Nov 24
13
The Property Bag Feature
I remember the Property Bag feature from long ago, namely SharePoint 2013. I never used it.
Apparently, it’s still around and available for SharePoint Online. There is no GUI for it so setting or viewing Property Bag key/value pairs is done either programmatically or via PowerShell.
Scripts are disabled by default on SharePoint Online modern sites. So if you try to set a Property Bag key/value pair in PowerShell you will encounter an error. To avoid this, you have to first run a PowerShell command to disable NoScript. (The double negative means you’re therefore enabling scripts on the site.) Once NoScript is disabled, you’re free to run your PowerShell script.
According to this article, starting in November, 2024 (i.e. now) Microsoft is providing a new tenant-wide feature that will allow Property Bag scripts to run without first disabling NoScript. In short, the Property Bag feature gets a pass.
If you’re thinking either “What is the Property Bag feature?” or “Who cares? I’ll never use it.” then here is a very good article that describes the feature well and provides some very good use cases, such as auto-applying retention labels.
Definitely heed the part where you need to add the -Indexed parameter if you want this key/value pair to be added to Search.
I can see how the Property Bag feature could be quite useful in assigning Metadata values that are leveraged both by Search as well as Sensitivity or Retention labels. So consider this hidden feature in your SharePoint Online development journey.
Want to edit the toolbar on a list in SharePoint Online as shown above? April Dunham has provided an excellent and concise video on YouTube. She covers how to hide, move, and edit the text on the various toolbar buttons on a SharePoint list by editing the JSON for the List view.
Caveat: You have to edit the JSON for each view separately. And anyone with the permissions to create a new view can clearly do so and then enjoy the default buttons, thereby bypassing your cleverness.
She provides a high-level overview with a few examples. This spurred me into looking for a complete list of commands and functions for editing a List toolbar. So here it is: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/declarative-customization/view-commandbar-formatting
Now go customize those list menus and impress your users!
I cannot say enough about Salaudeen Rajack. His website – SharePointDiary.com – is awesome and I often find content there that one simply cannot find elsewhere. Recently, he posted a list on LinkedIn of 10 excellent (and free) resource guides that he offers on his website. So I’m copying and pasting the list here for those that may not see it on his LinkedIn profile.
Top-10 Guides for SharePoint Pros from SharePointDiary.com!
1. PowerShell Basics: Your Quick Reference Guide! https://lnkd.in/gsnDzp_M
2. How to Install the PnP PowerShell Module for SharePoint Online? https://lnkd.in/gi-sz2Xk
3. SharePoint Permissions – A Comprehensive Guide! https://lnkd.in/gGRrJs7M
4. SharePoint Admin Center: A Comprehensive Guide https://lnkd.in/gji3crfX
5. Mastering PowerShell Loops: An Essential Guide https://lnkd.in/gvrkYk-y
6. Site Collection Admins in SharePoint Online https://lnkd.in/gMTgHFRx
7. How to Connect to SharePoint Online from PowerShell? https://lnkd.in/gkAYfvyH
8. Mastering SharePoint Document Library: A Comprehensive Guide https://lnkd.in/gTX3E3Sf
9. How to Run PowerShell Scripts for SharePoint Online? https://lnkd.in/gdXPf_vT
10. SharePoint Recycle Bin: A Comprehensive Guide https://lnkd.in/geBRU6wc
It feels odd to write a non-technical post but I read an interesting article about product development around the SharePoint ecosystem at Microsoft over the past 8 years and it is worth sharing. This is an interesting behind-the-scenes view. It seems to me that the focus lately has been on the end-user experience, the UI/UX, and the web content creator experience rather than the previous emphases on document management and process automation. (Content types, document sets anyone?) Anyway, draw your own conclusions.
If you’re keen to see the whole 23 year history of SharePoint in one nifty graphic, SharePoint Product Manager Mark Kashman put one up on recently on his Twitter/X account. Here it is:
Yes I know it’s too small to read. Right-click on it, then select “Open image in new tab”.
You’re welcome.
Power Automate (formerly called Microsoft Flow) is the automation tool for the M365 suite of products. Like many of you, I grew accustomed to using Workflows and the SharePoint Designer tool to create and edit workflows in previous versions of SharePoint. Now with Power Automate, there are several ways to connect with other systems. I’ll cover these briefly:
- Connector: Microsoft provides many for you to choose from. A connector is used to connect to a data source, such as a SharePoint list, the Dataverse, a Google calendar, OneDrive, or a SQL server, to name but a few.
