| |  Todd O. Klindt | 10/18/2018 4:54 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 10/17/2018 5:01 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 10/8/2018 3:17 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 10/7/2018 11:15 PM | Office 365 | 0 | | Every day I’m knee deep, well, waist deep in Office 365. My personal email and all of that is in Office 365. I’m also the Global Admin for that same tenant. I jump into customer tenants all the time and I have 2 or 3 demo and trial tenants that I’m routinely noodling around in. Since all of those environments are in the same DNS domain, office.com, it’s tough to handle being signed into them all at the same time. You can use in-private or incognito mode, but that only gets you one additional user, as all in-private mode windows share the same memory space. You could use multiple browsers, but that gets unwieldy remembering which browser is for which account, and at some point you end up using Microsoft Edge, and that’s just not worth it. It would seem this summit is insurmountable. I am here to tell you fellow Office 365 lover, that it is not. I have cracked the code, and I’m going to show you how. First, let me say this is not something I figured out on my own. I’m not blazing any new trails here. There are dozens of blog posts on this already, some by friends of mine. I’m writing this blog post because I’ve told a few people about it recently and they hadn’t heard about. I thought I’d blog this and make it official. The secret to making this all work is to use Google Chrome. Chrome has support for multiple people, and we’re going to use that to set up a Person for each Office 365 persona we have. Each Chrome Person has its own separate password store, bookmarks, and plugins. Perfect for what we’re doing. Of course you’ll need to have Google Chrome installed before this will work. You can download it from this link. Or, you can show off your geek prowess and download it with PowerShell using this: Invoke-WebRequest "http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/375.126/chrome_installer.exe" -OutFile chrome_installer.exe –UseBasicParsing Chrome auto-updates, so even if you get an older version, it should update itself after it installs. After it’s installed look in the upper right corner for the Person icon. This screenshot shows my current Person and icon, but yours might look different: 
It pulled my name “Todd” and my picture from my Google profile. After I created this person I logged into my Google account and it got it from there. We’ll cover that later. If you click on the Person icon you’ll get a dropdown like this. To add another user, click “Manage people.” 
Right now I have a single, lonely person in Chrome. Fortunately we can add some friends with the Add Person button. 
When you click the Add Person you get the dialog box to, well, add another user. I log in as my Office 365 Global Admin, so I’m going to make a Person for that user. I’m calling it “Office Admin” and I’m choosing the Ninja as its icon, it seems appropriate. If I log into Google as this Person it will download my Google profile including bookmarks and my Google avatar will replace the Ninja, sadly. In the lower left you have the option of creating a desktop icon for this Person. If you don’t, you simply pick it from the list in an existing Chrome instance. You can also add the desktop icon later if you regret not making it when you created the Person. 
Now when we go into the “Manage people” screen my user has friends. 
You can add as many users as you want. Each will have its own environment and its own set of stored passwords, bookmarks, and so on. You know what they say, “Pics or it didn’t happen.” 
You can see I have two browsers both logged into Office as different users, and best of all it will all persist, so the next time I use the “Office Admin” Person in Chrome it will remember my username and password. And also unlike using Incognito Mode, I can have more than two different users logged in at a time. While I’ve talked about this all in the context of Office 365, it works for anything. If you have multiple Twitter accounts, YouTube accounts, whatever, this works. It’s a miracle of modern science, that’s what it is. tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/ManyUsersBrowser | | | Todd O. Klindt | 10/1/2018 3:47 PM | Office 365; SharePoint 2016; Speaking; Sharepoint | 0 | | Want to join me for an all day SharePoint and Office 365 Admin Workshop? You are so in luck! On October 26th 2018 I will be teaching a one day workshop in beautiful, sunny Omaha Nebraska, Peyton Manning’s favorite!
Here’s the official event information:
Are you a SharePoint or Office 365 administrator looking for a fun way to spend a chilly Midwestern Friday? If so, then join Todd Klindt on Friday, October 26th for an all-day workshop on SharePoint and Office 365 Administration. He’ll pack as much administrative goodness into one day as humanly possible. He’s going to cover on-prem topics architecture and administration. Then he’ll switch gears and talk about cloud and Office 365 topics like authentication with Azure AD, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Groups, and other administrative topics. After that foundation is laid down he’ll bring it all together by covering some of the hybrid opportunities there are with on-prem and online SharePoint and help you figure out which ones make the most sense for you. If there’s any time or brain cells left he’ll talk about migration and PowerShell.
The Omaha SharePoint User Group has created this low-cost training opportunity for our community. While we normally meet a couple hours each month, this day will provide an exceptional training opportunity at a very low cost.
What a great way to start your weekend, please join Todd on Friday for all things SharePoint.
Technologies Covered
SharePoint, Office 365, Azure AD, OneDrive, Groups
Details
Breakfast and snacks will be provided. Lunch is on your own.
All of this for only $50. What a good deal! Register now before all the seats are taken and you’re forced to press your face to the window from the outside and watch the rest of us have the times of our lives.
I've had a couple of questions about this. This class is in-person only. I don't think there are options for remote viewing. Sorry to anyone that has the misfortune of not being in Omaha that day.
