Recently I was assisting a customer with a SharePoint Online subscription who wanted custom Master pages on their SPO sites.

Even though creating a Custom Master page is not the Microsoft best practise ( Microsoft pushes down updates to the default Master Pages which will not be received by the custom Master Page), the customer had very specific design requirements which required this.

Therefore we activated the “"SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure" feature on the Site Collection and Site level for the Team Site. Activation of the site collection feature gave the following error the first time "Dependency feature 'PublishingMobile' (id: 57cc6207-aebf-426e-9ece-45946ea82e4a) for feature 'PublishingSite' (id: f6924d36-2fa8-4f0b-b16d-06b7250180fa) is not activated at this scope." However on the second attempt we were able to activate the feature, so we ignored the error we had received initially.

Once we started playing around with Design Manager to convert the HTML styles to Master Pages we noticed that the Design Manager in SPO seemed to look slightly different from the usual on prem one.

As shown in the screenshot there appeared to be an extra view of what looked lik the Master Page catalog on the 'Edit the Master Page' stage. Futhermore while trying to convert the HTML to Master Page, the resulting conversion was not getting displayed on the page.

On checking the Master Page gallery we found that the conversion was being done. However when applying this MASTER page to the site we were getting the default Seattle.master's design.

After a couple of hours of trying and re-trying, we tried creating a new Team site collection, after activating the Publishing features ( no errors this time) we tried the same there...And Voila! ..we got the normal Design Manager view back (see screenshot below). On this site the design manager worked as expected and converted the HTML files.

It looks like there have been quite a few instances of this issue. It seems to be connected to the "Dependency feature 'PublishingMobile'" errror which we received when we activated the Publishing Infrastructure feature.

The root cause of this issue is still not clear, but re-creating the site collection seems to fix the issue.

Even though the users can see the names of all the files, once they click on the link it should give them an Access Denied error.

The first thing that came to my mind was Provider Hosted Apps with App only policy to implement this requirement.

So we went about creating a High Trust Provider Hosted App using the CSOM SharePoint Search API.

After a couple of stumbles we managed to get the App up and running. Since it is a development environment, we had the web application in the Provider Hosted App project hosted on the local IIS of the SharePoint server.

The App works fine when we use the User and Client Context. However the moment we change it to App only policy it would throw an Unauthorized Exception.

It gave an System.UauthorizedAccessException with a CorrelationID. We searched the ULS logs with the correlation ID and found this error message ‘Do not apply UserResourceTally for app only request.’

After some re-search we found that with Search SharePoint does not allow you to use App only principal, in the App Manifest file you can find that the only permission associated with search is 'QueryAsUserIgnoreAppPrincipal'.

Therefore it executes as the currently logged in user.

We ended up changing the code back to User + App context and setting the credentials of a site collection administrator for the ClientContext in the code.

clientContext.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("CONTOSO\\spadmin", "password");

This error occurs while trying to apply sort using APIs to sort a column which is not enabled for sorting on Search schema.

Navigate to Search Administration on Central Administration and select Search Schema.

Select the Managed Property that you are trying to use for sorting.

Now click on this Managed property. This opens the 'Edit Managed Property' page.

Now scroll down until you reach the section on Sorting. Ensure that this is set to 'Yes- active' as shown in below screenshot, which allows the value to be sortable immediately after a full crawl.

'Yes - latent' option allows the value to be made sortable at a later period of time by selecting 'Yes - active' without requiring a full crawl.

It is a convenient way to add extra functionaly to SharePoint Designer workflows ( by delegating work to a remote web service). Apart from that I enjoy the extra flexibility it provides by calling the REST services provided by SharePoint to retrive values from lists/libraries.

I recently had to develop a workflow in SharePoint to allow Managers to assign tasks to team members from a pre-defined list of tasks. These tasks are stored as the items in a multi select choice column as shown in below screenshot.

For this I need to retrieve the selected items in the multi select choice column in the SP Designer workflow. I found out that the Call HTTP action was the easiest way to implement this requirement.

Most of you might have tried calling the SharePoint REST services from SP Desinger workflows already.

You have to use the Build Dictionary variable and add two items to the dictionary named Accept and Content-type as shown in the screenshots.

The Call HTTP Web Service action has to be added after this. Then right click the action and select properties, and set the request header to the Dictionary variable which was built in the previous step as shown in the screenshot.

In my case I am retrieving values from a SharePoint List which has a multi select choice column and I need iterate through the items to retrieve the values which were selected for each item.

Therefore we need to choose HTTP GET as the HTTP method and specify the list, and filter specifications. Selecting specific columns will reduce the amount of data that is returned from the call.

As shown in the screenshot 'Tasks Assigned' is the multi select column. To retrieve the values of just this particular column from all the other data that the REST call returns, we need to use the 'Get an Item from a Dictionary' action.

Getting the values for the multi select column was the part where I struggled because the on the browser the data is returned in ATOM format and not in JSON.

For this I used Fiddler. Before starting a new capture, click on the Filters tab and Select Use Filters.

In the Request Headers section, select Set request header and enter the header as application/json;odata=verbose.

Now browse to the SharePoint REST url and refresh the page, this allows you to download the feed in the JSON format.

Open this file using JSON viewer, this enables you to view the correct path that needs to be used in the Get an Item from a dictionary action as shown in the below screenshot.

The same path can be used in the Action as shown below.

The count of the items selected in the multi select column can be obtained using the Count items in Dictionary action.

I created a loop that loops till the value of the count and inside the loop I use the 'Assing a Task' action to assign the task to team members.

The complete workflow can be seen in the below screenshot.

