Posts by Joaoferreira

Manage SPFx extensions from macOS with Office 365 CLI

SPFx extensions are used to customize the modern SharePoint user experience, built using script frameworks they can be built using any operating system.

Currently there is no graphical interface to manage the extensions and all the operations need to be done from the command line using PowerShell.

Well it use to be like that but not anymore, with the Office 365 CLI you no longer need to use PowerShell and Windows to manage the extensions if you are a macOS or Linux user you can do it directly from your native operating system.

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By João Ferreira Feb 11, 2018 Office 365 1 Comment

Create a modern SharePoint site template with multiple pages using PnP provisioning engine

The PnP provisioning engine is a framework that allows you to create templates based on pre-built SharePoint sites. The framework was not built to be a migration tool and when a template is generated it only saves the home page, although the schema supports multiple pages.

In this article you can find a PowerShell script that saves a modern SharePoint site as a template with all the included pages.

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By João Ferreira Feb 4, 2018 Development, Office 365 42 Comments

Create a page layout with custom content areas

Page layouts are essential on SharePoint publishing sites, they enable the creation of content with specific editable fields.

There are predefined content areas that can be reused however sometimes they are not enough to build the perfect layout.

In this article I’ll explain you how to create a basic custom page layout with multiple Page Content areas also known as Rich HTML Field.

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By João Ferreira Feb 1, 2018 Branding, Office 365, SharePoint 2 Comments

Activate SharePoint Search refiner count

SharePoint refiner web part has a great hidden feature that shows the count of search refiners, despite being included in the web part there is no graphical user interface to turn it on.

To get the refiners count you will need to manually modify the display template file used by the web part, following the instructions below.

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By João Ferreira Jan 21, 2018 Office 365, SharePoint 0 Comments

Export and Import Site Collection Term Groups using PnP PowerShell

Managed metadata allows the creation of central managed term sets that can be used as attributes in SharePoint sites, term sets can be created globally and shared across site collections or can be created locally to the site collection.

The PnP PowerShell includes commands to export and import terms groups but unfortunately the site collection term group is not exported automatically, this article provides a workaround to get all the site collection term sets into an xml ready to import into other site collections.

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By João Ferreira Jan 14, 2018 Office 365, SharePoint 0 Comments

Detect SharePoint environment type and page mode from an SPFx web part

Knowing the SharePoint environment and if the page is edit mode will allow you to provide tailored web parts to enhance the user experience of your SharePoint solutions.

The code provided in this article gives you the ability to detect if your SPFx web part is running in the modern or classic SharePoint environment and if the page is in edit mode.

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By João Ferreira Jan 7, 2018 Development, Office 365 6 Comments

Fix most common issues with SharePoint Import Spreadsheet functionality

Every once in a while, I stumble across SharePoint functionalities that are only available when using Internet Explorer, on this post I’ll explain you how to overcome two common issues when trying to import a spreadsheet into a SharePoint list.

If you are dealing with the error messages below this post is for you.

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By João Ferreira Jan 3, 2018 Office 365, SharePoint 12 Comments

How to add Google Analytics to the Modern SharePoint

Having an analytics tool monitoring your intranet is essential to understand the engagement of the users and how they are interacting with the content that is published.

Google Analytics is widely used in the internet, it provides a concise analysis with reports of everything that happens in your site as well as real time reports, mostly targeted for public sites it also works on SharePoint intranets.

Earlier this year I wrote an article that explains step by step how to add Google Analytics to SharePoint without modifying the master page, while that solution is still valid for classic SharePoint it doesn’t work on the modern sites and libraries.

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By João Ferreira Dec 21, 2017 Development, Office 365 73 Comments

Asset Packaging and the goodies from SharePoint Framework 1.4

Asset packaging is an excellent feature for SPFx solutions, until now the manifest and script files had to be hosted in a CDN like Azure or Office 365 CDN. Handling the hosting was a problem to if you want to distribute or sell the solution, with the solution being recompiled to be used in different tenants.

With Asset Packaging the SPFx solution files are deployed to a central CDN without the need to manually specify the url in the solution source code.

The Asset Packaging was released along with the Site Collection App Catalog and both features combined provide the same type of functionality that was provided by the sand box solutions, with all the files included into one package and being able to be installed per site collection and not globally.

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By João Ferreira Dec 11, 2017 Development, Office 365 2 Comments

Change the color of SharePoint modern experience automatically

SharePoint modern experience is available for Lists, Document Libraries and Pages and while it delivers new functionalities to the end users it lacks some of the customization options available in the classic SharePoint.

The modern experience is provided with a theme that is responsible to format the colors of the elements in the page. On modern site collections like group and communication sites there’s a native interface that allows the administrator to control the color theme, but on classic site collections things are a little bit different and the modern experience will receive a random color applied automatically.

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By João Ferreira Dec 5, 2017 Branding, Office 365 3 Comments