Category: Office 365

SharePoint 2016 Team SItes and Groups – It All Comes Together

Published May 4, 2016

SharePoint is back. With a vengeance.

For the past few years, SharePoint has been relegated to a supporting role within Office 365. It even lost its identity a few years back, with the name “SharePoint” being replaced by the bland “Sites”. This has been exacerbated recently by the rise of Groups (referred to either as Outlook Groups or Office 365 Groups). If Groups are the way forward, what value can SharePoint provide?

A lot, as it turns out.

Office 365 Groups

I refer to them as Office 365 Groups, because they incorporate elements from multiple Office 365 products. However, they are also referred to as Outlook Groups, which is the name of the mobile app. The interesting thing is that if you scratch the surface of the Groups user interface in either OneDrive or OneNote, you can see pretty quickly that it’s really a SharePoint site, or more specifically a site collection. Just look at the URL.

In SharePoint, a Group is a specific type of site collection with a single document library for files (the OneDrive), and a library for other supporting files (including the Group OneNote). The difference is that a Group is what it is – it can’t be extended or modified to any significant degree. You can’t even access the All Content or site settings by adding “/_layouts/15/viewlsts.aspx” to the site URL (if you try, you get redirected to the main OneDrive view of the Group). SharePoint is really just there as the container. This can be frustrating, because as anyone that has worked with SharePoint knows, it can be much, much more.

The introduction of Groups initially caused confusion, particularly for users of SharePoint team sites, or Yammer. Was OneDrive replacing SharePoint (which is kind of silly… OneDrive IS SharePoint)? Did the new Exchange based conversations mean that Yammer was dead? Those questions have been hanging out there unanswered for quite some time.

Once I understood them, I came to really like Office 365 Groups. They bring together multiple tools into a single coherent location with a clear security boundary, and they are relatively simple to manage. One of the criticisms of Groups has been that there is no single central UI. Groups are manifested in Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, OneNote and Power BI, but there’s really no central starting point for a group. It’s like a city of suburbs in search of a downtown.

There have been more than a few detractors of Groups as well. Most of them relate to their immaturity. The Outlook conversations provide excellent email integration (obviously) but were not as full featured as Yammer in other ways. There have been several others, but the biggest complaint seems to me to be the fact that a SharePoint team site provides much more functionality than a simple OneDrive library. These factors have been a significant blocker for the adoption of Office 365 Groups.

That all changed with the Future of SharePoint event on May 4, 2016.

The New Team Sites

Team sites have been the traditional place for groups of people to work in the world of SharePoint. These sites would be decorated with web parts, both in and out of the box in order to augment their capabilities, and to provide a window into other team based content structures such as calendars, custom lists, reports, etc. Team sites have always seemed like the logical starting place for group data, and now they are.

Beginning in mid 2016, whenever a new group is created, a new team site will be created as well. Conversely, a new team site will create an Office 365 Group, with all of its components (OneDrive, OneNote, Mail address, Planner, Power BI Workspace). To be totally clear, this new style of team site is a SharePoint site collection, and not a subsite (or web), which means that its security details are bound to that of the group.

Yammer users may wonder what this means for the previously announced integration with both Groups and Azure Active Directory. Nothing was announced at the event, so this is pure speculation on my part, but I would have to assume that if there is to be a 1:1 correspondence between Office 365 Groups, and Yammer groups, that Yammer will be a part of this as well. Given SharePoint’s strengths, I can only assume that this will be the place that all non conversational Yammer content is stored (files, calendars, etc.

The new team site will intrinsically integrate many of the things that formerly needed to be added on later, and the new Office 365 connectors mean that many other content sources can be added with a minimum of effort.

External Sharing

While both SharePoint and Yammer have had external sharing for several years now, and Yammer now has external groups (with a lowercase g…), Office 365 groups have been restricted to members of the tenant’s Azure Active Directory. Therefore, if we now have a 1:1 correspondence between Groups and team sites, and we are also able to use Yammer as the conversations provider, Office 365 groups need to accommodate external users.

