How Can I Help?

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Over the years, I’ve come to love the SharePoint community. The people are great, and I depend upon the vast resources available to help me get the job done.

Now I want to give back!

When you post to the forums at sharepoint.stackexchange.com, I’m committed to helping out whenever I can.

Additionally, I like to use my blog (which you’re reading right now) to share nuggets of the valuable SharePoint knowledge I’ve picked up over the years. If you have a topic that you would like me to discuss — even if I have to do some research — just leave a comment here and I’ll take a look.

If you’re looking for help, please check your dev tool bar for scripting errors and send them along. Chances are I’ll ask you, anyway ;)

67 thoughts on “How Can I Help?”

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  1. Hi David,
    Thank you for the great website, and I learned a lot. It is very helpful to me about this article “Implementing a custom Okta authentication error page in ReactJS”. Can you please let me know how to apply this to okta v6 or v7?
    Thanks

    Reply

    1. It’s now easier! The LoginCallback component you send to the Route now supports an errorComponent. Something like ` } />`. Then the ErrorComponent can receive an error parameter to process what Okta errored about.

      Reply

  2. Hi David,

    Pls help on topics,

    1. Can we use approval flow to send email out side of the organisation?

    2. “Send email with options” has choice buttons and yes the response also can be stored back in excel or SharePoint list, however what if the responder doesn’t choose to respond using choice buttons but choose to reply to that email as we do in normal emails.

    In this case the flow will be keep on waiting for the response and how to store the email response if responder not used choice button?

    Regards,
    Angel

    Reply

    1. Hi Angel,

      1. Approvers have to be authenticated to the system. I think you could go to external users if they’re named users in your O365 tenant.

      2. I’m not sure about that use case, you’d have to try it out and see what happens ;)

      Thanks,

      Reply

  4. I want to create a request form using Forms in a teams channel. If I create a tag based upon one of the responses, can I use flow to notify the individuals associated with that tag?

    Reply

    1. You can certainly add a Form to Teams as a tab. I’m not following the second part, “create a tag”, what’s a tag? If you’re looking to associate a question/answer specifically from the form to specific people, you certainly can. You’ll need a list to define who is associated to what answer, and Flow can use that list to know who to notify. You can store this list as a SharePoint list in the Team site (easiest) or even an Excel file (gets tricky)

      Reply

      1. Yes! That is what I want to do. I am a novice and have tried to define my desired flow without success.

        Reply

  5. Hello David,

    I have an issue with this flow, because what I need is this. Every time a task in Planner of one person of my team will due tomorrow, the should receive an email that notice that. But when I create the flow, it ask me the recipient of email and I insert “value of assignment assigned to the user” but it returns in error. Because it doesn’t see the email but only a value. To resolve it, I think of insert an email of the person of my team that have assigned that task, but they changes everytime, so, there are a lot of tasks with different people as owner. In your opinion, is there a possibility to automate the name of recipients based on the owner of task?

    Reply

    1. I’m not sure what Planner provides for that data in the user field. After your flow runs, you can explore the flow data (click on the flow that ran) and then look at the action/trigger that gets the planner data. You’ll see all of the data you have access too with field names and the like. Let me know if you figure it out, I can explore it some in the coming days and provide a post if you can’t figure it out.

      Reply

  6. I found interesting your post: “Use Microsoft Forms to collect data right into your Excel file.”
    I hope you can advise me on a problem facing a group of volunteers, Service Officers who assist veterans in getting support from the Veterans Administration. We need to complete forms as efficiently and correctly as possible.

    I would like to have a way for a veteran to provide his personal data by putting it into a form on his cell phone or laptop. That data would go to a file on the laptop of a service officer, who could use it to fill in and print government forms.

    I’m considering a way like the following:
    Veterans enter personal data into a form or into Excel using a cell phone or laptop. That data somehow goes into an Excel file on the laptop of a Service Officer, who uses it to fill in and print government forms that have been set up in this Excel file. Already I have drafted an Excel file that has the government forms. Data automatically feeds into those forms, each on a worksheet, when it is entered in a “data” worksheet.

    Could you recommend the most promising way to try first? I guess alternatives include having the veteran
    – Enter data into an online version of excel or an online form that links its data to excel. The service officer could download the excel file or have a local file that retrieves data from an online file.
    – Enter data into a mobile version of excel on his/her phone and emailing the excel file to the service officer.

    Good ways to set up an online form/Excel? Google forms? Sharepoint? Office 365?

    Reply

    1. Love the use case, and thank you for helping our vets! What I would look into here is using Forms to collect the data, then write it to an Excel file in a SP site. Have the Service Officer sync that Excel file locally, so they can just open it up and access the data.

      The other option might be to create a portal with Power Apps, that allows external users into a more custom form interface, that can include business logic and other other data elements. That can still write to Excel via Flow.

      Reply

  7. Hi David,
    I am trying to create ‘VIEWS’ similiar to SharePoint lists view on PowerApps(canvas) but unfortunately unable to achieve it. I am basically trying to display list items as per sorting/filtering conditions defined on list views and content approval but unable to do so on PowerApp. Please guide. Thanks in advance.

    Reply

    1. There’s a table control that will let you display and list out the items you want. Or you can use a gallery but formatting will be a little trickier. However, not sure if we can tie it to a specific view in SharePoint. Also, sorting will have to be created outside of your control using other options and buttons.

      Reply

  8. Hi David – not sure if you have tried this before, but do you know if it’s possible to send an email based on a specific answer/response/choice in a Microsoft Form using Microsoft Flow?

    One of the questions in a form could be:
    Do you need support from IT?
    1: I don’t require support
    2: Yes, I will require support from IT (action: send email to IT email address using MS Flow)

    I’m not very strong in MS Flow yet, so hoping you can point me in the right direction if it’s possible.
    Thanks!

    Reply

    1. Absolutely! You’ll want to add a condition to your Flow (when you click New in your flow you’ll see the option), and check that field’s value. Let me know if you need support, email me david.lozzi at slalom.com.

      Reply

  9. Hi David,

    Your post on the custom calendar color was a huge help, and it got me to where I need. However, when syncing the SharePoint calendar to Outlook, how do I “Tag” the colors to the right category? I changed the category to users. I have 7 users each with a different color, but when making a new event in Outlook, there isn’t an option to select a color/user for the event. I have to go back into SharePoint and open the event and tag a user and then it will be the right color.

    Thanks

    Reply

    1. Sadly there isn’t an option that I’ve seen. None of the extra fields from SP show up in Outlook. There may be a store addin available in Outlooo to help, not sure.

      Reply

  10. I responsible for a Sharepoint setup. I am new to it. Now I have a file server running NAS. How can I link up the sharepoint content to this file server?

    Reply

    1. There’s a couple of options. There isn’t an easy “configure it for a file share”. Your best bet may be to connect to it via search, let it crawl the content, and your users can at least search for files. If you want the folder experience, you’ll have to look for a 3rd party solution, I think Bamboo offers something.

      Reply

  11. Hi David,
    Loved your post on colour coding calendars on SharePoint! I’ve got a new conundrum – is it possible to run a merge between a) Excel and Word when both documents are stored in SharePoint or b) an alternate solution to run a merge with data (perhaps a SharePoint list) and Word (QuickParts?). Versions? 2013 all round, and preferably no scary coding…
    Thanks,
    K.

    Reply

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