Introduction Document Sets in SharePoint are a powerful way to manage groups of related documents as a single entity. They enable you to apply metadata, workflows, and permissions to a collection of documents, making them ideal for project folders, case files, or any scenario where you need to keep related content together. This post shows how to automate the configuration of Document Sets across multiple libraries using PnP PowerShell. Why Use Document Sets?

Introduction In this blog post, I demonstrate how to create an OpenAPI specification for interacting with a SharePoint list using Microsoft Graph for integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot Declarative Agents. The list in question was created using the tracker template. This approach allows you to define and document API interactions, making it easier to integrate with tools like Teams Toolkit or Copilot for automation and extensibility. Scenario We aim to create an OpenAPI YAML file to interact with the following endpoint:

PnP PowerShell: Enabling and Configuring Document ID in SharePoint The Document ID feature in SharePoint is a powerful tool that assigns a unique ID to files, making it easier to reference and track documents. The script within the post activates and configures the Document ID feature using PnP PowerShell. Additionally, it covers the Set-PnPSiteDocumentIdPrefix cmdlet, which simplifies the process of setting a custom prefix for Document IDs. Why Use Document IDs?

Using OpenAI in Excel and Google Sheets Integrating OpenAI’s GPT models into Excel or Google Sheets can unlock powerful automation and language processing capabilities. This blog post demonstrates how to use OpenAI’s API to translate text in a spreadsheet cell into French using a script. Google Spreadsheet Apps Script Example The following script uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5-turbo model to translate the content of a selected cell into French and outputs the result in the adjacent cell.

Introduction Document Sets in SharePoint are a powerful way to manage groups of related documents as a single entity. They enable you to apply metadata, workflows, and permissions to a collection of documents, making them ideal for project folders, case files, or any scenario where you need to keep related content together. This post shows how to automate the configuration of Document Sets across multiple libraries using PnP PowerShell. Why Use Document Sets?

Introduction Document Sets in SharePoint are a powerful way to manage groups of related documents as a single entity. They enable you to apply metadata, workflows, and permissions to a collection of documents, making them ideal for project folders, case files, or any scenario where you need to keep related content together. This post shows how to automate the configuration of Document Sets across multiple libraries using PnP PowerShell. Why Use Document Sets?

Introduction Managing multiline text fields in SharePoint can be tricky, especially when certain field properties are not visible or editable at the library/list level, even though they are available at the site level. For example, at the site level, you can configure properties such as: Append Changes to Text Number of Lines Field Type: Plain Text, Rich Text, or Enhanced Rich Text However, these settings may not appear at the library/list level, as shown below:

PnP PowerShell: Enabling and Configuring Document ID in SharePoint The Document ID feature in SharePoint is a powerful tool that assigns a unique ID to files, making it easier to reference and track documents. The script within the post activates and configures the Document ID feature using PnP PowerShell. Additionally, it covers the Set-PnPSiteDocumentIdPrefix cmdlet, which simplifies the process of setting a custom prefix for Document IDs. Why Use Document IDs?

Introduction In SharePoint Online, the filter pane is a powerful feature that allows users to quickly filter and find relevant data in libraries and lists. However, by default, not all fields are visible in the filter pane. To enhance usability, you can pin specific fields to the top of the filter pane using PowerShell or the REST API. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell and the REST API to pin fields to the filter pane in SharePoint libraries.

Introduction Understanding how a SharePoint site was created is crucial for governance, compliance, and troubleshooting. In Microsoft 365, SharePoint sites can be created through various methods, such as Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage, the SharePoint Admin Center, and more. However, identifying the exact creation source can sometimes be challenging. For example, exporting the list of active sites from the SharePoint Admin Center may not always provide accurate information. Communication sites, for instance, may incorrectly show their creation source as “Microsoft M365 Group,” even though they can only be created from the SharePoint Admin Center.

Introduction Managing Microsoft 365 Group settings is crucial for maintaining a compliant and secure environment.PowerShell and Microsoft Graph can be used to configure various group settings, including naming policies, guest access, and more. As a regular user of PnP PowerShell, I aimed to replicate the functionality of the Microsoft Entra cmdlets for configuring group settings using PnP PowerShell. Example Script to Update naming policy Settings The following PowerShell script updates the naming group settings using the Microsoft Graph API and PnP PowerShell.

Introduction Thanks to Kinga Kazala for her timely article Deploy SPFx app using pipeline’s Workload Identity federation, which showcases how to use Workload Identity Federation to alleviate the need for using Entra app secrets or certificates. This method simplifies the setup process, especially when there’s reliance on a single person who might be unavailable. We initially set up the SPFx pipeline for the Test environment using certificates with CLI for M365.

When working with SharePoint lists, there might be times when you need to restore items to a previous version. Whether it’s due to an error, unwanted changes, or simply needing to revert to an earlier state, SharePoint’s versioning feature is a lifesaver. I used the script to undo bulk changes made by a Power Automate flow after the process failed halfway due to some data needing correction. For data integrity, the bulk update needed to be undone before running the Power Automate flow again after the data corrections were made.

Introduction When working with files in SharePoint, the drive ID and drive item ID are essential parameters for further manipulation using Microsoft Graph API. The drive ID is a base64 encoded string composed of the site ID, web ID, and list ID for a particular SharePoint library. For more details, refer to Microsoft Graph: Encoding and decoding the drive ID by Mikael Svenson. The item ID part appears to be a base32 encoding of the SharePoint item’s unique ID, though the exact mechanics are still being explored.

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

When working with large SharePoint sites, checking for unique permissions can be a time-consuming task. This blog post explores methods to optimize PowerShell scripts for fetching property HasUniqueRoleAssignments to determine unique permissions, including using PnP PowerShell and the SharePoint REST API. We compare their performance and highlight the advantages and limitations of each approach. Using PnP PowerShell PnP PowerShell provides an efficient way to interact with SharePoint Online and retrieve list items to check for unique permissions.

Teamifying an Existing M365 Group with PowerShell Within M365 , SharePoint and Teams together provides a rich collaboaration platform. When a team site is created from SharePoint admin centre, it is not associated with a Teams despite a M365 group is created in the background. To extend SharePoint collaboration features , there is a need to “teamify” an existing Microsoft 365 Group, essentially attaching a new Teams instance to it to allow use of channels and other apps.

Counting Files and Folders within SharePoint Libraries using PnP PowerShell This post shows a PowerShell script using PnP PowerShell module to count the number of files and folders within a SharePoint library. It might be useful doing an inventory of file count. $SiteURL = "Counting Files within a SharePoint Library using PnP PowerShell" # Generate a unique log file name using today's date $dateTime = (Get-Date).toString("dd-MM-yyyy") $invocation = (Get-Variable MyInvocation).Value $directorypath = Split-Path $invocation.

Resolving the ‘PnP PowerShell Not Digitally Signed’ Issue If you’ve recently upgraded PnP PowerShell to the latest nightly build and are encountering errors when trying to execute any PnP PowerShell cmdlets, this guide is for you. PS C:\Users\RAuckloo> connect-pnponline -url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com -Interactive connect-pnponline: The 'connect-pnponline' command was found in the module 'PnP. PowerShell', but the module could not be loaded due to the following error: [Errors occurred while loading the format data file: \\contoso-it.

Retrieving File Count and Size of a folder within a SharePoint Library using PnP PowerShell This post covers a PowerShell script that uses the PnP PowerShell module to retrieve the file count and total size of a specific folder within a SharePoint library. #Parameters $SiteURL = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/company311" $FolderSiteRelativeURL = "Shared Documents/Test1" #Connect to PnP Online Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Interactive #Get the folder $Folder = Get-PnPFolder -Url $FolderSiteRelativeURL -Includes ListItemAllFields #Get the total Size of the folder - with versions Write-host "Size of the Folder:" $([Math]::Round(($Folder.

Retrieving SiteId from Microsoft Graph for Subsequent API Calls This post offers an option to retrieve a SiteId from Microsoft Graph using PnP PowerShell. This can be particularly useful when making further API calls that require the SiteId. $siteurl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Company311" Connect-PnPOnline -url $siteurl -interactive # for the site url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com/teams/app-m365 # Extract the domain and site name $uri = New-Object System.Uri($siteurl) $domain = $uri.Host $siteName = $uri.AbsolutePath # Construct the new URL $RestMethodUrl = "v1.

Excluding certain SharePoint sites from search would mean the contents from the excluded sites won’t be available to M365 tenant search and M365 Copilot using Restricted SharePoint Search feature. The downsides using this feature are: Limited Findability: By excluding certain SharePoint sites from search, you limit the findability of data. Users would need to know the specific sites where the data resides in order to search for it. This can hinder efficient data retrieval and records management.

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Introduction Document Sets in SharePoint are a powerful way to manage groups of related documents as a single entity. They enable you to apply metadata, workflows, and permissions to a collection of documents, making them ideal for project folders, case files, or any scenario where you need to keep related content together. This post shows how to automate the configuration of Document Sets across multiple libraries using PnP PowerShell. Why Use Document Sets?

Introduction In a previous post, I detailed the steps for Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to List My ToDo Tasks. However, I encountered issues with the CreateTask function when using an OpenAPI spec generated with Kiota. Upon investigation, I identified the problem as being related to the handling of complex objects, particularly those involving dates. Even after simplifying the object structure, the CreateTask function continued to fail.

Introduction When working with the UserInformationList in SharePoint via Microsoft Graph, you might encounter challenges when trying to search or filter user information. This post highlights the issues I faced while attempting to use $search and $filter queries on the UserInformationList, along with examples and insights within M365 Copilot declarative agent. Issue 1: Search by Email Did Not Work I attempted to search for a user by their email address using the $search query, but it did not return any results.

Introduction In this blog post, I demonstrate how to create an OpenAPI specification for interacting with a SharePoint list using Microsoft Graph for integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot Declarative Agents. The list in question was created using the tracker template. This approach allows you to define and document API interactions, making it easier to integrate with tools like Teams Toolkit or Copilot for automation and extensibility. Scenario We aim to create an OpenAPI YAML file to interact with the following endpoint:

Introduction In this blog post, we’ll explore how to trigger a single Power Automate flow from multiple SharePoint libraries, lists, and sites. This approach is particularly useful for standardizing workflows across different document libraries and sites, avoiding the need to replicate flows multiple times. This not only simplifies maintenance but also streamlines deployment. The For a selected file or For a selected item trigger action is key to achieving this. While the Manually trigger a flow action was considered, it does not pass the necessary context (site URL, library ID/name, and item ID) to the flow, making it unsuitable for this scenario.

Introduction Managing multiline text fields in SharePoint can be tricky, especially when certain field properties are not visible or editable at the library/list level, even though they are available at the site level. For example, at the site level, you can configure properties such as: Append Changes to Text Number of Lines Field Type: Plain Text, Rich Text, or Enhanced Rich Text However, these settings may not appear at the library/list level, as shown below:

Managing permissions in SharePoint can be challenging, especially when users are granted access through various means such as direct permissions, shared links, SharePoint groups, or M365 groups. To simplify this process, you can use the effectivepermissions endpoint to retrieve and analyze permissions assigned to users at the site, list/library, and item/file/folder levels. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to identify and retrieve effective permissions for end users across SharePoint sites.

Introduction This guide walks you through creating a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph API. By leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Kiota, and Teams Toolkit, you can build a plugin to interact with Microsoft Graph endpoints. I used the blog post Copilot Graph API QnA Plugin by Franck Cornu as inspiration with some variation to apply it to get my ToDo tasks. Plugins for Copilot agents rely on OpenAPI specifications. While the complete Microsoft Graph OpenAPI specification exists, it is a massive file (34MB) and not practical for performance reasons.

Troubleshooting Copilot Agent Teams Toolkit M365Graph Plugin Issues When building a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit, you may encounter certain errors that can hinder your progress. This blog post highlights common issues and provides solutions to help you resolve them effectively. Common Issues and Fixes 1. name_for_human Exceeds 20 Characters Issue: You may encounter the following error when the name_for_human field in the ai-plugin.json file exceeds 20 characters: name_for_human in PluginManifestDocument has characters beyond the length 20 that MAY be ignored.

Searching Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint Sensitivity labels are a powerful tool for protecting documents, offering features like watermarks, encryption, and access control at the file level. However, the default Sensitivity column in SharePoint has limitations—it cannot be filtered, indexed, or bulk updated. This blog post explores ways to search for sensitivity label values in SharePoint and highlights some challenges and potential solutions. Challenges with Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint The crawled managed property InformationProtectionLabelId refers to the sensitivity label’s GUID/ID, which is not user-friendly for end users to easily search.

Power Automate: Retrieve SharePoint Library Internal Name When working with Power Automate, you may encounter scenarios where you need the internal name of a SharePoint library. For example, when creating a file in a library using Power Automate, the internal name is often required. Instead of manually adding the internal name as an environment variable, you can dynamically retrieve it using the Send an HTTP Request to SharePoint action. This blog post demonstrates how to retrieve the internal name of a SharePoint library using its ID or display name.

PnP PowerShell: Enabling and Configuring Document ID in SharePoint The Document ID feature in SharePoint is a powerful tool that assigns a unique ID to files, making it easier to reference and track documents. The script within the post activates and configures the Document ID feature using PnP PowerShell. Additionally, it covers the Set-PnPSiteDocumentIdPrefix cmdlet, which simplifies the process of setting a custom prefix for Document IDs. Why Use Document IDs?

Monitoring Storage Quotas with PowerShell Managing storage quotas in Microsoft 365 is critical to ensure uninterrupted service and optimal performance. This blog post demonstrates how to use a PowerShell script to monitor storage usage across SharePoint Online sites and identify sites nearing or exceeding their storage quotas. Script Overview The script connects to the SharePoint Online admin center, retrieves site storage details, calculates the percentage of storage used, and generates a report for sites exceeding 80% of their allocated storage quota.

Power Automate: Save Run Flow URL to SharePoint List Item When running a Power Automate flow, capturing and saving the flow’s run URL to a SharePoint list item can simplify troubleshooting and auditing. This allows you to easily revisit the flow run details in case of failures or for review purposes. However, note that flow run URLs are only available for 30 days, so older links may no longer work.

Latency Issues Accessing Microsoft 365 Sites - SharePoint, Admin Center When using a SaaS (Software as a Service) product like Microsoft 365, troubleshooting performance issues can be challenging due to the lack of server-level access. This limitation makes it difficult to analyze network traffic or monitor server resources like CPU, RAM, or storage, which could impact the performance of SharePoint sites. We were experiencing errors, timeouts, delays, and non-functional features for users.

Introduction In SharePoint Online, the filter pane is a powerful feature that allows users to quickly filter and find relevant data in libraries and lists. However, by default, not all fields are visible in the filter pane. To enhance usability, you can pin specific fields to the top of the filter pane using PowerShell or the REST API. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell and the REST API to pin fields to the filter pane in SharePoint libraries.

Introduction Managing files in SharePoint libraries can be challenging, especially when dealing with test data or bulk operations. For instance, you may need to find and delete files containing specific names or patterns to reset a testing environment. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to locate and delete files in SharePoint libraries, including associated data in lists, to streamline the testing process. In this example, we had PDF files containing a series of receipts that were split into individual files using Power Automate with the Encodian connector.

Introduction Understanding how a SharePoint site was created is crucial for governance, compliance, and troubleshooting. In Microsoft 365, SharePoint sites can be created through various methods, such as Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage, the SharePoint Admin Center, and more. However, identifying the exact creation source can sometimes be challenging. For example, exporting the list of active sites from the SharePoint Admin Center may not always provide accurate information. Communication sites, for instance, may incorrectly show their creation source as “Microsoft M365 Group,” even though they can only be created from the SharePoint Admin Center.

Introduction Embedding a Copilot Studio Agent within a SharePoint page can significantly enhance user experience by providing seamless access to AI-powered assistance directly within the context of a SharePoint site. While there are examples of achieving this using SPFx (SharePoint Framework), I wanted to explore whether this could be done using out-of-the-box (OOB) features without custom development. In this blog post, I will walk you through the steps to embed a Copilot Studio Agent into a SharePoint page using the Embed Webpart and site settings.

Introduction Balancing AI safety measures and practical functionality for SharePoint Agents is key for some use cases due to the lack of customisation of the inbuilt content safety against the four categories: harm, self-harm, sex, and hate. A particular use case we wanted to explore was its use for mental health support agents in the form of virtual mental health first aiders. My partner in crime Lee Ford and I explored what we could do without tripping the Responsible AI principles and flagging Content Safety categories.

Introduction SharePoint Agent is the easiest way to get started with building your own grounded Agents from your SharePoint data. The possibilities are vast, from HR agents to legal agents. If more configuration and features are required, the Copilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry could help. Each SharePoint site comes with its own default Agent scoped to data within the site. As of today (i.e. March 2025), the default SharePoint agent can’t be modified.

Introduction Default sensitivity labels can be set at the document library level in SharePoint to help manage and protect your data. However, there are some limitations and issues that you should be aware of like the default sensitivity label does not automatically update existing files within SharePoint and there might be delay in applying the sensitivity label within M365 app. This is described in the documentation for Configuring a default sensitivity label for a SharePoint document library.

Introduction Updating the default sharing link from the User Interface at both the site level and tenant level to Specific People (only the people the user specifies) might not work always as expected. This issue could be due to the outdated setting DefaultSharingLinkType being updated behind the scenes. I tested this on a Team site by updating the default sharing setting from the SharePoint Admin Centre to “People you choose”. However, the default sharing link for new sharing links did not reflect this setting.

Introduction There are situations where you might want to reuse the M365 Group principals to assign permissions to other sites without creating additional Entra ID groups. This can be useful for: Adding M365 group members to a SharePoint site, such as an intranet site for ‘Human Resources’ managed by the ‘Human Resources’ M365 Group/Teams or a hub site managed by a ‘Service Desk’ M365 Group/Teams. Adding M365 group members to custom or out-of-the-box SharePoint groups, such as adding particular M365 group owners or members to custom groups created for additional libraries within a different site.

Introduction The SharePoint Home Site experiences have moved to Viva Connections and is managed from the Microsoft 365 admin centre through the Viva Connections admin centre I started exploring how to manage these SharePoint Home Sites/Viva Experiences using browser’s developer tools, considering I had little luck with the SPO PowerShell, PnP PowerShell, and CLI for M365. These PowerShell experiences will be updated at some point to work with the updated Viva Connections Experience.

When working with SharePoint lists, there might be times when you need to restore items to a previous version. Whether it’s due to an error, unwanted changes, or simply needing to revert to an earlier state, SharePoint’s versioning feature is a lifesaver. I used the script to undo bulk changes made by a Power Automate flow after the process failed halfway due to some data needing correction. For data integrity, the bulk update needed to be undone before running the Power Automate flow again after the data corrections were made.

Introduction When working with files in SharePoint, the drive ID and drive item ID are essential parameters for further manipulation using Microsoft Graph API. The drive ID is a base64 encoded string composed of the site ID, web ID, and list ID for a particular SharePoint library. For more details, refer to Microsoft Graph: Encoding and decoding the drive ID by Mikael Svenson. The item ID part appears to be a base32 encoding of the SharePoint item’s unique ID, though the exact mechanics are still being explored.

Introduction By default, guest access for Microsoft 365 groups is enabled within the tenant. This can be controlled either to allow or block guest access at the tenant level or for individual Microsoft 365 groups / Teams. For more information, check out Manage guest access in Microsoft 365 groups. PowerShell Script to Prevent Guest Access Below is a PowerShell script that allows you to disable/enable guest access for specific Microsoft 365 groups.

Introduction With the release of SPFx 1.20.0 in September 2024, I decided to upgrade an existing SPFx solution to the latest version following a post by Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community on Linkedin This process can be challenging, especially when dealing with dependency version conflicts. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to upgrade your SPFx solution to version 1.20.0, including installing Node.js 18.18.0, using the CLI for Microsoft 365 to generate upgrade instructions, and addressing common issues.

Introduction The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.20.0 has been generally available since September 2024. However, if you work with SPFx, you might encounter issues when trying to use the latest version. SPFx still requires Node.js 18.x.x. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to install Node.js 18.20.4 using NVM, install the SPFx toolchain, and troubleshoot an issue where the project scaffolding defaulted to an older version of SPFx.

Introduction As part of Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness, you may want to find where “Everyone and “Everyone except external users” claims are granted permissions which is a cause of oversharing. This blog post will guide you through using PowerShell to manage and audit the “Everyone” and “Everyone except external users” claims within your SharePoint site collection. For more insights on why the “Everyone except external users” group is riskier than “People in your organization,” refer to Copilot for Microsoft 365 Data Ready – Where “Everyone except external users” group is more risky than “People in your organization” links!

Introduction Have you ever encountered the frustrating situation where the Restore a library link in SharePoint is missing or inconsistently available? This can be a significant issue when you need to restore a library urgently. The Problem Typically, you would expect to see the link ‘Restore This Library’ in the SharePoint interface: Restore library However, in some cases, this link might be missing: Restore Library Missing The Workaround After some investigation, I discovered a workaround.

Introduction Have you ever encountered a situation where the search results in SharePoint show incorrect document titles and modified dates? This can be frustrating, especially when you rely on accurate metadata for document management. In this blog post, we’ll explore why this happens and how to resolve it. Problem Statement A business user reported that the search results for a particular document displayed the wrong name and modified date. Upon investigation, we found that the title and modified date were being pulled from the document properties rather than the metadata shown in the SharePoint library.

Microsoft has introduced Enhanced Version Controls, previously known as Intelligent Versioning, as part of its public preview in May 2024. This feature, detailed in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap 145802, aims to help administrators manage file versions more effectively, reducing storage costs by removing unnecessary versions. Extract from the Roadmap We are introducing new version controls that help tenant and site admins or document library owners reduce the storage footprint driven by low value file versions.

Managing sharing settings for SharePoint sites is crucial for maintaining a secure and well-governed environment. With the help of PowerShell, administrators can efficiently retrieve and manage these settings across their SharePoint Online tenant. This ensures that sensitive information is not overshared and that your organisation’s data remains secure. Importance of Reviewing Sharing Settings Reviewing sharing settings is essential to prevent oversharing, which can lead to data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

How to Use the Instagram Basic Display Connector in Power Apps and Power Automate Instagram is a popular social media platform with over 1 billion monthly active users. It is a great platform for sharing photos and videos, and many businesses use it to promote their products and services. With the Instagram Basic Display (IndependentPublisher) connector, you can now easily retrieve data from Instagram accounts and use it in Power Apps and Power Automate.

When working with large SharePoint sites, checking for unique permissions can be a time-consuming task. This blog post explores methods to optimize PowerShell scripts for fetching property HasUniqueRoleAssignments to determine unique permissions, including using PnP PowerShell and the SharePoint REST API. We compare their performance and highlight the advantages and limitations of each approach. Using PnP PowerShell PnP PowerShell provides an efficient way to interact with SharePoint Online and retrieve list items to check for unique permissions.

If you have built Power Platform solutions using SharePoint as a datasource, you may want to export the list structure along with its data from the source environment (e.g., DEV) and deploy it across different environments such as Test, UAT, and PROD. Fortunately, the PnP Provisioning from PnP PowerShell provides this capability. Power Platform solutions can be deployed using pipelines after the SharePoint structure is deployed. Export Structure and Data from SharePoint Lists PnP PowerShell makes this process straightforward with Get-PnPSiteTemplate:

The SharePoint - Move file action can be used to move files, however the file can’t be moved if the file was accessed by the current Power Automate flow for any processing reslutng in a locked file error. { “status”: 400, “message”: “File ‘Shared Documents/Attendances/To Be Processed/Attendance -16072024.xlsx’ cannot be moved because it is in locked mode.\r\nclientRequestId: d6df7566-881f-4f14-8548-c5fac1eda46d\r\nserviceRequestId: 606841a1-40f0-9000-9c69-507df9b21720” } Handling Locked Files There are two options to handlelocked files when using SharePoint - Move file action:

Gaining an overview of what takes up space in a SharePoint site is crucial for monitoring large files or a significant number of versions. Unfortunately, the storage metrics link, <siteurl>/_layouts/15/storman.aspx, won’t work for libraries with more than 5,000 files without nested folders. While this might go against information architecture principles, creating folders is an option to avoid the list view threshold error. Here’s a PowerShell script to help you get storage metrics for your SharePoint site:

The Highlighted Content Web Part and the News Web Part in SharePoint can be used to display news on a page. Both webparts serve different purposes and have distinct features. One particular difference is the display of author in News Webpart and display of editor in the Highlighted Content Web Part. The Highlighted Content Web Part displays editing details like editor and last updated date with the news information. Unfortunately there is no option to change it to the author name.

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to create and publish a news link from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to create and publish a news link details. Send an Http request to SharePoint action renamed to Get Page Details. Site Address : site url Method : GET Uri : /_api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘Site%20Pages’)/items(10) Parse JSON renamed to Parse Page Details JSON Add the action Parse JSON and refer to the content from previous steps

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to get user details from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to retrieve a user details. Send an Http request to SharePoint action renamed to Get Page Author Details Site Address: https://test.sharepoint.com Method: GET URI: _api/Web/GetUserById(14) Here’s the output from the API: Here’s the output from the API:

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to get users from a SharePoint group from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. In the example below a SharePoint Group has been defined for approvers of a particular process and needed to be retrieved to be assigned an approval task. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to retrieve users from a SharePoint group.

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

This post outlines how to use Power Automate to update author and editor of a Page within SharePoint using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow, follow the following steps Add Send an Http request to SharePoint renamed to Update Author Properties Property Value Site Address The SharePoint site URL Method POST Uri See Uri below Headers See Headers table below Body See Body below Uri _api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘Site%20Pages’)/items(1)/ValidateUpdateListItem()`

As part of the M365 Copilot rollout , questions were raised on the /portals/Community and /portals/hub as both ‘Everyone Except External Users’ was granted access raising concerns on the content on the site. These are legacy sites and are currently inaccessible. Historically, these sites were accessible via the legacy SharePoint admin centre, however, they are not available through the modern SharePoint admin centre interface. Thanks to Gregory Zelfond’s blog post What are all these site collections in SharePoint?

There is limited space allocated to the tenant. To ensure business continuity and smooth ongoing operation, it is imperative to keep an eye on its usage and take relevant actions suited to the circumstances. By default a SharePoint site is allocated 25 TB by default and OneDrive for Business site is allocated 1 TB by default. These settings can be amended manually to a different quota to control SharePoint site. The script will help to proactively monitor percent used against quota for each SharePoint site.

SharePoint Online offers the useful feature of news links to avoid duplication of news articles and promote existing posts across different sites. This is especially beneficial when news creation is enabled for various departments or directorates, allowing them to share significant news organization-wide. However, the News WebPart might display both the news links and the original articles, resulting in duplicated content. To manage this, you can utilize the OriginalSourceUrl column, which stores the link to the source news article.

#Parameters $SiteURL = “https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/app-ar" $ListName = “Remittances” $dateTime = (Get-Date).toString(“dd-MM-yyyy”) $invocation = (Get-Variable MyInvocation).Value $directorypath = Split-Path $invocation.MyCommand.Path $fileName = “\RemittanceDuplicateReport-” + $dateTime + “.csv” $OutPutView = $directorypath + $fileName Connect-PnPOnline -url $SiteURL -Interactive $ListItems = Get-PnPListItem -List $ListName -PageSize 500 | Where {$_.FieldValues.Month -eq ‘202402’ } #Array for Results Data $DataCollection = @() ForEach($Item in $ListItems) { #Collect data $Data = New-Object PSObject -Property @{ SourceRef = $Item[“DocumentSourceReference”] GroupingRef = $Item[“GroupingReference”] Provider = $Item[“Provider”].

Maintaining up-to-date list items, especially when dealing with choice fields, can be a daunting task sepcially after choice field values are updated. We need a way to update these old values to the correct new ones. The Challenge SharePoint lists use choice fields to categorise items. Over time, the need to update these choice values can arise, whether due to changes in terminology, business processes, or error correction. Manually updating these values across numerous list items is not only time-consuming but also prone to human error.

Overcoming SharePoint’s List View Threshold with CAML Queries in PowerShell Encountering the list view threshold error in SharePoint when dealing with lists exceeding 5,000 items is a common challenge. Using CAML queries within PowerShell scripts offers a server-side solution to efficiently filter and retrieve data, yet is prone to the list view threshold error. Sample script This is the sample PowerShell script querying the specified SharePoint list using CAML query.

Find orphaned choice values in SharePoint list/libraries using PowerShell One common issue is orphaned choice values in SharePoint lists which may affect subsequent update to the list item. This can occur when list items contain values that are no longer valid according to the list’s choice field values. This post covers a PowerShell script to identify these orphaned choice values in SharePoint lists to either update them or add them back to the list of choice field values.

Update SharePoint Site Logo and Thumbnail with PowerShell In SharePoint Online sites, the distinction between the Site Logo and Site Thumbnail is crucial. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, file copying/moving, and other areas. Both site logo and thumbnail are part of SharePoint branding. This post covers how to update the site logo and thumbnail across multiple SharePoint sites within a hub using PowerShell.

Update Content Type of List Items in SharePoint List A content type in SharePoint is a reusable collection of metadata (columns) allowing to organise, manage and handle content in a consistent way. If the content type of files and items need to be updated because of required changes how particular content have to be managed, it can be a daunting laborious task if done manually. PowerShell can help automating the update of content types and corresponding metadata (columns).

Importing Dates and Numbers from Excel file into SharePoint list with Power Automate Transferring data from Excel to SharePoint lists can encounter format issues, especially with datetime and number fields. This post covers solutions to some challenges particularly related to dates and numbers. The flow is quite simple with an action to read contents from excel file and an action to create items into a sharepoint list. Handling DateTime Fields When importing datetime data with the “List rows present in a table” action from the “Excel Online for Business” connector, you might encounter format related errors.

Power Automate flow succeeded despite failure to update multi line text field within a SharePoint Library Updating multi-line text fields in a SharePoint Library from Power Automate flows, especially when the content exceeds 255 characters might fail if the field is not updated to allow unlimited length. This can cause workflows to fail silently. In a recent scenario, an action was added to a Power Automate flow to update a SharePoint Library’s multi-line text field named ‘ErrorLog’ with error details captured during the flow’s execution.

Publishing Major Versions of Files in SharePoint with Power Automate This post covers how to publish major versions for Office documents (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) in SharePoint using Power Automate, especially after an approval task using the checkin and publish REST endpoints. This applies to libraries having minor versions enabled Just for context, a Power Automate approval flow with trigger for a selected file needed publishing for the selected file as major version after being approved.

Column Validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint Column validation provides a solution to validate data for data integrity. This post covers column validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint. Validation for Sort Code =AND(LEN([Sort Code])=6,ISNUMBER([Sort Code]+0)) The above formula checks The length of the sort code must be exactly 6 digits. The sort code must be a number. Validation for Account Number =AND(LEN([Account Number])=8,ISNUMBER([Account Number]+0))

Streamlining SharePoint Template Usage: A Guide to Opening DOTX Files as DOCX Encountering issues with opening “.dotx” templates in SharePoint is a common scenario that can disrupt your workflow. Typically, when you attempt to open a “.dotx” file in SharePoint, it opens in edit mode for the template itself, rather than generating a new “.docx” document as expected. This behavior diverges from the experience in Windows File Explorer and can hinder productivity.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring OneDrive Tenant Settings with PowerShell OneDrive makes it easy to collaborate by sharing files and folders with others. OneDrive is the storage space for personal productivity and not meant for collaboration. Data stored within OneDrive are Files shared to chats within Teams Files shared with end user by other OneDrive users. OneNote Personal lists and Document storage Shortcuts to SharePoint sites/libraries Favourites Loops within chats Streams In this article, we’ll explore into how PowerShell can empower SharePoint administrators to configure OneDrive sharing settings proactively at the tenant level, addressing oversharing concerns for the M365 Copilot rollout.

Counting Files and Folders within SharePoint Libraries using PnP PowerShell This post shows a PowerShell script using PnP PowerShell module to count the number of files and folders within a SharePoint library. It might be useful doing an inventory of file count. $SiteURL = "Counting Files within a SharePoint Library using PnP PowerShell" # Generate a unique log file name using today's date $dateTime = (Get-Date).toString("dd-MM-yyyy") $invocation = (Get-Variable MyInvocation).Value $directorypath = Split-Path $invocation.

Retrieving File Count and Size of a folder within a SharePoint Library using PnP PowerShell This post covers a PowerShell script that uses the PnP PowerShell module to retrieve the file count and total size of a specific folder within a SharePoint library. #Parameters $SiteURL = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/company311" $FolderSiteRelativeURL = "Shared Documents/Test1" #Connect to PnP Online Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Interactive #Get the folder $Folder = Get-PnPFolder -Url $FolderSiteRelativeURL -Includes ListItemAllFields #Get the total Size of the folder - with versions Write-host "Size of the Folder:" $([Math]::Round(($Folder.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring Microsoft Loop Sharing SharePoint Tenant and Site Settings with PowerShell Guest users can be invited to collaborate within Microsoft Loop in the tenant. Refer How to work with guest users using Microsoft Loop how sharing within Loop works. This post focuses on using PowerShell to control the Microsoft Loop sharing settings to help securing data especially with M365 Copilot which can expose data not previously accessible by other means.

Sharing Options Updates - Send Email button greyed out Starting from March 2024, there has been a notable change in SharePoint’s sharing options. If a user is not allowed to share on a SharePoint site (for instance, when a user is a member and only owners have sharing privileges), the Send Email button appears greyed out. Additionally, a warning message is displayed: Sharing is limited on this item. You can only copy links for people who have existing access, and you can’t invite anyone new.

Query Unique Permissions in SharePoint using CSOM and PnP PowerShell Managing permissions in SharePoint is a critical aspect of maintaining data security and compliance within organisations. However, as SharePoint environments grow in complexity, manually auditing and managing permissions becomes increasingly challenging. To address this challenge, PowerShell scripts can be leveraged to automate the auditing process, providing administrators with valuable insights into permission structures across SharePoint sites and libraries. What do SharePoint permissions have to do with Copilot for Microsoft 365?

Retrieving SharePoint Site URL for Teams Channels Have you ever needed to construct the SharePoint site URL for a private or shared channel using just the channel name? This post will guide you through the process using Microsoft Graph endpoint and PnP PowerShell though PowerShell. You may need the details for these reasons To specify within a retention policy Purview Retention Policy Questions from the Field eDiscovery Extract from eDiscovery of private and shared channels “Each private and shared channel has its own SharePoint site that’s separate from the parent team site.

Troubleshooting NVM Setup Issues for SPFx Development I have not used my dev machine for SPFx development for over a year. Before diving into any new SPFx development, I followed the typical procedure of installing the latest Node.js version 18.19.0 supported by the current SPFx version (1.18.2) using nvm (node version management).nvm allows to maintain different development environment. nvm install 18.19.0 Following this, I proceeded to install the SPFx toolchain:

Get Folder Item properties using PnP PowerShell : Get-PnPFolderItem versus Get-PnPListItem Introduction In this blog post, we will explore an alternative approach to retrieving folder item properties using PnP PowerShell. We will discuss the limitations of the Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet and demonstrate how to use Get-PnPListItem to overcome those limitations. The Limitations of Get-PnPFolderItem The Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet is not suitable for working with large libraries. When attempting to retrieve items from a large library, you may encounter the following error message:

Automating Site Reindexing with PowerShell Introduction Keeping your SharePoint environment up-to-date is crucial, especially after making schema changes. One important aspect of maintaining accurate and relevant search results is to regularly reindex sites, libraries, or lists. In this blog post, we will explore a streamlined approach using PnP PowerShell to automate the reindexing process. By leveraging this script, you can ensure that your search results reflect the latest changes in your SharePoint environment.

For many organizations, maintaining a consistent brand identity across SharePoint sites is crucial. The distinction between “Site Logo” and “Site Logo Thumbnail” is essential, as they serve different purposes across SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site logo thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, when copying/moving files, and other critical areas. It plays a vital role in helping end users differentiate between various SharePoint Online (SPO) sites and Teams.

Unveiling Audit Logs with PnP PowerShell for the last 7 days Understanding and tracking activities within your M365 environment is crucial for maintaining security and compliance. Audit Logs offer a wealth of information, and in this post, we’ll delve into the methods to retrieve and analyze them. Specifically, we’ll focus on leveraging the Office 365 Management Activity API reference through the Get-PnPUnifiedAuditLog PnP PowerShell cmdlet. It is a great alternative if you are only a SharePoint Administrator with no global admin or Purview Audit logs access.

Recreating Deleted Owners Group for M365-Connected SharePoint Sites If out-of-the-box (OOB) groups such as owners, members, or visitors have been deleted accidentally from your SharePoint site, this article may assist you in recovering those vanished groups specifically for M365 linked Team site. I recently encountered a distress call from an end user facing data access issues on a SharePoint Team site. To my dismay, I discovered that the SharePoint Owners group had been accidentally deleted, prompting me to seek and implement a solution to restore access.

Updating Approval Details in SharePoint Library using ‘Send HTTP Request to SharePoint’ in Power Automate In Power Automate, there are two methods for updating file properties: Send HTTP Request to SharePoint Update File Properties While the latter suffices for most cases, I opted for the “Send HTTP Request to SharePoint” in specific scenarios: To avoid triggering a new file version using system update. When modifying system columns such as author or modified date.

Leveraging ChatGPT to Generate Test Data for SharePoint Lists Using PnP PowerShell Utilizing ChatGPT to generate test data for various applications is a powerful capability. After stumbling upon the sample script Create test users using MS Graph API from list or ask ChatGPT to generate test users by Valeras Narbutas on creating test users with MS Graph API, I decided to explore using ChatGPT to generate a list of data. This script harnesses OpenAI’s ChatGPT model to effortlessly generate a list of wellbeing activities.

Optimising Large List Updates with PnP Batch: Handling Throttling and Enhancing Efficiency In this article, we explore how to efficiently update a large SharePoint list containing approximately 60,000 items using PnP-Batch. Updating such a substantial number of items individually can be time-consuming and prone to throttling issues. Prior to using PnP Batch , it was taking more than 12 hours to update 60k one by one. The article highlights the benefits of using PnP Batch, which significantly reduces the time taken for updates by sending fewer requests.

Troubleshooting SharePoint Storage Reports with PowerShell As the amount of data stored in SharePoint grows, it becomes important to monitor and manage storage usage. In this blog post, we will explore how to generate storage reports for SharePoint sites using PowerShell. These reports will provide insights into the storage usage of sites and individual files, including file versions and the size of the recycle bin. However the reports can only give a glimpse of at least 60-90% of storage.

Introduction After encountering issues with creating a To-Do task action in my previous attempt Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to list my ToDo Tasks, I explored various methods to generate an OpenAPI specification for M365 Copilot Declarative Agents using the Ms Graph OpenAPI spec. This post outlines the different approaches I tried, the challenges I faced, and the lessons learned. Methods for Generating OpenAPI Specs 1.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure AI Search APIs from a M365 Copilot declarative agent without writing any code by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure AI Search, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Waldek Mastykarz wrote an insightful post on when Azure AI Search can be used, highlighting its ability to provide a more controlled approach to indexing and relevance without the complexity of building a custom engine agent.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure OpenAI APIs from a Copilot declarative agent—without writing any code—by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure OpenAI, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Step 1: Create and Import an OpenAPI Specification Microsoft provides a pre-built OpenAPI specification for Azure OpenAI, but it’s often broader than needed. To simplify, I generated a targeted OpenAPI spec with Copilot by using the endpoint URL and a sample request body as a prompt.

Introduction After encountering issues with creating a To-Do task action in my previous attempt Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to list my ToDo Tasks, I explored various methods to generate an OpenAPI specification for M365 Copilot Declarative Agents using the Ms Graph OpenAPI spec. This post outlines the different approaches I tried, the challenges I faced, and the lessons learned. Methods for Generating OpenAPI Specs 1.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure OpenAI APIs from a Copilot declarative agent—without writing any code—by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure OpenAI, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Step 1: Create and Import an OpenAPI Specification Microsoft provides a pre-built OpenAPI specification for Azure OpenAI, but it’s often broader than needed. To simplify, I generated a targeted OpenAPI spec with Copilot by using the endpoint URL and a sample request body as a prompt.

Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman I attended the session Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman on the 19th Oct 2023. He demoed how to leverage Azure Open AI Service to “add your own data” combined with ChatGPT to retrieve information from your company owned data covering elements of generative AI and reinforcing some of the points highlighted in the Keynote such as prompt engineering, grounding, jail breaking, etc.

Introduction After encountering issues with creating a To-Do task action in my previous attempt Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to list my ToDo Tasks, I explored various methods to generate an OpenAPI specification for M365 Copilot Declarative Agents using the Ms Graph OpenAPI spec. This post outlines the different approaches I tried, the challenges I faced, and the lessons learned. Methods for Generating OpenAPI Specs 1.

Introduction In a previous post, I detailed the steps for Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to List My ToDo Tasks. However, I encountered issues with the CreateTask function when using an OpenAPI spec generated with Kiota. Upon investigation, I identified the problem as being related to the handling of complex objects, particularly those involving dates. Even after simplifying the object structure, the CreateTask function continued to fail.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure AI Search APIs from a M365 Copilot declarative agent without writing any code by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure AI Search, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Waldek Mastykarz wrote an insightful post on when Azure AI Search can be used, highlighting its ability to provide a more controlled approach to indexing and relevance without the complexity of building a custom engine agent.

Introduction In this blog post, I demonstrate how to create an OpenAPI specification for interacting with a SharePoint list using Microsoft Graph for integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot Declarative Agents. The list in question was created using the tracker template. This approach allows you to define and document API interactions, making it easier to integrate with tools like Teams Toolkit or Copilot for automation and extensibility. Scenario We aim to create an OpenAPI YAML file to interact with the following endpoint:

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure OpenAI APIs from a Copilot declarative agent—without writing any code—by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure OpenAI, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Step 1: Create and Import an OpenAPI Specification Microsoft provides a pre-built OpenAPI specification for Azure OpenAI, but it’s often broader than needed. To simplify, I generated a targeted OpenAPI spec with Copilot by using the endpoint URL and a sample request body as a prompt.

Introduction This guide walks you through creating a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph API. By leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Kiota, and Teams Toolkit, you can build a plugin to interact with Microsoft Graph endpoints. I used the blog post Copilot Graph API QnA Plugin by Franck Cornu as inspiration with some variation to apply it to get my ToDo tasks. Plugins for Copilot agents rely on OpenAPI specifications. While the complete Microsoft Graph OpenAPI specification exists, it is a massive file (34MB) and not practical for performance reasons.

Troubleshooting Copilot Agent Teams Toolkit M365Graph Plugin Issues When building a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit, you may encounter certain errors that can hinder your progress. This blog post highlights common issues and provides solutions to help you resolve them effectively. Common Issues and Fixes 1. name_for_human Exceeds 20 Characters Issue: You may encounter the following error when the name_for_human field in the ai-plugin.json file exceeds 20 characters: name_for_human in PluginManifestDocument has characters beyond the length 20 that MAY be ignored.

Embed GitHub Gist in Hugo posts I was approached by Divya Akula with a suggestion to use a link to GitHub for my script and I really bought in the idea because I used to do it on Wordpress. I started googling and trying out solutions which did not work and messed up my blog repo. Fortunately being MVP I have access to GitHub Copilot and asked Copilot with a simple prompt which gave me a simple straight forward looking solution.

Exploring some Limitations of Copilot in Power Automate I was thrilled when Copilot became available in the UK region within Power Automate around mid-November 2023. To understand its functionalities and limitations, I started exploring. Please refer to Understanding the Cloud Flows Designer, which outlines some limitations and described the Flows Designer experience. Creating New Flows While creating a new flow using the prompt “Start an approval process and update the item in a SharePoint list when a new item is created,” I noticed a functional flow generated.

