SharePoint 2013 community site

benjaminprins Office 365

A lot of new social features have been added in SharePoint 2013. A major social feature is the new community site. In this blog I will show the new features included in the community site.

Creating a discussion

When a new discussion is created a user can raise the discussion as a question. For as long as there is no answer the discussion will be show in the Unanswered question view.

Featured discussions

Discussion can be marked as featured to indicate there importance. Featured discussion will be shown in the Featured view.

Finding discussions

The content of the community is organized by categories. Users can interact with the rich interface to find the correct category. Hovering over a category shows the number of discussions, replies and the description.  The views “Recent” and “What’s hot” help the users to find new are popular categories.

After selecting the correct category with the help of the different views users can find the correct discussions. For example the Featured view displays all the posts that are set as featured (important) and the Unanswered question view shows all the post without an answer.

Members

Members of a community site are user who interacted with the site, not the user added to the community sites members group. The member list shows all the members with their statistics.

My membership
On the members page users can see their own reputation statistics and if they wish leave the community.

Reputation

Users activity on community sites will give the user reputation points, bases on the gained points users will be awarded achieved badges.  Points are gained per community and achieved badges can be shown as a bar or as text.

Users gain points by;

  • creating new posts,
  • replying to posts,
  • getting a liked or receives a rating of 4 or 5 on a reply or post,
  • getting a reply get marked as ‘Best Reply’.

It is not possible to extend the reputation model.

Besides the achieved badges there are also gifted badges. Gifted badges cannot be earned, but are manually awarded.

Rating

There are two rating systems available, rating with stars and rating with likes. Rating is an individual setting for lists and libraries.

Add View folder link for document search results

benjaminprins Office 365

In the default document search results it is only possible to open the documents. It is not possible to navigate to the documents location.

Solution

1. Edit the Search Core Results Web part on the Search Center results page.
2. Click on XSL Editor under Display properties.
4. In the XSLT look for the following code.

<xsl:template name="ViewInBrowser">
        <xsl:param name="browserlink" />
        <xsl:param name="currentId" />
        <xsl:if test="string-length($browserlink) &gt; 0">
            <span class="srch-urllink">
                <a href="{$browserlink}" id="{concat($currentId,'_VBlink')}">
                    <xsl:value-of select="$ViewInBrowser" />
                </a>

3. Add the following code after the code for ViewInBrowser.

<!-- Toon View Folder link bij documenten -->    
<xsl:if test="isdocument = 'True'">
  <a>
    <xsl:attribute name="href">
      <xsl:value-of select="sitename"/>
    </xsl:attribute>
    View Folder
  </a>                         
</xsl:if>

4. Save the changes and  enjoy the result.

Result

SharePoint 2013 the my tasks social feature

benjaminprins Office 365

A lot of new social features have been added to SharePoint 2013. My tasks is one of the new social features. My tasks is located on the my site of every user and shows the aggregated tasks.  The aggregation happens through a new shared service application called “Work Management”.  The SSA uses an hidden list in the users my site to cache all the task data and is able to aggregate from SharePoint sites, Exchange and Project sites. The my tasks does not only show the tasks but provides the user with a fully editable task and the ability to create new tasks.   In this blog I will show a few of the new features included in the my tasks.

Try out the new Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise Preview for yourself!

Tasks preview panel

A fancy new preview panel is added. Click on the dots beside the task to open the preview panel. The panel shows the location and URL of the tasks but more importantly the due date of the task. In this example the task is 2 days past the due date and is shown in red.

Task filter

Tasks can be filtered to show only the tasks form a specific location.

1. Click on the dots to show the additional options.
2. Select one or more locations to filter the tasks.

Search in my tasks

A search box has been added to the tasks list. The search query will be executed directly on the task list without a page reload or page redirect!

Tasks importance

The importance of a task is show by the red exclamation mark. Simply click on the exclamation mark to change the importance.

The timeline

The timeline shows the tasks within the range of the timeline.

Remove task from timeline

Removing tasks from the timeline is very simple.

