February 2023 – 28 Days, 28 Blog Posts

The first month of 2023 is gone and during January we’ve seen a lot of announcements for Microsoft Viva applications being made.

There were a lot of posts made about Viva Engage and Viva Goals, to learn more about everything new in Microsoft Viva with more detail, check out the details of this article.

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Whenever you create a list item or a document in SharePoint, the platform automatically adds the information of the user to the Created By column.

Once the file or item is added to the platform, there is no way to change the value of this column through the UI, however it is possible to do it using PnP PowerShell and that’s what I’m explaining in this article.

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HTML anchor links are hyperlinks that are used to link to a specific webpage or a specific place within a webpage, and in SharePoint they can be used to open pages directly in specific sections.

Don’t get scared by the HTML jargon, to get these specific links you don’t need to write or have any knowledge about HTML as this feature is built in in the Text web part.

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Modern SharePoint and Microsoft Lists calendar views are available for some time now and I covered the creation process already here in the blog.

What I’m explaining in this post is how you can easily format the calendar with colors to better identify the items throughout the month.

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This type of post is a first for me, I’ve never did a book review even though I’m a book addict and a book author. From now on, in this space you will find book reviews that somehow relate with technology, management or any other topic I’m into.

The first book review is about “My Life at Apple: And the Steve I Knew” a memoir written by John Couch, a former Apple executive that was employee number 54 and worked at the company for more than 20 years.

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With SharePoint Online you can easily create automations for lists and libraries using Power Automate, however this simple process can easily become out of control as more lists and libraries get created across SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.

For each new list or library where you want to get an automation applied, you need to copy or configure a new flow. This tedious and repetitive task is a waste of time and prone to human error.

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In the modern era of remote work, internal brand awareness plays a key role in the understanding and recognition of a brand within an organization, among its employees, partners, and stakeholders.

With more and more employees working from home, it is important to brand the daily used applications to help them remember the values, mission, and goals of the company.

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A video voice message is a short video recording that typically features audio of someone speaking and often also includes a video of their face. Video voice messages can be an effective way to add a personal touch to communication, especially when text-based messages or voice messages alone might not convey the desired tone or context.

This type of messages is now available in Microsoft Teams and in this article you will learn how to use it.

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A video playlist is a collection of videos, typically related in some way, that play in a specific order. Playlists are commonly found on video sharing platforms like YouTube and allow users to watch a series of videos without having to manually search for and select each video.

Recently SharePoint lists and Microsoft Lists got a new playlist template that can be used to create playlists of Videos hosted in SharePoint that are reproduced in the new version of Microsoft Stream.

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In my previous blog post I’ve explained how to create Video Playlists using the new awesome Microsoft Lists playlist template, and today I’m showing how you can tweak it a little bit to organize the videos.

By default, videos are shown in the playlist by the order they were added without an option to sort them differently, but with a small customization this behavior can be easily modified.

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Organization assets libraries are an effective way to distribute official company images and document templates across the organization that will help users to easily find content and be more productive.

With SharePoint it is possible to create up to 30 organization assets libraries to easily distribute this content, however this feature is not enabled by default and needs to be configured by one of the administrators using PowerShell as explained below.

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A column name in a list is used to help users to identify what type of information is store in each cell. Throughout the live of projects in SharePoint and Microsoft Lists requirements can change or you can have made a typo when creating the lists.

If you face yourself in this situation, in this article I’m showing you how to easily modify the column name and what things should you take into consideration when doing it.

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Scheduling messages can be useful in a variety of situations, such as when you want to send a message at a specific time when you may not be available, when you want to send a message in a different time zone, or when you want to send a reminder to yourself or others.

By scheduling a message, you can ensure that your message will be delivered at the right time and without the need for manual intervention. This can help increase efficiency and productivity and allow you to better manage your time and communication.

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Microsoft Teams allows users to send and receive voice messages as part of its collaboration features. While with text and files you can save a local copy of the content, with voice messages there is no direct option to download the audio file.

Depending on the location where the voice message was posted, you will need to use different methods to download it.