tk
ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/OmahaWorkshop2018 | | | Todd O. Klindt | 9/28/2018 5:40 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 9/25/2018 5:15 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 9/21/2018 8:19 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 9/19/2018 5:09 PM | PowerShell; Office 365; Sharepoint | 0 | | Now, now, I know what you’re thinking, “This is a terrible idea! Why would any want to disable Flow?? What’s Flow ever done to them anyway?” I’m right there with you, honest I am, but a customer asked me how to do this and I can’t imagine they’re the only ones trying to do it. So while I’m a big fan of Flow and think everyone should enjoy it, in the unlikely event your organization doesn’t want to, here’s how to disable it. When things are in their default state, the Ribbon, or Toolbar in a Modern List or Document Library in Office 365 shows an easy to use link to wire up a Flow to the library. It looks like this: 
Very cute, very innocent, but regardless, some folks don’t want it there. Even if the user hitting the list or library isn’t licensed to use Flow, it’s there. This is a per site collection setting, and nowhere in the site or site collection settings is there a place to shut it off. I turned on the Bat Signal, and PowerShell answered my call. Sort of… The official Microsoft SharePoint Online cmdlets have a cmdlets, Set-SPOSite and it has a parameter, –DisableFlows. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Of course you are. And it does what we want, kind of. Here’s how the whole solution looks: Connect-SPOService -Url https://flowhater-admin.sharepoint.com $val = [Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.TenantAdministration.FlowsPolicy]::Disabled
Set-SPOSite -Identity https://flowhater.sharepoint.com/sites/Me2Hub -DisableFlows $val You have to do the funny business with $val because the –DisableFlows parameter doesn’t accept a boolean, like a civilized parameter does, it requires its value to be in the form of a Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.TenantAdministration.FlowsPolicy object, whatever that is. So that’s what it gets. Now when we go to our Document Library it looks like this: 
Sad, I know. When you come to your senses and want to reenable Flow, here’s how you do it: $val = [Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.TenantAdministration.FlowsPolicy]::NotDisabled
Set-SPOSite -Identity https://flowhater.sharepoint.com/sites/Me2Hub -DisableFlows $val And now is all right in the world. Unless you have the fancy Site Collections that are using Groups in the background. Then you get the “womp womp” sound from Set-SPOSite. Okay, it really says, “Set-SPOSite : https://flowhater.sharepoint.com/sites/SPODemo2-Test2 is a Groups site collection.” but we all know what it really means. A less motivated man would have given up at this point. He would have taken this as a sign from the universe that one should not be disabling Flows, it’s just unnatural. Not this man. (In reality, not this man’s customer). So I went to Plan B, the PnP PowerShell, and it did not disappoint. The PnP’s version of the Set-Site cmdlet works with Group Site Collections and doesn’t require any weird casting voodoo. Here’s how it looks: Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://flowhater.sharepoint.com/sites/SPODemo2-Test2 -Credentials 'SteffenAdmin' Set-PnPSite -DisableFlows:$true Here’s how you right that wrong: Set-PnPSite -DisableFlows:$false That’s much easier, and works on all site collections. There you have it. I hope you never have to use it.  tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/PoshDisableFlowButton | | | Todd O. Klindt | 9/18/2018 9:40 AM | SharePoint 2016; SharePoint 2019; SharePoint 2013; SharePoint 2010; Speaking | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 9/15/2018 11:42 AM | SharePoint 2010; SharePoint 2013; SharePoint 2016 | 3 | | This isn’t specifically a SharePoint patching issue, but it’s close enough I thought I’d add it. A recent .NET security patch, KB 4457916, while doing a bang-up job fixing a remote exploitation in .NET, broke Workflows in SharePoint. Of course you could uninstall the patch, but everyone except the bad guys think that’s a horrible idea. Fortunately there’s a fix that allows you all the protection of the patch as well as continue to enjoy SharePoint workflows. This blog post on MSDN provides the solution;
After that, you should be good to go.
This issue punctuates why it’s important to keep an eye on the Windows patches on your SharePoint servers. If you’re using some sort of patch distribution service, like WSUS, your SharePoint servers should be in their own group.
If you’ve had any experience with this patch or the fix, leave a comment below.
tk
ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/PatchBreaksWorkflow | | | Todd O. Klindt | 9/12/2018 4:02 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 9/7/2018 4:45 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 8/8/2018 8:37 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 7/24/2018 4:13 PM | | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 7/22/2018 10:28 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 7/19/2018 9:23 AM | Sharepoint; Petri | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 7/18/2018 9:33 AM | SPDocKit | 0 | | Back in May I started doing marketing work for SysKit, the folks that bring you fine products like SPDocKit. One of the things they asked me to do was to write a review of SPDocKit from the view of someone that uses it. They know I’ve been a big fan of SPDocKit for years, so I was happy to do it. This blog post is my review of SPDocKit, or at least the first part of it. I had so many things to say SysKit had to finally cut me off and tell me to publish the thing. I may follow this up with some more thoughts later. Here it is, my review of SPDocKit. I've been a SharePoint Administrator for a lot of years, the majority of my professional career. Over that time I've seen a lot of SharePoint utilities come and go. A few have grabbed me as being must haves, and SPDocKit is one of them. Since the first time I used it I knew how much value it provided the SharePoint admin, and with each update it's gotten even better. Today I want to walk you through a quick review of a few of my favorite pieces of SPDocKit and how you can put it to use for you. One of SharePoint's biggest strengths, and why I think it has been so popular is how easy it makes things for the users. IT is no longer the bottleneck to adding functionality or getting things done. If a user wants to add someone to their site, they can. If a user wants to create a new list, library, or even subsite, they can. No waiting on hold with the helpdesk. No filling out a web form that they didn’t know existed. No bribing IT with a bag of candy. All without IT lifting a finger. A win for IT, a win for the user, and ultimately a win for the business. But it does have a cost… SharePoint's greatest strength, putting power in the hands of the people, is also one of its greatest problems. Users don't care about governance, security, storage resources, any of that. They just worry about getting their job done. Unfortunately, sometimes that runs afoul of IT, and without IT knowing about it. Over the years IT departments have either been blindsided by this, when data leaked out, or drives filled up, or they’ve cobbled together solutions to keep an eye on it. I learned a long time ago what my favorite solution to the problem was, frequent doses of SPDocKit applied liberally to my SharePoint farms. SPDocKit is a tool, conceived and inspired by SharePoint experts, that documents your SharePoint farm in stunning detail. That sounds pretty boring on its surface, no one likes documentation. But the folks at SysKit have taken SharePoint documentation to a whole new level. They’ve made documentation fun, and very powerful. Not only does it do an impressively thorough of documenting a SharePoint farm, it produces completely customizable professional looking reports that are useful to admins, and their bosses. Personally, I don’t think any SharePoint farm is complete without SPDocKit. It gives the SharePoint Admin a fighting chance of keeping up with the growth and proliferation of their farms. The SPDocKit installation is a breeze. Don’t take my word for it, download a trial for free and walk through the install yourself. It’s right up my alley as a SharePoint admin that enjoys clicking “next” and “finish” a lot. You have the option to have SPDocKit store its results in SQL, and I recommend that. Since you’re documenting SharePoint you have a SQL instance at your disposal. Letting SPDocKit use SQL allows it to take advantage of SQL’s database engine to run queries and give you better information faster. Another nice touch is that while SPDocKit caters to SharePoint admins, it also has an install mode for SharePoint consultants, such as myself. This allows me to run it on a customer’s farm without leaving it there afterwards. Features like this showcase how in tune the SPDocKit developers are with the people that use their tools. Once you get SPDocKit installed you’re greeted with a very friendly page that shows you what tools are at your disposal. 
There are a ton of great tools in SPDocKit, but the ones I use the most are in the top heading, Documentation and Configuration. This is where SPDocKit got its start and where it really shines, in my opinion. My trips into SPDocKit on a new farm usually start with “Take Snapshot.” If SPDocKit had a weakness (and I’m not sure it does) it would be that it does too good of a job collecting data. It finds useful information in many dark corners of SharePoint, and in that can be overwhelming depending on how big your farm is, or what information you’re looking for. To help combat the potential information overload, SPDocKit has a couple of options for what is collected during a snapshot. The “Default” mode is a good place to start. That report runs pretty quickly and gives you a good overview of what snapshots collect. 
