifiedDate,Url&$filter=effectivebasepermissions/high%20gt%2032",
            type: "GET",
            headers: {
                "accept": "application/json;odata=verbose",
            },
            success: function (data)
            {
                readContractFormSuccess(data);
            },
            error: function (err)
            {
                alert(JSON.stringify(err));
            }
        }
        );
    }

    // success function for contract form check
    readContractFormSuccess = function (data)
    {
     
        var results = data.d.results;


        if (results.length > 0) {


            var html = "<div id='resorts-site-elements'><br/>";
            html += "<table>";
            html += "<tr><td  style='padding-right:10px>Resort Name</td></tr>"
            for (var i = 0; i < results.length; i++)
            {
                           
                     

                var created = results[i].Created;
                var descp =results[i].Description;
             
                var sitetitle =  results[i].Title;
                var link =results[i].Url;
                       


                html += "<tr><td style='padding-right:10px'>"
                html += "<a href='"+ link + "'>" + sitetitle + "</a>";
                html += "</td> ";
                 
                html += "</tr>";
            }
        }

        else {
            html += "<tr></td>No Sites</td></tr>";
        }

        html += "</table>";
        html += "</div>";
        $("div[id='resortslist']").html(html).show();
     
    }

 
</script>

Kickoff SharePoint 2013 Worklfows using PowerShell

Here is the script I created and used for triggering SP 2013 Worklfows. This does not work for 2010 workflows. You can schedule this script on Task Scheduler on any Machine installed with SharePoint bits

cls
if ((Get-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null)
{
    Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell"
}

$sourceWebURL = 'http://xxx.com/sites/xxx/subsite'
$sourceListName = 'TaskNotifications'
$TargetWorkflow = 'NotifyPendingTasks'
$spSourceWeb = Get-SPWeb $sourceWebURL
$spSourceList = $spSourceWeb.Lists[$sourceListName]
$items = $spSourceList.getItems()

#-- Getting a Workflow manager object to work with.
$wfm = New-object Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkflowServices.WorkflowServicesManager($spSourceweb)
#-- Getting the subscriptions
$sub = $wfm.GetWorkflowSubscriptionService()
#-- Getting the specific workflow within the list of subscriptions on the specific list. (SP2010 associated workflows basically)
$WF = $sub.EnumerateSubscriptionsByList($spSourcelist.ID) | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq "$TargetWorkflow"}
#-- Getting a Workflow instance in order to perform my commands.
$wfis=$wfm.GetWorkflowInstanceService()


Foreach($item in $items){
 
    $object = New-Object 'system.collections.generic.dictionary[string,object]'
    $object.Add("WorkflowStart", "StartWorkflow");
   $wfis.StartWorkflowOnListItem($WF, $item.ID, $object)
}

SharePoint Online Web Galleries are hidden

The probable cause can be related to deny access that got set.

Run this powershell command on the SP Online Powershell Console. May have to be downloaded

To run you should be a global or SharePoint admin on the Office 365 Portal

SharePoint Designer "failed to load this workflow" or Windows Workflow Foundation, part of .Net Framework 3.0, must be installed to use this feature.

To resolve this issue please update your designer with the hotfixes in sequence. Make sure the designer is NOT open.

http://support2.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2837667&kbln=en-us

http://support2.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2727100&amp;kbln=en-US

Once installation is complete open the site once again. A restart may not be necessary. If you still get the same issue then clear your designer cache by running this 

rmdir "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\WebsiteCache\" /s /q

rmdir "%APPDATA%\Microsoft\SharePoint Designer\ProxyAssemblyCache\" /s /q

Then Restart you PC.

Enable site publishing feature and apply master page on SharePoint sub sites including Office 365

In this blog I will go over how to create a sandboxed event receiver which will activate the "Publishing Feature" and inherit master page from parent. (Thanks to Anvesh Kunati and Alex Mayer)

This sandboxed solution will work on SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online/365

Steps

1. Fire up a visual studio, if you are using VS 2012 then you may have to download Office 365 Tools for VS 2012. Create a new SharePoint 2013 projects

2. Name the solution accordingly

3. Point to the SharePoint Site(has to be a local site)later on we can copy this WSP to SharePoint Online.

4. Click on the validate and choose "Sandbox Solution" as the option

5. On the VS Project right click on the solution and add a new item choose "Event Receiver" 

6. Name it accordingly because changing it later can become frustrating.

7. From the popup choose Web Events and choose A Site was provisioned

8. In the event receiver code add the following code within public override void WebProvisioned(SPWebEventProperties properties)

 base.WebProvisioned(properties);

            SPWeb web = properties.Web;

            web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

            //activating Publishing feature. If you need any other features to be activated the put those GUID's

            web.Features.Add(new Guid("{94c94ca6-b32f-4da9-a9e3-1f3d343d7ecb}"), true);

            web.Update();

            // add a description toshow that its running/to check if this worked

            // web.Description = "Feature activated log";

            //   web.Update();

            SPWeb rootWeb = web.Site.RootWeb;

            //Inherit the master and custom master page from root site

            web.MasterUrl = rootWeb.MasterUrl;

            web.CustomMasterUrl = rootWeb.CustomMasterUrl;

            //Set navigation

            web.Navigation.UseShared = true;

            web.Update();

            web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;

            web.Dispose();

            rootWeb.Dispose();

9. Compile/Build and deploy to the local site. In the properties make sure it is selected as sandbox solution.

10. Go to the site features and activate this new feature

11. This is a reusable solution and the WSP can be uploaded to any site collection or Office 365 SharePoint sites.. Just download the WSP from the local SharePoint site solution gallery and upload to any new site collection.

Alternatively you can also get the latest WSP by right clicking the VS solution and opening the solution in "file explorer", bin folder Debug/Release folder