Convert web application from Classic Authentication to Claims authentication using the following PowerShell commands. The user running these commands should be a securityadmin on SQL server instance, db_owner on all databases that are to be updated and a local Administrator on the server on which you are running the Windows PowerShell cmdlets.

$webApp = Get-SPWebApplication "https://sharepoint.pink.com/"
$webApp.UseClaimsAuthentication = $True;
$webApp.Update()

Do an IISRESET after this.

Run the following PowerShell script to perform user migration.

$webApp.Migrate($true);

Once this is completed, go back to Central Administration -> Web Applications. Select the converted Web Application and click on Authentication Providers.

You will see that the Authentication Membership Provider Name would have changed to Claims Based Authentication.

Use the following article as reference to set up Forms Based Authentication for SharePoint 2010 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/gg252020(v=office.14).aspx

 On Central Administration go to Manage Web Applications -> Select the Web Application and go to Authentication Providers. Choose the default zone, and browse down to the Claims Based Authentication section.

Here select the 'Enable Forms Based Authentication (FBA)', as shown in screenshot. Add a name for the ASP.NET Membership provider and ASP.NET Role manager (this will be used later), and click OK.

Now we need to prepare the Microsoft SQL Server database for the ASP.NET membership and role providers.

The Microsoft SQL Server membership provider stores user information in a SQL Server database. You can create your SQL Server user store manually by running Aspnet_regsql.exe from the command line. Otherwise you can use the ASP.NET Configuration tool which you can find under the Website menu in Microsoft Visual Studio.

Start SQL Server Management Studio to connect to the SQL instance used by SharePoint, and create a new Database called aspnetdb as shown in the screenshot.

Use aspnet_regsql.exe to create the membership database. Open a Command Prompt window. Run the following command-line command to change directories to the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 directory.

cd C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727

Then run the following command as shown in screenshot

aspnet_regsql -S DEMO2010A -E -A mr –d aspnetdb_claim

-S    Specifies the server. In this example, the server is local.

-E    Specifies that Windows authentication should be used to connect to SQL Server.

-A mr   Specifies that the membership and role feature should be added.

-d    Specifies the database name.

This creates all the tables and Stored Procedures required for ASP.NET Membership and role provider. Verify that this has been created.

Grant database access to your web application AppPool account.

Now there are three web.config files that you must modify:

• Central Administration: To allow picking for site collections.

• Security Token Service: To allow sign in, and for issuing tokens.

• FBA Web Application: To allow picking on the local web application.

In the web.config file for the FBA web application, add the following connection string after the closing </configSections> tag.

<connectionStrings>
  <add name="MySQLServer"
       connectionString="Initial Catalog=aspnetdb;data source=SPDCSQL;Integrated Security=SSPI;" />
</connectionStrings>

as shown in the screenshot.

Repeat the same step for the web.config file under Central Administration website and the SecurityTokenServiceApplication website.

The SecurityTokenServiceApplication website is located under the SharePoint Web Services website.

Back at the FBA Web Application open the web.config file again and make the following changes:

Add the following code under the provider tag under membership

<add name="aspnetmembership" connectionStringName="MySQLServer" applicationName="MyAppName" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />

and the following code under the provider tag under role manager

<add name="aspnetrolemanager" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" connectionStringName="MyLocalSQLServer" applicationName="MyAppName" />

Do the same for the the web.config file under Central Administration website and the SecurityTokenServiceApplication website.

To add users and roles to the membership and role provider database execute the follwing command on aspnetdb database:

declare @now datetime
set @now= GETDATE()
exec aspnet_Membership_CreateUser 'MyAppName','admin1','pass@word1',
    '','admin1@contoso.com','','',1,@now,@now,0,0,null

Run the following query to add the user admin1 to the Admin role:

EXEC aspnet_Roles_CreateRole 'MyAppName', 'Admin'
EXEC aspnet_UsersInRoles_AddUsersToRoles 'MyAppName', 'admin1', 'Admin', 8

Now go to Central Administration and Under Application Management select Change site collection administrators. Select a site collection under the FBA web application.

For second Site collection Administrator click on the user lookup button and Select Forms Auth. Type admin1 and search. Select the user as shown in screenshot.

Once the Forms Auth user has been added as a Site collection Administrator, navigate to the Site Collection. You will see a dropdown to choose the Authentication type.

Choose Forms Auth and trype the admin1 username and password. You will now be logged in using this account.

You can add more FBA members and roles using the following SQL script:

declare @now datetime
set @now= GETDATE()

exec aspnet_Membership_CreateUser 'MyAppName','bob','pass@word1',
    '','bob@contoso.com','','',1,@now,@now,0,0,null
exec aspnet_Membership_CreateUser 'MyAppName','mary','pass@word1',
    '','mary@contoso.com','','',1,@now,@now,0,0,null
exec aspnet_Membership_CreateUser 'MyAppName','jack','pass@word1',
'','jack@contoso.com','','',1,@now,@now,0,0,null

EXEC aspnet_Roles_CreateRole 'MyAppName', 'Employee'
EXEC aspnet_Roles_CreateRole 'MyAppName', 'TeamManager'
EXEC aspnet_Roles_CreateRole 'MyAppName', 'CEO'

EXEC aspnet_UsersInRoles_AddUsersToRoles 'MyAppName', 'bob', 'Employee', 8
EXEC aspnet_UsersInRoles_AddUsersToRoles 'MyAppName', 'mary', 'TeamManager', 8
EXEC aspnet_UsersInRoles_AddUsersToRoles 'MyAppName', 'jack', 'CEO', 8
EXEC aspnet_UsersInRoles_AddUsersToRoles 'MyAppName', 'jack', 'Admin', 8

These members/roles will have to be granted permission to the site collection manually.