SharePoint Knowledge Base

Oct 03
Integrating MS Planner with Outlook Calendars
O365 has a number of ready to use apps. Planner is one of our favorites. SimpleSharepoint provides SharePoint consulting to assist with getting more out of O365.

 
To use planner with MS Outlook, you create a link from planner. In Microsoft Planner, once your task has a start or due date, you can choose to view it on a calendar. You can simply use the Schedule view in Planner, or add your plan to an Outlook calendar.

To view your Planner calendar in Outlook, the plan owner first adds it to the Outlook calendar with an iCalendar format feed. Then each member can add the plan to their own Outlook calendar.

And it gets added to MS Outlook as an Other calendar!


More info here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/see-your-planner-calendar-in-outlook-5dcccce5-2750-49b5-991b-1837379d96c7

We love helping with SharePoint and it's all we do.

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper about how to best utilize SharePoint! As SharePoint consultants we strive to empower our clients to unlock the full potential of their SharePoint environment. ​

 

Oct 01
General Branding Guidelines for SharePoint Online

Our job as SharePoint consultants is not only to help our clients deploy SharePoint, but also to make it match their company image by applying custom branding onto their portals. This article provides you an overview of branding best practices.

What not to do:

  • Don't override the branding of the Office 365 Suite Bar.
  • Don't customize branding for personal sites.
  • Don't implement by default your custom branding by using custom master pages.

Common branding requirements:

  • Customize the look:
    • Implement a custom color scheme.
    • Show a custom logo.
    • Customize the look of the sign-in page.
    • Change the look of the navigation controls.
  • Adjust the layout:
    • Change the overall layout of information on pages.
    • Make the portal "responsive."
    • Show a custom footer.
  • Add more functionality:
    • Customize the behavior of the portal navigation.
    • Add custom controls (web parts) on pages.

General principles

Consider the following general principles when branding portals in a SharePoint Online environment:

  • The SharePoint Online service is constantly improving. Updates provisioned to the service may affect the Document Object Model (DOM) structure of out-of-the-box pages and the content of out-of-the-box files (for example, master pages). Developers must keep this in mind and should not rely on unsupported customization approaches (for example, the position of specific elements in the DOM structure of the page).
  • Avoid customizing master pages. Updates to the service may affect the structure of out-of-the-box master pages. If you have implemented a custom master page by copying the contents of any out-of-the-box master page, you must further monitor if this out-of-the-box master page is not updated, and re-implement these changes in your custom master page. Otherwise, some SharePoint functionality may behave incorrectly when your custom master page is in use. That's why customizing master pages leads to additional risks and maintenance costs, and we recommend that you avoid it when possible.
  • Customized branding of personal sites (OneDrive for Business sites) is not supported. You can apply custom color schemes via Office 365 tenant-level branding settings. Note that this applies to the default modern experience of OneDrive for Business.
  • SharePoint Online portals must be considered a part of the overall Office 365 ecosystem. That's why every portal now has an Office 365 Suite Bar, and customizing it is not supported (see the section Office 365 Suite Bar).
  • When planning branding and the structure of your navigation components, it is important to follow the recommendations outlined in Navigation solutions for SharePoint Online portals.
  • When extending portal functionality via custom controls (web parts), it is important to follow the recommendations in Performance guidance for SharePoint Online portals.
  • There are significant differences between branding approaches for "classic" vs "modern" sites and pages. For information about "modern" sites and pages, see Customizing "modern" team sites and Customizing "modern" site pages.

We're SharePoint partners and love helping so feel free to contact us!

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper about how to best utilize SharePoint! As SharePoint consultants we strive to empower our clients to unlock the full potential of your SharePoint environment. ​

Sep 16
5 Dos and Don’ts for Modern Branding

As SharePoint consultants we have a seen quite a few projects get hung up on branding. We are going to share some tips on how to make the best choices for your company's branding.

Everyone wants to be "modern" and "relevant": kids at school, TV shows, and sports teams... even most moms and dads! Companies are no exception, especially when it comes to marketing their brand to the masses. However, the definition of modern branding can be quite subjective, and there's a lot of unclear and even conflicting information in many guides and sites scattered throughout the internet. One thing is for sure: it often involves a lot of trial and error, and what works for someone else's brand may not work for you.

