Promoted Tiles - Popup Prior to Click

Scenario

• You have a promoted tiles web part on a page
• You need to prompt the user with a dialog box prior to navigating to the link on click

Issue

• The onclick attribute is dynamically populated by the control, so it's hard to manipulate using Javascript or JQuery

Resolution

• The key is to use the mousedown event instead.
• Note: This will not support keyboard navigation so you may need to handle the keydown event as well.
• Here is the code for the Script Editor.  Adapt the URLs for your environment

<script type="text/javascript" src="/SiteAssets/jquery-3.3.1.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/teams/print/SiteAssets/PromotedLinkPrompt.js"></script>

• Here is the PromotedLinkPrompt.js code

console.log("PromotedLinkPrompt.js Loaded");

localStorage.setItem("PopupContentDone", "false");

function PopupContent()
{
var done = localStorage.getItem("PopupContentDone");
if (done == "false")
{
if (confirm("Does this work?\n\nClick OK to Proceed.\nClick Cancel for More Info.")) 
{
$(this).find("a")[0].click();
}
else
{
window.location = "http://www.votematrix.com";
}
localStorage.setItem("PopupContentDone", "true");
}
}

$(document).ready(function () {$("div .ms-tileview-tile-content").mousedown(PopupContent)});

Use a JSON file in a SharePoint Library

Scenario

• You want to utilize a JSON file uploaded by an automated process to a SharePoint Document Library
• In this case we will use the SiteAssets (Site Assets) document library in an Office 365 SharePoint Online (O365) site

Issue

• If you use a direct path to the file you get the "Sorry, something went wrong"  "File Not Found." error
• Ex: https://mycompany.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/SiteAssets/MyFile.json
• If you click on the file or get a link to the file you are given a URL to an AllItems display form which renders a file editor, but will not grant access to the JSON via script
• Ex: https://mycompany.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/SiteAssets/Forms/AllItems.aspx?id=%2Fsites%2FMySite%2FSiteAssets%2FMyFile%2Ejson&parent=%2Fsites%2FMySite%2FSiteAssets

Resolution

• Using the Download button and Fiddler (or IE dev tools / network), you can identify the correct URL to access the raw JSON file.
• Look for the HTTPS GET for download.aspx
• Alternatively, you can use the following URL format and replace mycompany, MySite, and MyFile text with your own values:
• https://mycompany.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/_layouts/15/download.aspx?SourceUrl=%2Fsites%2FMySite%2FSiteAssets%2FMyFile%2Ejson
• Note: This is for a site at /sites/MySite.  You may need to modify this path.
• If using JQuery, here is some code to get it:

$(document).ready(function () 
{
 $.ajax({
   type: "GET",
   url: "/sites/MySite/_layouts/15/download.aspx?SourceUrl=%2Fsites%2FMySite%2FSiteAssets%2FMyFile%2Ejson",
   success: function(result)
   {
            console.log(result[0].property1+ " - " + result[0].property2);
   }
  });
});

SharePoint Column Validation - Is Numeric

Scenario

• You want the Title field to be an integer only.

Issue

• The Title field cannot be typed as an integer using the standard list administration UI
• The column validation in SharePoint is not straightforward
• ISNumeric([Column Name]) does not work as it always sees the parameter as text
• You have to add 0 to get a numeric value

Resolution

• Use this format for the column validation to correctly identify an Integer
• =IFERROR(INT([Column Name]+0)=[Column Name]+0,FALSE)

Microsoft tech support fails the open source community

Scenario

• Open an O365 support ticket with Microsoft to notify them of a bug in their product.
• Detail everything Microsoft needs to know to fix the problem in an email
• In a recent case it was simply due to the Microsoft release engineer failing to deploy 2 files (CSS and PNG) from the Office 365 release to the CDN.
• This effected tenants utilizing the CKEditor open source JavaScript class library, breaking the functionality for released web parts.  (Part of the SPfx 40)

Issues

• Tier 1 support calls you and wastes an hour (or more) of your time making you go over the same steps provided in the email.
• In the recent case it was literally as easy as clicking a link and getting a 404 error.
• Here is the link to the Open Source product that Microsoft broke and the users who took the time to report it: https://github.com/OlivierCC/spfx-40-fantastics/issues/29
• Tier 1 support says they can't support this because it is a programming issue and wants you to open a paid ticket to fix their own product issue.

Proposed Resolution

• Microsoft needs a better way to escalate tickets from members of the community who are trying to help out and know what they are doing without having to go through tier 1 engineers or paid support.

