SharePoint: Two Secrets for Typing Two Letter Names

 

SharePoint 2013 took away the people picker search tool and replaced it with an autocomplete feature. Type a few letters and matching names appear.

The problem is that this only works when you have typed the third letter of the name. With only two letters SharePoint just sits there patiently and does nothing useful.

 

But there is a way…

Two secrets for two letter names...

• Type the two letters and a space. Name will pop up.
• Type the two letters and a semicolon. Name will be auto completed.

 

The semicolon trick also works when you have typed enough to uniquely identify a single user or group. In my farm I only have one "Robert". Typing "rob;" automatically finds him. Typing "sale;" finds and adds the "Sales" AD group.

 

 

 

.

SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati - SharePoint 2013 Search Results Customization

 

SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati is almost here! In fact… it's tomorrow. I thought I'd do something a little different this time and put out a little teaser on my topic. To be fair though… there's 19 other cool topics planned for Saturday, just click here to see the schedule.  Register NOW!   http://bit.ly/1DAprtv

 

So a bit about my presentation…

SharePoint 2013 Search Results Customization

Let's start with a problem… Our users can't find a certain kind of document; for example, PowerPoint presentations about our R&D projects. And when they find them, they don't know which ones are highly confidential, and more than once they have shared them with the wrong people.

And then a solution…

• Create Site Columns for consistent metadata and to support Managed Property searches such as"ResearchGroup=aviation".
• Configure the search schema to support friendly property names and the ability to search using "<" and ">" on dates and numbers.
• Create a Content Type to ensure document classification and to collect important metadata.
• Create a Display Template to add useful information to the search results, and display our Governance policies for R&D documents. ("Warning… confidential content. Do not share!")
• Create a Result Type to map the Content Type to the Display Template.
• Create a user friendly and governance friendly search results page.

All in an hour! 

 

See you there!

 

.

SharePoint: Who can't you hide things from?

 

You just created a new subsite. You broke inheritance. You removed all of the inherited permissions. You gave only three people access.

Can anyone else see this site?

Yup…

• Your Site Collection Administrator.
• People granted Web Application level "super user" permission policies by the server administrators. These roles are often called "Auditors" and "Super Administrators".
• Server administrators who have granted themselves "super user" permissions.
• Any administrator using the farm service account. (Never a best practice.)
• Any one who your team members have "Shared" with!  (see below)
• The SQL Database Administrator. (we never directly query the tables… right?)

 

Site Collection Administrators

When a new Site Collection is created the server administrator can assign people to two roles named Primary Owner and Secondary Owner. These two users can see and change everything in site collection, unless some permission has been denied by Web Application level user policies.

These two Site Collection Administrators can add as many other people to the list of Site Collection Administrators as they like. Only the Primary and Secondary will receive site alert emails, all of these admins have Full Control over everything in the Site Collection. For more interesting things about these extra admins, see: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2012/12/fun-and-games-with-site-collection.html.

 

Web Application Level "Super User" Permission Policies

Server administrators can define Web Application level policies and broadly give or remove permissions. These policies overrule anything done at the Site Collection or subsite levels. Here's a few examples:

• Remove the "Create Subsites" permission from all users.
• Remove the "Manage Lists" permission from everyone in the Active Directory Sales Managers group.
• Make a user an "Auditor" with rights to see everything in the entire Web Application. Yes, everything, including permissions and everything in the Site Settings page.
• Make a user a "Super Administrator" with the ability to change anything in the Site Collection, and even run in "stealth mode" with all changes listed as "by System Account".

 

Team Member Sharing – Members are security admins???

In SharePoint 2013 Online, users given the "Edit" permission level can share the site or anything in any list or library in the site where they have that permission level. All they have to do is click one of the many "Share" buttons or links. This one should really scare you! All they have to do is click the Share at the top of the page, and they have shared the entire site without site owner approval. If they click Share on a document or list item, then they have broken inheritance on that item, and then shared it!  The same user in SharePoint on-premises is only creating an "access request". See how to hide the share buttons here: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2015/08/hiding-evil-sharepoint-2013-share.html

A bit odd, while the user with the "Edit" permission can "share" a full site or a single list item, then cannot share a list or library. If they guess the URL to "Permissions for this document library" they get "access denied".

SharePoint Online/Office 365 vs. On Premises:

	On Premises	Online
Member clicks the site level Share button	Creates an "access request" – site owner needs to approve	Adds new user to the Members group with usually has the Edit permission level
Member clicks the list or library item Share button	Creates an "access request" – site owner needs to approve. If approved, breaks inheritance and adds permissions for the new user.	Breaks inheritance and adds permissions for the new user.
Member guesses the URL to the People and Groups page…	Can only see the list of users in the groups.	Can remove users from groups!

So… Consider editing the "Edit" permission level and removing the "Manage Lists" permission!

 

 

 

.