MS Build AI Day Keynote by Scott Hanselman On October 19, 2023, the inaugural MS Build AI Day at Excel London in Custom House marked a pivotal moment for the world of AI. As an attendee, I had the privilege of witnessing a groundbreaking keynote session led by none other than Scott Hanselman. Titled “Navigating the AI Landscape,” the keynote, introduced by Michael Wignall, the lead for MS Build, set the stage for an eventful day filled with insights, connections, and hands-on experiences.

Introduction After encountering issues with creating a To-Do task action in my previous attempt Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to list my ToDo Tasks, I explored various methods to generate an OpenAPI specification for M365 Copilot Declarative Agents using the Ms Graph OpenAPI spec. This post outlines the different approaches I tried, the challenges I faced, and the lessons learned. Methods for Generating OpenAPI Specs 1.

Introduction In a previous post, I detailed the steps for Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to List My ToDo Tasks. However, I encountered issues with the CreateTask function when using an OpenAPI spec generated with Kiota. Upon investigation, I identified the problem as being related to the handling of complex objects, particularly those involving dates. Even after simplifying the object structure, the CreateTask function continued to fail.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure AI Search APIs from a M365 Copilot declarative agent without writing any code by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure AI Search, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Waldek Mastykarz wrote an insightful post on when Azure AI Search can be used, highlighting its ability to provide a more controlled approach to indexing and relevance without the complexity of building a custom engine agent.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure OpenAI APIs from a Copilot declarative agent—without writing any code—by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure OpenAI, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Step 1: Create and Import an OpenAPI Specification Microsoft provides a pre-built OpenAPI specification for Azure OpenAI, but it’s often broader than needed. To simplify, I generated a targeted OpenAPI spec with Copilot by using the endpoint URL and a sample request body as a prompt.

Introduction This guide walks you through creating a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph API. By leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Kiota, and Teams Toolkit, you can build a plugin to interact with Microsoft Graph endpoints. I used the blog post Copilot Graph API QnA Plugin by Franck Cornu as inspiration with some variation to apply it to get my ToDo tasks. Plugins for Copilot agents rely on OpenAPI specifications. While the complete Microsoft Graph OpenAPI specification exists, it is a massive file (34MB) and not practical for performance reasons.

Troubleshooting Copilot Agent Teams Toolkit M365Graph Plugin Issues When building a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit, you may encounter certain errors that can hinder your progress. This blog post highlights common issues and provides solutions to help you resolve them effectively. Common Issues and Fixes 1. name_for_human Exceeds 20 Characters Issue: You may encounter the following error when the name_for_human field in the ai-plugin.json file exceeds 20 characters: name_for_human in PluginManifestDocument has characters beyond the length 20 that MAY be ignored.

Introduction Balancing AI safety measures and practical functionality for SharePoint Agents is key for some use cases due to the lack of customisation of the inbuilt content safety against the four categories: harm, self-harm, sex, and hate. A particular use case we wanted to explore was its use for mental health support agents in the form of virtual mental health first aiders. My partner in crime Lee Ford and I explored what we could do without tripping the Responsible AI principles and flagging Content Safety categories.

Introduction SharePoint Agent is the easiest way to get started with building your own grounded Agents from your SharePoint data. The possibilities are vast, from HR agents to legal agents. If more configuration and features are required, the Copilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry could help. Each SharePoint site comes with its own default Agent scoped to data within the site. As of today (i.e. March 2025), the default SharePoint agent can’t be modified.

Introduction After encountering issues with creating a To-Do task action in my previous attempt Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to list my ToDo Tasks, I explored various methods to generate an OpenAPI specification for M365 Copilot Declarative Agents using the Ms Graph OpenAPI spec. This post outlines the different approaches I tried, the challenges I faced, and the lessons learned. Methods for Generating OpenAPI Specs 1.

Introduction In a previous post, I detailed the steps for Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to List My ToDo Tasks. However, I encountered issues with the CreateTask function when using an OpenAPI spec generated with Kiota. Upon investigation, I identified the problem as being related to the handling of complex objects, particularly those involving dates. Even after simplifying the object structure, the CreateTask function continued to fail.

Introduction When working with the UserInformationList in SharePoint via Microsoft Graph, you might encounter challenges when trying to search or filter user information. This post highlights the issues I faced while attempting to use $search and $filter queries on the UserInformationList, along with examples and insights within M365 Copilot declarative agent. Issue 1: Search by Email Did Not Work I attempted to search for a user by their email address using the $search query, but it did not return any results.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure AI Search APIs from a M365 Copilot declarative agent without writing any code by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure AI Search, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Waldek Mastykarz wrote an insightful post on when Azure AI Search can be used, highlighting its ability to provide a more controlled approach to indexing and relevance without the complexity of building a custom engine agent.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure OpenAI APIs from a Copilot declarative agent—without writing any code—by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure OpenAI, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Step 1: Create and Import an OpenAPI Specification Microsoft provides a pre-built OpenAPI specification for Azure OpenAI, but it’s often broader than needed. To simplify, I generated a targeted OpenAPI spec with Copilot by using the endpoint URL and a sample request body as a prompt.

Introduction This guide walks you through creating a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph API. By leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Kiota, and Teams Toolkit, you can build a plugin to interact with Microsoft Graph endpoints. I used the blog post Copilot Graph API QnA Plugin by Franck Cornu as inspiration with some variation to apply it to get my ToDo tasks. Plugins for Copilot agents rely on OpenAPI specifications. While the complete Microsoft Graph OpenAPI specification exists, it is a massive file (34MB) and not practical for performance reasons.

Troubleshooting Copilot Agent Teams Toolkit M365Graph Plugin Issues When building a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit, you may encounter certain errors that can hinder your progress. This blog post highlights common issues and provides solutions to help you resolve them effectively. Common Issues and Fixes 1. name_for_human Exceeds 20 Characters Issue: You may encounter the following error when the name_for_human field in the ai-plugin.json file exceeds 20 characters: name_for_human in PluginManifestDocument has characters beyond the length 20 that MAY be ignored.

Introduction After encountering issues with creating a To-Do task action in my previous attempt Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to list my ToDo Tasks, I explored various methods to generate an OpenAPI specification for M365 Copilot Declarative Agents using the Ms Graph OpenAPI spec. This post outlines the different approaches I tried, the challenges I faced, and the lessons learned. Methods for Generating OpenAPI Specs 1.

Introduction When working with the UserInformationList in SharePoint via Microsoft Graph, you might encounter challenges when trying to search or filter user information. This post highlights the issues I faced while attempting to use $search and $filter queries on the UserInformationList, along with examples and insights within M365 Copilot declarative agent. Issue 1: Search by Email Did Not Work I attempted to search for a user by their email address using the $search query, but it did not return any results.

Introduction In this blog post, I demonstrate how to create an OpenAPI specification for interacting with a SharePoint list using Microsoft Graph for integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot Declarative Agents. The list in question was created using the tracker template. This approach allows you to define and document API interactions, making it easier to integrate with tools like Teams Toolkit or Copilot for automation and extensibility. Scenario We aim to create an OpenAPI YAML file to interact with the following endpoint:

Introduction Managing Microsoft 365 Group settings is crucial for maintaining a compliant and secure environment.PowerShell and Microsoft Graph can be used to configure various group settings, including naming policies, guest access, and more. As a regular user of PnP PowerShell, I aimed to replicate the functionality of the Microsoft Entra cmdlets for configuring group settings using PnP PowerShell. Example Script to Update naming policy Settings The following PowerShell script updates the naming group settings using the Microsoft Graph API and PnP PowerShell.

Introduction When working with files in SharePoint, the drive ID and drive item ID are essential parameters for further manipulation using Microsoft Graph API. The drive ID is a base64 encoded string composed of the site ID, web ID, and list ID for a particular SharePoint library. For more details, refer to Microsoft Graph: Encoding and decoding the drive ID by Mikael Svenson. The item ID part appears to be a base32 encoding of the SharePoint item’s unique ID, though the exact mechanics are still being explored.

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

When using Power Automate with Excel for Business actions, the drive ID for a library is automatically determined. However, if you deploy a Power Automate solution across different environments and use a library as a datasource environment variable, referencing this variable in the flow can result in an error due to an invalid drive ID. Referencing the variable in the Power Automate flow, it will throw an error message failing to work our the drive id of the library.

Updating the expiration time and role for sharing links is still limited. Although it seems possible through the Graph API Update permission, I have been unable to pass the roles as body parameters. Graph Explorer Attempts Using the following script: Invoke-PnPGraphMethod -Url "v1.0/drives/$driveId/items/$driveItemId/permissions/$($ShareLink.Id)" -Method Patch -Content @{ roles = @("read") } threw the error message “Invalid input: No Information provided to update the specifed permission” From the UI Anyone link can’t be edited Organisation link can’t be edited Specific people links can be edited Using the network tab from the browser developer tools enables identifying the endpoint to update specific people links only.

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Retrieving SiteId from Microsoft Graph for Subsequent API Calls This post offers an option to retrieve a SiteId from Microsoft Graph using PnP PowerShell. This can be particularly useful when making further API calls that require the SiteId. $siteurl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Company311" Connect-PnPOnline -url $siteurl -interactive # for the site url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com/teams/app-m365 # Extract the domain and site name $uri = New-Object System.Uri($siteurl) $domain = $uri.Host $siteName = $uri.AbsolutePath # Construct the new URL $RestMethodUrl = "v1.

Retrieving SharePoint Site URL for Teams Channels Have you ever needed to construct the SharePoint site URL for a private or shared channel using just the channel name? This post will guide you through the process using Microsoft Graph endpoint and PnP PowerShell though PowerShell. You may need the details for these reasons To specify within a retention policy Purview Retention Policy Questions from the Field eDiscovery Extract from eDiscovery of private and shared channels “Each private and shared channel has its own SharePoint site that’s separate from the parent team site.

Introduction After encountering issues with creating a To-Do task action in my previous attempt Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to list my ToDo Tasks, I explored various methods to generate an OpenAPI specification for M365 Copilot Declarative Agents using the Ms Graph OpenAPI spec. This post outlines the different approaches I tried, the challenges I faced, and the lessons learned. Methods for Generating OpenAPI Specs 1.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure AI Search APIs from a M365 Copilot declarative agent without writing any code by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure AI Search, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Waldek Mastykarz wrote an insightful post on when Azure AI Search can be used, highlighting its ability to provide a more controlled approach to indexing and relevance without the complexity of building a custom engine agent.

Introduction In this blog post, I demonstrate how to create an OpenAPI specification for interacting with a SharePoint list using Microsoft Graph for integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot Declarative Agents. The list in question was created using the tracker template. This approach allows you to define and document API interactions, making it easier to integrate with tools like Teams Toolkit or Copilot for automation and extensibility. Scenario We aim to create an OpenAPI YAML file to interact with the following endpoint:

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure OpenAI APIs from a Copilot declarative agent—without writing any code—by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure OpenAI, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Step 1: Create and Import an OpenAPI Specification Microsoft provides a pre-built OpenAPI specification for Azure OpenAI, but it’s often broader than needed. To simplify, I generated a targeted OpenAPI spec with Copilot by using the endpoint URL and a sample request body as a prompt.

Introduction After encountering issues with creating a To-Do task action in my previous attempt Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to list my ToDo Tasks, I explored various methods to generate an OpenAPI specification for M365 Copilot Declarative Agents using the Ms Graph OpenAPI spec. This post outlines the different approaches I tried, the challenges I faced, and the lessons learned. Methods for Generating OpenAPI Specs 1.

Introduction In a previous post, I detailed the steps for Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to List My ToDo Tasks. However, I encountered issues with the CreateTask function when using an OpenAPI spec generated with Kiota. Upon investigation, I identified the problem as being related to the handling of complex objects, particularly those involving dates. Even after simplifying the object structure, the CreateTask function continued to fail.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure AI Search APIs from a M365 Copilot declarative agent without writing any code by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure AI Search, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Waldek Mastykarz wrote an insightful post on when Azure AI Search can be used, highlighting its ability to provide a more controlled approach to indexing and relevance without the complexity of building a custom engine agent.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure OpenAI APIs from a Copilot declarative agent—without writing any code—by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure OpenAI, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Step 1: Create and Import an OpenAPI Specification Microsoft provides a pre-built OpenAPI specification for Azure OpenAI, but it’s often broader than needed. To simplify, I generated a targeted OpenAPI spec with Copilot by using the endpoint URL and a sample request body as a prompt.

Introduction This guide walks you through creating a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph API. By leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Kiota, and Teams Toolkit, you can build a plugin to interact with Microsoft Graph endpoints. I used the blog post Copilot Graph API QnA Plugin by Franck Cornu as inspiration with some variation to apply it to get my ToDo tasks. Plugins for Copilot agents rely on OpenAPI specifications. While the complete Microsoft Graph OpenAPI specification exists, it is a massive file (34MB) and not practical for performance reasons.

Troubleshooting Copilot Agent Teams Toolkit M365Graph Plugin Issues When building a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit, you may encounter certain errors that can hinder your progress. This blog post highlights common issues and provides solutions to help you resolve them effectively. Common Issues and Fixes 1. name_for_human Exceeds 20 Characters Issue: You may encounter the following error when the name_for_human field in the ai-plugin.json file exceeds 20 characters: name_for_human in PluginManifestDocument has characters beyond the length 20 that MAY be ignored.

Introduction In a previous post, I detailed the steps for Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to List My ToDo Tasks. However, I encountered issues with the CreateTask function when using an OpenAPI spec generated with Kiota. Upon investigation, I identified the problem as being related to the handling of complex objects, particularly those involving dates. Even after simplifying the object structure, the CreateTask function continued to fail.

Introduction This guide walks you through creating a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph API. By leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Kiota, and Teams Toolkit, you can build a plugin to interact with Microsoft Graph endpoints. I used the blog post Copilot Graph API QnA Plugin by Franck Cornu as inspiration with some variation to apply it to get my ToDo tasks. Plugins for Copilot agents rely on OpenAPI specifications. While the complete Microsoft Graph OpenAPI specification exists, it is a massive file (34MB) and not practical for performance reasons.

Troubleshooting Copilot Agent Teams Toolkit M365Graph Plugin Issues When building a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit, you may encounter certain errors that can hinder your progress. This blog post highlights common issues and provides solutions to help you resolve them effectively. Common Issues and Fixes 1. name_for_human Exceeds 20 Characters Issue: You may encounter the following error when the name_for_human field in the ai-plugin.json file exceeds 20 characters: name_for_human in PluginManifestDocument has characters beyond the length 20 that MAY be ignored.

Introduction Embedding a Copilot Studio Agent within a SharePoint page can significantly enhance user experience by providing seamless access to AI-powered assistance directly within the context of a SharePoint site. While there are examples of achieving this using SPFx (SharePoint Framework), I wanted to explore whether this could be done using out-of-the-box (OOB) features without custom development. In this blog post, I will walk you through the steps to embed a Copilot Studio Agent into a SharePoint page using the Embed Webpart and site settings.

Introduction Balancing AI safety measures and practical functionality for SharePoint Agents is key for some use cases due to the lack of customisation of the inbuilt content safety against the four categories: harm, self-harm, sex, and hate. A particular use case we wanted to explore was its use for mental health support agents in the form of virtual mental health first aiders. My partner in crime Lee Ford and I explored what we could do without tripping the Responsible AI principles and flagging Content Safety categories.

Introduction SharePoint Agent is the easiest way to get started with building your own grounded Agents from your SharePoint data. The possibilities are vast, from HR agents to legal agents. If more configuration and features are required, the Copilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry could help. Each SharePoint site comes with its own default Agent scoped to data within the site. As of today (i.e. March 2025), the default SharePoint agent can’t be modified.

My Visual Studio subscription was deactivated, resulting in the loss of my Azure subscription and licenses to access Microsoft Teams within my M365 developer tenant. This post covers my attempts to recover access in vain. Access to Microsoft Teams I thought I could extend my access to Microsoft Teams by opting for a free trial for Microsoft 365 E5 (no Teams) and Teams Premium - Microsoft Teams Premium. However, this did not restore access to Microsoft Teams despite waiting multiple hours after I added the above licenses.

Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. The sharing link is created when the copy links is clicked from the sharing pop up options when people other those already have existing access are picked. However by default, if sharing options have not been configured, links to “People in ” or “Anyone” (if external sharing is allowed) is selected

Introduction Understanding the sensitivity and retention labels applied to files in your SharePoint Online sites is essential for maintaining data security and compliance. These labels enable you to manage and protect your data by defining retention periods and handling sensitive information appropriately. This is particularly important for initiatives like the Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, ensuring that the correct files are stored within the appropriate SharePoint sites. For example, if a SharePoint site is a public Team site, files labeled as confidential should be moved to a private Team site or existing Team site updated from public to private.

Managing sharing settings for SharePoint sites is crucial for maintaining a secure and well-governed environment. With the help of PowerShell, administrators can efficiently retrieve and manage these settings across their SharePoint Online tenant. This ensures that sensitive information is not overshared and that your organisation’s data remains secure. Importance of Reviewing Sharing Settings Reviewing sharing settings is essential to prevent oversharing, which can lead to data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Have you ever wondered how to default the default sharing link in Teams chats to ‘People currently in this chat’? By default, if “Anyone” is disabled within the tenant, the sharing link is set to “People in my organization”. This can be a challenge when you want to limit access to only those in the current chat. All files uploaded to a Teams Chat are stored in the uploader’s OneDrive for Business.

As part of the M365 Copilot rollout , questions were raised on the /portals/Community and /portals/hub as both ‘Everyone Except External Users’ was granted access raising concerns on the content on the site. These are legacy sites and are currently inaccessible. Historically, these sites were accessible via the legacy SharePoint admin centre, however, they are not available through the modern SharePoint admin centre interface. Thanks to Gregory Zelfond’s blog post What are all these site collections in SharePoint?

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring OneDrive Tenant Settings with PowerShell OneDrive makes it easy to collaborate by sharing files and folders with others. OneDrive is the storage space for personal productivity and not meant for collaboration. Data stored within OneDrive are Files shared to chats within Teams Files shared with end user by other OneDrive users. OneNote Personal lists and Document storage Shortcuts to SharePoint sites/libraries Favourites Loops within chats Streams In this article, we’ll explore into how PowerShell can empower SharePoint administrators to configure OneDrive sharing settings proactively at the tenant level, addressing oversharing concerns for the M365 Copilot rollout.

Deletion of sharing links with PowerShell As organisations look to deploy Copilot for Microsoft 365, ensuring the security and proper governance of shared content is important. The rollout of Copilot introduces advanced AI capabilities across Microsoft 365 apps using content from SharePoint/OneDrive, making it even more essential to manage sharing links judiciously to tackle the issue of oversharing. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Excluding certain SharePoint sites from search would mean the contents from the excluded sites won’t be available to M365 tenant search and M365 Copilot using Restricted SharePoint Search feature. The downsides using this feature are: Limited Findability: By excluding certain SharePoint sites from search, you limit the findability of data. Users would need to know the specific sites where the data resides in order to search for it. This can hinder efficient data retrieval and records management.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring Microsoft Loop Sharing SharePoint Tenant and Site Settings with PowerShell Guest users can be invited to collaborate within Microsoft Loop in the tenant. Refer How to work with guest users using Microsoft Loop how sharing within Loop works. This post focuses on using PowerShell to control the Microsoft Loop sharing settings to help securing data especially with M365 Copilot which can expose data not previously accessible by other means.

Query Unique Permissions in SharePoint using CSOM and PnP PowerShell Managing permissions in SharePoint is a critical aspect of maintaining data security and compliance within organisations. However, as SharePoint environments grow in complexity, manually auditing and managing permissions becomes increasingly challenging. To address this challenge, PowerShell scripts can be leveraged to automate the auditing process, providing administrators with valuable insights into permission structures across SharePoint sites and libraries. What do SharePoint permissions have to do with Copilot for Microsoft 365?

Introduction In a previous post, I detailed the steps for Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to List My ToDo Tasks. However, I encountered issues with the CreateTask function when using an OpenAPI spec generated with Kiota. Upon investigation, I identified the problem as being related to the handling of complex objects, particularly those involving dates. Even after simplifying the object structure, the CreateTask function continued to fail.

Introduction This guide walks you through creating a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph API. By leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Kiota, and Teams Toolkit, you can build a plugin to interact with Microsoft Graph endpoints. I used the blog post Copilot Graph API QnA Plugin by Franck Cornu as inspiration with some variation to apply it to get my ToDo tasks. Plugins for Copilot agents rely on OpenAPI specifications. While the complete Microsoft Graph OpenAPI specification exists, it is a massive file (34MB) and not practical for performance reasons.

Troubleshooting Copilot Agent Teams Toolkit M365Graph Plugin Issues When building a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit, you may encounter certain errors that can hinder your progress. This blog post highlights common issues and provides solutions to help you resolve them effectively. Common Issues and Fixes 1. name_for_human Exceeds 20 Characters Issue: You may encounter the following error when the name_for_human field in the ai-plugin.json file exceeds 20 characters: name_for_human in PluginManifestDocument has characters beyond the length 20 that MAY be ignored.

Introduction In a previous post, I detailed the steps for Building a Copilot Agent with Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph Plugin to List My ToDo Tasks. However, I encountered issues with the CreateTask function when using an OpenAPI spec generated with Kiota. Upon investigation, I identified the problem as being related to the handling of complex objects, particularly those involving dates. Even after simplifying the object structure, the CreateTask function continued to fail.

Introduction This guide walks you through creating a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph API. By leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Kiota, and Teams Toolkit, you can build a plugin to interact with Microsoft Graph endpoints. I used the blog post Copilot Graph API QnA Plugin by Franck Cornu as inspiration with some variation to apply it to get my ToDo tasks. Plugins for Copilot agents rely on OpenAPI specifications. While the complete Microsoft Graph OpenAPI specification exists, it is a massive file (34MB) and not practical for performance reasons.

Troubleshooting Copilot Agent Teams Toolkit M365Graph Plugin Issues When building a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit, you may encounter certain errors that can hinder your progress. This blog post highlights common issues and provides solutions to help you resolve them effectively. Common Issues and Fixes 1. name_for_human Exceeds 20 Characters Issue: You may encounter the following error when the name_for_human field in the ai-plugin.json file exceeds 20 characters: name_for_human in PluginManifestDocument has characters beyond the length 20 that MAY be ignored.

Introduction Microsoft Teams offers private and shared channels as specialized collaboration spaces to cater to different organizational needs. While these channels provide enhanced security and collaboration features, they come with specific limitations and management challenges, particularly around the associated SharePoint sites. This post covers some limitations, and management tips for SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels, including PowerShell hacks and governance practices to overcome these challenges. Managing SharePoint Sites for Private and Shared Channels SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels are special types of sites with the limitations as identified by Gregory in his blog post Why you should never mess with Private and Shared Channel SharePoint Sites related to the inability to attach to a hub directly, being accessible from the Teams interface mainly, and inability to manage permissions at the site level, and with constrained external sharing.

Introduction It is possible to create M365 Groups and Teams with the same name, and there is currently no built-in way to prevent this. The new Team/Site/M365 Group is created with a random number appended to the Team name for the SharePoint site and m365 Group email address. Having duplicate names can cause confusion and increase risks, including: Wrongly Granting Permissions: Users may accidentally grant permissions to the wrong M365 Group or Team, leading to unauthorized access.

Introduction Renaming the ‘Files’ tab in Microsoft Teams to something more meaningful for your business, such as “All Access,” can enhance user experience. It can help to differentiate other document libraries added as tabs. The Files has been renamed to Shared for chats to show all the files and links that were sent in the chat, making it easier to find them- all in one place. However, it is not possible to rename the Files and Posts tabs from the UI within channels.

Introduction By default, guest access for Microsoft 365 groups is enabled within the tenant. This can be controlled either to allow or block guest access at the tenant level or for individual Microsoft 365 groups / Teams. For more information, check out Manage guest access in Microsoft 365 groups. PowerShell Script to Prevent Guest Access Below is a PowerShell script that allows you to disable/enable guest access for specific Microsoft 365 groups.

Introduction If ever you had the chance to get your hands onto the New chats & channels experience, you may notice that the Teams icon is missing from the tray on the left To access the channels, it is an option within the chats. Revert In case you find it confusing you can turn it off by following those steps Click on the button Update, settings and more at the top of Teams

Teamifying an Existing M365 Group with PowerShell Within M365 , SharePoint and Teams together provides a rich collaboaration platform. When a team site is created from SharePoint admin centre, it is not associated with a Teams despite a M365 group is created in the background. To extend SharePoint collaboration features , there is a need to “teamify” an existing Microsoft 365 Group, essentially attaching a new Teams instance to it to allow use of channels and other apps.

Retrieving SharePoint Site URL for Teams Channels Have you ever needed to construct the SharePoint site URL for a private or shared channel using just the channel name? This post will guide you through the process using Microsoft Graph endpoint and PnP PowerShell though PowerShell. You may need the details for these reasons To specify within a retention policy Purview Retention Policy Questions from the Field eDiscovery Extract from eDiscovery of private and shared channels “Each private and shared channel has its own SharePoint site that’s separate from the parent team site.

Teams Add-in Not Showing Within Outlook The add-in for setting up a teams meeting within the outlook application was no longer showing. The add-in was not available to be enabled within Outlook as per Troubleshoot the Teams Meeting add-in in Outlook for Windows. Even after reinstalling Teams or creating a new profile within Outlook, it did not fix the issue. As a workaround I was using Use Team calendar to create meeting Use Outlook Web App to create meetings With Microsoft Support’s help via a case we identified the issue was the missing following key:

Introduction When working with the UserInformationList in SharePoint via Microsoft Graph, you might encounter challenges when trying to search or filter user information. This post highlights the issues I faced while attempting to use $search and $filter queries on the UserInformationList, along with examples and insights within M365 Copilot declarative agent. Issue 1: Search by Email Did Not Work I attempted to search for a user by their email address using the $search query, but it did not return any results.

Introduction When working with the UserInformationList in SharePoint via Microsoft Graph, you might encounter challenges when trying to search or filter user information. This post highlights the issues I faced while attempting to use $search and $filter queries on the UserInformationList, along with examples and insights within M365 Copilot declarative agent. Issue 1: Search by Email Did Not Work I attempted to search for a user by their email address using the $search query, but it did not return any results.

Introduction In this post, I’ll walk you through how to call Azure AI Search APIs from a M365 Copilot declarative agent without writing any code by using Teams Toolkit. Leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Teams Toolkit enables seamless integration with Azure AI Search, streamlining the development process for Copilot extensibility. Waldek Mastykarz wrote an insightful post on when Azure AI Search can be used, highlighting its ability to provide a more controlled approach to indexing and relevance without the complexity of building a custom engine agent.

Introduction In this blog post, we’ll explore how to trigger a single Power Automate flow from multiple SharePoint libraries, lists, and sites. This approach is particularly useful for standardizing workflows across different document libraries and sites, avoiding the need to replicate flows multiple times. This not only simplifies maintenance but also streamlines deployment. The For a selected file or For a selected item trigger action is key to achieving this. While the Manually trigger a flow action was considered, it does not pass the necessary context (site URL, library ID/name, and item ID) to the flow, making it unsuitable for this scenario.

Introduction In this blog post, we’ll explore how to trigger a single Power Automate flow from multiple SharePoint libraries, lists, and sites. This approach is particularly useful for standardizing workflows across different document libraries and sites, avoiding the need to replicate flows multiple times. This not only simplifies maintenance but also streamlines deployment. The For a selected file or For a selected item trigger action is key to achieving this. While the Manually trigger a flow action was considered, it does not pass the necessary context (site URL, library ID/name, and item ID) to the flow, making it unsuitable for this scenario.

Introduction In this blog post, we’ll explore how to trigger a single Power Automate flow from multiple SharePoint libraries, lists, and sites. This approach is particularly useful for standardizing workflows across different document libraries and sites, avoiding the need to replicate flows multiple times. This not only simplifies maintenance but also streamlines deployment. The For a selected file or For a selected item trigger action is key to achieving this. While the Manually trigger a flow action was considered, it does not pass the necessary context (site URL, library ID/name, and item ID) to the flow, making it unsuitable for this scenario.

Introduction Managing files in SharePoint libraries can be challenging, especially when dealing with test data or bulk operations. For instance, you may need to find and delete files containing specific names or patterns to reset a testing environment. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to locate and delete files in SharePoint libraries, including associated data in lists, to streamline the testing process. In this example, we had PDF files containing a series of receipts that were split into individual files using Power Automate with the Encodian connector.

Using column formatting in SharePoint, you can update the values of other fields using the setValue function. This approach allows you to create dynamic functionality in your lists and libraries without extensive development, helping to avoid accumulating technical debt. Updating a Managed Metadata field, however, is not as straightforward as simply specifying the display value. The field expects a specific format that includes the term’s ID (termId). Understanding Column Formatting Column formatting in SharePoint involves using a combination of inline CSS, HTML, and JSON to control how fields in lists and libraries are displayed.

Get Total Count of SharePoint Files, Folders, and Items with PnP PowerShell This PowerShell script powered by PnP PowerShell can help to get total count of files, folders, and list items across SharePoint tenant. This script is invaluable for administrators looking to perform audits, verify data migrations, or simply keep tabs on the content sprawl within their environments. The use case of this script was to get a total number of items that would be ingested into a third party application Records365 (provided by RecordPoint) to ensure the number tally for compliance purposes and identify any gaps.

Get Folder Item properties using PnP PowerShell : Get-PnPFolderItem versus Get-PnPListItem Introduction In this blog post, we will explore an alternative approach to retrieving folder item properties using PnP PowerShell. We will discuss the limitations of the Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet and demonstrate how to use Get-PnPListItem to overcome those limitations. The Limitations of Get-PnPFolderItem The Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet is not suitable for working with large libraries. When attempting to retrieve items from a large library, you may encounter the following error message:

SharePoint Column Formatting for Document libraries: Leveraging Name, Folder and Path properties While referencing [$Title] in lists is straightforward, document libraries demand a nuanced approach. Instead of [$Name], had to delve into the intricacies of internal names like $FileLeafRef and $FileRef when working with column formatting. $FileLeafRef: Denotes the name of the file. $FileRef: Represents the server-relative URL of the file. Initial attempts to incorporate $FileSystemObjectType for folder identification was challenging, indicating that not all document library internal column names are supported.

Introduction In this blog post, we’ll explore how to trigger a single Power Automate flow from multiple SharePoint libraries, lists, and sites. This approach is particularly useful for standardizing workflows across different document libraries and sites, avoiding the need to replicate flows multiple times. This not only simplifies maintenance but also streamlines deployment. The For a selected file or For a selected item trigger action is key to achieving this. While the Manually trigger a flow action was considered, it does not pass the necessary context (site URL, library ID/name, and item ID) to the flow, making it unsuitable for this scenario.

Power Automate: Retrieve SharePoint Library Internal Name When working with Power Automate, you may encounter scenarios where you need the internal name of a SharePoint library. For example, when creating a file in a library using Power Automate, the internal name is often required. Instead of manually adding the internal name as an environment variable, you can dynamically retrieve it using the Send an HTTP Request to SharePoint action. This blog post demonstrates how to retrieve the internal name of a SharePoint library using its ID or display name.

Introduction Have you ever encountered a stubborn Power Automate flow that won’t open in the new designer? For a long time, I stuck with the classic designer due to issues I faced with the new designer. However, I recently decided to make the switch for these reasons: New Power Automate features will only be available in the new designer Microsoft will get rid of classic designer Future proof flows as they might not be editable if classic designer is gone unless Microsoft caters for incompatible action schemas In this blog post, I’ll share my experience and the steps I took to transition from the classic designer to the new designer in Power Automate.

When using Power Automate with Excel for Business actions, the drive ID for a library is automatically determined. However, if you deploy a Power Automate solution across different environments and use a library as a datasource environment variable, referencing this variable in the flow can result in an error due to an invalid drive ID. Referencing the variable in the Power Automate flow, it will throw an error message failing to work our the drive id of the library.

Introduction In Power Automate, there are scenarios where a specific item needs to be excluded from an array to exclude. This blog post will guide you through the process of filtering an array to exclude the first approver from a list of approvers. This can be particularly useful in approval workflows where same person does not approve multiple stages. Step-by-Step Guide Add Filter Array Action This action will allow filtering out the first approver from the list of approvers.

Introduction In Power Automate/Power Platform, environment variables within solutions are essential for managing and configuring flows across different environments. However, there is no direct way to declare an environment variable as an array. This blog post will cover how to use JSON to store arrays as environment variables, enabling you to manage complex data structures efficiently. Available Environment Variable Types Power Automate offers various types of environment variables you can select and configure:

Introduction In Power Automate, retrieving details about the author of a SharePoint page can be essential for various workflows. This blog post will guide you through the steps to get the page author details using Power Automate. Add Send an Http request to SharePoint action and rename it to Get Page Author Details.Configure the action with the following settings: Site Address: triggerOutputs()?[‘body/SiteUrl’] Method: Get Uri : /_api/web/_api/Web/GetUserById(body(‘Parse_Page_Details_JSON’)?[’d’]?[‘AuthorId’]) Output of the API

How to Use the Instagram Basic Display Connector in Power Apps and Power Automate Instagram is a popular social media platform with over 1 billion monthly active users. It is a great platform for sharing photos and videos, and many businesses use it to promote their products and services. With the Instagram Basic Display (IndependentPublisher) connector, you can now easily retrieve data from Instagram accounts and use it in Power Apps and Power Automate.

Learn how to automatically refresh long-lived access tokens using the Instagram Graph API. Refer to how the Long-Lived Access Tokens for more info. Long-lived tokens are valid for 60 days and can be refreshed as long as they are at least 24 hours old but have not expired, and the app user has granted your app the instagram_graph_user_profile permission. Refreshed tokens are valid for 60 days from the date at which they are refreshed.

I had a flow created in the default environment that needed to be moved into a solution in a managed environment. However, the export link for Package (.zip) was missing as the flow was within a default solution (preferred). It was a huge flow, and manually recreating each action would have taken a considerable amount of time. I checked another flow where the Package (.zip) was available. Upon clicking the link, I noticed that /export was appended to the URL of the flow.

The SharePoint - Move file action can be used to move files, however the file can’t be moved if the file was accessed by the current Power Automate flow for any processing reslutng in a locked file error. { “status”: 400, “message”: “File ‘Shared Documents/Attendances/To Be Processed/Attendance -16072024.xlsx’ cannot be moved because it is in locked mode.\r\nclientRequestId: d6df7566-881f-4f14-8548-c5fac1eda46d\r\nserviceRequestId: 606841a1-40f0-9000-9c69-507df9b21720” } Handling Locked Files There are two options to handlelocked files when using SharePoint - Move file action:

When using Power Automate action Send an Http request to SharePoint specially to send data in the body to a REST API call, for instance to create a news link from a SharePoint List Item, you might encounter issues if the body contains double quotes in the title or description. This blog post will walk you through the problem and provide solutions to handle double quotes in JSON strings. Problem Overview Using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action to create a news link can fail if the JSON body contains double quotes.

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to create and publish a news link from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to create and publish a news link details. Send an Http request to SharePoint action renamed to Get Page Details. Site Address : site url Method : GET Uri : /_api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘Site%20Pages’)/items(10) Parse JSON renamed to Parse Page Details JSON Add the action Parse JSON and refer to the content from previous steps

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to get user details from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to retrieve a user details. Send an Http request to SharePoint action renamed to Get Page Author Details Site Address: https://test.sharepoint.com Method: GET URI: _api/Web/GetUserById(14) Here’s the output from the API: Here’s the output from the API:

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to get users from a SharePoint group from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. In the example below a SharePoint Group has been defined for approvers of a particular process and needed to be retrieved to be assigned an approval task. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to retrieve users from a SharePoint group.

This post outlines how to use Power Automate to update author and editor of a Page within SharePoint using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow, follow the following steps Add Send an Http request to SharePoint renamed to Update Author Properties Property Value Site Address The SharePoint site URL Method POST Uri See Uri below Headers See Headers table below Body See Body below Uri _api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘Site%20Pages’)/items(1)/ValidateUpdateListItem()`

Update A row action from Dataverse connector was not available to an older Power Automate.The requirement was to add ability to cancel an approval task created via action ‘Create Approval’ within 30 days as Power Automate flows timeout after 30 days. I noticed the action Update a Row in Selected Environment and decided to try it instead. Unfortunately it threw the forbidden error for no apparent reason with no obvious permissions to grant.

Power Automate copy actions across different environments If an action is copied from a different environment, the action is not avaible from the My Clipboard, if not you are presented with the following message only. Save time and paste your most-used Flow code snippets here. Select the ellipsis menu on any trigger or action, then choose Copy to my Clipboard. Note: Pasted code clears each time you log out of Power Automate.

Importing Dates and Numbers from Excel file into SharePoint list with Power Automate Transferring data from Excel to SharePoint lists can encounter format issues, especially with datetime and number fields. This post covers solutions to some challenges particularly related to dates and numbers. The flow is quite simple with an action to read contents from excel file and an action to create items into a sharepoint list. Handling DateTime Fields When importing datetime data with the “List rows present in a table” action from the “Excel Online for Business” connector, you might encounter format related errors.

Handling Locked Office Files issue In Power Automate Inspired by the workaround described by Pieter Veenstra System Updates in SharePoint from Power Automate using the ValidateUpdateListItem endpoint to help with the locked file issue, this post covers file version creation as well. File Locked Issue File lock issues in Power Automate can occur due to: The file being opened by a user. The file being updated by a Power Automate flow, which may take up to 6 minutes to release the lock.

Power Automate flow succeeded despite failure to update multi line text field within a SharePoint Library Updating multi-line text fields in a SharePoint Library from Power Automate flows, especially when the content exceeds 255 characters might fail if the field is not updated to allow unlimited length. This can cause workflows to fail silently. In a recent scenario, an action was added to a Power Automate flow to update a SharePoint Library’s multi-line text field named ‘ErrorLog’ with error details captured during the flow’s execution.

DateTime Handling in Power Automate Manipulating dates and times in Power Automate is a requirement at times. This post covers a few useful scenerios. Add To Time For instance, adding a specific number of months to a date retrieved from an action using AddToTime function: addToTime(body(‘Wait_for_an_approval_2’)?[‘completionDate’], int(body(‘Get_file_properties’)?[‘ReviewFrequency’]?[‘Value’]), ‘Month’, ‘dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm’) Substract Time Specific number of months can be substracted from the date retrieved from an action string(subtractFromTime(items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘DueDate’],1,‘Month’,‘dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm’)) Format Date Time Formatting date to a specific string format is essential otherwise update of data fields might fail because of culture differences.

Power Automate fix for InvalidTemplate: Unable to process template language expressions InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action can happen with actions within PowerAutomate. In my scenerio I added the encodian action ‘Convert_to_PDF’ and was resubmitting a flow for testing and kept getting the error message. InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action ‘Convert_to_PDF’ inputs at line ‘0’ and column ‘0’: ‘The template language expression ‘json(decodeBase64(secrets(‘X-MS-APIM-Tokens’)))[’$connections’][‘shared_encodiandocumentmanager’][‘connectionId’]’ cannot be evaluated because property ‘shared_encodiandocumentmanager’ doesn’t exist, available properties are ‘shared_sharepointonline, shared_office365, shared_approvals, shared_teams_1’.

Publishing Major Versions of Files in SharePoint with Power Automate This post covers how to publish major versions for Office documents (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) in SharePoint using Power Automate, especially after an approval task using the checkin and publish REST endpoints. This applies to libraries having minor versions enabled Just for context, a Power Automate approval flow with trigger for a selected file needed publishing for the selected file as major version after being approved.

I accidentally deleted a power automate flow and needed a way of restoring it. I stumbled on Restore deleted flows to restore the deleted flows. However the action List Flows as Admin (v2) was not returning all the flows, hence the deleted flow was missing. If it happens , enables the pagination setting of the action withing settings tab and set the threshold to ensure the number is more than number of flows you have in the environment.

JSON Data Handling in Power Automate : outputs versus body In Power Automate, JSON data output from various actions is key to connect each other. Accessing Action Outputs Accessing the outputs of a specific action, such as the action ‘Get file properties’, the spcific property can be accessed via the outputs, for instance file name with extension.: outputs(‘Get_file_properties’)?[‘body/{FilenameWithExtension}’] Referencing Action Body A streamlined way is to reference the body directly making it simpler.

Optimizing Email HTML for Outlook using the ‘Send Email’ action within Power Automate When crafting attention-grabbing emails, the HTML structure plays a pivotal role. I recently encountered challenges in achieving consistent formatting across Outlook desktop and web versions using the Send Email action within Power Automate. Using div Tags for Responsiveness At first, I experimented with divs to ensure responsiveness and modern HTML formatting. The code appeared as follows: <style> .

Introduction In this blog post, we’ll explore how to trigger a single Power Automate flow from multiple SharePoint libraries, lists, and sites. This approach is particularly useful for standardizing workflows across different document libraries and sites, avoiding the need to replicate flows multiple times. This not only simplifies maintenance but also streamlines deployment. The For a selected file or For a selected item trigger action is key to achieving this. While the Manually trigger a flow action was considered, it does not pass the necessary context (site URL, library ID/name, and item ID) to the flow, making it unsuitable for this scenario.

Introduction Managing multiline text fields in SharePoint can be tricky, especially when certain field properties are not visible or editable at the library/list level, even though they are available at the site level. For example, at the site level, you can configure properties such as: Append Changes to Text Number of Lines Field Type: Plain Text, Rich Text, or Enhanced Rich Text However, these settings may not appear at the library/list level, as shown below:

Managing permissions in SharePoint can be challenging, especially when users are granted access through various means such as direct permissions, shared links, SharePoint groups, or M365 groups. To simplify this process, you can use the effectivepermissions endpoint to retrieve and analyze permissions assigned to users at the site, list/library, and item/file/folder levels. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to identify and retrieve effective permissions for end users across SharePoint sites.

Searching Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint Sensitivity labels are a powerful tool for protecting documents, offering features like watermarks, encryption, and access control at the file level. However, the default Sensitivity column in SharePoint has limitations—it cannot be filtered, indexed, or bulk updated. This blog post explores ways to search for sensitivity label values in SharePoint and highlights some challenges and potential solutions. Challenges with Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint The crawled managed property InformationProtectionLabelId refers to the sensitivity label’s GUID/ID, which is not user-friendly for end users to easily search.

Monitoring Storage Quotas with PowerShell Managing storage quotas in Microsoft 365 is critical to ensure uninterrupted service and optimal performance. This blog post demonstrates how to use a PowerShell script to monitor storage usage across SharePoint Online sites and identify sites nearing or exceeding their storage quotas. Script Overview The script connects to the SharePoint Online admin center, retrieves site storage details, calculates the percentage of storage used, and generates a report for sites exceeding 80% of their allocated storage quota.

Introduction In SharePoint Online, the filter pane is a powerful feature that allows users to quickly filter and find relevant data in libraries and lists. However, by default, not all fields are visible in the filter pane. To enhance usability, you can pin specific fields to the top of the filter pane using PowerShell or the REST API. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell and the REST API to pin fields to the filter pane in SharePoint libraries.

Introduction Managing files in SharePoint libraries can be challenging, especially when dealing with test data or bulk operations. For instance, you may need to find and delete files containing specific names or patterns to reset a testing environment. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to locate and delete files in SharePoint libraries, including associated data in lists, to streamline the testing process. In this example, we had PDF files containing a series of receipts that were split into individual files using Power Automate with the Encodian connector.

Introduction Understanding how a SharePoint site was created is crucial for governance, compliance, and troubleshooting. In Microsoft 365, SharePoint sites can be created through various methods, such as Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage, the SharePoint Admin Center, and more. However, identifying the exact creation source can sometimes be challenging. For example, exporting the list of active sites from the SharePoint Admin Center may not always provide accurate information. Communication sites, for instance, may incorrectly show their creation source as “Microsoft M365 Group,” even though they can only be created from the SharePoint Admin Center.

