Audit Log Reports in SharePoint 2013

You can use the audit Log Reports to view data in the audit logs for a site collection.With Audit Logs you can determine who deleted which content, Recently used documets in list or library and more..

Prerequisites -

Auditing must be enabled to use audit log reports in SharePoint Server 2013.

Auditing Events Recorded -

The audit log captures the following information for the events that are selected to be audited.

• Site from which an event originated
• Item ID, type, name, and location
• User ID associated with the event
• Event type, date, time, and source
• Action taken on the item

Trimming the audit logs -

When you select an event to be audited for a site collection, such as delete and restore, it will be audited for every item in the site collection each time the event occurs. Auditing can potentially generate a large number of audit events, creating a large audit log. This could fill the hard drive, affecting performance and other aspects of a site collection.

To prevent the audit log from filling the hard drive and potentially degrading the performance of the site collection, we recommended that you enable audit log trimming for site collections with extensive auditing

Note : If you are using SharePoint Online in Office 365 for enterprises, auditing for Opening or downloading documents, viewing items in lists, or viewing item properties is not available because of storage and performance concerns.

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Open PDF in SharePoint Online site Office 365

This is probably the most discussed question in Office 365 forum. A simple answer to whether it can be done or not is yes PDF's can be opened in browser after a new Service update which was announced Here .

So what's the catch why people are still complaining about this? Well I am going to clarify some points around this update.

1. The PDF's Open in browser only in Internal sharepoint sites. If the PDFs are located in document library for your public-facing website, you will not be able to open them using Internet Explorer.

2. Make sure your Internet Options is not set too high.

3. IF your trying to open the PDF which is attached to the list item while using Internet Explorer, it is not going to work. When using Internet Explorer, the functionality is strictly for SharePoint Online Document Libraries.

4. If you still got issues try using Adobe Reader 10.1.2. UnInstall your current version and Install install Adobe Reader 10.1.2.

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SharePoint Online - Send e-mail alert to notify Item or Document expiration Office 365

This can be done by an easy trick using SharePoint designer

Here are the high-level steps

1. Create a calculated column to calculate the Expiry Date.

2. Create a SPD workflow that starts upon item creation.

3. Build a variable "Notification date" of the type date, that stores the value of "Expiry Date" plus or minus number of days before or after when you want to send the notification. For example if you want to send the notification a day before the item is going to expire then say "Expiry Date - 1 day"

3. Next add a step to pause the workflow until the current date is equal to "Notification date". When the system date becomes equal to "Notification date" the workflow can be set to send a custom e-mail message.

 
You would write something like below

Add -1 days to List:Expiry Date (Output to Variable:Date)
then Pause until Variable:Date
then Send email toOwner

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Difference between Team site and Public-facing site in Office 365

Team site and Public-facing site are two sites available in Office 365. In this post I am going to expalin in simple words about these two sites and there site structure.

The public-facing website is an external site while a Team site is an Internal site. There are quite a few differences between the two.

 1. In Professional and Small Business account (P1 account) the public-facing website is the top-level of the site collection and the Team site is a sub-site of the top-level site.

  

2. The public-facing website and the Team site have different editing tools from each other. The public site is a prepackaged deal with a finite set of tools and no flexibility. The Team site can be used to interact with stored Sharepoint content and so has a different set of tools.  

3. The domain is the same for public-facing website and the tTam site due to both of them being a part of the same site collection in a P1 account.

 

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Create Office 365{SharePoint Online} External site with an existing domain

Do you posses your own domain name and now you need that hosted as Office 365 site? This can be done with a little effort. You can use a vanity domain (this is what the additional domain is called) a Office 365 public-facing website.

To use your vanity domain for a Professional and Small Business account (P1), please complete the following instructions:

1. Add your vanity domain to the domain section of your Microsoft Online Portal
2. Complete the process of having your vanity domain verified
3. Once the vanity domain is verified, go to your domain registrar
4. At the registrar, change the name servers to ns1.bdm.microsoftonline.com and       ns2.bdm.microsoftonline.com  (This process may take up to 72 hours)
5. After the name servers are changed, go back to the domain section of your Microsoft Online Portal
6. Click on the "change address" option, choose the vanity domain (This process may take up to 24 hours to propagate for you to be able to access your website and for your links in the portal to update to the vanity domain URLs)

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Office 365 SharePoint Online - This website wants to run the following add-on: 'Not Available' from 'Control name is not available'. If you trust the website and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click here

You might get a warning in IE8 when trying to add a new solution in your SharePoint Online site.
IE message -

This website wants to run the following add-on: 'Not Available' from 'Control name is not available'. If you trust the website and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click here...



