SharePoint Emails — Setting the email FROM field pt. 1

Posted by devaaron

Changing the from field on emails coming from SharePoint is one of the most requested things I’ve tripped across and while it’s certainly possible to achieve I haven’t found a good blog post showing or explaining how to do it. This post and the one to follow will detail two solutions to accomplish that: the first through javascript using the REST API and the second in a SharePoint 2013 workflow using the call http function.

REST API

First, I found this solution here:
http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/148226/send-e-mail-from-javascript-using-rest-api

function sendEmail(to, cc, bcc, from, body, subject) {
     var siteurl = _spPageContextInfo.webServerRelativeUrl;
     var urlTemplate = siteurl + &amp;quot;/_api/SP.Utilities.Utility.SendEmail&amp;quot;;
     $.ajax({
         contentType: 'application/json',
         url: urlTemplate,
         type: 'POST',
         data: JSON.stringify({
             'properties': {
                 '__metadata': {
                 'type': 'SP.Utilities.EmailProperties'
                 },
                 'From': from,
                 'To': {
                     'results': [to]
                 },
                 'CC': {
                     'results': [cc]
                 },
                 'BCC': {
                      'results': [bcc]
                 },
                 'Body': body,
                 'Subject': subject
              }
          }),
          headers: {
              'Accept': 'application/json;odata=verbose',
              'content-type': 'application/json;odata=verbose',
              'X-RequestDigest': jQuery('#__REQUESTDIGEST').val()
          },
          success: function(data){
              //alert('Email sent successfully');
          },
          error: function(data){
              alert('Error in sending email: ' + JSON.stringify(data));
          }
     });
}

Calling it is pretty easy.

sendEmail(to, cc, bcc, from, body, subject);

Keep in mind that to, cc, bcc and from must be a user like name@yourdomain.com, while body can contain html and subject must be a string.

The next post will show how to achieve the same thing though a 2013 workflow.

Turning Point

Posted by devaaron

I don’t think this post will be useful to anyone other than me but I’m going to include it anyway.

A few changes to this blog:

First: the post are going to be a little more conversational and show interesting things that I think are worth sharing. They will probably be less tutorials and more useful things I’ve discovered.

Second: I’m going to try and post more often, hopefully once a week to once every two weeks for some time.

Console Apps for SharePoint Lists

Posted by devaaron

I recently had a requirement to update a SharePoint list based on a Date and Time field. The list contained two important fields: the Date and Time field called ‘Hire Date’ and a field called ‘Active’. The goal was to update the list item when the ‘Hire Date’ field was equal to today’s date and change the ‘Active’ field to false.

This is simple in a workflow, however, the item was NOT getting updated when ‘Hire Date’ was equal to today so there was no way to trigger the workflow. A simple alternative is a .NET console app that runs every day using Windows Task Scheduler.

The app itself is simple, it uses CSOM to get the values of the item and updates the Active column when appropriate.

There are several advantages to using a console app and running it on a schedule:

It’s easy to parse the values of a list and preform an update
I don’t need to do something as unnecessary as pause a workflow on Item Creation to the ‘Hire Date’ and leave it paused for potentially weeks
And most importantly, I’m not using a Custom Timer Job. SharePoint Timer Jobs, particularly custom ones, can be resource intensive strains on your SharePoint server. If your SharePoint server is already strained for resources, like ours, console apps are a quick and efficient way to check for and make updates to SharePoint Lists.

SharePoint Online Reports

Posted by devaaron

I recently discovered that in SharePoint Online only some auditing reports are available.

If you want to monitor which users are accessing what the Content Viewing Report is not available in SharePoint Online despite being a link that you can click on and try to generate a report for. The explanation comes from this Microsoft Support article:

content_report_sharepoint_online

Hopefully, the link in SharePoint Online means that it’s coming soon…

Changing Workflow Service Account

Posted by devaaron

Recently, I needed to change the workflow service account for workflow 2013 platform. While this seemed relatively easy, there were several strange errors that I ran into. We had the Workflow 2013 Platform configured but the RunAs account needed to be changed. We were using the System Account, when we should have had a Service Account created for the workflow service itself. After creating that Service Account for the workflow service we need to set it as the RunAs account.