The good news is that soon, they will. Thanks to Wictor Wilen’s sharp eye, we can see in the Office 365 admin center that as of this writing, the infrastructure to support external access to groups has already rolled out. Coincidentally (or not), Yammer support of external groups also rolled out in the same timeframe.

The new SharePoint team sites, and their integration with Groups will give Office 365 that entry point that so many have been missing. It is exceedingly easy, and fast to get up and running with a usable site that is automatically integrated across the platform. When you create a Group, you not only have the AAD group, but a team site, a calendar, a distribution list, a conversation platform, a Planner Plan and a Power BI workspace. At the same time, it brings SharePoint back out of the shadows, and back in to the limelight.

SharePoint is back at the center of Office 365, and it’s better than ever.

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OneDrive, TwoDrive, ThreeDrive

Published December 1, 2015

I’m calling it ThreeDrive now.

The much ballyhooed “Next Generation Sync Client for OneDrive for Business rolled out with the Windows 10 November update. You’d be excused for not noticing, because it looks pretty much the same as the old OneDrive consumer client. In fact, it IS the new OneDrive consumer client as well but it supports OneDrive for Business too. It’s not obvious that it supports OneDrive for Business because as of this writing, it requires a registry key entry. If you sign up for the OneDrive for Business preview, you’ll get the new sync client and the instructions, but for convenience, the key is:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OneDrive] – “EnableAddAccounts”=dword:00000001

Presumably, at some point that registry key will be switched on for everyone by an update. Once it has been added, when you open the OneDrive settings, you will now see an option to add a business account.

Once added, your Office 365 OneDrive will be synchronized using the same (more robust) engine as the consumer client, you’ll be able to do selective sync of folders, etc. Once you add your business account, you’ll see two sync “clouds” in your system tray, one blue, and one white. White is your consumer OneDrive, and blue your OneDrive for Business.

I’m pretty sure that this brings us to TwoDrive. You’ll also get (at least) two entries in your Windows File explorer, one for Personal, and one for your corporate OneDrive. If you connect multiple Office 365 accounts, you’ll get multiple blue cloud icons, and multiple explorer entries.

I don’t know why the consumer client icon is blue, but it is what it is. To me, white would help with understanding. We do however have a single sync client! Well, not so fast. If I need to sync SharePoint libraries from either on-prem or Office 365, I will still need the older OneDrive for Business sync client, with all of the same limitations. This is also true for the OneDrives contained in an Office 365 group.

Once that’s installed, by syncing a library, you’ll get another blue cloud icon that is indistinguishable from the icons created by the new sync client, and you’ll get an entry in File Explorer for SharePoint.

Everything should be working at this point. However, although I have gotten my head around this, I find it pretty confusing, and I work in this environment for a living. I know that I’m not alone, I recently spent about an hour with my friend and fellow MVP Marc Anderson helping him get his head around it, so it’s certainly not simple.

I am quite happy to see the new sync client, and the harmonization that it brings. I also know that the need for the old OneDrive for Business sync client will go away as the new client gains the ability to sync with SharePoint libraries and Group based OneDrives. I personally use cloud based storage solutions from a number of vendors, and they all have strengths and weaknesses. OneDrive is still the best deal out there, and it’s also the best solution for corporate sharing. I am however concerned about the complexity. I can imagine the following future conversation with a customer.

Me: You should really look at OneDrive for Business for offline access to your content

Customer: Oh, I have OneDrive already. Didn’t Microsoft just limit its storage capacity?

M: No – they had only turned on unlimited storage for a small test group. They just decided not to move forward with it as earlier announced. Besides, that’s only for the consumer OneDrive, not OneDrive for Business.

C: So they’re not the same thing?

M: No – OneDrive is a consumer product, and you log into it with a Microsoft account. OneDrive for Business is a business product, and you get it with an Office 365 business account. You need a corporate account to use it. It gives each person that uses it 1 TB of storage.