1. Click on the dots to open the task preview panel.
2. Click on Remove from timeline.

Add task to timeline

Adding a task to the timeline works the same as removing a tasks from the timeline.

1. Click on the dots to open the task preview panel.
2. Click on Add to timeline.

SharePoint 2013 new search features

benjaminprins Office 365

A lot of new features have been added to the Search site of SharePoint 2013. In this blog I will show a few of these new features.

Try out the new Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise Preview for yourself!

Author refinement 

The refinement panel shows refinement options relative to the search results. For example it shows the authors. With SharePoint 2013 it possible to click on Show More and enter the name of the author you are looking for.

Modified date refinement 

Another example of a refinement options is the modified date. With SharePoint 2013 it possible to select a period on the timeline. A very easy and powerful way to refine the search results.

Document search results

When hovering over a document in the search result the fancy new preview panel is loaded. Not only can you open the document itself, with the view library button you can open the library where the document is stored! In the preview panel it is possible to fully scroll through the document, a very fast way to ensure you found the correct document.

Per user search preferences

User can configure search preferences to make the search experience more personal.

1. Users can activate or deactivate search suggestions in the search box and suggestions and favorites based on personal query history.
2. Users can clear there Clear personal query history, resetting Personal Query Suggestions and Results You Have Clicked.
3. Users can select if a document will open in the client application or in the browser.
4. Users can select a preferred search language.
5. Users can view and edit there existing search alerts.

SharePoint 2013 new document library features

benjaminprins Office 365

A lot of new features have been added to the document library of SharePoint 2013. In this blog I will show a few of these new features.

Try out the new Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise Preview for yourself!

Create new documents

The drop-down menu has been replaced by a good looking popup panel.

Preview of selected document

A fancy new preview panel is added. Click on the dots beside a document and view a fully scrollable preview of the document.

Follow a document

Not only whole sites can be followed. Click in the preview panel on follow to follow individual documents.

Search in document library

A search box has been added to the document library. Without a page reload or page redirect the search will be executed directly on the document library!

Uploading document

The process of uploading documents is changed and works a lot faster. Just drag the document(s) onto the document library!

Saving views
Small order and filter changes to active views can be saved very quickly. Just change the view and click on the save this view link.

1. Change the sort order of a view.


2. Click on the save this view link.
3. Click on Save to save the changes to the current view (all documents) or change the name of the view to create a new view.

Switching views

Changing views changed a little bit in a good way. The first three views will be displayed above the documents and by clicking on the name the view will be loaded. Clicking on the dots will collapse a menu which shows all the remaining views, nice and simple.

SharePoint 2013 has Nintex Workflow 2013 App

benjaminprins Office 365

Nintex Workflow is a powerful tool which lets you visual design workflow within SharePoint. Up until now Nintex Workflow needed to be installed on the SharePoint servers itself, it was not possible to use it with SharePoint Online. In the new SharePoint Online version (part of Office 365) Nintex Workflow is available in the SharePoint App Store!

In this post I will walk through an installation and give a demo using Nintex Workflow Platform Preview on a SharePoint Online site.The Nintex Workflow Platform Preview has less features  in comparison to the on premise version, but I expect that this will change over time.

Install the Nintex Workflow Platform Preview

1. Open the app store.
2. Search for Nintex Workflow Platform Preview.

3. Click on the app and add it.

4. Return to the site.

5. Click on Trust It.

Use Nintex Workflow Plathform Preview

In this demo we are going to build a Nintex Workflow to

1. Open a document library and create a new Single Line of text column named First Letters.
2. Click on Nintes Workflow in the ribbon.

2. Click on Design a workflow.

3. Click on Variable and add a text variable named FirstLettersOfName.

4. Add the Extract Substring from Start of String action to the flow.

5. Set the action as shown below

6. Add the Set Field in Current Item Action and set the action as shown below.

7. Set the workflow settings as shown below and publish the workflow.


8. Upload a document to the library and check out the result.

Result