Introduction Default sensitivity labels can be set at the document library level in SharePoint to help manage and protect your data. However, there are some limitations and issues that you should be aware of like the default sensitivity label does not automatically update existing files within SharePoint and there might be delay in applying the sensitivity label within M365 app. This is described in the documentation for Configuring a default sensitivity label for a SharePoint document library.

Introduction Taxonomy feature is not activated by default in SharePoint sites linked to a private or shared Teams Channels. When attempting to add content types with managed metadata columns, you may encounter an error message stating “Taxonomy disabled”. To resolve this issue, you can enable the taxonomy feature with the ID 73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b0604c using the PowerShell cmdlet Enable-PnPFeature before adding the content types to the sites with the template TEAMCHANNEL#1. Script to check whether feature taxonomy is enabled Get-PnPFeature -Scope Site | Where-Object { $_.

Sharing is a great feature for collaboration. However, depending on how items, files, or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. It is possible to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. For more details, please refer to How to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft introduced the capability to set an expiry date for all types of sharing links: “Anyone”, company-wide (aka.

Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. The sharing link is created when the copy links is clicked from the sharing pop up options when people other those already have existing access are picked. However by default, if sharing options have not been configured, links to “People in ” or “Anyone” (if external sharing is allowed) is selected

Introduction Microsoft Teams offers private and shared channels as specialized collaboration spaces to cater to different organizational needs. While these channels provide enhanced security and collaboration features, they come with specific limitations and management challenges, particularly around the associated SharePoint sites. This post covers some limitations, and management tips for SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels, including PowerShell hacks and governance practices to overcome these challenges. Managing SharePoint Sites for Private and Shared Channels SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels are special types of sites with the limitations as identified by Gregory in his blog post Why you should never mess with Private and Shared Channel SharePoint Sites related to the inability to attach to a hub directly, being accessible from the Teams interface mainly, and inability to manage permissions at the site level, and with constrained external sharing.

Introduction It is possible to create M365 Groups and Teams with the same name, and there is currently no built-in way to prevent this. The new Team/Site/M365 Group is created with a random number appended to the Team name for the SharePoint site and m365 Group email address. Having duplicate names can cause confusion and increase risks, including: Wrongly Granting Permissions: Users may accidentally grant permissions to the wrong M365 Group or Team, leading to unauthorized access.

Introduction Renaming the ‘Files’ tab in Microsoft Teams to something more meaningful for your business, such as “All Access,” can enhance user experience. It can help to differentiate other document libraries added as tabs. The Files has been renamed to Shared for chats to show all the files and links that were sent in the chat, making it easier to find them- all in one place. However, it is not possible to rename the Files and Posts tabs from the UI within channels.

Introduction There are situations where you might want to reuse the M365 Group principals to assign permissions to other sites without creating additional Entra ID groups. This can be useful for: Adding M365 group members to a SharePoint site, such as an intranet site for ‘Human Resources’ managed by the ‘Human Resources’ M365 Group/Teams or a hub site managed by a ‘Service Desk’ M365 Group/Teams. Adding M365 group members to custom or out-of-the-box SharePoint groups, such as adding particular M365 group owners or members to custom groups created for additional libraries within a different site.

Introduction By default, guest access for Microsoft 365 groups is enabled within the tenant. This can be controlled either to allow or block guest access at the tenant level or for individual Microsoft 365 groups / Teams. For more information, check out Manage guest access in Microsoft 365 groups. PowerShell Script to Prevent Guest Access Below is a PowerShell script that allows you to disable/enable guest access for specific Microsoft 365 groups.

Introduction Managing the lifecycle of Microsoft 365 Groups is important to prevent accidental deletion of M365 Groups. It is a good practice to set lifecycle expiration policy to control sprawl. However that means that the group will get automatically deleted after they expire. The Teams/M365 groups owners will get email notifications to renew within a certain timeframe , however if the owners missed the renewal notifications for different reasons, it may lead to accidental data loss.

Introduction As part of Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness, you may want to find where “Everyone and “Everyone except external users” claims are granted permissions which is a cause of oversharing. This blog post will guide you through using PowerShell to manage and audit the “Everyone” and “Everyone except external users” claims within your SharePoint site collection. For more insights on why the “Everyone except external users” group is riskier than “People in your organization,” refer to Copilot for Microsoft 365 Data Ready – Where “Everyone except external users” group is more risky than “People in your organization” links!

Introduction Understanding the sensitivity and retention labels applied to files in your SharePoint Online sites is essential for maintaining data security and compliance. These labels enable you to manage and protect your data by defining retention periods and handling sensitive information appropriately. This is particularly important for initiatives like the Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, ensuring that the correct files are stored within the appropriate SharePoint sites. For example, if a SharePoint site is a public Team site, files labeled as confidential should be moved to a private Team site or existing Team site updated from public to private.

As part of the multi tenant app registration for PnP PowerShell deprecated on the 9th September 2024, we need to have our own app registration and grant the required permissions. Read more from Changes in PnP Management Shell registration in Microsoft 365 For the cmdlet Get-PnPFlow it requires permissions Azure: management.azure.com which is Azure Service Management Simply adding the permission as it does not require admin consent and executing the cmdlet below yields no results

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

Updating the expiration time and role for sharing links is still limited. Although it seems possible through the Graph API Update permission, I have been unable to pass the roles as body parameters. Graph Explorer Attempts Using the following script: Invoke-PnPGraphMethod -Url "v1.0/drives/$driveId/items/$driveItemId/permissions/$($ShareLink.Id)" -Method Patch -Content @{ roles = @("read") } threw the error message “Invalid input: No Information provided to update the specifed permission” From the UI Anyone link can’t be edited Organisation link can’t be edited Specific people links can be edited Using the network tab from the browser developer tools enables identifying the endpoint to update specific people links only.

Microsoft has introduced Enhanced Version Controls, previously known as Intelligent Versioning, as part of its public preview in May 2024. This feature, detailed in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap 145802, aims to help administrators manage file versions more effectively, reducing storage costs by removing unnecessary versions. Extract from the Roadmap We are introducing new version controls that help tenant and site admins or document library owners reduce the storage footprint driven by low value file versions.

Managing sharing settings for SharePoint sites is crucial for maintaining a secure and well-governed environment. With the help of PowerShell, administrators can efficiently retrieve and manage these settings across their SharePoint Online tenant. This ensures that sensitive information is not overshared and that your organisation’s data remains secure. Importance of Reviewing Sharing Settings Reviewing sharing settings is essential to prevent oversharing, which can lead to data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

The script checks the ‘SharePoint Online Web Client Extensibility’ Principal within Entra ID for the actual assigned permissions as the SPFx solutions requests are all be added to that single shared permission group. As hilghlighted by “Wes Hackett”: I’ve personally seen plenty of tenants with Mailbox permissions with no corresponding solutions live in the app catalogs. Early SPFx doc examples encouraged the use of MS Graph into Mailbox permissions in one of the how to learn samples, older tenants sometimes have this breadcrumb left behind.

Have you ever needed to gather detailed information about SPFx solutions installed in your SharePoint environment, such as API permissions, for auditing, inventory, or compliance purposes? The PowerShell script below helps you retrieve these details from both the tenant-level and site collection app catalogs for auditing with the aim to improve security posture by removing unneeded apps and access rights. To execute this script, you must have Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator roles.

When working with large SharePoint sites, checking for unique permissions can be a time-consuming task. This blog post explores methods to optimize PowerShell scripts for fetching property HasUniqueRoleAssignments to determine unique permissions, including using PnP PowerShell and the SharePoint REST API. We compare their performance and highlight the advantages and limitations of each approach. Using PnP PowerShell PnP PowerShell provides an efficient way to interact with SharePoint Online and retrieve list items to check for unique permissions.

If you have built Power Platform solutions using SharePoint as a datasource, you may want to export the list structure along with its data from the source environment (e.g., DEV) and deploy it across different environments such as Test, UAT, and PROD. Fortunately, the PnP Provisioning from PnP PowerShell provides this capability. Power Platform solutions can be deployed using pipelines after the SharePoint structure is deployed. Export Structure and Data from SharePoint Lists PnP PowerShell makes this process straightforward with Get-PnPSiteTemplate:

If a M365 group connected Team site is deleted from SharePoint Admin Centre, from the UI it is not possible to delete the site from the deleted sites to be able to resuse the URL or name of the deleted site. The end user is presented with the following prompt This site belongs to a Microsoft 365 group. Deleting the site will delete the group and all its resources, including the Outlook mailbox and calendar, and any Teams channels.

Have you ever wondered how to default the default sharing link in Teams chats to ‘People currently in this chat’? By default, if “Anyone” is disabled within the tenant, the sharing link is set to “People in my organization”. This can be a challenge when you want to limit access to only those in the current chat. All files uploaded to a Teams Chat are stored in the uploader’s OneDrive for Business.

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

As part of the M365 Copilot rollout , questions were raised on the /portals/Community and /portals/hub as both ‘Everyone Except External Users’ was granted access raising concerns on the content on the site. These are legacy sites and are currently inaccessible. Historically, these sites were accessible via the legacy SharePoint admin centre, however, they are not available through the modern SharePoint admin centre interface. Thanks to Gregory Zelfond’s blog post What are all these site collections in SharePoint?

There is limited space allocated to the tenant. To ensure business continuity and smooth ongoing operation, it is imperative to keep an eye on its usage and take relevant actions suited to the circumstances. By default a SharePoint site is allocated 25 TB by default and OneDrive for Business site is allocated 1 TB by default. These settings can be amended manually to a different quota to control SharePoint site. The script will help to proactively monitor percent used against quota for each SharePoint site.

#Parameters $SiteURL = “https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/app-ar" $ListName = “Remittances” $dateTime = (Get-Date).toString(“dd-MM-yyyy”) $invocation = (Get-Variable MyInvocation).Value $directorypath = Split-Path $invocation.MyCommand.Path $fileName = “\RemittanceDuplicateReport-” + $dateTime + “.csv” $OutPutView = $directorypath + $fileName Connect-PnPOnline -url $SiteURL -Interactive $ListItems = Get-PnPListItem -List $ListName -PageSize 500 | Where {$_.FieldValues.Month -eq ‘202402’ } #Array for Results Data $DataCollection = @() ForEach($Item in $ListItems) { #Collect data $Data = New-Object PSObject -Property @{ SourceRef = $Item[“DocumentSourceReference”] GroupingRef = $Item[“GroupingReference”] Provider = $Item[“Provider”].

Maintaining up-to-date list items, especially when dealing with choice fields, can be a daunting task sepcially after choice field values are updated. We need a way to update these old values to the correct new ones. The Challenge SharePoint lists use choice fields to categorise items. Over time, the need to update these choice values can arise, whether due to changes in terminology, business processes, or error correction. Manually updating these values across numerous list items is not only time-consuming but also prone to human error.

Overcoming SharePoint’s List View Threshold with CAML Queries in PowerShell Encountering the list view threshold error in SharePoint when dealing with lists exceeding 5,000 items is a common challenge. Using CAML queries within PowerShell scripts offers a server-side solution to efficiently filter and retrieve data, yet is prone to the list view threshold error. Sample script This is the sample PowerShell script querying the specified SharePoint list using CAML query.

Find orphaned choice values in SharePoint list/libraries using PowerShell One common issue is orphaned choice values in SharePoint lists which may affect subsequent update to the list item. This can occur when list items contain values that are no longer valid according to the list’s choice field values. This post covers a PowerShell script to identify these orphaned choice values in SharePoint lists to either update them or add them back to the list of choice field values.

Update SharePoint Site Logo and Thumbnail with PowerShell In SharePoint Online sites, the distinction between the Site Logo and Site Thumbnail is crucial. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, file copying/moving, and other areas. Both site logo and thumbnail are part of SharePoint branding. This post covers how to update the site logo and thumbnail across multiple SharePoint sites within a hub using PowerShell.

Update Content Type of List Items in SharePoint List A content type in SharePoint is a reusable collection of metadata (columns) allowing to organise, manage and handle content in a consistent way. If the content type of files and items need to be updated because of required changes how particular content have to be managed, it can be a daunting laborious task if done manually. PowerShell can help automating the update of content types and corresponding metadata (columns).

Teamifying an Existing M365 Group with PowerShell Within M365 , SharePoint and Teams together provides a rich collaboaration platform. When a team site is created from SharePoint admin centre, it is not associated with a Teams despite a M365 group is created in the background. To extend SharePoint collaboration features , there is a need to “teamify” an existing Microsoft 365 Group, essentially attaching a new Teams instance to it to allow use of channels and other apps.

Get Total Count of SharePoint Files, Folders, and Items with PnP PowerShell This PowerShell script powered by PnP PowerShell can help to get total count of files, folders, and list items across SharePoint tenant. This script is invaluable for administrators looking to perform audits, verify data migrations, or simply keep tabs on the content sprawl within their environments. The use case of this script was to get a total number of items that would be ingested into a third party application Records365 (provided by RecordPoint) to ensure the number tally for compliance purposes and identify any gaps.

When working with CSV files in PowerShell with special characters you might encounter an issue where special characters (e.g., em dashes —) are incorrectly represented as a question mark inside a diamond �. This common issue arises due to PowerShell’s default encoding not matching the encoding used in the CSV file. Problem Statement The root of this problem lies in the encoding mismatch. Encoding is a method of converting characters into a format that can be easily stored or transmitted.

Find SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages with PowerShell in Tenant and Site Collection App Catalogs This post covers a PowerShell script to generate an inventory of SPFx installations within your SharePoint Online environment which will help you maintain oversight of your SPFx solutions, ensuring they are up-to-date and compliant. The script was particularly useful in pinpointing sites within the tenant where third-party applications, specifically an analytics SPFx component, were deployed. This was crucial for ensuring that data collection was confined to designated sites, such as the intranet in my case study.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring OneDrive Tenant Settings with PowerShell OneDrive makes it easy to collaborate by sharing files and folders with others. OneDrive is the storage space for personal productivity and not meant for collaboration. Data stored within OneDrive are Files shared to chats within Teams Files shared with end user by other OneDrive users. OneNote Personal lists and Document storage Shortcuts to SharePoint sites/libraries Favourites Loops within chats Streams In this article, we’ll explore into how PowerShell can empower SharePoint administrators to configure OneDrive sharing settings proactively at the tenant level, addressing oversharing concerns for the M365 Copilot rollout.

Deletion of sharing links with PowerShell As organisations look to deploy Copilot for Microsoft 365, ensuring the security and proper governance of shared content is important. The rollout of Copilot introduces advanced AI capabilities across Microsoft 365 apps using content from SharePoint/OneDrive, making it even more essential to manage sharing links judiciously to tackle the issue of oversharing. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Excluding certain SharePoint sites from search would mean the contents from the excluded sites won’t be available to M365 tenant search and M365 Copilot using Restricted SharePoint Search feature. The downsides using this feature are: Limited Findability: By excluding certain SharePoint sites from search, you limit the findability of data. Users would need to know the specific sites where the data resides in order to search for it. This can hinder efficient data retrieval and records management.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring Microsoft Loop Sharing SharePoint Tenant and Site Settings with PowerShell Guest users can be invited to collaborate within Microsoft Loop in the tenant. Refer How to work with guest users using Microsoft Loop how sharing within Loop works. This post focuses on using PowerShell to control the Microsoft Loop sharing settings to help securing data especially with M365 Copilot which can expose data not previously accessible by other means.

Sharing Options Updates - Send Email button greyed out Starting from March 2024, there has been a notable change in SharePoint’s sharing options. If a user is not allowed to share on a SharePoint site (for instance, when a user is a member and only owners have sharing privileges), the Send Email button appears greyed out. Additionally, a warning message is displayed: Sharing is limited on this item. You can only copy links for people who have existing access, and you can’t invite anyone new.

Query Unique Permissions in SharePoint using CSOM and PnP PowerShell Managing permissions in SharePoint is a critical aspect of maintaining data security and compliance within organisations. However, as SharePoint environments grow in complexity, manually auditing and managing permissions becomes increasingly challenging. To address this challenge, PowerShell scripts can be leveraged to automate the auditing process, providing administrators with valuable insights into permission structures across SharePoint sites and libraries. What do SharePoint permissions have to do with Copilot for Microsoft 365?

Working with PowerShell Script Module Files:psm1 Have you ever utilized a psm1 file to create reusable functions across multiple ps1 files? If so, you might have encountered the frustration of edits not reflecting immediately due to module caching. I recently faced this issue when updating a psm1 file; despite making changes, the updates didn’t take effect immediately. The issue stemmed from module caching. The only solution I found to load the updated psm1 file was to terminate the PowerShell session and start a new one.

How to Redirect PowerShell Terminal Output to a File The PowerShell console buffer, while useful, has its limitations. When dealing with thousands of lines of output, you may encounter performance issues or even lose older output due to truncation. However, there’s a straightforward solution to ensure all output is retained for later review: redirect the output to a file. You can accomplish this by using the redirection operator > operator, followed by the name of the file where you want the output to be stored.

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Get Folder Item properties using PnP PowerShell : Get-PnPFolderItem versus Get-PnPListItem Introduction In this blog post, we will explore an alternative approach to retrieving folder item properties using PnP PowerShell. We will discuss the limitations of the Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet and demonstrate how to use Get-PnPListItem to overcome those limitations. The Limitations of Get-PnPFolderItem The Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet is not suitable for working with large libraries. When attempting to retrieve items from a large library, you may encounter the following error message:

Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites There is the blog post how Deploying and Installing SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions using PnP PowerShell to Hub Site and Associated Sites using site collection app catalog. This post covers how to perform same objective but using the tenant level app catalog if the SPFx packages have not been added to all sites globally during deployment in the tenant level app catalog and instead need targeted deployment or upgrades on specific sites.

Custom document library template using PnP PowerShell Creating custom list templates is now possible to create both custom document libraries and lists. This article explores the option how to use a combination of list design and PowerShell script to provision multiple instances of document libraries using a CSV file and how to create a document library from a custom list template from UI. First we can create a list design for our library based on an existing configured document library with custom content types, fields and views.

Retracting SPFx Solutions from Hub Site and associated sites using PnP PowerShell SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions are a powerful tool for extending and customizing SharePoint sites. However, managing these solutions across multiple sites in a SharePoint tenant can be a daunting task. Fortunately, PnP PowerShell provides automation capabilities that can streamline these operations and ensure consistency across the tenant. The blog post Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites covers how to deploy SPFx solutions across a hub site and associated sites.

Automating Site Reindexing with PowerShell Introduction Keeping your SharePoint environment up-to-date is crucial, especially after making schema changes. One important aspect of maintaining accurate and relevant search results is to regularly reindex sites, libraries, or lists. In this blog post, we will explore a streamlined approach using PnP PowerShell to automate the reindexing process. By leveraging this script, you can ensure that your search results reflect the latest changes in your SharePoint environment.

For many organizations, maintaining a consistent brand identity across SharePoint sites is crucial. The distinction between “Site Logo” and “Site Logo Thumbnail” is essential, as they serve different purposes across SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site logo thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, when copying/moving files, and other critical areas. It plays a vital role in helping end users differentiate between various SharePoint Online (SPO) sites and Teams.

Unveiling Audit Logs with PnP PowerShell for the last 7 days Understanding and tracking activities within your M365 environment is crucial for maintaining security and compliance. Audit Logs offer a wealth of information, and in this post, we’ll delve into the methods to retrieve and analyze them. Specifically, we’ll focus on leveraging the Office 365 Management Activity API reference through the Get-PnPUnifiedAuditLog PnP PowerShell cmdlet. It is a great alternative if you are only a SharePoint Administrator with no global admin or Purview Audit logs access.

Recreating Deleted Owners Group for M365-Connected SharePoint Sites If out-of-the-box (OOB) groups such as owners, members, or visitors have been deleted accidentally from your SharePoint site, this article may assist you in recovering those vanished groups specifically for M365 linked Team site. I recently encountered a distress call from an end user facing data access issues on a SharePoint Team site. To my dismay, I discovered that the SharePoint Owners group had been accidentally deleted, prompting me to seek and implement a solution to restore access.

A Guide to Contributing to PnP PowerShell Contributing to PnP PowerShell is a rewarding journey. Whether you’re a seasoned contributor or a beginner, this guide aims to simplify the process and keep it handy for your next contribution. Prerequisites To set up the development to start hacking on PnP PowerShell, install the following Install Git Install PowerShell 7 Install Visual Code or Visual Studio Code Install .NET SDK 6 (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0) Forking and cloning First things first, make a copy of the repository to start working on your changes.

Discovering All Checked Out Files including those with no checked in versions There are scenarios when files uploaded won’t have “checked-in version” which will make the files visible only to their uploader. Two possible scenarios that can lead to the situation: Mandatory Metadata Requirements: When there are mandatory fields configured on the libraries and end users use Onedrive as a medium to upload the files to SharePoint via a shortcut to OneDrive.

How to Hide the “See All” Button in the Highlighted Content Web Part using PnP PowerShell Recently, I encountered an issue with the “Show Title and Commands” toggle in the out-of-the-box Highlighted Content web part. It stopped working on both my development and customer tenant. I’ve raised the issue on the Microsoft Forum and also opened a case with Microsoft to investigate the backend. While awaiting a resolution from Microsoft, I decided to find a workaround.

Ensure Owners Are Members M365Group Microsoft 365 (M365) Groups serve as a central hub for collaboration across various M365 applications like Teams, Planner, SharePoint, and more. While M365 roles include Owners, Members, and Guests, it’s crucial to understand that being an owner doesn’t always inherit member privileges. In this article, we’ll explore why it’s imperative to have M365 Group owners also serve as active members for seamless group management and productivity.

Github does not provide an easy way to export all your pull requests for review or sharing with anyone. Below is a great post to show how to do it using BASH. GitHub: Get a CSV containing my pull requests (PRs) If you are using windows machine, PowerShell is your friend. Install GitHub CLI via command line winget install --id GitHub.cli Enter Y to the question Do you agree to all the source agreements terms?

Troubleshooting SharePoint Storage Reports with PowerShell As the amount of data stored in SharePoint grows, it becomes important to monitor and manage storage usage. In this blog post, we will explore how to generate storage reports for SharePoint sites using PowerShell. These reports will provide insights into the storage usage of sites and individual files, including file versions and the size of the recycle bin. However the reports can only give a glimpse of at least 60-90% of storage.

Introduction Managing multiline text fields in SharePoint can be tricky, especially when certain field properties are not visible or editable at the library/list level, even though they are available at the site level. For example, at the site level, you can configure properties such as: Append Changes to Text Number of Lines Field Type: Plain Text, Rich Text, or Enhanced Rich Text However, these settings may not appear at the library/list level, as shown below:

Introduction In SharePoint Online, the filter pane is a powerful feature that allows users to quickly filter and find relevant data in libraries and lists. However, by default, not all fields are visible in the filter pane. To enhance usability, you can pin specific fields to the top of the filter pane using PowerShell or the REST API. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell and the REST API to pin fields to the filter pane in SharePoint libraries.

Introduction Understanding how a SharePoint site was created is crucial for governance, compliance, and troubleshooting. In Microsoft 365, SharePoint sites can be created through various methods, such as Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage, the SharePoint Admin Center, and more. However, identifying the exact creation source can sometimes be challenging. For example, exporting the list of active sites from the SharePoint Admin Center may not always provide accurate information. Communication sites, for instance, may incorrectly show their creation source as “Microsoft M365 Group,” even though they can only be created from the SharePoint Admin Center.

Sharing is a great feature for collaboration. However, depending on how items, files, or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. It is possible to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. For more details, please refer to How to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft introduced the capability to set an expiry date for all types of sharing links: “Anyone”, company-wide (aka.

Introduction The SharePoint Home Site experiences have moved to Viva Connections and is managed from the Microsoft 365 admin centre through the Viva Connections admin centre I started exploring how to manage these SharePoint Home Sites/Viva Experiences using browser’s developer tools, considering I had little luck with the SPO PowerShell, PnP PowerShell, and CLI for M365. These PowerShell experiences will be updated at some point to work with the updated Viva Connections Experience.

Updating the expiration time and role for sharing links is still limited. Although it seems possible through the Graph API Update permission, I have been unable to pass the roles as body parameters. Graph Explorer Attempts Using the following script: Invoke-PnPGraphMethod -Url "v1.0/drives/$driveId/items/$driveItemId/permissions/$($ShareLink.Id)" -Method Patch -Content @{ roles = @("read") } threw the error message “Invalid input: No Information provided to update the specifed permission” From the UI Anyone link can’t be edited Organisation link can’t be edited Specific people links can be edited Using the network tab from the browser developer tools enables identifying the endpoint to update specific people links only.

Have you ever needed to gather detailed information about SPFx solutions installed in your SharePoint environment, such as API permissions, for auditing, inventory, or compliance purposes? The PowerShell script below helps you retrieve these details from both the tenant-level and site collection app catalogs for auditing with the aim to improve security posture by removing unneeded apps and access rights. To execute this script, you must have Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator roles.

The SharePoint - Move file action can be used to move files, however the file can’t be moved if the file was accessed by the current Power Automate flow for any processing reslutng in a locked file error. { “status”: 400, “message”: “File ‘Shared Documents/Attendances/To Be Processed/Attendance -16072024.xlsx’ cannot be moved because it is in locked mode.\r\nclientRequestId: d6df7566-881f-4f14-8548-c5fac1eda46d\r\nserviceRequestId: 606841a1-40f0-9000-9c69-507df9b21720” } Handling Locked Files There are two options to handlelocked files when using SharePoint - Move file action:

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to get user details from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to retrieve a user details. Send an Http request to SharePoint action renamed to Get Page Author Details Site Address: https://test.sharepoint.com Method: GET URI: _api/Web/GetUserById(14) Here’s the output from the API: Here’s the output from the API:

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to get users from a SharePoint group from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. In the example below a SharePoint Group has been defined for approvers of a particular process and needed to be retrieved to be assigned an approval task. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to retrieve users from a SharePoint group.

This post outlines how to use Power Automate to update author and editor of a Page within SharePoint using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow, follow the following steps Add Send an Http request to SharePoint renamed to Update Author Properties Property Value Site Address The SharePoint site URL Method POST Uri See Uri below Headers See Headers table below Body See Body below Uri _api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘Site%20Pages’)/items(1)/ValidateUpdateListItem()`

Managing permissions in SharePoint can be challenging, especially when users are granted access through various means such as direct permissions, shared links, SharePoint groups, or M365 groups. To simplify this process, you can use the effectivepermissions endpoint to retrieve and analyze permissions assigned to users at the site, list/library, and item/file/folder levels. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to identify and retrieve effective permissions for end users across SharePoint sites.

Managing permissions in SharePoint can be challenging, especially when users are granted access through various means such as direct permissions, shared links, SharePoint groups, or M365 groups. To simplify this process, you can use the effectivepermissions endpoint to retrieve and analyze permissions assigned to users at the site, list/library, and item/file/folder levels. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to identify and retrieve effective permissions for end users across SharePoint sites.

Copy Column and View Formatting using PnP PowerShell There is a great sample script how to backup all column, view and content type formatting by Dan Toft. If you need to copy column and view formatting across different environments, such as from Dev to Test, UAT, and Prod, especially when dealing with multiple lists/libraries, the script may help you. PnP PowerShell Script param ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$SourceSiteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/d-app-test", [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$DestinationSiteUrl = "https://contoso.

Ensure Owners Are Members M365Group Microsoft 365 (M365) Groups serve as a central hub for collaboration across various M365 applications like Teams, Planner, SharePoint, and more. While M365 roles include Owners, Members, and Guests, it’s crucial to understand that being an owner doesn’t always inherit member privileges. In this article, we’ll explore why it’s imperative to have M365 Group owners also serve as active members for seamless group management and productivity.

Managing permissions in SharePoint can be challenging, especially when users are granted access through various means such as direct permissions, shared links, SharePoint groups, or M365 groups. To simplify this process, you can use the effectivepermissions endpoint to retrieve and analyze permissions assigned to users at the site, list/library, and item/file/folder levels. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to identify and retrieve effective permissions for end users across SharePoint sites.

Monitoring Storage Quotas with PowerShell Managing storage quotas in Microsoft 365 is critical to ensure uninterrupted service and optimal performance. This blog post demonstrates how to use a PowerShell script to monitor storage usage across SharePoint Online sites and identify sites nearing or exceeding their storage quotas. Script Overview The script connects to the SharePoint Online admin center, retrieves site storage details, calculates the percentage of storage used, and generates a report for sites exceeding 80% of their allocated storage quota.

Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. The sharing link is created when the copy links is clicked from the sharing pop up options when people other those already have existing access are picked. However by default, if sharing options have not been configured, links to “People in ” or “Anyone” (if external sharing is allowed) is selected

Introduction There are situations where you might want to reuse the M365 Group principals to assign permissions to other sites without creating additional Entra ID groups. This can be useful for: Adding M365 group members to a SharePoint site, such as an intranet site for ‘Human Resources’ managed by the ‘Human Resources’ M365 Group/Teams or a hub site managed by a ‘Service Desk’ M365 Group/Teams. Adding M365 group members to custom or out-of-the-box SharePoint groups, such as adding particular M365 group owners or members to custom groups created for additional libraries within a different site.

Introduction Managing the lifecycle of Microsoft 365 Groups is important to prevent accidental deletion of M365 Groups. It is a good practice to set lifecycle expiration policy to control sprawl. However that means that the group will get automatically deleted after they expire. The Teams/M365 groups owners will get email notifications to renew within a certain timeframe , however if the owners missed the renewal notifications for different reasons, it may lead to accidental data loss.

Introduction Understanding the sensitivity and retention labels applied to files in your SharePoint Online sites is essential for maintaining data security and compliance. These labels enable you to manage and protect your data by defining retention periods and handling sensitive information appropriately. This is particularly important for initiatives like the Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, ensuring that the correct files are stored within the appropriate SharePoint sites. For example, if a SharePoint site is a public Team site, files labeled as confidential should be moved to a private Team site or existing Team site updated from public to private.

As part of the multi tenant app registration for PnP PowerShell deprecated on the 9th September 2024, we need to have our own app registration and grant the required permissions. Read more from Changes in PnP Management Shell registration in Microsoft 365 For the cmdlet Get-PnPFlow it requires permissions Azure: management.azure.com which is Azure Service Management Simply adding the permission as it does not require admin consent and executing the cmdlet below yields no results

Microsoft has introduced Enhanced Version Controls, previously known as Intelligent Versioning, as part of its public preview in May 2024. This feature, detailed in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap 145802, aims to help administrators manage file versions more effectively, reducing storage costs by removing unnecessary versions. Extract from the Roadmap We are introducing new version controls that help tenant and site admins or document library owners reduce the storage footprint driven by low value file versions.

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Overcoming SharePoint’s List View Threshold with CAML Queries in PowerShell Encountering the list view threshold error in SharePoint when dealing with lists exceeding 5,000 items is a common challenge. Using CAML queries within PowerShell scripts offers a server-side solution to efficiently filter and retrieve data, yet is prone to the list view threshold error. Sample script This is the sample PowerShell script querying the specified SharePoint list using CAML query.

Find orphaned choice values in SharePoint list/libraries using PowerShell One common issue is orphaned choice values in SharePoint lists which may affect subsequent update to the list item. This can occur when list items contain values that are no longer valid according to the list’s choice field values. This post covers a PowerShell script to identify these orphaned choice values in SharePoint lists to either update them or add them back to the list of choice field values.

Working with PowerShell Script Module Files:psm1 Have you ever utilized a psm1 file to create reusable functions across multiple ps1 files? If so, you might have encountered the frustration of edits not reflecting immediately due to module caching. I recently faced this issue when updating a psm1 file; despite making changes, the updates didn’t take effect immediately. The issue stemmed from module caching. The only solution I found to load the updated psm1 file was to terminate the PowerShell session and start a new one.

Get Folder Item properties using PnP PowerShell : Get-PnPFolderItem versus Get-PnPListItem Introduction In this blog post, we will explore an alternative approach to retrieving folder item properties using PnP PowerShell. We will discuss the limitations of the Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet and demonstrate how to use Get-PnPListItem to overcome those limitations. The Limitations of Get-PnPFolderItem The Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet is not suitable for working with large libraries. When attempting to retrieve items from a large library, you may encounter the following error message:

Custom document library template using PnP PowerShell Creating custom list templates is now possible to create both custom document libraries and lists. This article explores the option how to use a combination of list design and PowerShell script to provision multiple instances of document libraries using a CSV file and how to create a document library from a custom list template from UI. First we can create a list design for our library based on an existing configured document library with custom content types, fields and views.

Automating Site Reindexing with PowerShell Introduction Keeping your SharePoint environment up-to-date is crucial, especially after making schema changes. One important aspect of maintaining accurate and relevant search results is to regularly reindex sites, libraries, or lists. In this blog post, we will explore a streamlined approach using PnP PowerShell to automate the reindexing process. By leveraging this script, you can ensure that your search results reflect the latest changes in your SharePoint environment.

For many organizations, maintaining a consistent brand identity across SharePoint sites is crucial. The distinction between “Site Logo” and “Site Logo Thumbnail” is essential, as they serve different purposes across SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site logo thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, when copying/moving files, and other critical areas. It plays a vital role in helping end users differentiate between various SharePoint Online (SPO) sites and Teams.

Unveiling Audit Logs with PnP PowerShell for the last 7 days Understanding and tracking activities within your M365 environment is crucial for maintaining security and compliance. Audit Logs offer a wealth of information, and in this post, we’ll delve into the methods to retrieve and analyze them. Specifically, we’ll focus on leveraging the Office 365 Management Activity API reference through the Get-PnPUnifiedAuditLog PnP PowerShell cmdlet. It is a great alternative if you are only a SharePoint Administrator with no global admin or Purview Audit logs access.

A Guide to Contributing to PnP PowerShell Contributing to PnP PowerShell is a rewarding journey. Whether you’re a seasoned contributor or a beginner, this guide aims to simplify the process and keep it handy for your next contribution. Prerequisites To set up the development to start hacking on PnP PowerShell, install the following Install Git Install PowerShell 7 Install Visual Code or Visual Studio Code Install .NET SDK 6 (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0) Forking and cloning First things first, make a copy of the repository to start working on your changes.

Discovering All Checked Out Files including those with no checked in versions There are scenarios when files uploaded won’t have “checked-in version” which will make the files visible only to their uploader. Two possible scenarios that can lead to the situation: Mandatory Metadata Requirements: When there are mandatory fields configured on the libraries and end users use Onedrive as a medium to upload the files to SharePoint via a shortcut to OneDrive.

Copy Column and View Formatting using PnP PowerShell There is a great sample script how to backup all column, view and content type formatting by Dan Toft. If you need to copy column and view formatting across different environments, such as from Dev to Test, UAT, and Prod, especially when dealing with multiple lists/libraries, the script may help you. PnP PowerShell Script param ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$SourceSiteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/d-app-test", [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$DestinationSiteUrl = "https://contoso.

Managing permissions in SharePoint can be challenging, especially when users are granted access through various means such as direct permissions, shared links, SharePoint groups, or M365 groups. To simplify this process, you can use the effectivepermissions endpoint to retrieve and analyze permissions assigned to users at the site, list/library, and item/file/folder levels. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to identify and retrieve effective permissions for end users across SharePoint sites.

Introduction Updating the default sharing link from the User Interface at both the site level and tenant level to Specific People (only the people the user specifies) might not work always as expected. This issue could be due to the outdated setting DefaultSharingLinkType being updated behind the scenes. I tested this on a Team site by updating the default sharing setting from the SharePoint Admin Centre to “People you choose”. However, the default sharing link for new sharing links did not reflect this setting.

In the Power Platform Admin Center, you may have added app users that you no longer need. To view the list of app users added to an environment, navigate to the following URL https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/manage/environments/c1725b9e-0000-0000-0000-000d3ad0000/appusers, replacing c1725b9e-0000-0000-0000-000d3ad0000 with your environment ID: To delete an app user, click on the ellipsis (…) next to the app user and select the Delete button. However, you may encounter a misleading error message: ✖ Failed to delete app user: User with SystemUserId= is not disabled.

Client secrets have traditionally been the go-to method for deploying Power Platform solutions from Azure DevOps, utilizing app registrations from the Azure platform. However, my personal experience has shown that this approach can be problematic, especially when you are not an application admin. It often involves wasting time figuring out why deployments have failed due to expired or missing client secrets. Even when reaching out to someone with application admin rights, they might generate a new client secret but forget to update the service connections for each service connection within Azure DevOps or the application admin does not have access requiring to reach out to someone else who have access, causing further disruptions.

My Visual Studio subscription was deactivated, resulting in the loss of my Azure subscription and licenses to access Microsoft Teams within my M365 developer tenant. This post covers my attempts to recover access in vain. Access to Microsoft Teams I thought I could extend my access to Microsoft Teams by opting for a free trial for Microsoft 365 E5 (no Teams) and Teams Premium - Microsoft Teams Premium. However, this did not restore access to Microsoft Teams despite waiting multiple hours after I added the above licenses.

When you create an Agent within Copilot Studio, a corresponding App registration is automatically generated. These app registrations are named after the Agent, suffixed with “(Microsoft Copilot Studio)”. You can view these app registrations in the Azure Portal under App registrations > All applications. Agent Certificates and Federated Identity Each app registration associated with a Copilot Studio Agent includes three certificates and two federated credentials as of January 2025. These components enable secure communication between agents and your data sources and services.

Sharing is a great feature for collaboration. However, depending on how items, files, or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. It is possible to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. For more details, please refer to How to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft introduced the capability to set an expiry date for all types of sharing links: “Anyone”, company-wide (aka.

Introduction Microsoft Teams offers private and shared channels as specialized collaboration spaces to cater to different organizational needs. While these channels provide enhanced security and collaboration features, they come with specific limitations and management challenges, particularly around the associated SharePoint sites. This post covers some limitations, and management tips for SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels, including PowerShell hacks and governance practices to overcome these challenges. Managing SharePoint Sites for Private and Shared Channels SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels are special types of sites with the limitations as identified by Gregory in his blog post Why you should never mess with Private and Shared Channel SharePoint Sites related to the inability to attach to a hub directly, being accessible from the Teams interface mainly, and inability to manage permissions at the site level, and with constrained external sharing.

Introduction There are situations where you might want to reuse the M365 Group principals to assign permissions to other sites without creating additional Entra ID groups. This can be useful for: Adding M365 group members to a SharePoint site, such as an intranet site for ‘Human Resources’ managed by the ‘Human Resources’ M365 Group/Teams or a hub site managed by a ‘Service Desk’ M365 Group/Teams. Adding M365 group members to custom or out-of-the-box SharePoint groups, such as adding particular M365 group owners or members to custom groups created for additional libraries within a different site.

Introduction By default, guest access for Microsoft 365 groups is enabled within the tenant. This can be controlled either to allow or block guest access at the tenant level or for individual Microsoft 365 groups / Teams. For more information, check out Manage guest access in Microsoft 365 groups. PowerShell Script to Prevent Guest Access Below is a PowerShell script that allows you to disable/enable guest access for specific Microsoft 365 groups.

Introduction As part of Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness, you may want to find where “Everyone and “Everyone except external users” claims are granted permissions which is a cause of oversharing. This blog post will guide you through using PowerShell to manage and audit the “Everyone” and “Everyone except external users” claims within your SharePoint site collection. For more insights on why the “Everyone except external users” group is riskier than “People in your organization,” refer to Copilot for Microsoft 365 Data Ready – Where “Everyone except external users” group is more risky than “People in your organization” links!

Introduction Understanding the sensitivity and retention labels applied to files in your SharePoint Online sites is essential for maintaining data security and compliance. These labels enable you to manage and protect your data by defining retention periods and handling sensitive information appropriately. This is particularly important for initiatives like the Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, ensuring that the correct files are stored within the appropriate SharePoint sites. For example, if a SharePoint site is a public Team site, files labeled as confidential should be moved to a private Team site or existing Team site updated from public to private.

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

Updating the expiration time and role for sharing links is still limited. Although it seems possible through the Graph API Update permission, I have been unable to pass the roles as body parameters. Graph Explorer Attempts Using the following script: Invoke-PnPGraphMethod -Url "v1.0/drives/$driveId/items/$driveItemId/permissions/$($ShareLink.Id)" -Method Patch -Content @{ roles = @("read") } threw the error message “Invalid input: No Information provided to update the specifed permission” From the UI Anyone link can’t be edited Organisation link can’t be edited Specific people links can be edited Using the network tab from the browser developer tools enables identifying the endpoint to update specific people links only.

The script checks the ‘SharePoint Online Web Client Extensibility’ Principal within Entra ID for the actual assigned permissions as the SPFx solutions requests are all be added to that single shared permission group. As hilghlighted by “Wes Hackett”: I’ve personally seen plenty of tenants with Mailbox permissions with no corresponding solutions live in the app catalogs. Early SPFx doc examples encouraged the use of MS Graph into Mailbox permissions in one of the how to learn samples, older tenants sometimes have this breadcrumb left behind.

Have you ever needed to gather detailed information about SPFx solutions installed in your SharePoint environment, such as API permissions, for auditing, inventory, or compliance purposes? The PowerShell script below helps you retrieve these details from both the tenant-level and site collection app catalogs for auditing with the aim to improve security posture by removing unneeded apps and access rights. To execute this script, you must have Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator roles.

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Query Unique Permissions in SharePoint using CSOM and PnP PowerShell Managing permissions in SharePoint is a critical aspect of maintaining data security and compliance within organisations. However, as SharePoint environments grow in complexity, manually auditing and managing permissions becomes increasingly challenging. To address this challenge, PowerShell scripts can be leveraged to automate the auditing process, providing administrators with valuable insights into permission structures across SharePoint sites and libraries. What do SharePoint permissions have to do with Copilot for Microsoft 365?

Recreating Deleted Owners Group for M365-Connected SharePoint Sites If out-of-the-box (OOB) groups such as owners, members, or visitors have been deleted accidentally from your SharePoint site, this article may assist you in recovering those vanished groups specifically for M365 linked Team site. I recently encountered a distress call from an end user facing data access issues on a SharePoint Team site. To my dismay, I discovered that the SharePoint Owners group had been accidentally deleted, prompting me to seek and implement a solution to restore access.

Introduction This guide walks you through creating a Copilot agent using Teams Toolkit and Microsoft Graph API. By leveraging OpenAPI specifications, Kiota, and Teams Toolkit, you can build a plugin to interact with Microsoft Graph endpoints. I used the blog post Copilot Graph API QnA Plugin by Franck Cornu as inspiration with some variation to apply it to get my ToDo tasks. Plugins for Copilot agents rely on OpenAPI specifications. While the complete Microsoft Graph OpenAPI specification exists, it is a massive file (34MB) and not practical for performance reasons.

Searching Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint Sensitivity labels are a powerful tool for protecting documents, offering features like watermarks, encryption, and access control at the file level. However, the default Sensitivity column in SharePoint has limitations—it cannot be filtered, indexed, or bulk updated. This blog post explores ways to search for sensitivity label values in SharePoint and highlights some challenges and potential solutions. Challenges with Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint The crawled managed property InformationProtectionLabelId refers to the sensitivity label’s GUID/ID, which is not user-friendly for end users to easily search.

Introduction Understanding how a SharePoint site was created is crucial for governance, compliance, and troubleshooting. In Microsoft 365, SharePoint sites can be created through various methods, such as Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage, the SharePoint Admin Center, and more. However, identifying the exact creation source can sometimes be challenging. For example, exporting the list of active sites from the SharePoint Admin Center may not always provide accurate information. Communication sites, for instance, may incorrectly show their creation source as “Microsoft M365 Group,” even though they can only be created from the SharePoint Admin Center.

