SharePoint Archives - Page 4 of 6

2019-07-242023-02-23

SharePoint library/folder default field values

You can configure default values on a SharePoint library (root folder) or library folder fields. For example, if you configure default values in a folder, documents added to that folder will automatically inherit those field values. This functionality is great when you have a project that heavily relies on metadata. Especially if metadata should be inherited through multiple levels of information.

2019-05-202023-02-23

SPFx Workbench Customizer

I recently published a blog post about a web part that I use on the workbench page during development. I have this solution deployed on my dev tenant and simply add it to the bottom of the Workbench page. It allows me to work around some workbench limitations when building the UI of SPFx web parts.

2019-05-022023-02-23

Edit Featured links on SharePoint home page

When trying to edit the Featured links on the default SharePoint home page, you may end up getting the following error. And guess what? Trying again later didn’t really work…
But don’t worry, this is SharePoint and a lot of things are stored in lists. A hidden list, in this case.

2019-01-222023-02-23

Thread view for SharePoint classic Discussion Board

One of the classic SharePoint list types is the Discussion Board. It allows the creation of discussion topics that users can reply to. And users can also reply to previous replies, creating a thread-like scenario.
Unfortunately, Discussion Boards currently only have a Flat view that lists all the replies ordered by creation date. This creates a very poor user experience as it’s nearly impossible to follow the replies to a given topic. Thread view used to be an available feature for discussion lists, but this is no longer the case. There is also a user voice request to bring the feature back.

2019-01-182023-02-23

SPFx Workbench Customizer

With SharePoint Framework, Microsoft also introduced a really good development story for creating custom web parts: the Workbench page.
This page is not only available when you are developing solutions locally, but also on a SharePoint site. This gives you the option to access data on a SharePoint site from code running on your machine. Let’s be honest, it’s great!

Unfortunately, the Workbench page also has some limitations for some development scenarios. One of them is, in my opinion, how the overall page styles differ from a normal modern SharePoint page.

2019-01-102023-02-23

Add Google Analytics to SharePoint modern pages

I had a client requirement to help them add Google Analytics to a modern SharePoint site. The objective was to track all SharePoint page views within the site.

The first thing that came to my mind was to look for a solution available online. As this is a fairly common scenario, I assumed it would be easy to find one for my requirements. But this was also what the client had tried to do before calling us, and they got stuck with some limitations on the solutions that they have found.
There are plenty of solutions available online for using Google Analytics with SharePoint modern pages. From complete implementations, to blog posts with the relevant code snippets. But I was also unable to find one that was able to track full and partial page loads. And so I decided to tweak one to work on the scenarios.

2018-12-172023-02-23

Style SPFx workbench

This blog post does not contain anything amazing or new. But it’s something I use for a very long time and decided to write it down to hopefully help someone. Style the SPFx workbench page.

2018-11-292023-02-23

Restore deleted documents already restored by OneDrive

Imagine the following scenario:

A user syncs a SharePoint document library using OneDrive, so that he can have a local copy of the documents.
When he doesn’t need them anymore, he deletes the documents from the machine (which is a sensible approach).
OneDrive syncs the changes and deletes the documents in the SharePoint library.
User notices that the documents were deleted, opens the recycle bin and restores them.
One Drive syncs all the documents back to the SharePoint library and all is good again. NOT!

Even though all your documents are back into the SharePoint document library, they do not contain information about previous versions. This information is recorded against the original list item object. The original documents, containing the version history information are now in the site recycle bin. But, because OneDrive uploaded a new copy of the documents, you are unable to restore the deleted versions. This is because the library already contains a document with the same name.
This is simple to manually resolve if you only have a few documents affected. But what if we are talking about hundreds or thousands? And multiple libraries? Well, in this case, PnP PowerShell to the rescue!

2018-11-152023-02-23

Using pnpm with SPFx 1.7.0

Update 21-11-2018: As documented on the pnpm FAQs, a simpler way to use pnpm is to use the “–shamefully-flatten” flag. This will create a flat node_modules structure similar to npm and yarn.
The instructions below are relevant if you do not want to use the “–shamefully-flatten”, but be aware that you will end up modifying the package.json file.

2018-11-142023-02-23

Resources from my session at SPS Leicester 2018

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of speaking at SharePoint Saturday Leicester (SPS Leicester). Very well organized event and with a good number of attendees, especially considering that it was the first event.

You can find the slides from my presentation below.