C: So if it’s they’re different things, why are they both called OneDrive?

M: I know. Never mind.

C: OK, so how do I get them both working?

M: Well, you have the November update for Windows 10, right? All that you need to do is to go into your OneDrive settings, and add your business account.

C: Oh, so they use the same sync client?

M: Yes. That’s fairly new. There used to be an exclusive OneDrive for Business client, but you don’t need it now.

C: OK. (adds the business account) So how do I work with it?

M: You see those two cloud icons in your tray? The white one is your consumer account, and the blue one is your business account.

C: I thought that it was one sync client. Why are there two icons?

M: That’s so you can see the two different repositories. They are both driven by the same sync engine. It makes sense.

C: OK, cool. And how do I access my files?

M: Just open up File Explorer. The one that says OneDrive – Personal is your consumer account. The one that says OneDrive – your company name is your business OneDrive.

C: So the business one is my personal OneDrive in Office 365?

M: Yes. I know… the term “Personal” is a bit confusing, but it is what it is.

C: That’s fine. Why is personal cloud icon blue in File Explorer but not in the tray?

M: I have no idea

C: OK – so how do I sync my Office 365 Group OneDrives?

M: Oh. Remember when I mentioned the old sync client? You’ll need that to sync those. The new client doesn’t support them yet, but it will.

C: I thought the old one doesn’t work very well?

M: It’s not as good, but it’ll do for this purpose.

C: OK, how do I install that?

M: You have Office installed, so you already have it. Just open up the OneDrive in your browser, and click on the sync icon.

C: OK (does it). So how do I know it’s working?

M: Open up your tray. See that you have another blue cloud icon? That’s the older sync client.

C: How do I tell the difference between this and the other one?

M: Just hover over the icon. The one that’s just called OneDrive for Business is the older engine. The one that contains your company name is the new one.

C: Am I going to get another icon for every OneDrive that I sync?

M: No – in this case, they all use the same icon. If you hover over and select open the folder, you’ll see what’s syncing.

C: OK. So where do I find my files?

M: Open up File Explorer. Under your two OneDrives, you’ll see a new entry for SharePoint. Click on that, and you’ll see your content.

C: What’s SharePoint?

M: *sigh*

I really quite like OneDrive, and what it can do. It’s even more valuable to me when the people that I interact with use it too, and after walking through this explanation over the past few days, I can see a few barriers to entry. I’d love to see this whole thing simplified.

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Working with Excel Files in Power BI V2

Published August 11, 2015

In the beginning, Excel was at the center of Power BI. In the “V1” version of Power BI, the entire product was all about enabling analytics in the cloud, and Excel/Excel services was the delivery vehicle for those analytics. The authoring tools were all Excel add-ins, and the service revolved around updating data models in Excel, and allowing you to work with data models greater than 10 MB. Power BI “V2” changed that focus completely, completely removing that dependency on Office 365 and Excel. However, all of the Excel goodness that was within the “V1” product is still there, it just may have moved around a bit, and it works a little differently now.

In the early days of Power BI V1, I wrote up a post about the limitations of the product, specifically the file size limitations. Reviewing this article recently, I was actually struck by how little has changed. The maximum data model size remains 250 MB. In fact, 250 MB is the maximum size of any data model in Power BI, whether or not it originated in Excel. What has changed, rather drastically is the means of enabling this 250 MB limit for an Excel file, which we’ll get to below.

Let’s have a look at some of the major differences between Power BI “V2” and Power BI “V1” as it pertains to Excel.

More than just pretty face

In V1, Excel was almost always used as a means of presenting data. It was possible to use Excel as a data source, but the presentation of that data would inevitably be through another Excel file.

