Differences between Communication Sites and Modern Team Sites

#	Communication Sites	Modern Team Sites
1	Communication Sites are a convenient way for broadcasting or communicating information to wider audience	Team Sites are sites created for users to work collaborate as a team
2	In Communication site, typically there are a small number of users and many readers	In a team site, most users contribute content and collaborate each other
3	There are 3 designs (Topic, Showcase and Blank) available for Communication Sites to choose from while site creation	There are no different designs available for Team sites to choose from while site creation
4	Communication Site are ready made from the get go for sharing information	Team sites are focused on Collaboration and backed by Office 365 Groups
5	No shared apps are created automatically when communication site is created	A shared Documents, Calendar, One Note, Planner tasks board, mailbox is created automatically when a new modern team site is created
6	Office 365 groups are not automatically when communication site is created	Creating a Team Site automatically creates Office 365 groups
7	Communication Sites are private by default	Modern Team Sites are public by default
8	While site creation, it does not prompt to add users/members to the site	While site creation, it automatically prompts to add additional owners, members
9	Default top navigation (Home, Documents, Pages and Site Contents) is added when new site is created	There is no default top navigation
10	There is no left navigation in home page	Traditional left navigation is created by default
11	Clicking on “Home” in the top menu just navigates to the home page instead of displaying more options	Clicking on “Site Name” link opens a small context menu showing options to navigate to Home, Conversations, Calendar, Files, Notebook, Planner and Members. Also, it shows the numbers of members, option to leave group
12	There are no such options in Communication Sites	Team Sites show a summary of team members and a link to team conversations in the upper right-hand corner of the site navigation
13	The security groups are the more traditional SharePoint groups	It is Office 365 groups for permissions in modern team sites

See Also

Communication Sites in SharePoint Online
Modern Team Sites in SharePoint Online Explained

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Modern Team Sites in SharePoint Online Explained

Modern Team sites are Team Sites integrated with Office 365 groups and it provides options to collaborate better than before. 
When you create a modern team site in SharePoint Online, it automatically creates the O365 group, group email address, and ability to identify whether this site will contain sensitive data (privacy) and more new features.
The home page of a SharePoint Online modern team site gives you immediate visibility into site activity and important documents, with quick access to Office 365 Groups, its members and associated Office 365 apps.

Also, Modern Team Sites works seamless in Mobile apps as well. This way it increases the usability of SharePoint, collaborate on the go!!

DOWNLOAD this eBOOK from this link

See Also

• Communication Sites in SharePoint Online
• Differences between Communication Sites and Modern Team Sites

This eBook has detailed information of each features of Modern Team Sites in SharePoint Online.
Your feedback, ratings are welcome!!  

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Create Power BI report and publish in SharePoint

Introduction:
In this article, we will learn how to create a report in Power BI using SharePoint List as a data source, using DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) in Power BI, publish the Power BI report to SharePoint Online, and Schedule Data Refresh. We will also learn how to use Power BI desktop tool which is used for designing reports in Power BI.
Articles in SharePoint Business Intelligence (BI) series: 🔗

Power BI in SharePoint Online
Creating reports using OData Feed in Power BI
Power View report in SharePoint
Display Power BI reports in SharePoint Online

Environment:
1. SharePoint Online - Office 365 (applicable to SP 2016/2013)
2. Power BI - needs Power BI Pro License
3. Power BI for desktop - for designing the report
Create report using Power BI Desktop from SharePoint List as Data Source:
1. Let's use the same data Finance Sample Workbook from Power BI site for this example as well
2. Load the data in SharePoint List
3. Open the Power BI for desktop tool and sign in using your O365 ID & password
4. Click File -> New -> It should open the blank report
5. Click Get Data option from Home menu -> More -> Online Services -> SharePoint Online List as shown below:

6. Enter the SharePoint URL - just the site collection but not till List

7. Once you enter, select Microsoft account option from Anonymous, Windows, Microsoft account options displayed for authentication as shown below:

8. Once authenticated & connected, it will display all lists and library in the site collection. Select the List (which we loaded the Finance Sample excel work book) and either click edit to edit the columns or click Load to load the data to the Power BI

9. Important point to note is that we have loaded the Finance Sample Excel Workbook in to SharePoint List and now the data is connected to Power BI. If you notice the loaded data (columns Gross Sales, Sales Price, COGS, Profit related to cost) in Power BI are loaded as text instead of $$$ value in this example

10. Using Power BI, we can change the data type (NOTE: 💡changing the data type will affect the data refresh so it is a good practice to change the data type in the source or load the data at source with appropriate data type). For this example, I have changed the data type in Power BI for desktop. 

Option is Data section -> Modeling tab in Ribbon -> Data Type & Format as shown below:

 11. Loaded data and updated with data type is shown below:

12. In the above data loaded, we see the month, year are in a separate column, let's use DAX expression to combine them and display as Year - Month in a separate column. 

I have added a new column "Date" as shown below:

13. Once the data is loaded, fields section shows the column that can be added to report, also the fields which can be displayed as aggregate/sum and also the measure which we created (Date field in above step):

14. Now, it's time to add the charts in the report section. I have used Card, KPI, Line & Clustered Column Chart, Pie Chart, Line Chart as shown below:

Publish the report to SharePoint Online (Power BI Pro)

15. Now, it's time to publish the report to SharePoint Online 😃 

First step is to publish the report to work space in Power BI site then to SP Online.

Log in to the Power BI site. In the above step, I have published the report to "My Workspace" section. Hence navigate to the My Workspace section in Power BI site -> Reports section (since this is published as report but not dashboard) -> click on the report ("Sales Report")

Now, click on the File -> click on select Embed in SharePoint Online preview as shown below. This will give the link to publish the Power BI report to SharePoint Online.

16. Now, time to integrate the report in SharePoint Online. In previous article, I have explained  about creating Communication Sites in SharePoint Online. In this site, create a page and add Power BI (preview) web part 

17. Now, name the page and publish the page. Below is the preview of the page and how the filter works in the chart according to the selection:

💡 Embed in SharePoint Online is only available with Power BI Pro. Each user that views the report mush have a Power BI Pro license. If they do not have a Pro license, they will be prompted to sign-up to view the report.

18. Next one final step is "Data Refresh". Navigate to the Power BI site again -> Workspaces -> My Workspace -> Datasets -> select your report (Sales Report) -> Schedule Refresh button in Actions section to schedule the data refresh as shown below:

Apple Power BI App preview of the report

Granting Access to reports:

Embedding a report in SharePoint Online does not automatically give users permission to view the report in SharePoint site. The permissions to view the report are set within Power BI service itself. 

There are two ways to provide access to the report within the Power BI service. 

1. If you are using Office 365 Group to build your SharePoint Online team site, you list the user as a member of the app work space within the Power BI service. This will make sure that users can view the contents of that group. For more information, see Create and distribute an app in Power BI. 🔗

2. Alternatively, you can grant users access to your report by doing the following.

Add a tile from the report to a dashboard.

Share the dashboard with the users that need access to the report. For more information, see Share a dashboard with colleagues and others. 🔗

Reference: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-embed-report-spo 🔗

Publish the report to SharePoint (without Power BI Pro option)

Suppose you don't have Power BI pro license but want to integrate the Power BI report in SharePoint 2013 or 2016 or in SharePoint Online, then Page Viewer is the option we have 😉

Navigate to the page where you want to display the Power BI report -> add a Page Viewer Web Part -> add the link copied from Power BI site (Report -> File -> Embed in SharePoint Online(Preview)-> copy the link)

 