Introduction Default sensitivity labels can be set at the document library level in SharePoint to help manage and protect your data. However, there are some limitations and issues that you should be aware of like the default sensitivity label does not automatically update existing files within SharePoint and there might be delay in applying the sensitivity label within M365 app. This is described in the documentation for Configuring a default sensitivity label for a SharePoint document library.

Sharing is a great feature for collaboration. However, depending on how items, files, or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. It is possible to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. For more details, please refer to How to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft introduced the capability to set an expiry date for all types of sharing links: “Anyone”, company-wide (aka.

Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. The sharing link is created when the copy links is clicked from the sharing pop up options when people other those already have existing access are picked. However by default, if sharing options have not been configured, links to “People in ” or “Anyone” (if external sharing is allowed) is selected

Introduction Microsoft Teams offers private and shared channels as specialized collaboration spaces to cater to different organizational needs. While these channels provide enhanced security and collaboration features, they come with specific limitations and management challenges, particularly around the associated SharePoint sites. This post covers some limitations, and management tips for SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels, including PowerShell hacks and governance practices to overcome these challenges. Managing SharePoint Sites for Private and Shared Channels SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels are special types of sites with the limitations as identified by Gregory in his blog post Why you should never mess with Private and Shared Channel SharePoint Sites related to the inability to attach to a hub directly, being accessible from the Teams interface mainly, and inability to manage permissions at the site level, and with constrained external sharing.

Introduction It is possible to create M365 Groups and Teams with the same name, and there is currently no built-in way to prevent this. The new Team/Site/M365 Group is created with a random number appended to the Team name for the SharePoint site and m365 Group email address. Having duplicate names can cause confusion and increase risks, including: Wrongly Granting Permissions: Users may accidentally grant permissions to the wrong M365 Group or Team, leading to unauthorized access.

Introduction There are situations where you might want to reuse the M365 Group principals to assign permissions to other sites without creating additional Entra ID groups. This can be useful for: Adding M365 group members to a SharePoint site, such as an intranet site for ‘Human Resources’ managed by the ‘Human Resources’ M365 Group/Teams or a hub site managed by a ‘Service Desk’ M365 Group/Teams. Adding M365 group members to custom or out-of-the-box SharePoint groups, such as adding particular M365 group owners or members to custom groups created for additional libraries within a different site.

Introduction By default, guest access for Microsoft 365 groups is enabled within the tenant. This can be controlled either to allow or block guest access at the tenant level or for individual Microsoft 365 groups / Teams. For more information, check out Manage guest access in Microsoft 365 groups. PowerShell Script to Prevent Guest Access Below is a PowerShell script that allows you to disable/enable guest access for specific Microsoft 365 groups.

Introduction As part of Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness, you may want to find where “Everyone and “Everyone except external users” claims are granted permissions which is a cause of oversharing. This blog post will guide you through using PowerShell to manage and audit the “Everyone” and “Everyone except external users” claims within your SharePoint site collection. For more insights on why the “Everyone except external users” group is riskier than “People in your organization,” refer to Copilot for Microsoft 365 Data Ready – Where “Everyone except external users” group is more risky than “People in your organization” links!

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

Updating the expiration time and role for sharing links is still limited. Although it seems possible through the Graph API Update permission, I have been unable to pass the roles as body parameters. Graph Explorer Attempts Using the following script: Invoke-PnPGraphMethod -Url "v1.0/drives/$driveId/items/$driveItemId/permissions/$($ShareLink.Id)" -Method Patch -Content @{ roles = @("read") } threw the error message “Invalid input: No Information provided to update the specifed permission” From the UI Anyone link can’t be edited Organisation link can’t be edited Specific people links can be edited Using the network tab from the browser developer tools enables identifying the endpoint to update specific people links only.

Managing sharing settings for SharePoint sites is crucial for maintaining a secure and well-governed environment. With the help of PowerShell, administrators can efficiently retrieve and manage these settings across their SharePoint Online tenant. This ensures that sensitive information is not overshared and that your organisation’s data remains secure. Importance of Reviewing Sharing Settings Reviewing sharing settings is essential to prevent oversharing, which can lead to data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Deletion of sharing links with PowerShell As organisations look to deploy Copilot for Microsoft 365, ensuring the security and proper governance of shared content is important. The rollout of Copilot introduces advanced AI capabilities across Microsoft 365 apps using content from SharePoint/OneDrive, making it even more essential to manage sharing links judiciously to tackle the issue of oversharing. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Excluding certain SharePoint sites from search would mean the contents from the excluded sites won’t be available to M365 tenant search and M365 Copilot using Restricted SharePoint Search feature. The downsides using this feature are: Limited Findability: By excluding certain SharePoint sites from search, you limit the findability of data. Users would need to know the specific sites where the data resides in order to search for it. This can hinder efficient data retrieval and records management.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring Microsoft Loop Sharing SharePoint Tenant and Site Settings with PowerShell Guest users can be invited to collaborate within Microsoft Loop in the tenant. Refer How to work with guest users using Microsoft Loop how sharing within Loop works. This post focuses on using PowerShell to control the Microsoft Loop sharing settings to help securing data especially with M365 Copilot which can expose data not previously accessible by other means.

SharePoint Search: Excluding Columns from Search Results SharePoint empowers users to manage and organize vast amounts of data efficiently. However, not all data within a SharePoint site might need to be searchable. Do you miss the functionality to control visibility of sensitive or irrelevant information in column. The Challenge You might have encountered instances where you need certain columns in your SharePoint lists or libraries to be excluded from search results.

Sharing Options Updates - Send Email button greyed out Starting from March 2024, there has been a notable change in SharePoint’s sharing options. If a user is not allowed to share on a SharePoint site (for instance, when a user is a member and only owners have sharing privileges), the Send Email button appears greyed out. Additionally, a warning message is displayed: Sharing is limited on this item. You can only copy links for people who have existing access, and you can’t invite anyone new.

Query Unique Permissions in SharePoint using CSOM and PnP PowerShell Managing permissions in SharePoint is a critical aspect of maintaining data security and compliance within organisations. However, as SharePoint environments grow in complexity, manually auditing and managing permissions becomes increasingly challenging. To address this challenge, PowerShell scripts can be leveraged to automate the auditing process, providing administrators with valuable insights into permission structures across SharePoint sites and libraries. What do SharePoint permissions have to do with Copilot for Microsoft 365?

Recreating Deleted Owners Group for M365-Connected SharePoint Sites If out-of-the-box (OOB) groups such as owners, members, or visitors have been deleted accidentally from your SharePoint site, this article may assist you in recovering those vanished groups specifically for M365 linked Team site. I recently encountered a distress call from an end user facing data access issues on a SharePoint Team site. To my dismay, I discovered that the SharePoint Owners group had been accidentally deleted, prompting me to seek and implement a solution to restore access.

Searching Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint Sensitivity labels are a powerful tool for protecting documents, offering features like watermarks, encryption, and access control at the file level. However, the default Sensitivity column in SharePoint has limitations—it cannot be filtered, indexed, or bulk updated. This blog post explores ways to search for sensitivity label values in SharePoint and highlights some challenges and potential solutions. Challenges with Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint The crawled managed property InformationProtectionLabelId refers to the sensitivity label’s GUID/ID, which is not user-friendly for end users to easily search.

Latency Issues Accessing Microsoft 365 Sites - SharePoint, Admin Center When using a SaaS (Software as a Service) product like Microsoft 365, troubleshooting performance issues can be challenging due to the lack of server-level access. This limitation makes it difficult to analyze network traffic or monitor server resources like CPU, RAM, or storage, which could impact the performance of SharePoint sites. We were experiencing errors, timeouts, delays, and non-functional features for users.

Introduction Default sensitivity labels can be set at the document library level in SharePoint to help manage and protect your data. However, there are some limitations and issues that you should be aware of like the default sensitivity label does not automatically update existing files within SharePoint and there might be delay in applying the sensitivity label within M365 app. This is described in the documentation for Configuring a default sensitivity label for a SharePoint document library.

Introduction Microsoft Teams provides a unified platform for end users to collaborate on files stored within SharePoint. However, there are notable differences between the two platforms that can influence your decision on when to use SharePoint and when to use Teams. Search Functionality Contextual Search Contextual search on libraries does not exist within Teams, while SharePoint offers richer contextual search at library, site, organization, and hub levels. Issue with Results from Shared Channels There is an issue searching contents within shared channels where the shared channel name is shown as Mock Team Name which is not helpful identitying the source of the search results without opening the file.

Introduction There are situations where you might want to reuse the M365 Group principals to assign permissions to other sites without creating additional Entra ID groups. This can be useful for: Adding M365 group members to a SharePoint site, such as an intranet site for ‘Human Resources’ managed by the ‘Human Resources’ M365 Group/Teams or a hub site managed by a ‘Service Desk’ M365 Group/Teams. Adding M365 group members to custom or out-of-the-box SharePoint groups, such as adding particular M365 group owners or members to custom groups created for additional libraries within a different site.

Introduction Managing Microsoft 365 Group settings is crucial for maintaining a compliant and secure environment.PowerShell and Microsoft Graph can be used to configure various group settings, including naming policies, guest access, and more. As a regular user of PnP PowerShell, I aimed to replicate the functionality of the Microsoft Entra cmdlets for configuring group settings using PnP PowerShell. Example Script to Update naming policy Settings The following PowerShell script updates the naming group settings using the Microsoft Graph API and PnP PowerShell.

Sharing Options Updates - Send Email button greyed out Starting from March 2024, there has been a notable change in SharePoint’s sharing options. If a user is not allowed to share on a SharePoint site (for instance, when a user is a member and only owners have sharing privileges), the Send Email button appears greyed out. Additionally, a warning message is displayed: Sharing is limited on this item. You can only copy links for people who have existing access, and you can’t invite anyone new.

For many organizations, maintaining a consistent brand identity across SharePoint sites is crucial. The distinction between “Site Logo” and “Site Logo Thumbnail” is essential, as they serve different purposes across SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site logo thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, when copying/moving files, and other critical areas. It plays a vital role in helping end users differentiate between various SharePoint Online (SPO) sites and Teams.

Recreating Deleted Owners Group for M365-Connected SharePoint Sites If out-of-the-box (OOB) groups such as owners, members, or visitors have been deleted accidentally from your SharePoint site, this article may assist you in recovering those vanished groups specifically for M365 linked Team site. I recently encountered a distress call from an end user facing data access issues on a SharePoint Team site. To my dismay, I discovered that the SharePoint Owners group had been accidentally deleted, prompting me to seek and implement a solution to restore access.

Searching Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint Sensitivity labels are a powerful tool for protecting documents, offering features like watermarks, encryption, and access control at the file level. However, the default Sensitivity column in SharePoint has limitations—it cannot be filtered, indexed, or bulk updated. This blog post explores ways to search for sensitivity label values in SharePoint and highlights some challenges and potential solutions. Challenges with Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint The crawled managed property InformationProtectionLabelId refers to the sensitivity label’s GUID/ID, which is not user-friendly for end users to easily search.

Searching Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint Sensitivity labels are a powerful tool for protecting documents, offering features like watermarks, encryption, and access control at the file level. However, the default Sensitivity column in SharePoint has limitations—it cannot be filtered, indexed, or bulk updated. This blog post explores ways to search for sensitivity label values in SharePoint and highlights some challenges and potential solutions. Challenges with Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint The crawled managed property InformationProtectionLabelId refers to the sensitivity label’s GUID/ID, which is not user-friendly for end users to easily search.

Introduction Default sensitivity labels can be set at the document library level in SharePoint to help manage and protect your data. However, there are some limitations and issues that you should be aware of like the default sensitivity label does not automatically update existing files within SharePoint and there might be delay in applying the sensitivity label within M365 app. This is described in the documentation for Configuring a default sensitivity label for a SharePoint document library.

Searching Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint Sensitivity labels are a powerful tool for protecting documents, offering features like watermarks, encryption, and access control at the file level. However, the default Sensitivity column in SharePoint has limitations—it cannot be filtered, indexed, or bulk updated. This blog post explores ways to search for sensitivity label values in SharePoint and highlights some challenges and potential solutions. Challenges with Sensitivity Labels in SharePoint The crawled managed property InformationProtectionLabelId refers to the sensitivity label’s GUID/ID, which is not user-friendly for end users to easily search.

Introduction Default sensitivity labels can be set at the document library level in SharePoint to help manage and protect your data. However, there are some limitations and issues that you should be aware of like the default sensitivity label does not automatically update existing files within SharePoint and there might be delay in applying the sensitivity label within M365 app. This is described in the documentation for Configuring a default sensitivity label for a SharePoint document library.

Read Rows in Excel Using Power Automate with ‘Create Table’ Action When working with Excel files that need to be imported into a SharePoint list, you may encounter scenarios where the data is not already in table format. This can be challenging, especially if the Excel files are automatically generated by an external system and cannot be manually updated. This blog post demonstrates how to dynamically convert raw data into a table using the Create Table action in Power Automate and subsequently read rows using the List rows present in a table action.

When using Power Automate with Excel for Business actions, the drive ID for a library is automatically determined. However, if you deploy a Power Automate solution across different environments and use a library as a datasource environment variable, referencing this variable in the flow can result in an error due to an invalid drive ID. Referencing the variable in the Power Automate flow, it will throw an error message failing to work our the drive id of the library.

Read Rows in Excel Using Power Automate with ‘Create Table’ Action When working with Excel files that need to be imported into a SharePoint list, you may encounter scenarios where the data is not already in table format. This can be challenging, especially if the Excel files are automatically generated by an external system and cannot be manually updated. This blog post demonstrates how to dynamically convert raw data into a table using the Create Table action in Power Automate and subsequently read rows using the List rows present in a table action.

Read Rows in Excel Using Power Automate with ‘Create Table’ Action When working with Excel files that need to be imported into a SharePoint list, you may encounter scenarios where the data is not already in table format. This can be challenging, especially if the Excel files are automatically generated by an external system and cannot be manually updated. This blog post demonstrates how to dynamically convert raw data into a table using the Create Table action in Power Automate and subsequently read rows using the List rows present in a table action.

Read Rows in Excel Using Power Automate with ‘Create Table’ Action When working with Excel files that need to be imported into a SharePoint list, you may encounter scenarios where the data is not already in table format. This can be challenging, especially if the Excel files are automatically generated by an external system and cannot be manually updated. This blog post demonstrates how to dynamically convert raw data into a table using the Create Table action in Power Automate and subsequently read rows using the List rows present in a table action.

Power Automate: Save Run Flow URL to SharePoint List Item When running a Power Automate flow, capturing and saving the flow’s run URL to a SharePoint list item can simplify troubleshooting and auditing. This allows you to easily revisit the flow run details in case of failures or for review purposes. However, note that flow run URLs are only available for 30 days, so older links may no longer work.

Exploring some Limitations of Copilot in Power Automate I was thrilled when Copilot became available in the UK region within Power Automate around mid-November 2023. To understand its functionalities and limitations, I started exploring. Please refer to Understanding the Cloud Flows Designer, which outlines some limitations and described the Flows Designer experience. Creating New Flows While creating a new flow using the prompt “Start an approval process and update the item in a SharePoint list when a new item is created,” I noticed a functional flow generated.

Converting a HTTP Trigger into a Child Workflow in Power Automate Using a HTTP trigger requires Premium licence and with the Child Workflow in a solution alleviates the need of premium license. Other advantages using a solution: Application Lifecycle Management: Facilitates deployment. Child Workflow: Allows for a more modular and manageable flow structure. Easier Ownership Management: Simplifies updates to the flow owner. I recreated the child workflow within the solution selecting the Manually trigger a flow trigger and updated the parent flow to use the flow as child workflow.

Updating Approval Details in SharePoint Library using ‘Send HTTP Request to SharePoint’ in Power Automate In Power Automate, there are two methods for updating file properties: Send HTTP Request to SharePoint Update File Properties While the latter suffices for most cases, I opted for the “Send HTTP Request to SharePoint” in specific scenarios: To avoid triggering a new file version using system update. When modifying system columns such as author or modified date.

Power Automate: Retrieve SharePoint Library Internal Name When working with Power Automate, you may encounter scenarios where you need the internal name of a SharePoint library. For example, when creating a file in a library using Power Automate, the internal name is often required. Instead of manually adding the internal name as an environment variable, you can dynamically retrieve it using the Send an HTTP Request to SharePoint action. This blog post demonstrates how to retrieve the internal name of a SharePoint library using its ID or display name.

Power Automate: Retrieve SharePoint Library Internal Name When working with Power Automate, you may encounter scenarios where you need the internal name of a SharePoint library. For example, when creating a file in a library using Power Automate, the internal name is often required. Instead of manually adding the internal name as an environment variable, you can dynamically retrieve it using the Send an HTTP Request to SharePoint action. This blog post demonstrates how to retrieve the internal name of a SharePoint library using its ID or display name.

Introduction Have you ever encountered the frustrating situation where the Restore a library link in SharePoint is missing or inconsistently available? This can be a significant issue when you need to restore a library urgently. The Problem Typically, you would expect to see the link ‘Restore This Library’ in the SharePoint interface: Restore library However, in some cases, this link might be missing: Restore Library Missing The Workaround After some investigation, I discovered a workaround.

Gaining an overview of what takes up space in a SharePoint site is crucial for monitoring large files or a significant number of versions. Unfortunately, the storage metrics link, <siteurl>/_layouts/15/storman.aspx, won’t work for libraries with more than 5,000 files without nested folders. While this might go against information architecture principles, creating folders is an option to avoid the list view threshold error. Here’s a PowerShell script to help you get storage metrics for your SharePoint site:

Counting Files and Folders within SharePoint Libraries using PnP PowerShell This post shows a PowerShell script using PnP PowerShell module to count the number of files and folders within a SharePoint library. It might be useful doing an inventory of file count. $SiteURL = "Counting Files within a SharePoint Library using PnP PowerShell" # Generate a unique log file name using today's date $dateTime = (Get-Date).toString("dd-MM-yyyy") $invocation = (Get-Variable MyInvocation).Value $directorypath = Split-Path $invocation.

Power Automate: Retrieve SharePoint Library Internal Name When working with Power Automate, you may encounter scenarios where you need the internal name of a SharePoint library. For example, when creating a file in a library using Power Automate, the internal name is often required. Instead of manually adding the internal name as an environment variable, you can dynamically retrieve it using the Send an HTTP Request to SharePoint action. This blog post demonstrates how to retrieve the internal name of a SharePoint library using its ID or display name.

Publishing Major Versions of Files in SharePoint with Power Automate This post covers how to publish major versions for Office documents (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) in SharePoint using Power Automate, especially after an approval task using the checkin and publish REST endpoints. This applies to libraries having minor versions enabled Just for context, a Power Automate approval flow with trigger for a selected file needed publishing for the selected file as major version after being approved.

PnP PowerShell: Enabling and Configuring Document ID in SharePoint The Document ID feature in SharePoint is a powerful tool that assigns a unique ID to files, making it easier to reference and track documents. The script within the post activates and configures the Document ID feature using PnP PowerShell. Additionally, it covers the Set-PnPSiteDocumentIdPrefix cmdlet, which simplifies the process of setting a custom prefix for Document IDs. Why Use Document IDs?

PnP PowerShell: Enabling and Configuring Document ID in SharePoint The Document ID feature in SharePoint is a powerful tool that assigns a unique ID to files, making it easier to reference and track documents. The script within the post activates and configures the Document ID feature using PnP PowerShell. Additionally, it covers the Set-PnPSiteDocumentIdPrefix cmdlet, which simplifies the process of setting a custom prefix for Document IDs. Why Use Document IDs?

Monitoring Storage Quotas with PowerShell Managing storage quotas in Microsoft 365 is critical to ensure uninterrupted service and optimal performance. This blog post demonstrates how to use a PowerShell script to monitor storage usage across SharePoint Online sites and identify sites nearing or exceeding their storage quotas. Script Overview The script connects to the SharePoint Online admin center, retrieves site storage details, calculates the percentage of storage used, and generates a report for sites exceeding 80% of their allocated storage quota.

Have you ever wondered how to default the default sharing link in Teams chats to ‘People currently in this chat’? By default, if “Anyone” is disabled within the tenant, the sharing link is set to “People in my organization”. This can be a challenge when you want to limit access to only those in the current chat. All files uploaded to a Teams Chat are stored in the uploader’s OneDrive for Business.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring OneDrive Tenant Settings with PowerShell OneDrive makes it easy to collaborate by sharing files and folders with others. OneDrive is the storage space for personal productivity and not meant for collaboration. Data stored within OneDrive are Files shared to chats within Teams Files shared with end user by other OneDrive users. OneNote Personal lists and Document storage Shortcuts to SharePoint sites/libraries Favourites Loops within chats Streams In this article, we’ll explore into how PowerShell can empower SharePoint administrators to configure OneDrive sharing settings proactively at the tenant level, addressing oversharing concerns for the M365 Copilot rollout.

Discovering All Checked Out Files including those with no checked in versions There are scenarios when files uploaded won’t have “checked-in version” which will make the files visible only to their uploader. Two possible scenarios that can lead to the situation: Mandatory Metadata Requirements: When there are mandatory fields configured on the libraries and end users use Onedrive as a medium to upload the files to SharePoint via a shortcut to OneDrive.

Introduction Azure Logic Apps provide a powerful alternative to Power Automate for building workflows and integrations in the cloud. While both tools share similarities, Logic Apps offer unique advantages, especially for enterprise-scale solutions. However, managing Logic Apps in source control and deploying them via Azure DevOps pipelines comes with its own set of challenges. This blog post explores the differences between Logic Apps and Power Automate, highlights the limitations of Logic Apps in source control, and provides insights into handling system-assigned identities and API versions during deployment.

Introduction The PAT(Personal Access Token) is the Azure DevOps personal access token which can be generated from your account settings and used for authentication when performing Git operations. Cons using PATs Not conducive for teamwork: If the PAT belongs to a team member who leaves the organization, the release manager or another team member will have to generate their own PAT and update the pipeline. Security risks: Similar to a password, a PAT poses risks if leaked.

Introduction When setting up your Azure DevOps pipeline for deploying a Power Platform solution, you may encounter an error message if your solution relies on connection references. The reason given was : An unexpected error occurred. This generic message does not provide much help and can occur for multiple reasons. In my scenario, it was related to the connection references in the target environment not being shared with the service principal.

Client secrets have traditionally been the go-to method for deploying Power Platform solutions from Azure DevOps, utilizing app registrations from the Azure platform. However, my personal experience has shown that this approach can be problematic, especially when you are not an application admin. It often involves wasting time figuring out why deployments have failed due to expired or missing client secrets. Even when reaching out to someone with application admin rights, they might generate a new client secret but forget to update the service connections for each service connection within Azure DevOps or the application admin does not have access requiring to reach out to someone else who have access, causing further disruptions.

Introduction Thanks to Kinga Kazala for her timely article Deploy SPFx app using pipeline’s Workload Identity federation, which showcases how to use Workload Identity Federation to alleviate the need for using Entra app secrets or certificates. This method simplifies the setup process, especially when there’s reliance on a single person who might be unavailable. We initially set up the SPFx pipeline for the Test environment using certificates with CLI for M365.

If it takes too long to deploy the solution, time out issues might occur. In this instance consider checking and updating the MaxAsyncWaitTime. Its value has been increased to 120 which means the deployment process will wait up to 120 seconds (or 2 minutes) for asynchronous operations such as import power platform solution to complete fixing the timing out issue. The fix is to amend the MaxAsyncWaitTime to 120 - task: PowerPlatformImportSolution@2 inputs: authenticationType: PowerPlatformSPN PowerPlatformSPN: 'powerplatform-t-connection' Environment: 'https://contoso-st.

Overcoming Challenges with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Self-Hosted Build Agents for Power Platform Managed Solutions Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform solutions can be effectively managed using Azure DevOps, providing a robust framework for automating deployments, version control, and continuous integration and delivery, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing manual errors. Refer to the posts for more details: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform There are loads of posts explaining Application Lifecycle Management for the Power Platform using Azure DevOps most using the graphical classical pipeline. The latest post I read on this is Application Lifecycle Management for the Power Platform using Azure DevOps by Luise Freese which is brilliant. Please read article covering difference between YAML and Classic UI to explain why you may want the modern YAML pipeline.

Unable to find Power Platform in Azure DevOps Issue I was Unable to find the powerplatform in Azure devops Solution The solution is to install the Extension: Power Platform Build Tools (2.0.5) to Organisation. This will enable the Power Platform service connection. References Unable to find the powerplatform in Azure devops

Coauthoring with power apps issues Coauthoring in power apps allows multiple power apps developers to work on the same canvas app. Despite being an experimental feature we decided to give a try to speed up the development process. We used the blog post [How To Setup Power Apps Co-Authoring - Azure DevOps Version] (https://www.matthewdevaney.com/how-to-setup-power-apps-co-authoring-azure-dev-ops-version/). The tutorial covers step-by-step instructions for enabling co-authoring for canvas apps in Power Apps using Azure DevOps repository.

Introduction Azure Logic Apps provide a powerful alternative to Power Automate for building workflows and integrations in the cloud. While both tools share similarities, Logic Apps offer unique advantages, especially for enterprise-scale solutions. However, managing Logic Apps in source control and deploying them via Azure DevOps pipelines comes with its own set of challenges. This blog post explores the differences between Logic Apps and Power Automate, highlights the limitations of Logic Apps in source control, and provides insights into handling system-assigned identities and API versions during deployment.

Introduction Azure Logic Apps provide a powerful alternative to Power Automate for building workflows and integrations in the cloud. While both tools share similarities, Logic Apps offer unique advantages, especially for enterprise-scale solutions. However, managing Logic Apps in source control and deploying them via Azure DevOps pipelines comes with its own set of challenges. This blog post explores the differences between Logic Apps and Power Automate, highlights the limitations of Logic Apps in source control, and provides insights into handling system-assigned identities and API versions during deployment.

Introduction Azure Logic Apps provide a powerful alternative to Power Automate for building workflows and integrations in the cloud. While both tools share similarities, Logic Apps offer unique advantages, especially for enterprise-scale solutions. However, managing Logic Apps in source control and deploying them via Azure DevOps pipelines comes with its own set of challenges. This blog post explores the differences between Logic Apps and Power Automate, highlights the limitations of Logic Apps in source control, and provides insights into handling system-assigned identities and API versions during deployment.

Introduction In SharePoint, you can enhance user interactions by conditionally triggering different Power Automate flows based on specific conditions in a list or library. This is achieved using JSON column formatting and the executeFlow action. By dynamically linking flows to specific conditions, you can streamline processes and improve automation. List formatting provides a powerful feature to control the flow of a process from filling mandatory fields, create approval tasks. Depending on the status of the list item, different power automate flows can be called.

Introduction Adding a “Copy Code” button to code blocks in your Hugo blog can significantly enhance the user experience, especially for technical blogs. With the help of GitHub Copilot, I implemented a solution to add a copy button above code blocks, styled similarly to GitHub’s copy button. This blog post walks you through the steps to achieve this functionality using JavaScript and CSS. By the end, you’ll have a fully functional “Copy” button that appears in the top of your code blocks.

Enhance List Formatting for Multi-Line Text fields challenges Summary The following sample shows how you can view more of a truncated multi line text column on click. Column formatting in SharePoint is a powerful tool to customize how data is displayed. Multi-line text fields, however, present unique challenges when applying these formats. This guide explores a method to expand truncated multi-line text on click and discusses its limitations. Understanding the Concept The objective is to provide users with a preview of truncated text and enable expansion on hover.

Executing a Flow from Column Formatting from a page using the Embed Webpart I encountered an intriguing challenge: triggering a flow from column formatting within a List View Webpart. Initially, I successfully created a button within a list to execute a flow on a specific item, following the steps outlined in Microsoft’s documentation here. It worked seamlessly within the list interface directly. However, when attempting to add the list with the formatting column using the list view webpart on a page to allow end-users to trigger the flow the results were different.

Introduction In SharePoint, you can enhance user interactions by conditionally triggering different Power Automate flows based on specific conditions in a list or library. This is achieved using JSON column formatting and the executeFlow action. By dynamically linking flows to specific conditions, you can streamline processes and improve automation. List formatting provides a powerful feature to control the flow of a process from filling mandatory fields, create approval tasks. Depending on the status of the list item, different power automate flows can be called.

Enhance List Formatting for Multi-Line Text fields challenges Summary The following sample shows how you can view more of a truncated multi line text column on click. Column formatting in SharePoint is a powerful tool to customize how data is displayed. Multi-line text fields, however, present unique challenges when applying these formats. This guide explores a method to expand truncated multi-line text on click and discusses its limitations. Understanding the Concept The objective is to provide users with a preview of truncated text and enable expansion on hover.

Executing a Flow from Column Formatting from a page using the Embed Webpart I encountered an intriguing challenge: triggering a flow from column formatting within a List View Webpart. Initially, I successfully created a button within a list to execute a flow on a specific item, following the steps outlined in Microsoft’s documentation here. It worked seamlessly within the list interface directly. However, when attempting to add the list with the formatting column using the list view webpart on a page to allow end-users to trigger the flow the results were different.

Optimizing Email HTML for Outlook using the ‘Send Email’ action within Power Automate When crafting attention-grabbing emails, the HTML structure plays a pivotal role. I recently encountered challenges in achieving consistent formatting across Outlook desktop and web versions using the Send Email action within Power Automate. Using div Tags for Responsiveness At first, I experimented with divs to ensure responsiveness and modern HTML formatting. The code appeared as follows: <style> .

Introduction In SharePoint, you can enhance user interactions by conditionally triggering different Power Automate flows based on specific conditions in a list or library. This is achieved using JSON column formatting and the executeFlow action. By dynamically linking flows to specific conditions, you can streamline processes and improve automation. List formatting provides a powerful feature to control the flow of a process from filling mandatory fields, create approval tasks. Depending on the status of the list item, different power automate flows can be called.

When using Power Automate action Send an Http request to SharePoint specially to send data in the body to a REST API call, for instance to create a news link from a SharePoint List Item, you might encounter issues if the body contains double quotes in the title or description. This blog post will walk you through the problem and provide solutions to handle double quotes in JSON strings. Problem Overview Using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action to create a news link can fail if the JSON body contains double quotes.

JSON Data Handling in Power Automate : outputs versus body In Power Automate, JSON data output from various actions is key to connect each other. Accessing Action Outputs Accessing the outputs of a specific action, such as the action ‘Get file properties’, the spcific property can be accessed via the outputs, for instance file name with extension.: outputs(‘Get_file_properties’)?[‘body/{FilenameWithExtension}’] Referencing Action Body A streamlined way is to reference the body directly making it simpler.

Enhance List Formatting for Multi-Line Text fields challenges Summary The following sample shows how you can view more of a truncated multi line text column on click. Column formatting in SharePoint is a powerful tool to customize how data is displayed. Multi-line text fields, however, present unique challenges when applying these formats. This guide explores a method to expand truncated multi-line text on click and discusses its limitations. Understanding the Concept The objective is to provide users with a preview of truncated text and enable expansion on hover.

Executing a Flow from Column Formatting from a page using the Embed Webpart I encountered an intriguing challenge: triggering a flow from column formatting within a List View Webpart. Initially, I successfully created a button within a list to execute a flow on a specific item, following the steps outlined in Microsoft’s documentation here. It worked seamlessly within the list interface directly. However, when attempting to add the list with the formatting column using the list view webpart on a page to allow end-users to trigger the flow the results were different.

Introduction In SharePoint, you can enhance user interactions by conditionally triggering different Power Automate flows based on specific conditions in a list or library. This is achieved using JSON column formatting and the executeFlow action. By dynamically linking flows to specific conditions, you can streamline processes and improve automation. List formatting provides a powerful feature to control the flow of a process from filling mandatory fields, create approval tasks. Depending on the status of the list item, different power automate flows can be called.

Using column formatting in SharePoint, you can update the values of other fields using the setValue function. This approach allows you to create dynamic functionality in your lists and libraries without extensive development, helping to avoid accumulating technical debt. Updating a Managed Metadata field, however, is not as straightforward as simply specifying the display value. The field expects a specific format that includes the term’s ID (termId). Understanding Column Formatting Column formatting in SharePoint involves using a combination of inline CSS, HTML, and JSON to control how fields in lists and libraries are displayed.

SharePoint Column Formatting for Document libraries: Leveraging Name, Folder and Path properties While referencing [$Title] in lists is straightforward, document libraries demand a nuanced approach. Instead of [$Name], had to delve into the intricacies of internal names like $FileLeafRef and $FileRef when working with column formatting. $FileLeafRef: Denotes the name of the file. $FileRef: Represents the server-relative URL of the file. Initial attempts to incorporate $FileSystemObjectType for folder identification was challenging, indicating that not all document library internal column names are supported.

Enhance List Formatting for Multi-Line Text fields challenges Summary The following sample shows how you can view more of a truncated multi line text column on click. Column formatting in SharePoint is a powerful tool to customize how data is displayed. Multi-line text fields, however, present unique challenges when applying these formats. This guide explores a method to expand truncated multi-line text on click and discusses its limitations. Understanding the Concept The objective is to provide users with a preview of truncated text and enable expansion on hover.

Executing a Flow from Column Formatting from a page using the Embed Webpart I encountered an intriguing challenge: triggering a flow from column formatting within a List View Webpart. Initially, I successfully created a button within a list to execute a flow on a specific item, following the steps outlined in Microsoft’s documentation here. It worked seamlessly within the list interface directly. However, when attempting to add the list with the formatting column using the list view webpart on a page to allow end-users to trigger the flow the results were different.

Introduction In SharePoint, you can enhance user interactions by conditionally triggering different Power Automate flows based on specific conditions in a list or library. This is achieved using JSON column formatting and the executeFlow action. By dynamically linking flows to specific conditions, you can streamline processes and improve automation. List formatting provides a powerful feature to control the flow of a process from filling mandatory fields, create approval tasks. Depending on the status of the list item, different power automate flows can be called.

Introduction In SharePoint, you can enhance user interactions by conditionally triggering different Power Automate flows based on specific conditions in a list or library. This is achieved using JSON column formatting and the executeFlow action. By dynamically linking flows to specific conditions, you can streamline processes and improve automation. List formatting provides a powerful feature to control the flow of a process from filling mandatory fields, create approval tasks. Depending on the status of the list item, different power automate flows can be called.

Executing a Flow from Column Formatting from a page using the Embed Webpart I encountered an intriguing challenge: triggering a flow from column formatting within a List View Webpart. Initially, I successfully created a button within a list to execute a flow on a specific item, following the steps outlined in Microsoft’s documentation here. It worked seamlessly within the list interface directly. However, when attempting to add the list with the formatting column using the list view webpart on a page to allow end-users to trigger the flow the results were different.

Power Automate: Save Run Flow URL to SharePoint List Item When running a Power Automate flow, capturing and saving the flow’s run URL to a SharePoint list item can simplify troubleshooting and auditing. This allows you to easily revisit the flow run details in case of failures or for review purposes. However, note that flow run URLs are only available for 30 days, so older links may no longer work.

Power Automate: Save Run Flow URL to SharePoint List Item When running a Power Automate flow, capturing and saving the flow’s run URL to a SharePoint list item can simplify troubleshooting and auditing. This allows you to easily revisit the flow run details in case of failures or for review purposes. However, note that flow run URLs are only available for 30 days, so older links may no longer work.

Latency Issues Accessing Microsoft 365 Sites - SharePoint, Admin Center When using a SaaS (Software as a Service) product like Microsoft 365, troubleshooting performance issues can be challenging due to the lack of server-level access. This limitation makes it difficult to analyze network traffic or monitor server resources like CPU, RAM, or storage, which could impact the performance of SharePoint sites. We were experiencing errors, timeouts, delays, and non-functional features for users.

Latency Issues Accessing Microsoft 365 Sites - SharePoint, Admin Center When using a SaaS (Software as a Service) product like Microsoft 365, troubleshooting performance issues can be challenging due to the lack of server-level access. This limitation makes it difficult to analyze network traffic or monitor server resources like CPU, RAM, or storage, which could impact the performance of SharePoint sites. We were experiencing errors, timeouts, delays, and non-functional features for users.

Latency Issues Accessing Microsoft 365 Sites - SharePoint, Admin Center When using a SaaS (Software as a Service) product like Microsoft 365, troubleshooting performance issues can be challenging due to the lack of server-level access. This limitation makes it difficult to analyze network traffic or monitor server resources like CPU, RAM, or storage, which could impact the performance of SharePoint sites. We were experiencing errors, timeouts, delays, and non-functional features for users.

Latency Issues Accessing Microsoft 365 Sites - SharePoint, Admin Center When using a SaaS (Software as a Service) product like Microsoft 365, troubleshooting performance issues can be challenging due to the lack of server-level access. This limitation makes it difficult to analyze network traffic or monitor server resources like CPU, RAM, or storage, which could impact the performance of SharePoint sites. We were experiencing errors, timeouts, delays, and non-functional features for users.

Introduction Adding a “Copy Code” button to code blocks in your Hugo blog can significantly enhance the user experience, especially for technical blogs. With the help of GitHub Copilot, I implemented a solution to add a copy button above code blocks, styled similarly to GitHub’s copy button. This blog post walks you through the steps to achieve this functionality using JavaScript and CSS. By the end, you’ll have a fully functional “Copy” button that appears in the top of your code blocks.

Introduction Adding a “Copy Code” button to code blocks in your Hugo blog can significantly enhance the user experience, especially for technical blogs. With the help of GitHub Copilot, I implemented a solution to add a copy button above code blocks, styled similarly to GitHub’s copy button. This blog post walks you through the steps to achieve this functionality using JavaScript and CSS. By the end, you’ll have a fully functional “Copy” button that appears in the top of your code blocks.

Introduction Adding a “Copy Code” button to code blocks in your Hugo blog can significantly enhance the user experience, especially for technical blogs. With the help of GitHub Copilot, I implemented a solution to add a copy button above code blocks, styled similarly to GitHub’s copy button. This blog post walks you through the steps to achieve this functionality using JavaScript and CSS. By the end, you’ll have a fully functional “Copy” button that appears in the top of your code blocks.

Enable Giscus for Hugo Blog I recently switched to Giscus for comments on my blog post, inspired by its popularity among other bloggers. Giscus, a commenting system powered by GitHub Discussions, offers a seamless way to engage with readers. If you’re using Hugo for your blog hosted on GitHub, linking Giscus to your posts is straightforward. Note: The following setup guide is based on instructions generated by GitHub Copilot, which I successfully followed to integrate Giscus into my blog.

Embed GitHub Gist in Hugo posts I was approached by Divya Akula with a suggestion to use a link to GitHub for my script and I really bought in the idea because I used to do it on Wordpress. I started googling and trying out solutions which did not work and messed up my blog repo. Fortunately being MVP I have access to GitHub Copilot and asked Copilot with a simple prompt which gave me a simple straight forward looking solution.

Creating New Posts with Hugo In this post, we will walk through the process of creating a new post in Hugo, a popular static site generator. Step 1: Navigate to Your Hugo Site First, navigate to the directory where your Hugo site is configured. You can do this using the cd command in terminal: cd .\Hugo\sites\M365Blog\ Step 2: Create a New Post Next, use the hugo new command to create a new post:

How to Ensure Your Netlify Site is Search Engine Crawlable There are numerous posts to describe how to convert Wordpress to Hugo. I followed the instructions from blog post How to move your blog from Wordpress to Hugo to start with and hosted it on Netlify, it’s essential to ensure that search engines can crawl and index your site properly. Follow these steps to make sure your site is discoverable:

Introduction Adding a “Copy Code” button to code blocks in your Hugo blog can significantly enhance the user experience, especially for technical blogs. With the help of GitHub Copilot, I implemented a solution to add a copy button above code blocks, styled similarly to GitHub’s copy button. This blog post walks you through the steps to achieve this functionality using JavaScript and CSS. By the end, you’ll have a fully functional “Copy” button that appears in the top of your code blocks.

Introduction Adding a “Copy Code” button to code blocks in your Hugo blog can significantly enhance the user experience, especially for technical blogs. With the help of GitHub Copilot, I implemented a solution to add a copy button above code blocks, styled similarly to GitHub’s copy button. This blog post walks you through the steps to achieve this functionality using JavaScript and CSS. By the end, you’ll have a fully functional “Copy” button that appears in the top of your code blocks.

Enable Giscus for Hugo Blog I recently switched to Giscus for comments on my blog post, inspired by its popularity among other bloggers. Giscus, a commenting system powered by GitHub Discussions, offers a seamless way to engage with readers. If you’re using Hugo for your blog hosted on GitHub, linking Giscus to your posts is straightforward. Note: The following setup guide is based on instructions generated by GitHub Copilot, which I successfully followed to integrate Giscus into my blog.

How to Ensure Your Netlify Site is Search Engine Crawlable There are numerous posts to describe how to convert Wordpress to Hugo. I followed the instructions from blog post How to move your blog from Wordpress to Hugo to start with and hosted it on Netlify, it’s essential to ensure that search engines can crawl and index your site properly. Follow these steps to make sure your site is discoverable:

Introduction Managing files in SharePoint libraries can be challenging, especially when dealing with test data or bulk operations. For instance, you may need to find and delete files containing specific names or patterns to reset a testing environment. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to locate and delete files in SharePoint libraries, including associated data in lists, to streamline the testing process. In this example, we had PDF files containing a series of receipts that were split into individual files using Power Automate with the Encodian connector.

Introduction When working with files in SharePoint, the drive ID and drive item ID are essential parameters for further manipulation using Microsoft Graph API. The drive ID is a base64 encoded string composed of the site ID, web ID, and list ID for a particular SharePoint library. For more details, refer to Microsoft Graph: Encoding and decoding the drive ID by Mikael Svenson. The item ID part appears to be a base32 encoding of the SharePoint item’s unique ID, though the exact mechanics are still being explored.

Gaining an overview of what takes up space in a SharePoint site is crucial for monitoring large files or a significant number of versions. Unfortunately, the storage metrics link, <siteurl>/_layouts/15/storman.aspx, won’t work for libraries with more than 5,000 files without nested folders. While this might go against information architecture principles, creating folders is an option to avoid the list view threshold error. Here’s a PowerShell script to help you get storage metrics for your SharePoint site:

Publishing Major Versions of Files in SharePoint with Power Automate This post covers how to publish major versions for Office documents (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) in SharePoint using Power Automate, especially after an approval task using the checkin and publish REST endpoints. This applies to libraries having minor versions enabled Just for context, a Power Automate approval flow with trigger for a selected file needed publishing for the selected file as major version after being approved.

Introduction Managing files in SharePoint libraries can be challenging, especially when dealing with test data or bulk operations. For instance, you may need to find and delete files containing specific names or patterns to reset a testing environment. This blog post demonstrates how to use PowerShell to locate and delete files in SharePoint libraries, including associated data in lists, to streamline the testing process. In this example, we had PDF files containing a series of receipts that were split into individual files using Power Automate with the Encodian connector.

Get Total Count of SharePoint Files, Folders, and Items with PnP PowerShell This PowerShell script powered by PnP PowerShell can help to get total count of files, folders, and list items across SharePoint tenant. This script is invaluable for administrators looking to perform audits, verify data migrations, or simply keep tabs on the content sprawl within their environments. The use case of this script was to get a total number of items that would be ingested into a third party application Records365 (provided by RecordPoint) to ensure the number tally for compliance purposes and identify any gaps.

Get Folder Item properties using PnP PowerShell : Get-PnPFolderItem versus Get-PnPListItem Introduction In this blog post, we will explore an alternative approach to retrieving folder item properties using PnP PowerShell. We will discuss the limitations of the Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet and demonstrate how to use Get-PnPListItem to overcome those limitations. The Limitations of Get-PnPFolderItem The Get-PnPFolderItem cmdlet is not suitable for working with large libraries. When attempting to retrieve items from a large library, you may encounter the following error message:

Introduction Embedding a Copilot Studio Agent within a SharePoint page can significantly enhance user experience by providing seamless access to AI-powered assistance directly within the context of a SharePoint site. While there are examples of achieving this using SPFx (SharePoint Framework), I wanted to explore whether this could be done using out-of-the-box (OOB) features without custom development. In this blog post, I will walk you through the steps to embed a Copilot Studio Agent into a SharePoint page using the Embed Webpart and site settings.

