Configuring approvals for lists and libraries
We are adding a new menu item under the Flow menu that will let customers configure the type of approvals they would like to use in their lists and libraries (Request sign-off, or Content approval), or turn approvals off altogether. We have added this feature based on the feedback that we received for the rollout of the Request sign-off feature, where some customers preferred to use the Content approval feature which changes the visibility of the current item based on the approval status, and there are fixed approvers for a given list or library, or other customers had other custom flows configured for their list or library, and did not want to have Request sign-off to become a source of confusion for their users. To make changes, as site owner, you will be able click on Flow->Configure flows in the command bar of your list or library: Then in the panel that appears, pick the approval method that you'd like, or turn approvals off altogether: The new configuration panel will become available for our Targeted Release customers in early September, and then go to the rest of our customers. We expect to complete the rollout by September 19. Please continue to keep the feedback for our features coming, and tell us how we can make SharePoint work better for you.New feature: Create Power BI reports from tables in Excel files and CSV files
We are excited to announce a new feature that will make it very easy to start visualizing data in Excel tables and CSV files using Power BI. When you go to your OneDrive for Business, or any SharePoint document library, you will be able to select an Excel file that contains tables, or a CSV file, and click on "Open in Power BI" in the command bar. Clicking this command will open a new tab in your browser and take you to Power BI. A Power BI dataset will be automatically created based on your Excel or CSV file and you can start creating a report to visualize your data. Note that this requires that your data is formatted as tables in Excel. The dataset created in Power BI will be automatically refreshed when you make changes to the original Excel or CSV file. This means you can continue to make changes to the file in OneDrive or SharePoint, and any associated dataset, reports and dashboards will be automatically updated with the latest data. Refresh happens every hour, but if you want to see changes right away you can start a refresh in Power BI by clicking the ellipses beside the dataset, then clicking the refresh now icon. The dataset will be added to your group's workspace if the SharePoint site you started from has a group association (like a modern team site). Otherwise, it will be added to your personal workspace. Any user can create a report based on an Excel or CSV file in Power BI for free, but to share the report with others you will need a Power BI Pro license. If the user creating the dataset already has a Power BI Pro license, they will be able to take full advantage of it. If you are a first time Power BI user, you may find this page helpful for an introduction. We will be gradually rolling this feature out to customers over the coming weeks and months, and as always listen to your feedback. We will make updates to this post as the feature rollout expands through our release process.Set values for Managed Metadata (aka Taxonomy) columns in PowerApps and Flow! (First Release)
Hi everyone, As of today, you will be able to set the values of your managed metadata columns (sometimes also called taxonomy columns) in PowerApps (for both multi-value and single value) and in Flow (single value for now, but multi-value coming soon...) Here's a sample multi-value taxonomy column that was tied to a termset for languages. We are not fully all the way there: the default values are not yet showing up if they are set, and we don't yet let you disambiguate between different paths while you are typing, but we think this is a great net new add for our customers who love and use the managed metadata columns. Please give it a try, and let us know your feedback. In your First Release tenant, you can create a new app, or custom forms, or go to an existing app and refresh the schema to get the new columns. We expect to start rolling out to Production in the last week of November if we don't hit any blocking issues.five issues with one Office 365 Group
I have five issues with an Office 365 Group. I've been trying to work on them with Microsoft for about 4 weeks now and, unfortunately, I've only stumbled into more problems, rather than resolving any issues. I have two support tickets open with Microsoft support at the moment. Importantly, I don't seem to have these issues with a test group I created for comparison purposes. The issues only seem to occur with this group. Below is a summary of the five issues that I'm currently facing with this group. Invites to some external users sometimes never arrive even though they're added to the group. I've seen others posts on this issue, but I haven't seen an explanation as to why that happens and what the fix is. I have no resolution other than to remove and re-add them, and hope they get the email this time. Invited external users sometimes aren't granted SharePoint access after they click the "Read Group Files" message in the welcome email. I've seen others with this issue on the forum, and it looks like a permission syncing issue between Groups and SharePoint. Regardless, it's a bad user experience if they accept the invitation and then have to request access to the Team Site document library via the web browser and wait for that permission to be granted by an administrator. Or, they can close their browser, wait a while, try again, and find it magically work. External users who are succesfully able to access the Team SharePoint site are suddenly unable to do so. It seems like their permissions were removed, even though they remain listed as a user through PowerShell. I have to remove and re-add them to the Group. External users are unable to search the document library. The "Highlighted Content" web part also doesn't work for them. This was the inital issue I discovered and there's been no resolution at this point. I can't manage the group from Outlook 2016. See the screenshot below. A web search for part of that error in quotes has no results so I suspect this is an unusual problem.Windows Store Library shows empty list in "All owned" section when the type Is set to "All Types"
Windows Store Library shows empty list in "All owned" section when the type Is set to "All Types" when I set it specifically to "Games" or "Apps" then the list starts populating and showing me my stuff. Windows 10 build 18363.657 Feedback: https://aka.ms/AA7c2fb
New infographic: document circle of life
"Where should I store my files?" and "What's the difference between SharePoint and OneDrive?" If you get these questions a lot, this infographic could seriously help build a standard lifecycle for files and documents. Also applicable to Teams, Outlook Groups, and Yammer, since they use SharePoint in the background. Link below for full-size version. http://icsh.pt/DocCircleOfLife http://icsh.pt/DocCircleOfLife
Sharepoint library - Lookup stopped working just on one column
I have a library with lookup columns pointing to specific lists (providers, companies, products etc.). In particular, I have two columns, "Company" and "Invoicee" pointing to the same list "companies". Everything worked perfectly for months, but suddenly since yesterday the lookup for the "Invoicee" columns stopped working. When I start typing, it seems that it starts looking for a match but it keeps looping forever. The other column "Company" that points to the same lookup list does not present the same problem and is still working properly. I thought it could be a temporary issue but today the problem is still there. Any idea on how to fix this?