Differences between publishing using Power BI pro & in Page Viewer web part

1. Show/Hide Navigation Page, Filter Pane options are available only in Power BI

2. Options to change the display size of the report is available only in Power BI pro  

3. Sorting the each section of report by it's main report parameter is available only in Power BI pro

4. Option to See Data of a particular report is available only in Power BI pro

5. All the above options are not available in normal publishing way

6. Share the report via Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Email, & information about report, flagging report option is available in normal publihing method (Page Viewe web part)

Export to PowerPoint (Preview)

There is another option available in reports in Power BI site which is Export to PowerPoint(Preview). Navigate to Power BI Site -> Select the report -> File -> Export to PowerPoint (Preview) as shown below:

The exported file is attached here to know how a exported Power BI report looks like. See Downloads section for the file.

Downloads: 🔗

Power BI Desktop
Power BI for Mobile - Windows, App Store, Google Play
Power BI report file
Sales report exported to PowerPoint
So, we have learnt how to create a Power BI report from SharePoint List as data source, created DAX expressions, added different chart types, published the report to Power BI and then to SharePoint Online, SharePoint Online with out Power BI Pro and also applicable to SharePoint 2013 & 2016.

Please free to comment. Always. your comments help me to write more.😃 Share this post to others if this helps you!😇

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SharePoint Online Software Boundaries and Limits

Size limit and Number of items that can be synced

1.     You can sync up to 20,000 items in your One Drive for Business library. This includes folders and files.

2.   You can sync up to 5,000 items in a SharePoint library. This includes folders and files. These are the libraries that you find on various SharePoint sites, such as team sites and community sites. This also includes syncing other people's One Drive personal sites that you may have access to. You can sync multiple SharePoint libraries.

3.     In any SharePoint library, you can sync files of up to 2 GB

Character limit for files and folders

1. In SharePoint Online, file names can have up to 256 characters
2. Folder names can have up to 250 characters
3. When you sync One Drive for Business with SharePoint Online, a folder named "forms" isn't supported at the root level for a list or library. This occurs because "forms" is a hidden default folder that's used to store templates and forms for the library.
4. Any file that’s currently open by an application (for example, an Excel .xlsx file) can't be synced by One Drive for Business.
5. To sync the file, close any application where the file is currently being used, and then sync the file.
6. The following characters in file names aren't supported when you sync One Drive for Business with SharePoint Online: (\, /, :, *, ?, “, <, >, |, #, %, ~)

SharePoint Online Site Collection

1. SharePoint Online Site collection package details below:

• Small Business: a single Team Site Collection
• Midsize Business plans: limits 20 Team Site Collections
• Enterprise, Education, and Government: limits to 10,000 Team Site Collections

2. In all options, just single Public Web Site Collection can be created, 1TB for My sites, 2000 site/sub site per site collection

Developer Limits

Only Sandbox Solutions are designed to allow SharePoint developer to customize/develop on Office365/SharePoint Online

• No access to file/folder. It means you cannot use IO API commands
• Only be deployed at a site collection level scope (not farm scope)
• No access to web.config
• PDF Documents cannot be opened in the browser
• Restrictions to access security
• Cannot overuse system resources

Storage

The following table describes the limits for SharePoint Online in Office 365 Business Essentials and Office 365 Business Premium:

Feature	Description
Storage per user (contributes to total storage base of tenant)	500 megabytes (MB) per subscribed user
Storage base per tenant	10 GB + 500 MB per subscribed user + additional storage purchased For example, if you have 10,000 users, the base storage allocation is approximately 5 TB (10 GB + 500 MB * 10,000 users) You can purchase an unlimited amount of additional storage
Site collection storage limit	Up to 1 TB per site collection. (25 GB for trial). SharePoint admins can set storage limits for site collections and sites. The minimum storage allocation per site collection is 100 MB
List view threshold limit in site libraries, including files and folders	You can sync up to 5,000 items in site libraries, including folders and files
Site collections (#) per tenant	500,000 site collections (other than personal sites)
Sub sites	Up to 2,000 sub sites per site collection
File upload limit	2 GB per file
Number of external user’s invitees	There is no limit to number of external users you can invite to your SharePoint Online Site Collections

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Site Mailbox is removed from SharePoint Online

I tried to create a Site Mailbox this morning, in SharePoint Online and came to know this feature is no longer supported in SharePoint Online.

