New SharePoint CSOM update for Office 365

Wow. This is such a great build. Loving the new additions added in the new SharePoint CSOM for Office 365. Since a year, was submitting the feedback and waiting for some features has to be included in the CSOM API and here they are. You can do even more with the new API methods and classed added. The package will be available via Nuget.

Version: 16.1.3912.1204.

The major feature I really impressed are:

• Manage regional settings of a site
• Manage language settings of a site
• Manage auditing settings of a site
• Support for upcoming enhanced migration APIs
• Secondary contact in site collection level
• Sharing settings
• Tenant

The auditing settings API is a major help for me along with the Sharing settings. There are over 50 methods added across and the major ones which might help you are:

• Accessing document set properties, documents
• Added classes related to Search PushTenant
• Additional properties for Publishing classes
• Accessing AppCatalog
• Audit information
• File, Folder methods and properties
• Many Web and Site properties and methods. 

If you are feeling like you are unable to implement just because of product limitation then it's for you. Go and have a look at the new update and start building the examples. 

Get more details about complete CSOM methods and properties here.

Show user profile pictures in SharePoint Hosted Apps

This is the issue which killed more than a week of my time. Many users are facing it too and I see the same question in almost all the forums. Proud to tell that the solution which I have found is the most usable one for SharePoint Hosted App world.

In SharePoint Hosted Apps the cross-domain calls are limited. The issue I am facing in SharePoint Online Hosted Apps was:

I have created a SharePoint hosted app which has the code to show the user profile picture. I have tried below options for it:

1. Queried the REST API user profile and then 
1. used the "PictureUrl" from user profile metadata. But, no luck with this. Then,
2. used the "UserProfileProperties -> PictureURL attribute in the results. Still, there is no luck. 
2. Used the Outlook Office 365 profile picture link: https://outlook.office365.com/owa/service.svc/s/GetPersonaPhoto?email=useremail&UA=0&size=HR64x64. 
1. But, the url is an external site link the picture failed to load.
3.  Used the UserPhoto.aspx page in the _layouts folder: /_layouts/15/userphoto.aspx?size=L&accountname=encodeduseraccountname.
1. I have tried with both hosted web url and app web url. But, no luck. 
2. But, if I create a App Part and in the app part the same image path shows perfectly. So, the issue is only in the App landing page. 

Published the issue in all social networking sites, forums for help, but no luck. Many people come up with different ideas, but nothing worked. 

Solution:

After spending the good amount of time in analyzing the UserPhoto.aspx, and how it works, I was able to find a way to download the image. 

UserPhoto.aspx accepts many parameters. We always use the AccountName querystring to download the image of the user. But, it also accepts other paramters like "url". 

So, the solution I used here is: 

{appweburl}/_layouts/15/userphoto.aspx?size=L&url={encodeduserprofilepictureurl}

Note: You must query the User profile REST API for the user to get the user profile picture url and then encode that picture url and then replace the string {encodeduserprofilepictureurl} with that.

This one given me the output I wanted. Now, the pictures are showing everywhere, inside the app and also in app part... 

Updates to SharePoint Online Limits

This must be one of the most loving post for SharePoint Audience. The updates to the limits of SharePoint Online are unbelievable and it's the great thinking by SharePoint Online team.

With the new announcement a site collection can grow up to 1TB in size. This will be a huge benefit to the tenants who has huge data and would like to go cloud with publishing/enterprise/social features.

Get all details here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-sharepoint-online-enterprise-help/sharepoint-online-software-boundaries-and-limits-HA102694293.aspx

Importing Excel Data to SharePoint

Recently for my company I have implemented a nice tool for importing data to SharePoint. The initial implementation started with Importing Excel Data to SharePoint List. Few years back me and my colleague implemented the same solution for 32 and 64 bit SharPoint 2007 servers. But, this new tool is targeted for SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online. For more details visit the company blog. And also take a look at the codeplex project.

Its officially moved to my company utilities page. Please get it here.

SharePoint Online improvements

Office 365 is going to be better and better. As many people are started using Office 365 I see Microsoft is planning to invest more on this domain. Lets see what they have improved. Below improvements are not applicable to Office 365 dedicated subscribers.

1. The complete Office 365 environment for all users are updated to SharePoint 2013.
2. Skydrive Pro will solve many problems regarding storage for Online users. Now, its been increased from 7GB to 25GB. This is free. 
3. The improvements which are rolling out in coming weeks are:
• Now SharePoint Online supports many file types: This is one of the great features I like. They extended the support for broad range of file types including .EXE and .DLL.
• File upload limit increased: Now, users can upload files up to 2 GB size. Earlier it was just 250 MB limitation.   
• Number of site collections: With latest improvements a tenant can create 10000 site collections. Earlier it was limited to 3000. 
• Improvements to Look up fields: Each list can support 12 lookup fields. 
• Self-restoration: Increasing recycle bin retention duration (now it is 90 days, earlier it was just 30 days) and versioning is turning on by default for the Skydrive Pro libraries.
• IE 10 now supports opening Explorer view. Yes, it is back...
4. Other than these there are many improvements. 

Below are the reference links to get more details. These are really important points to know before you planning to migrate to Office 365/SharePoint Online.

Links:

http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/09/05/sharepoint-online-improves-limits-and-makes-it-easier-to-restore-documents.aspx

http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/09/03/what-s-new-august-2013.aspx

http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/08/27/skydrive-pro-increases-storage-and-ease-of-sharing.aspx

SharePoint 2013 Cloud or no Cloud - What is your choice?

SharePoint 2013 come up with fantastic features with new UI, new architectures like App Model, Search Crawling and Shredded Storage etc. This new release is impressive and it's support very large and multi-server FARM support. Below are my views on whether to go for Cloud environment or to no go for it.

Why to go for Cloud (SharePoint Online)?

• Platform: As we already know SharePoint online for 2013 Preview build is available. RTM will be available soon.
• UI: The new UI is very easy to use, customize and add more functionality through CMS improvements compared to earlier versions.
• Tools: The Napa tools help us to quickly write the code (Client Side code) and publish them from browser in no time. Very quick development tools. 
• App Model: The new app model will give us the opportunity to extend our SharePoint system with custom coding. Earlier models supports Sandbox solutions and in 2013 we have both Sandbox and App models. 
• Design & Customization: It's as easy as uploading a background image and change colors to design a new theme for SharePoint site in 2013, until unless you want to change the master page for full extent. You can customize the master pages with tools like SharePoint Designer and deploy them to SharePoint Online. Themes are very easy to apply and customization is very simple. 
• Cost: If you like to maintain a FARM on-premises it will be more expensive to maintain the hardware and software. SharePoint online is too cheap compared to on-premises and will save thousands of $. 

Why to not go for Cloud (SharePoint Online)?

• There are no big new reasons why we need on-premises environment. :) If yours is big organization where many services are running like finance services, corporation intranet, file share and search crawling then we must need on-premises environment. SharePoint Online will not give control to run all these as there is  no authorization to Central Administration. 
• If an organization has big repository for the documents on file share and you like to crawl them to show results in Search then we must need on-premises.
• Multi-server FARM is only possible in On-premises and Farm level solutions are possible only in On-premises.

It's completely based on our requirements to decide whether to go for Cloud or not. Above mentioned are the possible reasons according to my view. SharePoint online (build in 2013) is a great product for CMS, small scale intranets. With new templates available in SharePoint 2013, you can build product catalog web sites etc. I believe SharePoint Online will grow fast in near future.