SharePoint 2013 - Hello World App

Hello World!!! Lets create a SharePoint 2013 App.
Following are the quick steps to create a SharePoint Hosted App using Visual Studio 2013:

1. Launch Visual Studio 2013.
2. Select File -> New Project
3. Select App for SharePoint 2013 and provide name and location of the project
   
4. Provide url of the developer site (Site collection created by using Developer Site template) and select SharePoint Hosted App in hosting option then select Finish.
   
5. Hit Start from the tool bar, it will compile and deploy the app to your developer site.
   

Sharing SharePoint Online Site with External Users

Scenario:
I have subscription of SharePoint Online and have created few private sites in it. I wanted to share one of the private site collection with the external users and keep on getting the following error message:

Sorry, you are not allowed to share this with external users.

However when I try to share existing sites (default sites) with external users, it gets shared without any problem.

Solution:
For the new site collections you have to enable following option:

1. Go to the SharePoint admin center and  select the Site Collection.
2. Select Sharing from the tool bar. 
3. Change the sharing settings to Allow
   
   

SharePoint 2013 - Audit Log

Scenario:
I had a business requirement to track user activities inside a SharePoint site and guess what? SharePoint have OTB functionality to track who is doing what in the whole site collection. For example: User A is editing documents, User B is downloading some documents and User C is just viewing the content without touching them. This functionality is called Audit Log Reporting.

Configure Audit Log Settings:

1. Go to Site Settings and under Site Collection Administration section, select Site collection audit settings.
   
2. Select the events that you want to capture.
   

View Audit Log Reports:

1. Go to Site Collection Administration section and select Audit log reports.
2. Select the report that you want to view. Make sure you have selected the corresponding event in the above steps.
   
3. You will be asked to select a document library where the report will be generated as an Excel document.

Note: In SharePoint 2007, you might not see the option of Audit log reports on Site Settings page. You have to go to the Site collection features and enable the Reporting feature to make the link visible.

Keep Calm & Learn SharePoint

The picture says it all.

CS50 - Final Project

Today I got my result for famous CS50 course that I am taking at Harvard University (Extension School) and boy! I must say, it was not an easy course :o). Here is my final project presentation.

Content Type Inheritance and Initialization

Content Type Inheritance and Initialization

Content Type Inheritance and Initialization

Situation:
Last week, I got a requirement from business to come up with a strategy of Meta Data that will be attached to different types of documents in different sub-sites and then eventually in different document libraries.

Specific Requirement: There were few columns that were common among all the Documents but not their values. e.g. Client Name is a common metadata/field among all documents but its value may vary depending on which client subsite is using that document.

Approach:
After some research and reading, the strategy that evolved was to create all the Site Columns required for all documents and then create Site Content Types. Fill those Site Content Types with the required Site Columns. Now attach those Site Content Types to the Document Libraries. Diagram below shows how this approach.

Setting Default Values (Locally):
User can set default values of the Site Columns at Document Library level. This way default values will stay within the document library and will not effect values in any other document library.

Setting Default Values (Globally):

Users can also set default values of the Site Columns at Site Collection level, where the values will propagate to all the document libraries which are using that Site Column through any Site Content Type.