This is really just a “note to self” because I always forget where this settings lies.
Activate On Default is property of a feature. You can find it by opening the Feature Designer and then looking in the properties window. It is the first property under the SharePoint section.
This property determines whether the feature will be activated when the solution is activated. My preferred approach when developing a publishing portal that requires web templates, is to only have the ‘web templates’ feature activated this way and have any/all other features activated along with the root site web template.
Note that this property has no impact on the set of features which are activated when deploying the solution via Visual Studio. You can configure this somewhat using the ‘Active Deployment Configuration’ property of the project. You can try something like the following from Mavention for more granularity: Mavention – activating selected features
For solutions that are contained in a single site collection, or span a small number of site collections, or are in a tenant where the other solutions are not trusted or are unknown, then I have a strong preference to use site collection scoped search schema rather than tenant scoped.
Side note: I am yet to come across a situation where I would use site scoped search schema. In my mind, the existence of search schema at this level only serves to confuse.
Search Schema hierarchy is SharePoint Online. There is also site scoped search schema at lowest level which is not present here.
For those that aren’t fully aware, search schema (the set of managed properties that are accessible via the search framework) can be provisioned at the tenant, site collection, or site scope. These scopes are hierarchical such that managed properties are inherited from the tenant scope down to the site scope but can be overridden along the way. There are some good articles that delve into this in more detail.
By provisioning search schema at the site collection level you are mitigating the risks of errors related to other solutions changing the properties which your solution relies upon. This is especially relevant in SharePoint Online where all solutions in the tenant have to share a common set of RefinableTypeXX managed properties.
There are some important exceptions, of course.
People Search, a.k.a User Profile Search, a.k.a Local People Results
In SharePoint Online, people properties are indexed on a very slow schedule. We requested more information from Microsoft regarding this and were told that this schedule is ‘confidential’. I have found that when using site-collection scoped managed properties it can take *weeks* for them to get populated. I have found much better (although still poor) performance using tenant scoped properties (usually within a few days). Assuming you do require custom search schema for people properties I would still recommend provisioning all remaining managed properties (all those not mapped to people properties) at the site collection level.
Many site collections
Of course, having many site collections which require the same search schema is valid reason to go tenant scoped. This is purely due to management of the properties going forwards. A solid scripted deployment procedure should not care if you are provision search schema to 1 or 50 site collections – but anyone maintaining the solution will definitely care if they have update 50 schemas manually, or are suddenly required to script something which they feel should be *easy*. Even in this scenario you should still consider how much you trust other solutions in the tenant against the impact of finding out that one day your managed properties are mapped incorrectly. Depending on your solution this could lead to errors that are left undetected, or conversely obviously break your home page.
There is a somewhat confusing logic behind when the FOLLOW button is displayed on the search results hover panel (a.k.a document preview).
A document hover panel with both the POST and FOLLOW buttons present
What I am talking about?
If you are building a solution that relies on the following of documents but you are using Yammer rather than the SharePoint social feed then you may be wondering why, from the search results hover panel, you can follow pages, users, sites, but not most document types.
NB. If you are finding that you can’t following anything, check that web scoped feature ‘Follow Content’ has been activated on each site which contains content you wish to be able to follow.
NB. You can still follow the document types in question by clicking ‘view in library’ and using the library item menu to follow.
In many cases, wanting both POST and FOLLOW doesn’t make a lot sense as a primary reason of following documents is to populate the activity feed which is not available when Yammer is being used as the enterprise social experience. As such, please consider why you want this behaviour at all. In my scenario the user’s list of followed documents is promoted to the home page and bookmarking documents is a key user story.
What is going on?
The search results hover panel is built from a number of display templates which you can read about in more depth here (TechNet) or here (Chris O’Brien) or many other places.
Importantly, there is a display template which defines the common actions (buttons) across the bottom of the hover panel and when to display them. The display template is called Item_CommonHoverPanel_Actions and can be found here:
Site Settings > Master Pages and Page Layouts > Display Templates > Search > Item_CommonHoverPanel_Actions.html
If you inspect this display template you will find an if else block around the rendering of the POST and FOLLOW buttons. The logic can be summarised as: The POST button is visible if Yammer is enabled and the result type supports it, otherwise the FOLLOW button is visible if the result type supports it, at no time will both buttons be visible.
If you download a copy of the display template HTML file, update it to remove the ‘else’ as in the code snippet below, and then upload it again, you will find the both the POST and FOLLOW buttons will be displayed in the search hover panel when supported. Success!
But is it okay update that file?