As you get more familiar with SPDocKit you can fine tune what does and does not get included in the Snapshot. Choosing the “Custom” mode lights up the “Options” step, which gives you more fine tuning on what is and isn’t included in the Snapshot. 
You can run Snapshots as often as you’d like. SPDocKit keeps track of them all. At any point you can look at any previous Snapshot. You can create a report from the Snapshot, or even more. The obvious power of snapshots is to give you an easily consumable look at your farm at that moment. See how things are going, so you can address something if it needs it, or be proactive and get ahead of any problems coming down the road. SPDocKit does that with ease, but it takes it one step further. It allows you to compare snapshots over time, so you can also see trends in your farm. 
The Compare Wizard can also compare two different farms, for instance, if you want to compare your Test farm with Production. 
If you choose to compare two snapshots from the same farm you get a dialog box that lets you choose which two Snapshots to compare. 
Once you choose the Snapshots, SPDocKit gets to work comparing them. After that’s finished, you got a dialog like the one below. 
There are several results possible for each compared node. In the screenshot above, SPDocKit pointed out that the build number was different between the two Snapshots. The Snapshot taken before was running the April 2018 patch, 16.0.4678.1001. Some time after that, the farm was patched to the June 2018 patch, 16.0.4705.1000. If we drill down farther, we can also see there are differences in the site collections and content databases in the farm. Reports The place where SPDocKit really shines is with its reporting. As a nerd, it’s often tough for me communicate correctly with non-nerdy audiences. I get all excited about the technical aspects of something, and completely forget that not everyone else does. Sometimes I need help presenting in a way that can be easily consumed by my audience. SPDocKit lets me do this. It lets me see all the deep technical details of my farm, all the bytes of this, the users in that, but also lets me take that information, and distill it down to something that any CIO or other higher level person can look at and makes heads or tails of, without being overwhelmed by all the technical minutia. Not only does SPDocKit create easy to read, professional looking reports, it allows you nearly infinite customization options. This can be what information is reported, how deeply that information is reported, and even the style and colors used to report it. If your company has a particular color palette it uses, SPDocKit can make your reports match that. Want to put your corporate logo on the reports, too? Easy enough. And once you get the formatting exactly how you want it, you just save the template and SPDocKit lets you use that any time you create a report. I fill pages with all the customization options you have, but I won’t do that. I’ll show you a couple and let you take SPDocKit for a trial run and explore on your own. When you want to create a report, choose the Snapshot you want to report on and open it up. In the ribbon at the top you’ll see “Generate” in the Documentation area. 
Notice “Customization” right next to that. Choose the format you want your documentation in. I usually choose PDF, as that is easy to forward on to whoever I am reporting to. After you choose the documentation type I’m presented with a dialog box asking which Template I want to use. These templates let you pick what information is included in the report. 
Like the default Snapshot, choosing the “Simple Documentation” template is a good place to start. If you change any of the objects reported, SPDocKit will ask you at the end if you want to save it. That’s how I created the cleverly named “Temp 1” template at the end of that list. Once you’re satisfied that the information you want is in there, and the information you don’t want isn’t, click “Generate.” You’ll get the familiar Save dialog box where you can specify the name and location of your report. SPDocKit will open the report for you after it’s been saved. It will probably be a lot of pages, so don’t be surprised if you don’t have to run the Report Generation wizard a few times to get exactly the right information. Here are a couple of screenshots of the report I ran on one of my test servers: 
Here’s the Microsoft Word version of the same report, with a little color splashed on for good measure. 
As you can see, for good or bad, you have a lot of flexibility. I’ve run out of time for this blog post and I’ve only scratched the surface of what SPDocKit can do. There’s so much more to talk about. In an upcoming blog post I’ll gush over the other features that make SPDocKit such a great and indispensable tool. tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/SPDocKitReview | | | Todd O. Klindt | 7/17/2018 8:26 AM | Podcast | 2 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 7/11/2018 2:58 PM | SharePoint 2019; Sharepoint | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 7/11/2018 2:39 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 7/6/2018 8:35 AM | SharePoint 2016; SharePoint 2019; Sharepoint | 2 | | The Internet is a pretty big place. There’s my blog, YouTube, some funny cat videos, lots of stuff in lots of places. I think it’s safe to say I’m the uncontested best poster here at toddklindt.com. It was a an uphill fight, but I prevailed. I’ve set my sights a bit higher. I’m going to start writing articles for Petri.com as well. I’ve written a few things for them in the past, but hopefully I’ll do a better job sticking with it this time. I’ll still be posting here at toddklindt.com, so don’t remove it from your Favorites bar just yet. I’ll just be augmenting it with some articles over at Petri. That’s a decent site too, so you’re probably already going there. If you’re not, shame on you, you should be. My first article, 5 Things You Can Do to Prepare for your SharePoint 2019 Migration, went up this week. Check it out. You can leave comments there or here. I’m checking both places. If you have ideas for articles, for here or there, let me know. I’m always happy to take requests. Even “stop writing” requests.  tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/SP20195Things | | | Todd O. Klindt | 7/2/2018 2:44 PM | Sharepoint | 2 | | July 1st is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s the beginning of the second half of the calendar year, the days are long, the sun is bright, and of course, it’s Canada Day! And our own Independence Day is right around the corner. It’s about this time I start getting out my shorts with the elastic waistband in preparation for all the good eats. July 1st has also been, for the last decade, MVP renewal date. The MVP Program is a program at Microsoft were they recognize people in the community that support and evangelize Microsoft products. I have gotten the award every year since 2006, and without too much hyperbole, it has changed my life. It has opened doors for me that otherwise would have been very difficult to open, and it has allowed me to surround myself with many like-minded folks, most of which are much smarter than me, and most of which I am lucky enough to call friends. It’s been wonderful, to say the least. So every year, when July 1st starts getting close, I get nervous. I get nervous that my contributions in the previous year weren’t enough to earn the award for another year. That would be very sad indeed. Fortunately yesterday I got the happy email, 
I’d like to thank Microsoft for the opportunity and for renewing me each year. I’d also like to thank everyone that reads my blog, responds to my tweets, and comes to my sessions. I do all of this for you all, and knowing it helps you is what keeps me going. And congratulations to all of my fellow MVPs out there that either got renewed, or were awarded for the first time. tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/2018MVPAward | | | Todd O. Klindt | 6/21/2018 10:46 AM | Podcast | 1 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 6/20/2018 2:27 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 6/13/2018 9:17 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 6/10/2018 5:11 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 6/8/2018 4:16 PM | SharePoint 2016; SharePoint 2019 | 2 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 5/30/2018 11:13 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 5/29/2018 3:13 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 5/19/2018 11:26 PM | PowerShell | 0 | | The Internet wouldn’t work if it weren’t for Short URLs. How else would we efficiently share our funny cat videos? I’ve written a couple of blog posts on them myself. Handy little devils, aren’t they? One downside of them is you don’t know where they’re going to lead you. That innocent looking bit.ly link could take you to some amazing bit of wisdom on the internet, sure. But short URLs can have a dark side, too. The payload waiting for you on the other side of that t.co link could also be a Rick Astley video, you just never know. Being a generally untrusting person, I always hesitate to click URLs if I don’t know exactly where they are going. But then I started feeling like I was missing out on stuff. That’s when I put my thinking cap on and wrote this little PowerShell gem: $url = “https://www.toddklindt.com/sp2016builds” ((Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing –Uri $url).baseresponse).ResponseUri This little beauty will take a short URL for any of the common shorteners and tell you what it resolves to. Here it is in action. 
