Category: Development

Windows PowerShell Command Builder

Robert Everatt / / Development, Office 365

Recently we have been researching how Windows PowerShell could help with the some of the more advanced administration tasks of SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 365. Our most recent discovery of Windows PoweShell is an online Command Builder, which enables users with limited knowledge of Windows PowerShell the ability to create commands to perform certain functions. The command builder, shown below, lets users select the product they have, either SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010 or Office 365. There is then the option to filter all the commands based on what you wish to do.

It is through exploring this command builder that we have seen the difference of what Windows PowerShell can do for SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 365. The difference in functionality is greater than what I expected. With Office 365 you appear to only get basic functionality such as ‘Get’, ‘Set’, ‘Add’, ‘Remove’ and ‘Update’ etc. In comparison SharePoint Server 2010 offers much more. As shown in the image above there are functions to revoke and grant permissions, publish and un-publish content, and also options to install and uninstall.

Here is an example of a command that was built in the command builder and sent to clipboard:

“Set-SPUser -Identity “Robert Everatt” -Group “Administrator Extraordinaire” -MobileNumber “666” -IsSiteCollectionAdmin”

User Properties

Michael Bratley / / Capabilities, Development, Features, Office 365

Whilst investigating another problem we were experiencing on the SharePoint site, we stumbled upon some User Profile and Properties options. We had previous been looking at storing additional fields against a user to hold information such as leave entitlement and leave remaining. The properties of the user can be edited and custom fields can be created. The image below shows the administration centre where these additions can be made.

Manage_Users

We were able to add the two additional fields that we require at this stage in testing and development. We were also able to read the values of the two fields and have them returned to the user in an email using a workflow. However we quickly discovered that it appears to not be possible to write data back to the fields. In this instance this would allow us to keep track of the number of days leave a user has remaining.

Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise

Michael Bratley / / Branding, Capabilities, Development, Office 365

We now have access to an extended trial of Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise Edition. This will now enable us to actively use and test features of the service that the University may upgrade to in the near future. We will now begin to look at complex workflows, integrating InfoPath Forms, and RSS Feeds amongst others. In a just couple of days we have managed to give the site some basic branding, after coming across many difficulties trying the same thing in the Small Business Edition. As always we will keep posting with our progress.

Migration With Penguins

Robert Everatt / / Development, Migration, Office 365, Testing

In the last few days, Michael and I have been given access to a small area of the current University Portal to work with,originally we used it to test Microsoft InfoPath (see previous InfoPath post), however, after that failed I decided to use the area to test migration for a second time. I was confident that this time it would work as our site was much smaller than the one we tried previously. We used MetaVis again to carry out the migration and did it pretty much the same way we did the previous migration.

To test migration I first populated our page with test data and nonsense, adding a few lists, document libraries and images, this would help me tell whether or not the migration was successful.

We connected to https://portal.lincoln.ac.uk/C10/C6/PortalDelevopment and  http://adp.sharepoint.com/TeamSite/office365dev/migration/, again I found that it did not have to input my username and password to connect to our portal site. I then simply simply dragged the Lincoln portal site to the 365 portal site and the migration began. I was surprised to find that the migration process still took up to about 10 minutes, which I thought was odd considering there was very little on the page.

The migration completed successfully, with only a few minor errors, which consisted of these:

Copy group “Guest” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

Copy group “Reader” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

Copy group “Contributor” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

Copy group “Web Designer” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

Copy group “Administrator” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

Copy group “anon” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

Copy group “Content Manager” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

Copy group “Member” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

Copy group “ReadOnly” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

Copy group “Role Analysis Group” – The server sent HTTP status code 401: Unauthorized

However, this was unimportant for this migration and was not needed, I also believe that this could easily be fixed when both portals are set up for migration.

Once it had completed I went to both portal pages to compare them. From what I saw, the migration was mostly successful.

 

Penguins

As you can see, everything was transferred correctly, the only two problems were the navigation (although I am not sure if this is because it isn’t the entire portal that has been transferred) and the layout of the page. I believe that this has happened because office 365 has multiple layout styles, where as SharePoint 2003 only has a few. This is easily fixed by dragging the ‘Content Editor’ web part over the the left of the screen.

penguins 2

So we finally have a successful migration using MetaVis, I will continue to test other migration methods and software and to research the migration of other areas including emails and users. for now it is just nice to directly compare Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 to SharePoint online, it’s clear which looks better.

RE

Microsoft Plans to Expand Office 365 with Visio & Project

Michael Bratley / / Cloud Computing, Development, Features

Microsoft appears to be already planning for an expansion of services provided with Office 365. In an article posted by Mary Jo Foley on Zdnet, it is suggested that Microsoft is planning to introduce Visio and Project to the cloud to join a handful of other services already offered. This is a surprising move considering it’s less than a month ago that the service was officially launched to the public. However it does show that Microsoft is committed to the service and the Office 365 brand.

Full details of the story can be found here: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-boost-office-365-with-project-and-visio-cloud-services/10057