Item-Level Permissions in SharePoint Online using Power Automate

As you fellow SharePoint gurus already know, SharePoint 2010 Workflows will be retired this year. This of course also means that we will eventually lose the all important 'Replace List Item Permissions' action in SharePoint Designer, which essentially gave us the ability to implement automated item-level permissions for a SharePoint library or list. I recently took the time over a weekend to evaluate any good alternative (non 3rd party) solutions that I could think of, and it appears that Power Automate is now the best way to go. However, there is one drawback to this new approach -- you can only assign Edit or Read level permissions to any given item in a SharePoint library or list.

1. Go to the Power Automate site, which at the time of this article is located at https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us. Be sure to login.

2. Create a new automated blank flow using the 'When an item is created' SharePoint trigger.

3. Add the remaining logic as shown in the screenshot below.

NOTES:  1) The ID is available in the dynamic content section that appears once you click inside the 'Id' field in your flow.  2) I also used the dynamic content section for the Recipients, but you can manually type in email addresses as long as you separate them with a semicolon.

SharePoint Online Wiki Homepage: Change Top Suite Bar Color (CSS)

To change the color of the top suite bar on a SharePoint Online Wiki homepage, add a Script Editor web part to the page and add the following CSS code:

#suiteBarTop, #O365_NavHeader, #O365_AppName, #O365_MainLink_NavMenu, #O365_MainLink_Bell, #O365_MainLink_Settings, #O365_MainLink_Help, #O365_MainLink_Me  

{

background: #0078d4 !important;

}

That's it. Enjoy.

SharePoint Roles are Business Roles, Not IT Roles

SharePoint is a platform for BUSINESS SOLUTIONS. Without business purpose, SharePoint is worthless. And because SharePoint professionals work so closely with the core areas of business (accounting, business development, finance, operations, etc.), I wholeheartedly believe SharePoint roles are business roles, not IT roles.

Just a little 'food for thought' for the next time you are planning to hire a SharePoint professional.

That is all for this post.

Quick Tip: Add 'Find a file' search box to Document Library Web Part

Another Quick Tip:

To add the 'Find a file' search box to a document library web part on a page, simply edit the web part, expand the Miscellaneous section, and select the checkbox to "Display search box". That's it.

If only Microsoft made everything that easy! :)

Have a great day.

Lesson Learned: Three-state workflow feature is the IssueTrackingWorkflow feature

Recently I had an issue in which I could not deploy a new solution to a SharePoint 2016 on-premises site collection due to a dependent feature not being activated: the IssueTrackingWorkflow feature, which has a GUID of "fde5d850-671e-4143-950a-87b473922dc7". After a few hours of research, I discovered that this feature is actually the "Three-state workflow" site collection feature. After activating this feature on the site collection, I was able to successfully deploy the new solution without any issues. Here are few tips:

To see if a site collection feature is activated, here is the PowerShell script:

Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell"
$featureGuid = "fde5d850-671e-4143-950a-87b473922dc7"
$site = Get-SPSite http://SiteCollectionUrl
$feature = $site.Features[$featureGuid]
if ($feature -eq $null) { "feature not activated" } else { "feature activated" }

To active the site collection feature in PowerShell:

$site = Get-SPSite http://SiteCollectionUrl
$site | Get-SPSite -limit all | ForEach-Object {Enable-SPFeature -Identity "fde5d850-671e-4143-950a-87b473922dc7" -Url $_.Url}
$site.Dispose()

Done.

SharePoint Online: Cannot create a new classic site collection

Today I ran into an issue in SharePoint Online in which I could not create a new site collection using one of the classic templates. The SharePoint Administration Center allowed me to perform the steps to create the new site collection (many times, actually), but it never would actually provision it. After a bit of troubleshooting, I realized that I had initially created the new site collection using the modern experience, and I immediately deleted it. I then discovered that by default, SharePoint Online now temporarily holds deleted sites under an area named 'Deleted Sites,' and the only way to permanently delete the site collection is to run the following command in the SharePoint Online Management Shell.

Remove-SPODeletedSite -Identity https://company.sharepoint.com/sites/sitecollection

After running this command, the site collection is permanently deleted, and the URL suffix (alias) is now available for you to use again for your new classic site collection.

Have a great day.

SharePoint Online External Sharing on Subsites: "Your organization's policies don't allow you to share with these users. Go to External Sharing in the Office 365 admin center to enable it."

Scenario: You enable external sharing for a site collection in SharePoint Online. You notice that you can share externally on the parent site, but not any of its subsites.

Solution: You simply need to deactivate the 'Limited-access user permission lockdown mode' site collection feature, as shown in the screenshot below.

That is all.

Content Search Web Part: Open Links in New Tab

Just a quick post on how to configure a Content Search Web Part to open links in a new tab. See steps below.

1. Using SharePoint Designer, copy an existing item display template in order to create your own custom item display template (Site Settings > Master pages and layouts > Display Templates > Content Web Parts). For my needs, I usually copy the Item_TwoLines.html file. NOTE: You only need to copy the HTML file, not the JavaScript file (.js file) associated with the HTML file.

2. Edit the properties of your copied HTML file and give it a unique Name, Title, and Description.

3. Using SharePoint Designer, check-out your new HTML file, and edit it. Find the line of code as shown below, and add target="_blank".

4. Save the file, check it in, and publish it.
5. Edit your Content Search Web Part. Under the 'Display Templates' section, select the title of your custom item display template in the Item drop-down menu, and select the OK button to save your web part configuration.

Links should now open in a new tab.