The URL at the top is the short URL we want to check, and the circled URL below is the secret URL it’s forwarding you to. If you decide it is safe, you can type start $url in PowerShell and it will open up in your default browser. Once again, PowerShell comes to the rescue. I hope this helps a few of you explore short URLs without fear, and without having to listen to Rick Astley, unless you want to of course. tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/PoshResolveShortURLS | | | Todd O. Klindt | 5/14/2018 11:07 AM | Podcast | 2 | | This week's podcast starts off with Todd talking about a couple of new things he's doing. First his new role, the Chief Evangelist for SysKit. Also, some help he's giving the OneDrive Product Team to update their documentation. After that Shane and Todd talk a bit about MS Build and the upcoming SharePoint Conference. They also touch on GDPR and Cord cutting, and calendars in SharePoint Online. And no self respecting podcast would be complete without Shane going gaga over PowerApps. Audio File  Video File 
YouTube (Subscribe) Subscribe in iTunes Running Time: 47:07 Links: ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/Podcast388 | | | Todd O. Klindt | 5/9/2018 3:28 PM | | 2 | | For the last few months, the folks at SysKit and I have been keeping a secret. I’ve been a fan of their products for years, and they’re the only company I’ve ever let advertise on my blog because of that. A few months ago we realized that we both wanted to work together more and this crazy idea was hatched. Starting May 1st I am officially the Chief Evangelist at Syskit. I will be working with them to deliver the message about their products, and connect them more to their customers. It lets me do two things I love, playing with SysKit products, and hanging out with SharePoint Admins, some of my favorite, hardest working, best looking people on the planet.  You can read the big announcement on the SysKit Blog. What does this all mean? Well, you’ll start seeing some posts about SysKit products and events here on my blog, and you’ll see me showing up at events with them and probably on their blog from time to time. My role with SysKit is a part-time role, so I will still spend plenty of time getting my hands dirty in SharePoint and Office 365 environments of all shapes and sizes. This will help me keep in touch with the products and how people are using them. I’m really excited about working with SysKit and I’m grateful that they’ve given me this opportunity. If you have any feedback on any SysKit products, please let me know. tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/SysKitChiefEvangelist | | | Todd O. Klindt | 5/3/2018 4:41 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 5/2/2018 9:18 AM | OneDrive | 8 | | In the past few weeks I've had a couple of conversations with customers that have wanted to use some old school solutions for modern day problems, with Office 365. One was trying to get Explorer View to work, the other was trying to map a network drive to a document library. Neither were having much luck. That's when I stepped in with what was probably an unappreciated answer, "Use the OneDrive Sync client instead." OneDrive has taken its share of knocks over the years, and much of that was well earned. In the last two or three years, the OneDrive team has put on both their thinking caps, and their heavy leather working gloves and they've really made things happen. While I struggle to find a single area of improvement that I like the most, the sync client has got to be right up there. Most, if not all of the frustrating, infuriating, sync issues have been cleared up. And it can sync OneDrive Consumer, on-prem SharePoint MySites, and multiple Office 365 tenants. Most importantly, late last year, it added on-demand sync functionality to the Next Generation Sync Client (NGSC). This allows the sync client to see all of the files in the team site, document library, or whatever, without actually downloading the files and taking up local space. Here is how multiple libraries looks in Explorer: 
All of those locations are under the purview of OneDrive’s Next Gen Sync Client. Back to my customers. In the first situation, the customer wanted to get Explorer View to work because that was the way they were most comfortable uploading a bunch of files to SharePoint. They wanted to lasso a bunch of files in Windows Explorer, Ctrl-C copy them, open up a SharePoint Document Library in Explorer View, and Ctrl-V paste them in. I can't blame them. That method has worked for the last decade, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Except it is broken, sort of. Explorer View uses two technologies, WebDAV and FPRPC. Neither of which has aged well. And they behave differently depending on which version of Windows you have installed, and which version of Office you have installed. It's unreliable at its best, and downright infuriating at its worst. And if you're using Edge, it flat out won't work at all. Instead of having their business balance on that decade old cobbled together technology, I recommended they use the OneDrive NGSC to accomplish this. I told them to sync it with the library where they want to upload the files. That will expose the document library to Windows, in Explorer, PowerShell, and anything else they want to run. Now they can use their lasso technique in Explorer to upload files, and do it with a current, maintained, and mostly reliable client, the OneDrive NGSC. Once the files are copied into the local OneDrive location, the NGSC will sync them up to Office 365. After that's finished the user can choose to no longer sync that folder, or keep syncing it, but free up space by making those files "Cloud Only" with OneDrive. The other scenario was mapping a network drive to SharePoint. This customer didn't want to do a one time operation like the Explorer View customer above. They wanted a quick, easy link to their frequently used SharePoint documents, and in the familiar Explorer interface. Again, I can't blame them for that. It's familiar, and it works well. Except it doesn't sometimes. Once again, if you're using Edge, mapping as a network drive is not supported. Fortunately, if you have the OneDrive NGSC installed, you can use the same technic we used above, to mimic this behavior. Use OneDrive's "Sync" to sync with all of the locations you would have mapped as network drives. When you do they'll show up in Explorer and your file system. You'll be able to use them however you'd like. Since the OneDrive NGSC supports on-demand sync this won't take up extra space on your local machine, just like mapping as a network drive didn't. I hope that helps a little. tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/UseOneDriveSyncClient | | | Todd O. Klindt | 4/30/2018 11:09 AM | Office 365 | 2 | | The cloud has come a long way in the last few years. One of the ways it has improved, though not fast enough in my opinion, is storage allocation or quotas. Cloud storage providers have struggled with how to offer increasing amounts of storage in a way that is financially viable for them. The 1 TB package I could buy from Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive 3 years ago is the same today, despite the fact that physical storage itself is cheaper, and storage needs and cloud storage reliance have increased. I am happy to report that in one area, Microsoft is getting it right. Very right. Before Friday your Office 365 tenant got 1 TB of storage, plus .5 GB for each user license. This was storage you could assign to any of your SharePoint Online site collections outside of OneDrive for Business. If you had 25 user licenses you had 1012.5 GB of storage in your tenant, 12.5 GB from your licenses (25 x 0.5 GB) and the 1 TB each tenant gets. Each user also gets 1 TB in their personal OneDrive, but that’s a different pool of storage. On April 27th, 2018, in the blog post Increase in SharePoint Online storage allocation, Aaron Rimmer the Product Marketing Group Manager for OneDrive at Microsoft, outlined the changes to SharePoint Online’s storage allocation. Starting on July 1st, 2018, every Office 365 tenant (except kiosk and F1 tenants) will still get their initial 1 TB, but they will also get a staggering 10 GB of storage for each licensed user. That’s a 20x increase! Now, that 25 user tenant would have 1500 GB of storage, up from the current 1012.5 GB. As someone that is a happy Office 365 Administrator what do you need to do to take advantage of this storage windfall? Two things, first send me $5 via PayPal. Okay, maybe not that.  The second step, well, you’re already doing the second step. Do nothing. Microsoft will start rolling this out July 1st, 2018, and they plan to have the roll out completed by August 1st, 2018. Your only job now is to sit back, relax, and start planning on how you’re going to take advantage of all of that storage you’re going to be getting. May I suggest more funny cat videos? tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/O365StorageIncrease | | | Todd O. Klindt | 4/27/2018 1:30 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 4/19/2018 4:23 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 4/16/2018 10:50 PM | PowerShell | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 4/13/2018 9:56 AM | Speaking | 0 | | I’ve had a busy month or so of travel, going to the MVP Summit and being honored to speak at SPS Omaha. All of those things are in the rear-view mirror. The next big event for me, really for all of us, is the SharePoint Conference North America.
