Provision SharePoint Online Site Collections

Objective 2.3: Plan a collaboration solution

This objective deals with using a variety of Office 365 tools for collaboration and coauthoring. To master this objective you’ll need to understand the differences between Yammer and SharePoint newsfeeds, the settings related to coauthoring, the functionality of OneDrive For Business, the SharePoint App Store, and Enterprise eDiscovery.

Using newsfeeds and Yammer

Newsfeeds and Yammer provide different methods for allowing users to share information throughout the organization.

Newsfeeds

Newsfeeds in SharePoint Online function as an organizational blog where members of the organization can post and reply to posts. A newsfeed exists at the SharePoint Online tenancy level. Newsfeeds also exist at the team site level. Figure 2-44 shows a post to the newsfeed in a SharePoint Online tenancy’s team site.

As is the case with other social networks, users can choose to like or reply to newsfeed posts. It is also possible to follow specific users. This allows for the newsfeed filter to be switched between those users a person is following and all users in the organization. People are also able to filter newsfeed posts so that only those posts that reference them are displayed.

In the event that you want to use a newsfeed to have a conversation with a small number of users rather than everyone in the organization, and you have permission to create new sites, you can do the following:

1. Create a new SharePoint Online site.
2. Share the site with the people who you want to have included in the conversation.
3. Use the site-specific newsfeed to have the conversation.

4. Ensure that users accessing the site select the Follow option, as shown in Figure 2-45, so that the users are subscribed to the newsfeed.

   

   FIGURE 2-45 Follow option

Users can access all of the newsfeeds of sites that are followed through the newsfeed app. To access the newsfeed app, perform the following steps:

1. In the list of apps, shown in Figure 2-46, click Newsfeed.

   

   FIGURE 2-46 List of apps

2. The Newsfeed page will show you all existing posts on sites that you are following. Figure 2-47 shows a newsfeed where a user is following two sites.

   

   FIGURE 2-47 Newsfeed app

3. If you are following multiple sites, you are able to select which site you post to from the Newsfeed app by using the drop down menu, as shown in Figure 2-48.

   

   FIGURE 2-48 Sharing options

Yammer

Yammer is a private social network that has features similar to many of the larger social networks. Yammer allows people in your organization to collaborate with one another. Only people with company email addresses are able to join a company Yammer network.

To use Yammer with SharePoint Online, you need to configure Yammer as the SharePoint social collaboration option. To configure Yammer as the SharePoint social collaboration option, perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Office 365 Admin Center with a user account that has SharePoint Online administrator privileges.
2. Under Admin, click SharePoint. This will open the SharePoint Admin Center.

3. Click Settings. Next to Enterprise Social Collaboration, click Use Yammer.com Service, as shown in Figure 2-49.

   

   FIGURE 2-49 Enterprise Social Collaboration

4. Click Save.

Switching to Yammer doesn’t disable Newsfeed functionality, though it does disable the ability to make posts to everyone in the organization. Newsfeeds associated with specific sites remain in place after you have enabled Yammer.

Documenting coauthoring

The coauthoring feature of SharePoint Online allows multiple users to work on a document. This occurs in such a way that the changes made by one user do not interfere with the changes made by another. The ability to coauthor documents is enabled by default for documents stored in SharePoint Online.

Office 365 ProPlus provides coauthoring support for Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Visio. Coauthoring is also possible through the Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote Online web apps. The only restriction is that the Excel client application supports a Shared Workbook feature rather than direct coauthoring of workbooks stored in SharePoint Online.

When planning for document coauthoring in SharePoint Online, take the following into account:

• Correct permissions Every user who will coauthor a document needs to have appropriate permissions to edit the document. One method of accomplishing this goal is to give all users who need to edit the document access to the SharePoint site where the document is stored. SharePoint permissions can also be used to limit which documents within a SharePoint site can be edited by particular users.
• Versioning Versioning keeps track of documents and stores previous versions of a document. SharePoint Online supports major and minor versioning, with major versioning being the default value. Microsoft recommends that monitor versioning not be used for document libraries that are used with OneNote coauthoring, as it can interfere with OneNote’s built-in versioning functionality.
• Number of versions The number of versions kept doesn’t directly impact coauthoring, but it will impact the amount of storage space consumed by versions. The default value for SharePoint Online is 500 versions.

• Check out If a document is checked out by an author, the document is locked until the check out is released. This blocks coauthoring. Check out is disabled by default in SharePoint Online, but users can manually check out documents using the Advanced menu, as shown in Figure 2-50. You should warn users not to check out documents when engaging in the coauthoring process.

