This post is part of SP14 Keynote highlights series where I provide some highlights of the next version of SharePoint. These highlights are from the SP24 Conference Keynote that Bill Baer delivered.
Updated Command Surface in SharePoint Online
The Command Surface that is available at the top of List and Library pages is being updated in SharePoint Online over the coming weeks. A message about this change has been available in the Office 365 Message Centre (MC4558) for some weeks now.
Command surface coming to SharePoint Online.
The change is intended to simplify access to common commands. The commands are now enlarged, include icons and there are additional commands to sync, edit, manage and share documents.
Close-up of the new command surface coming to SharePoint Online.
While this is not a new feature to SharePoint, it does demonstrate the continuous investment and development that is happening in Office 365 and SharePoint Online. Better still it is a further example that Microsoft is listening to customers – in this example, how commands were not easily accessible and hidden in the ellipsis menu.
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Join me over the next year as I discover more news and information about the next version of SharePoint and Office 16 by following my #Office16 tag.
This post is the first of my SP14 Keynote highlights series where I provide some highlights of the next version of SharePoint. These highlights are from the SP24 Conference Keynote that Bill Baer delivered.
“Shared with Me” coming to SharePoint
Something to look out for in the next version of SharePoint (possibly SharePoint 2016 or Office16) or even soon is a summary of documents and folders that have been “Shared with Me”. It appears that the “Share with Me” page is already available in SharePoint Online, however, the summary of folders shared with you isn’t.
Folders Shared with me summary in the next version of SharePoint.
It’s pretty self-explanatory but a list of documents or folders that have been shared with you will be displayed in your OneDrive for Business site.
List of items Shared with me in the next version of SharePoint.
I wonder if this might extend to include scenarios such as multiple environments or Office 365 sites, to create a true consolidated view of files that have been shared with you. I’m always searching my inbox to find emails from colleagues where they have shared files with me in one single place for this information would be well received.
Discover more
Join me over the next year as I discover more news and information about the next version of SharePoint and Office 16 by following my #Office16 tag.
In this post, I share information about On-Premises SharePoint, highlights of SharePoint 2016 and see how Outlook attachments (bye-bye) are changing as we know them.
Firstly I’d like to congratulate the SP24 Conference (#SP24Conf) organisers for delivering an awesome conference this week. The format was new and a challenge for those involved I’m sure. It worked very well aside from the twenty-first-century hiccup or two. I look forward to the next one when the crew have all recovered and caught up on their sleep. Maybe I might be able to get a speaker slot next time where we might hear more about SharePoint 2016!
I managed to stay up for three sessions before calling it a night (a late one at that – 2 am UK time. I was delivering an Azure briefing at the Microsoft Offices in London the next morning. But I did manage to attend five other sessions towards the end of the day. Hopefully, in a few weeks, we will have access to all the sessions when I’ll try to watch as many sessions as I can when the time arises.
SharePoint 24 Conference – Keynote delivers important industry news and SharePoint 2016 highlights.
SharePoint 2016 highlights and more…
I’d like to share some highlights I learned during the SP24 Keynote that Bill Baer’s delivered. It’s important news for all those involved in the industry to hear at this time. More importantly, it demonstrates again that Microsoft is continuing to share more and more with us long before they would have done before.
SP24 Keynote available on YouTube
SharePoint On-Premises lives on
With Microsoft investing so much in their Cloud products whether that’s Office 365 or Microsoft Azure, many have thought that time had been called for the On-Premises version of SharePoint. Well, that time is not in sight – not yet anyway!
So the next version of SharePoint that we’re shipping in later 2015 will in fact not be the last version of SharePoint server that we ever ship.
Sure we’ll see features and changes to these Cloud products more often especially Office 365, long before we see them On-Premises. We might not see some features at all but Bill said, “Microsoft will continue to develop in On-Premises for as long as there is demand for it”. SharePoint 2016 is not going to be the last.
We are going to continue to ship SharePoint server on-premises as long as there is a demand for SharePoint server on-premises!
Not only that but SharePoint 2016 will ship towards the end of 2015.
In late 2015 we are going to launch another version of SharePoint server to our on-premises audience.
SharePoint 2016 highlights
On top of the On-Premises news, Bill also demonstrated features from the next version of SharePoint – SharePoint 2016. Here are some highlights from the Keynote:
The close integration with Yammer was clear once again and more Office Graph functionality seemed to be visible since the demonstration during the SharePoint Conference 2014 (#SPC14).
We also learned about Remote Index. This will make it possible to push On-Premises Search Indexes to Office 365 to provide a single search experience and result set. A unified search index in Office 365 along with Office Graph will create an awesome experience for end-users.
Outlook is the first program that many of us launch on a typical working day yet we have many other sources of information. Expect to see changes to Outlook that will help us access this information and deliver more than just email to us.
A further change to Outlook and SharePoint 2016 that we’ll see in the next version is the removal of email attachments as we know them with the help of OneDrive for Business. Users will continue to attach files to their emails but they’ll be saved to their OneDrive for Business Document Library and shared with all to, cc and bcc addresses via a URL in the email. This is a really exciting change and I look forward to discovering more about soon. The net result is users will have continuous access to the latest files and can use features such as Co-Authoring.
