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InfoPath loves Microsoft Flow

How to: Move/ copy InfoPath attachments in SharePoint Online

Although it has been repeatedly said that the history of InfoPath is over, for many companies still building workflows’ forms using InfoPath is as obvious as using Excel. However, when doing that in Office 365 and SharePoint Online the product’s boundaries are really visible and are becoming a real pain. 

I’ve been struggling some time ago with an issue related to the workflow’s instance size (here), what was directly related to the size of the InfoPath form together with attached files. The obvious solution I was thinking then was moving those attachments away from the form, into a dedicated SharePoint library, but I wasn’t able to do that easily mainly because of the algorithm that is used in InfoPath to handle file attachments.

SharePoint Logo

Site Collection Administrator access denied when adding solutions

I have recently found myself in a situation, when after creation of a new, Modern Site (it was a modern Team Site) my account, even though that was set to be a SharePoint Administrator (even a tenant one :)) and a Site Collection Administrator wasn’t able to see links to any galleries in the Site Collection settings. Moreover, when accessing them using a direct links and then trying to ex. add a new solution, I was being told, that I have no permissions for that operation.

SharePoint Designer Splash Screen

How To: Simple newsletter solution using SharePoint Designer 2013

Some longer time ago I was asked to think about a solution, allowing my client to notify his employes, about changes and news that were being published in the application built on SharePoint 2013. However, client did not want to use alerts, or to develop a dedicated application. No – the client wanted something like a newsletter, which would allow him to sent HTML formatted messages to all users (or SP Groups of users) who were working with the application, or to anyone having account in SharePoint (or to anyone beyond the organization).

Microsoft Ignite 2017

Microsoft Ignite 2017 – what’s ahead of us?

The Microsoft Ignite 2017 conference has just ended last week. It was full of very interesting keynotes, presentations, workshops and demos. I haven’t had the opportunity to be there myself, however I was trying to follow up Twitter and all content being published during the event. This is my summary of the most interesting announcements, specifically for the SharePoint and Office 365.

Office 365 Groups vs Microsoft Teams

Office 365 Groups vs Microsoft Teams, comparision and misconceptions

Office 365 Groups are a quite old concept. They were first introduced somewhere in 2014, but since then the concept developed, from a simple Shared Mailbox, into a tool dedicated for collaboration between employees. Then, in November 2016 Microsoft Teams went public what… brought a lot of confusion on users’ faces. I guess this confusion is still present.

I this post I am not trying to explain when to use what, but to compare those two products to show you their capabilities and… to help you answer on your own, which tool to use when.

Communication Sites – where are they?

Yesterday I was crawling Twitter being a bit upset, that I cannot find any mark of the new Communication Sites. It was said, that my tenant must be set to be in “First release” to get that new feature before anyone else in the world. So I did it. But still, no sign.

Then I read somewhere, that it cannot be the “First release for everyone”, but “First release for selected users”! Go to https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home#/companyprofile and change “Release preferences” indicating your account as one from the selected users.

I hate SharePoint IT frustration

User Adoption issues in SharePoint and Office 365

The topic is repeatedly discussed over the years. It doesn’t really rely on any specific IT system. Even more – the user adoption is a common word describing how fast and how likely users are getting familiar with and accept a new product, innovation, etc… Not in IT exclusively. It really applies to every segment of the market, where a product or service is being sold to the end-user. The faster user “buys” it, the faster ROI rises.

During the Collaboration Summit that has recently took place in Zagreb, I’ve attended Jussi Mori’s seminar where he was talking about that topic, trying to evaluate reasons for which users do not want to easily adopt new things and ways to help them working it out. This presentation inspired me to make a little more research on the topic, what resulted in writing this post.

Nevertheless, the post is going to be about the user adoption in IT especially, moreover – it will apply to the Microsoft products. To be even more precise – to SharePoint and the whole Office 365.

Office 365 – Roadmap for 2017

Recently ended video-conference “SharePoint Virtual Summit” (https://resources.office.com/ww-landing-sharepoint-virtual-summit-2017) confirmed rumors regarding upcoming changes and direction of the development Microsoft is planning for Office 365, in terms of “Digital Workplace” – a space dedicated for the employees, providing them with all necessary tools to make their work more efficient and comfy.

Microsoft is focusing mostly on the following products in these terms:

In my opinion this is where the most interesting changes are foreseen.

How to: Import data from XLSX file into SharePoint Online using Nintex

In Nintex 2010, 2013 and 2016 for SharePoint (Standard version even) on-premise of course, there was a possibility to use Excel Services to query and work with the xlsx and xls files’ data. However, in Sharepoint Online there is no such powerful mechanism (well, there are Excel Services available via REST API, but it doesn’t provide that much functionality). Moreover Nintex products for SharePoint Online (neither Nintex Workflow Cloud nor Nintex for Office 365) don’t have any “OOTB” actions that would fill that gap. So in the end, there is no straightforward way to achieve it. So how can I import (and preferably automate it) data from XLSX file into SharePoint?

The most common workaround is to convert the xlsx file into a plain, csv file and then to work with the data from the file using collections (I will write about it in second post).

Recently I have realized, that there is a set of Excel actions in Microsoft Flow! All of us, who has SharePoint Online, has also a free version of Flow available.