  

  FIGURE 2-50 Check Out

To configure versioning and check out settings in a SharePoint Online document library, perform the following steps:

1. In the SharePoint Site, click Documents and then click Library, as shown in Figure 2-51.

   

   FIGURE 2-51 Documents

2. On the Library toolbar, shown in Figure 2-52, click Library Settings.

   

   FIGURE 2-52 Library Settings

3. Under the General settings area, click Versioning Settings, as shown in Figure 2-53.

   

   FIGURE 2-53 Library settings

4. Next to Document Version History, shown in Figure 2-54, choose whether you want to configure No versioning, Create Major Versions, or Create Major And Minor (Draft) Versions. You can also specify the number of major and minor versions to be kept. The default is to use major versions and to keep 500 major versions of a document.

   

   FIGURE 2-54 Version History

5. In the Require Check Out section, shown in Figure 2-55, specify whether documents should be checked out before editing. Remember that enabling this option disables coauthoring.

   

   FIGURE 2-55 Require Check Out

6. Click OK to apply the new settings.

Project Online

Project Online is a standalone web service that provides browser-based portfolio and project management tools. Project Online includes Project Web App. Depending on an organization’s Office 365 subscription level, it might also include Project Pro for Office 365. Project Pro for Office 365 is a desktop application that runs on client computers.

Excel Services

When you open an Excel file hosted in a SharePoint Online tenancy in a browser, the file opens in Excel Online. When you perform the same task with an Excel file hosted in an on-premises SharePoint 2013 deployment, the file might be opened either in Excel Services or in Excel Web App if an Office Web Apps server is present.

Visio Services

Visio Services is included with SharePoint 2013 and Office 365. It allows Visio diagrams stored in SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint Online to be viewed in a browser without requiring a full Visio client or Visio Viewer. Visio Services works with the .VSDX Visio file format. Older Visio files in .VDW format will also be visible in a web browser through Visio Services.

Using OneDrive for Business

OneDrive for Business, formerly known as SkyDrive Pro, is a location that allows you to store, sync, and share work files. OneDrive for Business is separate from OneDrive, which was formerly known as SkyDrive. OneDrive for Business differs from OneDrive in the following ways:

• OneDrive is associated with a personal Microsoft account. People in your organization cannot access or manage OneDrive.
• OneDrive for Business is managed by an organization and is made available through an Office 365 subscription. This means that files stored in OneDrive for Business can be accessed by Office 365 administrators. OneDrive for Business allows Office 365 users to share files with each other for the purposes of collaboration. OneDrive for Business can also be used with an on-premises SharePoint deployment. As this is an Office 365-related exam, using OneDrive for Business is not covered.

Accessing OneDrive for Business

A user can access OneDrive for Business by performing the following steps:

1. Sign in to Office 365 with your user account.

2. On the list of apps, shown in Figure 2-56, click OneDrive.

   

   FIGURE 2-56 App list

3. The OneDrive for Business site, which is a SharePoint Online personal site, will be opened. Documents can be uploaded to this site or created and added to this location. It is also possible to create a folder hierarchy in this location. Figure 2-57 shows a OneDrive for Business page with several documents and folders.

   

   FIGURE 2-57 OneDrive For Business Documents

Collaborating with OneDrive for Business

Collaborating with someone using OneDrive for Business is very similar to collaborating using SharePoint Online. This makes sense considering OneDrive for Business stores data in SharePoint Online. The main difference is that the sharing done through SharePoint Online directly is usually managed by an administrator. The sharing done through OneDrive for Business is usually managed directly by an end user.

An end user can choose to share individual files or can create and share folders. As is the case with SharePoint Online, it’s possible to share with people using a Microsoft account, or by sending an external link. Sharing settings are dependent on the sharing settings configured in the SharePoint Online tenancy.

• If the Don’t Allow Sharing Outside Your Organization option is selected at the tenancy level, users will only be able to share with other users in the tenancy. If the users attempt to share with external users, they will see the message shown in Figure 2-58, explaining that sharing with external users is not possible.

  

  FIGURE 2-58 No sharing with external users

• If the Allow External Users Who Accept Sharing Invitations And Sign In As Authenticated Users option is selected at the tenancy level, sharing with external users will be possible as long as those users have a Microsoft account or an Office 365 account.
• If the Allow Both External Users Who Accept Sharing Invitations And Anonymous Guest Links option is selected at the tenancy level, it will be possible to share with external users with Office 365 or Microsoft accounts. It will also be possible to forward links to shared documents or folders to users so that they can access content without having to authenticate.

To share an individual document, perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to Office 365 with your user account.
2. On the list of apps, click OneDrive.

3. In the OneDrive for Business site, select the document that you want to share. Figure 2-59 shows the DonFunkExcel workbook selected.

