Hide column headings in SharePoint Views

If you want to hide column headings in a sharepoint view which you have sitting on your home page (or any other page for that matter) Perform following actions

1. Edit Page and Add a Script Editor webpart from Media and Content section.

2. Once the Script Editor webpart is added (make sure that the webpart is the last webpart on the page (bottom most). Edit the webpart and click EDIT SNIPPET

3. Add following script in the editor

4. Click OK on the webpart properties and Save the page.

Cannot Save as Draft on a team site blog in SharePoint Online

If you are reading this blog you must have the same issue I had a few days ago: you might not have the right permission level to use this, you might need to select an object or item, or the control might not work in this context.

Its even more frustrating when you know that you are a site collection administrator.

Lets get this solved once and for all.

Click on the gear icon on top right on your screen and select Site contents.

Click on the Posts app.
Click on List>Library settings on the ribbon and click Version Settings.
Make sure you have following settings on the page.

• Require content approval for submitted items? Yes
• Who should see draft items in the list? Only users who can edit items.

Click OK and go back to your blogs home page and try editing the blog again. You should be able to now see Save As Draft in your ribbon and a new Save As Draft button appearing before your Publish button.

Read my previous blog on how to get here.

SharePoint Online Blogs

Today one of the clients I am working for asked me to suggest options for blogging on Office 365 SharePoint Online.

Following are my 2 cents on it.

We have 2 options out of the box
1. SharePoint Blog site
2. Your personal Blog

Let me share what are our options with each type of blog posting and how to do it.

SharePoint Blog Site

You need to have administrative rights on the site/site collection to be able to create a new (Blog) sub site.

On the gear icon click on Site contents

Under Subsites select new subsite

On the New SharePoint Site provide all the required information and select Blog from Select a template Collaboration tab

Click Create.
Once you have the blog site ready you will see following on your Blog home page.

I must admit this is not a very best of interface but this feature is out of box and it works.
On the right hand side you see following options

Create a post

This link lets you create a new blog post.

Manage Post, Manage comments, Manage categories

SharePoint keeps blogs, comments and categories in different sharepoint lists and each link lets you work on the respective sharepoint list.

Change post layout:

Layout that you see on your home page is different from mine because I have chosen Boxed layout. Other options are Basic and Inline.

Your personal Blog

Click on the About Me link on your profile picture on the top right corner of the page. Under Profile you will see Blog section which lets you create your personal blogs. The interface is awesome and also lets you write posts directly from your Office Word which you can post directly to your Blog but I dont like a few things about it.

I cannot share it as I would like it to.

You need to post it to your Yammer feed to get a visibility

Share sends an email with a link to the post.

Clicking on All posts takes me to all my published and draft posts and lets me create a new post which is similar to the small + New post link on the top right on the Blog section on my profile page.

Open your Office Word and compose a pretty blog with images and videos and you can directly publish it to your Blog.

It really depends what type of Blog you or your organization needs. If its really your personal blog which you want to share with your team, My blogs is a way to go but if its organization wide which you want people to be interacting with go for SharePoint Blog Site.

Office 365 - Set user password to not never expire

It is as easy as
1. Connnect-MSOLService
2. Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName | Select PasswordNeverExpires
3. Set-MSOL -UserPrincipalName -PasswordNeverExpires $true
4. Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName | Select PasswordNeverExpires


If all the above statements do not make any sense to you, read on...
  
I was asked by my SDM to create an Global Administrator for one of our clients and set the password expiry to be set to Never. This is what we expect with system accounts when passwords don't change normally.

I created a new account and unchecked "Make this person change their password the next time they sign in"

That's all I though was involved in setting up an account as there was no "Password Policy" that I saw and of course my assumption was not right.

Solution

If you want to apply such a policy for a specific user, PowerShell is your friend. We will see in the end what it takes to apply different password related policies for all users in an organization.

You need to get Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant and Windows Azure AD Module.

Download each of them separately (64 bit) and install one after the other.

Once all is setup, look for Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell and right click and run as administrator

Type following command
Connnect-MSOLService
and connect using admin account on your tenant

First thing you need to do is verify if user password is already set to expire or not. We will run this commend again when we have applied the policy to set if it is set correctly.

Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName | Select PasswordNeverExpires

This command will return you a value of True or False depending on user settings. 

To apply the password never expire policy on your user run the following command

Set-MSOL -UserPrincipalName -PasswordNeverExpires $true

Rerun

Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName | Select PasswordNeverExpires 

to verify if your changes are applied or not.

Office 365 Interface

You must have realized by now that its too much work to be done if you need to apply it to the all users. Fear not my friend and continue reading.

Once you are on your Office 365 admin center click Service Settings and then select Passwords. This is where you administrate organization wide password policy. 

Happy administrating Office 365.

Onboarding Office 365 Series

I am working on a project for one of my clients where I am asked to onboard them to Office 365.

I have decided to write a series on Onboarding Office 365
There will a series of articles which I will write and share as I go along.

1. Add and configure domains
2. Activate Active Directory synchronization

Onboarding Office 365 Series: Add and configure domains

Page under construction. Please visit following useful links to get you started.


Domains
Video: Add your domain to Office 365
Video: Verify your domain in Office 365
Confirm ownership of your custom domain name

How to send Ctrl+Alt+Del on Remote Desktop

I was connected to a remote box using Windows Remote Desktop and wanted to change my password. Easiest way to do this is to press Ctrl + Alt +Delete key sequences but on the remote computer you cannot because your local client will pick this key combination and give you options on your local box.

The way to do it on remote client is to press CTRL + ALT + END and that should solve your problem.