The warning message is from Internet Explorer (IE) and concerns trusting a custom template file and the SharePoint Online tenant it is stored in.
If you have a Professionals Small Business subscription, to resolve the trust issue and configure your computer for SharePoint Online you will need to add some additional trusted sites as listed below:

1.Open Internet Explorer Tools and select Internet options

2.Select the Security tab -> Trusted Sites -> and verify that Enable Protected mode is unchecked

3.Select Sites and verify that Require server verification (https:) for all sites in the zone is unchecked

4.Under Add this website to the zone -> Add

5.Add the following websites to the zone:

http://*.microsoft.com, http://PutYourDomainHere.microsoft.com and http://*.sharepoint.com

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Office 365 "Reached my 24 hour limit"

If you get "Reached my 24 hour limit" on your Exchange Online in Office 365 you probably reached the sending limit for cloud-based e-mail accounts.

This limit defines the maximum number of recipients that can receive e-mail messages sent from a single cloud-based account in a 24-hour period. The recipient rate limit for Exchange Online Plan P is 500 recipients per day, for E is 1500 recipients  per day.

You can take a look at help.outlook.com/.../ff381292.aspx about the detail and walk-around solution.

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Microsoft Office 365 for Education plans

Microsoft Introducted Office 365 for Education yesterday and here are the details on Plans.

Reference - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/education/compare-plans.aspx#fbid=ujqpdNBGXEm

1. Sign up for a 30-day trial. Explore the features and benefits of Office 365 for up to 50 users.
2. Verify eligibility. At any time during the trial you can have Microsoft verify your domain’s eligibility for academic prices.
3. Start using the service. Deploy the free service (A2) to your entire institution or purchase other services.

To qualify for Office 365 for education you must be an accredited educational institution. You will be required to sign a contract and attest that you are an eligible customer. Microsoft reserves the right to verify eligibility at any time and suspend the service for ineligible customers. Learn more

SIGN UP FOR 30-DAY TRIAL

A2		A3		A4
Free for academic institutions		Students: $2.50 per user/month Faculty and staff: $4.50 per user/month		Students: $3 per user/month Faculty and staff: $6 per user/month
Cloud-based email, calendar and contacts Use your own domain name Instant messaging, voice and video chat Online conferencing with desktop sharing Web-based viewing and editing of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files		Everything in A2, plus: Office Professional Plus 2010 desktop version subscription (for up to 5 devices per user) or Mac Office 2011 Unlimited email storage Archiving eDiscovery tools to support your compliance needs Hosted voicemail support		Everything in A3, plus: Enterprise voice capabilities Replace or enhance a PBX with Lync Server on-premises

• All A plans also include:
• Financially-backed 99.9% availability
• Live 24 x 7 customer phone support for advanced IT issues
• Single sign on using latest federation technology
• Configurable anti-spam filtering
• Free Active Directory synchronization

Learn more about additional online services for schools

Please contact your Microsoft account representative if you are a Microsoft Core CAL, Enterprise CAL, or Office Professional Plus subscriber.

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SSRS in Office 365 SharePoint Online

One of my Client asked if they can use SSRS in their Office 365 SharePoint Online site. Well the answer is simply NO. It is not supported in any Office 365 plan . I was looking for a definate answer to this but the only written thing I could found was this from SharePoint Online Forum.

"Based on the information I have available, this is not currently a feature of SharePoint Online -- also keeping in mind that it appears that this add-in must be installed on the SharePoint servers themselves, not remotely, and is specific to a user's SQL infrastructure.  SharePoint Online is based on SharePoint 2010, but due to the hosted, multi-tenant environment in which SPO is deployed, there are feature limitations vis a vis SharePoint 2010."