   

   FIGURE 2-59 Select document

4. Click the Share icon. If the Allow Both External Users Who Accept Sharing Invitations And Anonymous Guest Links option is selected at the tenancy level, users will be able to share to external users and generate links. To share with external users, enter the user’s email address and determine if the users have read-only or edit access. Figure 2-60 shows the user orin.thomas@outlook.com granted the edit permission.

   

   FIGURE 2-60 Share document

5. If you want to share the document with anonymous users, click the Get A Link section. On this page, you can click View Only or the Edit option, as shown in Figure 2-61.

   

   FIGURE 2-61 Anonymous sharing

You can view who a document is shared with on the document’s Share page. Note that if you’ve invited someone to a document and they haven’t accepted the invitation, their account will not be listed on the Shared With section of the Share page. Invitations remain valid for seven days.

To view who a document is shared with, perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to Office 365 with your user account.
2. On the list of apps, click OneDrive.

3. In the OneDrive for Business site, select the document of which you want to view the sharing properties. Any documents that are shared will have Shared in the Sharing column, as shown in Figure 2-62.

   

   FIGURE 2-62 Document shown as Shared

4. On the toolbar, click Share.
5. The Shared With section will show with whom the document has been shared.

6. As Figure 2-63 shows, you can choose to remove someone’s permission to access a document from this page.

   

   FIGURE 2-63 Who the document is shared with

You can share folders from OneDrive for Business. All of the content in a folder inherits the sharing settings of the parent folder. This makes sharing documents a matter of placing them in the appropriately configured folder.

To share a folder, perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to Office 365 with your user account.
2. On the list of apps, click OneDrive.

3. In the OneDrive for Business site, select the Folder you want to share. Figure 2-64 shows the Hovercraft folder selected.

   

   FIGURE 2-64 Share a folder

4. On the toolbar, click Share.

5. On the Invite People page, enter the email addresses of people who you want to invite to the folder and specify their permissions, either Read Only or Edit. Figure 2-65 shows sharing with an external user granted the Edit permission to items in the folder.

   

   FIGURE 2-65 Share folder

You can’t create links for anonymous users to folders. Anonymous links can only be created for documents.

Administering OneDrive for Business

Administrators are able to view files and folders stored in OneDrive for Business. To access a user’s OneDrive for Business content, perform the following steps:

1. In the Admin area of the Office 365 Admin Center, click SharePoint.
2. In the SharePoint Admin Center, click User Profiles.

3. In the User Profiles setting, click Manage User Profiles, as shown in Figure 2-66.

   

   FIGURE 2-66 User Profiles

4. In the Find User Profiles box, enter part of the account name. Figure 2-67 shows a search for the name Don.

   

   FIGURE 2-67 Find Profiles

5. Select the user whose OneDrive for Business content you want to examine, and then click Manage Site Collection Owners, as shown in Figure 2-68.

   

   FIGURE 2-68 Manage Site Collection Owners

6. Add an administrator account to the list of Site Collection Administrators, and then click OK.

   

   FIGURE 2-69 Add Site Collection Administrator

7. Select the user again, and this time select Manage Personal Site.
8. On the Site Settings page, click Documents.

9. The user’s OneDrive for Business content will be displayed, as shown in Figure 2-70.

   

   FIGURE 2-70 Administrator viewing documents

Understanding the App Store

The SharePoint App Store provides organizations with a collection of SharePoint apps that can be used with SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online. A SharePoint app is a stand-alone application that can add functionality to a SharePoint deployment. You can add apps to a SharePoint Online tenancy from the apps section of the SharePoint Admin Center, as shown in Figure 2-71.

From the Apps section of the SharePoint Admin Center, you can perform the following tasks:

• App Catalog Allows you to make purchased apps available to people in your organization. You need an app catalog if you want to disable Store purchases for end users.
• Purchase Apps Allows administrators to purchase apps from third-party developers, as well as Microsoft, from the SharePoint store.
• Manage Licenses Allows you to manage licensing for apps purchased from the SharePoint Store.
• Configure Store Settings Allows you to manage how apps are acquired by users from the SharePoint Store.
• Monitor Apps Allows you to track how SharePoint apps are being used across the SharePoint Online tenancy.
• App Permissions Allows you to manage how Apps interact with the SharePoint Online tenancy.

Understanding Enterprise eDiscovery

Enterprise eDiscovery is the process of locating content that will serve as evidence in litigation or an official investigation. SharePoint Online has a special site collection called the eDiscovery Center. This site collection allows you to create special SharePoint sites named cases that you can use to locate, hold, search, and export content from Exchange online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.