But all hope is not lost! Here are five universal Do's and Don'ts that are applicable to all modern branding:

#1. DO your research

See what other industry leaders are doing with their branding and sites, but don't get caught up in copying everything they are doing. Making a direct copy of your competition's website will cause your brand to lack any real authenticity. Find the balance between paying attention and staying true to yourself. Make sure your brand and messaging is the overall theme of your site (and especially you homepage), rather than gimmicky tricks or flashy visuals. This also involves having deep knowledge about your intended audience, your industry and your own brand. The clearer the picture you have of these key factors, the better equipped you'll be at making branding decisions that present your site as relevant in the eyes of today's public.

#2. DO consider using a professional service

Sometimes you just don't have the in-house knowledge, talent or ability to do it all yourself. There are some rare instances when this isn't true, but for most of us mere mortals, a little help is needed. That's when you might bring in a branding specialist. It's not an admission to defeat, it's an investment for your company's image. You may not do our own auto repair work, plumbing, roofing or electrical work, so why try to do that with your branding? Let them do the legwork in terms of developing a modern theme for your company and brand.

#3. DO be consistent

Brand consistency is important for building confidence in your visitors that your company "has it together", and adds credibility right off the bat. Inconsistent branding not only looks unprofessional and scattered, but it can also lead to brand confusion and the feeling that your site is out of date, or worse: That it can't afford to maintain their site and is no longer in business!

#4. DO be patient

Patience is key! Good branding doesn't happen overnight, no matter what a particular branding agency may tell you. It takes time, diligence and strategy, so your expectations for success should be adjusted to be realistic. Tracking your progress may help you see where you started and where you're going, so be sure to get as much analytics and data as you go along in this process. See what works and what doesn't, but most of all, don't give up! Just the fact that the site is being updated will keep things "fresh" on your site.

#5. DON'T expect to be "done" with your branding

The cliché of "it's not a destination but a journey" can be said about keeping your branding modern: it will never be "complete" - even after a major update and you've entered the maintenance phase. Remain open to the possibility of future branding updates as your company and industry evolves. Constant changes to your branding are not a "mistake", they are stepping stones in truly establishing your brand among the multitudes of cookie cutter companies out there, an enduring effort as to what makes your company... well, YOUR company. 

In conclusion, developing a modern branding for today's world is about finding what works best to develop and establish YOUR Company's presence and reputation. Hopefully these tips will be a helpful supplement alongside your current branding strategy.

Speaking of professional branding help, here's a link to our services when it comes to SharePoint branding: SimpleSharePoint Branding 

We're SharePoint partners and love helping so feel free to contact us!

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper about how to best utilize SharePoint! As SharePoint consultants we strive to empower our clients to unlock the full potential of your SharePoint environment. ​

Oct 21
Tips for Using SharePoint Surveys Better – Part 3

This post is part of an series. Click below for Parts 1 and 2:

When it comes to surveys, one question we get asked about frequently is how to allow surveys to tailor questions to users based on their responses. As SharePoint consultants we want our clients to get the most out of SharePoint. This post will take you on a deep dive into the topic of branching logic for surveys.

Hiding or Showing Questions Based on a Single Answer Condition

  • Add the question that will trigger your logic to your survey.
  • Add the question or questions you intend to hide or show to your survey.
  • Select the Page tab on the palette.
  • Select Advanced Branching Wizard.
  • Click the + Add Branching Rule.
  • Click Add a condition? and select the question that you want to trigger the logic.
  • In the drop down that appears, select the answer condition you want to trigger the logic.
  • Under Rule Actions select either hide a question or show a question.
  • In the drop down that appears, select the question you would like to hide or show.
  • Repeat this process in the Rule Actions section until you have added all questions you want hidden or shown.
  • Click Save Rule.

Hiding or Showing Questions Based on the Answers to a Set of Questions

Use Advanced Branching to show or hide questions based on multiple answer choice conditions in previous questions. You can combine rule conditions with the Boolean operators AND or OR to create more complex conditions.

