Category: SharePoint 2013

Collab365 MicroJobs: I will build you a Dev Farm in Azure

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If you’re struggling to find help or keep up to date with Microsoft SharePoint then I will build you a basic SharePoint 2013/2016/2019 Dev farm in Azure.

I am now a registered Freelancer on Collab365 MicroJobs – the brand new marketplace dedicated to Microsoft professionals.

Here are 4 reasons that the Collab365 Team have spent months building the site:

  1. You often need expert Microsoft help just for a couple of hours.
  2. You can’t keep up with everything Microsoft is releasing.
  3. You find it hard to find Microsoft experts on other non-dedicated sites. There are just too many other subjects covered.
  4. You don’t have time to go through a lengthy interview process.

I personally love the concept and have actually just posted a MicroJob. Here are the details…

How I can help you …


Building out a SharePoint farm to use as a Dev/Test environment can be a long tedious process.  It also usually requires hardware resources that aren\’t always available.  Using Azure you can spin up new VMs relatively quickly, but installing and configuring SharePoint can still take a significant amount of time.  There are pre-built Azure templates, but these often don\’t provide the flexibility needed to configure a specific environment.
Using a combination of PowerShell and Desired State Configuration (DSC) we will design and build a basic  server farm consisting of three (3) virtual machines (AD, SQL, and SharePoint) to your specifications.  The farm will include the following:

  • One (1) Active Directory domain controller configured to the domain name of your choice containing ten (10) Service accounts to support installation of SQL and SharePoint
  • One (1) SQL server configured using a domain service account to support SharePoint
  • One (1) SharePoint 2013, 2016 or 2019 server
  • Up to three (3) Web Applications
  • Up to ten (10) Site Collections
  • Core Service Applications (Application Management, Managed Metadata, Search, Secure Store, State, Subscription Settings,  Usage, & User Profile)

Not included:

  • Configuration of Office 365 hybrid
  • Configuration of SQL reporting services
  • Configuration of Office Online Server

How does it work and what about payment?
Paying for online services with people that you don’t know can be worrying for both parties. The buyer often doesn’t want to pay until they’re happy that the Freelancer has completed the work. Likewise the Freelancer wants to be sure they will be recompensed for their time and commitment. Collab365 MicroJobs helps both the buyer and the Freelancer in these ways:

  1. The buyer pays up front and the money is securely held in the MicroJobs Stripe Connect platform account.
  2. The Freelancer can then begin the work in the knowledge that the payment has been made.
  3. Once the buyer is happy that the work is complete and to their satisfaction, the funds become available to the Freelancer.
  4. There’s even a dispute management function in case of a disagreement. But it won’t on my MicroJob! As long as we agree what’s needed up front and keep talking the entire way through, you won’t be disappointed.

Note: Once I’ve completed the work, I’d love it if you could write a review for me. This will allow others to see what a fantastic job I did for you.
What if we need to add extra’s to the job after I’ve started?
It’s really easy for us to discuss your extra requirement (using the chat feature on the site) and for us to agree a price and add it to the order.
If you’d like me to help you, here are the steps to hire me …

  1. View my MicroJob.
  2. On that page click the “Buy” button.
  3. You’ll need to register as a buyer on the MicroJobs site, but this only takes a minute and will also allow you to purchase MicroJobs from other awesome Freelancers.

If you need to contact me then please use the “contact” button and ask me any questions before purchasing.

Dogfood Conference 2015 Wrap-up and Slides

Dogfood2015I really enjoyed my time at the Dogfood Conference in Columbus last week. The attendees were great and all three of my talks were well received. I want to express my thanks to the conference organizers and the attendees for the wonderful conference. I really enjoyed myself this year and I hope to be invited back to speak again next year.