Introduction Balancing AI safety measures and practical functionality for SharePoint Agents is key for some use cases due to the lack of customisation of the inbuilt content safety against the four categories: harm, self-harm, sex, and hate. A particular use case we wanted to explore was its use for mental health support agents in the form of virtual mental health first aiders. My partner in crime Lee Ford and I explored what we could do without tripping the Responsible AI principles and flagging Content Safety categories.

Introduction SharePoint Agent is the easiest way to get started with building your own grounded Agents from your SharePoint data. The possibilities are vast, from HR agents to legal agents. If more configuration and features are required, the Copilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry could help. Each SharePoint site comes with its own default Agent scoped to data within the site. As of today (i.e. March 2025), the default SharePoint agent can’t be modified.

Introduction Embedding a Copilot Studio Agent within a SharePoint page can significantly enhance user experience by providing seamless access to AI-powered assistance directly within the context of a SharePoint site. While there are examples of achieving this using SPFx (SharePoint Framework), I wanted to explore whether this could be done using out-of-the-box (OOB) features without custom development. In this blog post, I will walk you through the steps to embed a Copilot Studio Agent into a SharePoint page using the Embed Webpart and site settings.

Executing a Flow from Column Formatting from a page using the Embed Webpart I encountered an intriguing challenge: triggering a flow from column formatting within a List View Webpart. Initially, I successfully created a button within a list to execute a flow on a specific item, following the steps outlined in Microsoft’s documentation here. It worked seamlessly within the list interface directly. However, when attempting to add the list with the formatting column using the list view webpart on a page to allow end-users to trigger the flow the results were different.

Introduction Balancing AI safety measures and practical functionality for SharePoint Agents is key for some use cases due to the lack of customisation of the inbuilt content safety against the four categories: harm, self-harm, sex, and hate. A particular use case we wanted to explore was its use for mental health support agents in the form of virtual mental health first aiders. My partner in crime Lee Ford and I explored what we could do without tripping the Responsible AI principles and flagging Content Safety categories.

Introduction Balancing AI safety measures and practical functionality for SharePoint Agents is key for some use cases due to the lack of customisation of the inbuilt content safety against the four categories: harm, self-harm, sex, and hate. A particular use case we wanted to explore was its use for mental health support agents in the form of virtual mental health first aiders. My partner in crime Lee Ford and I explored what we could do without tripping the Responsible AI principles and flagging Content Safety categories.

Inheritance of Sharing Settings in Channel Associated SharePoint Sites Channel associated SharePoint sites inherit the external and default sharing settings of the parent team except when the parent team default sharing link is set to “People with Existing Access” only during creation. The two sections highlight the testing I have done by first updating the parent team sharing setting before creating a private or shared channel which creates the corresponding site in the background.

Introduction Azure AI Foundry comes with built-in Safety + Security features, also known as Azure AI Services. However, you may encounter the following error message: Your account does not have access to this resource, please contact your resource owner to get access The Learn More link directs you to a possible fix: ensuring your account is assigned the role of Cognitive Services User for the Content Safety resource or Azure AI Services resource you’re using.

Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman I attended the session Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman on the 19th Oct 2023. He demoed how to leverage Azure Open AI Service to “add your own data” combined with ChatGPT to retrieve information from your company owned data covering elements of generative AI and reinforcing some of the points highlighted in the Keynote such as prompt engineering, grounding, jail breaking, etc.

MS Build AI Day Keynote by Scott Hanselman On October 19, 2023, the inaugural MS Build AI Day at Excel London in Custom House marked a pivotal moment for the world of AI. As an attendee, I had the privilege of witnessing a groundbreaking keynote session led by none other than Scott Hanselman. Titled “Navigating the AI Landscape,” the keynote, introduced by Michael Wignall, the lead for MS Build, set the stage for an eventful day filled with insights, connections, and hands-on experiences.

Introduction SharePoint Agent is the easiest way to get started with building your own grounded Agents from your SharePoint data. The possibilities are vast, from HR agents to legal agents. If more configuration and features are required, the Copilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry could help. Each SharePoint site comes with its own default Agent scoped to data within the site. As of today (i.e. March 2025), the default SharePoint agent can’t be modified.

Introduction Since January 2024, I have had the honor of being a Microsoft MVP. Now, it’s time to renew my MVP status, which requires gathering all my contributions to submit within the renewal application. I must admit, I haven’t been great at keeping track of my contributions every time I raise a Pull Request or write a blog post. But here’s what I’ve managed to pull together. Pull Requests within Github I’ve successfully merged nearly 70 Pull Requests (PRs) in open-source PnP repositories, along with over 50 blog posts spanning areas like PowerShell, SharePoint, Azure DevOps, Power Automate, and M365 Copilot.

Creating New Posts with Hugo In this post, we will walk through the process of creating a new post in Hugo, a popular static site generator. Step 1: Navigate to Your Hugo Site First, navigate to the directory where your Hugo site is configured. You can do this using the cd command in terminal: cd .\Hugo\sites\M365Blog\ Step 2: Create a New Post Next, use the hugo new command to create a new post:

Introduction Since January 2024, I have had the honor of being a Microsoft MVP. Now, it’s time to renew my MVP status, which requires gathering all my contributions to submit within the renewal application. I must admit, I haven’t been great at keeping track of my contributions every time I raise a Pull Request or write a blog post. But here’s what I’ve managed to pull together. Pull Requests within Github I’ve successfully merged nearly 70 Pull Requests (PRs) in open-source PnP repositories, along with over 50 blog posts spanning areas like PowerShell, SharePoint, Azure DevOps, Power Automate, and M365 Copilot.

Inheritance of Sharing Settings in Channel Associated SharePoint Sites Channel associated SharePoint sites inherit the external and default sharing settings of the parent team except when the parent team default sharing link is set to “People with Existing Access” only during creation. The two sections highlight the testing I have done by first updating the parent team sharing setting before creating a private or shared channel which creates the corresponding site in the background.

Introduction Azure AI Foundry comes with built-in Safety + Security features, also known as Azure AI Services. However, you may encounter the following error message: Your account does not have access to this resource, please contact your resource owner to get access The Learn More link directs you to a possible fix: ensuring your account is assigned the role of Cognitive Services User for the Content Safety resource or Azure AI Services resource you’re using.

Transferring an Azure subscription to a new tenant can be a complex process. I recently followed the instructions from How can I move a subscription to a new tenant? to move an Azure subscription to a new test tenant. However, the new test tenant was not appearing in the list of tenants I could move the subscription to. I realized that the account I was using needed to be a global admin in both tenants.

Azure Document Intelligence Studio - Neural vs. Template Training Azure Document Intelligence Studio formally known as form recognizer is a powerful tool to extract data from documents at scale. Among its features, the ability to “train a new model” for data extraction from documents. This process comes with two distinct options: Neural and Template. Each has its unique advantages and use cases. Neural Training The Neural option leverages deep learning algorithms to understand and process documents.

Inheritance of Sharing Settings in Channel Associated SharePoint Sites Channel associated SharePoint sites inherit the external and default sharing settings of the parent team except when the parent team default sharing link is set to “People with Existing Access” only during creation. The two sections highlight the testing I have done by first updating the parent team sharing setting before creating a private or shared channel which creates the corresponding site in the background.

Introduction Azure AI Foundry comes with built-in Safety + Security features, also known as Azure AI Services. However, you may encounter the following error message: Your account does not have access to this resource, please contact your resource owner to get access The Learn More link directs you to a possible fix: ensuring your account is assigned the role of Cognitive Services User for the Content Safety resource or Azure AI Services resource you’re using.

Inheritance of Sharing Settings in Channel Associated SharePoint Sites Channel associated SharePoint sites inherit the external and default sharing settings of the parent team except when the parent team default sharing link is set to “People with Existing Access” only during creation. The two sections highlight the testing I have done by first updating the parent team sharing setting before creating a private or shared channel which creates the corresponding site in the background.

Introduction Azure AI Foundry comes with built-in Safety + Security features, also known as Azure AI Services. However, you may encounter the following error message: Your account does not have access to this resource, please contact your resource owner to get access The Learn More link directs you to a possible fix: ensuring your account is assigned the role of Cognitive Services User for the Content Safety resource or Azure AI Services resource you’re using.

Inheritance of Sharing Settings in Channel Associated SharePoint Sites Channel associated SharePoint sites inherit the external and default sharing settings of the parent team except when the parent team default sharing link is set to “People with Existing Access” only during creation. The two sections highlight the testing I have done by first updating the parent team sharing setting before creating a private or shared channel which creates the corresponding site in the background.

Introduction Azure AI Foundry comes with built-in Safety + Security features, also known as Azure AI Services. However, you may encounter the following error message: Your account does not have access to this resource, please contact your resource owner to get access The Learn More link directs you to a possible fix: ensuring your account is assigned the role of Cognitive Services User for the Content Safety resource or Azure AI Services resource you’re using.

Introduction Updating the default sharing link from the User Interface at both the site level and tenant level to Specific People (only the people the user specifies) might not work always as expected. This issue could be due to the outdated setting DefaultSharingLinkType being updated behind the scenes. I tested this on a Team site by updating the default sharing setting from the SharePoint Admin Centre to “People you choose”. However, the default sharing link for new sharing links did not reflect this setting.

Introduction The PAT(Personal Access Token) is the Azure DevOps personal access token which can be generated from your account settings and used for authentication when performing Git operations. Cons using PATs Not conducive for teamwork: If the PAT belongs to a team member who leaves the organization, the release manager or another team member will have to generate their own PAT and update the pipeline. Security risks: Similar to a password, a PAT poses risks if leaked.

Introduction When setting up your Azure DevOps pipeline for deploying a Power Platform solution, you may encounter an error message if your solution relies on connection references. The reason given was : An unexpected error occurred. This generic message does not provide much help and can occur for multiple reasons. In my scenario, it was related to the connection references in the target environment not being shared with the service principal.

Client secrets have traditionally been the go-to method for deploying Power Platform solutions from Azure DevOps, utilizing app registrations from the Azure platform. However, my personal experience has shown that this approach can be problematic, especially when you are not an application admin. It often involves wasting time figuring out why deployments have failed due to expired or missing client secrets. Even when reaching out to someone with application admin rights, they might generate a new client secret but forget to update the service connections for each service connection within Azure DevOps or the application admin does not have access requiring to reach out to someone else who have access, causing further disruptions.

Guide to Preparing setting files for Power Platform managed solution deployment This guide will walk you through the process of creating a settings file for Power Platform managed solution deployment. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform for detailed steps for ALM for power platform solutions.

Power Platform Managed Solution Deployment with Connection References - Allow customisations This article explores the challenges and solutions associated with Power Platform managed solution deployment, specifically focusing on connection references and the “Allow Customisations” property. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Introduction The PAT(Personal Access Token) is the Azure DevOps personal access token which can be generated from your account settings and used for authentication when performing Git operations. Cons using PATs Not conducive for teamwork: If the PAT belongs to a team member who leaves the organization, the release manager or another team member will have to generate their own PAT and update the pipeline. Security risks: Similar to a password, a PAT poses risks if leaked.

Introduction When setting up your Azure DevOps pipeline for deploying a Power Platform solution, you may encounter an error message if your solution relies on connection references. The reason given was : An unexpected error occurred. This generic message does not provide much help and can occur for multiple reasons. In my scenario, it was related to the connection references in the target environment not being shared with the service principal.

Introduction The PAT(Personal Access Token) is the Azure DevOps personal access token which can be generated from your account settings and used for authentication when performing Git operations. Cons using PATs Not conducive for teamwork: If the PAT belongs to a team member who leaves the organization, the release manager or another team member will have to generate their own PAT and update the pipeline. Security risks: Similar to a password, a PAT poses risks if leaked.

Overcoming Challenges with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Self-Hosted Build Agents for Power Platform Managed Solutions Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform solutions can be effectively managed using Azure DevOps, providing a robust framework for automating deployments, version control, and continuous integration and delivery, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing manual errors. Refer to the posts for more details: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Introduction The PAT(Personal Access Token) is the Azure DevOps personal access token which can be generated from your account settings and used for authentication when performing Git operations. Cons using PATs Not conducive for teamwork: If the PAT belongs to a team member who leaves the organization, the release manager or another team member will have to generate their own PAT and update the pipeline. Security risks: Similar to a password, a PAT poses risks if leaked.

Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform There are loads of posts explaining Application Lifecycle Management for the Power Platform using Azure DevOps most using the graphical classical pipeline. The latest post I read on this is Application Lifecycle Management for the Power Platform using Azure DevOps by Luise Freese which is brilliant. Please read article covering difference between YAML and Classic UI to explain why you may want the modern YAML pipeline.

Introduction The PAT(Personal Access Token) is the Azure DevOps personal access token which can be generated from your account settings and used for authentication when performing Git operations. Cons using PATs Not conducive for teamwork: If the PAT belongs to a team member who leaves the organization, the release manager or another team member will have to generate their own PAT and update the pipeline. Security risks: Similar to a password, a PAT poses risks if leaked.

Introduction When setting up your Azure DevOps pipeline for deploying a Power Platform solution, you may encounter an error message if your solution relies on connection references. The reason given was : An unexpected error occurred. This generic message does not provide much help and can occur for multiple reasons. In my scenario, it was related to the connection references in the target environment not being shared with the service principal.

Client secrets have traditionally been the go-to method for deploying Power Platform solutions from Azure DevOps, utilizing app registrations from the Azure platform. However, my personal experience has shown that this approach can be problematic, especially when you are not an application admin. It often involves wasting time figuring out why deployments have failed due to expired or missing client secrets. Even when reaching out to someone with application admin rights, they might generate a new client secret but forget to update the service connections for each service connection within Azure DevOps or the application admin does not have access requiring to reach out to someone else who have access, causing further disruptions.

I had to set up a new developer tenant as my previous tenant became unusable due to an expired Visual studio subscription. Fortunately, there is plenty of help and documentation available to guide you through the process. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to get started with the Power Platform Developer Plan. Steps to Enable the Power Platform Developer Plan Sign Up: Visit the Power Apps Developer Plan website. Click on the “Start free” button.

Introduction In Power Automate/Power Platform, environment variables within solutions are essential for managing and configuring flows across different environments. However, there is no direct way to declare an environment variable as an array. This blog post will cover how to use JSON to store arrays as environment variables, enabling you to manage complex data structures efficiently. Available Environment Variable Types Power Automate offers various types of environment variables you can select and configure:

If it takes too long to deploy the solution, time out issues might occur. In this instance consider checking and updating the MaxAsyncWaitTime. Its value has been increased to 120 which means the deployment process will wait up to 120 seconds (or 2 minutes) for asynchronous operations such as import power platform solution to complete fixing the timing out issue. The fix is to amend the MaxAsyncWaitTime to 120 - task: PowerPlatformImportSolution@2 inputs: authenticationType: PowerPlatformSPN PowerPlatformSPN: 'powerplatform-t-connection' Environment: 'https://contoso-st.

Guide to Preparing setting files for Power Platform managed solution deployment This guide will walk you through the process of creating a settings file for Power Platform managed solution deployment. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform for detailed steps for ALM for power platform solutions.

Overcoming Challenges with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Self-Hosted Build Agents for Power Platform Managed Solutions Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform solutions can be effectively managed using Azure DevOps, providing a robust framework for automating deployments, version control, and continuous integration and delivery, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing manual errors. Refer to the posts for more details: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Power Platform Managed Solution Deployment with Connection References - Allow customisations This article explores the challenges and solutions associated with Power Platform managed solution deployment, specifically focusing on connection references and the “Allow Customisations” property. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Unable to find Power Platform in Azure DevOps Issue I was Unable to find the powerplatform in Azure devops Solution The solution is to install the Extension: Power Platform Build Tools (2.0.5) to Organisation. This will enable the Power Platform service connection. References Unable to find the powerplatform in Azure devops

In the Power Platform Admin Center, you may have added app users that you no longer need. To view the list of app users added to an environment, navigate to the following URL https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/manage/environments/c1725b9e-0000-0000-0000-000d3ad0000/appusers, replacing c1725b9e-0000-0000-0000-000d3ad0000 with your environment ID: To delete an app user, click on the ellipsis (…) next to the app user and select the Delete button. However, you may encounter a misleading error message: ✖ Failed to delete app user: User with SystemUserId= is not disabled.

Introduction Microsoft Teams provides a unified platform for end users to collaborate on files stored within SharePoint. However, there are notable differences between the two platforms that can influence your decision on when to use SharePoint and when to use Teams. Search Functionality Contextual Search Contextual search on libraries does not exist within Teams, while SharePoint offers richer contextual search at library, site, organization, and hub levels. Issue with Results from Shared Channels There is an issue searching contents within shared channels where the shared channel name is shown as Mock Team Name which is not helpful identitying the source of the search results without opening the file.

Introduction Microsoft Teams provides a unified platform for end users to collaborate on files stored within SharePoint. However, there are notable differences between the two platforms that can influence your decision on when to use SharePoint and when to use Teams. Search Functionality Contextual Search Contextual search on libraries does not exist within Teams, while SharePoint offers richer contextual search at library, site, organization, and hub levels. Issue with Results from Shared Channels There is an issue searching contents within shared channels where the shared channel name is shown as Mock Team Name which is not helpful identitying the source of the search results without opening the file.

Introduction Microsoft Teams provides a unified platform for end users to collaborate on files stored within SharePoint. However, there are notable differences between the two platforms that can influence your decision on when to use SharePoint and when to use Teams. Search Functionality Contextual Search Contextual search on libraries does not exist within Teams, while SharePoint offers richer contextual search at library, site, organization, and hub levels. Issue with Results from Shared Channels There is an issue searching contents within shared channels where the shared channel name is shown as Mock Team Name which is not helpful identitying the source of the search results without opening the file.

Introduction Have you ever encountered a situation where the search results in SharePoint show incorrect document titles and modified dates? This can be frustrating, especially when you rely on accurate metadata for document management. In this blog post, we’ll explore why this happens and how to resolve it. Problem Statement A business user reported that the search results for a particular document displayed the wrong name and modified date. Upon investigation, we found that the title and modified date were being pulled from the document properties rather than the metadata shown in the SharePoint library.

SharePoint Online offers the useful feature of news links to avoid duplication of news articles and promote existing posts across different sites. This is especially beneficial when news creation is enabled for various departments or directorates, allowing them to share significant news organization-wide. However, the News WebPart might display both the news links and the original articles, resulting in duplicated content. To manage this, you can utilize the OriginalSourceUrl column, which stores the link to the source news article.

SharePoint Search: Excluding Columns from Search Results SharePoint empowers users to manage and organize vast amounts of data efficiently. However, not all data within a SharePoint site might need to be searchable. Do you miss the functionality to control visibility of sensitive or irrelevant information in column. The Challenge You might have encountered instances where you need certain columns in your SharePoint lists or libraries to be excluded from search results.

Introduction Microsoft Teams provides a unified platform for end users to collaborate on files stored within SharePoint. However, there are notable differences between the two platforms that can influence your decision on when to use SharePoint and when to use Teams. Search Functionality Contextual Search Contextual search on libraries does not exist within Teams, while SharePoint offers richer contextual search at library, site, organization, and hub levels. Issue with Results from Shared Channels There is an issue searching contents within shared channels where the shared channel name is shown as Mock Team Name which is not helpful identitying the source of the search results without opening the file.

Introduction Understanding the sensitivity and retention labels applied to files in your SharePoint Online sites is essential for maintaining data security and compliance. These labels enable you to manage and protect your data by defining retention periods and handling sensitive information appropriately. This is particularly important for initiatives like the Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, ensuring that the correct files are stored within the appropriate SharePoint sites. For example, if a SharePoint site is a public Team site, files labeled as confidential should be moved to a private Team site or existing Team site updated from public to private.

The script checks the ‘SharePoint Online Web Client Extensibility’ Principal within Entra ID for the actual assigned permissions as the SPFx solutions requests are all be added to that single shared permission group. As hilghlighted by “Wes Hackett”: I’ve personally seen plenty of tenants with Mailbox permissions with no corresponding solutions live in the app catalogs. Early SPFx doc examples encouraged the use of MS Graph into Mailbox permissions in one of the how to learn samples, older tenants sometimes have this breadcrumb left behind.

Have you ever needed to gather detailed information about SPFx solutions installed in your SharePoint environment, such as API permissions, for auditing, inventory, or compliance purposes? The PowerShell script below helps you retrieve these details from both the tenant-level and site collection app catalogs for auditing with the aim to improve security posture by removing unneeded apps and access rights. To execute this script, you must have Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator roles.

SharePoint Online has a list view threshold (LVT) of 5,000 items, which can cause performance issues if exceeded. This post provides a workaround through filtering libraries/lists to stay within this limit and avoid common problems associated with large lists. The Problem When a SharePoint library exceeds the 5,000-item threshold, various issues can arise. These include: Inability to Browse Folders Navigating through folders becomes challenging and sometimes impossible through desktop office apps (Excel, Word,etc.

Get Total Count of SharePoint Files, Folders, and Items with PnP PowerShell This PowerShell script powered by PnP PowerShell can help to get total count of files, folders, and list items across SharePoint tenant. This script is invaluable for administrators looking to perform audits, verify data migrations, or simply keep tabs on the content sprawl within their environments. The use case of this script was to get a total number of items that would be ingested into a third party application Records365 (provided by RecordPoint) to ensure the number tally for compliance purposes and identify any gaps.

SharePoint Search: Excluding Columns from Search Results SharePoint empowers users to manage and organize vast amounts of data efficiently. However, not all data within a SharePoint site might need to be searchable. Do you miss the functionality to control visibility of sensitive or irrelevant information in column. The Challenge You might have encountered instances where you need certain columns in your SharePoint lists or libraries to be excluded from search results.

Client secrets have traditionally been the go-to method for deploying Power Platform solutions from Azure DevOps, utilizing app registrations from the Azure platform. However, my personal experience has shown that this approach can be problematic, especially when you are not an application admin. It often involves wasting time figuring out why deployments have failed due to expired or missing client secrets. Even when reaching out to someone with application admin rights, they might generate a new client secret but forget to update the service connections for each service connection within Azure DevOps or the application admin does not have access requiring to reach out to someone else who have access, causing further disruptions.

Client secrets have traditionally been the go-to method for deploying Power Platform solutions from Azure DevOps, utilizing app registrations from the Azure platform. However, my personal experience has shown that this approach can be problematic, especially when you are not an application admin. It often involves wasting time figuring out why deployments have failed due to expired or missing client secrets. Even when reaching out to someone with application admin rights, they might generate a new client secret but forget to update the service connections for each service connection within Azure DevOps or the application admin does not have access requiring to reach out to someone else who have access, causing further disruptions.

Introduction Thanks to Kinga Kazala for her timely article Deploy SPFx app using pipeline’s Workload Identity federation, which showcases how to use Workload Identity Federation to alleviate the need for using Entra app secrets or certificates. This method simplifies the setup process, especially when there’s reliance on a single person who might be unavailable. We initially set up the SPFx pipeline for the Test environment using certificates with CLI for M365.

When you create an Agent within Copilot Studio, a corresponding App registration is automatically generated. These app registrations are named after the Agent, suffixed with “(Microsoft Copilot Studio)”. You can view these app registrations in the Azure Portal under App registrations > All applications. Agent Certificates and Federated Identity Each app registration associated with a Copilot Studio Agent includes three certificates and two federated credentials as of January 2025. These components enable secure communication between agents and your data sources and services.

When you create an Agent within Copilot Studio, a corresponding App registration is automatically generated. These app registrations are named after the Agent, suffixed with “(Microsoft Copilot Studio)”. You can view these app registrations in the Azure Portal under App registrations > All applications. Agent Certificates and Federated Identity Each app registration associated with a Copilot Studio Agent includes three certificates and two federated credentials as of January 2025. These components enable secure communication between agents and your data sources and services.

When you create an Agent within Copilot Studio, a corresponding App registration is automatically generated. These app registrations are named after the Agent, suffixed with “(Microsoft Copilot Studio)”. You can view these app registrations in the Azure Portal under App registrations > All applications. Agent Certificates and Federated Identity Each app registration associated with a Copilot Studio Agent includes three certificates and two federated credentials as of January 2025. These components enable secure communication between agents and your data sources and services.

My Visual Studio subscription was deactivated, resulting in the loss of my Azure subscription and licenses to access Microsoft Teams within my M365 developer tenant. This post covers my attempts to recover access in vain. Access to Microsoft Teams I thought I could extend my access to Microsoft Teams by opting for a free trial for Microsoft 365 E5 (no Teams) and Teams Premium - Microsoft Teams Premium. However, this did not restore access to Microsoft Teams despite waiting multiple hours after I added the above licenses.

My Visual Studio subscription was deactivated, resulting in the loss of my Azure subscription and licenses to access Microsoft Teams within my M365 developer tenant. This post covers my attempts to recover access in vain. Access to Microsoft Teams I thought I could extend my access to Microsoft Teams by opting for a free trial for Microsoft 365 E5 (no Teams) and Teams Premium - Microsoft Teams Premium. However, this did not restore access to Microsoft Teams despite waiting multiple hours after I added the above licenses.

Introduction Thanks to Kinga Kazala for her timely article Deploy SPFx app using pipeline’s Workload Identity federation, which showcases how to use Workload Identity Federation to alleviate the need for using Entra app secrets or certificates. This method simplifies the setup process, especially when there’s reliance on a single person who might be unavailable. We initially set up the SPFx pipeline for the Test environment using certificates with CLI for M365.

Introduction With the release of SPFx 1.20.0 in September 2024, I decided to upgrade an existing SPFx solution to the latest version following a post by Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community on Linkedin This process can be challenging, especially when dealing with dependency version conflicts. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to upgrade your SPFx solution to version 1.20.0, including installing Node.js 18.18.0, using the CLI for Microsoft 365 to generate upgrade instructions, and addressing common issues.

Introduction The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.20.0 has been generally available since September 2024. However, if you work with SPFx, you might encounter issues when trying to use the latest version. SPFx still requires Node.js 18.x.x. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to install Node.js 18.20.4 using NVM, install the SPFx toolchain, and troubleshoot an issue where the project scaffolding defaulted to an older version of SPFx.

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

The script checks the ‘SharePoint Online Web Client Extensibility’ Principal within Entra ID for the actual assigned permissions as the SPFx solutions requests are all be added to that single shared permission group. As hilghlighted by “Wes Hackett”: I’ve personally seen plenty of tenants with Mailbox permissions with no corresponding solutions live in the app catalogs. Early SPFx doc examples encouraged the use of MS Graph into Mailbox permissions in one of the how to learn samples, older tenants sometimes have this breadcrumb left behind.

Have you ever needed to gather detailed information about SPFx solutions installed in your SharePoint environment, such as API permissions, for auditing, inventory, or compliance purposes? The PowerShell script below helps you retrieve these details from both the tenant-level and site collection app catalogs for auditing with the aim to improve security posture by removing unneeded apps and access rights. To execute this script, you must have Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator roles.

Find SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages with PowerShell in Tenant and Site Collection App Catalogs This post covers a PowerShell script to generate an inventory of SPFx installations within your SharePoint Online environment which will help you maintain oversight of your SPFx solutions, ensuring they are up-to-date and compliant. The script was particularly useful in pinpointing sites within the tenant where third-party applications, specifically an analytics SPFx component, were deployed. This was crucial for ensuring that data collection was confined to designated sites, such as the intranet in my case study.

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites There is the blog post how Deploying and Installing SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions using PnP PowerShell to Hub Site and Associated Sites using site collection app catalog. This post covers how to perform same objective but using the tenant level app catalog if the SPFx packages have not been added to all sites globally during deployment in the tenant level app catalog and instead need targeted deployment or upgrades on specific sites.

Retracting SPFx Solutions from Hub Site and associated sites using PnP PowerShell SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions are a powerful tool for extending and customizing SharePoint sites. However, managing these solutions across multiple sites in a SharePoint tenant can be a daunting task. Fortunately, PnP PowerShell provides automation capabilities that can streamline these operations and ensure consistency across the tenant. The blog post Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites covers how to deploy SPFx solutions across a hub site and associated sites.

My Visual Studio subscription was deactivated, resulting in the loss of my Azure subscription and licenses to access Microsoft Teams within my M365 developer tenant. This post covers my attempts to recover access in vain. Access to Microsoft Teams I thought I could extend my access to Microsoft Teams by opting for a free trial for Microsoft 365 E5 (no Teams) and Teams Premium - Microsoft Teams Premium. However, this did not restore access to Microsoft Teams despite waiting multiple hours after I added the above licenses.

I had to set up a new developer tenant as my previous tenant became unusable due to an expired Visual studio subscription. Fortunately, there is plenty of help and documentation available to guide you through the process. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to get started with the Power Platform Developer Plan. Steps to Enable the Power Platform Developer Plan Sign Up: Visit the Power Apps Developer Plan website. Click on the “Start free” button.

Power Automate fix for InvalidTemplate: Unable to process template language expressions InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action can happen with actions within PowerAutomate. In my scenerio I added the encodian action ‘Convert_to_PDF’ and was resubmitting a flow for testing and kept getting the error message. InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action ‘Convert_to_PDF’ inputs at line ‘0’ and column ‘0’: ‘The template language expression ‘json(decodeBase64(secrets(‘X-MS-APIM-Tokens’)))[’$connections’][‘shared_encodiandocumentmanager’][‘connectionId’]’ cannot be evaluated because property ‘shared_encodiandocumentmanager’ doesn’t exist, available properties are ‘shared_sharepointonline, shared_office365, shared_approvals, shared_teams_1’.

I had to set up a new developer tenant as my previous tenant became unusable due to an expired Visual studio subscription. Fortunately, there is plenty of help and documentation available to guide you through the process. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to get started with the Power Platform Developer Plan. Steps to Enable the Power Platform Developer Plan Sign Up: Visit the Power Apps Developer Plan website. Click on the “Start free” button.

Transferring an Azure subscription to a new tenant can be a complex process. I recently followed the instructions from How can I move a subscription to a new tenant? to move an Azure subscription to a new test tenant. However, the new test tenant was not appearing in the list of tenants I could move the subscription to. I realized that the account I was using needed to be a global admin in both tenants.

Transferring an Azure subscription to a new tenant can be a complex process. I recently followed the instructions from How can I move a subscription to a new tenant? to move an Azure subscription to a new test tenant. However, the new test tenant was not appearing in the list of tenants I could move the subscription to. I realized that the account I was using needed to be a global admin in both tenants.

I had to set up a new developer tenant as my previous tenant became unusable due to an expired Visual studio subscription. Fortunately, there is plenty of help and documentation available to guide you through the process. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to get started with the Power Platform Developer Plan. Steps to Enable the Power Platform Developer Plan Sign Up: Visit the Power Apps Developer Plan website. Click on the “Start free” button.

Power Automate copy actions across different environments If an action is copied from a different environment, the action is not avaible from the My Clipboard, if not you are presented with the following message only. Save time and paste your most-used Flow code snippets here. Select the ellipsis menu on any trigger or action, then choose Copy to my Clipboard. Note: Pasted code clears each time you log out of Power Automate.

Transferring an Azure subscription to a new tenant can be a complex process. I recently followed the instructions from How can I move a subscription to a new tenant? to move an Azure subscription to a new test tenant. However, the new test tenant was not appearing in the list of tenants I could move the subscription to. I realized that the account I was using needed to be a global admin in both tenants.

Transferring an Azure subscription to a new tenant can be a complex process. I recently followed the instructions from How can I move a subscription to a new tenant? to move an Azure subscription to a new test tenant. However, the new test tenant was not appearing in the list of tenants I could move the subscription to. I realized that the account I was using needed to be a global admin in both tenants.

Introduction Taxonomy feature is not activated by default in SharePoint sites linked to a private or shared Teams Channels. When attempting to add content types with managed metadata columns, you may encounter an error message stating “Taxonomy disabled”. To resolve this issue, you can enable the taxonomy feature with the ID 73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b0604c using the PowerShell cmdlet Enable-PnPFeature before adding the content types to the sites with the template TEAMCHANNEL#1. Script to check whether feature taxonomy is enabled Get-PnPFeature -Scope Site | Where-Object { $_.

Using column formatting in SharePoint, you can update the values of other fields using the setValue function. This approach allows you to create dynamic functionality in your lists and libraries without extensive development, helping to avoid accumulating technical debt. Updating a Managed Metadata field, however, is not as straightforward as simply specifying the display value. The field expects a specific format that includes the term’s ID (termId). Understanding Column Formatting Column formatting in SharePoint involves using a combination of inline CSS, HTML, and JSON to control how fields in lists and libraries are displayed.

Introduction Taxonomy feature is not activated by default in SharePoint sites linked to a private or shared Teams Channels. When attempting to add content types with managed metadata columns, you may encounter an error message stating “Taxonomy disabled”. To resolve this issue, you can enable the taxonomy feature with the ID 73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b0604c using the PowerShell cmdlet Enable-PnPFeature before adding the content types to the sites with the template TEAMCHANNEL#1. Script to check whether feature taxonomy is enabled Get-PnPFeature -Scope Site | Where-Object { $_.

Introduction Taxonomy feature is not activated by default in SharePoint sites linked to a private or shared Teams Channels. When attempting to add content types with managed metadata columns, you may encounter an error message stating “Taxonomy disabled”. To resolve this issue, you can enable the taxonomy feature with the ID 73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b0604c using the PowerShell cmdlet Enable-PnPFeature before adding the content types to the sites with the template TEAMCHANNEL#1. Script to check whether feature taxonomy is enabled Get-PnPFeature -Scope Site | Where-Object { $_.

Introduction Taxonomy feature is not activated by default in SharePoint sites linked to a private or shared Teams Channels. When attempting to add content types with managed metadata columns, you may encounter an error message stating “Taxonomy disabled”. To resolve this issue, you can enable the taxonomy feature with the ID 73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b0604c using the PowerShell cmdlet Enable-PnPFeature before adding the content types to the sites with the template TEAMCHANNEL#1. Script to check whether feature taxonomy is enabled Get-PnPFeature -Scope Site | Where-Object { $_.

Sharing is a great feature for collaboration. However, depending on how items, files, or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. It is possible to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. For more details, please refer to How to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft introduced the capability to set an expiry date for all types of sharing links: “Anyone”, company-wide (aka.

Introduction Microsoft Teams offers private and shared channels as specialized collaboration spaces to cater to different organizational needs. While these channels provide enhanced security and collaboration features, they come with specific limitations and management challenges, particularly around the associated SharePoint sites. This post covers some limitations, and management tips for SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels, including PowerShell hacks and governance practices to overcome these challenges. Managing SharePoint Sites for Private and Shared Channels SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels are special types of sites with the limitations as identified by Gregory in his blog post Why you should never mess with Private and Shared Channel SharePoint Sites related to the inability to attach to a hub directly, being accessible from the Teams interface mainly, and inability to manage permissions at the site level, and with constrained external sharing.

Introduction Understanding the sensitivity and retention labels applied to files in your SharePoint Online sites is essential for maintaining data security and compliance. These labels enable you to manage and protect your data by defining retention periods and handling sensitive information appropriately. This is particularly important for initiatives like the Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, ensuring that the correct files are stored within the appropriate SharePoint sites. For example, if a SharePoint site is a public Team site, files labeled as confidential should be moved to a private Team site or existing Team site updated from public to private.

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

Updating the expiration time and role for sharing links is still limited. Although it seems possible through the Graph API Update permission, I have been unable to pass the roles as body parameters. Graph Explorer Attempts Using the following script: Invoke-PnPGraphMethod -Url "v1.0/drives/$driveId/items/$driveItemId/permissions/$($ShareLink.Id)" -Method Patch -Content @{ roles = @("read") } threw the error message “Invalid input: No Information provided to update the specifed permission” From the UI Anyone link can’t be edited Organisation link can’t be edited Specific people links can be edited Using the network tab from the browser developer tools enables identifying the endpoint to update specific people links only.

Sharing is a great feature for collaboration. However, depending on how items, files, or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. It is possible to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. For more details, please refer to How to set an expiration date on sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft introduced the capability to set an expiry date for all types of sharing links: “Anyone”, company-wide (aka.

Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created. The sharing link is created when the copy links is clicked from the sharing pop up options when people other those already have existing access are picked. However by default, if sharing options have not been configured, links to “People in ” or “Anyone” (if external sharing is allowed) is selected

Updating the expiration time and role for sharing links is still limited. Although it seems possible through the Graph API Update permission, I have been unable to pass the roles as body parameters. Graph Explorer Attempts Using the following script: Invoke-PnPGraphMethod -Url "v1.0/drives/$driveId/items/$driveItemId/permissions/$($ShareLink.Id)" -Method Patch -Content @{ roles = @("read") } threw the error message “Invalid input: No Information provided to update the specifed permission” From the UI Anyone link can’t be edited Organisation link can’t be edited Specific people links can be edited Using the network tab from the browser developer tools enables identifying the endpoint to update specific people links only.

Deletion of sharing links with PowerShell As organisations look to deploy Copilot for Microsoft 365, ensuring the security and proper governance of shared content is important. The rollout of Copilot introduces advanced AI capabilities across Microsoft 365 apps using content from SharePoint/OneDrive, making it even more essential to manage sharing links judiciously to tackle the issue of oversharing. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Introduction Microsoft Teams offers private and shared channels as specialized collaboration spaces to cater to different organizational needs. While these channels provide enhanced security and collaboration features, they come with specific limitations and management challenges, particularly around the associated SharePoint sites. This post covers some limitations, and management tips for SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels, including PowerShell hacks and governance practices to overcome these challenges. Managing SharePoint Sites for Private and Shared Channels SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels are special types of sites with the limitations as identified by Gregory in his blog post Why you should never mess with Private and Shared Channel SharePoint Sites related to the inability to attach to a hub directly, being accessible from the Teams interface mainly, and inability to manage permissions at the site level, and with constrained external sharing.

Introduction Microsoft Teams offers private and shared channels as specialized collaboration spaces to cater to different organizational needs. While these channels provide enhanced security and collaboration features, they come with specific limitations and management challenges, particularly around the associated SharePoint sites. This post covers some limitations, and management tips for SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels, including PowerShell hacks and governance practices to overcome these challenges. Managing SharePoint Sites for Private and Shared Channels SharePoint sites associated with private and shared channels are special types of sites with the limitations as identified by Gregory in his blog post Why you should never mess with Private and Shared Channel SharePoint Sites related to the inability to attach to a hub directly, being accessible from the Teams interface mainly, and inability to manage permissions at the site level, and with constrained external sharing.

Introduction Renaming the ‘Files’ tab in Microsoft Teams to something more meaningful for your business, such as “All Access,” can enhance user experience. It can help to differentiate other document libraries added as tabs. The Files has been renamed to Shared for chats to show all the files and links that were sent in the chat, making it easier to find them- all in one place. However, it is not possible to rename the Files and Posts tabs from the UI within channels.

Introduction Renaming the ‘Files’ tab in Microsoft Teams to something more meaningful for your business, such as “All Access,” can enhance user experience. It can help to differentiate other document libraries added as tabs. The Files has been renamed to Shared for chats to show all the files and links that were sent in the chat, making it easier to find them- all in one place. However, it is not possible to rename the Files and Posts tabs from the UI within channels.

Introduction It is possible to create M365 Groups and Teams with the same name, and there is currently no built-in way to prevent this. The new Team/Site/M365 Group is created with a random number appended to the Team name for the SharePoint site and m365 Group email address. Having duplicate names can cause confusion and increase risks, including: Wrongly Granting Permissions: Users may accidentally grant permissions to the wrong M365 Group or Team, leading to unauthorized access.

Introduction Managing the lifecycle of Microsoft 365 Groups is important to prevent accidental deletion of M365 Groups. It is a good practice to set lifecycle expiration policy to control sprawl. However that means that the group will get automatically deleted after they expire. The Teams/M365 groups owners will get email notifications to renew within a certain timeframe , however if the owners missed the renewal notifications for different reasons, it may lead to accidental data loss.

Introduction It is possible to create M365 Groups and Teams with the same name, and there is currently no built-in way to prevent this. The new Team/Site/M365 Group is created with a random number appended to the Team name for the SharePoint site and m365 Group email address. Having duplicate names can cause confusion and increase risks, including: Wrongly Granting Permissions: Users may accidentally grant permissions to the wrong M365 Group or Team, leading to unauthorized access.

SharePoint Column Formatting for Document libraries: Leveraging Name, Folder and Path properties While referencing [$Title] in lists is straightforward, document libraries demand a nuanced approach. Instead of [$Name], had to delve into the intricacies of internal names like $FileLeafRef and $FileRef when working with column formatting. $FileLeafRef: Denotes the name of the file. $FileRef: Represents the server-relative URL of the file. Initial attempts to incorporate $FileSystemObjectType for folder identification was challenging, indicating that not all document library internal column names are supported.

Introduction Renaming the ‘Files’ tab in Microsoft Teams to something more meaningful for your business, such as “All Access,” can enhance user experience. It can help to differentiate other document libraries added as tabs. The Files has been renamed to Shared for chats to show all the files and links that were sent in the chat, making it easier to find them- all in one place. However, it is not possible to rename the Files and Posts tabs from the UI within channels.

Introduction There are situations where you might want to reuse the M365 Group principals to assign permissions to other sites without creating additional Entra ID groups. This can be useful for: Adding M365 group members to a SharePoint site, such as an intranet site for ‘Human Resources’ managed by the ‘Human Resources’ M365 Group/Teams or a hub site managed by a ‘Service Desk’ M365 Group/Teams. Adding M365 group members to custom or out-of-the-box SharePoint groups, such as adding particular M365 group owners or members to custom groups created for additional libraries within a different site.

Introduction There are situations where you might want to reuse the M365 Group principals to assign permissions to other sites without creating additional Entra ID groups. This can be useful for: Adding M365 group members to a SharePoint site, such as an intranet site for ‘Human Resources’ managed by the ‘Human Resources’ M365 Group/Teams or a hub site managed by a ‘Service Desk’ M365 Group/Teams. Adding M365 group members to custom or out-of-the-box SharePoint groups, such as adding particular M365 group owners or members to custom groups created for additional libraries within a different site.

Recreating Deleted Owners Group for M365-Connected SharePoint Sites If out-of-the-box (OOB) groups such as owners, members, or visitors have been deleted accidentally from your SharePoint site, this article may assist you in recovering those vanished groups specifically for M365 linked Team site. I recently encountered a distress call from an end user facing data access issues on a SharePoint Team site. To my dismay, I discovered that the SharePoint Owners group had been accidentally deleted, prompting me to seek and implement a solution to restore access.

Introduction There are situations where you might want to reuse the M365 Group principals to assign permissions to other sites without creating additional Entra ID groups. This can be useful for: Adding M365 group members to a SharePoint site, such as an intranet site for ‘Human Resources’ managed by the ‘Human Resources’ M365 Group/Teams or a hub site managed by a ‘Service Desk’ M365 Group/Teams. Adding M365 group members to custom or out-of-the-box SharePoint groups, such as adding particular M365 group owners or members to custom groups created for additional libraries within a different site.

Recreating Deleted Owners Group for M365-Connected SharePoint Sites If out-of-the-box (OOB) groups such as owners, members, or visitors have been deleted accidentally from your SharePoint site, this article may assist you in recovering those vanished groups specifically for M365 linked Team site. I recently encountered a distress call from an end user facing data access issues on a SharePoint Team site. To my dismay, I discovered that the SharePoint Owners group had been accidentally deleted, prompting me to seek and implement a solution to restore access.

