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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Creating reports using OData Feed in Power BI

Today, I published my second Tech Net article about creating reports in Power BI using OData feeds after winning gold winner for TechNet Guru August month :)
To learn about basics of Power BI, click this article: Power BI in SharePoint Online
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

Scenario:
In this article, let’s get the data from OData (Open Data Protocol) feeds and use the Power BI desktop software to design reports and publish it to Power BI site
To learn more about what OData is and how to integrate, read the following articles:

1. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/hh237663.aspx 
2. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Access-OData-Feeds-from-Power-Query-82BD48B9-6A2F-4F2A-83C9-6868BA1D30E2
3. http://www.odata.org/   

Read my article from the following TechNet link and share your valuable comments:

                 Creating reports using OData Feed in Power BI

Power BI Dashboard screenshot reference:

Power BI Dashboard from mobile app reference:

                    

          

Update 26-Oct-2015
I am happy to share with you all that my second TechNet article is awarded for SQL BI and Power BI Technical Guru - September, 2015.
Gold Winner!!!!

Also, this post is highlighted in TechNet Wiki Magazine, 12th edition | Last Articles Spotlight and Guru Awards Edition. :)

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Tabbed View Report using SSRS

Today, I published my first Tech Net article about creating Tabbed View Report using SSRS. SQL Server Reporting Services is a powerful BI tool by Microsoft.

Soon, I will publish articles about SSRS and its integration with SharePoint. Read my article from the following link and share your valuable comments:

Tabbed View Report using SSRS

Scenario Explained in the article:

Suppose take an example employee database which stores their professional summary, salary information, personal information, etc. The end user will search for an Employee by Emp ID as the parameter only one time and the result will be displayed in a tabbed view like professional summary in one tab, salary in another tab and personal information in another tab. Each tab should be clickable and when a Tab1 is clicked, other Tab result should be hidden. In the similar way, show and hide data should work for all the other tabs.

Don't forgot to share this post if this helps you!

Update 22-Sep-2015
I am happy to share with you all that my first TechNet article is awarded for SQL BI and Power BI Technical Guru - August, 2015.
Gold Winner!!!!
Ref: http://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/archive/2015/09/19/technet-guru-awards-august-2015.aspx

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Deprecated Features in SharePoint 2016 Preview

SharePoint Foundation

1. SharePoint Foundation 2013 remains available for use

2. Previous releases of SharePoint Server included SharePoint Foundation, a free edition of SharePoint that included most of the core functionality and architecture provided by the commercial editions of SharePoint. SharePoint Foundation is no longer available in the SharePoint Server 2016 release.

Standalone Install mode

SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview doesn't support the standalone install option, so it is no longer available in the setup program. Use the MinRole during installation and choose one of the available install options. The Single Server Farm option where everything is installed on the same computer is supported for dev/test/demo purposes. When you use this option, you must install SQL Server yourself and then run the SharePoint Server 2016 farm configuration wizard.. For more information, see "MinRole farm topology" in New and improved features in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview.

ForeFront Identity Manager client (FIM)

Earlier versions of SharePoint used ForeFront Identity Manager client (FIM) to synchronize between Active Directory and SharePoint. SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview no longer uses FIM as the synchronization client. The default process is Active Directory Import. You can also use any synchronization tool such as Microsoft Identity Manager 2016, or any third-party tool. We'll soon release tools to help you deploy and configure Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 to work with SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview for identity synchronization.

Excel Services in SharePoint

Excel Services and its associated business intelligence capabilities are no longer available in SharePoint Server. Excel Services functionality is now part of Excel Online in Office Online Server Preview, and SharePoint users can use the services from there.

The following Excel Services functionality has been deprecated:

• Trusted data providers
• Trusted file locations
• Trusted data connection libraries
• Unattended service account
• Excel Services Windows PowerShell cmdlets
• Opening of Excel workbooks from SharePoint Central Administration site

The following Excel Services functionality requires Excel Online in Office Online Server Preview:

• Viewing and editing Excel workbooks in a browser (with or without the Data Model)
• Excel Web Access web part for SharePoint
• ODC file support (no longer requires Data Connection Librariees)
• Programmability features such as JavaScript OM, User Defined Function Assemblies, SOAP and REST protocol support

SharePoint BI capabilities

SharePoint Server 2016 requires updated versions that will ship later this year. The SQL Server 2014 Power Pivot and Power View add-ins for SharePoint 2013 cannot be deployed or used in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview. The following business intelligence features won't be available until then:

• Power Pivot Gallery
• Scheduled Data Refresh
• Using another workbook's Data Model as a data source
• Power View reports (standalone or embedded in Excel workbooks)
• Power View Subscriptions and Report Alerting

Power Pivot Management Dashboard

• BISM Link support

Tags and Notes

The Tags and Notes feature is no longer available in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview. Users can no longer create new tags and notes or access existing ones.

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SharePoint 2016 Preview Arrived

I am excited to share the news with my blog readers that SharePoint 2016 Preview is arrived and it is available for download in the below link:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48712

SharePoint 2016 Forum Discussions:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/home?forum=SP2016
Customer Feedback Link:
http://sharepoint.uservoice.com/forums/282887-customer-feedback-for-sharepoint-server

Soon will explore on SharePoint 2016 and post you all about the new features and updates :)

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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.
Hope this helps you! Please share you comments since it helps me write more. Also, share this post to your friends via the networks below.  