  • Use the AND operator to set up logic where every condition must be met in order to show or hide the question.
  • Use the OR operator to set up logic where only one of the conditions must be met in order to show or hide the question.

For example, you can choose to show parenting related questions to respondents who answered yes to a question asking if they currently have children OR if they answered yes to a question asking if they are planning to have children.

To apply Advanced Branching based on multiple conditions:

  • Add the question that will trigger your logic to your survey.
  • Add the question or questions you intend to hide or show to your survey.
  • Select the Page tab on the palette.
  • Select Advanced Branching Wizard.
  • Click the + Add Branching Rule.
  • Click Add a condition? and select the question that you want to trigger the logic.
  • In the drop down that appears, select the answer condition you want to trigger the logic.
  • Click Add Rule.
  • Toggle between AND or OR by clicking on the operand that appears.
  • Continue to add additional question and answer conditions until you've set up the rule condition you want.
  • Under Rule Actions select either hide a question or show a question.
  • In the drop down that appears, select the question you would like to hide or show.
  • Repeat this process in the Rule Actions section until you have added all questions you want hidden or shown.
  • Click Save Rule

We love helping with SharePoint and it's all we do so feel free to contact us!

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper on all of the ways Outlook and SharePoint work together!  As SharePoint consultants we strive to empower our clients to unlock the full potential of their SharePoint environment.

Aug 14
Tips for Using SharePoint Surveys Better – Part 2

This post is part of an series. Click below for Parts 1 and 3:

Once the survey is made, how can you parse the data and understand the survey results? As SharePoint consultants we want our clients to get the most out of SharePoint. This post will take you through reviewing and compiling the survey results.

How to View the Survey Results

SharePoint has the ability to graph the survey responses. Once a survey is completed by one or more respondents, you can view the results in a comparative graphical form, or view the answers given by individual respondents.

  • Start Internet Explorer and type the URL for your organization's SharePoint server. The Start Page will open.
  • Navigate to the survey in which you are interested. The Survey Overview page will open.
  • Click the Show a graphical summary of responses link. The Graphical Summary page will open.

 

Figure 8: The Graphical Summary Page

  • On the upper right select the View menu and click the Overview option. The Survey Overview page will open again.
  • Click the Show all responses link. The All Responses page will open.

 

Figure 9: The All Responses Page

  • Click any View Response link. The View Response page will open.

 

Figure 10: The View Response Page

  • When finished, click Close. You can now compile the survey, as demonstrated in the "Compile Survey Results" task.

 

How to Compile Survey Results

SharePoint surveys can capture a lot of information and viewing the results on the screen is great for a quick review, however, sometimes it will be necessary to look at the details and perform the kind of data analysis only available in Excel. Thankfully SharePoint can export the results of a survey into an Excel spreadsheet.

  • Start Internet Explorer and type the URL for your organization's SharePoint server. The Start page will open.
  • Navigate to the survey in which you are interested. The Survey page will open.
  • Click the Actions menu and select the Export to Spreadsheet option. The File Download message box for your browser will appear.
  • Click Open. The file will download and Excel will open.

Note: If a warning dialog box appears identifying a potential security concern, click Enable if you were the one who initiated the export from SharePoint.

 

Figure 11: The Survey in Excel

  • Edit the spreadsheet as you normally would, using the table tools.

We love helping with SharePoint and it's all we do so feel free to contact us!

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper on all of the ways Outlook and SharePoint work together!  As SharePoint consultants we strive to empower our clients to unlock the full potential of their SharePoint environment.

Jun 21
Tips for Using SharePoint Surveys Better – Part 1

This post is part of an series. Click below for Parts 2 and 3:

What is the easiest way to gather data or opinions from a group? Well you might say a survey would be pretty easy, but how should you do the survey? Survey Monkey? Fortunately, if you have SharePoint then you're in luck! SharePoint has a premade survey list that can be quickly added and customized however is needed. They can have branching logic (have special diet needs ye or no can branch into Vegan etc.) Then once the survey is made there are many functions for distributing and looking at the survey results.

As SharePoint consultants we want our clients to get the most out of SharePoint. Surveys are easy to get started with, but have a lot of options and tools, some of which may not be apparent as to their use. This post will take you through the steps of creating a simple survey and distributing it using a link.