I could go on and on about how great it’s going to be. Microsoft will be there in full force. Answering our questions, showing us cool stuff, giving away annoying screeching monkeys, and just generally making things fun. There’s also going to be a bunch of the best non-Microsoft folks there. Presenters, sponsors, you name it. It would be a shame if you missed it all.
Speaking of missing it all, here is my schedule during the event. I’ll update it as I add new things:
Monday, May 21st - 11:00 - 11:30 Keynote Wrapup (Expo Hall Podcasting Booth)
Monday, May 21st - 3:00 – 4:00 SharePoint Migration, What Did I Get Myself Into? (Room 123)
Monday, May 21st - 5:15 – 6:30 SharePint, Reception in the Expo Hall
Tuesday, May 22nd – 8:30 – 9:30 Life as a SharePoint Administrator in the Year 2018 (Room 123)
Tuesday, May 22nd - 10:45 - 11:30 Hangout with me at the SysKit Booth in the Expo Hall (Booth 423)
Tuesday May 22nd - 5:00 – 6:30 Record Podcast in the Expo Hall
Tuesday, May 22nd – 8:00 – ???? Attendee Pool-side Party
Wednesday, May 23rd – 9:45 – 10:45
Cloud Authentication Options for Hybrid Environments (Room 121)
Thursday, May 24th - 9:00 – 4:00 SharePoint Administration Day Camp workshop (Room 112)
You can download the full conference schedule from here.
Shane and I are also planning on having a Podcast get together at some point. I’ll let you all know when that will be.
Does this sound like too much fun to pass up? Of course it is! If you haven’t already registered (tsk, tsk) don’t fret, there’s still time. Point your favorite browser to the SharePoint Conference NA web site and get Registered. If you use the Discount Code KLINDT you’ll get $50 off, my eternal gratitude, and it’ll make Shane mad. Everybody wins!
If have the unfortunate situation of not being able to join us at SPC NA in person, but still want to join in, here's a link to a live stream of the Keynote.
See you in Vegas,
tk
Download Slides
ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/SPCNA2018
Edited 4/18 to fix Podcast time
Edited 4/20 to add Authentication session
Edited 5/15 to add Keynote podcast and time at the SysKit booth
Edited 5/20 to add link to Keynote live stream
Edited 5/25 to add download link
| | | Todd O. Klindt | 4/12/2018 1:47 PM | Podcast | 0 | | Shane's got a new job, and that's how they start out this week's podcast, talking about Shane's new endeavor. After that they talk about Todd's trip to SPS Omaha, and how much fun he had. After all of that they talk about new OneDrive functionality that will help you combat ransomware, new patches for SharePoint, Office 365 endpoints, Windows 3.1 File Manager on Windows 10, and of course, a word or two from Shane's newest love, PowerApps. All that and more this week on Todd and Shane's Cloudy Podcast. Audio File Video File 
YouTube (Subscribe) Subscribe in iTunes Running Time: 50:41 Links: 05:00 I got a new Job, PowerApps911
18:00 Restore your OneDrive
22:00 Announcing: Office 365 endpoint categories and Office 365 IP Address and URL web service
24:00 Windows File Manager (WinFile) is Open Source
26:00 File Manager Primer
27:00 New version of Microsoft's SharePoint Migration Tool
29:00 Download Microsoft SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool
00:34 PowerApps Password Screen
35:00 PowerApps SharePoint Columns
36:00 PowerApps Patch Function
40:00 Pocket Casts Desktop for Windows 10 is a fantastic podcast app
46:00 SPS Vancouver
47:00 Cloud Friday Nashville
47:00 SPS Nashville
47:00 SPS Montreal Call for Speakers
47:00 SPS Charlotte
48:00 SharePoint North America Conference
48:10 SharePoint Administration Day Camp
48:20 SPTechCon Boston ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/Podcast384 | | | Todd O. Klindt | 4/10/2018 2:37 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 4/9/2018 3:01 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 3/28/2018 9:02 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 3/22/2018 9:38 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 3/20/2018 11:15 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 3/9/2018 9:21 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 3/4/2018 4:24 PM | PowerShell | 1 | | In my quest to become a minor YouTube celebrity, I recently graced Shane’s YouTube channel with a video. This video covers how to use PowerShell to create Active Directory users. It’s a live action video version of this blog post. I start out by showing how to add AD support to PowerShell, and my big finish is working through a CSV file and creating a bunch of users. I hope I didn’t spoil the ending for you. 
Here’s a link to the video. I reference some files in the video, here they are: Enjoy. Watch the video. Watch it twice. Leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it. tk ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/PoshIntroAD | | | Todd O. Klindt | 2/27/2018 3:27 PM | | 2 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 2/20/2018 10:27 AM | Podcast; Netcast | 0 | | | | | Todd O. Klindt | 2/12/2018 10:45 AM | | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 2/5/2018 4:49 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 2/2/2018 8:25 AM | SharePoint 2016; Speaking | 2 | | The new year is upon us. This means the conference season is in full swing. There are a ton of great SharePoint and Office 365 conferences this year, and some of them are even letting me participate, restraining orders be damned! The first one, and maybe the biggest one, is the SharePoint Conference North America. It has been four, very long, years since the SharePoint Community has descended on Las Vegas and showed it what a tech community is really like. If you haven’t already seen all the gooey details about the 2018 SPC, let me explain. There’s too much, let me sum up. The festivities are taking place May 21 – 23, 2018 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. There are also optional workshops the weekend before and a couple of days after. 