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Power Query and Power Map in Excel 2013

As you all know, Microsoft is improving the BI capabilities with a lot of new features with exciting releases in the year 2015. Microsoft has introduced new add-ins called Power Query and Power Map for Excel 2013.
Believe me guys, this is really awesome add-ins which taken the Microsoft's BI capabilities one step ahead of all other BI competitors!
Let's try to create a power map by searching a public data using power query in Excel 2013 in this article.
Before trying a sample, let's understand what is power query and power map for excel 2013 and it's download links:
Power Query:

• Microsoft Power Query for Excel (a data analysis tool) is an Excel add-in that enhances the self-service Business Intelligence experience in Excel by simplifying data discovery, combine, refine, access and collaborate.
• Power Query supports importing data from a wide range of Web sources, including scrapping tables from HTML pages, as well as importing data from Web APIs. Power Query supports XML, JSON and OData formats
• It includes intuitive discovery features, a powerful query language, and a built-in ability to share your discoveries with others

Power Map:

• Power Map provides interactive, 3D visualization with geospatial and temporal data
• It enables information workers to discover and share new insights from data through
• rich, 3D visualization on a globe with fluidic appearance & guided cinematic tours
• seeing time-stamped data change over time (which you might not have seen in traditional 2D tables and charts) and to share it with others
• you can create a video tour easily in a single click
• Geo flow is another feature which shows how the
• data changed over a period of time

Excel Add-in Links:

1. Power Query for Excel 2013
2. Power Map for Excel 2013

Creating a Power Map with GeoFlow:
Let's add a public data from internet by using Power Query - connecting data from the existing excel file.
I have downloaded the U.S. Operable Generating Units in the United States by State and Energy Source, 2011 from the link. Thank you for the data!
Open the excel 2013 -> Power Query tab -> Get External Data -> From Excel

This will open the query editor where you can select the data sets (this downloaded excel sheet has various tabs with different power sources). You can combine the data using Power Query data editor as well.
Let's select only "Coal" worksheet, delete the unwanted columns and create a date column using initial month and year (which is required for showing the growth of coal energy plants across U.S by county in power map) as shown below:

Now, click Insert Map -> Power Map option in the excel file -> Power Map will load the data source and it should automatically detect the geo-location fields from the dataset.

I have created two types of visualizations, one which is heat map visualization which will show the coal power generated in U.S. by state as shown below:

 The other one is coal power generated in U.S. by county with a time by using Initial Month of Operation column as shown below:

    

Power Map gives the options of creating video tour in a single click from the menu. Here is the video, I created from this sample:

Cool, isn't it?
Thanks for reading! Don't forgot to share this post and post your valuable comments which will make me write more. 

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Get set, update!!!! Windows 10 is here

I am feeling excited to see the Windows 10 upgrade is started!!!

Rock and Roll !!! Will update you all soon about the features and my first experience after the update!

Update running from Windows 8.1 OS.

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Create Business Intelligence Center in Office 365

Recently, Microsoft has updated Power BI features in SharePoint online. It has enhanced the Business Intelligence features a lot and I am sure self-service BI is the ultimate goal for Microsoft:) In this article, we will learn how to create Business Intelligence Center in Office 365.
To get  Microsoft Office 365 trail with Business Intelligence Center (this feature is not available in all the versions of the O 365), you need to sign up using the E3 license. This includes the advanced features in it.
Office 365 Enterprise E3 
Once you sign up, navigate to Office 365 admin center -> Admin -> SharePoint -> It will open the SharePoint administration

Click Site Collections -> New -> Private Site Collection -> Give the Title and Web Site Address -> Template Selection -> Enterprise tab -> Business Intelligence Center ->  Enter the site collection Admin and click OK to create it.

You will see the new BI site collection as shown below:

Soon, will post about creating dashboards and reports in SharePoint 2013. Happy Learning!

Please share this post if this helps you!

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Get Windows 10 from Windows 8.1

I know everyone is excited and waiting for the 29th of July, 2015 for Windows 10 upgrade which is FREE  :)

I have Windows 8.1 version in my system.

Points to be noted for getting Windows 10 FREE upgrade from Windows 8.1:

1. You should have a licensed version of Windows OS installed.
2. You should have all the latest updates of Windows installed successfully
3. When you have all the latest updates installed, you will automatically see an Windows 10 icon in the task bar as shown below:

4. When you click on the icon, you see an pop up window showing the steps to get Windows 10 as shown below:

5. When you click on the blue icon on the left top corner, you will see various menus -> click View Confirmation under Getting the upgrade:

                                   

Here you can enter your email ID associated with Windows Account to reserve your Windows 10 for free :)

You should see a screen as shown below if your Windows 10 copy is reserved:

According to Microsoft's latest press release, it is going to be LIFETIME FREE!!!!

Learn more on Windows 10 Update: Link

Read Windows 10 Features: Link

Please share this post if this helps you!

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