I had lots of attendees at both sessions who asked for the slides so I’ve uploaded them here.  You can also get them from the conference.  You can download a PDF of the slides from each talk using the links below:

Intro to Yammer: Redefining Enterprise Social

Intro to Office Graph and Delve: Finding what you want before you know you need it

SharePoint 2013 “Apps” 101: A Basic Introduction


Managing External Sharing in Office 365 – Part 2

Office365This is the second in a series of posts that is reviewing details about how to manage External Sharing in Office 365.  This post will cover the process of what happens from the time you fill in the sharing dialog to share a site or document with another user until that user accesses the site.  For the purpose of this overview we won’t get into the specifics of how this process differs for an external user.  We’ll cover that in the third installment of this series.  If you haven’t read the first post in the series you can access it through the links below:

  • Part 1 – A high level walk-through of how to configure external sharing starting with your O365 tenant and going down to an individual site collection.
  • Part 2 – (This Post) How the process flow of sharing differs between sharing a site versus sharing a document and how Office 365 adjusts this experience
  • Part 3 – How external sharing depends on the site collection access request list to manage permissions for an external sharing invitation
  • Part 4 – How to use PowerShell to manage external users

How Sharing Works

To understand how external sharing works you first need to understand what happens when a user shares a document or site.  In this post we’ll trace the process that SharePoint goes through whenever something is shared.  We’ll take a look at what permissions are required to share a site or document and explain what the user experience is for a user who receives a sharing request.  Along the way we’ll discover that there is a significant difference between the experience of the recipient when receiving an invitation to share a site versus share a specific document.  We’ll also point out a potential difference in the experience between sharing in Office 365 versus an On-premises SharePoint environment. Note:  we’ll dig more into the differences between SharePoint On-line and SharePoint On-premises in Part 3 of this series.

Sharing a Site

If you are the Site Collection Administrator (SCA) or Site Owner (SO) the process for sharing a site or a document is the same.

Speaking at the Columbus Buckeye SPUG

BuckeyeSPUG_TranspI will be speaking at the Columbus Buckeye SharePoint Users Group on Thursday, January 16th. The meeting will start at 5:30pm. My topic will be "Share, Follow, and Sync: How SharePoint 2013 uses Personal MySites for Social functionality”. Here’s a brief description of the talk:

Prior to SharePoint 2013 many organizations built a MySite Host but never implemented personal MySite storage. This was a very viable strategy in 2010. But with the introduction of the Social features in SharePoint 2013 things have changed. In this talk we’ll review all the new "Social" features in SharePoint 2013 that depend on personal MySites. We’ll also look at how to control and manage personal MySites in your organization and discuss how future integration with Yammer may change this requirement. 

Next Buckeye SPUG Meeting: Jan 16th – 5:30 pm @ the Microsoft Polaris Office

Agenda

5:30pm – 6:00pm –> Food Sponsor’s Presentation

6:00pm – 6:30pm –> Community Time

6:30pm – 7:30pm –> My Talk

7:30pm +           —> SharePint @ The Pub

MCM, MCSM, and MCA Programs Cancelled

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Less than two months after Microsoft announced a major change to the Microsoft Certified Masters (MCSM formerly known as MCM) program they’ve dropped another bombshell on the community. At the end of June Microsoft abruptly announced that they were removing all the pre-requisites from taking the MCSM Knowledge Exams and Qualification Lab to make the certification available to more people.  Last night at about 1:00 AM Eastern Time they sent out an email to all currently certified MCMs, MCSMs, and MCAs to give them the bad news that as of October 1, 2013 (Yes, that’s only 30 days from now) all the MCSM and MCA certification exams and training will be retired and the certification will no longer be offered.  Here’s the beginning of the email:

We are contacting you to let you know we are making a change to the Microsoft Certified Master, Microsoft Certified Solutions Master, and Microsoft Certified Architect certifications. As technology changes so do Microsoft certifications and as such, we are continuing to evolve the Microsoft certification program. Microsoft will no longer offer Masters and Architect level training rotations and will be retiring the Masters level certification exams as of October 1, 2013.

Words cannot express how deeply disappointed I am by this news.  The MCSM community has helped me several times in the last few months alone to find the answers to SharePoint problems that I’ve experienced in the projects I work on.  And I hope that I’ve helped some of my other MCMs with their problems.  After the news earlier this summer I was trying to decide whether recertifying my MCSM: SharePoint certification was worth it or not.  I had just about made up my mind that it was and had started talking to my management about getting the time to go back to training (one of the best parts of the program) to complete my recertification before time was up next June.  I guess I don’t have to worry about that anymore.  Crying face