The only alternative which I could find was Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint Online

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Add Jquery to Office 365 SharePoint site using Sandbox Soltuions

Most prefered location to add JQUERY is "Site Asserts" library that exist in SharePoint Online - Office 365 site. Qucik Steps to create a soltuion for that

1. Create a Empty Soltuion in Visual Studio 2010 and deploy it as sandbox.
2. Create a Folder Jquery.
3. In this Folder add an new Module. You would notice you get a new ELments.xml and a txt file. You can delete the txt file.
3. Add the Jquery library in the "Jquery" folder.
4. Next edit the Elements.xml to add the "URL" paramenter, where the Jquery library will be deployed. You will notice that Elemets.xml will now contain the Module elemenet for Jquery.

Open elements.xml file and Change the following
1. Edit Module Name  - Add some name "JqueryModule"
2.Add URL property to Module something like
URL ="Site Asserts"
3. In File tag add Type=”GhostableInLibrary”

Thats it!

Now deploy the soltuion and verify if the Jquery gets added to Site Asserts library

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Office 365 Tutorial for beginners - Part 1

This is a beginners tutorial for Office 365.

What is Office 365 - Office 365 is a Cloud based service that is pay-as-you-go for clients who purchance Office 365 subscription.

Office 365 consists of
             - Outlook (Exchange online)
            - Lync
            - Team Site (SharePoint Online)
            - Office Web Apps ( MS office Word, excel, Power point)

These are the Out-of-Box products that the Clients get to use when they subscibe for Office 365.

Features & Benefits - Some of the main fetaures and Benefits of Office 365 are at Main benefits of office 365

Office Deployment -
* Deploying Office 365 - Accodring to Microsoft Ofice 365 Deploymnet is done in three phase steps.

Pre-deployment phase - During pre-deployment, Microsoft or an Office 365 partner of your choice will take you through a set of pre-sales evaluation activities, starting with the questions outlined in this buyer’s guide, and activities agreed to in an evaluation plan.

Deployment phase -
(1) Customers can choose to plan and execute their own migration leveraging prescriptive guidance, tools and resources published by Microsoft.

(2) Migration services can also be provided by one of our Recommended Deployment Partners, who have extensive experience with enterprise scale migrations.

(3) Customers can decide to work with Microsoft’s Premier Deployment Team directly. Planning a Successful Migration with Microsoft Premier Deployment.

Microsoft Premier Deployment (MPD) provides a team of specialists helping enterprise customers who intend to migrate more than 2,400 users to the Office 365 online service. or Migrations with our Recommended Deployment Partners.

Post-deployment phase -
Self-service & community experience.
Assisted support.
Premier support services with Office 365.

Next Lets look at Prerequisites to Install Office 365
Prerequisites -
1. Go to this site System requirements link and check system requirenments before you install.
2. Check the whole matrix for Plans Check the whole matrix for Plans.

See Office 365 Tutorial for beginners - Part 2 for Details on Plans >>

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Main benefits of office 365

* Enterprise-class security and reliability.

* IT control and efficiency.

* User familiarity and productivity.

* 25 GB mailboxes and the ability to send attachments up to 25 MB.

* Services Level Agreement with financially-backed 99.9% uptime.

* 24/7, IT-level support over the phone, the web or email.

* Single sign on capabilities with Active Directory deployment.

* Latest version of Office Professional Plus - connecting users to communication and collaboration services.

* Office Web Apps for viewing, sharing and minor editing of documents directly from a browser.

* Industry-leading, always-up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spam solutions.

* Integrated IM and presence, online meetings with audio and video conferencing and multiparty data sharing.

* Team sites to share, manage and search for information and resources.

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Practice Accelerator for Microsoft Office 365 Course

Practice Accelerator for Microsoft Office 365 Course for Partners and others is a greate course which is free for a Cloud Accelerate member or Cloud Essentials subscriber

Practice Accelerator provides intermediate- to advanced-level training in Office 365 solutions.

Practice Accelerator for Office 365 is designed for Cloud Accelerate and Cloud Essentials partners in small and medium businesses who are planning to deploy Office 365 in environments with fewer than 2,400 seats. Ideal participants for this offering are project personnel with technical backgrounds, such as those in technical project management, technical consulting, or technical support.