Discover more
Join me over the next year as I discover more news and information about the next version of SharePoint and Office 16 by following my #Office16 tag.
I thought I’d share a PowerShell script that I’ve created to perform a few tasks against a Site Collection Second Stage Recycle Bin (SSRB) in SharePoint.
Remove-SecondStageRecycleBinItems.ps1
The requirement was to delete items that were older than a set number of days from the Second Stage Recycle Bin (SSRB). A record of each item deleted also needed to be added to a report. But SharePoint can do this already I hear you say…well yes if a Site Collection quotas and the auditing features are used. In this scenario neither could be.
To display items in the Second State Recycle Bin in a table I used this command.
Then to remove each item from the Recycle Bin I used the delete command.
$site.Recyclebin.Delete($_.ID)
The full script is shared below. Remember to review, rename and test this script before using it in a production environment.
One quirk I found while creating the script was that through the web browser, SharePoint reported the time each file was deleted correctly whereas, in PowerShell, the time was not honouring GMT summer time.
Two of the Authors Randy Williams and Chris Givens kindly signed it for me – it was really great to meet these two authors after many years of reading their books.
Authors Randy Williams and Chris Givens at AvePoint book signing.
Alcatraz 1259
Second up was a book (Alcatraz 1259) from Alcatraz Island signed by the author Willam G. Baker himself who happened to be there just after finishing his parole aged 81. He is one of the last living cons who served in US Penitentiary Alcatraz and shares his account of life there in the book.
Alcatraz 1259 author William G. Baker during book signing.
I hadn’t appreciated the history of the Island, the Penitentiary or the prisoners and guards up until the audio tour. Up until this point I had just seen it as a prison in America that featured in the movie The Rock but the Island has a fascinating past – one that I am looking forward to learning more and more about.
I’ve struggled to put Bill’s account of life on the Island down since we brought it – once done I’m going to find a guards account of life on the Island among others.
MCSA Windows Server 2012 exams
During the SharePoint Conference, I took the opportunity to update my Microsoft Certifications – more about that another day.
To complete the Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) in SharePoint I have to pass 70-410, 70-411 and 70-412 also making me a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) in Windows Server 2012.
The SharePoint Conference has sadly finished and our holiday has started. We are currently staying in a lodge on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon for a few days…slightly different from the Venetian where we’ve spent the last week.
Having passed 70-331 and 70-332 at the SharePoint Conference (#SPC14) I have decide to take the Microsoft Certification Challenge and work towards updating my existing certifications and getting new ones over the next 180 days.
PS. Microsoft Learning have a really useful Certification Guide available – the Windows 8 App is great and there is a PDF alternative if you don’t have Windows 8.
Microsoft Learning and Certification Windows 8 App
Thanks for finding the time to meet with me this evening, Bill – I look forward to repeating this in the future. You’re a true inspiration and someone I’ve looked up to since getting started with SharePoint.
So I have an early draft of my expo hall treasure map mapped out! Do you have yours?
#SPC14 expo hall treasure map
One tip I’ve read repeatedly is to know how to navigate between the various session rooms and the expo hall efficiently. While I’m not aware of any map that’s available for the session rooms yet I’ve taken the time to map out the expo hall and contact some vendors to arrange meetings with them.
I’ve made use of the expo floor map that’s available through the MySPC website and used OneNote on my Surface Pro to map out particular stands as a starting point as to where I will try to visit. I want to say hi to the folks who are partners with ClearPeople and those who I have worked with before as well as other vendors that interest me.
Update: 23/02/2014 I’ve updated the #SPC14 sessions spreadsheet one last time to include some missed sessions and a request to have sortable start and end dates.
With just under two weeks left to go until #SPC14 I would imagine a lot of you are running out of time fast trying to finalise your plans for the conference.
Updated sessions spreadsheet
To help I have updated my #SPC14 session spreadsheet again – it now includes time and room information for all the available sessions (as of 17/02/2014).
Spreadsheet containing all the SharePoint Conference 2014 sessions
Since this is my first conference I’ve done plenty of reading about what to expect and how to prepare etc. There are some really great posts on Yammer and LinkedIn as well as guides such as Mark Freeman’s survival and readiness guide. Rather than rewrite what is already on the web I thought I would share a summary of the tips I keep seeing repeatedly.
Firstly I’ve filled my Outlook calendar with all the sessions I want to attend (including alternatives incase a session is not what I had thought it would be), meetings with partners and peers, agenda information such as #SPC14 organised events, social events I’m attending and breakfast and lunch times.
Make use of the MySPC App that has just been launched to organise your schedule beyond the capabilities of the spreadsheet I have produced.
Have your information cached or printed so that you can use it offline – I have read that the internet was extremely bad at previous conferences however it seems that Microsoft is not going to allow previous problems to be repeated this year.
Make sure you visit the exhibition hall – you never know who you might see not forgetting the #SPC14 swag you might find!