Introduction Managing Microsoft 365 Group settings is crucial for maintaining a compliant and secure environment.PowerShell and Microsoft Graph can be used to configure various group settings, including naming policies, guest access, and more. As a regular user of PnP PowerShell, I aimed to replicate the functionality of the Microsoft Entra cmdlets for configuring group settings using PnP PowerShell. Example Script to Update naming policy Settings The following PowerShell script updates the naming group settings using the Microsoft Graph API and PnP PowerShell.

Introduction Managing Microsoft 365 Group settings is crucial for maintaining a compliant and secure environment.PowerShell and Microsoft Graph can be used to configure various group settings, including naming policies, guest access, and more. As a regular user of PnP PowerShell, I aimed to replicate the functionality of the Microsoft Entra cmdlets for configuring group settings using PnP PowerShell. Example Script to Update naming policy Settings The following PowerShell script updates the naming group settings using the Microsoft Graph API and PnP PowerShell.

Introduction Thanks to Kinga Kazala for her timely article Deploy SPFx app using pipeline’s Workload Identity federation, which showcases how to use Workload Identity Federation to alleviate the need for using Entra app secrets or certificates. This method simplifies the setup process, especially when there’s reliance on a single person who might be unavailable. We initially set up the SPFx pipeline for the Test environment using certificates with CLI for M365.

Unable to find Power Platform in Azure DevOps Issue I was Unable to find the powerplatform in Azure devops Solution The solution is to install the Extension: Power Platform Build Tools (2.0.5) to Organisation. This will enable the Power Platform service connection. References Unable to find the powerplatform in Azure devops

Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites There is the blog post how Deploying and Installing SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions using PnP PowerShell to Hub Site and Associated Sites using site collection app catalog. This post covers how to perform same objective but using the tenant level app catalog if the SPFx packages have not been added to all sites globally during deployment in the tenant level app catalog and instead need targeted deployment or upgrades on specific sites.

Introduction Thanks to Kinga Kazala for her timely article Deploy SPFx app using pipeline’s Workload Identity federation, which showcases how to use Workload Identity Federation to alleviate the need for using Entra app secrets or certificates. This method simplifies the setup process, especially when there’s reliance on a single person who might be unavailable. We initially set up the SPFx pipeline for the Test environment using certificates with CLI for M365.

Introduction Thanks to Kinga Kazala for her timely article Deploy SPFx app using pipeline’s Workload Identity federation, which showcases how to use Workload Identity Federation to alleviate the need for using Entra app secrets or certificates. This method simplifies the setup process, especially when there’s reliance on a single person who might be unavailable. We initially set up the SPFx pipeline for the Test environment using certificates with CLI for M365.

Introduction With the release of SPFx 1.20.0 in September 2024, I decided to upgrade an existing SPFx solution to the latest version following a post by Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community on Linkedin This process can be challenging, especially when dealing with dependency version conflicts. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to upgrade your SPFx solution to version 1.20.0, including installing Node.js 18.18.0, using the CLI for Microsoft 365 to generate upgrade instructions, and addressing common issues.

Introduction The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.20.0 has been generally available since September 2024. However, if you work with SPFx, you might encounter issues when trying to use the latest version. SPFx still requires Node.js 18.x.x. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to install Node.js 18.20.4 using NVM, install the SPFx toolchain, and troubleshoot an issue where the project scaffolding defaulted to an older version of SPFx.

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

The script checks the ‘SharePoint Online Web Client Extensibility’ Principal within Entra ID for the actual assigned permissions as the SPFx solutions requests are all be added to that single shared permission group. As hilghlighted by “Wes Hackett”: I’ve personally seen plenty of tenants with Mailbox permissions with no corresponding solutions live in the app catalogs. Early SPFx doc examples encouraged the use of MS Graph into Mailbox permissions in one of the how to learn samples, older tenants sometimes have this breadcrumb left behind.

Have you ever needed to gather detailed information about SPFx solutions installed in your SharePoint environment, such as API permissions, for auditing, inventory, or compliance purposes? The PowerShell script below helps you retrieve these details from both the tenant-level and site collection app catalogs for auditing with the aim to improve security posture by removing unneeded apps and access rights. To execute this script, you must have Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator roles.

Find SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages with PowerShell in Tenant and Site Collection App Catalogs This post covers a PowerShell script to generate an inventory of SPFx installations within your SharePoint Online environment which will help you maintain oversight of your SPFx solutions, ensuring they are up-to-date and compliant. The script was particularly useful in pinpointing sites within the tenant where third-party applications, specifically an analytics SPFx component, were deployed. This was crucial for ensuring that data collection was confined to designated sites, such as the intranet in my case study.

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Troubleshooting NVM Setup Issues for SPFx Development I have not used my dev machine for SPFx development for over a year. Before diving into any new SPFx development, I followed the typical procedure of installing the latest Node.js version 18.19.0 supported by the current SPFx version (1.18.2) using nvm (node version management).nvm allows to maintain different development environment. nvm install 18.19.0 Following this, I proceeded to install the SPFx toolchain:

Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites There is the blog post how Deploying and Installing SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions using PnP PowerShell to Hub Site and Associated Sites using site collection app catalog. This post covers how to perform same objective but using the tenant level app catalog if the SPFx packages have not been added to all sites globally during deployment in the tenant level app catalog and instead need targeted deployment or upgrades on specific sites.

Retracting SPFx Solutions from Hub Site and associated sites using PnP PowerShell SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions are a powerful tool for extending and customizing SharePoint sites. However, managing these solutions across multiple sites in a SharePoint tenant can be a daunting task. Fortunately, PnP PowerShell provides automation capabilities that can streamline these operations and ensure consistency across the tenant. The blog post Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites covers how to deploy SPFx solutions across a hub site and associated sites.

Introduction The SharePoint Home Site experiences have moved to Viva Connections and is managed from the Microsoft 365 admin centre through the Viva Connections admin centre I started exploring how to manage these SharePoint Home Sites/Viva Experiences using browser’s developer tools, considering I had little luck with the SPO PowerShell, PnP PowerShell, and CLI for M365. These PowerShell experiences will be updated at some point to work with the updated Viva Connections Experience.

Introduction The SharePoint Home Site experiences have moved to Viva Connections and is managed from the Microsoft 365 admin centre through the Viva Connections admin centre I started exploring how to manage these SharePoint Home Sites/Viva Experiences using browser’s developer tools, considering I had little luck with the SPO PowerShell, PnP PowerShell, and CLI for M365. These PowerShell experiences will be updated at some point to work with the updated Viva Connections Experience.

When working with SharePoint lists, there might be times when you need to restore items to a previous version. Whether it’s due to an error, unwanted changes, or simply needing to revert to an earlier state, SharePoint’s versioning feature is a lifesaver. I used the script to undo bulk changes made by a Power Automate flow after the process failed halfway due to some data needing correction. For data integrity, the bulk update needed to be undone before running the Power Automate flow again after the data corrections were made.

Overcoming SharePoint’s List View Threshold with CAML Queries in PowerShell Encountering the list view threshold error in SharePoint when dealing with lists exceeding 5,000 items is a common challenge. Using CAML queries within PowerShell scripts offers a server-side solution to efficiently filter and retrieve data, yet is prone to the list view threshold error. Sample script This is the sample PowerShell script querying the specified SharePoint list using CAML query.

When working with SharePoint lists, there might be times when you need to restore items to a previous version. Whether it’s due to an error, unwanted changes, or simply needing to revert to an earlier state, SharePoint’s versioning feature is a lifesaver. I used the script to undo bulk changes made by a Power Automate flow after the process failed halfway due to some data needing correction. For data integrity, the bulk update needed to be undone before running the Power Automate flow again after the data corrections were made.

#Parameters $SiteURL = “https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/app-ar" $ListName = “Remittances” $dateTime = (Get-Date).toString(“dd-MM-yyyy”) $invocation = (Get-Variable MyInvocation).Value $directorypath = Split-Path $invocation.MyCommand.Path $fileName = “\RemittanceDuplicateReport-” + $dateTime + “.csv” $OutPutView = $directorypath + $fileName Connect-PnPOnline -url $SiteURL -Interactive $ListItems = Get-PnPListItem -List $ListName -PageSize 500 | Where {$_.FieldValues.Month -eq ‘202402’ } #Array for Results Data $DataCollection = @() ForEach($Item in $ListItems) { #Collect data $Data = New-Object PSObject -Property @{ SourceRef = $Item[“DocumentSourceReference”] GroupingRef = $Item[“GroupingReference”] Provider = $Item[“Provider”].

Maintaining up-to-date list items, especially when dealing with choice fields, can be a daunting task sepcially after choice field values are updated. We need a way to update these old values to the correct new ones. The Challenge SharePoint lists use choice fields to categorise items. Over time, the need to update these choice values can arise, whether due to changes in terminology, business processes, or error correction. Manually updating these values across numerous list items is not only time-consuming but also prone to human error.

Leveraging ChatGPT to Generate Test Data for SharePoint Lists Using PnP PowerShell Utilizing ChatGPT to generate test data for various applications is a powerful capability. After stumbling upon the sample script Create test users using MS Graph API from list or ask ChatGPT to generate test users by Valeras Narbutas on creating test users with MS Graph API, I decided to explore using ChatGPT to generate a list of data. This script harnesses OpenAI’s ChatGPT model to effortlessly generate a list of wellbeing activities.

Optimising Large List Updates with PnP Batch: Handling Throttling and Enhancing Efficiency In this article, we explore how to efficiently update a large SharePoint list containing approximately 60,000 items using PnP-Batch. Updating such a substantial number of items individually can be time-consuming and prone to throttling issues. Prior to using PnP Batch , it was taking more than 12 hours to update 60k one by one. The article highlights the benefits of using PnP Batch, which significantly reduces the time taken for updates by sending fewer requests.

Expanding Doughnut Chart in Microsoft Lists: Visualize Data in Segments and Track Progress The doughnut chart is a powerful visualization tool that allows users to represent data in segments and track progress against targets. Frederico Sapia’s Doughnut Chart with percentage and values displayed is a valuable custom chart for Microsoft Lists, enabling users to visualize data effectively. However, the original chart allowed for only six slices, limiting its flexibility. In this blog post, we explore how to extend the doughnut chart to support up to nine slices, and we’ll also demonstrate how to display the percentage of each segment within the chart.

When working with SharePoint lists, there might be times when you need to restore items to a previous version. Whether it’s due to an error, unwanted changes, or simply needing to revert to an earlier state, SharePoint’s versioning feature is a lifesaver. I used the script to undo bulk changes made by a Power Automate flow after the process failed halfway due to some data needing correction. For data integrity, the bulk update needed to be undone before running the Power Automate flow again after the data corrections were made.

Introduction When working with files in SharePoint, the drive ID and drive item ID are essential parameters for further manipulation using Microsoft Graph API. The drive ID is a base64 encoded string composed of the site ID, web ID, and list ID for a particular SharePoint library. For more details, refer to Microsoft Graph: Encoding and decoding the drive ID by Mikael Svenson. The item ID part appears to be a base32 encoding of the SharePoint item’s unique ID, though the exact mechanics are still being explored.

Introduction When working with files in SharePoint, the drive ID and drive item ID are essential parameters for further manipulation using Microsoft Graph API. The drive ID is a base64 encoded string composed of the site ID, web ID, and list ID for a particular SharePoint library. For more details, refer to Microsoft Graph: Encoding and decoding the drive ID by Mikael Svenson. The item ID part appears to be a base32 encoding of the SharePoint item’s unique ID, though the exact mechanics are still being explored.

Introduction When working with files in SharePoint, the drive ID and drive item ID are essential parameters for further manipulation using Microsoft Graph API. The drive ID is a base64 encoded string composed of the site ID, web ID, and list ID for a particular SharePoint library. For more details, refer to Microsoft Graph: Encoding and decoding the drive ID by Mikael Svenson. The item ID part appears to be a base32 encoding of the SharePoint item’s unique ID, though the exact mechanics are still being explored.

Introduction When working with files in SharePoint, the drive ID and drive item ID are essential parameters for further manipulation using Microsoft Graph API. The drive ID is a base64 encoded string composed of the site ID, web ID, and list ID for a particular SharePoint library. For more details, refer to Microsoft Graph: Encoding and decoding the drive ID by Mikael Svenson. The item ID part appears to be a base32 encoding of the SharePoint item’s unique ID, though the exact mechanics are still being explored.

Introduction By default, guest access for Microsoft 365 groups is enabled within the tenant. This can be controlled either to allow or block guest access at the tenant level or for individual Microsoft 365 groups / Teams. For more information, check out Manage guest access in Microsoft 365 groups. PowerShell Script to Prevent Guest Access Below is a PowerShell script that allows you to disable/enable guest access for specific Microsoft 365 groups.

Introduction Have you ever encountered a stubborn Power Automate flow that won’t open in the new designer? For a long time, I stuck with the classic designer due to issues I faced with the new designer. However, I recently decided to make the switch for these reasons: New Power Automate features will only be available in the new designer Microsoft will get rid of classic designer Future proof flows as they might not be editable if classic designer is gone unless Microsoft caters for incompatible action schemas In this blog post, I’ll share my experience and the steps I took to transition from the classic designer to the new designer in Power Automate.

Introduction Have you ever encountered a stubborn Power Automate flow that won’t open in the new designer? For a long time, I stuck with the classic designer due to issues I faced with the new designer. However, I recently decided to make the switch for these reasons: New Power Automate features will only be available in the new designer Microsoft will get rid of classic designer Future proof flows as they might not be editable if classic designer is gone unless Microsoft caters for incompatible action schemas In this blog post, I’ll share my experience and the steps I took to transition from the classic designer to the new designer in Power Automate.

Introduction With the release of SPFx 1.20.0 in September 2024, I decided to upgrade an existing SPFx solution to the latest version following a post by Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community on Linkedin This process can be challenging, especially when dealing with dependency version conflicts. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to upgrade your SPFx solution to version 1.20.0, including installing Node.js 18.18.0, using the CLI for Microsoft 365 to generate upgrade instructions, and addressing common issues.

Introduction With the release of SPFx 1.20.0 in September 2024, I decided to upgrade an existing SPFx solution to the latest version following a post by Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community on Linkedin This process can be challenging, especially when dealing with dependency version conflicts. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to upgrade your SPFx solution to version 1.20.0, including installing Node.js 18.18.0, using the CLI for Microsoft 365 to generate upgrade instructions, and addressing common issues.

Introduction If ever you had the chance to get your hands onto the New chats & channels experience, you may notice that the Teams icon is missing from the tray on the left To access the channels, it is an option within the chats. Revert In case you find it confusing you can turn it off by following those steps Click on the button Update, settings and more at the top of Teams

Introduction The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.20.0 has been generally available since September 2024. However, if you work with SPFx, you might encounter issues when trying to use the latest version. SPFx still requires Node.js 18.x.x. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to install Node.js 18.20.4 using NVM, install the SPFx toolchain, and troubleshoot an issue where the project scaffolding defaulted to an older version of SPFx.

Introduction The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.20.0 has been generally available since September 2024. However, if you work with SPFx, you might encounter issues when trying to use the latest version. SPFx still requires Node.js 18.x.x. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to install Node.js 18.20.4 using NVM, install the SPFx toolchain, and troubleshoot an issue where the project scaffolding defaulted to an older version of SPFx.

Introduction The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.20.0 has been generally available since September 2024. However, if you work with SPFx, you might encounter issues when trying to use the latest version. SPFx still requires Node.js 18.x.x. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to install Node.js 18.20.4 using NVM, install the SPFx toolchain, and troubleshoot an issue where the project scaffolding defaulted to an older version of SPFx.

Troubleshooting NVM Setup Issues for SPFx Development I have not used my dev machine for SPFx development for over a year. Before diving into any new SPFx development, I followed the typical procedure of installing the latest Node.js version 18.19.0 supported by the current SPFx version (1.18.2) using nvm (node version management).nvm allows to maintain different development environment. nvm install 18.19.0 Following this, I proceeded to install the SPFx toolchain:

Introduction The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.20.0 has been generally available since September 2024. However, if you work with SPFx, you might encounter issues when trying to use the latest version. SPFx still requires Node.js 18.x.x. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to install Node.js 18.20.4 using NVM, install the SPFx toolchain, and troubleshoot an issue where the project scaffolding defaulted to an older version of SPFx.

Troubleshooting NVM Setup Issues for SPFx Development I have not used my dev machine for SPFx development for over a year. Before diving into any new SPFx development, I followed the typical procedure of installing the latest Node.js version 18.19.0 supported by the current SPFx version (1.18.2) using nvm (node version management).nvm allows to maintain different development environment. nvm install 18.19.0 Following this, I proceeded to install the SPFx toolchain:

Introduction As part of Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness, you may want to find where “Everyone and “Everyone except external users” claims are granted permissions which is a cause of oversharing. This blog post will guide you through using PowerShell to manage and audit the “Everyone” and “Everyone except external users” claims within your SharePoint site collection. For more insights on why the “Everyone except external users” group is riskier than “People in your organization,” refer to Copilot for Microsoft 365 Data Ready – Where “Everyone except external users” group is more risky than “People in your organization” links!

Introduction As part of Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness, you may want to find where “Everyone and “Everyone except external users” claims are granted permissions which is a cause of oversharing. This blog post will guide you through using PowerShell to manage and audit the “Everyone” and “Everyone except external users” claims within your SharePoint site collection. For more insights on why the “Everyone except external users” group is riskier than “People in your organization,” refer to Copilot for Microsoft 365 Data Ready – Where “Everyone except external users” group is more risky than “People in your organization” links!

Introduction As part of Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness, you may want to find where “Everyone and “Everyone except external users” claims are granted permissions which is a cause of oversharing. This blog post will guide you through using PowerShell to manage and audit the “Everyone” and “Everyone except external users” claims within your SharePoint site collection. For more insights on why the “Everyone except external users” group is riskier than “People in your organization,” refer to Copilot for Microsoft 365 Data Ready – Where “Everyone except external users” group is more risky than “People in your organization” links!

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Introduction Understanding the sensitivity and retention labels applied to files in your SharePoint Online sites is essential for maintaining data security and compliance. These labels enable you to manage and protect your data by defining retention periods and handling sensitive information appropriately. This is particularly important for initiatives like the Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, ensuring that the correct files are stored within the appropriate SharePoint sites. For example, if a SharePoint site is a public Team site, files labeled as confidential should be moved to a private Team site or existing Team site updated from public to private.

The script checks the ‘SharePoint Online Web Client Extensibility’ Principal within Entra ID for the actual assigned permissions as the SPFx solutions requests are all be added to that single shared permission group. As hilghlighted by “Wes Hackett”: I’ve personally seen plenty of tenants with Mailbox permissions with no corresponding solutions live in the app catalogs. Early SPFx doc examples encouraged the use of MS Graph into Mailbox permissions in one of the how to learn samples, older tenants sometimes have this breadcrumb left behind.

Have you ever needed to gather detailed information about SPFx solutions installed in your SharePoint environment, such as API permissions, for auditing, inventory, or compliance purposes? The PowerShell script below helps you retrieve these details from both the tenant-level and site collection app catalogs for auditing with the aim to improve security posture by removing unneeded apps and access rights. To execute this script, you must have Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator roles.

Introduction Understanding the sensitivity and retention labels applied to files in your SharePoint Online sites is essential for maintaining data security and compliance. These labels enable you to manage and protect your data by defining retention periods and handling sensitive information appropriately. This is particularly important for initiatives like the Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, ensuring that the correct files are stored within the appropriate SharePoint sites. For example, if a SharePoint site is a public Team site, files labeled as confidential should be moved to a private Team site or existing Team site updated from public to private.

Introduction Understanding the sensitivity and retention labels applied to files in your SharePoint Online sites is essential for maintaining data security and compliance. These labels enable you to manage and protect your data by defining retention periods and handling sensitive information appropriately. This is particularly important for initiatives like the Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, ensuring that the correct files are stored within the appropriate SharePoint sites. For example, if a SharePoint site is a public Team site, files labeled as confidential should be moved to a private Team site or existing Team site updated from public to private.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

As part of the multi tenant app registration for PnP PowerShell deprecated on the 9th September 2024, we need to have our own app registration and grant the required permissions. Read more from Changes in PnP Management Shell registration in Microsoft 365 For the cmdlet Get-PnPFlow it requires permissions Azure: management.azure.com which is Azure Service Management Simply adding the permission as it does not require admin consent and executing the cmdlet below yields no results

As part of the multi tenant app registration for PnP PowerShell deprecated on the 9th September 2024, we need to have our own app registration and grant the required permissions. Read more from Changes in PnP Management Shell registration in Microsoft 365 For the cmdlet Get-PnPFlow it requires permissions Azure: management.azure.com which is Azure Service Management Simply adding the permission as it does not require admin consent and executing the cmdlet below yields no results

As part of the multi tenant app registration for PnP PowerShell deprecated on the 9th September 2024, we need to have our own app registration and grant the required permissions. Read more from Changes in PnP Management Shell registration in Microsoft 365 For the cmdlet Get-PnPFlow it requires permissions Azure: management.azure.com which is Azure Service Management Simply adding the permission as it does not require admin consent and executing the cmdlet below yields no results

Introduction Have you ever encountered the frustrating situation where the Restore a library link in SharePoint is missing or inconsistently available? This can be a significant issue when you need to restore a library urgently. The Problem Typically, you would expect to see the link ‘Restore This Library’ in the SharePoint interface: Restore library However, in some cases, this link might be missing: Restore Library Missing The Workaround After some investigation, I discovered a workaround.

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Ensuring the security and compliance of your SharePoint environment is crucial, especially when dealing with service principals, Entra ID apps, or federated identities. These entities often have elevated permissions that, if mismanaged, can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Regularly auditing these permissions is a best practice for maintaining a secure and compliant SharePoint environment. Application only or granular access to individual site instead of whole tenant, scope called “Sites.

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Introduction Have you ever encountered a situation where the search results in SharePoint show incorrect document titles and modified dates? This can be frustrating, especially when you rely on accurate metadata for document management. In this blog post, we’ll explore why this happens and how to resolve it. Problem Statement A business user reported that the search results for a particular document displayed the wrong name and modified date. Upon investigation, we found that the title and modified date were being pulled from the document properties rather than the metadata shown in the SharePoint library.

Introduction Have you ever encountered a situation where the search results in SharePoint show incorrect document titles and modified dates? This can be frustrating, especially when you rely on accurate metadata for document management. In this blog post, we’ll explore why this happens and how to resolve it. Problem Statement A business user reported that the search results for a particular document displayed the wrong name and modified date. Upon investigation, we found that the title and modified date were being pulled from the document properties rather than the metadata shown in the SharePoint library.

When using Power Automate with Excel for Business actions, the drive ID for a library is automatically determined. However, if you deploy a Power Automate solution across different environments and use a library as a datasource environment variable, referencing this variable in the flow can result in an error due to an invalid drive ID. Referencing the variable in the Power Automate flow, it will throw an error message failing to work our the drive id of the library.

When using Power Automate with Excel for Business actions, the drive ID for a library is automatically determined. However, if you deploy a Power Automate solution across different environments and use a library as a datasource environment variable, referencing this variable in the flow can result in an error due to an invalid drive ID. Referencing the variable in the Power Automate flow, it will throw an error message failing to work our the drive id of the library.

Introduction In Power Automate/Power Platform, environment variables within solutions are essential for managing and configuring flows across different environments. However, there is no direct way to declare an environment variable as an array. This blog post will cover how to use JSON to store arrays as environment variables, enabling you to manage complex data structures efficiently. Available Environment Variable Types Power Automate offers various types of environment variables you can select and configure:

When using Power Automate with Excel for Business actions, the drive ID for a library is automatically determined. However, if you deploy a Power Automate solution across different environments and use a library as a datasource environment variable, referencing this variable in the flow can result in an error due to an invalid drive ID. Referencing the variable in the Power Automate flow, it will throw an error message failing to work our the drive id of the library.

When working with large SharePoint sites, checking for unique permissions can be a time-consuming task. This blog post explores methods to optimize PowerShell scripts for fetching property HasUniqueRoleAssignments to determine unique permissions, including using PnP PowerShell and the SharePoint REST API. We compare their performance and highlight the advantages and limitations of each approach. Using PnP PowerShell PnP PowerShell provides an efficient way to interact with SharePoint Online and retrieve list items to check for unique permissions.

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Handling Locked Office Files issue In Power Automate Inspired by the workaround described by Pieter Veenstra System Updates in SharePoint from Power Automate using the ValidateUpdateListItem endpoint to help with the locked file issue, this post covers file version creation as well. File Locked Issue File lock issues in Power Automate can occur due to: The file being opened by a user. The file being updated by a Power Automate flow, which may take up to 6 minutes to release the lock.

Publishing Major Versions of Files in SharePoint with Power Automate This post covers how to publish major versions for Office documents (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) in SharePoint using Power Automate, especially after an approval task using the checkin and publish REST endpoints. This applies to libraries having minor versions enabled Just for context, a Power Automate approval flow with trigger for a selected file needed publishing for the selected file as major version after being approved.

When using Power Automate with Excel for Business actions, the drive ID for a library is automatically determined. However, if you deploy a Power Automate solution across different environments and use a library as a datasource environment variable, referencing this variable in the flow can result in an error due to an invalid drive ID. Referencing the variable in the Power Automate flow, it will throw an error message failing to work our the drive id of the library.

Introduction In Power Automate/Power Platform, environment variables within solutions are essential for managing and configuring flows across different environments. However, there is no direct way to declare an environment variable as an array. This blog post will cover how to use JSON to store arrays as environment variables, enabling you to manage complex data structures efficiently. Available Environment Variable Types Power Automate offers various types of environment variables you can select and configure:

Guide to Preparing setting files for Power Platform managed solution deployment This guide will walk you through the process of creating a settings file for Power Platform managed solution deployment. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform for detailed steps for ALM for power platform solutions.

Power Platform Managed Solution Deployment with Connection References - Allow customisations This article explores the challenges and solutions associated with Power Platform managed solution deployment, specifically focusing on connection references and the “Allow Customisations” property. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Microsoft has introduced Enhanced Version Controls, previously known as Intelligent Versioning, as part of its public preview in May 2024. This feature, detailed in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap 145802, aims to help administrators manage file versions more effectively, reducing storage costs by removing unnecessary versions. Extract from the Roadmap We are introducing new version controls that help tenant and site admins or document library owners reduce the storage footprint driven by low value file versions.

Microsoft has introduced Enhanced Version Controls, previously known as Intelligent Versioning, as part of its public preview in May 2024. This feature, detailed in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap 145802, aims to help administrators manage file versions more effectively, reducing storage costs by removing unnecessary versions. Extract from the Roadmap We are introducing new version controls that help tenant and site admins or document library owners reduce the storage footprint driven by low value file versions.

Microsoft has introduced Enhanced Version Controls, previously known as Intelligent Versioning, as part of its public preview in May 2024. This feature, detailed in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap 145802, aims to help administrators manage file versions more effectively, reducing storage costs by removing unnecessary versions. Extract from the Roadmap We are introducing new version controls that help tenant and site admins or document library owners reduce the storage footprint driven by low value file versions.

Introduction In Power Automate, there are scenarios where a specific item needs to be excluded from an array to exclude. This blog post will guide you through the process of filtering an array to exclude the first approver from a list of approvers. This can be particularly useful in approval workflows where same person does not approve multiple stages. Step-by-Step Guide Add Filter Array Action This action will allow filtering out the first approver from the list of approvers.

Introduction In Power Automate, there are scenarios where a specific item needs to be excluded from an array to exclude. This blog post will guide you through the process of filtering an array to exclude the first approver from a list of approvers. This can be particularly useful in approval workflows where same person does not approve multiple stages. Step-by-Step Guide Add Filter Array Action This action will allow filtering out the first approver from the list of approvers.

Introduction In Power Automate, retrieving details about the author of a SharePoint page can be essential for various workflows. This blog post will guide you through the steps to get the page author details using Power Automate. Add Send an Http request to SharePoint action and rename it to Get Page Author Details.Configure the action with the following settings: Site Address: triggerOutputs()?[‘body/SiteUrl’] Method: Get Uri : /_api/web/_api/Web/GetUserById(body(‘Parse_Page_Details_JSON’)?[’d’]?[‘AuthorId’]) Output of the API

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to get user details from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to retrieve a user details. Send an Http request to SharePoint action renamed to Get Page Author Details Site Address: https://test.sharepoint.com Method: GET URI: _api/Web/GetUserById(14) Here’s the output from the API: Here’s the output from the API:

Managing sharing settings for SharePoint sites is crucial for maintaining a secure and well-governed environment. With the help of PowerShell, administrators can efficiently retrieve and manage these settings across their SharePoint Online tenant. This ensures that sensitive information is not overshared and that your organisation’s data remains secure. Importance of Reviewing Sharing Settings Reviewing sharing settings is essential to prevent oversharing, which can lead to data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Managing sharing settings for SharePoint sites is crucial for maintaining a secure and well-governed environment. With the help of PowerShell, administrators can efficiently retrieve and manage these settings across their SharePoint Online tenant. This ensures that sensitive information is not overshared and that your organisation’s data remains secure. Importance of Reviewing Sharing Settings Reviewing sharing settings is essential to prevent oversharing, which can lead to data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring OneDrive Tenant Settings with PowerShell OneDrive makes it easy to collaborate by sharing files and folders with others. OneDrive is the storage space for personal productivity and not meant for collaboration. Data stored within OneDrive are Files shared to chats within Teams Files shared with end user by other OneDrive users. OneNote Personal lists and Document storage Shortcuts to SharePoint sites/libraries Favourites Loops within chats Streams In this article, we’ll explore into how PowerShell can empower SharePoint administrators to configure OneDrive sharing settings proactively at the tenant level, addressing oversharing concerns for the M365 Copilot rollout.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring Microsoft Loop Sharing SharePoint Tenant and Site Settings with PowerShell Guest users can be invited to collaborate within Microsoft Loop in the tenant. Refer How to work with guest users using Microsoft Loop how sharing within Loop works. This post focuses on using PowerShell to control the Microsoft Loop sharing settings to help securing data especially with M365 Copilot which can expose data not previously accessible by other means.

Managing sharing settings for SharePoint sites is crucial for maintaining a secure and well-governed environment. With the help of PowerShell, administrators can efficiently retrieve and manage these settings across their SharePoint Online tenant. This ensures that sensitive information is not overshared and that your organisation’s data remains secure. Importance of Reviewing Sharing Settings Reviewing sharing settings is essential to prevent oversharing, which can lead to data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Have you ever wondered how to default the default sharing link in Teams chats to ‘People currently in this chat’? By default, if “Anyone” is disabled within the tenant, the sharing link is set to “People in my organization”. This can be a challenge when you want to limit access to only those in the current chat. All files uploaded to a Teams Chat are stored in the uploader’s OneDrive for Business.

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring OneDrive Tenant Settings with PowerShell OneDrive makes it easy to collaborate by sharing files and folders with others. OneDrive is the storage space for personal productivity and not meant for collaboration. Data stored within OneDrive are Files shared to chats within Teams Files shared with end user by other OneDrive users. OneNote Personal lists and Document storage Shortcuts to SharePoint sites/libraries Favourites Loops within chats Streams In this article, we’ll explore into how PowerShell can empower SharePoint administrators to configure OneDrive sharing settings proactively at the tenant level, addressing oversharing concerns for the M365 Copilot rollout.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring Microsoft Loop Sharing SharePoint Tenant and Site Settings with PowerShell Guest users can be invited to collaborate within Microsoft Loop in the tenant. Refer How to work with guest users using Microsoft Loop how sharing within Loop works. This post focuses on using PowerShell to control the Microsoft Loop sharing settings to help securing data especially with M365 Copilot which can expose data not previously accessible by other means.

Query Unique Permissions in SharePoint using CSOM and PnP PowerShell Managing permissions in SharePoint is a critical aspect of maintaining data security and compliance within organisations. However, as SharePoint environments grow in complexity, manually auditing and managing permissions becomes increasingly challenging. To address this challenge, PowerShell scripts can be leveraged to automate the auditing process, providing administrators with valuable insights into permission structures across SharePoint sites and libraries. What do SharePoint permissions have to do with Copilot for Microsoft 365?

Automating Site Reindexing with PowerShell Introduction Keeping your SharePoint environment up-to-date is crucial, especially after making schema changes. One important aspect of maintaining accurate and relevant search results is to regularly reindex sites, libraries, or lists. In this blog post, we will explore a streamlined approach using PnP PowerShell to automate the reindexing process. By leveraging this script, you can ensure that your search results reflect the latest changes in your SharePoint environment.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Unveiling Audit Logs with PnP PowerShell for the last 7 days Understanding and tracking activities within your M365 environment is crucial for maintaining security and compliance. Audit Logs offer a wealth of information, and in this post, we’ll delve into the methods to retrieve and analyze them. Specifically, we’ll focus on leveraging the Office 365 Management Activity API reference through the Get-PnPUnifiedAuditLog PnP PowerShell cmdlet. It is a great alternative if you are only a SharePoint Administrator with no global admin or Purview Audit logs access.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Sharing lies at the heart of collaboration within SharePoint, facilitating seamless communication and teamwork. However, effective management of sharing settings is crucial to maintain data security and prevent unintended exposure. This is particularly important in light of tools like M365 Copilot. An extract from Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era “With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster.

Have you ever wondered how to default the default sharing link in Teams chats to ‘People currently in this chat’? By default, if “Anyone” is disabled within the tenant, the sharing link is set to “People in my organization”. This can be a challenge when you want to limit access to only those in the current chat. All files uploaded to a Teams Chat are stored in the uploader’s OneDrive for Business.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring OneDrive Tenant Settings with PowerShell OneDrive makes it easy to collaborate by sharing files and folders with others. OneDrive is the storage space for personal productivity and not meant for collaboration. Data stored within OneDrive are Files shared to chats within Teams Files shared with end user by other OneDrive users. OneNote Personal lists and Document storage Shortcuts to SharePoint sites/libraries Favourites Loops within chats Streams In this article, we’ll explore into how PowerShell can empower SharePoint administrators to configure OneDrive sharing settings proactively at the tenant level, addressing oversharing concerns for the M365 Copilot rollout.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring Microsoft Loop Sharing SharePoint Tenant and Site Settings with PowerShell Guest users can be invited to collaborate within Microsoft Loop in the tenant. Refer How to work with guest users using Microsoft Loop how sharing within Loop works. This post focuses on using PowerShell to control the Microsoft Loop sharing settings to help securing data especially with M365 Copilot which can expose data not previously accessible by other means.

How to Use the Instagram Basic Display Connector in Power Apps and Power Automate Instagram is a popular social media platform with over 1 billion monthly active users. It is a great platform for sharing photos and videos, and many businesses use it to promote their products and services. With the Instagram Basic Display (IndependentPublisher) connector, you can now easily retrieve data from Instagram accounts and use it in Power Apps and Power Automate.

Learn how to automatically refresh long-lived access tokens using the Instagram Graph API. Refer to how the Long-Lived Access Tokens for more info. Long-lived tokens are valid for 60 days and can be refreshed as long as they are at least 24 hours old but have not expired, and the app user has granted your app the instagram_graph_user_profile permission. Refreshed tokens are valid for 60 days from the date at which they are refreshed.

How to Use the Instagram Basic Display Connector in Power Apps and Power Automate Instagram is a popular social media platform with over 1 billion monthly active users. It is a great platform for sharing photos and videos, and many businesses use it to promote their products and services. With the Instagram Basic Display (IndependentPublisher) connector, you can now easily retrieve data from Instagram accounts and use it in Power Apps and Power Automate.

Learn how to automatically refresh long-lived access tokens using the Instagram Graph API. Refer to how the Long-Lived Access Tokens for more info. Long-lived tokens are valid for 60 days and can be refreshed as long as they are at least 24 hours old but have not expired, and the app user has granted your app the instagram_graph_user_profile permission. Refreshed tokens are valid for 60 days from the date at which they are refreshed.

How to Use the Instagram Basic Display Connector in Power Apps and Power Automate Instagram is a popular social media platform with over 1 billion monthly active users. It is a great platform for sharing photos and videos, and many businesses use it to promote their products and services. With the Instagram Basic Display (IndependentPublisher) connector, you can now easily retrieve data from Instagram accounts and use it in Power Apps and Power Automate.

How to Use the Instagram Basic Display Connector in Power Apps and Power Automate Instagram is a popular social media platform with over 1 billion monthly active users. It is a great platform for sharing photos and videos, and many businesses use it to promote their products and services. With the Instagram Basic Display (IndependentPublisher) connector, you can now easily retrieve data from Instagram accounts and use it in Power Apps and Power Automate.

Coauthoring with power apps issues Coauthoring in power apps allows multiple power apps developers to work on the same canvas app. Despite being an experimental feature we decided to give a try to speed up the development process. We used the blog post [How To Setup Power Apps Co-Authoring - Azure DevOps Version] (https://www.matthewdevaney.com/how-to-setup-power-apps-co-authoring-azure-dev-ops-version/). The tutorial covers step-by-step instructions for enabling co-authoring for canvas apps in Power Apps using Azure DevOps repository.

Learn how to automatically refresh long-lived access tokens using the Instagram Graph API. Refer to how the Long-Lived Access Tokens for more info. Long-lived tokens are valid for 60 days and can be refreshed as long as they are at least 24 hours old but have not expired, and the app user has granted your app the instagram_graph_user_profile permission. Refreshed tokens are valid for 60 days from the date at which they are refreshed.

I had a flow created in the default environment that needed to be moved into a solution in a managed environment. However, the export link for Package (.zip) was missing as the flow was within a default solution (preferred). It was a huge flow, and manually recreating each action would have taken a considerable amount of time. I checked another flow where the Package (.zip) was available. Upon clicking the link, I noticed that /export was appended to the URL of the flow.

The script checks the ‘SharePoint Online Web Client Extensibility’ Principal within Entra ID for the actual assigned permissions as the SPFx solutions requests are all be added to that single shared permission group. As hilghlighted by “Wes Hackett”: I’ve personally seen plenty of tenants with Mailbox permissions with no corresponding solutions live in the app catalogs. Early SPFx doc examples encouraged the use of MS Graph into Mailbox permissions in one of the how to learn samples, older tenants sometimes have this breadcrumb left behind.

Have you ever needed to gather detailed information about SPFx solutions installed in your SharePoint environment, such as API permissions, for auditing, inventory, or compliance purposes? The PowerShell script below helps you retrieve these details from both the tenant-level and site collection app catalogs for auditing with the aim to improve security posture by removing unneeded apps and access rights. To execute this script, you must have Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator roles.

Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites There is the blog post how Deploying and Installing SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions using PnP PowerShell to Hub Site and Associated Sites using site collection app catalog. This post covers how to perform same objective but using the tenant level app catalog if the SPFx packages have not been added to all sites globally during deployment in the tenant level app catalog and instead need targeted deployment or upgrades on specific sites.

Retracting SPFx Solutions from Hub Site and associated sites using PnP PowerShell SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions are a powerful tool for extending and customizing SharePoint sites. However, managing these solutions across multiple sites in a SharePoint tenant can be a daunting task. Fortunately, PnP PowerShell provides automation capabilities that can streamline these operations and ensure consistency across the tenant. The blog post Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites covers how to deploy SPFx solutions across a hub site and associated sites.

The script checks the ‘SharePoint Online Web Client Extensibility’ Principal within Entra ID for the actual assigned permissions as the SPFx solutions requests are all be added to that single shared permission group. As hilghlighted by “Wes Hackett”: I’ve personally seen plenty of tenants with Mailbox permissions with no corresponding solutions live in the app catalogs. Early SPFx doc examples encouraged the use of MS Graph into Mailbox permissions in one of the how to learn samples, older tenants sometimes have this breadcrumb left behind.

The script checks the ‘SharePoint Online Web Client Extensibility’ Principal within Entra ID for the actual assigned permissions as the SPFx solutions requests are all be added to that single shared permission group. As hilghlighted by “Wes Hackett”: I’ve personally seen plenty of tenants with Mailbox permissions with no corresponding solutions live in the app catalogs. Early SPFx doc examples encouraged the use of MS Graph into Mailbox permissions in one of the how to learn samples, older tenants sometimes have this breadcrumb left behind.

Have you ever needed to gather detailed information about SPFx solutions installed in your SharePoint environment, such as API permissions, for auditing, inventory, or compliance purposes? The PowerShell script below helps you retrieve these details from both the tenant-level and site collection app catalogs for auditing with the aim to improve security posture by removing unneeded apps and access rights. To execute this script, you must have Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator roles.

As part of the M365 Copilot rollout , questions were raised on the /portals/Community and /portals/hub as both ‘Everyone Except External Users’ was granted access raising concerns on the content on the site. These are legacy sites and are currently inaccessible. Historically, these sites were accessible via the legacy SharePoint admin centre, however, they are not available through the modern SharePoint admin centre interface. Thanks to Gregory Zelfond’s blog post What are all these site collections in SharePoint?

Get Total Count of SharePoint Files, Folders, and Items with PnP PowerShell This PowerShell script powered by PnP PowerShell can help to get total count of files, folders, and list items across SharePoint tenant. This script is invaluable for administrators looking to perform audits, verify data migrations, or simply keep tabs on the content sprawl within their environments. The use case of this script was to get a total number of items that would be ingested into a third party application Records365 (provided by RecordPoint) to ensure the number tally for compliance purposes and identify any gaps.

Find SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages with PowerShell in Tenant and Site Collection App Catalogs This post covers a PowerShell script to generate an inventory of SPFx installations within your SharePoint Online environment which will help you maintain oversight of your SPFx solutions, ensuring they are up-to-date and compliant. The script was particularly useful in pinpointing sites within the tenant where third-party applications, specifically an analytics SPFx component, were deployed. This was crucial for ensuring that data collection was confined to designated sites, such as the intranet in my case study.

Using column formatting in SharePoint, you can update the values of other fields using the setValue function. This approach allows you to create dynamic functionality in your lists and libraries without extensive development, helping to avoid accumulating technical debt. Updating a Managed Metadata field, however, is not as straightforward as simply specifying the display value. The field expects a specific format that includes the term’s ID (termId). Understanding Column Formatting Column formatting in SharePoint involves using a combination of inline CSS, HTML, and JSON to control how fields in lists and libraries are displayed.

When working with large SharePoint sites, checking for unique permissions can be a time-consuming task. This blog post explores methods to optimize PowerShell scripts for fetching property HasUniqueRoleAssignments to determine unique permissions, including using PnP PowerShell and the SharePoint REST API. We compare their performance and highlight the advantages and limitations of each approach. Using PnP PowerShell PnP PowerShell provides an efficient way to interact with SharePoint Online and retrieve list items to check for unique permissions.

When working with large SharePoint sites, checking for unique permissions can be a time-consuming task. This blog post explores methods to optimize PowerShell scripts for fetching property HasUniqueRoleAssignments to determine unique permissions, including using PnP PowerShell and the SharePoint REST API. We compare their performance and highlight the advantages and limitations of each approach. Using PnP PowerShell PnP PowerShell provides an efficient way to interact with SharePoint Online and retrieve list items to check for unique permissions.

When working with large SharePoint sites, checking for unique permissions can be a time-consuming task. This blog post explores methods to optimize PowerShell scripts for fetching property HasUniqueRoleAssignments to determine unique permissions, including using PnP PowerShell and the SharePoint REST API. We compare their performance and highlight the advantages and limitations of each approach. Using PnP PowerShell PnP PowerShell provides an efficient way to interact with SharePoint Online and retrieve list items to check for unique permissions.

Query Unique Permissions in SharePoint using CSOM and PnP PowerShell Managing permissions in SharePoint is a critical aspect of maintaining data security and compliance within organisations. However, as SharePoint environments grow in complexity, manually auditing and managing permissions becomes increasingly challenging. To address this challenge, PowerShell scripts can be leveraged to automate the auditing process, providing administrators with valuable insights into permission structures across SharePoint sites and libraries. What do SharePoint permissions have to do with Copilot for Microsoft 365?

