Creating a .pnp provisioning template file

After my demo on the PnP screen cast where I showed a provisioning solution based on PowerShell and Azure web jobs, I’ve had some questions about how you go about creating the .pnp files we use for provisioning templates.

There are basically two options, and it’s quite easy. For full samples run Get-Help <command> –Examples on the command lets. If you want to use code instead of PowerShell, look at the PowerShell code in github and see how it’s all implemented.

Generate .pnp file from a site

Connect to the site, and then run:

PS:> Get-PnPProvisioningTemplate -Out template.pnp

By naming the output .pnp, you get a .pnp file instead of and .xml file.

Generate .pnp file from a template xml file

This works for both a single .xml file, or one referencing artifacts.

Make sure the .xml file and all artifacts are stored in a folder. Then run:

PS:> Convert-PnPFolderToProvisioningTemplate -Out template.pnp -Folder c:\temp

It’s important that the .pnp file has the same name as the .xml file inside the folder, due to convention when applying the template, as you can have multiple .xml files in a complete template referenced with <xi:include> statements.

Improved navigation for Office 365 Groups

A colleague showed me yesterday that now you can actually navigate from a Group site to any other resource. Just click the site title, and a menu appears. I have no idea when this was rolled out, and kind of difficult to discover – but hey, it’s Friday, so let’s celebrate that things are improving making life easier.

Why the new Microsoft is cool–rapid bug fixing

I had a customer report that the label when closing a card in Planner gave the wrong impression of the actual action. The term used was “Forkast”,(English “Dismiss”). The labeling gives the impression that whatever changes you have made are not saved, which is not the case as all changes are auto saved.

I reported this to Microsoft in a translation forum I’m part of at Linked-in, and lo and behold, one week later Microsoft changed the label in all languages, where the English label now is “Close”. “Close” communicates the correct action a lot better indeed :D

A tiny step, but a one week turnaround on this is awesome!

SharePoint PnP Webcast – Provisioning with PnP PowerShell and Azure WebJobs

I had the pleasure of doing this web cast with Vesa Juvonen recently where I do a demo of how you can set up a pretty simple provisioning solution to let users order new team sites in SharePoint Online using an order list, and an azure web job to do the heavy lifting. A simple solutions with only two technical components, a SharePoint site and an Azure web job using PnP PowerShell.

The complete sample is located at the PnP repo (https://github.com/SharePoint/PnP-PowerShell/tree/master/Samples/Provisioning.SelfHostedWithAzureWebJob) and contains everything you need to get up and running.

PnP webcast post: https://dev.office.com/blogs/provisioning-with-pnp-powershell-and-azure-webjobs

I’m currently doing the same approach for Office 365 Groups with a customer, so watch out for a sample on this later as well.

I’ve been a podcast guest twice in the past month

Curious on what I sound like if you’ve never met me? Now is your chance.

I was recently a guest at Tobias Zimmergren’s Rencore Tech Talk episode 6, where we talked about PnP provisioning and how you can configure SharePoint sites.

And I also was a guest on episode 120 of the Office 365 Developer Podcast with Richard diZerega and Andrew Coates, where we talked about development, provisioning and more.