Thursday, March 29, 2018

Quick tip: easily test SharePoint Framework web parts on modern pages (addendum to Waldek’s post)

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Did you know that you can easily test your SharePoint Framework web parts on modern pages?

If there’s one guy who know, it’s my friend Waldek Mastykarz. Today he had a post outlining how you can debug/test SPFx web parts on a real modern page, not the SharePoint workbench.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Optimizing meshing with Cisco Meraki access points

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I have had a Cisco Meraki MR-33 hooked up for a little while, which is positioned pretty centrally in an L shaped space. The issue is that the building is old with lots of brick walls. In the far room of the long leg of the L there is about 2 meters of space which gets pretty spotty connection. Not a huge deal, but enough to irritate :)

Setting up a second access point via cable is not a viable option so I decided to mesh two access points instead. The setup was easy, but the throughput was not amazing, averaging around 15mbit/s, and lower. You might think this is ok as we’re meshing, but the good thing is that it can be improved.

Note: Read the Meraki guide Manually Changing Channels in a Mesh Network for information on how you can change the channel used for meshing.

By default when you have auto channels for both the 2.4GHz and the 5Ghz radio, the 5GHz channel will be set to the same channel for both devices, and this is used for meshing. Having band steering on, where clients also use 5GHz, this will greatly reduce the speed.

What I did was this.

  • I set a dedicated channel for the 2.4GHz radio – to allow meshing to happen on the 2.4GHz radio, which also travels better though the brick walls.
  • I set the 5Ghz radio to automatic.
  • I use band steering, leading clients to the 5GHz radio.

This setup “ensures” clients use 5Ghz, while the mesh traffic have the full bandwidth itself on the 2.4GHz radio. Now my throughput is pretty consistent around 55mbit/s.

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Office 365 logo kit available at Fasttrack for partners/customers

Ever in the need to use Office 365 icons and wonder how they can be used? Head over to https://fasttrack.microsoft.com/dl/brandingkit (requires login) and download the Microsoft Office 365 Branding Toolkit today.

The downloaded zip file has icons in different formats. Below are samples of the 256x256 icons, and the file only contains .png files.

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Monday, March 26, 2018

Updated Modern Script Editor Web Part with fix for AMD modules and exposing _spPageContextInfo

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The web part haven’t change much, but the following configuration options are now available:

  • Keep or remove padding on the web part zone – useful if you have script which does not output any markup.
  • Set the _spPageContextInfo variable – useful if you have old scripts using this variable on classic SharePoint pages.

I have also fixed the code so that it won’t fail when loading AMD module scripts – meaning the scripts will not detect themselves as module scripts, but load globally instead.

You can get the code from https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-fx-webparts/tree/master/samples/react-script-editor.

SharePoint Query Tool v2.8


Image by Emily Morter on Unsplash

This is a short one, and not much has changed. Basically I removed the old browser based SharePoint Online login method as it caused too much friction on Windows 10 machines. And I fixed an issue where all properties did not show when using the new SharePoint Online login method.

Get v2.8!

Friday, March 23, 2018

Two approaches to applying a modern theme using PnP


Photo by Ash Edmons on Unsplash

Modern sites are no longer using the old theming engine directly with .sptheme, .spcolor and .spfont files. Instead you can use the Theme Generator tool to get your colors the way you want them, and this is what this post will focus on, how you can automatically set the right colors using PnP. The post has two samples, one using PnP PowerShell and one using a PnP Provisioning template.

Monday, March 19, 2018

A workaround for saving hi-res photos from PowerApps to SharePoint

Saving photos or images from PowerApps to SharePoint is not easy, but there are workarounds using for example Flow to get this to work as I’ve written about previously. The caveat with this approach is that when using the camera control you won’t get full resolution on the images you take, but a scaled down version – and adding Flow to the mix increased complexity.

With the recent release of supporting attachments with SharePoint lists in PowerApps it’s now possible to get those high resolution photos into SharePoint. But, it’s not straight forward. Even though it’s possible you should think it through before going full on production with this.

Note: This post is written based on testing on iOS.

Uploading photos is a common ask when using PowerApps on mobile device. You might create a reporting application of sorts which supports adding photos as documentation. My first thought was to utilize the new attachment support, pick the camera as input and be done with it. Turns out I should stop believing in fairy tales when a feature is just released :). When tapping the “Attach file” link, you get a dialog to browse your iCloud Drive, not an option to tap into the camera. Which makes sense as you need an attachment filename. This means we cannot use the default add attachment functionality.

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What I came up with was using the “Add picture” control with a custom collection, and then binding the forms attachment control value to this collection. You also need to reset the form after you modify the collection in order for the change to be picked up in the control (which is needed for it top be submitted). The reset has a timing issue, so I had to add a timer control which reset’s the form every 1 second. It’s all in a days works of duct tape.

Oh well.. let’s build the application, and you will see for yourself.

Friday, March 16, 2018

How to display images from a SharePoint library in PowerApps

[Update: As mentioned in the comments by Paul Culmsee, this only works in the web version of PowerApps - not on devices. To make it work on devices take a look at his posts for a proxy workaround]

A while back I wrote a post about how to save images from PowerApps to SharePoint via Flow. Today  I got a comment asking how you can show images sored in a SharePoint library in a PowerApp. Turns out it’s not hard at all.

I first created a new document library named “Images” in a SharePoint site and uploaded two images.

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Within your PowerApp add a new data source, and manually type in the name to the library containing your files, in my case “Images” and hit “Connect”. The manual typing is the crux to make this work.

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Next add a gallery to your app and bind it to the Images data source. For the Image control, change the binding to be ‘{Link}’ and you should see your images showing up in the gallery.

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Happy PowerApping!

How to: Embed the Yammer All Company feed on a modern page in SharePoint Online

This is not hard at all these days, as the Modern Yammer web part recently got updated and allows you to pick “All Company” as the feed to display.

First add the Yammer web part to your page.

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Then search for “All Company” and pick it. Previously you had to paste the link to a group, but this search experience makes it a lot easier indeed.

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Friday, March 2, 2018

My NACS2018 presentation about taking control of Office 365 Groups creation and configuration using Azure Functions and Flow

Here’s my presentation and don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to learn more.