Brooks White, Sr. PFE SharePoint

Turning off Access Requests in all sites in a web app

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 16:18:09 GMT

My customer uses Jive instead of Yammer for internal social media. Jive is housed in SharePoint 2013 on premises. The question came up of how to turn off access requests to Jive sites because they are not needed. The customer wanted all checkboxes in this widget turned off on all sites in the web app Jive is using: I quick internet search turned up this, which had a nice script to do just that - https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/63841325-c643-42a2-baa8-2ba730575356/disable-manage-access-request-for-all-sites?forum=sharepointgeneralprevious This script was created by @zeemanj.

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
$webApp = Get-SPWebApplication http://sharepoint/
foreach ($site in $webApp.Sites)
{
    Write-Host "Opening" $site.Url
	foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs)
	{
        Write-Host "Opening" $web.Url        
        if ($web.RequestAccessEmail -ne "")
        {                        
            $web.AddProperty("RequestAccessEnabledBackup", $web.RequestAccessEmail)
            $web.RequestAccessEmail = ""
            $web.Update()
            Write-Host $web.GetProperty("RequestAccessEnabledBackup") "saved"
        }
		$web.Dispose()
	}
	$site.Dispose()
}

Lesser Used Features in the Project Desktop Client: Add object to task

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 20:10:38 GMT

This series covers the Microsoft Project 2016 and Project Online desktop client’s lesser known and underutilized features. In this short presentation, I will cover adding objects to a task in three minutes nine seconds. https://youtu.be/0r-vR7v0PaY

Please upvote product suggestions on UserVoice

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 18:49:34 GMT

I was reviewing UserVoice input for suggestions about CSOM accessing Project Online and Project Server on premises. I found several suggestions that have high vote counts and which have affected my Project Online customers. Can I ask you to upvote these suggestions?

Clone Project Online PWA instances - https://microsoftproject.uservoice.com/forums/218133-microsoft-project/suggestions/15330594-clone-project-online-pwa-instances
Provide support for backup and restore of a single project - https://microsoftproject.uservoice.com/forums/218133-microsoft-project/suggestions/12261789-provide-support-for-backup-and-restore-of-a-single, which is essentially the same as #3 below.

Additionally, I really like these ideas.

Allow an alias to be associated with Baseline, Baseline 1, Baseline 2 etc - https://microsoftproject.uservoice.com/forums/218133-microsoft-project/suggestions/12277935-allow-an-alias-to-be-associated-with-baseline-bas
Open multiple instances of Project for side-by-side comparison - https://microsoftproject.uservoice.com/forums/218133-microsoft-project/suggestions/13586853-open-multiple-instances-of-project-for-side-by-sid

Please help me improve the product by upvoting with me.

Providing notes to resources on their timesheets

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 18:25:11 GMT

My customer wanted to provide text notes to a resource about a task. The requirement that made this challenging was that the text notes had to be on the user's timesheet. The notes would define what "success" looked like and help the resource determine if he was done with the task. Any resource can create their timesheet and then drill into any task to see the task Notes field at the bottom of the page. The project manager just has to double click a task in the Project client and choose the Notes tab. Add any notes you want, then save and publish and the resource can see them via drilling in. The goal, however, was to eliminate the drill down mouse click. The customer wanted the text notes to go IN the timesheet itself. No extra mouse clicks; it's just there. The disadvantage to the method I am about to describe is that each resource will need the notes. You can't just edit the task Notes field once and have all assigned resources see it in the timesheet views. As an administrator, create an enterprise custom field called "Notes for Resource" that is Entity: Task and Type: Text. In my screenshots, I used "Task Note TEXT". As a project manager, open your plan in Project and change the view to Task Usage. Add the new custom field to the view on the entry table side of the view. On each resource name row, edit the new custom field and add whatever text is desired, then publish. As an administrator, add the new ECF to the My Timesheet and My Work views in Server Settings > Manage Views and set the new column checkbox for "Mark column as read only." As a resource, view the notes the project manager added for you, specifically.