If you have built Power Platform solutions using SharePoint as a datasource, you may want to export the list structure along with its data from the source environment (e.g., DEV) and deploy it across different environments such as Test, UAT, and PROD. Fortunately, the PnP Provisioning from PnP PowerShell provides this capability. Power Platform solutions can be deployed using pipelines after the SharePoint structure is deployed. Export Structure and Data from SharePoint Lists PnP PowerShell makes this process straightforward with Get-PnPSiteTemplate:

The SharePoint - Move file action can be used to move files, however the file can’t be moved if the file was accessed by the current Power Automate flow for any processing reslutng in a locked file error. { “status”: 400, “message”: “File ‘Shared Documents/Attendances/To Be Processed/Attendance -16072024.xlsx’ cannot be moved because it is in locked mode.\r\nclientRequestId: d6df7566-881f-4f14-8548-c5fac1eda46d\r\nserviceRequestId: 606841a1-40f0-9000-9c69-507df9b21720” } Handling Locked Files There are two options to handlelocked files when using SharePoint - Move file action:

If a M365 group connected Team site is deleted from SharePoint Admin Centre, from the UI it is not possible to delete the site from the deleted sites to be able to resuse the URL or name of the deleted site. The end user is presented with the following prompt This site belongs to a Microsoft 365 group. Deleting the site will delete the group and all its resources, including the Outlook mailbox and calendar, and any Teams channels.

Teamifying an Existing M365 Group with PowerShell Within M365 , SharePoint and Teams together provides a rich collaboaration platform. When a team site is created from SharePoint admin centre, it is not associated with a Teams despite a M365 group is created in the background. To extend SharePoint collaboration features , there is a need to “teamify” an existing Microsoft 365 Group, essentially attaching a new Teams instance to it to allow use of channels and other apps.

Ensure Owners Are Members M365Group Microsoft 365 (M365) Groups serve as a central hub for collaboration across various M365 applications like Teams, Planner, SharePoint, and more. While M365 roles include Owners, Members, and Guests, it’s crucial to understand that being an owner doesn’t always inherit member privileges. In this article, we’ll explore why it’s imperative to have M365 Group owners also serve as active members for seamless group management and productivity.

If a M365 group connected Team site is deleted from SharePoint Admin Centre, from the UI it is not possible to delete the site from the deleted sites to be able to resuse the URL or name of the deleted site. The end user is presented with the following prompt This site belongs to a Microsoft 365 group. Deleting the site will delete the group and all its resources, including the Outlook mailbox and calendar, and any Teams channels.

The SharePoint - Move file action can be used to move files, however the file can’t be moved if the file was accessed by the current Power Automate flow for any processing reslutng in a locked file error. { “status”: 400, “message”: “File ‘Shared Documents/Attendances/To Be Processed/Attendance -16072024.xlsx’ cannot be moved because it is in locked mode.\r\nclientRequestId: d6df7566-881f-4f14-8548-c5fac1eda46d\r\nserviceRequestId: 606841a1-40f0-9000-9c69-507df9b21720” } Handling Locked Files There are two options to handlelocked files when using SharePoint - Move file action:

This post outlines how to use Power Automate to update author and editor of a Page within SharePoint using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow, follow the following steps Add Send an Http request to SharePoint renamed to Update Author Properties Property Value Site Address The SharePoint site URL Method POST Uri See Uri below Headers See Headers table below Body See Body below Uri _api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘Site%20Pages’)/items(1)/ValidateUpdateListItem()`

The SharePoint - Move file action can be used to move files, however the file can’t be moved if the file was accessed by the current Power Automate flow for any processing reslutng in a locked file error. { “status”: 400, “message”: “File ‘Shared Documents/Attendances/To Be Processed/Attendance -16072024.xlsx’ cannot be moved because it is in locked mode.\r\nclientRequestId: d6df7566-881f-4f14-8548-c5fac1eda46d\r\nserviceRequestId: 606841a1-40f0-9000-9c69-507df9b21720” } Handling Locked Files There are two options to handlelocked files when using SharePoint - Move file action:

This post outlines how to use Power Automate to update author and editor of a Page within SharePoint using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow, follow the following steps Add Send an Http request to SharePoint renamed to Update Author Properties Property Value Site Address The SharePoint site URL Method POST Uri See Uri below Headers See Headers table below Body See Body below Uri _api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘Site%20Pages’)/items(1)/ValidateUpdateListItem()`

Have you ever wondered how to default the default sharing link in Teams chats to ‘People currently in this chat’? By default, if “Anyone” is disabled within the tenant, the sharing link is set to “People in my organization”. This can be a challenge when you want to limit access to only those in the current chat. All files uploaded to a Teams Chat are stored in the uploader’s OneDrive for Business.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring OneDrive Tenant Settings with PowerShell OneDrive makes it easy to collaborate by sharing files and folders with others. OneDrive is the storage space for personal productivity and not meant for collaboration. Data stored within OneDrive are Files shared to chats within Teams Files shared with end user by other OneDrive users. OneNote Personal lists and Document storage Shortcuts to SharePoint sites/libraries Favourites Loops within chats Streams In this article, we’ll explore into how PowerShell can empower SharePoint administrators to configure OneDrive sharing settings proactively at the tenant level, addressing oversharing concerns for the M365 Copilot rollout.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Have you ever wondered how to default the default sharing link in Teams chats to ‘People currently in this chat’? By default, if “Anyone” is disabled within the tenant, the sharing link is set to “People in my organization”. This can be a challenge when you want to limit access to only those in the current chat. All files uploaded to a Teams Chat are stored in the uploader’s OneDrive for Business.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring OneDrive Tenant Settings with PowerShell OneDrive makes it easy to collaborate by sharing files and folders with others. OneDrive is the storage space for personal productivity and not meant for collaboration. Data stored within OneDrive are Files shared to chats within Teams Files shared with end user by other OneDrive users. OneNote Personal lists and Document storage Shortcuts to SharePoint sites/libraries Favourites Loops within chats Streams In this article, we’ll explore into how PowerShell can empower SharePoint administrators to configure OneDrive sharing settings proactively at the tenant level, addressing oversharing concerns for the M365 Copilot rollout.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Have you ever wondered how to default the default sharing link in Teams chats to ‘People currently in this chat’? By default, if “Anyone” is disabled within the tenant, the sharing link is set to “People in my organization”. This can be a challenge when you want to limit access to only those in the current chat. All files uploaded to a Teams Chat are stored in the uploader’s OneDrive for Business.

Have you ever wondered how to default the default sharing link in Teams chats to ‘People currently in this chat’? By default, if “Anyone” is disabled within the tenant, the sharing link is set to “People in my organization”. This can be a challenge when you want to limit access to only those in the current chat. All files uploaded to a Teams Chat are stored in the uploader’s OneDrive for Business.

Gaining an overview of what takes up space in a SharePoint site is crucial for monitoring large files or a significant number of versions. Unfortunately, the storage metrics link, <siteurl>/_layouts/15/storman.aspx, won’t work for libraries with more than 5,000 files without nested folders. While this might go against information architecture principles, creating folders is an option to avoid the list view threshold error. Here’s a PowerShell script to help you get storage metrics for your SharePoint site:

Retrieving File Count and Size of a folder within a SharePoint Library using PnP PowerShell This post covers a PowerShell script that uses the PnP PowerShell module to retrieve the file count and total size of a specific folder within a SharePoint library. #Parameters $SiteURL = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/company311" $FolderSiteRelativeURL = "Shared Documents/Test1" #Connect to PnP Online Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Interactive #Get the folder $Folder = Get-PnPFolder -Url $FolderSiteRelativeURL -Includes ListItemAllFields #Get the total Size of the folder - with versions Write-host "Size of the Folder:" $([Math]::Round(($Folder.

Gaining an overview of what takes up space in a SharePoint site is crucial for monitoring large files or a significant number of versions. Unfortunately, the storage metrics link, <siteurl>/_layouts/15/storman.aspx, won’t work for libraries with more than 5,000 files without nested folders. While this might go against information architecture principles, creating folders is an option to avoid the list view threshold error. Here’s a PowerShell script to help you get storage metrics for your SharePoint site:

Gaining an overview of what takes up space in a SharePoint site is crucial for monitoring large files or a significant number of versions. Unfortunately, the storage metrics link, <siteurl>/_layouts/15/storman.aspx, won’t work for libraries with more than 5,000 files without nested folders. While this might go against information architecture principles, creating folders is an option to avoid the list view threshold error. Here’s a PowerShell script to help you get storage metrics for your SharePoint site:

The Highlighted Content Web Part and the News Web Part in SharePoint can be used to display news on a page. Both webparts serve different purposes and have distinct features. One particular difference is the display of author in News Webpart and display of editor in the Highlighted Content Web Part. The Highlighted Content Web Part displays editing details like editor and last updated date with the news information. Unfortunately there is no option to change it to the author name.

The Highlighted Content Web Part and the News Web Part in SharePoint can be used to display news on a page. Both webparts serve different purposes and have distinct features. One particular difference is the display of author in News Webpart and display of editor in the Highlighted Content Web Part. The Highlighted Content Web Part displays editing details like editor and last updated date with the news information. Unfortunately there is no option to change it to the author name.

SharePoint Online offers the useful feature of news links to avoid duplication of news articles and promote existing posts across different sites. This is especially beneficial when news creation is enabled for various departments or directorates, allowing them to share significant news organization-wide. However, the News WebPart might display both the news links and the original articles, resulting in duplicated content. To manage this, you can utilize the OriginalSourceUrl column, which stores the link to the source news article.

When using Power Automate action Send an Http request to SharePoint specially to send data in the body to a REST API call, for instance to create a news link from a SharePoint List Item, you might encounter issues if the body contains double quotes in the title or description. This blog post will walk you through the problem and provide solutions to handle double quotes in JSON strings. Problem Overview Using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action to create a news link can fail if the JSON body contains double quotes.

When using Power Automate action Send an Http request to SharePoint specially to send data in the body to a REST API call, for instance to create a news link from a SharePoint List Item, you might encounter issues if the body contains double quotes in the title or description. This blog post will walk you through the problem and provide solutions to handle double quotes in JSON strings. Problem Overview Using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action to create a news link can fail if the JSON body contains double quotes.

DateTime Handling in Power Automate Manipulating dates and times in Power Automate is a requirement at times. This post covers a few useful scenerios. Add To Time For instance, adding a specific number of months to a date retrieved from an action using AddToTime function: addToTime(body(‘Wait_for_an_approval_2’)?[‘completionDate’], int(body(‘Get_file_properties’)?[‘ReviewFrequency’]?[‘Value’]), ‘Month’, ‘dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm’) Substract Time Specific number of months can be substracted from the date retrieved from an action string(subtractFromTime(items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘DueDate’],1,‘Month’,‘dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm’)) Format Date Time Formatting date to a specific string format is essential otherwise update of data fields might fail because of culture differences.

JSON Data Handling in Power Automate : outputs versus body In Power Automate, JSON data output from various actions is key to connect each other. Accessing Action Outputs Accessing the outputs of a specific action, such as the action ‘Get file properties’, the spcific property can be accessed via the outputs, for instance file name with extension.: outputs(‘Get_file_properties’)?[‘body/{FilenameWithExtension}’] Referencing Action Body A streamlined way is to reference the body directly making it simpler.

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to create and publish a news link from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to create and publish a news link details. Send an Http request to SharePoint action renamed to Get Page Details. Site Address : site url Method : GET Uri : /_api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘Site%20Pages’)/items(10) Parse JSON renamed to Parse Page Details JSON Add the action Parse JSON and refer to the content from previous steps

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to create and publish a news link from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to create and publish a news link details. Send an Http request to SharePoint action renamed to Get Page Details. Site Address : site url Method : GET Uri : /_api/web/lists/GetByTitle(‘Site%20Pages’)/items(10) Parse JSON renamed to Parse Page Details JSON Add the action Parse JSON and refer to the content from previous steps

This post covers how to leverage SharePoint REST API to get users from a SharePoint group from Power Automate using the Send an Http request to SharePoint action. In the example below a SharePoint Group has been defined for approvers of a particular process and needed to be retrieved to be assigned an approval task. Within a Power Automate flow follow the steps below to retrieve users from a SharePoint group.

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Query Unique Permissions in SharePoint using CSOM and PnP PowerShell Managing permissions in SharePoint is a critical aspect of maintaining data security and compliance within organisations. However, as SharePoint environments grow in complexity, manually auditing and managing permissions becomes increasingly challenging. To address this challenge, PowerShell scripts can be leveraged to automate the auditing process, providing administrators with valuable insights into permission structures across SharePoint sites and libraries. What do SharePoint permissions have to do with Copilot for Microsoft 365?

Effective oversight of sharing links and sharing information are paramount to ensuring data security, compliance, and optimal collaboration experiences. As organisations migrate to M365 environments, they inherit powerful collaboration tools that facilitate seamless sharing of documents and resources. However, without proper governance, these capabilities can lead to unintended consequences such as data breaches, compliance violations, and loss of intellectual property. Sharing is a powerful feature for collaboration. However depending on how items, files or folders are shared, a sharing link might be created or unique permissions on these items are created.

Query Unique Permissions in SharePoint using CSOM and PnP PowerShell Managing permissions in SharePoint is a critical aspect of maintaining data security and compliance within organisations. However, as SharePoint environments grow in complexity, manually auditing and managing permissions becomes increasingly challenging. To address this challenge, PowerShell scripts can be leveraged to automate the auditing process, providing administrators with valuable insights into permission structures across SharePoint sites and libraries. What do SharePoint permissions have to do with Copilot for Microsoft 365?

Update A row action from Dataverse connector was not available to an older Power Automate.The requirement was to add ability to cancel an approval task created via action ‘Create Approval’ within 30 days as Power Automate flows timeout after 30 days. I noticed the action Update a Row in Selected Environment and decided to try it instead. Unfortunately it threw the forbidden error for no apparent reason with no obvious permissions to grant.

There is limited space allocated to the tenant. To ensure business continuity and smooth ongoing operation, it is imperative to keep an eye on its usage and take relevant actions suited to the circumstances. By default a SharePoint site is allocated 25 TB by default and OneDrive for Business site is allocated 1 TB by default. These settings can be amended manually to a different quota to control SharePoint site. The script will help to proactively monitor percent used against quota for each SharePoint site.

As part of the M365 Copilot rollout , questions were raised on the /portals/Community and /portals/hub as both ‘Everyone Except External Users’ was granted access raising concerns on the content on the site. These are legacy sites and are currently inaccessible. Historically, these sites were accessible via the legacy SharePoint admin centre, however, they are not available through the modern SharePoint admin centre interface. Thanks to Gregory Zelfond’s blog post What are all these site collections in SharePoint?

As part of the M365 Copilot rollout , questions were raised on the /portals/Community and /portals/hub as both ‘Everyone Except External Users’ was granted access raising concerns on the content on the site. These are legacy sites and are currently inaccessible. Historically, these sites were accessible via the legacy SharePoint admin centre, however, they are not available through the modern SharePoint admin centre interface. Thanks to Gregory Zelfond’s blog post What are all these site collections in SharePoint?

There is limited space allocated to the tenant. To ensure business continuity and smooth ongoing operation, it is imperative to keep an eye on its usage and take relevant actions suited to the circumstances. By default a SharePoint site is allocated 25 TB by default and OneDrive for Business site is allocated 1 TB by default. These settings can be amended manually to a different quota to control SharePoint site. The script will help to proactively monitor percent used against quota for each SharePoint site.

Troubleshooting SharePoint Storage Reports with PowerShell As the amount of data stored in SharePoint grows, it becomes important to monitor and manage storage usage. In this blog post, we will explore how to generate storage reports for SharePoint sites using PowerShell. These reports will provide insights into the storage usage of sites and individual files, including file versions and the size of the recycle bin. However the reports can only give a glimpse of at least 60-90% of storage.

Update A row action from Dataverse connector was not available to an older Power Automate.The requirement was to add ability to cancel an approval task created via action ‘Create Approval’ within 30 days as Power Automate flows timeout after 30 days. I noticed the action Update a Row in Selected Environment and decided to try it instead. Unfortunately it threw the forbidden error for no apparent reason with no obvious permissions to grant.

SharePoint Online has a list view threshold (LVT) of 5,000 items, which can cause performance issues if exceeded. This post provides a workaround through filtering libraries/lists to stay within this limit and avoid common problems associated with large lists. The Problem When a SharePoint library exceeds the 5,000-item threshold, various issues can arise. These include: Inability to Browse Folders Navigating through folders becomes challenging and sometimes impossible through desktop office apps (Excel, Word,etc.

SharePoint Online has a list view threshold (LVT) of 5,000 items, which can cause performance issues if exceeded. This post provides a workaround through filtering libraries/lists to stay within this limit and avoid common problems associated with large lists. The Problem When a SharePoint library exceeds the 5,000-item threshold, various issues can arise. These include: Inability to Browse Folders Navigating through folders becomes challenging and sometimes impossible through desktop office apps (Excel, Word,etc.

Overcoming SharePoint’s List View Threshold with CAML Queries in PowerShell Encountering the list view threshold error in SharePoint when dealing with lists exceeding 5,000 items is a common challenge. Using CAML queries within PowerShell scripts offers a server-side solution to efficiently filter and retrieve data, yet is prone to the list view threshold error. Sample script This is the sample PowerShell script querying the specified SharePoint list using CAML query.

SharePoint Online offers the useful feature of news links to avoid duplication of news articles and promote existing posts across different sites. This is especially beneficial when news creation is enabled for various departments or directorates, allowing them to share significant news organization-wide. However, the News WebPart might display both the news links and the original articles, resulting in duplicated content. To manage this, you can utilize the OriginalSourceUrl column, which stores the link to the source news article.

Maintaining up-to-date list items, especially when dealing with choice fields, can be a daunting task sepcially after choice field values are updated. We need a way to update these old values to the correct new ones. The Challenge SharePoint lists use choice fields to categorise items. Over time, the need to update these choice values can arise, whether due to changes in terminology, business processes, or error correction. Manually updating these values across numerous list items is not only time-consuming but also prone to human error.

#Parameters $SiteURL = “https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/app-ar" $ListName = “Remittances” $dateTime = (Get-Date).toString(“dd-MM-yyyy”) $invocation = (Get-Variable MyInvocation).Value $directorypath = Split-Path $invocation.MyCommand.Path $fileName = “\RemittanceDuplicateReport-” + $dateTime + “.csv” $OutPutView = $directorypath + $fileName Connect-PnPOnline -url $SiteURL -Interactive $ListItems = Get-PnPListItem -List $ListName -PageSize 500 | Where {$_.FieldValues.Month -eq ‘202402’ } #Array for Results Data $DataCollection = @() ForEach($Item in $ListItems) { #Collect data $Data = New-Object PSObject -Property @{ SourceRef = $Item[“DocumentSourceReference”] GroupingRef = $Item[“GroupingReference”] Provider = $Item[“Provider”].

Find orphaned choice values in SharePoint list/libraries using PowerShell One common issue is orphaned choice values in SharePoint lists which may affect subsequent update to the list item. This can occur when list items contain values that are no longer valid according to the list’s choice field values. This post covers a PowerShell script to identify these orphaned choice values in SharePoint lists to either update them or add them back to the list of choice field values.

Power Automate copy actions across different environments If an action is copied from a different environment, the action is not avaible from the My Clipboard, if not you are presented with the following message only. Save time and paste your most-used Flow code snippets here. Select the ellipsis menu on any trigger or action, then choose Copy to my Clipboard. Note: Pasted code clears each time you log out of Power Automate.

Update SharePoint Site Logo and Thumbnail with PowerShell In SharePoint Online sites, the distinction between the Site Logo and Site Thumbnail is crucial. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, file copying/moving, and other areas. Both site logo and thumbnail are part of SharePoint branding. This post covers how to update the site logo and thumbnail across multiple SharePoint sites within a hub using PowerShell.

Update SharePoint Site Logo and Thumbnail with PowerShell In SharePoint Online sites, the distinction between the Site Logo and Site Thumbnail is crucial. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, file copying/moving, and other areas. Both site logo and thumbnail are part of SharePoint branding. This post covers how to update the site logo and thumbnail across multiple SharePoint sites within a hub using PowerShell.

Update SharePoint Site Logo and Thumbnail with PowerShell In SharePoint Online sites, the distinction between the Site Logo and Site Thumbnail is crucial. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, file copying/moving, and other areas. Both site logo and thumbnail are part of SharePoint branding. This post covers how to update the site logo and thumbnail across multiple SharePoint sites within a hub using PowerShell.

For many organizations, maintaining a consistent brand identity across SharePoint sites is crucial. The distinction between “Site Logo” and “Site Logo Thumbnail” is essential, as they serve different purposes across SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site logo thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, when copying/moving files, and other critical areas. It plays a vital role in helping end users differentiate between various SharePoint Online (SPO) sites and Teams.

Update Content Type of List Items in SharePoint List A content type in SharePoint is a reusable collection of metadata (columns) allowing to organise, manage and handle content in a consistent way. If the content type of files and items need to be updated because of required changes how particular content have to be managed, it can be a daunting laborious task if done manually. PowerShell can help automating the update of content types and corresponding metadata (columns).

Update Content Type of List Items in SharePoint List A content type in SharePoint is a reusable collection of metadata (columns) allowing to organise, manage and handle content in a consistent way. If the content type of files and items need to be updated because of required changes how particular content have to be managed, it can be a daunting laborious task if done manually. PowerShell can help automating the update of content types and corresponding metadata (columns).

Importing Dates and Numbers from Excel file into SharePoint list with Power Automate Transferring data from Excel to SharePoint lists can encounter format issues, especially with datetime and number fields. This post covers solutions to some challenges particularly related to dates and numbers. The flow is quite simple with an action to read contents from excel file and an action to create items into a sharepoint list. Handling DateTime Fields When importing datetime data with the “List rows present in a table” action from the “Excel Online for Business” connector, you might encounter format related errors.

Importing Dates and Numbers from Excel file into SharePoint list with Power Automate Transferring data from Excel to SharePoint lists can encounter format issues, especially with datetime and number fields. This post covers solutions to some challenges particularly related to dates and numbers. The flow is quite simple with an action to read contents from excel file and an action to create items into a sharepoint list. Handling DateTime Fields When importing datetime data with the “List rows present in a table” action from the “Excel Online for Business” connector, you might encounter format related errors.

Handling Locked Office Files issue In Power Automate Inspired by the workaround described by Pieter Veenstra System Updates in SharePoint from Power Automate using the ValidateUpdateListItem endpoint to help with the locked file issue, this post covers file version creation as well. File Locked Issue File lock issues in Power Automate can occur due to: The file being opened by a user. The file being updated by a Power Automate flow, which may take up to 6 minutes to release the lock.

Handling Locked Office Files issue In Power Automate Inspired by the workaround described by Pieter Veenstra System Updates in SharePoint from Power Automate using the ValidateUpdateListItem endpoint to help with the locked file issue, this post covers file version creation as well. File Locked Issue File lock issues in Power Automate can occur due to: The file being opened by a user. The file being updated by a Power Automate flow, which may take up to 6 minutes to release the lock.

Power Automate flow succeeded despite failure to update multi line text field within a SharePoint Library Updating multi-line text fields in a SharePoint Library from Power Automate flows, especially when the content exceeds 255 characters might fail if the field is not updated to allow unlimited length. This can cause workflows to fail silently. In a recent scenario, an action was added to a Power Automate flow to update a SharePoint Library’s multi-line text field named ‘ErrorLog’ with error details captured during the flow’s execution.

DateTime Handling in Power Automate Manipulating dates and times in Power Automate is a requirement at times. This post covers a few useful scenerios. Add To Time For instance, adding a specific number of months to a date retrieved from an action using AddToTime function: addToTime(body(‘Wait_for_an_approval_2’)?[‘completionDate’], int(body(‘Get_file_properties’)?[‘ReviewFrequency’]?[‘Value’]), ‘Month’, ‘dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm’) Substract Time Specific number of months can be substracted from the date retrieved from an action string(subtractFromTime(items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘DueDate’],1,‘Month’,‘dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm’)) Format Date Time Formatting date to a specific string format is essential otherwise update of data fields might fail because of culture differences.

Power Automate fix for InvalidTemplate: Unable to process template language expressions InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action can happen with actions within PowerAutomate. In my scenerio I added the encodian action ‘Convert_to_PDF’ and was resubmitting a flow for testing and kept getting the error message. InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action ‘Convert_to_PDF’ inputs at line ‘0’ and column ‘0’: ‘The template language expression ‘json(decodeBase64(secrets(‘X-MS-APIM-Tokens’)))[’$connections’][‘shared_encodiandocumentmanager’][‘connectionId’]’ cannot be evaluated because property ‘shared_encodiandocumentmanager’ doesn’t exist, available properties are ‘shared_sharepointonline, shared_office365, shared_approvals, shared_teams_1’.

Power Automate fix for InvalidTemplate: Unable to process template language expressions InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action can happen with actions within PowerAutomate. In my scenerio I added the encodian action ‘Convert_to_PDF’ and was resubmitting a flow for testing and kept getting the error message. InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action ‘Convert_to_PDF’ inputs at line ‘0’ and column ‘0’: ‘The template language expression ‘json(decodeBase64(secrets(‘X-MS-APIM-Tokens’)))[’$connections’][‘shared_encodiandocumentmanager’][‘connectionId’]’ cannot be evaluated because property ‘shared_encodiandocumentmanager’ doesn’t exist, available properties are ‘shared_sharepointonline, shared_office365, shared_approvals, shared_teams_1’.

Publishing Major Versions of Files in SharePoint with Power Automate This post covers how to publish major versions for Office documents (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) in SharePoint using Power Automate, especially after an approval task using the checkin and publish REST endpoints. This applies to libraries having minor versions enabled Just for context, a Power Automate approval flow with trigger for a selected file needed publishing for the selected file as major version after being approved.

Enable Giscus for Hugo Blog I recently switched to Giscus for comments on my blog post, inspired by its popularity among other bloggers. Giscus, a commenting system powered by GitHub Discussions, offers a seamless way to engage with readers. If you’re using Hugo for your blog hosted on GitHub, linking Giscus to your posts is straightforward. Note: The following setup guide is based on instructions generated by GitHub Copilot, which I successfully followed to integrate Giscus into my blog.

Enable Giscus for Hugo Blog I recently switched to Giscus for comments on my blog post, inspired by its popularity among other bloggers. Giscus, a commenting system powered by GitHub Discussions, offers a seamless way to engage with readers. If you’re using Hugo for your blog hosted on GitHub, linking Giscus to your posts is straightforward. Note: The following setup guide is based on instructions generated by GitHub Copilot, which I successfully followed to integrate Giscus into my blog.

Enable Giscus for Hugo Blog I recently switched to Giscus for comments on my blog post, inspired by its popularity among other bloggers. Giscus, a commenting system powered by GitHub Discussions, offers a seamless way to engage with readers. If you’re using Hugo for your blog hosted on GitHub, linking Giscus to your posts is straightforward. Note: The following setup guide is based on instructions generated by GitHub Copilot, which I successfully followed to integrate Giscus into my blog.

Enable Giscus for Hugo Blog I recently switched to Giscus for comments on my blog post, inspired by its popularity among other bloggers. Giscus, a commenting system powered by GitHub Discussions, offers a seamless way to engage with readers. If you’re using Hugo for your blog hosted on GitHub, linking Giscus to your posts is straightforward. Note: The following setup guide is based on instructions generated by GitHub Copilot, which I successfully followed to integrate Giscus into my blog.

Enable Giscus for Hugo Blog I recently switched to Giscus for comments on my blog post, inspired by its popularity among other bloggers. Giscus, a commenting system powered by GitHub Discussions, offers a seamless way to engage with readers. If you’re using Hugo for your blog hosted on GitHub, linking Giscus to your posts is straightforward. Note: The following setup guide is based on instructions generated by GitHub Copilot, which I successfully followed to integrate Giscus into my blog.

Embed GitHub Gist in Hugo posts I was approached by Divya Akula with a suggestion to use a link to GitHub for my script and I really bought in the idea because I used to do it on Wordpress. I started googling and trying out solutions which did not work and messed up my blog repo. Fortunately being MVP I have access to GitHub Copilot and asked Copilot with a simple prompt which gave me a simple straight forward looking solution.

A Guide to Contributing to PnP PowerShell Contributing to PnP PowerShell is a rewarding journey. Whether you’re a seasoned contributor or a beginner, this guide aims to simplify the process and keep it handy for your next contribution. Prerequisites To set up the development to start hacking on PnP PowerShell, install the following Install Git Install PowerShell 7 Install Visual Code or Visual Studio Code Install .NET SDK 6 (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0) Forking and cloning First things first, make a copy of the repository to start working on your changes.

MS Build AI Day Keynote by Scott Hanselman On October 19, 2023, the inaugural MS Build AI Day at Excel London in Custom House marked a pivotal moment for the world of AI. As an attendee, I had the privilege of witnessing a groundbreaking keynote session led by none other than Scott Hanselman. Titled “Navigating the AI Landscape,” the keynote, introduced by Michael Wignall, the lead for MS Build, set the stage for an eventful day filled with insights, connections, and hands-on experiences.

Github does not provide an easy way to export all your pull requests for review or sharing with anyone. Below is a great post to show how to do it using BASH. GitHub: Get a CSV containing my pull requests (PRs) If you are using windows machine, PowerShell is your friend. Install GitHub CLI via command line winget install --id GitHub.cli Enter Y to the question Do you agree to all the source agreements terms?

Column Validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint Column validation provides a solution to validate data for data integrity. This post covers column validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint. Validation for Sort Code =AND(LEN([Sort Code])=6,ISNUMBER([Sort Code]+0)) The above formula checks The length of the sort code must be exactly 6 digits. The sort code must be a number. Validation for Account Number =AND(LEN([Account Number])=8,ISNUMBER([Account Number]+0))

Column Validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint Column validation provides a solution to validate data for data integrity. This post covers column validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint. Validation for Sort Code =AND(LEN([Sort Code])=6,ISNUMBER([Sort Code]+0)) The above formula checks The length of the sort code must be exactly 6 digits. The sort code must be a number. Validation for Account Number =AND(LEN([Account Number])=8,ISNUMBER([Account Number]+0))

Column Validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint Column validation provides a solution to validate data for data integrity. This post covers column validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint. Validation for Sort Code =AND(LEN([Sort Code])=6,ISNUMBER([Sort Code]+0)) The above formula checks The length of the sort code must be exactly 6 digits. The sort code must be a number. Validation for Account Number =AND(LEN([Account Number])=8,ISNUMBER([Account Number]+0))

Column Validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint Column validation provides a solution to validate data for data integrity. This post covers column validation for Sort Code and Account Number in SharePoint. Validation for Sort Code =AND(LEN([Sort Code])=6,ISNUMBER([Sort Code]+0)) The above formula checks The length of the sort code must be exactly 6 digits. The sort code must be a number. Validation for Account Number =AND(LEN([Account Number])=8,ISNUMBER([Account Number]+0))

When working with CSV files in PowerShell with special characters you might encounter an issue where special characters (e.g., em dashes —) are incorrectly represented as a question mark inside a diamond �. This common issue arises due to PowerShell’s default encoding not matching the encoding used in the CSV file. Problem Statement The root of this problem lies in the encoding mismatch. Encoding is a method of converting characters into a format that can be easily stored or transmitted.

When working with CSV files in PowerShell with special characters you might encounter an issue where special characters (e.g., em dashes —) are incorrectly represented as a question mark inside a diamond �. This common issue arises due to PowerShell’s default encoding not matching the encoding used in the CSV file. Problem Statement The root of this problem lies in the encoding mismatch. Encoding is a method of converting characters into a format that can be easily stored or transmitted.

When working with CSV files in PowerShell with special characters you might encounter an issue where special characters (e.g., em dashes —) are incorrectly represented as a question mark inside a diamond �. This common issue arises due to PowerShell’s default encoding not matching the encoding used in the CSV file. Problem Statement The root of this problem lies in the encoding mismatch. Encoding is a method of converting characters into a format that can be easily stored or transmitted.

Find SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages with PowerShell in Tenant and Site Collection App Catalogs This post covers a PowerShell script to generate an inventory of SPFx installations within your SharePoint Online environment which will help you maintain oversight of your SPFx solutions, ensuring they are up-to-date and compliant. The script was particularly useful in pinpointing sites within the tenant where third-party applications, specifically an analytics SPFx component, were deployed. This was crucial for ensuring that data collection was confined to designated sites, such as the intranet in my case study.

Streamlining SharePoint Template Usage: A Guide to Opening DOTX Files as DOCX Encountering issues with opening “.dotx” templates in SharePoint is a common scenario that can disrupt your workflow. Typically, when you attempt to open a “.dotx” file in SharePoint, it opens in edit mode for the template itself, rather than generating a new “.docx” document as expected. This behavior diverges from the experience in Windows File Explorer and can hinder productivity.

Streamlining SharePoint Template Usage: A Guide to Opening DOTX Files as DOCX Encountering issues with opening “.dotx” templates in SharePoint is a common scenario that can disrupt your workflow. Typically, when you attempt to open a “.dotx” file in SharePoint, it opens in edit mode for the template itself, rather than generating a new “.docx” document as expected. This behavior diverges from the experience in Windows File Explorer and can hinder productivity.

Streamlining SharePoint Template Usage: A Guide to Opening DOTX Files as DOCX Encountering issues with opening “.dotx” templates in SharePoint is a common scenario that can disrupt your workflow. Typically, when you attempt to open a “.dotx” file in SharePoint, it opens in edit mode for the template itself, rather than generating a new “.docx” document as expected. This behavior diverges from the experience in Windows File Explorer and can hinder productivity.

Streamlining SharePoint Template Usage: A Guide to Opening DOTX Files as DOCX Encountering issues with opening “.dotx” templates in SharePoint is a common scenario that can disrupt your workflow. Typically, when you attempt to open a “.dotx” file in SharePoint, it opens in edit mode for the template itself, rather than generating a new “.docx” document as expected. This behavior diverges from the experience in Windows File Explorer and can hinder productivity.

I accidentally deleted a power automate flow and needed a way of restoring it. I stumbled on Restore deleted flows to restore the deleted flows. However the action List Flows as Admin (v2) was not returning all the flows, hence the deleted flow was missing. If it happens , enables the pagination setting of the action withing settings tab and set the threshold to ensure the number is more than number of flows you have in the environment.

I accidentally deleted a power automate flow and needed a way of restoring it. I stumbled on Restore deleted flows to restore the deleted flows. However the action List Flows as Admin (v2) was not returning all the flows, hence the deleted flow was missing. If it happens , enables the pagination setting of the action withing settings tab and set the threshold to ensure the number is more than number of flows you have in the environment.

If it takes too long to deploy the solution, time out issues might occur. In this instance consider checking and updating the MaxAsyncWaitTime. Its value has been increased to 120 which means the deployment process will wait up to 120 seconds (or 2 minutes) for asynchronous operations such as import power platform solution to complete fixing the timing out issue. The fix is to amend the MaxAsyncWaitTime to 120 - task: PowerPlatformImportSolution@2 inputs: authenticationType: PowerPlatformSPN PowerPlatformSPN: 'powerplatform-t-connection' Environment: 'https://contoso-st.

If it takes too long to deploy the solution, time out issues might occur. In this instance consider checking and updating the MaxAsyncWaitTime. Its value has been increased to 120 which means the deployment process will wait up to 120 seconds (or 2 minutes) for asynchronous operations such as import power platform solution to complete fixing the timing out issue. The fix is to amend the MaxAsyncWaitTime to 120 - task: PowerPlatformImportSolution@2 inputs: authenticationType: PowerPlatformSPN PowerPlatformSPN: 'powerplatform-t-connection' Environment: 'https://contoso-st.

If it takes too long to deploy the solution, time out issues might occur. In this instance consider checking and updating the MaxAsyncWaitTime. Its value has been increased to 120 which means the deployment process will wait up to 120 seconds (or 2 minutes) for asynchronous operations such as import power platform solution to complete fixing the timing out issue. The fix is to amend the MaxAsyncWaitTime to 120 - task: PowerPlatformImportSolution@2 inputs: authenticationType: PowerPlatformSPN PowerPlatformSPN: 'powerplatform-t-connection' Environment: 'https://contoso-st.

Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform There are loads of posts explaining Application Lifecycle Management for the Power Platform using Azure DevOps most using the graphical classical pipeline. The latest post I read on this is Application Lifecycle Management for the Power Platform using Azure DevOps by Luise Freese which is brilliant. Please read article covering difference between YAML and Classic UI to explain why you may want the modern YAML pipeline.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management Settings Using PowerShell to protect data in M365 Copilot Rollout SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management offers features to help prevent data oversharing and accidental leaks, which is crucial for a successful rollout of M365 Copilot. This guide will show you how to manage these settings using PowerShell. For an overview, read the Microsoft SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management overview. This post covers how to manage SharePoint Premium - SharePoint Advanced Management settings at both the tenant and site level using PowerShell.

Guide to Preparing setting files for Power Platform managed solution deployment This guide will walk you through the process of creating a settings file for Power Platform managed solution deployment. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform for detailed steps for ALM for power platform solutions.

Power Platform Managed Solution Deployment with Connection References - Allow customisations This article explores the challenges and solutions associated with Power Platform managed solution deployment, specifically focusing on connection references and the “Allow Customisations” property. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Guide to Preparing setting files for Power Platform managed solution deployment This guide will walk you through the process of creating a settings file for Power Platform managed solution deployment. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform for detailed steps for ALM for power platform solutions.

Resolving the ‘PnP PowerShell Not Digitally Signed’ Issue If you’ve recently upgraded PnP PowerShell to the latest nightly build and are encountering errors when trying to execute any PnP PowerShell cmdlets, this guide is for you. PS C:\Users\RAuckloo> connect-pnponline -url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com -Interactive connect-pnponline: The 'connect-pnponline' command was found in the module 'PnP. PowerShell', but the module could not be loaded due to the following error: [Errors occurred while loading the format data file: \\contoso-it.

Resolving the ‘PnP PowerShell Not Digitally Signed’ Issue If you’ve recently upgraded PnP PowerShell to the latest nightly build and are encountering errors when trying to execute any PnP PowerShell cmdlets, this guide is for you. PS C:\Users\RAuckloo> connect-pnponline -url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com -Interactive connect-pnponline: The 'connect-pnponline' command was found in the module 'PnP. PowerShell', but the module could not be loaded due to the following error: [Errors occurred while loading the format data file: \\contoso-it.

Counting Files and Folders within SharePoint Libraries using PnP PowerShell This post shows a PowerShell script using PnP PowerShell module to count the number of files and folders within a SharePoint library. It might be useful doing an inventory of file count. $SiteURL = "Counting Files within a SharePoint Library using PnP PowerShell" # Generate a unique log file name using today's date $dateTime = (Get-Date).toString("dd-MM-yyyy") $invocation = (Get-Variable MyInvocation).Value $directorypath = Split-Path $invocation.

Retrieving File Count and Size of a folder within a SharePoint Library using PnP PowerShell This post covers a PowerShell script that uses the PnP PowerShell module to retrieve the file count and total size of a specific folder within a SharePoint library. #Parameters $SiteURL = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/company311" $FolderSiteRelativeURL = "Shared Documents/Test1" #Connect to PnP Online Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Interactive #Get the folder $Folder = Get-PnPFolder -Url $FolderSiteRelativeURL -Includes ListItemAllFields #Get the total Size of the folder - with versions Write-host "Size of the Folder:" $([Math]::Round(($Folder.

Retrieving SiteId from Microsoft Graph for Subsequent API Calls This post offers an option to retrieve a SiteId from Microsoft Graph using PnP PowerShell. This can be particularly useful when making further API calls that require the SiteId. $siteurl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Company311" Connect-PnPOnline -url $siteurl -interactive # for the site url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com/teams/app-m365 # Extract the domain and site name $uri = New-Object System.Uri($siteurl) $domain = $uri.Host $siteName = $uri.AbsolutePath # Construct the new URL $RestMethodUrl = "v1.

Retrieving File Count and Size of a folder within a SharePoint Library using PnP PowerShell This post covers a PowerShell script that uses the PnP PowerShell module to retrieve the file count and total size of a specific folder within a SharePoint library. #Parameters $SiteURL = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/company311" $FolderSiteRelativeURL = "Shared Documents/Test1" #Connect to PnP Online Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Interactive #Get the folder $Folder = Get-PnPFolder -Url $FolderSiteRelativeURL -Includes ListItemAllFields #Get the total Size of the folder - with versions Write-host "Size of the Folder:" $([Math]::Round(($Folder.

Overcoming Challenges with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Self-Hosted Build Agents for Power Platform Managed Solutions Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform solutions can be effectively managed using Azure DevOps, providing a robust framework for automating deployments, version control, and continuous integration and delivery, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing manual errors. Refer to the posts for more details: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Embed GitHub Gist in Hugo posts I was approached by Divya Akula with a suggestion to use a link to GitHub for my script and I really bought in the idea because I used to do it on Wordpress. I started googling and trying out solutions which did not work and messed up my blog repo. Fortunately being MVP I have access to GitHub Copilot and asked Copilot with a simple prompt which gave me a simple straight forward looking solution.

A Guide to Contributing to PnP PowerShell Contributing to PnP PowerShell is a rewarding journey. Whether you’re a seasoned contributor or a beginner, this guide aims to simplify the process and keep it handy for your next contribution. Prerequisites To set up the development to start hacking on PnP PowerShell, install the following Install Git Install PowerShell 7 Install Visual Code or Visual Studio Code Install .NET SDK 6 (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0) Forking and cloning First things first, make a copy of the repository to start working on your changes.

Overcoming Challenges with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Self-Hosted Build Agents for Power Platform Managed Solutions Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform solutions can be effectively managed using Azure DevOps, providing a robust framework for automating deployments, version control, and continuous integration and delivery, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing manual errors. Refer to the posts for more details: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Overcoming Challenges with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Self-Hosted Build Agents for Power Platform Managed Solutions Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform solutions can be effectively managed using Azure DevOps, providing a robust framework for automating deployments, version control, and continuous integration and delivery, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing manual errors. Refer to the posts for more details: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Overcoming Challenges with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Self-Hosted Build Agents for Power Platform Managed Solutions Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform solutions can be effectively managed using Azure DevOps, providing a robust framework for automating deployments, version control, and continuous integration and delivery, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing manual errors. Refer to the posts for more details: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Overcoming Challenges with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Self-Hosted Build Agents for Power Platform Managed Solutions Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform solutions can be effectively managed using Azure DevOps, providing a robust framework for automating deployments, version control, and continuous integration and delivery, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing manual errors. Refer to the posts for more details: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Overcoming Challenges with Azure DevOps Pipelines using Self-Hosted Build Agents for Power Platform Managed Solutions Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform solutions can be effectively managed using Azure DevOps, providing a robust framework for automating deployments, version control, and continuous integration and delivery, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing manual errors. Refer to the posts for more details: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Excluding certain SharePoint sites from search would mean the contents from the excluded sites won’t be available to M365 tenant search and M365 Copilot using Restricted SharePoint Search feature. The downsides using this feature are: Limited Findability: By excluding certain SharePoint sites from search, you limit the findability of data. Users would need to know the specific sites where the data resides in order to search for it. This can hinder efficient data retrieval and records management.

Power Platform Managed Solution Deployment with Connection References - Allow customisations This article explores the challenges and solutions associated with Power Platform managed solution deployment, specifically focusing on connection references and the “Allow Customisations” property. Refer to the posts for more details to set up Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for power platform: Power Platform ALM & Pipelines w/ Matt Devaney and Converting to Modern YAML Pipeline: Application Lifecycle Management in Azure DevOps for Power Platform

Azure Document Intelligence Studio - Neural vs. Template Training Azure Document Intelligence Studio formally known as form recognizer is a powerful tool to extract data from documents at scale. Among its features, the ability to “train a new model” for data extraction from documents. This process comes with two distinct options: Neural and Template. Each has its unique advantages and use cases. Neural Training The Neural option leverages deep learning algorithms to understand and process documents.