 

Tried to understand it in detail and following are the updates:

1. Microsoft is notifying Office 365 customers that access to Site Mailboxes is being removed from SharePoint Online, and no more Site Mailboxes can be created from March 2017 onward.
2. Site Mailboxes originally appeared as a feature of Exchange Server 2013. Site Mailboxes appended together an Exchange mailbox with a SharePoint site to allow users to collect email conversations in a single location, as well as access shared documents from both Outlook and SharePoint.
3. If you are using Site Mailboxes, then you have got some migration work to look forward to. Otherwise, if you are looking for “email-centric collaboration”, Office 365 Groups are the way to go (Reference: Microsoft Community Groups).

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Slide Library in SharePoint Online

When you try to migrate from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint Online (Office 365), Slide Library template is not listed as app in the Create App section.
You can still get it with a direct URL. I would not depend on it being there forever as the Slide Library is officially not in SharePoint 2013, but for now you can create one.
The direct URL to create the old Slide Library:
http://yourserver/sites/yoursite/_layouts/15/slnew.aspx?FeatureId={0be49fe9-9bc9-409d-abf9-702753bd878d}&ListTemplate=2100

Update 22/05/2017:
Even though above solution works as expected in SharePoint 2013 & SP Online it is advisable not to use since Microsoft may remove this feature in future.

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Enable "Open with Explorer" Option In SharePoint Online Document Libraries In Microsoft Edge Browser

Happy New Year 2017 to all readers and wish you all success in this year 😃😃😃

I was asked by my colleague who is from different Technology stream about “Open with Explorer” option disabled in SharePoint Online document libraries in Microsoft Edge browser.
Microsoft Edge browser has a new look and feel than other IE versions and obviously it is going to take a while for all end users to get used to / to know the various options in it.I tried checking the permissions of the user and he has admin permissions but still the user couldn’t open the library with explorer option as shown below:

As usual searched for various articles and understood about the features of Microsoft Edge browser.Read this KB article about Microsoft Edge and SharePoint behavior:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Using-SharePoint-in-Windows-10-a16bdaa4-73d6-45f8-897f-0a3cb8131763

Solution:
Navigate to the edge browser -> click on Open with Internet Explorer as shown below:

Now, the SharePoint site should open in the IE 11 (latest version before Microsoft Edge is released).As expected, in IE 11, Open with Explorer option is enabled and everything works perfectly as shown below:

If you want to sync, click on Sync and it will open the One Drive -> Sign in -> Sync the data.

Hope this helps you!
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Deploying List Workflow in SharePoint Online

Recently, I had a query from one of my readers about migrating the Workflows from development to production and the environment is SharePoint Online.

Scenario:

Suppose that you have created a List Workflow in development site in SP Online and now it is ready to move to Production in SP Online, you can follow the following steps to deploy the workflow. This method is easy, cheaper since no third party tool (licensing cost) is used for migration/deployment.

Solution:

1. Take the backup of SP list with or with out content (depending upon the requirement). List backup will be in .stp format.

2. Download the List Template from List Templates (Site Settings -> Web Designer Galleries -> List Templates).

3. Upload the List Template in the PROD site in the same path (Site Settings -> Web Designer Galleries -> List Templates).

4. Create a new app from "Add an App" and create the list with the same Internal Name (impt: the internal name of the list created in the PROD should be the same as DEV environment)

5. Open the DEV site SP designer, point to the List Workflow -> Click save as template from ribbon (in Manage section) - This will save your WF as web part solution (.wsp) in the Site Assets Library. 

