SharePoint 2016(Preview) New Features

Microsoft has released the new and improved features in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview. Check out the following link:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt346121(v=office.16).aspx

SharePoint 2016 Preview

SharePoint 2016 Preview is available to download now.

Breaking: #SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview and cloud hybrid search is here! Download now -> http://t.co/JCPzHQP3K9 pic.twitter.com/GDat7bv5rJ

— Microsoft SharePoint (@SharePoint) August 24, 2015

SharePoint 2013 - Content Type Hub

Content Type Hub is part of Managed Meta Data Service and was introduced into SharePoint to share the Content Types across the site collections and web applications. It was introduced in SharePoint 2010 and now its available in SharePoint 2013 and Office365.

I found this beautiful article to explain how to configure a Content Type Hub to share Content Type across other site collections and web applications:

http://sharepoint-community.net/profiles/blogs/understanding-content-type-hub-cth-in-sharepoint-2013

Note: Its already configured for you in Office365 under http://MyOffice365/sites/contentTypeHub.

SharePoint 2013 People Search REST Call

You can find the whole API reference for Search REST API here. But when you have to do People Search then you need to put the context around your search Query and it will look like as follows:

Normal Search REST Call:
http://www.sharepointblue.com/SearchCenter/_api/search/query?querytext='*'

People Search REST Call: 
http://www.sharepointblue.com/SearchCenter/_api/search/query?querytext='*'&sourceid='b09a7990-05ea-4af9-81ef-edfab16c4e31'

Note: Before firing the People Search request, make sure User Profiles are crawlled inside the SharePoint by crawling: sps3://My_Site_host_URL

Ref: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj163876.aspx

Predictive Analytics with AzureML

I started exploring AzureML(Azure Machine Learning) few weeks back and quickly fell in love with its simplicity and robustness.

I grabbed the sample data of Down Jones Index from UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository and applied the Linear Regression algorithm to create a prediction model to estimate the future values of Microsoft stock's opening weekly price (so that I can be rich) and here how my model looks like in AzureML.

First I am removing the entire rows with missing values from the data. Then I am applying the filter for MSFT symbol in the first split and I am dividing the data to 80-20 ratio to train the actual model on 80% of the data with the help of Linear Regression algorithm. After that I am trying to predict price variable in Train Model and verifying it using 20% of remaining data. In the last, I am evaluating the model that how effective and reliable it is.

At this point I need to seriously improve my model using other algorithms, removing/adding new variables etc because the Coefficient of Determination is nowhere closer to 1 and Mean Absolute Error, Root Mean Squared Error, Relative Absolute Error & Relative Squared Error are very high. But that's how a prediction model (more or less) will eventually look like in AzureML. It can be published as a web service with few clicks.

I have published this experiment/source to AzureML gallery and can be accessed here:

https://gallery.azureml.net/Details/3f4d92649bfa4fa3bf4b0c93a3635227

My next step would be to grab data from SharePoint lists and apply some prediction algos on it.

PowerShell - Download Images from Web

I had a requirement where I have to export user profile images from MySite 2013 and I end up writing following PowerShell script:

[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile( `
'C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Web.dll')`
  | out-null 

$FileName = "C:\Temp\ImagesURL.txt";
$Loc = "C:\Temp\Images\"
$ImageName = ""

$wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient

$content = Get-Content $FileName
foreach ($line in $content)
{
    $Image = $Loc + $line.Substring($line.LastIndexOf("/") + 1)
    $url = $line
    
    Write-Host $url
    Write-Host $Image
    
    $wc.DownloadFile($url, $Image)
    
}

write-host "Finished successfully."

HTTP Request with Javascript

<script type="text/javascript">

var oReq = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP.3.0");

function handler()
{
    if (oReq.readyState == 4 /* complete */) {
        if (oReq.status == 200) {
            document.getElementById("myDiv").innerText = oReq.responseText;
        }
    }
}

function SendRequest()
{
    var vURL = "http://IdolApp:12345/data/data.xml";

    if (oReq != null) {
        oReq.open("GET", vURL, true);
        oReq.onreadystatechange = handler;
        oReq.send();
    }
    else {
        window.console.log("AJAX (XMLHTTP) not supported.");
    }
}

</script>

<input type="button" id="btnSubmit" value="Go" onclick="SendRequest()"/>
<br/>
<div id="myDiv" >:o)</div>

Ref: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/ms535874(v=vs.85).aspx

Note:
Initialize the oReq with following to make it IE and Chrome compatible:

var oReq;

if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
{// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
 oReq=new XMLHttpRequest();
}
else
{// code for IE6, IE5
 oReq=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}