Azure Document Intelligence Studio - Neural vs. Template Training Azure Document Intelligence Studio formally known as form recognizer is a powerful tool to extract data from documents at scale. Among its features, the ability to “train a new model” for data extraction from documents. This process comes with two distinct options: Neural and Template. Each has its unique advantages and use cases. Neural Training The Neural option leverages deep learning algorithms to understand and process documents.

Azure Document Intelligence Studio - Neural vs. Template Training Azure Document Intelligence Studio formally known as form recognizer is a powerful tool to extract data from documents at scale. Among its features, the ability to “train a new model” for data extraction from documents. This process comes with two distinct options: Neural and Template. Each has its unique advantages and use cases. Neural Training The Neural option leverages deep learning algorithms to understand and process documents.

Empowering Secure Collaboration: Configuring Microsoft Loop Sharing SharePoint Tenant and Site Settings with PowerShell Guest users can be invited to collaborate within Microsoft Loop in the tenant. Refer How to work with guest users using Microsoft Loop how sharing within Loop works. This post focuses on using PowerShell to control the Microsoft Loop sharing settings to help securing data especially with M365 Copilot which can expose data not previously accessible by other means.

SharePoint Search: Excluding Columns from Search Results SharePoint empowers users to manage and organize vast amounts of data efficiently. However, not all data within a SharePoint site might need to be searchable. Do you miss the functionality to control visibility of sensitive or irrelevant information in column. The Challenge You might have encountered instances where you need certain columns in your SharePoint lists or libraries to be excluded from search results.

SharePoint Search: Excluding Columns from Search Results SharePoint empowers users to manage and organize vast amounts of data efficiently. However, not all data within a SharePoint site might need to be searchable. Do you miss the functionality to control visibility of sensitive or irrelevant information in column. The Challenge You might have encountered instances where you need certain columns in your SharePoint lists or libraries to be excluded from search results.

Embed GitHub Gist in Hugo posts I was approached by Divya Akula with a suggestion to use a link to GitHub for my script and I really bought in the idea because I used to do it on Wordpress. I started googling and trying out solutions which did not work and messed up my blog repo. Fortunately being MVP I have access to GitHub Copilot and asked Copilot with a simple prompt which gave me a simple straight forward looking solution.

Embed GitHub Gist in Hugo posts I was approached by Divya Akula with a suggestion to use a link to GitHub for my script and I really bought in the idea because I used to do it on Wordpress. I started googling and trying out solutions which did not work and messed up my blog repo. Fortunately being MVP I have access to GitHub Copilot and asked Copilot with a simple prompt which gave me a simple straight forward looking solution.

Sharing Options Updates - Send Email button greyed out Starting from March 2024, there has been a notable change in SharePoint’s sharing options. If a user is not allowed to share on a SharePoint site (for instance, when a user is a member and only owners have sharing privileges), the Send Email button appears greyed out. Additionally, a warning message is displayed: Sharing is limited on this item. You can only copy links for people who have existing access, and you can’t invite anyone new.

Recreating Deleted Owners Group for M365-Connected SharePoint Sites If out-of-the-box (OOB) groups such as owners, members, or visitors have been deleted accidentally from your SharePoint site, this article may assist you in recovering those vanished groups specifically for M365 linked Team site. I recently encountered a distress call from an end user facing data access issues on a SharePoint Team site. To my dismay, I discovered that the SharePoint Owners group had been accidentally deleted, prompting me to seek and implement a solution to restore access.

Ensure Owners Are Members M365Group Microsoft 365 (M365) Groups serve as a central hub for collaboration across various M365 applications like Teams, Planner, SharePoint, and more. While M365 roles include Owners, Members, and Guests, it’s crucial to understand that being an owner doesn’t always inherit member privileges. In this article, we’ll explore why it’s imperative to have M365 Group owners also serve as active members for seamless group management and productivity.

Sharing Options Updates - Send Email button greyed out Starting from March 2024, there has been a notable change in SharePoint’s sharing options. If a user is not allowed to share on a SharePoint site (for instance, when a user is a member and only owners have sharing privileges), the Send Email button appears greyed out. Additionally, a warning message is displayed: Sharing is limited on this item. You can only copy links for people who have existing access, and you can’t invite anyone new.

Using OpenAI in Excel and Google Sheets Integrating OpenAI’s GPT models into Excel or Google Sheets can unlock powerful automation and language processing capabilities. This blog post demonstrates how to use OpenAI’s API to translate text in a spreadsheet cell into French using a script. Google Spreadsheet Apps Script Example The following script uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5-turbo model to translate the content of a selected cell into French and outputs the result in the adjacent cell.

Using OpenAI in Excel and Google Sheets Integrating OpenAI’s GPT models into Excel or Google Sheets can unlock powerful automation and language processing capabilities. This blog post demonstrates how to use OpenAI’s API to translate text in a spreadsheet cell into French using a script. Google Spreadsheet Apps Script Example The following script uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5-turbo model to translate the content of a selected cell into French and outputs the result in the adjacent cell.

Using OpenAI in Excel and Google Sheets Integrating OpenAI’s GPT models into Excel or Google Sheets can unlock powerful automation and language processing capabilities. This blog post demonstrates how to use OpenAI’s API to translate text in a spreadsheet cell into French using a script. Google Spreadsheet Apps Script Example The following script uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5-turbo model to translate the content of a selected cell into French and outputs the result in the adjacent cell.

Using OpenAI in Excel and Google Sheets Integrating OpenAI’s GPT models into Excel or Google Sheets can unlock powerful automation and language processing capabilities. This blog post demonstrates how to use OpenAI’s API to translate text in a spreadsheet cell into French using a script. Google Spreadsheet Apps Script Example The following script uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5-turbo model to translate the content of a selected cell into French and outputs the result in the adjacent cell.

Working with PowerShell Script Module Files:psm1 Have you ever utilized a psm1 file to create reusable functions across multiple ps1 files? If so, you might have encountered the frustration of edits not reflecting immediately due to module caching. I recently faced this issue when updating a psm1 file; despite making changes, the updates didn’t take effect immediately. The issue stemmed from module caching. The only solution I found to load the updated psm1 file was to terminate the PowerShell session and start a new one.

Working with PowerShell Script Module Files:psm1 Have you ever utilized a psm1 file to create reusable functions across multiple ps1 files? If so, you might have encountered the frustration of edits not reflecting immediately due to module caching. I recently faced this issue when updating a psm1 file; despite making changes, the updates didn’t take effect immediately. The issue stemmed from module caching. The only solution I found to load the updated psm1 file was to terminate the PowerShell session and start a new one.

Retrieving SharePoint Site URL for Teams Channels Have you ever needed to construct the SharePoint site URL for a private or shared channel using just the channel name? This post will guide you through the process using Microsoft Graph endpoint and PnP PowerShell though PowerShell. You may need the details for these reasons To specify within a retention policy Purview Retention Policy Questions from the Field eDiscovery Extract from eDiscovery of private and shared channels “Each private and shared channel has its own SharePoint site that’s separate from the parent team site.

Retrieving SharePoint Site URL for Teams Channels Have you ever needed to construct the SharePoint site URL for a private or shared channel using just the channel name? This post will guide you through the process using Microsoft Graph endpoint and PnP PowerShell though PowerShell. You may need the details for these reasons To specify within a retention policy Purview Retention Policy Questions from the Field eDiscovery Extract from eDiscovery of private and shared channels “Each private and shared channel has its own SharePoint site that’s separate from the parent team site.

Retrieving SharePoint Site URL for Teams Channels Have you ever needed to construct the SharePoint site URL for a private or shared channel using just the channel name? This post will guide you through the process using Microsoft Graph endpoint and PnP PowerShell though PowerShell. You may need the details for these reasons To specify within a retention policy Purview Retention Policy Questions from the Field eDiscovery Extract from eDiscovery of private and shared channels “Each private and shared channel has its own SharePoint site that’s separate from the parent team site.

Retrieving SharePoint Site URL for Teams Channels Have you ever needed to construct the SharePoint site URL for a private or shared channel using just the channel name? This post will guide you through the process using Microsoft Graph endpoint and PnP PowerShell though PowerShell. You may need the details for these reasons To specify within a retention policy Purview Retention Policy Questions from the Field eDiscovery Extract from eDiscovery of private and shared channels “Each private and shared channel has its own SharePoint site that’s separate from the parent team site.

How to Redirect PowerShell Terminal Output to a File The PowerShell console buffer, while useful, has its limitations. When dealing with thousands of lines of output, you may encounter performance issues or even lose older output due to truncation. However, there’s a straightforward solution to ensure all output is retained for later review: redirect the output to a file. You can accomplish this by using the redirection operator > operator, followed by the name of the file where you want the output to be stored.

How to Redirect PowerShell Terminal Output to a File The PowerShell console buffer, while useful, has its limitations. When dealing with thousands of lines of output, you may encounter performance issues or even lose older output due to truncation. However, there’s a straightforward solution to ensure all output is retained for later review: redirect the output to a file. You can accomplish this by using the redirection operator > operator, followed by the name of the file where you want the output to be stored.

How to Redirect PowerShell Terminal Output to a File The PowerShell console buffer, while useful, has its limitations. When dealing with thousands of lines of output, you may encounter performance issues or even lose older output due to truncation. However, there’s a straightforward solution to ensure all output is retained for later review: redirect the output to a file. You can accomplish this by using the redirection operator > operator, followed by the name of the file where you want the output to be stored.

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Managing Service Principal Permission Requests using PowerShell Permission to the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal can be granted either in declarative method within SPFx solutions or directly. This post explores how to handle both declarative and direct permission grants using SPO PowerShell , ClI for M365 and PnP PowerShell. PnP PowerShell Get all service principal permission grants Gets the collection of permission grants for the “SharePoint Online Client” service principal using the cmdlet Get-PnPTenantServicePrincipalPermissionGrants

Troubleshooting NVM Setup Issues for SPFx Development I have not used my dev machine for SPFx development for over a year. Before diving into any new SPFx development, I followed the typical procedure of installing the latest Node.js version 18.19.0 supported by the current SPFx version (1.18.2) using nvm (node version management).nvm allows to maintain different development environment. nvm install 18.19.0 Following this, I proceeded to install the SPFx toolchain:

Limitations of Azure Storage Explorer: Filtering and Renaming Challenges Azure Storage Explorer simplifies managing Azure Storage data across Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms. Refer to Get started with Storage Explorer for more info. However, there are nuances surrounding filtering and renaming functionalities that users should be mindful of. Filter Functionality Azure Storage Explorer lacks wildcard support, limiting search capabilities to prefixes only. This limitation can pose challenges when attempting to locate files based on substrings within the blob container.

Limitations of Azure Storage Explorer: Filtering and Renaming Challenges Azure Storage Explorer simplifies managing Azure Storage data across Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms. Refer to Get started with Storage Explorer for more info. However, there are nuances surrounding filtering and renaming functionalities that users should be mindful of. Filter Functionality Azure Storage Explorer lacks wildcard support, limiting search capabilities to prefixes only. This limitation can pose challenges when attempting to locate files based on substrings within the blob container.

Limitations of Azure Storage Explorer: Filtering and Renaming Challenges Azure Storage Explorer simplifies managing Azure Storage data across Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms. Refer to Get started with Storage Explorer for more info. However, there are nuances surrounding filtering and renaming functionalities that users should be mindful of. Filter Functionality Azure Storage Explorer lacks wildcard support, limiting search capabilities to prefixes only. This limitation can pose challenges when attempting to locate files based on substrings within the blob container.

Custom document library template using PnP PowerShell Creating custom list templates is now possible to create both custom document libraries and lists. This article explores the option how to use a combination of list design and PowerShell script to provision multiple instances of document libraries using a CSV file and how to create a document library from a custom list template from UI. First we can create a list design for our library based on an existing configured document library with custom content types, fields and views.

Custom document library template using PnP PowerShell Creating custom list templates is now possible to create both custom document libraries and lists. This article explores the option how to use a combination of list design and PowerShell script to provision multiple instances of document libraries using a CSV file and how to create a document library from a custom list template from UI. First we can create a list design for our library based on an existing configured document library with custom content types, fields and views.

Custom document library template using PnP PowerShell Creating custom list templates is now possible to create both custom document libraries and lists. This article explores the option how to use a combination of list design and PowerShell script to provision multiple instances of document libraries using a CSV file and how to create a document library from a custom list template from UI. First we can create a list design for our library based on an existing configured document library with custom content types, fields and views.

Power Apps list forms deployment with help of solution Power Apps List forms are be default hidden from the list of apps from https://make.powerapps.com/. Deployment of list forms remains a challenge. This is my brief attempt to try to streamline the process using a solution. A solution within Power Platform makes it dataverse friendly. Let’s say you already have a list form tied to a list. In the background it is a hidden list.

Power Apps list forms deployment with help of solution Power Apps List forms are be default hidden from the list of apps from https://make.powerapps.com/. Deployment of list forms remains a challenge. This is my brief attempt to try to streamline the process using a solution. A solution within Power Platform makes it dataverse friendly. Let’s say you already have a list form tied to a list. In the background it is a hidden list.

Building a Quiz App with OpenAI GPT in PowerApps Discover how to create your very own quiz app in Power Apps using the OpenAI GPT (Independent Publisher). This app was inspired by Robin Rosengrün from his demo on Add OpenAI Capabilities to your Power Platform solutions . Prerequisites API Key Before integrating ChatGPT into PowerShell, you’ll need an OpenAI API key. You can obtain one by visiting OpenAI’s API key page and creating a new secret key.

Power Apps list forms deployment with help of solution Power Apps List forms are be default hidden from the list of apps from https://make.powerapps.com/. Deployment of list forms remains a challenge. This is my brief attempt to try to streamline the process using a solution. A solution within Power Platform makes it dataverse friendly. Let’s say you already have a list form tied to a list. In the background it is a hidden list.

Retracting SPFx Solutions from Hub Site and associated sites using PnP PowerShell SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions are a powerful tool for extending and customizing SharePoint sites. However, managing these solutions across multiple sites in a SharePoint tenant can be a daunting task. Fortunately, PnP PowerShell provides automation capabilities that can streamline these operations and ensure consistency across the tenant. The blog post Deploying SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Packages from Tenant App Catalog to Hub Site and Associated Sites covers how to deploy SPFx solutions across a hub site and associated sites.

Automating Site Reindexing with PowerShell Introduction Keeping your SharePoint environment up-to-date is crucial, especially after making schema changes. One important aspect of maintaining accurate and relevant search results is to regularly reindex sites, libraries, or lists. In this blog post, we will explore a streamlined approach using PnP PowerShell to automate the reindexing process. By leveraging this script, you can ensure that your search results reflect the latest changes in your SharePoint environment.

For many organizations, maintaining a consistent brand identity across SharePoint sites is crucial. The distinction between “Site Logo” and “Site Logo Thumbnail” is essential, as they serve different purposes across SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site logo thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, when copying/moving files, and other critical areas. It plays a vital role in helping end users differentiate between various SharePoint Online (SPO) sites and Teams.

Unveiling Audit Logs with PnP PowerShell for the last 7 days Understanding and tracking activities within your M365 environment is crucial for maintaining security and compliance. Audit Logs offer a wealth of information, and in this post, we’ll delve into the methods to retrieve and analyze them. Specifically, we’ll focus on leveraging the Office 365 Management Activity API reference through the Get-PnPUnifiedAuditLog PnP PowerShell cmdlet. It is a great alternative if you are only a SharePoint Administrator with no global admin or Purview Audit logs access.

For many organizations, maintaining a consistent brand identity across SharePoint sites is crucial. The distinction between “Site Logo” and “Site Logo Thumbnail” is essential, as they serve different purposes across SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The site logo appears in the site header, while the site logo thumbnail is used in search results, site cards, when copying/moving files, and other critical areas. It plays a vital role in helping end users differentiate between various SharePoint Online (SPO) sites and Teams.

Unveiling Audit Logs with PnP PowerShell for the last 7 days Understanding and tracking activities within your M365 environment is crucial for maintaining security and compliance. Audit Logs offer a wealth of information, and in this post, we’ll delve into the methods to retrieve and analyze them. Specifically, we’ll focus on leveraging the Office 365 Management Activity API reference through the Get-PnPUnifiedAuditLog PnP PowerShell cmdlet. It is a great alternative if you are only a SharePoint Administrator with no global admin or Purview Audit logs access.

Unveiling Audit Logs with PnP PowerShell for the last 7 days Understanding and tracking activities within your M365 environment is crucial for maintaining security and compliance. Audit Logs offer a wealth of information, and in this post, we’ll delve into the methods to retrieve and analyze them. Specifically, we’ll focus on leveraging the Office 365 Management Activity API reference through the Get-PnPUnifiedAuditLog PnP PowerShell cmdlet. It is a great alternative if you are only a SharePoint Administrator with no global admin or Purview Audit logs access.

Unveiling Audit Logs with PnP PowerShell for the last 7 days Understanding and tracking activities within your M365 environment is crucial for maintaining security and compliance. Audit Logs offer a wealth of information, and in this post, we’ll delve into the methods to retrieve and analyze them. Specifically, we’ll focus on leveraging the Office 365 Management Activity API reference through the Get-PnPUnifiedAuditLog PnP PowerShell cmdlet. It is a great alternative if you are only a SharePoint Administrator with no global admin or Purview Audit logs access.

SharePoint Column Formatting for Document libraries: Leveraging Name, Folder and Path properties While referencing [$Title] in lists is straightforward, document libraries demand a nuanced approach. Instead of [$Name], had to delve into the intricacies of internal names like $FileLeafRef and $FileRef when working with column formatting. $FileLeafRef: Denotes the name of the file. $FileRef: Represents the server-relative URL of the file. Initial attempts to incorporate $FileSystemObjectType for folder identification was challenging, indicating that not all document library internal column names are supported.

SharePoint Column Formatting for Document libraries: Leveraging Name, Folder and Path properties While referencing [$Title] in lists is straightforward, document libraries demand a nuanced approach. Instead of [$Name], had to delve into the intricacies of internal names like $FileLeafRef and $FileRef when working with column formatting. $FileLeafRef: Denotes the name of the file. $FileRef: Represents the server-relative URL of the file. Initial attempts to incorporate $FileSystemObjectType for folder identification was challenging, indicating that not all document library internal column names are supported.

SharePoint Column Formatting for Document libraries: Leveraging Name, Folder and Path properties While referencing [$Title] in lists is straightforward, document libraries demand a nuanced approach. Instead of [$Name], had to delve into the intricacies of internal names like $FileLeafRef and $FileRef when working with column formatting. $FileLeafRef: Denotes the name of the file. $FileRef: Represents the server-relative URL of the file. Initial attempts to incorporate $FileSystemObjectType for folder identification was challenging, indicating that not all document library internal column names are supported.

A Guide to Contributing to PnP PowerShell Contributing to PnP PowerShell is a rewarding journey. Whether you’re a seasoned contributor or a beginner, this guide aims to simplify the process and keep it handy for your next contribution. Prerequisites To set up the development to start hacking on PnP PowerShell, install the following Install Git Install PowerShell 7 Install Visual Code or Visual Studio Code Install .NET SDK 6 (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0) Forking and cloning First things first, make a copy of the repository to start working on your changes.

A Guide to Contributing to PnP PowerShell Contributing to PnP PowerShell is a rewarding journey. Whether you’re a seasoned contributor or a beginner, this guide aims to simplify the process and keep it handy for your next contribution. Prerequisites To set up the development to start hacking on PnP PowerShell, install the following Install Git Install PowerShell 7 Install Visual Code or Visual Studio Code Install .NET SDK 6 (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0) Forking and cloning First things first, make a copy of the repository to start working on your changes.

Creating New Posts with Hugo In this post, we will walk through the process of creating a new post in Hugo, a popular static site generator. Step 1: Navigate to Your Hugo Site First, navigate to the directory where your Hugo site is configured. You can do this using the cd command in terminal: cd .\Hugo\sites\M365Blog\ Step 2: Create a New Post Next, use the hugo new command to create a new post:

Enhance List Formatting for Multi-Line Text fields challenges Summary The following sample shows how you can view more of a truncated multi line text column on click. Column formatting in SharePoint is a powerful tool to customize how data is displayed. Multi-line text fields, however, present unique challenges when applying these formats. This guide explores a method to expand truncated multi-line text on click and discusses its limitations. Understanding the Concept The objective is to provide users with a preview of truncated text and enable expansion on hover.

Export SharePoint Pages to PDF There may be scenerios where you might want to take screenshots of all your pages in your SharePoint site. For instance before revamping a site, you might take screenshots of all pages to compare against updated site to show end client progress or difference the new design brings or could be simply for backing up the pages before archiving the site. Prerequisites Google Chrome installed SharePoint PowerShell

Export SharePoint Pages to PDF There may be scenerios where you might want to take screenshots of all your pages in your SharePoint site. For instance before revamping a site, you might take screenshots of all pages to compare against updated site to show end client progress or difference the new design brings or could be simply for backing up the pages before archiving the site. Prerequisites Google Chrome installed SharePoint PowerShell

Export SharePoint Pages to PDF There may be scenerios where you might want to take screenshots of all your pages in your SharePoint site. For instance before revamping a site, you might take screenshots of all pages to compare against updated site to show end client progress or difference the new design brings or could be simply for backing up the pages before archiving the site. Prerequisites Google Chrome installed SharePoint PowerShell

Export SharePoint Pages to PDF There may be scenerios where you might want to take screenshots of all your pages in your SharePoint site. For instance before revamping a site, you might take screenshots of all pages to compare against updated site to show end client progress or difference the new design brings or could be simply for backing up the pages before archiving the site. Prerequisites Google Chrome installed SharePoint PowerShell

Optimizing Email HTML for Outlook using the ‘Send Email’ action within Power Automate When crafting attention-grabbing emails, the HTML structure plays a pivotal role. I recently encountered challenges in achieving consistent formatting across Outlook desktop and web versions using the Send Email action within Power Automate. Using div Tags for Responsiveness At first, I experimented with divs to ensure responsiveness and modern HTML formatting. The code appeared as follows: <style> .

Converting a HTTP Trigger into a Child Workflow in Power Automate Using a HTTP trigger requires Premium licence and with the Child Workflow in a solution alleviates the need of premium license. Other advantages using a solution: Application Lifecycle Management: Facilitates deployment. Child Workflow: Allows for a more modular and manageable flow structure. Easier Ownership Management: Simplifies updates to the flow owner. I recreated the child workflow within the solution selecting the Manually trigger a flow trigger and updated the parent flow to use the flow as child workflow.

Converting a HTTP Trigger into a Child Workflow in Power Automate Using a HTTP trigger requires Premium licence and with the Child Workflow in a solution alleviates the need of premium license. Other advantages using a solution: Application Lifecycle Management: Facilitates deployment. Child Workflow: Allows for a more modular and manageable flow structure. Easier Ownership Management: Simplifies updates to the flow owner. I recreated the child workflow within the solution selecting the Manually trigger a flow trigger and updated the parent flow to use the flow as child workflow.

Discovering All Checked Out Files including those with no checked in versions There are scenarios when files uploaded won’t have “checked-in version” which will make the files visible only to their uploader. Two possible scenarios that can lead to the situation: Mandatory Metadata Requirements: When there are mandatory fields configured on the libraries and end users use Onedrive as a medium to upload the files to SharePoint via a shortcut to OneDrive.

Discovering All Checked Out Files including those with no checked in versions There are scenarios when files uploaded won’t have “checked-in version” which will make the files visible only to their uploader. Two possible scenarios that can lead to the situation: Mandatory Metadata Requirements: When there are mandatory fields configured on the libraries and end users use Onedrive as a medium to upload the files to SharePoint via a shortcut to OneDrive.

Copy Column and View Formatting using PnP PowerShell There is a great sample script how to backup all column, view and content type formatting by Dan Toft. If you need to copy column and view formatting across different environments, such as from Dev to Test, UAT, and Prod, especially when dealing with multiple lists/libraries, the script may help you. PnP PowerShell Script param ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$SourceSiteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/d-app-test", [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$DestinationSiteUrl = "https://contoso.

Copy Column and View Formatting using PnP PowerShell There is a great sample script how to backup all column, view and content type formatting by Dan Toft. If you need to copy column and view formatting across different environments, such as from Dev to Test, UAT, and Prod, especially when dealing with multiple lists/libraries, the script may help you. PnP PowerShell Script param ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$SourceSiteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/d-app-test", [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$DestinationSiteUrl = "https://contoso.

Copy Column and View Formatting using PnP PowerShell There is a great sample script how to backup all column, view and content type formatting by Dan Toft. If you need to copy column and view formatting across different environments, such as from Dev to Test, UAT, and Prod, especially when dealing with multiple lists/libraries, the script may help you. PnP PowerShell Script param ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$SourceSiteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teams/d-app-test", [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)] [string]$DestinationSiteUrl = "https://contoso.

How to Hide the “See All” Button in the Highlighted Content Web Part using PnP PowerShell Recently, I encountered an issue with the “Show Title and Commands” toggle in the out-of-the-box Highlighted Content web part. It stopped working on both my development and customer tenant. I’ve raised the issue on the Microsoft Forum and also opened a case with Microsoft to investigate the backend. While awaiting a resolution from Microsoft, I decided to find a workaround.

How to Hide the “See All” Button in the Highlighted Content Web Part using PnP PowerShell Recently, I encountered an issue with the “Show Title and Commands” toggle in the out-of-the-box Highlighted Content web part. It stopped working on both my development and customer tenant. I’ve raised the issue on the Microsoft Forum and also opened a case with Microsoft to investigate the backend. While awaiting a resolution from Microsoft, I decided to find a workaround.

How to Hide the “See All” Button in the Highlighted Content Web Part using PnP PowerShell Recently, I encountered an issue with the “Show Title and Commands” toggle in the out-of-the-box Highlighted Content web part. It stopped working on both my development and customer tenant. I’ve raised the issue on the Microsoft Forum and also opened a case with Microsoft to investigate the backend. While awaiting a resolution from Microsoft, I decided to find a workaround.

Build and maintain your company Copilot with Azure ML and GPT-4 By Seth Juarez I attended the session Build and maintain your company Copilot with Azure ML and GPT-4 at MS Build AI Day by Seth Juarez on the 19th Oct 2023. Seth began the session with a “Group Therapy” followed by a delve deep into the intricacies of language models, shedding light on Azure Machine Learning. He referred to Henk’s presentation and Keynote to reinforce some Generative AI concepts.

Build and maintain your company Copilot with Azure ML and GPT-4 By Seth Juarez I attended the session Build and maintain your company Copilot with Azure ML and GPT-4 at MS Build AI Day by Seth Juarez on the 19th Oct 2023. Seth began the session with a “Group Therapy” followed by a delve deep into the intricacies of language models, shedding light on Azure Machine Learning. He referred to Henk’s presentation and Keynote to reinforce some Generative AI concepts.

Build and maintain your company Copilot with Azure ML and GPT-4 By Seth Juarez I attended the session Build and maintain your company Copilot with Azure ML and GPT-4 at MS Build AI Day by Seth Juarez on the 19th Oct 2023. Seth began the session with a “Group Therapy” followed by a delve deep into the intricacies of language models, shedding light on Azure Machine Learning. He referred to Henk’s presentation and Keynote to reinforce some Generative AI concepts.

Develop in the cloud with Microsoft Dev Box by Dona Sarkar I attended the session Develop in the cloud with Microsoft Dev Box at MS Build AI Day by Dona Sarkar on the 19th Oct 2023. Dona started the session to gauge the audience how long it takes to set up a dev environment before a Dev can submit their first PR. It takes between 1-5 days for Dev environment set up.

Develop in the cloud with Microsoft Dev Box by Dona Sarkar I attended the session Develop in the cloud with Microsoft Dev Box at MS Build AI Day by Dona Sarkar on the 19th Oct 2023. Dona started the session to gauge the audience how long it takes to set up a dev environment before a Dev can submit their first PR. It takes between 1-5 days for Dev environment set up.

Develop in the cloud with Microsoft Dev Box by Dona Sarkar I attended the session Develop in the cloud with Microsoft Dev Box at MS Build AI Day by Dona Sarkar on the 19th Oct 2023. Dona started the session to gauge the audience how long it takes to set up a dev environment before a Dev can submit their first PR. It takes between 1-5 days for Dev environment set up.

Develop in the cloud with Microsoft Dev Box by Dona Sarkar I attended the session Develop in the cloud with Microsoft Dev Box at MS Build AI Day by Dona Sarkar on the 19th Oct 2023. Dona started the session to gauge the audience how long it takes to set up a dev environment before a Dev can submit their first PR. It takes between 1-5 days for Dev environment set up.

Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman I attended the session Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman on the 19th Oct 2023. He demoed how to leverage Azure Open AI Service to “add your own data” combined with ChatGPT to retrieve information from your company owned data covering elements of generative AI and reinforcing some of the points highlighted in the Keynote such as prompt engineering, grounding, jail breaking, etc.

Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman I attended the session Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman on the 19th Oct 2023. He demoed how to leverage Azure Open AI Service to “add your own data” combined with ChatGPT to retrieve information from your company owned data covering elements of generative AI and reinforcing some of the points highlighted in the Keynote such as prompt engineering, grounding, jail breaking, etc.

Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman I attended the session Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman on the 19th Oct 2023. He demoed how to leverage Azure Open AI Service to “add your own data” combined with ChatGPT to retrieve information from your company owned data covering elements of generative AI and reinforcing some of the points highlighted in the Keynote such as prompt engineering, grounding, jail breaking, etc.

MS Build AI Day Keynote by Scott Hanselman On October 19, 2023, the inaugural MS Build AI Day at Excel London in Custom House marked a pivotal moment for the world of AI. As an attendee, I had the privilege of witnessing a groundbreaking keynote session led by none other than Scott Hanselman. Titled “Navigating the AI Landscape,” the keynote, introduced by Michael Wignall, the lead for MS Build, set the stage for an eventful day filled with insights, connections, and hands-on experiences.

Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman I attended the session Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman on the 19th Oct 2023. He demoed how to leverage Azure Open AI Service to “add your own data” combined with ChatGPT to retrieve information from your company owned data covering elements of generative AI and reinforcing some of the points highlighted in the Keynote such as prompt engineering, grounding, jail breaking, etc.

Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman I attended the session Generative AI using Azure OpenAI Service session at MS Build AI Day by Henk Boelman on the 19th Oct 2023. He demoed how to leverage Azure Open AI Service to “add your own data” combined with ChatGPT to retrieve information from your company owned data covering elements of generative AI and reinforcing some of the points highlighted in the Keynote such as prompt engineering, grounding, jail breaking, etc.

MS Build AI Day Keynote by Scott Hanselman On October 19, 2023, the inaugural MS Build AI Day at Excel London in Custom House marked a pivotal moment for the world of AI. As an attendee, I had the privilege of witnessing a groundbreaking keynote session led by none other than Scott Hanselman. Titled “Navigating the AI Landscape,” the keynote, introduced by Michael Wignall, the lead for MS Build, set the stage for an eventful day filled with insights, connections, and hands-on experiences.

MS Build AI Day Keynote by Scott Hanselman On October 19, 2023, the inaugural MS Build AI Day at Excel London in Custom House marked a pivotal moment for the world of AI. As an attendee, I had the privilege of witnessing a groundbreaking keynote session led by none other than Scott Hanselman. Titled “Navigating the AI Landscape,” the keynote, introduced by Michael Wignall, the lead for MS Build, set the stage for an eventful day filled with insights, connections, and hands-on experiences.

MS Build AI Day Keynote by Scott Hanselman On October 19, 2023, the inaugural MS Build AI Day at Excel London in Custom House marked a pivotal moment for the world of AI. As an attendee, I had the privilege of witnessing a groundbreaking keynote session led by none other than Scott Hanselman. Titled “Navigating the AI Landscape,” the keynote, introduced by Michael Wignall, the lead for MS Build, set the stage for an eventful day filled with insights, connections, and hands-on experiences.

MS Build AI Day Keynote by Scott Hanselman On October 19, 2023, the inaugural MS Build AI Day at Excel London in Custom House marked a pivotal moment for the world of AI. As an attendee, I had the privilege of witnessing a groundbreaking keynote session led by none other than Scott Hanselman. Titled “Navigating the AI Landscape,” the keynote, introduced by Michael Wignall, the lead for MS Build, set the stage for an eventful day filled with insights, connections, and hands-on experiences.

Ensure Owners Are Members M365Group Microsoft 365 (M365) Groups serve as a central hub for collaboration across various M365 applications like Teams, Planner, SharePoint, and more. While M365 roles include Owners, Members, and Guests, it’s crucial to understand that being an owner doesn’t always inherit member privileges. In this article, we’ll explore why it’s imperative to have M365 Group owners also serve as active members for seamless group management and productivity.

Building a Quiz App with OpenAI GPT in PowerApps Discover how to create your very own quiz app in Power Apps using the OpenAI GPT (Independent Publisher). This app was inspired by Robin Rosengrün from his demo on Add OpenAI Capabilities to your Power Platform solutions . Prerequisites API Key Before integrating ChatGPT into PowerShell, you’ll need an OpenAI API key. You can obtain one by visiting OpenAI’s API key page and creating a new secret key.

Building a Quiz App with OpenAI GPT in PowerApps Discover how to create your very own quiz app in Power Apps using the OpenAI GPT (Independent Publisher). This app was inspired by Robin Rosengrün from his demo on Add OpenAI Capabilities to your Power Platform solutions . Prerequisites API Key Before integrating ChatGPT into PowerShell, you’ll need an OpenAI API key. You can obtain one by visiting OpenAI’s API key page and creating a new secret key.

Updating Approval Details in SharePoint Library using ‘Send HTTP Request to SharePoint’ in Power Automate In Power Automate, there are two methods for updating file properties: Send HTTP Request to SharePoint Update File Properties While the latter suffices for most cases, I opted for the “Send HTTP Request to SharePoint” in specific scenarios: To avoid triggering a new file version using system update. When modifying system columns such as author or modified date.

Updating Approval Details in SharePoint Library using ‘Send HTTP Request to SharePoint’ in Power Automate In Power Automate, there are two methods for updating file properties: Send HTTP Request to SharePoint Update File Properties While the latter suffices for most cases, I opted for the “Send HTTP Request to SharePoint” in specific scenarios: To avoid triggering a new file version using system update. When modifying system columns such as author or modified date.

Leveraging ChatGPT to Generate Test Data for SharePoint Lists Using PnP PowerShell Utilizing ChatGPT to generate test data for various applications is a powerful capability. After stumbling upon the sample script Create test users using MS Graph API from list or ask ChatGPT to generate test users by Valeras Narbutas on creating test users with MS Graph API, I decided to explore using ChatGPT to generate a list of data. This script harnesses OpenAI’s ChatGPT model to effortlessly generate a list of wellbeing activities.

Optimising Large List Updates with PnP Batch: Handling Throttling and Enhancing Efficiency In this article, we explore how to efficiently update a large SharePoint list containing approximately 60,000 items using PnP-Batch. Updating such a substantial number of items individually can be time-consuming and prone to throttling issues. Prior to using PnP Batch , it was taking more than 12 hours to update 60k one by one. The article highlights the benefits of using PnP Batch, which significantly reduces the time taken for updates by sending fewer requests.

Leveraging ChatGPT to Generate Test Data for SharePoint Lists Using PnP PowerShell Utilizing ChatGPT to generate test data for various applications is a powerful capability. After stumbling upon the sample script Create test users using MS Graph API from list or ask ChatGPT to generate test users by Valeras Narbutas on creating test users with MS Graph API, I decided to explore using ChatGPT to generate a list of data. This script harnesses OpenAI’s ChatGPT model to effortlessly generate a list of wellbeing activities.

Optimising Large List Updates with PnP Batch: Handling Throttling and Enhancing Efficiency In this article, we explore how to efficiently update a large SharePoint list containing approximately 60,000 items using PnP-Batch. Updating such a substantial number of items individually can be time-consuming and prone to throttling issues. Prior to using PnP Batch , it was taking more than 12 hours to update 60k one by one. The article highlights the benefits of using PnP Batch, which significantly reduces the time taken for updates by sending fewer requests.

Teams Add-in Not Showing Within Outlook The add-in for setting up a teams meeting within the outlook application was no longer showing. The add-in was not available to be enabled within Outlook as per Troubleshoot the Teams Meeting add-in in Outlook for Windows. Even after reinstalling Teams or creating a new profile within Outlook, it did not fix the issue. As a workaround I was using Use Team calendar to create meeting Use Outlook Web App to create meetings With Microsoft Support’s help via a case we identified the issue was the missing following key:

Expanding Doughnut Chart in Microsoft Lists: Visualize Data in Segments and Track Progress The doughnut chart is a powerful visualization tool that allows users to represent data in segments and track progress against targets. Frederico Sapia’s Doughnut Chart with percentage and values displayed is a valuable custom chart for Microsoft Lists, enabling users to visualize data effectively. However, the original chart allowed for only six slices, limiting its flexibility. In this blog post, we explore how to extend the doughnut chart to support up to nine slices, and we’ll also demonstrate how to display the percentage of each segment within the chart.

Expanding Doughnut Chart in Microsoft Lists: Visualize Data in Segments and Track Progress The doughnut chart is a powerful visualization tool that allows users to represent data in segments and track progress against targets. Frederico Sapia’s Doughnut Chart with percentage and values displayed is a valuable custom chart for Microsoft Lists, enabling users to visualize data effectively. However, the original chart allowed for only six slices, limiting its flexibility. In this blog post, we explore how to extend the doughnut chart to support up to nine slices, and we’ll also demonstrate how to display the percentage of each segment within the chart.

Teams Add-in Not Showing Within Outlook The add-in for setting up a teams meeting within the outlook application was no longer showing. The add-in was not available to be enabled within Outlook as per Troubleshoot the Teams Meeting add-in in Outlook for Windows. Even after reinstalling Teams or creating a new profile within Outlook, it did not fix the issue. As a workaround I was using Use Team calendar to create meeting Use Outlook Web App to create meetings With Microsoft Support’s help via a case we identified the issue was the missing following key:

How to Ensure Your Netlify Site is Search Engine Crawlable There are numerous posts to describe how to convert Wordpress to Hugo. I followed the instructions from blog post How to move your blog from Wordpress to Hugo to start with and hosted it on Netlify, it’s essential to ensure that search engines can crawl and index your site properly. Follow these steps to make sure your site is discoverable:

How to Ensure Your Netlify Site is Search Engine Crawlable There are numerous posts to describe how to convert Wordpress to Hugo. I followed the instructions from blog post How to move your blog from Wordpress to Hugo to start with and hosted it on Netlify, it’s essential to ensure that search engines can crawl and index your site properly. Follow these steps to make sure your site is discoverable:

Github does not provide an easy way to export all your pull requests for review or sharing with anyone. Below is a great post to show how to do it using BASH. GitHub: Get a CSV containing my pull requests (PRs) If you are using windows machine, PowerShell is your friend. Install GitHub CLI via command line winget install --id GitHub.cli Enter Y to the question Do you agree to all the source agreements terms?

Coauthoring with power apps issues Coauthoring in power apps allows multiple power apps developers to work on the same canvas app. Despite being an experimental feature we decided to give a try to speed up the development process. We used the blog post [How To Setup Power Apps Co-Authoring - Azure DevOps Version] (https://www.matthewdevaney.com/how-to-setup-power-apps-co-authoring-azure-dev-ops-version/). The tutorial covers step-by-step instructions for enabling co-authoring for canvas apps in Power Apps using Azure DevOps repository.

Embedding Instagram Posts in Modern SharePoint Pages using embed webpart I was investigating on how to display an instagram post within a Modern SharePoint News Page. The generic embed code from instagram post uses the script tag which is not allowed within SharePoint Modern Page unless script webpart is allowed to be used. These are the steps to follow to get the embed code of an instagram post Navigate to the instagram post, e.

Embedding Instagram Posts in Modern SharePoint Pages using embed webpart I was investigating on how to display an instagram post within a Modern SharePoint News Page. The generic embed code from instagram post uses the script tag which is not allowed within SharePoint Modern Page unless script webpart is allowed to be used. These are the steps to follow to get the embed code of an instagram post Navigate to the instagram post, e.

Troubleshooting Blocked Links to SharePoint Pages in Embedded Power Apps When embedding Power Apps using the “Microsoft Power Apps web part,” you may encounter an issue where links to SharePoint pages are blocked from image or button controls. This issue does not affect links to Power Apps themselves. The error message you might encounter is as follows: “Unsafe attempt to initiate navigation for frame with origin ‘domain.sharepoint.com’ from frame with URL ‘https://pa-static-ms.

Troubleshooting Blocked Links to SharePoint Pages in Embedded Power Apps When embedding Power Apps using the “Microsoft Power Apps web part,” you may encounter an issue where links to SharePoint pages are blocked from image or button controls. This issue does not affect links to Power Apps themselves. The error message you might encounter is as follows: “Unsafe attempt to initiate navigation for frame with origin ‘domain.sharepoint.com’ from frame with URL ‘https://pa-static-ms.

Add or Update Image Column in SharePoint with Power Automate: Download and Use Images from the Web The blog post titled Update image in SharePoint/Microsoft Lists Image columns using Power Automate by Ganesh Sanap rovides a guide on how to update an image column in SharePoint or Microsoft Lists using Power Automate. The native “Create Item” and “Update Item” actions in Power Automate do not directly support adding or updating image columns.

Add or Update Image Column in SharePoint with Power Automate: Download and Use Images from the Web The blog post titled Update image in SharePoint/Microsoft Lists Image columns using Power Automate by Ganesh Sanap rovides a guide on how to update an image column in SharePoint or Microsoft Lists using Power Automate. The native “Create Item” and “Update Item” actions in Power Automate do not directly support adding or updating image columns.

Introduction When setting up your Azure DevOps pipeline for deploying a Power Platform solution, you may encounter an error message if your solution relies on connection references. The reason given was : An unexpected error occurred. This generic message does not provide much help and can occur for multiple reasons. In my scenario, it was related to the connection references in the target environment not being shared with the service principal.

Client secrets have traditionally been the go-to method for deploying Power Platform solutions from Azure DevOps, utilizing app registrations from the Azure platform. However, my personal experience has shown that this approach can be problematic, especially when you are not an application admin. It often involves wasting time figuring out why deployments have failed due to expired or missing client secrets. Even when reaching out to someone with application admin rights, they might generate a new client secret but forget to update the service connections for each service connection within Azure DevOps or the application admin does not have access requiring to reach out to someone else who have access, causing further disruptions.

My Visual Studio subscription was deactivated, resulting in the loss of my Azure subscription and licenses to access Microsoft Teams within my M365 developer tenant. This post covers my attempts to recover access in vain. Access to Microsoft Teams I thought I could extend my access to Microsoft Teams by opting for a free trial for Microsoft 365 E5 (no Teams) and Teams Premium - Microsoft Teams Premium. However, this did not restore access to Microsoft Teams despite waiting multiple hours after I added the above licenses.

Introduction Thanks to Kinga Kazala for her timely article Deploy SPFx app using pipeline’s Workload Identity federation, which showcases how to use Workload Identity Federation to alleviate the need for using Entra app secrets or certificates. This method simplifies the setup process, especially when there’s reliance on a single person who might be unavailable. We initially set up the SPFx pipeline for the Test environment using certificates with CLI for M365.

Power Apps list forms deployment with help of solution Power Apps List forms are be default hidden from the list of apps from https://make.powerapps.com/. Deployment of list forms remains a challenge. This is my brief attempt to try to streamline the process using a solution. A solution within Power Platform makes it dataverse friendly. Let’s say you already have a list form tied to a list. In the background it is a hidden list.