New SharePoint 2013 Search for Power Users Class

 

I'm very pleased to announce my latest Courseware Marketplace course! 55141AC SharePoint 2013 Search for Power Users. While the class has not shown up yet on the Microsoft Learning site, it should be here shortly. MCTs can download it today at https://shop.courseware-marketplace.com. You can attend it soon at Microsoft training centers around the world.

If you can't find the class near you, you can attend the class in Cincinnati or remotely at MAX.

 

Oh, don't forget the administrators! We have a SharePoint 2013 search class just for them: 55122AC Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Search Administration. If you can't find the class near you, you can attend the class in Cincinnati or remotely at MAX.

 

.

Using SharePoint Search To Find Sites You Have Access To

Did you ever wonder if there's more to SharePoint? Sites you may have permissions to, but no one ever told you about? Sites like the rumored jokes site and the "free stuff" site? You can use search to find these sites!
ContentClass is a SharePoint 2013 Managed Property that is used to find many SharePoint things by their "type". Two ContentClass values of interest when searching for sites are "STS_Site" and "STS_Web".
Tip: For more on what you can do with ContentClass see SharePoint Power Searching Using ContentClass and also here: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2015/02/sharepoint-2013-list-and-library.html

STS_Site

The STS_Site property is used to find site collections, or actually just find the top level sites of site collections. To list all of the top level sites that you have permissions to see, search for "ContentClass:STS_Site". (See warning below!)

My test user Sam found 8 site collections and my administrator account found 38.

STS_Web

The STS_Web property is used to find subsites. To list all of the subsites that you have permissions to see, search for "ContentClass:STS_Site". (See warning below!)

Sam found 9 subsites while my administrator account found 158.

Find all sites you have access to…

Just combine both searches with an "OR" to show all of the sites you have access to. (Remember that Boolean operators like AND, OR and NOT must be in UPPER case.)

Adding Keywords

A little tip: If you add keyword to your STS_Web and STS_Site queries you will not be searching content in the site. You instead will be searching for that keyword as a property of the home page or content that might be displayed on the home page. The following search will only return results when "plane" in somewhere on the home page of the site:

Warn'n matey, here be dragons, or at least duplicates…

SharePoint 2013 search hides duplicates by default and treats many of the things returned by STS_Site and STS_Web as duplicates. Over half of my subsites are missing using an out of the box search! Administrators can fix this little issue by following the "Option 2" steps here: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2015/04/sharepoint-2013-search-weirdness-part-1.html.

STS_Site <> SPSite

A note to developers and administrators: SPS_Site is not the same as SPSite. It's actually finding SPWebs, but only finding those that are top level webs.

.

SharePoint 2013 Search Weirdness – Part 3: When do Daily and Weekly Search Alerts Get Sent?

 

A continuation of the "Search Weirdness" series!

---

 

Search Alerts are Different!

Unlike list and library alerts:

• You cannot create them for other people. There's no place to type an email address.
• You cannot request an immediate alert.
• You cannot pick a time:

List / Library alert options:

Search Alert options:

 

So when are they run?

You would assume (always a dangerous thing to do) that Daily and Weekly summary search alerts would get created overnight. Turns out they get sent at an exact time, but a different one for each alert!

While working on a new SharePoint 2013 search class I was trying to find out which timer job created the alert emails and if I could set the time they are sent. TechNet documents only a single timer job, "Immediate Alerts", that runs every five minutes. While I could change that interval, I could not find an option for the "nightly jobs". Turns out there isn't any such thing.

I had always assumed (again, dangerous) that these ran overnight. The only documentation I had found in TechNet only said this:

"The daily alerts will have a 24-hour day, date, and time span calculated and stored in the respective database table. A weekly alert will have a seven-day day, date, and time span calculated and stored as part of the individual alert record."

It just says "calculated" and does not say "when". Then I ran across this blog article by Chris Domino and the light bulb went off:

http://www.chrisdomino.com/blog/post/The-Truth-About-How-Daily-SharePoint-Alerts-Actually-Work

When you create a daily alert it is scheduled to run every day at the time you created the alert. I.e. You created the alert at 2:00PM, it will processed every day shortly after 2:00PM. The same applies to weekly alerts. You created the alert at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday, it will be processed every Tuesday at 2:00 PM. I went out and looked as the SQL tables (never do this at home!) and there it was, to the minute, scheduled 24 hours or 7 days in the future.

 

But that's for an on-premises SharePoint installation. Office 365 is different!

In my Office 365 tenant my daily alerts are initially scheduled 17 hours in the future and then every 24 hours after that. My guess is that Office 365 is using GMT. So when I schedule a daily alert at 3:45 PM it runs 8:45 AM every day. Five hours off. Hum…  would that mean my tenant is running in Central time? Don't know… just guessing…

 

Another day… another new thing to discover…

 

.

SharePoint 2013 Asset Library Secrets and Wierdness!

 

Asset Libraries are… weird. When you just upload videos using only the Upload button, and just view the videos, then all is good. But if you want the link to the video file, or you upload without the Upload button, or you want to search for all videos, then weirdness happens! Especially in Office 365 / SharePoint Online.