The short answer is yes. Take care as this file is used by every hover panel in SharePoint (to my knowledge, there may be some completely unique ones) and so changes could break something that isn’t obvious.
The major risk is that if Microsoft decide to update the hover panel which require them to produce a new version of the display template file (they have done this previously when introducing the POST button). In the case that you have modified this file, then your changes will be lost. This can happen without warning (unless you have a second tenant on first release to catch these issues before they hit production – you should be doing this!).
For very minor updates such as this, and to support non-critical functionality, it may be okay to make these changes and be prepared to re-implement them should Microsoft issue an update.
The alternative is to make a copy of the display template with a new name. This approach means that your changes will not get overridden but it also means that your solution will not get the updates that would otherwise be pushed to this file. We call this ‘customisation tax’ and it is a trade off as to which way you’d rather push changes.
In this particular scenario this latter approach is not very practical as every result type references the existing display template. You would be required to make copies of all the result type display templates that are applicable (possibly a dozen or more), and update the result types themselves to use your new templates. Unless you are bypassing result types and using a single display template for all results, this feels overly complex for such a minor change, but major changes will necessitate the effort.
EDIT: A colleague of mine, Luis Manez, pointed out that with a little JS you can force a custom hover panel to be rendered for all result types. You can read about it (approach one) and some other approaches to associating custom hover panels here (Elio Struyf).
Content Search Web Parts (CSWPs) and Search Result Web Parts (SRWPs, a.k.a Result Script Web Parts RSWPs) prevent more than 50 results being returned at once. This is true with or without paging enabled. This is true even if you provision the web part using XML. In older versions of SharePoint, it may allow you to enter a row limit greater than 50 but will then default to a mere 10 results.
I’m sure Microsoft has very good UX and technical reasons behind this limitation, however at 100 items I don’t feel that either UX nor performance suffer. I imagine that if using this technique for returning large page sizes (>100) that there is very real potential for bad performance and the UX is most likely appalling.
Importantly – this code should only be considered a learning tool. This code is entirely unsupported and generally just a really bad idea. Please be responsible 🙂
Recognition to Matt Stark who provided this solution. All I have done is rewritten it a bit for safety and I wanted to prefix it with a bit more discussion than it had. Original discussion is here.
The web parts which you want to act upon must be set to load asynchronously (this is not the default mode).
Edit Web Part > Change Query > Settings > Loading Behaviour :: Async option Edit Web Part > Change Query > Settings > Loading Behaviour :: Async option
Take note:
There are a few available solutions to this, none of which are much good, and even this one is should be considered a hack and be treated with caution.
I will only discuss this option as it is the best I have come across when considering the limitations of SharePoint Online.
Please only include this code on specific pages using a Content Editor or a Script Editor, and NOT globally.
I have amended the original code such that it only changes the row limit for those web parts which are set to return 50 items exactly.
I haven’t found any issues with this code, however I am using on a page that does nothing but display a list and in a situation where failure has limited impact on the system.
Good news – it really is very easy to have links to pre-filtered search pages (search pages with active refiners). This post will give an example of linking to search page with a single active refiner but you should be able to extend the example to more complex scenarios if you wish.
EDIT: I have written a more recent post which provides JavaScript functions to generate these links dynamically
Cut to the chase
This is what you are looking for, I’ll explain it in depth below:
(The above URLs have been separated on to new lines for readability but should not contain any white space)
Breaking it down
As you have probably already noticed, by applying a filter to a search results page you are appending a hash (or anchor) to the query string. This value is a URL encoded JSON object. Once decoded it looks something like this:
Importantly for our purposes we can see the name of the managed property on which we are refining “RefinableString08”.
The value is a little more obfuscated. The value ‘5265706f7274’ is in fact the HEX encoded value which we want to refine on. It is vital the “t” property is set to this value prepended by the two “Ç‚” characters. The “m” property appears to define a mapping between the HEX encoded value and original value but it does not appear to be necessary.
Reducing the length to fit such that it can be used as a ‘Simple Link’ in a navigation term
A navigation term only supports a limited number of characters in its ‘simple link’ field, approximately 260. This means that the full encoded JS object as above will breach this limit if the managed property value is greater than about 8 characters (if using a ‘RefinableStringXX’ managed property). Not great. However, it turns out that the “m” property of the object is optional, at least when performing simple refinement as we are here. The example I provided at the top of this post has this property excluded in order to reduce it’s length.