- Connection: The stored authentication details and access tokens used to connect to an external data source. Basically, a stored Connector with your stored credentials.
- Connection Reference: A reusable reference object which acts as a proxy for a Connection. This allows you to use a single connection for multiple solutions. When you have to edit, modify, or update the Connection, all your flows will continue to work without having to be each updated.
For more on this subject, I recommend this article from the Global SharePoint Diary website.
Scott Ortlepp at SProbot has provided a step-by-step guide of an end-to-end process for Governance in an M365 environment. First, he set up a Contract Contact Type, then a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy in the SharePoint Admin Center, followed by setting up a Compliance rule within the policy that blocks files associated with the Contract Content Type from being shared with any external users.
Additionally, he provides the steps to add this new content type and associated documents to a managed property in the Search crawl component. It’s all quite clever and straight-forward. He uses PowerShell along the way although the same processes may very well be performed in the user interface. Good stuff here and happy to pass along.
Today I was reading this article from the SharePointEurope.com site about PDF forms. Most likely, as a SharePoint admin you’re going to want to use a SharePoint List to capture input from a form. The form will probably be either the default form created for you when you created the list, or that very form after you’ve modified it, or a form you made using a third-party product like Nintex. Sound about right?
But what if your users insist (as they sometimes do) on having a PDF form on SharePoint? What then? Do they download it, fill it out, and then upload it to a forms library? The article I referred to above discusses (ok, advertises) a third-party product that installs onto your SharePoint Online tenant or on-premises server which resolves this problem.
The PDF Editor for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams from Muhimbi promises to deliver the following features:
- Fill PDF forms “without having to leave SharePoint”
- Edit text like in a Word doc
- Annotate content
- Redact text
- Add electronic signatures
- Add digital signatures
- And some other features that I haven’t listed here…
I have no idea how much it costs but you can get a quote by visiting this page.
Note: I do not endorse this product, I don’t get any money (or anything else from them), and I haven’t tried it. I’m just letting you know about it since it looks promising. You’re on your own. 🙂
This article from SProbot compares two different methods for blocking external access to SharePoint Online sites: PowerShell vs Sensitivity Labels.
I find the first section on the PowerShell method to be the preferred method. The caveat here is that to perform this method you must have Global Admin rights on the O365 tenant. In my case, that’s not feasible.
So the second option is interesting. I did not realize that one could apply a sensitivity label to an entire site before this. I had never noticed. But under the section “Define the scope for this label” in Microsoft Purview (formerly Compliance Center) after you have chosen to “+ Create a label” sure enough, there is an option to define the scope to “Groups & sites”. So this is helpful indeed and you don’t have to be a Global Admin to do it.
If you’re working with a modern SharePoint Online site, such as the modern Communications site, you are probably disappointed at the limited number and features of the web parts available. Notably, the Script Editor web part (SEWP) and the Content Editor web part (CEWP) are no longer available, which is most unwelcome. To fill this gap, there are several options, at present:
- The Modern Script Editor web part from Puzzlepart. Salaudeen Rajack has provided a helpful write-up here.
- Dave Schmidt’s forum answer to add a classic “Web Part Page” to your site’s Content Types.
Note: If the classic page looks too dramatically different from the rest of your modern site, use CSS to customize it. - React InjectCSS: An SPFx extension that injects CSS on every page of your modern site
- Another gem from Salaudeen, this clever solution involves using the Embed web part to call a custom HTML page you’ve created.
Note: It requires enabling custom scripting in the SharePoint Online Admin Center.
I cannot count the number of clients I’ve encountered who have treated the default document library on a SharePoint site as the *only* document library they could use. So they filled it up with folders, then sub-folders, then sub-sub-folders, etc. It makes for a difficult conversation. I usually say “let’s take ALL of the top-level folders and make them each their own document library!” And then they say “No” because they’ve gotten used to it like this. And by “this” I mean sprawled and unmanageable, generally.
So if you’ve got sites that have folder sprawl, this article from Veronique Palmer will give your users a little help figuring out how many sub-folders are beneath your top-level folders, and how many items they contain. It’s a start. And it’s helpful.
One last piece of advice: if your organization manually provisions sites for users, delete the default “Documents” document library and during the provisioning process, ask your users to think about how many document libraries they’ll probably need going forward. Get them to provide meaningful document library names. And then create them for them.
- Sign up for the Robinhood Gold Card!
Click the image below.