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SharePoint page templates are pre-designed pages that can be used as a starting point for creating new content. They often include pre-defined layouts, text, web parts, and can save time and effort in the content creation process.

Page templates can be customized and modified to fit the specific needs of a site collection, however is not possible to share them across different sites. In this article I’m sharing a solution to save your page templates and deploy them in different site collections.

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The SharePoint tenant wide extensions list is a centralized list used by SharePoint Framework (SPFx) extensions that can be deployed to all site collections in a SharePoint tenant. It allows administrators to manage and deploy extensions across their entire organization or in single site collections where the app catalog is enabled.

The SharePoint tenant wide extensions list provides a single place for administrators to view and manage all the extensions that have been deployed to their tenant, making it easier to ensure consistency and control what is installed and applied in their SharePoint environment.

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When using Microsoft Teams in a meeting you have the possibility to apply a background image to hide your surroundings and to keep some privacy.

Teams has a set of predefined backgrounds that you can choose from and allows end users to upload their owns. Microsoft Teams administrators can also distribute organizational backgrounds for all users with approved and branded images.

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Microsoft has a lot of application under Microsoft 365 but unfortunately not all of them have API endpoints available in Microsoft Graph.

Yammer now rebranded as Viva Engage is one of those applications and in this article I’ll explain you how to connect old API from a SPFx solution that you can use to build web parts, extensions, Teams apps or ACE cards for Viva Connections.

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A redirect web page is a technique used to automatically send a website user from one URL to another URL. In SharePoint this process can be achieved at site collection level with a site swap as explained in here, or temporarily using a SharePoint news link.

A SharePoint News link is a hyperlink that points to a news article or post on a SharePoint site or available globally in the web, however it can be also used as a redirect page.

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In the previous article I wrote about adding custom company background images to be used in Microsoft Teams meetings by users with Teams Premium.

Today I’m writing about how to restrict the use of custom, non-authorized backgrounds by removing the possibility of uploading personal images.

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As explained in the previous article there are a variety of scenarios that can be implemented using SharePoint news links, by simply reposting something that is already available in your intranet or publicly in the web.

In this article I’ showing how SharePoint news links can be created using PnP PowerShell and this way used in automation processes to post information to SharePoint that is available elsewhere.

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The Print Screen key allows users to take a screenshot of the current screen and save it to the clipboard, which can then be pasted into an image editing program or other application.

It has been a part of the Windows operating system since its early versions, it was first introduced in Windows 2.0 in 1987, and it has been a standard feature in all subsequent versions of Windows providing the same functionality over the last 35 years.

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Screen record on Windows was one those features that always required the use of a third party solution, but now with a recent update on the built-in snipping tool you can easily record your screen and share it the way you want.

The snipping tool allows you to record full screen or a partial area or window on your computer but unfortunately it does capture the sound.

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All interactions in Microsoft Teams generate a chat, however not all of them are relevant and they can be discarded to save precious space in the chat pane for important conversations.

With a recent Microsoft Teams update you are now able to delete 1:1 chats, group chats, and meeting chats where you are a participant.

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To mention a user in a chat, you can usually use the “@” symbol followed by their username or display name. For example, if you wanted to mention a user named John Smith, you could type “@John Smith” in the chat.

Using the same mention functionality, you can now mention everyone in a Microsoft Teams chat with more than two participants.

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Microsoft Teams now allows users to delete 1:1, group and meeting chats as I explained here.

If as an administrator, you are concerned about the use of this feature or if you don’t want to make it available to all the users you can control it with messaging policies.

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Lists migration in SharePoint and Microsoft Lists is the process of moving lists from one site or tenant to another one.

Migrations can be necessary for a variety of reasons, including upgrading an existing intranet, merging multiple site collections, or consolidating data from different sites. The migration process can be complex and time-consuming, as it requires careful planning and execution to ensure that all data is accurately transferred and that there is no loss or corruption of information.

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Grouping a list in SharePoint or Microsoft Lists, makes it easier to view and analyze the data as the information is aggregated by one column.

In this article I’m explaining how you can group a list and format the header of the group with the creator name and profile picture to make it easier to find the information.

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