6. Download the WSP and upload it to the PROD site solutions: Site Settings ->  Web Designer Galleries -> Solutions -> Upload & Activate the solution

7. Now navigate to the Site Settings -> Site Actions -> Manage Site Features -> Activate the workflow (it should be in the name Workflow Template "name of the workflow" from web template "name of the site")

Note: If you do not the create the list with the same internal name in the PROD, you will get an error while activating the feature.

8. Now, navigate to the list -> list settings -> workflow settings -> you should see the Workflow associated with the list already. If you face any issues, remove the associated workflow, add it again either from SP designer or from SharePoint UI itself.

Hope this helps you in deploying the workflow from development site to production site in SharePoint Online.

If this useful to you, share this post using the buttons below / share your comments which will make me write more!  😊

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Power BI in SharePoint Online

I am very excited after Microsoft released Power BI GA (general availability) at the end of July. It comes with list of impressive new features which is explained in detail in this MSDN article.
I want my blog readers to know what is Power BI and how it can be used with SharePoint Online to leverage the BI capabilities of SharePoint. Let's learn the basics in this article.
Articles in SharePoint Business Intelligence (BI) Series:

Power BI in SharePoint Online
Creating reports using OData Feed in Power BI
Power View report in SharePoint
Display Power BI reports in SharePoint Online

Microsoft came with a new tool for BI for the following reasons:

1. Use the known tool  - Excel
2. Discover More  - Power Query
3. Analyze More – Power Pivot
4. Visualize  - Power View / Power Map
5. Combine with Office 365 – share with any one
6. Power BI sites – collaborate and share the data sets with your team
7. Dive into Q & A – ask a question and get answers visually
8. Stay Connected – Mobile Apps
9. Schedule data refresh and create security settings easily

So what is Power BI?

1. Cloud based service works with excel to provide users a complete self-service BI solution
2. Available in SharePoint & Excel 2013 Online (available only in E3 / E4 subscription)
3. With Power BI, you can easily deploy a cloud based BI environment for users to share insights, collaborate and access reports from anywhere on any device
4. With Power BI for Office 365, you can easily setup an online gallery for users to share insights
5. Mobile apps available in Apple store, Windows store & Google play store

How does Power BI differ from SharePoint BI?
 

Feature	Power BI	SharePoint BI
Content Viewing	It displays all document libraries with a preview to reports / dashboards	It displays only pivot gallery document library
Natural Language	Q & A provides the end user to search for data with your questions and it displays the results in visualization	No such option available
Workbook as a data source	Power BI the data model and the reports (created with Excel pivot tables + charts, or Power View for Excel) everything must be contained within a single .xlsx file	In SharePoint, we can upload a Power Pivot model to the Power Pivot Gallery and other reports can connect to it using a URL-based connection string. This works for Power View for SharePoint, Reporting Services, PerformancePoint, and Excel
Data Refresh Option	It is simpler for end users to manage the data refresh	Lot of options available for data refresh and it’s controlled by Admin
Data Management Gateway	It is a hybrid environment (partially cloud based and partially on premises)	No data management gateway available
Data rendering option	HTML 5 (hence cross platform support)	Silverlight for data preview
Maximum workbook size	Max is 250MB	2 GB
Security	Sign in with Organization ID (O365 ID)	AD security mechanism
Enterprise Search for data	Search query is the important feature and it can search public and data within organization	N/A
Mobile Application	Available in Microsoft, Apple and Google Play store	N/A

            
Where can I download the Power BI and related products?

1. Sign up for Power BI
2. Power BI for desktop
3. Power BI Analysis Services Connector
4. Power BI Business Gateway
5. Power BI Apps for mobile (apps for Apple, Microsoft and Android mobile)
6. Power BI pricing

Hope this article, gives an idea of Power BI and how it differs from SharePoint BI. I will explain about connecting data from different data sources, creating dashboards, reports, etc. with Power BI in the coming articles.
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