After a little hunting with google, I stumbled on this powershell script:

Stop-SBFarm
Set-SBFarm -RunAsAccount Domain\Username
$RunAsPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force ‘<password>’
[RunOnAllNodes] Update-SBHost -RunAsPassword $RunAsPassword

Start-SBFarm

It looks easy enough, but if I tried and run Set-SBFarm, I received the below error:

At this point, it’s important to note that we have Workflow Manager 1.0 which has a dependency of Service Bus 1.0. The above cmdlet is part of Service Bus 1.1. So, you’ll need to do some upgrading to use it. Of course, the order of installation matters.

First, you need to install Service Bus 1.0 CU 1: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2799752

Secondly, you’ll need to update to Workflow Manager 1.0 CU 1: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2799754 or Workflow Manager 1.o CU 2: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42036 both of which have a dependency of Service Bus 1.0 CU 1 and you need Workflow Manager 1.0 CU 2 to install Service Bus 1.1.

Preferably, you should update directly to Workflow Manager 1.0 CU 2 which has support for Service Bus 1.1 which you will need to run the above cmdlet. The Web Platform Installer is preferable in this situation as it will download the correct install for you without having to choose the files yourself.

Finally, you will want to install Service Bus 1.1, which will require you to uninstall Service Bus 1.0. After that you should have the correct cmdlet.

This order is important because Service Bus 1.0 CU 1 is necessary to install Workflow Manager 1.0 CU 1 or Workflow Manager 1.0 CU 2, the latter has support for Service Bus 1.1 which has the cmdlet you will need. The alternate way, if you can’t upgrade, is to remove and reconfigure your farm. Please note that this will cancel all in progress workflows and require them to be republished and manually restarted.

A final note: the installation of Service Bus 1.1 requires you to leave the Service Bus Farm and rejoin it. Make sure that you have the database connection string which you can get by running the get-sbfarm cmdlet and know the certificate auto generation key — if you don’t you can set it by running the set-sbcertificateautogenerationkey cmdlet.

It’s a little frustrating, that before Service Bus 1.1, the only way to change the Service Account is to remove and reconfigure the farm, and while that’s simple, it can be time consuming and, as noted above, requires that you republish and manually restart your workflows.

User Profile Sync

Posted by devaaron

After struggling with this for a few days, we discovered an interesting problem when syncing users from Active Directory to SharePoint. Our disabled accounts, which are moved to a disabled OU (organizational unit) in Active Directory were not showing up in SharePoint, however disabled IT account were still visible. Our Active Directory structure looked something like this (this is a very simplified version):

Active Accounts
–HR
–Accounting
–Practice Groups

Disabled Accounts

IT
–Disabled IT
–Active IT

The accounts in the Disabled OU did not show up in SharePoint, but the Disabled IT accounts did. There is a simple explanation for this, per this technet article:

“There is currently no utility that allows you to select a parent OU while excluding any of its child OUs from synchronization.”

Because we were syncing the IT OU, it was syncing all of the children, both Disabled and Active. The solution was to move the Disabled IT directory out of the IT OU, so our new structure looks like this:

Disabled Accounts
Disabled IT

IT
–Active IT

Once this was done, we ran a Full sync of the User Profile Application Service but the disabled account still showed up in search. Why? We needed to run a Full Crawl of Local SharePoint Sites as well. Once that completed, the disabled IT accounts were gone.

There are no lists to show in this view

Posted by devaaron

Recently I stumbled on an interesting problem: I needed to open and modify a list in SharePoint designer. So, I opened the list and found that designer gave a generic “There are no lists to show in this view” message. However, this particular site had over fifty lists that I could clearly see in the UI. The solution, which I found here, was a list that had been deleted was showing up.

As the blog suggest you can use a REST call to your site http:// [sharepoint] / [site] / _vti_bin/listdata.svc which should give you some XML, append a list name to this http:// [sharepoint] / [site] / _vti_bin/listdata.svc/ [list name] and with a little hunting you should be able to find your broken list. I was able to find it by trying to open the list through the browser and see a “This page does not exist” error. From here, the list can be deleted.