And speaking of workshops, my sidekick and I, Shane Young, will be doing an all day workshop on Thursday May 24th. It will cover SharePoint Administration in the year 2018. We’ll cover SharePoint Server, Hybrid Scenarios, Office 365, the works. We’ve even written a few new jokes, so you know we’re serious about this thing. We’ll also be doing a couple of sessions, so once you get registered, make sure to add them to your schedule. We haven’t finalized it yet, but we’ll also be having some sort of a get together. Probably one of the mornings. The idea is that if you’ve seen us on YouTube, or read our blogs this is your chance to come up and say Hi and see if Shane really is as annoying in person as he appears on the Internet. (He is) While SPC will be great, it won’t be the same without YOU there. If you haven’t already, go to https://www.sharepointna.com and get yourself registered. If you use the Promo code KLINDT, then I get $50, you get $50, and you also get a big bear hug, or a firm handshake from me. Your choice. Join me at SPC. I’ll be there. Will you? tk ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/BeThere | | | Todd Klindt | 1/29/2018 8:34 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 1/22/2018 9:43 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 1/12/2018 11:05 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 1/2/2018 9:59 AM | Podcast | 1 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 12/19/2017 10:21 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 12/15/2017 4:51 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 12/8/2017 11:21 AM | PowerShell; SharePoint 2013; SharePoint 2010; SharePoint 2016 | 0 | | I’ve been known to patch a SharePoint server here and there. Once in a while, when I’m on a customer server its Internet Explorer security settings will prevent me from being able to download a patch. I’ll go to my favorite patch list, toddklindt.com/sp2016builds or toddklindt.com/sp2013builds, and pick the patch I want. But when it comes down to getting the patch the IE security settings will prevent me from actually downloading said patch. Sadness ensues. I’ve had to do various dances to get the patches and recently I’ve started leveraging PowerShell more and more to do so. After a conversation with Jason Himmelstein I agreed to publish the PowerShell I use. Jason promised me you wouldn’t laugh. So you can’t laugh. I also made a video of how to use it. 
The Usage I packaged this as a function, Get-TKMSKBDownload, and while it’s in a module, you can easily paste it into any existing module file you might already be using. To use this function download TKDownloadFile.psm1.txt. Remove the “.txt” at the end to rename it to TKDownloadFile.psm1, Rename-Item .\TKDownloadfile.psm1.txt .\TKDownloadFile.psm1. Then Import it into your PowerShell session with Import-Module TKDownloadFile to let it know it’s there. 
I have lovingly provided some Help and Examples to help you use it. In trying to address all of the situations where I’ve done this, I made sure the function worked with either details.aspx and confirmation.aspx URLs for the download link. 
To use it, go to my patches page and click the Download link for the patch you want. Then copy that URL out of your browser and paste it after the function, like in the example: Get-TKMSKBDownload -url https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=56230 It will download the patch into your current directory. It should look like this when it runs: 
After the file is downloaded you can run it and patch your SharePoint server. I won’t paste all the code in this blog post, (download it here) but I do want to highlight a couple of pieces of it. First, this is the line I use to get the direct link to the patch download, where $url is the link from the patches page: $downloadurl = ((Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing -Uri $url).links | Where-Object -Property data-bi-cN -Like -Value "click here to download manually" | select -First 1).href Before I wrote this PowerShell I had a couple of instances where I needed the direct link to the patch. I had had to use the Developer Tools in Chrome to find the URL in the Microsoft Download web page. I was able to use that information to craft the line above. If you’re curious, you can start with the part inside of the parenthesis (Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing -Uri $url) and see how the page is loaded as an object by PowerShell. There is some interesting stuff in there. The other part I needed was the name of the file to save. That’s part of the $downloadurl object, so I used this PowerShell to put off the file name, which is everything after the final / character, plus 1 so we don’t get the / itself: $file = $downloadurl.Substring($downloadurl.LastIndexOf("/") + 1) With those two pieces of information I’m able to pull the patch down and save it. Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing -Uri $downloadurl -OutFile $file As always, I had a couple of people look this code. Thanks to Shane Young and Jeff Hicks for all of that. Jeff had some great ideas for a v2 of this, like being able to specify a download directory, or backgrounding the download job. All good ideas, but I didn’t want to delay the publication of this blog post to implement them. If I keep using this module I may add them later. If I do, I’ll update this blog post. Once again, if you’d like to see all of this magic in action, you can watch my HowTo video on YouTube. tk
ShortURL: http://toddklindt.com/PSDownloadMSPatch | | | Todd Klindt | 12/7/2017 9:49 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 12/4/2017 9:40 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 11/28/2017 9:31 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 11/20/2017 10:42 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 11/20/2017 9:20 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 11/20/2017 8:56 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 10/30/2017 9:09 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 10/23/2017 9:20 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 10/12/2017 9:57 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 10/5/2017 2:08 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 10/5/2017 9:14 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 9/21/2017 1:23 PM | Podcast | 0 | | Feature Pack 2 is upon us, and in this podcast Todd and Shane tell you what's to love, and what's not to love about it. They also revisit the Equifax breach discussion from last week, and add some additional context to what happened. As if that weren't bad enough, they also discuss the popular cleanup app, CCleaner, and how it has been quietly compromising customer machines for months. They finish up with good news when they talk about Microsoft's On-Prem data gateway, and how it's so easy to use, even Shane can do it. Audio File Video File 
YouTube (Subscribe) Subscribe in iTunes Running Time: 29:06 Links: 05:08 Feature Pack 2 for SharePoint Server 2016
14:22 Ccleaner used to spread malware
17:19 Pirate Bay hijacking your browser to mine Bitcoin
20:22 On-Prem Data gateway for Power BI, PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Azure Logic Apps
26:01 Microsoft Ignite
26:45 Thrive Conference
27:08 Shane speaking at SoCal User Group ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/Podcast356 | | | Todd Klindt | 9/14/2017 11:05 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 9/12/2017 5:17 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 9/11/2017 11:55 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 8/24/2017 2:45 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 8/23/2017 10:20 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 8/10/2017 9:16 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 8/7/2017 10:46 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 7/27/2017 10:35 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 7/25/2017 4:36 PM | SharePoint 2016; Speaking | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 7/21/2017 9:31 AM | Office 365; Hybrid | 0 | | With Shane’s prodding I’ve decided to put some instructional videos out onto YouTube for some of the common tasks people ask us about. I’m trying to break the videos up into small digestible chunks, and because of that some are more exciting than others. This one falls on the “less exciting” side.  But it sets the stage for some very cool stuff. In this video I start slow by just showing how to add your domain, like contoso.com, to your Office 365 tenant. It’s nothing fancy or earth-shattering, but it is the first part of doing much cooler things. Things that I will also immortalize on YouTube for future generations to enjoy. 