In this article:

• Finding the URL to an Asset library video.
• Two Three ways to upload a video, with TWO THREE different results!
• Searching Asset Libraries.

Finding the URL to an Asset library video

The Asset library does a pretty good job of hiding the full URL to a video file. A "video asset" item is actually a folder. The folder contains the video and supporting files like preview thumbnails.

So, if you upload a video named butterfly.wmv to http://yourSite/sites/demo/Assets the path to the video would be http://yourSite/sites/demo/Assets/butterfly/butterfly.wmv. If you changed the Name property while uploading the file to "Pretty bugs" the URL would then be http://yourSite/sites/demo/Assets/Pretty%20Bugs/butterfly.wmv.




There are two ways to discover the "real" URL, mouse over a download link or use SharePoint Designer.

Mouse over:

1. In SharePoint 2013, click the video to display the VideoPlayerPage.aspx page.
2. Mouse over the DOWNLOAD link and right-click and select Properties.
3. Copy the Address (URL), paste into Notepad and "un-escape" the SourceUrl parameter. (Not fun!)

 
SharePoint Designer:

1. Launch SharePoint Designer and open your site.
2. In the Navigation area click "All Files". (If you don't see All Files then your administrators may have partially locked down SPD.)
3. In the list of files and folders click the Assets library.
4. Find and click your video (you will see the "Name" as entered in the file's properties during upload, not the file name.)
5. Find the video file, right-click it and click Properties.
6. Copy the Location.

If you just want to display the video in the page using a Media Web Part:

1. Edit the page.
2. Click INSERT.
3. Click Web Part.
4. From the Media and Content category select Media Web Part and click Add.
5. Edit the web part (click the web part's dropdown).
6. From the MEDIA ribbon click Change Media.
7. Click From SharePoint and navigate to your assets library and pick a video.

 

Two Three ways to upload a video, with TWO THREE different results!

Uploading a file to a library is just uploading a file, right?
The Upload Button
Click the Upload button and the video will be uploaded as a full featured "Asset Library Video"!  A folder will be created with the "Name" entered by the user and the video will be stored in that folder with the original file name.


(I didn't have Silverlight loaded on the test workstation.)
 
The Upload Button (with a duplicate file!)
Here again, Office 365 is different than On Premise. With 365 if you upload the same file again, using the Upload button, you won't get a "Duplicate" error, it will just upload the file as an ordinary library file, but with a default Content Type of "Video Rendition". BUT… click OK and the file disappears! No error messages, just no file in the library! (Best guess… there was a server side error when trying to create the duplicate folder and no error was returned to the user.) With On Premise the upload just seems to freeze and never completes.
 

Drag and Drop (Office 365 / SharePoint Online only!)
Note: This is only a problem in Office 365!
Drag a video from Windows Explorer onto the Asset Library page and you will get a "plain old library file" with the Content Type set to "Image". (Image is the default Content Type.)

• If you edit the properties of the file you can only change the Content Type to "Image" or "Audio".
• SharePoint does not stop and ask for any metadata and simply uploads the file and assigns the "Image" Content Type.
• There is no folder created.
• Clicking this video only displays its properties. The link there only offers to download it, not display it in the browser.

You can actually upload the same video twice, once as an Asset Library Video and once as a "plain old library file". Remember that the Asset Library Video is really a folder.
 
 
 

Searching Asset Libraries

If you search an asset library by file extension you will not find any Asset Library Videos. You will only file the "plain old library file" videos that were uploaded using Office 365 drag and drop. The examples below are from the library's search box, but you get the same results from the site search box or the Enterprise Search Center.

   
  
Search by file extension will find other file types uploaded to the Asset library:
   
  
Best way to search? Cover all of the bases! Use the Videos vertical in the Enterprise Search Center or the following search (borrowed from the Local Videos result source).

searchKeywordsHere
AND
(
 ContentTypeId:0x0120D520A808* 
 OR ContentTypeId:0x010100F3754F12A9B6490D9622A01FE9D8F012* 
 OR (
     SecondaryFileExtension=wmv OR 
     SecondaryFileExtension=avi OR 
     SecondaryFileExtension=mpg OR 
     SecondaryFileExtension=asf OR 
     SecondaryFileExtension=mp4 OR 
     SecondaryFileExtension=ogg OR 
     SecondaryFileExtension=ogv OR 
     SecondaryFileExtension=webm OR 
     SecondaryFileExtension=mov
    )
)

The first content type for "Video" as found in the Asset libraries. The second content type is for the Office 365 Video Portal videos. The "*" is added to include any content types you create that inherit from these two.

Takeaways

• In an Asset library there are "videos" and "Asset Library Videos". Which you get depends on how you upload them.
• "Asset Library Videos" files are well hidden in a folder and their true URLs can only be discovered using SharePoint Designer, PowerShell, code or from the "DOWNLOAD" link in the videoplayerpage.aspx page.
• Searching for videos where the videos could be in a library, an Asset Library or an Office 365 Video Portal is best done using the "Videos" vertical in the Enterprise Search Center.

.