Creating a case

To create an eDiscovery case, perform the following steps:

1. In the Admin area of the Office 365 Admin Center, click Compliance.
2. In the Compliance Center, click eDiscovery.

3. In the list of eDiscovery Cases, shown in Figure 2-72, click the Plus icon to create a new case.

   

   FIGURE 2-72 eDiscovery Cases

4. On the Site Contents, New SharePoint Site page, provide the following information, as shown in Figure 2-73, ensuring that you select the eDiscovery Case template:

   • Title: Title for the eDiscovery case
   • Description: Description for the case
   • URL name: Address of the site related to the case
   

   FIGURE 2-73 New SharePoint Site for eDiscovery case

5. You can specify whether the site will use the same permissions as the parent site or unique permissions. If you need to allow specific people access to one case, but not other eDiscovery cases stored within your SharePoint Online tenancy, choose unique permissions.

Add sources and place them on hold

Adding sources to an eDiscovery case allows information to be added to the case. To add sources to an eDiscovery case, perform the following steps:

1. In the Admin area of the Office 365 Admin Center, click Compliance.
2. In the Compliance Center, click eDiscovery.

3. In the list of eDiscovery Cases, shown in Figure 2-74, click the case that you want to add a source to and then click the pencil icon, which allows you to edit the case.

   

   FIGURE 2-74 eDiscovery Cases

4. On the eDiscovery case page, shown in Figure 2-75, click New Item.

   

   FIGURE 2-75 eDiscovery Case page

5. On the New: eDiscovery Set page, provide a name for the set and then click Add & Manage sources, as shown in Figure 2-76.

   

   FIGURE 2-76 New: eDiscovery Set

6. On the Add & Manage Sources page, provide the names of mailboxes and the locations of SharePoint Sites and File Shares that are indexed by Search and click Save. All subsites and sub-folders will be included as sources. Figure 2-77 shows the Contoso347er Team Site selected.

   

   FIGURE 2-77 Add Sources

7. As shown in Figure 2-78, you can use the filter box to provide keywords; provide a start date and an end date; the name of an author; an email domain; and also enable in-place hold, stopping the deletion of objects that match the search criteria.

   

   FIGURE 2-78 Add Filters

8. Click Save to save the eDiscovery Set.

Objective summary

• Newsfeeds in SharePoint Online function as an organizational blog where members of the organization can post and reply to posts.
• A newsfeed exists at the SharePoint Online tenancy level. Newsfeeds also exist at the team site level.
• Yammer is a private social network that has features similar to many of the larger social networks.
• To use Yammer with SharePoint Online, you need to configure Yammer as the SharePoint social collaboration option.
• Every user who will coauthor a document needs to have appropriate permissions to edit the document.
• If a document is checked out by an author, the document is locked until the check out is released, which blocks coauthoring.
• Project Online is a stand-alone web service that provides browser-based portfolio and project management tools.
• Excel Services is used when a file hosted in an on-premises SharePoint deployment is opened in a browser.
• Visio Services allows Visio diagrams stored SharePoint Online to be viewed in a browser without requiring a full Visio client or Visio Viewer.
• OneDrive for Business allows users to store, sync, and share work files.
• Whether users can share OneDrive for Business documents with external users depends on the settings in the SharePoint Online tenancy.
• eDiscovery allows you to configure search and hold for the purposes of litigation and investigation.

Objective review

Answer the following questions to test your knowledge of the information in this objective. You can find the answers to these questions and explanations of why each answer choice is correct or incorrect in the “Answers” section at the end of this chapter.

1. Which of the following can block collaboration when configured for a SharePoint Online document library?

   1. Disabling major versions
   2. Enabling major versions
   3. Disabling minor versions
   4. Enabling check out

2. You want to block users of OneDrive for Business from sharing documents with people external to the organization. Users should still be able to share documents with other users who have accounts in your organization’s Office 365 tenancy. Which of the following steps can you take to accomplish this goal with a minimum of administrative effort?

   1. Configure the Don’t Allow Sharing Outside Your Organization option at the site collection level
   2. Configure the Allow External Users Who Accept Sharing Invitations And Sign In As Authenticated Users option at the site collection level
   3. Configure the Don’t Allow Sharing Outside Your Organization option at the SharePoint Online tenancy level
   4. Configure the Allow External Users Who Accept Sharing Invitations And Sign In As Authenticated Users option at the site collection level

3. You want to block OneDrive for Business users from sending links that allow anonymous users to access documents stored in SharePoint Online. Users should still be able to share documents with external users that have Microsoft or Office 365 accounts. Which of the following steps could you take to accomplish this goal?

   1. Configure the Allow External Users Who Accept Sharing Invitations And Sign In As Authenticated Users option at the site collection level
   2. Configure the Don’t Allow Sharing Outside Your Organization option at the SharePoint Online tenancy level
   3. Configure the Allow External Users Who Accept Sharing Invitations And Sign In As Authenticated Users option at the site collection level
   4. Configure the Don’t Allow Sharing Outside Your Organization option at the site collection level