"Due to organizational policies, you can't access these resources"

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 17:15:54 GMT

I attempted to connect to my Project Online instance today with Project 2016 using my administrator account and could not. I received a short message stating "Due to organizational policies, you can't access these resources". I was using a virtual machine in my test bed, so attempted the same on my workstation and found I could connect. I cleared the cache from Project 2016 and was able to connect again: File > Options > Save > Clean Up Cache.

What's new in SharePoint and Project Server 2016 links

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 19:28:37 GMT

I assembled this list of what is new/deprecated in SharePoint and Project Server 2016 for a customer upgrading from Project Server 2013. He wanted to have a training call, so built the list and added some notes about important information in each. It's my hope that this will be useful to others.

SharePoint 2016
1. Overview of MinRole Server Roles in SharePoint Server 2016 - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt346114(v=office.16).aspx
2. New and improved features in SharePoint Server 2016 - https://technet.microsoft.com/library/mt346121(v=office.16).aspx
  1. Learn about the new features and updates to existing features in SharePoint Server 2016. For a comparison of SharePoint on-premises features between SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Server 2016 editions, see SharePoint feature availability across on-premises solutions. For new features in SharePoint Server 2016 for end users, see What's new in SharePoint Server 2016.
3. What's deprecated or removed from SharePoint Server 2016 - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt346112(v=office.16).aspx
  1. For Project Server users, the main takeaway here is that Excel Services is now part of Office Online Server; OOS must be configured to interact with your SharePoint (and Project Server) farm. OOS can be a single server or n+1 servers for high availability.
4. What's new in SharePoint Server 2016 - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-s-new-in-SharePoint-Server-2016-089369b5-c3d4-4551-8bed-22b2548abd3b
5. New features in November 2016 PU for SharePoint Server 2016 (Feature Pack 1) - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt744526(v=office.16).aspx
  1. The Administrative Actions Logging feature provides logging around common SharePoint administrative actions to aid SharePoint administrators in troubleshooting changes to their farm.
  2. The MinRole feature in SharePoint Server 2016 now includes two new server roles and enhanced support for small farms.
6. New features in September 2017 PU for SharePoint Server 2016 (Feature Pack 2) - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt826233(v=office.16).aspx
  1. Feature Pack 2 contains all the new features that shipped with Feature Pack 1. You don't need to separately install Feature Pack 1 and then install Feature Pack 2. Feature Pack 2 is included in all future Public Updates for SharePoint Server 2016, beginning with the September 2017 Public Update.
Project Server 2016
1. What's new for IT pros in Project Server 2016 - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff631142(v=office.16).aspx
  1. “A single database for multiple instances” – If you want to have more than one instance of PWA, I recommend you have separate databases for reporting purposes from the pjrep.* tables in the content database, because direct access to the reporting schema is supported only if there is a single instance of Project Web App that uses the database.
2. What's deprecated or removed in Project Server 2016 - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt422816(v=office.16).aspx
3. What’s new in Project 2016- https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2015/09/30/whats-new-in-project-2016/
  1. Resource capacity heat maps
  2. Timeline changes

Installing Project 2016 on a workstation with Office Pro Plus 2016 C2R (click to run)

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Mon, 09 Oct 2017 14:54:06 GMT

My customer will be upgrading from Project Server 2013 to Project Server 2016 (all on premises). In order to install the Project 2016client software, he wanted to install Office Pro Plus 2016 C2R (click to run) alongside the Project installation which would be installed via the .MSI executable. Somewhere in the links below, it says this is possible, but then says it's possible because you will use the Project 2016 C2R to install Project and use your volume license key to license the software. So, you aren't installing via the .MSI. It took me a couple of readings to wrap my head around that idea. In my testing of the Office Deployment Tool, I ran into a problem early on after I copied the configuration xml from the Configuration options for the Office 2016 Deployment Tool link below and then added my changes to it.

When I ran the /download command, I received the this error [Error Code: 30088-1007 (0)]:

When I ran the /configure command, I received the same text and a different error - Error Code: 0-1008 (0). There is something wrong with the xml code on the site I pulled it from and I don't know exactly what. Eventually, I found the Configuration XML Editor for the Office Deployment Tool and I strongly recommend you use it to configure your XML for the tool. You walk through all of the options in an easy to use GUI on the left and the XML is built for you on the right hand side of the screen. [caption id="attachment_1225" align="aligncenter" width="1038"] Office Deployment Tool; Configuration XML Editor[/caption] Below are the links I researched and used to build my successful test for installing Office Pro Plus 2016 and Project 2016.