Add a Domain to Office 365 If you don’t want to miss out on the exciting sequels to this video, subscribe to my YouTube channel. Then you’ll get pestered every time I add something new. Everyone wins! tk ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/AddDomaintoO365 | | | Todd Klindt | 7/20/2017 3:11 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 7/17/2017 12:34 PM | Hybrid; PowerShell | 1 | | I’ve been working with Azure AD Connect (AADC) for a couple of years now. For those of you that haven’t had the pleasure yet, Azure AD Connect is a tremendous piece of software that you install on-prem and it syncs your on-prem Windows Active Directory to your Azure Active Directory or Office 365 tenant. It has come a long way since the old DirSync days. If you’re an IT Pro that has mainly worked with on-prem software like SharePoint and you’re curious where your career is going, this is it. You’re going to have to become an identity expert, or maybe start practicing those grocery bagging skills. Running AADC through its paces is a good way to start your journey into Azure, Hybrid, and Identity.
Azure AD Connect has greatly benefitted from Microsoft’s recent(-ish) move to agile software updates. For well over a year now Microsoft has been slipping out updates to AADC and made significant improvements to it, all the while not breaking anything. An amazing feat!  You can see from their Version History page they keep very busy.
At the very beginning of the AADC installation Wizard you encounter a fork in the road; you can do an Express Install, or an Advanced Install. I tell most people, especially people that are new to AADC that Express is a great option. It’s very close to Next –> Next –> Finish and it does a good job getting everything wired up. Later, you can go back and rerun the installation in Advanced mode to tweak anything you need to. It’s very well done. One of the things that the Express installation does is set AADC to automatically upgrade itself when Microsoft publishes its next tasty upgrade. Like I mentioned above, the upgrades have added some great functionality with none of those nasty regressions that we’ve come to fear from upgrades. Unfortunately, until recently, if you chose to do an Advanced install right out of the chute, AADC was not set to automatically upgrade itself. And to make matters worse, that wasn’t necessarily brought to your attention during the install. If you weren’t paying attention, or didn’t know to look, you’d be stuck with that version of AADC forever. How sad!
To address that scenario, and just to give you some control over the upgrade process, I’m blogging the setting. This way you can see what your auto upgrade status is as well as change it if you’d like. Plus it gives you another opportunity to play in PowerShell. Who doesn’t love that?
First log into the machine where AADC is installed and open a PowerShell prompt. It does not need to Run as Administrator. There are two cmdlets that deal with AADC’s autoupgrade status; Get-ADSyncAutoUpgrade and Set-ADSyncAutoUpgrade. Here’s a screenshot to break up the monotonous wall of text:
As expected, we can run Get-ADSyncAutoUpgrade to set what our current status is:
We can see here that AADC is set to automatically upgrade itself with the newest juicy bits that come out. What if we didn’t want that? Maybe we have a migration freeze coming up and updates can be applied. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it happens. To do that we use:
Set-ADSyncAutoUpgrade -AutoUpgradeState Disabled
As a guy that’s used a lot of PowerShell, I find myself wishing this followed the $TRUE / $FALSE structure, but I can work with this. Since there are only three acceptable values (Enabled, Disabled, and Suspended), you can tab complete the cmdlet name, the parameter name, and the value “disabled.” That helps.
Now AADC will not upgrade itself. But does this impact the sync cycles? Not at all. If we run Get-ADSyncScheduler we see that syncs are still happy and scheduled to run as expected.
Once our maintenance freeze is over we can reenable the autoupgrades with
Set-ADSyncAutoUpgrade -AutoUpgradeState Enabled
That’s a much more satisfying feeling than disabling.
In most cases I am afraid of autoupgrading software, but so far AADC hasn’t burned me, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
tk
ShortUrl: http://www.toddklindt.com/PSAutoUpgradeAADC | | | Todd Klindt | 7/17/2017 9:26 AM | Podcast | 1 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 7/5/2017 4:02 PM | Office 365 | 2 | | Over the last couple of years, my talks have migrated from fewer on-prem SharePoint Server talks, to more Office 365 centric talks. One of the questions I get asked more and more frequently, by admins that are trying to find their place in this new, cloudy, world is, “How can I keep up with all of the changes to Office 365?”
It’s a good question, and one a lot of people are struggling with, especially if they’re used to on-prem administration. As a SharePoint Server admin, updates came out no more frequently than once a month, and even then we were in complete control to when that update was applied to our farms. As our workloads are moving to Office 365 that is thrown completely on its ear. Now updates happen to Office 365 any day of the week. Sometimes they’re turned on for end users, sometimes they aren’t. You just never know. If you don’t know they’re coming, you can’t properly prepare yourself or your user base. Nobody likes that.
So here are a couple of ways to have a fighting chance against unexpected Office 365 updates.
1) Sign up for messages in the Message Center
You have to be a Tenant Admin for this one, but I assume most people reading my blog that aren’t my mom, are tenant admins. The Message center is a place in the Office 365 Portal where you can tell Office 365 which products you care about, and how it can tell you about changes and outages.
You can find this little gem under Health > Message center. The messages deal with outages, updated features, new features, the whole enchilada. In the upper right you can set which products you see messages for. If you’re not using Skype for Business, shut off those messages. The bottom left is where the real gold is. You can have Office 365 email you once a week with that week’s new messages. This is a great way to see what is new if you’ve forgotten to check the Message center. The link at the top middle, “Read about staying on top of Office 365 changes”, takes us to our second tip.
2) Office 365 Roadmap
For a few years the Office 365 Roadmap has been a great way to see what’s on the horizon for your favorite Office 365 property. It not only shows was coming, but what has been delivered and what has been cancelled as well.
3) Microsoft Tech Community
The more things change, the more they stay the same. When I was cutting my teeth as a SharePoint admin back at the turn the century, the place to go for answer was Usenet. Ask your grandparents about it. Today, that same need is met by online forums. The Microsoft Tech Community is the place to go with your cloudy questions. While it’s not specifically a resource for what’s new with Office 365, that does get covered there.
4) First Release
First Release isn’t really a place, First Release is more like a state of mind.  First Release lets your tenant, or some of the users in your tenant, see new functionality in Office 365 before it’s released to the entire Office 365 loving world. It’s not a good idea to have your entire Production tenant in First Release, so either only include a few users, or enable it for a test tenant. It’s also important to point out that some things are only rolled out to First Release Users, or First Release Tenants, but not both. They aren’t always in step. Read more about that in Marc Anderson’s blog post.