In V2, Excel is far more commonly used as a data source. The Power BI Designer, or the web interface can connect to Excel files, and then import the data into data models stored in the service. Native Power BI visualizations are then used for data presentation. These Excel files can be local, in OneDrive, or in OneDrive for Business. If the files are in OneDrive, or OneDrive for Business, the data models can be automatically refreshed when the source workbooks change. However, we can continue to work with Excel as a presentation mechanism.

If the Excel file is stored in OneDrive for Business (as opposed to OneDrive), you can connect the Power BI interface to the workbook in place. Once connected, the workbook can be viewed and interacted with through Excel Services right within the Power BI interface. To do this, from the dashboard, select “Get Data”, choose Files, select the OneDrive for Business option, select the desired workbook, and finally, select the “Connect” button”. You will then be presented with two options.

Importing data from Excel vs connecting to a workbook in place

Note that these two options will ONLY appear if the repository for the workbook is OneDrive for Business. Selecting “Import” will import the data contained in the file into a service based data model. This is the operation that will occur for all other repositories, and it uses Excel as a data source. Selecting “Connect” however connects to the workbook in place, and it adds the workbook as a report to the Power BI user interface.

Excel Workbook in the Power BI section

The workbook appears in the Reports section with a small Excel icon beside it. To view the workbook in Excel Services, click on the ellipsis to the right of the name, and select View. The workbook should load in a new window in full fidelity, and allow interaction.

No artifacts are created in the Datasets or Dashboards sections, the workbook is a self-contained unit. This is important because personal sharing can only be done through Dashboards. Therefore, Excel Services based reports can only be shared through Office 365 Groups.

Office 365 Groups

One of the biggest changes that Power BI “V1” users will notice (and need to deal with) is the fact that in order to work with Power BI in the same manner, Excel workbooks MUST be stored in a OneDrive for Business repository. With “V1”, a workbook could be stored within any SharePoint Online repository, and enabled for use with Power BI. Therefore, all “V1” users will need to move these workbooks into OneDrive repositories before the “V1” service is deprecate (Dec 31, 2015).

Every Office 365 user gets a OneDrive repository by default, and these repositories work just fine for personal use, but most current users that are using SharePoint Online will have workbooks in shared libraries in a collaboration environment. Office 365 Groups also each have their own OneDrive for Business repository, and all group members have access to that repository. Power BI V2 fully supports Groups, so this is the logical place to store all of the “V1” workbooks for collaboration purposes.

Connecting to a workbook in a Groups OneDrive is identical to the process above, but first, you need to navigate to the Group’s context in the Power BI UI. This is done by clicking on the My Workspace button (and not entirely obvious).

Groups Selector

Simply select the group and you will be working in that Group’s context.

Increased File Size

One of the biggest benefits of the original Power BI “V1” was the ability to work with workbooks that contained data models larger than 10 MB. The way that this was done was by “enabling” the workbook for Power BI as I outlined in this article. The enablement mechanism no longer exists, but the benefits are still there. The process of connecting a workbook outlined above intrinsically enables the workbook for Power BI and increases the maximum model size from 10 MB to 250 MB. In addition, the workbook can also be opened and interacted with directly from OneDrive. It is also possible to share that workbook with others in your organization, but in order to open those large workbooks in a browser, those users will need a Power BI licence.

Workbook Refresh

The ability to refresh workbooks stored in the cloud from data stored on-premises was, at the time of its introduction, the most important feature of Power BI. Each workbook would be enabled for refresh through an administrative interface, and if the data source matched a registered data source, the service would call an on-premises Data Management Gateway, which would facilitate the refresh of the workbook. This worked, but was somewhat difficult to get set up. Power BI “V2” has simplified the process tremendously. This does however mean that the process has changed.

Most refreshes are performed on a Dataset, but as mentioned above, an Excel report is self-contained, so the refresh options are available from the report itself. Simply click on the ellipsis to the right of the report and select “Schedule Refresh”.

Report refresh options

The first time this is done, you will need to enter the Data Source credentials. Once entered these will be used for subsequent refreshes. This will also need to be completed before the report can be refreshed on demand. You can also schedule the refresh time here.