Overview of the Office 2016 Deployment Tool <https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Overview-of-the-Office-2016-Deployment-Tool-bb5b62d9-1168-47e9-9d54-15a958acfcca> Configuration options for the Office 2016 Deployment Tool <https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Configuration-options-for-the-Office-2016-Deployment-Tool-d3879f0d-766c-469c-9440-0a9a2a905ca8> Deploy Office 365 ProPlus from a local source <https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Deploy-Office-365-ProPlus-from-a-local-source-35d4cb3b-4cc9-4bc9-9f20-eaf3c50f8331?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US> Use the Office Deployment Tool to install volume licensed editions of Visio 2016 and Project 2016 <https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-the-Office-Deployment-Tool-to-install-volume-licensed-editions-of-Visio-2016-and-Project-2016-82691bd7-a3d5-47ca-8d8a-0ee43ec2c01f?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US> Overview of update channels for Office 365 ProPlus <https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Overview-of-update-channels-for-Office-365-ProPlus-9ccf0f13-28ff-4975-9bd2-7e4ea2fefef4?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US> Configuration XML Editor <https://officedev.github.io/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts/XmlEditor.html>

HTTP or HTTPS in Office Online Server

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 20:58:04 GMT

I'm deploying a single Office Online Server for my SharePoint 2016 single server farm and using http, not https, because it's only a test farm. Here's one of the links I used: Deploy Office Web Apps Server https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219455.aspx. After I was done, I was unable to preview Excel spreadsheets and I was getting this error in the preview window: Sorry, something went wrong An error has occurred on the server. Looking in the ULS logs, I see this error and learn from researching that you can't be logged in as the System Account, and I WAS logged in as the farmadmin account, and accessing the preview and attempts to edit in Excel Online were met with the Sorry, something went wrong message. This is the error you will see if you do the same: 06/27/2017 09:47:15.87* w3wp.exe (0x3044) 0x3D18 SharePoint Foundation WOPI awyfb Unexpected WopiFrame: GetWOPITargetInternalEx failed. [URL: https://2016ss2/sites/Top Level/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc={58895ce6-3c14-4ea8-884a-c62346c08dbb}&action=interactivepreview&wdSmallView=1, Exception: System.NotSupportedException: Can not create an identity context for system account user token. at Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel.SPIdentityContext.Create(SPUserToken token, Boolean isShareByLinkGuestUser) at Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel.SPIdentityContext.Create(SPUser user) at Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel.OAuth2.SPOAuth2SecurityTokenManager.IssueLoopbackTokenString(Uri endpointAddress, SPUser user, String applicationContext, DateTime& validTo) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPWOPIHost.GetAccessToken(SPWeb web, Guid uniqueId, String proofKeyId, SPUrlZ... b4bfff9d-d300-20bd-0cad-856b0e426c56 Even after figuring out I can't use my System Account to access Office preview, I was unable to get the preview to work. I rebuilt my OOS farm repeatedly by running the New-OfficeWebAppsFarm command on my OOS server. I copied the command from some site I can't remember now, but it was a Microsoft branded article. The command I ran on my OOS server was: New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalURL "https://oos.brwhite1.lab" -EditingEnabled:$true -AllowHttp On my SP2016 Server, I ran: New-SPWOPIBinding -ServerName oos.brwhite1.lab -AllowHTTP I also ran: set-wopizone internal-http and confirmed it with get-spwopizone. BUT, whenever I ran get-spwopibinding on my SharePoint Server, all of the applications listed always showed WopiZone as "internal-https" and I needed it to show internal-http. Here's a snip from my get-spwopibinding command: Application : Excel Extension : XLS ProgId : Action : view IsDefaultAction : True ServerName : oos.brwhite1.lab WopiZone : internal-https It finally dawned on me that I was making assumptions. My original new-officewebappsfarm command was the problem. Because I copied and pasted the URL into Notepad, it copied the -InternalURL "https:// with it. I only had to change the -InternalURL to https:// and I was able to fix preview and edit in Excel Online access for normal users. For testing, there's no need to get fancy and use HTTPS, certificates, etc, although it's good for practice to do that. In my case, the problem was a simple 's' in my internalURL. Whew.