If you are attempting to run the PowerShell command Add-Type with a Path parameter that references an assembly which has been emailed or downloaded from the internet (e.g. Add-Type -Path "C:\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll") then it is likely that you will encounter the following error:
Could not load file or assembly ‘file:///’ or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515)
To confirm that the following steps are appropriate. Check the inner exception:
PS> $error[0].Exception.InnerException
“An attempt was made to load an assembly from a network location which would have caused the assembly to be
sandboxed in previous versions of the .NET Framework. This release of the .NET Framework does not enable
CAS policy by default, so this load may be dangerous. If this load is not intended to sandbox the assembly,
please enable the loadFromRemoteSources switch. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155569 for more
information.”
Not using SharePoint Client Components?
First check the execution policy under which PowerShell is running. This can be done by running the Get-ExecutionPolicy cmdlet. If you are not running under an Unrestricted policy, try running the Add-type cmdlet after setting the execution policy to Unrestricted (Set-ExecutionPolicy “Unrestricted”). If this resolves the issue then you’ll need to look into getting the assembly signed by a trusted publisher if you can’t continue to run PowerShell in this lowered state of security.
Next ensure that the assembly hasn’t been blocked. The easiest way to achieve this is by right-clicking on the assembly and checking on the General tab that there isn’t the option to unblock the assembly at bottom of the dialog. There is also the Unblock-File cmldlet to achieve this action via PowerShell.
Unblocking an assembly
Finally, PowerShell supports a config file which by default is not present. It allows configuration of a few things like the .NET versions which are supported and, importantly for us, whether or not PowerShell is allowed to load from remote sources. In order to add/update this file, ensure that you are logged in as a local administrator. The config file needs to reside adjacent to the PowerShell exe file. So, by default, it ought to be created here: C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe.config
Note: Do not confuse this with powershell_ise.exe.config although you may want to update this as well if you use ISE.
The content of the powershell.exe.config should be as follows. If you already have a file present, ensure that you merge the XML rather than just replacing it.
Using SharePoint Client Components?
If you are adding the SharePoint Client assemblies required for the execution of CSOM requests then you should take a different approach. Rather than bundling these assemblies with your script, instead insure that the correct SharePoint Client Components package is installed on the executing machine and reference the assemblies from their default location:
If you have a global navigation with more than a few second level items then the fly-out nature of the menu may cause some page content to be hidden while the menu is being interacted with by users. This is expected and acceptable behaviour.
I have found that sometimes (in IE only) the navigation fly-out falls behind page elements and cannot be used correctly. This is the case when iFrames are present in the content area. This issue came to my attention when using the Yammer Embed API to provide users with Yammer feeds from SharePoint.
The global navigation fly-out is being hidden by a Yammer Embedded feed (rendered as an iFrame)
The simplest way to resolve this is with CSS. The following CSS snippet should resolve this issue for you. We all know about z-index but the position:relative is also required for it to be applied correctly in IE.
N.B. The below snippet is specifically for Yammer Embed iFrames, if you would like to target all iFrames then the id selector should be removed (i.e. iframe#embed-feed becomes iframe).
When you import an image to use as a background image as part of a composed look in SharePoint Online, the image is re-scaled to 1024 x 768 and compressed as low quality jpg. If you have an image which still looks reasonable after these modifications then please continue to use composed looks as the ensures that the page weight is kept to a minimum.
A full HD imageThe same image as above after being processed by the Composed Look framework. Admittedly the compression is pretty good in this example.
SharePoint provides no configuration around this that I am aware of and even you provide a background image URL in the composed look to a non-compressed image, the image will be compressed and the compressed image will be referenced when the composed look is applied.
The only way to support a high resolution background image is to reference it in CSS, overriding the composed look background image. I have found that the best way to do this is with the following two CSS rules. The second prevents the background being used in dialogs which occasionally don’t use the transparent overlay and can become unusable otherwise.
If the image needs to be changed later, a new image with the same name can uploaded to replace the current one. The issue with this approach is that client browsers may have cached the background image and will continue to use the cached image until the cache expires (could be years, if hosted outside of SharePoint, or will be 24 hours if hosted in the Style Library) or the user manually clears their browser cache. In order to force the browser to re-fetch the image a query string value should be appended (or amended, in the current example we are using ‘v=1.0’).
Note that if you are using theme-able CSS you may need to reapply the theme in order to apply changes to the CSS.
Yammer and SharePoint Online are becoming more and more integrated. Recently, with the Yammer Embed widget supporting SSO from Office 365 to Yammer, we are in a situation where we can perform actions against Yammer from SharePoint Online without requiring further authentication.
