SharePoint Migration and Administration Notification Tool

Scenario

• You are performing an administrative change at the SharePoint site level or for all sub-sites starting at a particular location
• Examples
• Migration
• Retention, Archival or Deletion
• Redesign
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
• Upgrade
• Restructure
• Merge
• You need to convey the administrative status to all users on the site
• Likely as part of your SharePoint administrative communications plan

Issue

• There is no simple or easy out of the box way to accomplish this
• We don't want to manually replicate notifications on each sub-site, modify the master pages, or configure content roll-ups on each site

Solution

• I developed the SharePoint Migration Notification Tool specifically for this purpose
• Download SharePointMigrationNotification.wsp for deployment at the Site Collection level on a SharePoint on-premises farm
• SharePoint 2010 Version
• SharePoint 2013 Version
• Add and Install the WSP file you downloaded
• Enable the site collection feature named "Migration Notification" on each site collection
• Add a list to the root site for each site collection.  Select the "Migration Notification URLs" list template (found under Blank & Custom list types)
• You can name this whatever you like, but you should only have 1 of these lists at the site collection root because the tool uses the first one it finds
• Here are some examples of the default notifications you can configure
• You can also add your own custom notification messages






• Here is the list configured at the Site Collection root level that defines your notifications
• The new/edit item forms describe what should be entered in each field



• Notification Tool Feature List
• Site Collection Deployed full trust solution (Currently designed for SharePoint 2010+)
• Client object model exclusively used for notification processing in order to support future releases on the SharePoint 2013 app model and Office 365 environments
• Drop down selection of common notification scenarios
• Migration notification list definition
• Must be added to the root site collection
• Configurable notification text with wiki-like syntax for inserting hyperlinks or a date from the Migration Notification List
• More Info URL
• New URL
• Migration Date
• SharePoint client object model property bag caching to reduce server load and increase performance
• Supports the standard notification color selections
• Include all sub-sites (notification can be overridden at the child site level)
• New / test site URL replacement including the full path to the current page/form
• Notification disable flag
• Automatic population of the title field from the New Site URL wiki when sent to a ".../NewForm.aspx?source=..."  page (Using "New URL Set Title" syntax)
• Permission based notification visibility (security trimming)
• Added a MultiSelect choice field in the list called "Display To"
• Based on the SP.PermissionKind Enumeration
• Notification dismissal option (cookie based)
• 1 day dismissal duration
• Automatically delete sites from the migration notification list by selecting Auto Delete or Auto Recycle in the Old Site Status field
• This capability is enabled through a separate Site Collection feature and requires the user to have permissions to delete the site
• This feature is especially useful for retention policies that require you to post a notice of deletion before deleting the site.
• If you use Auto Delete instead of Auto Recycle, you should backup the site first if there is any possibility of needing a restore
• Contact me for SharePoint Farm Upgrade or Migration services, to request a customized version of this solution, or to provide SharePoint Solution Architecture services

Releases

• Release 1.3.2.0 (2013 only): 11/7/2015
• Fixed a bug when removing an existing Migration Notification List and adding another with a different name.
• Release 1.3.1.0: 7/6/2015
• SharePoint 2013 list view fix
• 3 digit year date format fix (115 fixed to be 2015)
• Release 1.3.0.0: 5/29/2015
• SharePoint 2013 version created
• Release 1.3.0.0: 5/27/2015
• New Features
• Auto Delete Old Site feature added
• New feature activates migration notification list event receiver keying off a new field type "Old Site Status"
• Refactored to use ScriptLink and _layouts JavaScript code file to enable browser based code caching
• Release 1.2.1.0: 5/15/2015
• Bug Fixes
• Redirect URL now works when browsing folders within a list/library
• These links now redirect to the Document Library root folder
• New Features
• Notification dismissal option (cookie based)
• 1 day dismissal duration
• Release 1.2.0.0: 5/13/2015
• Bug Fixes
• URLs with spaces and special characters now work correctly
• You will need to make sure to unencode the URLs when entering them in the list.  The title field description now reflects this requirement.
• Redirect URLs with special characters will now be encoded correctly
• Added Features
• Permission based notification visibility (security trimming)
• Added a MultiSelect choice field in the list called "Display To"
• Based on the SP.PermissionKind Enumeration

Backlog

• Develop an Office 365 app version
• Add parameter for dismissal duration length