PWA banner says “This site is read-only at the moment.”

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 17:35:55 GMT

Testing a customer's database upgrade on my internal test servers, I ran into this problem again. The PWA banner says "This site is read-only at the moment." I could have saved myself some time by actually reading the first paragraph of Brian Smith's post on the Project Support blog located here: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/projectsupport/2016/04/07/project-server-2016-if-your-pwa-site-goes-read-only/ I had successfully upgraded from PS2013 to PS2016 and when I went to PWA, I got the message that “This site is read-only at the moment.” Basically, there are two things to check when this happens. First make sure you have at least the May 2016 updates installed and then rerun the Enable-ProjectServerLicense -Key command. Rerunning the enable-projectserverlicense command made the site read/write for me.

Migrate-SPProjectDatabase : Error encountered while migrating project data in Content database. The INSERT permission was denied on the object 'MSP_RESOURCES', database 'PWA_Content', schema 'pjpub'.

Brooks White - Sr. PFE SharePoint — Sat, 13 May 2017 15:00:55 GMT

I'm running a migration test from Project Server 2013 to Project Server 2016 and ran into a problem of my own making, so I wanted to share in the event this can help others. My upgrade command is this: Migrate-SPProjectDatabase -DatabaseName PWA_ProjectWebApp -SiteCollection "https://vm1/pwa" "[A] Yes to All" got me this: Migrate-SPProjectDatabase : Error encountered while migrating project data in Content database. The SELECT permission was denied on the object 'MSP_RESOURCES', database 'PWA_ProjectWebApp', schema 'pub'. "[Y] Yes" got me this: Migrate-SPProjectDatabase : Error encountered while migrating project data in Content database. The INSERT permission was denied on the object 'MSP_RESOURCES', database 'PWA_Content', schema 'pjpub'. INSERT permission denied screams "this is a SQL Server permissions problem", so I opened SQL Server Management Studio. I expanded the Security node of my SQL instance, then expanded Logins. I double-clicked my farmadmin account (which I was using to run the migrate command) and started looking at the database role memberships for my content and my PWA databases. I saw that in both databases, the account was in dbowner and also PSDataAccess, among others. I decided to look at the PSDataAccess role by expanding the content database under the Databases node. I expanded the database itself and then Security > Roles > Database Roles and then I double-clicked on PSDataAccess. On the General page, I saw my farmadmin was a member. On the Securables page, things got interesting. In the top half of the Securables page, I scrolled down until I hit Schema pjpub and Name MSP_RESOURCES named in the error output and selected it. On the bottom half, I scrolled until I found the INSERT permission. This was set to Deny. I repeated these steps and confirmed the SELECT permission was also set to Deny in the PWA database on Schema Pub and Name MSP_RESOURCES. Aha! I removed the farmadmin account from the PSDataAccess role and attempted my command again and the upgrade appears to be running fine. PS C:\Users\farmadmin> Migrate-SPProjectDatabase -DatabaseName PWA_ProjectWebApp -SiteCollection "https://vm1/pwa" Confirm Are you sure you want to perform this action? Performing the operation "Migrate-SPProjectDatabase" on target "PWA_ProjectWebApp". [Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All [S] Suspend [?] Help (default is "Y"): y 41.78% : PWA_ProjectWebApp.pub --> PWA_Content.pjpub So, this leads me to wonder "why was my farmadmin account part of that database role?" because you can't run an upgrade with that role on the account. I checked another instance of PWA, found the databases, and performed the same check. In those DBs, my farmadmin account was NOT part of that role. Again, "aha!" I think I changed the SQL role membership for my farmadmin account doing some other testing (related to reporting) in the past on these databases and that came back to haunt me, because I never changed it back. You can check out Brian Smith's blog for more about this role and its relation to reporting here: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/projectsupport/2016/08/17/project-server-2016-why-does-psdataccess-deny-select-on-tables/