How to Create a Survey

  • Start Internet Explorer and type the URL for your organization's SharePoint server. The Start page will open. If you want your new survey located as a sub site of another site, navigate to that site.
  • Click the Settings menu gear icon. The Site Actions menu will appear.
  • Click Add an App. The Your Apps page will appear.
  • Scroll down and click the Survey icon. The Adding Survey dialog box will appear.
  • Click Advanced Options. The new Survey page will appear.
  • In the Name field enter a title for the new survey. This will appear in any list of surveys in SharePoint.
  • In the Description field enter a summary of the survey.
  • In the Survey Options section, select the appropriate options. There are two options to select: you can choose whether you want user names to be displayed with each survey result, and if you want to allow users to submit multiple responses when filling out the survey.
  • Click Next. The New Question page will open.

 

Figure 1: The New Question Page

  • In the Question field enter text for which you want to solicit user feedback.
  • Select a type of answer. Based on your selection, the fields in the Additional Question Settings section will change.
  • In the Additional Question Settings section, fill in the fields.
  • If there is another question in the survey, click Next Question and repeat Steps 10-12. Otherwise, click Finish. The Survey Settings page will appear.

 

Figure 2: The Survey Settings Page

 

How to Preview the Survey

SharePoint allows for the ability to test a survey before making it live. This allows you to make sure that the survey works as intended before asking a larger group of people to fill it out. This helps to ensure that it works as you intend it – particularly if you've implemented complex survey branching.

  • Start Internet Explorer and type the URL for your organization's SharePoint server. The Start Page will open.
  • Navigate to the survey in which you are interested. The Survey Overview page will open.

 

Figure 3: The Survey Overview Page

  • Click the Respond to this Survey link. The first survey question page will open.

 

Figure 4: The First Survey Question

  • Review the survey as a test to verify correctness. If all is in order, click the Cancel button on your browser so no results are actually saved.
  • To actually respond to the survey, answer all of the questions and click Finish. The answers will be recorded in the survey results.

 

How to Enable Survey Branching

When a survey is being created, not every question will be applicable to every respondent. For instance, if you want to poll users about their favorite candidate, and you've already asked their political party preference, you would want to narrow their choices to those candidates who are actually in that party. When a question asked depends on the answer of a previous question, this is known as branching.

  • Navigate to the survey you wish to modify or create a new survey.

Note: For survey branching to work, there must be more than two questions in the survey, or branching cannot be set up.

 

Figure 5: The Survey Settings Page

  • Click the link for the question with the answers that create a branch in the survey. The Edit Question page will open.

Note: Selecting the last question will only allow branching to a Content Type.

  • In the Branching Logic section, select the question that will appear after each individual answer is selected.

 

Figure 6: The Branching Logic Section on the Edit Question Page

  • When finished, click OK. The Survey Settings page will open and the survey will be ready for use.

 

How to Send a Survey Link

Once you've created a survey you need to let your users know where it is so they can respond to it. That requires sending out a link.

  • Start Internet Explorer and type the URL for your organization's SharePoint server. The Start Page will open.
  • Navigate to the survey in which you are interested. The Survey Overview page will open.

 

Figure 7: The Survey Overview Page

  • In the Address bar of your browser, select the entire address. Ctrl + A is useful for this.
  • Press Ctrl + C to copy the URL.
  • Open a new message window in Microsoft Outlook.
  • Press Ctrl + V to paste the URL into the body of the message.
  • Complete the message and press Send. The survey link will be distributed.

We love helping with SharePoint and it's all we do so feel free to contact us!

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper on all of the ways Outlook and SharePoint work together!  As SharePoint consultants we strive to empower our clients to unlock the full potential of their SharePoint environment.

Aug 06
A Simple Way to Ensure Your Users Know How to Use SharePoint.

Being SharePoint consultants means that our job is not to sell SharePoint to our clients, but to educate them on how to best use SharePoint. The easier people can figure out how to use SharePoint the more likely they are to use it better. This means less frustration, and a better return on the investment of building your intranet or public website using SharePoint. In our experience as SharePoint consultants we know well that the very first method is to turn to a colleague and say "hey how do you do this?" You don't want to hear from your neighbor in the next cubicle "look it up in the user manual" or take a webinar and learn how to use that!