Practice Accelerator is not intended to be in-depth technical instruction for a particular service offering or technical scenario. Instead, this Practice Accelerator covers a broad range of technical topics and scenarios that may be encountered when deploying Office 365, such as an Exchange Online Hybrid deployment scenario.

Practice Accelerator for Office 365 guides you through an Office 365 deployment project from start to finish in three phases: deployment overview, planning and preparation guidance, and migration and post-deployment guidance.

Check out the courseline at Practice Accelerator for Microsoft Office 365

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Real-time language translation in Lync - Office 365

How would you like if there exists a real time translation of instant messaging (IM) conversations from you Lync Online. I know it sounds wow! and yes it can be done now.

Jesper Osgaard on his blog post here has talked about a new tool "Conversation Translator" which would do the translations for you.

Here is the Donwload Link After installing the tool, click the double chevron (>>) at the upper right of your Lync conversation window and choose Conversation Translator.

The Lync client is extended with a conversation area to the right in which you can select sender and receiver language and start the conversation. -Enjoy Office 365

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Comparing Administrative Roles in Office 365

Awesome Comparison of tasks performed by various admin roles in Office 365. Image is posed by Jesper Osgaardon his Office 365 blog.

Enjoy!

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Step-byStep Installing Microsoft Lync from Office365

Microsoft Lync 2010 is the service that enables you to send instant messages to any
member of your team who is available for contact. Microsoft Lync 2010 Online is what you get when you sign-up for Office 365.

Benefits of Microsoft Lync 2010 -
* You can see the online presence of team members, share audio and video files, and schedule online meetings, phone calls, and more.
* Lync Online is the utility that connects your team in real time, whether you have something important to discuss or just want to ask somebody a quick question.

Lets look at the Install steps now-

1. Begin the process of downloading by clicking Install Lync 2010 in the Lync category of the Office
365 Home page.
2. On the Downloads page choose your version (32-bit or 64-bit) and click Install.
3. After you click Install, the File Download – Security Warning dialog box appears so that
you can choose whether you want to run or save the Lync install file. It’s OK to go ahead
and run the installation utility directly from Office 365.
4. It will take a few minutes for Lync to download; then you might be prompted to restart
your computer.
5. After Lync launches,. As you can see, it resembles an instant messaging client such as Windows Live Messenger. There’s one big difference, though—where are your contacts? Because Office 365 is built to be secure and enable your work with your team, only team members who are part of your Office 365 group appear in your Lync window, unless you use Lync for logging on to other
domains as well.
Within Office 365, your administrator is the one who adds user roles and
permissions so that others will appear in your Lync window, ready for contact.

- Enjoy Office 365

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Office 365 Tutorial for beginners - Part 2

In Contunuation to Part 1 of Office 365 Tutorial for beginners, Next lets look at the plans that microsoft has to offer for Office 365. Microsoft Offers "P family" and E family" Plans. The plans they offer are -

P1 - For Only for Small Business
E1 - For Mid- Size Business
E2 - For Midsize businesses and enterprises
E3 - For Midsize businesses and enterprises
E4 - For Midsize businesses and enterprises

Please take a look at Detailed Plan Matrix to understand what microsoft offers in these plans. Other Import documents related to Plans and Office 365 can be foud here.

So Once the client selects the plan they can start by downloading one of Trial versions of the Plans. Well to say it clearly microsoft right now only offers Trial Plans for P1 and E3 plans. If you decided to go this route i should make you aware that you can migrate from E3 plan to E1 or E2 or E4 after your Trial but now P1, and vice versa. So think carefully about what you will want to spend in future on Office 365 service. I knwo you would surely want to mograte your test data into the real live service once you decide to buy if officially.

Move to Cloud or Not - Taking a Decision about moving into Cloud is not easy as we know, so here are few factors that can help you make this decision -

* When you need an intranet site without the complexity of managing hardware and software.

* When you want to extend intranet based documents or resources to remote office or co-workers without a lot of IT expense and complexity.

* When you want to provide controlled access to external vendors or partners without opening up your network.

* Quickly set-up Public facing website to promote your business.

There are many other factors to decide if your company is ready for Cloud or not.

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