Posts

Tiles modern UI

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Back in SharePoint 2013 Microsoft introduced "Promoted links" a feature which enabled users to create tiles quick and easy without any custom code. Since then I've seen Promoted links being used a lot of ways, some better than others. However creating tiles with an image in the background was always a nasty thing to do. People would use the weirdest images as background to indicate what it was, totally not user friendly. Especially the choice of the color was very "weird" you would have tiles with all sort of colors and images (see image below as an example). Promoted links always had one big problem; Scaling! It's not responsive in a way you would want to have it. Since Microsoft introduced Modern UI they have also introduced the webpart "tiles". Tiles enables the user to create custom tiles within their SharePoint site, quick and easy. Cool features of the Tiles webpart. Tiles are responsive! They resize when the screen gets smalle

Azure AD Password Protection

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How often do you see users do the following things: Write their password on a post-it and stick it on their laptop or monitor Add a +1 when they need to reset their password for example they go from P@ssw0rd01 to P@ssw0rd02. That really made it harder. Create a default password like "P@ssw0rd" or "123456789" Yeah they sometimes add a 123 to make it "Difficult" haha Now to be honest now a days you need a lot of passwords to login into all those services on the www. Keeping track of them is a difficult task. Writing them down in a notepad and storing it on your computer is NOT the way to go! To make life easier for them users got "creative". For example they use the company name + a number to keep their password. For example "AcmeCompany123". Once they had to change their password they would make it "AcmeCompany234" As an IT admin preventing the use of these passwords is something that is hard to do. You could train t

Microsoft Forms GA - New Quiz

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In  Microsoft Forms GA - New Forms  I discussed the New Forms functionality and what you can do with it. In part 2 I want to talk about the Quiz functionality of Microsoft New Quiz When creating a new Quiz you get the same layout and options as in the Forms functionality. But there are some differences. Let's talk about the differences in an overview below. Questions As I mentioned the options are the same as in New Forms: Choice Text Rating Date Ranking Likert But in the details there are some more options: Math - You can fill in an equation that the user has to solve. Forms won't calculate the math for you and determine what the answer is. So you have to fill in the answer below the equation.  Points - Let's say you have 100 points to give in the exam, with Points you can determine which questions get how many points.  These points will be shown when the Quiz has been submitted. The user will directly know how many points he/she has

Microsoft Forms GA - New Forms

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SharePoint Survey Ah yes the good old days when Microsoft had SharePoint surveys. What a "tough" product that was, so complex and so not easy to implement and use. Just recently a client asked if it was possible to create a survey in SharePoint. I said "sure" but what I forgot was that they don't have Microsoft Forms enabled (yet!). So I helped them to get started with SharePoint survey but I soon realized that I had to create the survey myself because it's too complex to sell to the business. So that's what I did, create a survey. I thought about what was wrong with SharePoint survey and how hard it is to create a new survey. I thought about the sharing of the survey with other people and how the permission structure was set-up. I quickly realized I had to introduce them to another tool called Microsoft Forms. Microsoft Forms Released back in 2016 and since a few months Enterprise ready. Microsoft Forms enables users to create for

Publishing documents in Modern UI

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Yesterday at a client I got the question if it's possible to publish documents in Modern UI and if it's possible to only show documents that have been published. In the good old Classic UI days everyone would jump and say "YES, that's possible". However in Modern UI I was a little sceptic. What is possible concerning Publishing and can users only see documents that have been published. Want the short answer? NO, there is no publishing mechanism in Modern UI and NO it's not possible to show documents (default feature) that have been published. Now the long answer. We all know the settings in the classic document library that you need content approval and that users can only see draft items when: - Any user who can read items - Users that have contribute permissions - Users that can approve or the author However in Modern UI these features don't work. Microsoft introduced a "Sign-off" workflow that can be used to approve item

Hub Sites in Office 365

Wrote a blog for the company I work at Portiva. You can see it here: https://blog.portiva.nl/2018/05/30/hub-sites-in-office-365/ Regards, Alexander

Attack simulator Office 365

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Hearing about the attack simulator first I thought back at the time I was in college and somebody actually did a phishing "attack" on the whole school. That got him suspended (for a short period) but it made me aware of how easy it is to "attack" a school or another company. Do you know in your organization who is actually vulnerable for phishing or other forms of attack? Who of your employees does understand that the email is not coming from a trusted organization? Tot test this Microsoft released the "Attack simulator" a pretty cool name for a tool in Office 365. The Attack simulator At this moment it's in preview but if you're in targeted release you can go to Security and compliance center > Threat management > Attack simulator.  Note! you need to activate Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) for this. Activate this first and then log-in again to be able to use the Attack simulator features. Let the games begin You can use a temp