This opens up opportunities for utilising the Yammer SDK and Yammer REST API to build all kinds of Yammer interactions directly into your SharePoint pages. It also allows us to start implementing some of those anti-patterns that customers want but Yammer doesn’t want to support as they’re against ‘social freedom’. A prime example of this is forcing users into groups. In some scenarios it may be rather practical. I won’t discuss the pros and cons of this further but do consider that Microsoft would rather you coerce users socially to make their own decision to join the ‘correct’ groups rather than programmatically deciding for them.
Regardless of that, I’m going to provide an example which, upon page load, joins the current O365 user’s Yammer identity to a Yammer group based upon their SharePoint user profile.I’d like to point out that if Yammer Embed is present on the page and is enabled with Single Sign On, then the authentication piece can be hidden entirely from the user. I am currently unaware how to achieve SSO with Yammer from SharePoint Online without pigging-backing Yammer Embed, although I haven’t looked in earnest so I suspect it’s achievable without too much effort.
A few notes on the code:
Add the first code snippet to a page with a Script Editor web part. It calls the initiation code and any configurations can be provided here, and modified when live
The second code snippet contains all the logic. This can be included to the page in any manner you wish but you must ensure it has loaded prior to running the init function
In order to use the Yammer SDK you must register a Yammer app on the target network and provide the client ID as the data-app-id attribute on the script element which includes it
Each user must authorise the Yammer app, just once, before it can act in their behalf. I have implemented this as a status message, an example of which can be seen in the image below
Each user must authorise the Yammer App to act on their behalf
The code references ‘hut Id’ which is just a value stored in user’s profile and which is used to map a user to a Yammer group
I use local storage to prevent the code executing more often than every 24 hours. This has been commented out for clarity, however I would recommend functionality such as this is re-implemented
The experience of signing into Yammer from SharePoint is different if SharePoint is hosted on-premise or online. Only when online is the same identity used and can an SSO experience be achieved. In contrast, on-prem, the disconnect between O365 and Yammer credentials allows users to to provide credentials for any Yammer user in any Yammer network rather than being restricted to the associated identity
And finally, the code:
Finally, for completeness, here is a the settings object which I pass to Yammer Embed to achieve SSO with Yammer from SharePoint Online. I find that in practice anywhere I would want to run the above code I also have a feed of some sort that is appropriate to display. If this is not the case for you, hiding the feed with display:none will achieve the same result as long as the width of the Yammer Embed is equal to or greater than 400px. Note that this is *not* required, however without it the user may be prompted to provide their Yammer credentials.
I found myself encountering the following error when authenticating to SharePoint Online using CSOM from PowerShell:
Exception calling “ExecuteQuery” with “0” argument(s): “For security reasons DTD is prohibited in this XML document. To enable DTD processing set the DtdProcessing property on XmlReaderSettings to Parse and pass the settings into XmlReader.Create method.”
I believe that there a number of causes for this issue some of which are firewall and ISP related. This may only resolve a subset of the cases where this issue has been arising, even under the same circumstances.
In my scenario, I found that this issue was only arising when the credentials I was passing were being federated. That is, when the username was *not* in form <me>@<domain>.onmicrosoft.com but rather something like <me>@<domain>.co.uk. It is also possible that this issue resolves itself after a single successful authentication has occurred. Try providing credentials for a *.onmicrosoft.com account, and if that works try again with a federated account. This is discussed more later.
I used Fiddler to compare the request/response trace from a successful authentication and one where this error occurs. It turns out that somewhere internally a request is made to msoid.<full-domain> where <full-domain> is the bit after the @ symbol from the username provided. In the case where this value is of the *.onmicrosoft.com variety, a 502 error (no DNS entry)Â is returned with no request body and the authentication proceeds successfully. In the other case, the ‘msoid’ URL is resolved and a response with a request body is returned.
In my case the response was a 301 error (permanent relocation), however I read of cases where a 200 (success) has been received. Importantly to note, is that the response, success or otherwise, returns an HTML body containing a DTD (Document Type Declaration), and in turn produces the rather unhelpful error message.
So how do you fix it? Well one way is to provide an entry in your hosts file which ensure that the msoid URL will be invalid. I found that providing a local host entry for it worked. Your hosts file can be found here: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
I added a line which looks like the following:
127.0.0.1 Â Â Â Â msoid.<domain>.co.uk
And it worked! Intriguingly I found that if I then removed this line from my hosts file, SharePoint Online authentication from PowerShell continued to work. It is for this reason that I suggested trying to use a *.onmicrosoft.com account first at the begging of this post – just in case it resolves the issue for you without touching the hosts file. Please comment if you have any success (or otherwise) with that approach.