If the data source is a supported cloud source, no further steps will be necessary. If it is on-premises, then it is necessary to install the Power BI Personal Gateway. This does not require administrative permissions to run (although it’s best if you do), nor does it require any special permission on the service side. The Personal Gateway is meant to be just that – personal and easy to use.

Hopefully this covers most of the major differences of working with Excel workbooks in V2 of the service. It looks like a big change, but most things are still possible, and some things significantly enhanced.

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Where Did Power View Go in Excel 2016?

Published July 29, 2015

If you’ve been using the Excel 2016 Preview or just Excel 2016 (depending on when you read this), you may have noticed that there is no longer an option to insert a Power View report into o workbook. The reason is that it has been removed from the default ribbon in Excel 2016. It used to be on the Insert tab in the Reports Section, right beside Power Map.

Power View in Excel 2013

However, opening the Insert tab in Excel 2016 reveals it to be missing.

Power View Missing in Excel 2016

Did Microsoft remove Power View from Excel? What’s going on? Power View is still very much a part of Excel; the only change is that now it is no longer a default ribbon option. The good news is that it’s simple enough to add it back in. To do so, we need to edit the ribbon. Click on File-Options, and then select Advanced Options. The ribbon editor will appear. We can add Power View to any tab that we would like, or even create a new one, but here we’re just going to add it back to the Insert menu. To do so, expand the Insert menu. Each command must be added to a group, so we need to click the “New Group” button. Next, because I don’t think anyone will want their group named “New Group”, we want to rename it. In this case, we’ll rename it to “Reports”, the way that it used to be.

Adding a new group to the Insert tab

Next, we need to add Power View into the group. The easiest way to do this is to select “Commands Not in the Ribbon” from the “Choose commands from” dropdown. It’s a long list of items to choose from, and you’ll be tempted to look under “P” for Power View. You will be disappointed. The correct command is actually to be found in the “I”s, and it is “Insert a Power View Report”. Select that option, and click the “Add” button.

Once this is complete, Power View should once again appear in the Insert tab, in the Reports section.

I have no idea why Power View has been removed from the ribbon by default. It may just be temporary given that we’re not yet at release, but it could signal some other change. In any event, if you work with both Power View and Excel 2016, you can continue to do so.

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Sharing Power BI Content with Office 365 Groups

Published July 23, 2015

The Power BI sharing story got a lot clearer this week with the changes in the service that go along with General Availability. These changes included the integration with Office 365 groups, which will in my opinion, be the preferred way to share Power BI content with others.

If you’re unfamiliar with Office 365 Groups, what you need to know is that Groups is not a product per se, but really an integration mechanism that binds together multiple elements of Office 365, and as of now, Power BI. When a group is created, a number of things happen – a distribution list is created in Exchange, a Site Collection is created in SharePoint containing that Group’s OneDrive, and an Azure Active Directory group is created for membership in AAD. Now, a Power BI workspace is created for that group as well.

How Power BI works with groups

If you’ve been working with the Power BI preview already, you are familiar with the personal workspace. This is the workspace that you see when you first log into the Power BI service, and until now, the only workspace that was available. Within the personal workspace, you can create datasets, reports, and dashboards. Dashboards can be shared to the personal workspace of other people within the organization, but now you can also switch to the workspace of an Office 365 Group. To do so, click on the Workspace selector in Power BI. Initially, it will be labelled “My Workspace”.

You’ll then be able to select from any of your Office 365 groups. All groups that you are a member of should appear here automatically, you don’t need to register them. Once selected, you’ll be working within the context of that group. If it’s empty, you’ll be prompted to add data, and if not, you’ll be taken to a default dashboard. Everything that you do at this point will be done within the context of that group, and will not affect your personal workspace. In addition, everything that you do here will be visible to all members of the group that use Power BI. There is no need to “share” anything.