Of course you can also follow a ton of Twitter accounts to keep up. I’d try to list them all here, but I’d just embarrass myself.
I hope this helps. Let me know if there are any other means you use to keep up with Office 365.
tk
ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/O365Updates | | | Todd Klindt | 7/5/2017 9:16 AM | | 0 | | June and July are always nervous times for me, and I’m not talking about fireworks going off around me. It’s because for the last 11 years July 1st has been when I found out if I was renewed as a Microsoft MVP. This year was no different, though maybe a little worse. Microsoft has been tweaking the MVP program and I never take for granted whether I’ll meet the mark or not. I’m happy to report that I did in 2016. I was awarded my 12th MVP award July 1st! Being a SharePoint and Office 365 kinda guy my award is in the Office Servers and Services category. I have met so many great people in the MVP program and I’m honored to be a part of it. Thanks to Microsoft for including me, and thanks to all the people that have helped me out along the way. It means a lot. tk ShortUrl: http://toddklindt.com/2017MVPRenewal | | | Todd Klindt | 6/29/2017 10:12 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 6/27/2017 5:38 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 6/27/2017 11:35 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 6/8/2017 3:42 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 5/26/2017 9:22 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 5/25/2017 9:13 AM | Speaking | 0 | | As IT Pros our jobs have always been changing, but the rate at which they’re changing now is almost unprecedented. I’m glad I’m wearing my seatbelt. As we make the transition to Office 365 one of our new responsibilities, or a larger responsibility is Security and Compliance. You may have been able to avoid it in the past, but you may not be so lucky in the future. So where can an on-prem SharePoint admin get a start with it? I’m glad you asked.  On Wednesday May 31st, the nice folks at Petri.com are putting on a webinar where Shane Young and I will be talking about the processes and technologies you’ll need to get familiar with. We’ll cover the basics and show you some tools to get you started. And maybe we’ll find some time to make fun of each other too. How can you get all of this fun and information? Point your favorite web browser at this registration page and you’ll be all set. I look forward to seeing you. tk ShortUrl: http://www.toddklindt.com/PetriSecAndComp | | | Todd Klindt | 5/18/2017 10:47 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 5/12/2017 5:00 PM | Office 365; OneDrive | 0 | | I’ve been dancing with this girl we call SharePoint for well over a decade, and I swear she gets prettier every day.  It has been fun watching Microsoft squash bugs and add functionality to the product along the way. One area that has been particularly satisfying is watching Microsoft address areas where the SharePoint Haters always take jabs at SharePoint. Things like, “SharePoint can’t handle more than 5000 items in a list,” or “You can’t have site collections larger than 100 GB in SharePoint,” or my favorite, “SharePoint Designer is free and users are going to destroy SharePoint with it!” Oh, wait. OneDrive, Now with More Character Recently Microsoft has fixed two of the limitations that plagued, character support, and URL length. Last month Microsoft chipped away at the former when they released this blog post, New support for # and % in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. In that blog post they announce that there’s a new API that will allow the use of the characters # and % in file and folder names in SharePoint Online (SPO) and OneDrive for Business (ODFB). In the past these characters were forbidden because they were used for other purposes in HTTP. The # character was used to reference anchors in HTML documents. The % was also busy being how you escaped ASCII characters in URLs. Any SharePoint admin worth their salt is well accustomed to space characters showing up as %20 in URLs like ‘Shared%20Documents.’ Since so much of SPO and ODFB is accessed through URLs, this made using those two characters particularly tricky. But you know Microsoft, they have some smart folks there, they figured it out. Microsoft has always been stellar with backwards compatibility (sometimes to their detriment) and this is no exception. When this feature rolls out in June 2017 they will do it with a new API, so the old APIs will continue to work as expected. If the tenant was created before June 2017 a Tenant Admin will have to use PowerShell to toggle the SpecialCharactersStateInFileFolderNames parameter to Allowed. After that, file and folder names can include # and %. Site and web names cannot. You’ll also have to have the OneDrive Next Gen Sync Client to sync files and folders with # and % in their names. This only pertains to OneDrive for Business with SPO and Office 365. It is not for SharePoint Server 2016 on-prem. | ODFB Office 365 | ODFB On-Prem | |
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| URL Size Matters… Less… Another place that SharePoint got its nose bloodied was URL length. For most cases it was enough, but every once in a while it would bite people, like during upgrades. Last week Microsoft, hot off their victory against those rascals # and %, announced they are bumping the maximum path limit in SharePoint Online and ODFB from 256 characters to 400! That’s an increase of over 50%! And this 400 character limit does not apply to the query parameters at the end. Since SharePoint Online doesn’t have any the ability to add managed paths, I’ve seen people get creative with site collection names. Now they can use those extra 144 characters to get extra creative. This is also only for SharePoint Online. | ODFB Office 365 | ODFB On-Prem | |
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| There are more great OneDrive improvements to blog. I’ll get to them next week. tk ShortUrl: http://www.toddklindt.com/OneDriveSuperPowers | | | Todd Klindt | 5/11/2017 11:39 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 5/8/2017 3:16 PM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 4/18/2017 11:15 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 4/17/2017 9:29 AM | Podcast | 0 | | | | | Todd Klindt | 4/14/2017 5:03 PM | OneDrive | 0 | | As anyone that listens to my podcast knows, I’m a fan of both the Consumer and For Business versions of OneDrive. I use it for a lot of my personal file syncing as well as with several Office 365 tenants, both production and test. Some of that is Production, some of it is with demo tenants. In the last couple of months I’ve stumbled across an unbelievable gap in the product, you can’t delete a OneDrive for Business (ODFB) account that you can’t log in to from the Windows Next Gen Sync Client. (NGSC). You can delete OneDrive (consumer) accounts. And you can delete a ODFB account if you’re logged into it. Both of those show up on the Accounts tab of the Sync Client Settings page. But if you can’t log into the Office 365 account you’re syncing to, you can’t delete it. It’s stuck in this weird purgatory where the folders still show up in Explorer, but the blue icon for the account doesn’t show up in the system tray. It’s very confusing. I’ve been trying to figure out how to delete some stale accounts for a while and it was inconceivable to me that that wasn’t possible. Today, I finally swallowed my pride and reached out for help. I tweeted the official (pronounced “Oh-FISHeeal”) OneDrive Twitter account. If they can’t help me, no one can. They have a blue check mark! This was their response: 
I can’t find it because it’s not there! But, they do offer a solution, we can vote for this feature (really, deleting an account is a “feature”) on User Voice. It doesn’t cost anything but your time, and each vote you cast will bring me closer to my nirvana of being able to purge all the unused ODFB folders from my PC. Vote early, vote often. Thanks for your support. tk ShortUrl: http://www.toddklindt.com/DeleteODFBAccount |
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