OneNote Compliance, Records Management, and Governance - O365

Scenario

• OneNote (part of the Office 365 suite of tools) is used to store information that may be considered records (official information)
• Your compliance or governance teams may want retention, legal holds, or other policies configured on these records

Issues

1. Mixed Content: OneNote notebooks contain mixed content with differing record policies.
• Ex: Meeting minutes in one section, project info in another, and issues in a third section.
• You cannot apply policies at the page level.
• Note: This issue is the same as any other document containing mixed content (Word, Excel, etc.), however it is easier to use OneNote in this manner.
2. Time Span: OneNote notebooks contain content spanning multiple days, months, or years
1. This means disposition policies may not apply correctly, delaying or accelerating policy dates
3. Legal Holds: Legal holds may inadvertently block an entire notebook from being editable
4. Incompliant Locations: If  OneNote usage is discouraged or blocked, records are more likely to end up in  incompliant locations and users may experience broken integration features
1. Incompliant alternatives: Notepad saved locally, Evernote, cell phone pictures and voice memos (Office Lens), emails, other online services, a personal OneDrive OneNote account, or a locally stored OneNote
2. To avoid OneNote, users would also need to ignore the extensive OneNote integration features provided in Outlook, Windows, and the other Office products.
3. There is not a good alternative note-taking tool that would better meet compliance policies.

Solutions

1. Mixed Content

OneNote notebooks with records should live in SharePoint, not in OneDrive or on a file share.

• SharePoint allows for version tracking at the library level
• Note: This is in addition to the limited OneNote versioning.
• SharePoint also allows content policies to be applied at the section or Notebook level

OneNote notebooks with differing compliance policies should be split into separate notebooks

• The policies should then be applied at the notebook level

2. Time Span

Notebook policies should be applied based on the parent SharePoint site policy whenever possible and should be defined based on the overall work being done. 

• Example: A notebook for a project would last as long as the policy for the entire project.
• Example: A team site notebook would expire when the team was disbanded.
• Example: A department level knowledge-base notebook should not auto expire unless the department goes away.  A separate policy for archiving historical content can still be put into place.

Users can also be trained to export and archive specific content using any time frame required by your policies.  Users may automatically be assigned tasks to remind them to do this.

• Example Policy: Meeting minutes should be exported quarterly to PDF format and minutes deleted from the notebook for the prior quarter.
• Example: Project notebook should be exported yearly to XPS or PDF formats.

3. Legal Holds

For legal holds that block edits, records living in OneNote should be exported to an appropriate format (PDF, Word, etc.) and the hold should be applied to the exported document which would then be the official record and not block additional modifications to the entire notebook.  An alternative approach is to export the entire notebook and place a hold on the exported copy.  This issue applies to all document types that are actively used, but may be more impactful for OneNote if mixed content is contained in the notebook. 

4. Incompliant Locations

The best solution is to provide the user with compliant locations that are easy to use.  This can be done by provisioning SharePoint sites and OneNote notebooks for common records management use cases.  In this way, notebooks will already be split by appropriate policy groupings and correctly configured for versioning and compliance policies.

Restricting usage and adherence to best practices is the hardest to control and must be enforced through user training.  Some incompliant locations may be blocked by IT through firewall rules, but users can always get around these by using their own mobile devices.

SharePoint Permissions Cheat Sheet

The following is a list of the default permission levels organized from greatest to least permissions and relating them in a concise hierarchical manner.  You can modify these however you want; but I recommend creating new permission levels instead or modifying the default permission levels in order to avoid confusion.  

Microsoft has grid versions of this, but this format is much simpler.
Permission level details are available here: Technet

Full Control - Owner

• + Manage Hierarchy

• + Design

Design

• Apply Themes and Borders

• Apply Style Sheets

• Override list behaviors - checked out to other user

• + Edit

• + Approve

Manage Hierarchy - Hierarchy Managers

• Override list behaviors - checked out to other user

• Manage and Enumerate Permissions

• View Web Analytics Data

• Create Subsites

• Manage Web Site

• Manage Alerts

• + Edit

Edit - Members

• Manage Lists

• Add and Customize Pages

• + Contribute

Approve - Approvers

• Approve Items
• Override list behaviors - checked out to other user

• + Contribute

Contribute

• Add, Edit, Delete Items

• Delete Versions

• Browse Directories (explorer view)

• Personal info, views, and web parts

• + Read

Read - Visitors

• Open Items

• + View Only

View Only

• View Versions

• Create Alerts

• View Application Pages

• Self-service Site Creation

• Browse User Information

• Use Remote interfaces

• Use Client Integration Features

• + Restricted Read

• -  Open Items

Restricted Read

• View Items

• Open Items

• View Pages

• Open web/list/folder

Limited Access

• Browse User Information

• Use Client Integration Features

• Open web/list/folder