Post-conference holiday advice wanted!
Can you offer us any advice?
Travel guides
My partner and 6-month-old girl are joining me – we’re flying in from the UK and having a short holiday after the conference. We’re going to drive over to the Grand Canyon before heading across to Los Angeles and then San Francisco before flying home.
I’m looking for any great tips or suggestions for things we should do that we might have missed from the travel guides we are reading.
PS. Thanks for the traffic
I’ve been astonished at how popular my spreadsheet has been – I’ve had over 2,500 unique visitors since publishing it…that’s approximately 25% of the conference attendees!
Please do drop me a line or a tweet (@jamescallaghan) if you want to say hello! I look forward to seeing some of you at the conference.
A customer recently reported that they were not able to create any new Site Collections within any Web Application in their SharePoint 2013 UAT environment. Instead of being able to create a new Site Collection they repeatedly received the error shown in the image below.
Provider must implement the class ‘System.Web.Security.MembershipProvider’.
I in order to troubleshoot this issue I tried creating a Site Collection myself while monitoring the ULS logs. An event with an ID of 8307 was appearing in the logs each time I tried to create a new Site Collection. This event had a message of “An exception occurred in Forms claim provider when calling SPClaimProvider.FillResolve(): Provider must implement the class ‘System.Web.Security.MembershipProvider’. (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\34596\web.config line 606)”.
This suggested a problem with the web.config for the Central Administration Web Application and an error with a Membership provider. Forms Based Authentication (FBA) has been used to configure FBA in this environment so I continued exploring this avenue further.
I reviewed the web.config at the line indicated from the event and noticed that there were multiple entries for FBA membership and role providers. I removed these duplicate entries and was able to create Site Collections without any problems then.
As the Forms Based Authentication in this environment was configured using the FBA Configuration Manager I can only think that this was at fault somehow – the odd thing is that the same tool was also used on to configure the production environment which I also confirmed was not also having the same issue.
I would suggest that after using the FBA Configuration Manager to configure FBA that you ensure you can create new Site Collections. It’s certainly something I am going to be including to my deployment checklist!
Update: Wednesday, 8th January 2014. This post has seen an incredible amount of traffic which I have found to be a very rewarding experience- thank you! I’ve lived up to my word and managed to export the speaker information. Both the spreadsheet and PowerShell script has been updated to include this information.
Something I have found frustrating with the SharePoint Conference 2014 website over the holidays is that you have to browse through the sessions as search results pages. It makes planning how I want to fill my days at the conference very difficult.
Spreadsheet containing all the SharePoint Conference 2014 sessions
I also wanted to sit down with my colleagues to see if there are any particular sessions that interest them. Without all the sessions available in a format such as a spreadsheet this would become a very tiresome task.
There was no way I was going to do this by hand – at this time there is about 183 published sessions and 12 pieces of information per session that would require me to use copy and paste 4392 times and click between a browser and Excel 600 times…no thank you
Jumping the gun the a little maybe as I have yet to register (this is top of my to-do list when I’m back in the office on Monday and I’ll kick myself if this is available when you register!) but I broke out PowerShell and wrote a script to download all the information for the sessions from the SharePoint Conference (#SPC14) website to a spreadsheet – both of which you can download.
PowerShell script to export all the #SPC14 sessions to Excel
By no means is this script particularly complex or elegant – but I really wanted this information in a spreadsheet and pretty fast so forgive me if it is not up to my usual standard…the key thing is I achieved what I set out to do and can share it with you all. The last piece of information which I’m still trying to export are the speakers for the sessions – I’ll update if I manage it.
I hope you find the #SPC14 session spreadsheet helpful – see you at the conference!
Each time the conference comes around I’d try to make a business case or as in recent weeks, plead to attend but for various reasons, it has never been possible. This year however the answer was yes!
It’s been a long wait but I think this is for the better – I have now far more experience with SharePoint than ever and feel that the company and I will gain more by attending this time around. My focus has shifted and I will no longer be attending the conference with just SharePoint in mind but instead with SharePoint, Cloud & Windows Azure, Office 365 & SharePoint Online and Yammer to think about!
A few highlights I am looking forward to:-
Meeting some of my peers who I have followed online for so long (Todd Klindt, Bill Baer, Wictor Wilén and Spencer Harbar to name a few)
Attending some of the outstanding sessions I’m sure the following speakers will be delivering such as Shane Young, Laura Rogers, Fabian Williams, Jennifer Mason, Andrew Connell and Joel Oleson
Sessions such as Office 365 identity federation using Windows Azure and Windows Azure Active Directory; Best practices for Information Architecture and Enterprise Search and Real-world SharePoint architecture decisions
Networking with other like-minded people
Obtaining the invaluable material that I will have access to through attending the conference
Learning more about what is or will become available to those who were wanting to pursue this certification now that the Microsoft Certified Solutions Master (MCSM) programme is no more
Discovering what the next big thing for SharePoint might be?
I will be blogging about the conference no doubt before, during and after the event – you can follow all of this content with this tag #SPC14. The fun of organising this trip now begins!