All kidding aside we do suggest that you make a list of deep dive topics and post these in a SharePoint calendar for a "lunch and learn" and rotate the topics, keeping them to about 30 minutes. The popularity of the topics and the number of questions that get asked will serve as quick feedback as to the training needs. Perhaps even use a SharePoint survey that has branching logic?

But what about just-in-time learning? People talk about knowledge bases all the time but they don't necessarily explain what they would hope to see in one. What we have built is a framework for storing all types of unstructured knowledge within a structure in SharePoint which helps with SharePoint implementation.

We start with a wiki framework which is typically very unstructured and we immediately add structure (a table of contents). This framework is quite expandable and so later it can grow organically and still retain its structure. Even better, if we have done a good knowledge transfer the next question is could we now use this for other purposes like creating another knowledge base for sales, or this or that? That's what we want to hear. This this can serve as a framework that would show you the most recent videos, most popular videos, most viewed videos, and so forth. Even people who would not consider themselves content producers can do a Skype session or some other screen share and record themselves explaining how something works and then produce a video that can be changed over into an MP4 and linked into the system. SharePoint can play videos right from within the browser.

In almost all of our deployments of Porteo (our ready to go intranet) we have included Infopedia, as it provides over hundred pages embedded with videos that walk users through step-by-step procedures. The big hint here is that we recorded these videos and then sped them up so that they are all very brief to watch. The strategy here is that if people aren't getting it they can just rewind it.

 

 

We love helping with SharePoint and it's all we do so feel free to contact us!

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper on all of the ways we can help you learn SharePoint! As SharePoint consultants we strive to empower our clients to unlock the full potential of your SharePoint environment.

May 04
How OneDrive Can Help You Do Even More Work

For all of the people who just love working weekends it can be quite a hassle to access important documents from home. Fortunately for all of those go-getters, OneDrive has a new feature that lets you synch a SharePoint document library with a folder on your local machine. That way you can work all weekend without having to go into the office or spending lots of time trying to access your work from home. I bet this is just what you've been wishing for your whole life! I know as a SharePoint consultant it's extremely helpful to be able to access documents and work at any time when I'm not in the office. People may say I have no life, but gosh darn I have my documents!

How to Synch a Document Library to your Local Machine:

  • Start Internet Explorer and type the URL for your organization's SharePoint server. The Start page will open.
  • Navigate to the document library that you want to synchronize to a local folder. The document library page will open.
  • In the Quick Access Toolbar, click the Sync link. The Microsoft SkyDrive Pro dialog box will open.

    Figure 1: The SkyDrive Pro Dialog Box

  • To change the location of the shared folder on your local machine, click Change. The Browse for Folder dialog box will open.

    Figure 2: The Browse for Folder Dialog Box

  • Navigate to the location you want the new folder to be, then click OK. The Browser for Folder dialog will close.
  • Click Sync Now. The contents of the library will be synced to your computer.
  • Click the Show My Files button. Windows Explorer will open to the folder in which the document library's files were synced.

 

If this post was helpful, you might consider checking out some other posts about how to hook up Outlook and SharePoint. That way you can do even more work from home!

We love helping with SharePoint and it's all we do so feel free to contact us!

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper on all of the ways you can work from home!

Apr 26
Look and Feel of a Website

As a SharePoint consultant we often work to create public facing sites and of course even intranets that have a standardized corporate look and feel. The elements that achieve this are typically boiled down to colors and fonts. A second post will deal with web safe colors and their evolution over the years from the original Netscape 256 color palette (and yes each color has a name), to what is now possible using fonts.

Shown below was the conventional set of what's called web safe fonts. These are fonts that can be expected to be on any machine that is using the website. Here is the essential thing to understand - a website that describes its font doesn't declare exactly what it is and what renders on the client machine is dependent on the device. So if you say Arial bold, and it's an iPad device browsing it may render as Helvetica bold. The client machine matches it as close as it can. There is a family of fonts that are routinely substituted for any that are described in a webpage.

Newer techniques are to actually push the font to the client machine and it gives a great deal more flexibility.