Sharing to the personal dashboard vs sharing via groups

Groups represent a fundamental change to sharing in Power BI. The Personal Workspace is just that, personal. It is possible to share dashboards from here with colleagues, but the assumption is that you are the only person that may make changes. A Groups workspace turns that on its head, and assumes that everything is shared by default.

When you share a dashboard from the Personal Workspace, recipients can view the dashboard, and interact with the underlying reports. There is (currently) no mechanism to allow those recipients to make changes to those reports and dashboards. However, when working in the Groups workspace, any member of the group can make changes. Any changes made are also immediately visible to all other members of the group.

Update – 2015/09/26 – Groups can now share dashboards outwardly in the same manner as personal workspaces. Thanks Ajay for the comment.

Personal OneDrive vs Group One Drive

In its original incarnation, Power BI worked with Excel files stored in SharePoint Online document libraries, including OneDrive libraries. With this version, Power BI will refresh and render Excel workbooks with full fidelity as well, but now they MUST be stored in a OneDrive library. Each user receives a single OneDrive library through Office 365, and they may also have a OneDrive personal library. In addition, each group also has a OneDrive library, and these can be used as well. The way to use them is to connect to the workbook from within the Group’s workspace.

In order to connect to an Excel Workbook from the Personal Workspace, you click on “Get Data”, click the “Get” button in the Files section, and select from Local File, OneDrive – Business, or OneDrive Personal.

Selecting from Local File or OneDrive personal will import the contents of a workbook into a Power BI dataset. That dataset will be refreshable directly from OneDrive, or through the Personal Gateway if Local File was chosen. However, selecting OneDrive – Business will allow you to select your file, then give a further two options.

“Import” is the same process as OneDrive – personal, or local file – the date is imported from the workbook into the dataset. However “Connect” establishes a report connection between the Power BI service and the OneDrive file, allowing it to be rendered in the Power BI site through Excel Services.

Once this is done, the workbook will appear in the Reports section in Power BI with a small Excel icon beside it. Unlike other sources, no dataset or dashboard are created because the report is a self-contained entity.

The experience is quite similar within a Groups workspace, with one important difference – neither OneDrive-Personal nor OneDrive – Business are options.

Instead, we are presented with the Group’s OneDrive which makes sense given that we’re in the Group workspace. The group OneDrive is backed by Office 365 which means that it functions the same way as OneDrive – Business. Excel workbooks can either be imported or connected to.

Can we use Power BI with Team Sites like before?

As mentioned above, the original Power BI service rendered workbooks from any SharePoint Online document library. The new service works with OneDrive libraries only. This means that any workbooks that are currently stored in SharePoint Online and use Power BI features will need to be moved into Group based OneDrive, or personal OneDrive in order to be able to continue to take advantage of Power BI features. In other words, Groups are REALLY important to Power BI. The original Power BI for Office 365 service will continue to be available, but will shut down on December 31, 2015.

Sharing Externally

The V1 service allowed for the external sharing of workbooks through the external sharing facilities of SharePoint. However, due to licensing restrictions, the experience wasn’t optimal. If the data model was too large, the external user would not be able to open the workbook in a browser, and would instead be required to download it in its entirety in order to open it. This was because the external user would most likely not have a Power BI license. The V2 service allows users to share dashboards from their Personal Workspaces, and to collaborate fully in Group Workspaces, but there is currently no way to share Power BI content externally, or anonymously. This has been identified as a priority, but is not available yet.

I have no specific information about how this might be done, so I am free to speculate. I suspect that the Groups mechanism will be leveraged to accomplish external content sharing. At the moment, Office 365 groups do not allow for external members, but if they did, ths would solve the external sharing problem. I’m betting that this will be the approach.

Microsoft is betting a great deal on Office 365 groups, and Power BI is one of the first services to demonstrate this deep integration. If you’re already or will be invested in Power BI, I would strongly suggest that you get familiar with them.

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