Finally, close designer and clear your webcache, reopen designer and you should now be able to open your list in designer.

I believe this may have occurred in our migration from 2010 to 2013. The site in question had several outdated and unused lists that needed to be cleaned up and/or deleted. The link to the list seems to have persisted even though it no longer existed and this prevented designer from open the site correctly.

$(#SharePoint).jQuery(); pt. 2

Posted by devaaron

Pt. 1 Fixing Multi-Choice Column
Pt. 2 Changing Grouped By Views

Pt. 2 Changing Grouped By Views

Another frequent UI correction is to remove the column title in Grouped By views. By default, the Grouped By view will group items together that share a field value. If you have several items, each with a field called Category and a field value of Category 1, those items will be grouped together.

The below items have two fields: Title and Category and are Grouped By Category. So all items with Category 1 are grouped together, all items with Category 2 are grouped together, etc. The goal here is to remove the word “Category” in each grouped section of the Grouped By View, leaving only “Category 1”, instead of “Category: Category 1”.

Before

After

Like last time, jQuery makes this very simple:

The above function accepts a string to remove and iterates through the each grouped section and removes the text in textToRemove. This text should match the text you want to remove exactly, in the above example textToRemove should be set to “Category” to remove the text Category from the Before screenshot above and produce the After screenshot.

It’s also worth noting that list views allow two levels of grouped sections.

Before

After

Like the first function this can remove the SecondCategory text. Notice the difference in selectors. Again the text should match exactly the text that you want to remove, in the above Before screenshot the text should be “SecondCategory” to produce the After screenshot.

Credit goes to this thread on stack exchange where I was given the answer.

$(#SharePoint).jQuery(); pt. 1

Posted by devaaron

Pt. 1 Fixing Multi-Choice Column
Pt. 2 Changing Grouped By Views

Pt. 1 Fixing Multi-Choice Column

We use jQuery across SharePoint to make a lot of UI and UX corrections. One of our most common UI corrections is for displaying choice column values in lists views that are multi-select. If you have list with a choice column and allow users to multi-select more than one option it will get displayed in the list view as: [choice1],[choice2]:

This is great for parsing data but our end users hate it and I agree that from an end user standpoint you’re expecting to see choice1 and choice 2 horizontally displayed without the “,” delimiter.

There is a simple solution for this:

As I mention this is easy to parse, so knowing the column number of the list view and the delimiter for display, we can iterate through the list view and replace the html with the choices delimited by a <br> tag. This will display the choices horizontally as our users expect and can be abstracted into a global javascript function that can be called across your site collection.

Here, we need to know the column number and in the above the choice is the fourth cell in each row of the table or the fourth column. (The check and ellipsis are cells or columns of their own). The delimiter in this case is a “,” , so we want to find all instances of the “,” in the html. If you include a string “,” here it will only match the first instance. The regular expression /,/g will find all matches. Finally we want to replace with a <br> tag and push each choice to the next line. Knowing that we iterate through each tr and find the column number and get the html. Then we replace all instances of the delimiter with the <br> tag and finally set the html to our new variable to get the below:

This is best abstracted and called as a global function whenever you need it. Also note that other columns types will delimit by other delimiters like “;”.

SharePoint 2013 drag and drop feature

Posted by devaaron

One of the most useful features of SharePoint 2013 is the ability to drag and drop documents or entire directories into Document lists.
drag_and_drop_library

I’d noticed that this wasn’t working consistently for all of our users and after some looking, there is a pleth ora of blog posts and explanations for this–so, I’ll add one more to it.

The drag and drop feature requires an IE version 10 or greater OR Office 2013. Our current standards for our users were IE9 and Office 2010, so of course they weren’t seeing it. I’m running IE10 and have both Office 2010 and Office 2013 installed for development purposes, which satisfies the requirements for it’s use. Importantly, this doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for users with IE9 or lower or Office 2010 to use it.

The simple solution is to install SharePoint Designer 2013 and choose Custom Installation. Deselect everything (including SharePoint Designer) except Office Tools. This will install the correct Active-X control and allow the drag and drop functionality to work.

installation

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