 

 

As SharePoint partners, we love to help so feel free to contact us!

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper on all of the ways we can help you make your website or intranet look sharp!

Apr 11
How to Best Align SharePoint Features to your Business Needs

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. - C.S. Lewis

This is probably my favorite topic regarding SharePoint. As SharePoint consultants we are often asked to come in and help companies get more value from SharePoint. It's not uncommon to find a previous installation of SharePoint was just languishing and did nothing for the business. We are asked in as problem solvers to uncover why the adoption stalled out. There are number of reasons typically and include lack of understanding of the complexity of the technology, training and support for the people who will be using it, but even more so an overarching strategy. Technology does not provide strategy. This post provides guidance that we hope it's helpful.

We provide assistance with strategy planning using the tools in our SIMPLE method toolkit, to establish your business needs, and map them to SharePoint. Workshops use demos of our existing systems to demonstrate how portals, collaboration, search, business forms, content management, business intelligence and workflow can be used. We conduct the process of building a BA (your business reference architecture) and contrasting it to a RA (reference architecture) to establish your business needs, and map them to SharePoint. This would be augmented with building a roadmap using our six month plus method for strategic planning of your tactical goals.

The strategy of the organization lays out the combination of policies, processes, and procedures that are employed to help an organization achieve its' mission and vision statements. The success of SharePoint is directly related to how well the organizations mission, vision, and goals are developed and communicated to form a proper context into which SharePoint can be implemented.

Our approach is to build your BA (business reference architecture) and compare it to a RA (reference architecture). The RA is a way to understand what functions and processes in which a business could engage. The reference architecture can be treated like a checklist: compare what your business does with that which is presented in the RA and then build the BA for your organization. The RA is used to ensure that you don't miss any parts in building out your BA. The entire purpose in using the RA is to build out your own BA as a foundation to understanding which parts of SharePoint should and should not be used in your environment. The goal of using the RA is to build out your own Business Architecture so that you can better understand which features of SharePoint to utilize that will support the goals and objectives of your organization.

  1. Consider each part of the RA and map your business to it.
  2. Build your own business architecture (BA)
  3. Map the features of SharePoint to your BA
  4. Map other enterprise applications in your environment to your BA

For example, one organization might emphasize the ECM features in SharePoint while another might emphasize workflows. More to the point, some might list workflows as a supporting feature in their BA while others might list workflows as a supported feature, the latter meaning that workflows is a key reason that SharePoint is being implemented and the other features of content types or lists are implemented only to support the workflows needed for the solution.

Our six month plus method for designing a SharePoint roadmap

 

  1. Uncover and brainstorm potential intranet activities
  2. Identify criteria for determining which activities to pick
  3. Identify constraints that limit the intranet and intranet team
  4. Review each activity in turn against the criteria and constraints
  5. Determine a draft list of activities for the coming six months
  6. Assess the list as a whole against the criteria and constraints
  7. Obtain management signoff and develop a concrete project plan
  8. Implement and launch the improvements!

Our 6 month Plus method creates a roadmap for your SharePoint potential future.

 

It's a focus on the coming six planned and executed in detail, with sketched-out ideas for the second six months. This adds up to 12 months of planning, and becomes the basis for a solid and ongoing intranet strategy. At the end of each 6 months new functionality or content is delivered that helps position the intranet for the next round of improvements. Releasing intranet 'upgrades' every six months works well.

 

Instead of steadily working on longer-term activities, this approach asks: what can be delivered in the next six months? In answering this question, it also identifies those activities that are not just doable, but also worth doing (the best bang for the buck). This is a cyclic process, with each six month period of activity leading into the next. Underlying this is the steady building of momentum for the intranet, giving an 'upwards spiral' that allows more to be done in each six months period. In this way, the intranet team can steadily work on ever-larger needs and issues, even when the starting point is extremely constrained. This means you are not waiting for the 'right conditions' to arise, and you can act constructively and proactively to build an increasingly effective intranet.

 

We love helping people with SharePoint and Microsoft SharePoint consulting is all we do!

We provide SharePoint managed services and can provide a demo of our past work so contact us today! And don't worry you're not alone it's a complex product!

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