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Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Baltimore on May 20

I’m excited to be a part of the speaker lineup next weekend at SPS Baltimore. If you’re nearby, be sure to register (it’s free!) and check it out on Saturday, May 20. At the time of this post, there’s just one ticket left! Here’s what you can expect from me:

baltimoreLet Microsoft Flow and SharePoint Designer Workflows Do the Work

Your team members would appreciate getting some time back. Give it to them in ten minute increments here, thirty minutes there by using Microsoft Flow and SharePoint Designer to build them thoughtful workflows that range from simple one-steppers to more complex and conditional multi-stagers, even across site collections. We’ll cover specific HR and Accounting scenarios in this session based on real-case experience at KU Libraries, including automation of some onboarding and off-boarding processes, simple automated management of otherwise complex item-level permissions, travel plan submission and approval, receipt submission and reimbursement tracking and more all through utilizing workflows to save you and your colleagues time.

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Solution: Microsoft Flow error “The field ‘…’ is not supported in query. The lookup list is in another web.”

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Perhaps you, like me, built an exciting Microsoft Flow workflow and let it go into the wild without much additional thought. But at some point, you drop a lookup column into the mix and your Flow stops working. It tells you the field is not supported in query, even if that specific field isn’t being utilized in the Flow. I believe this has something to do with REST, but we won’t dwell on the cause – let’s get to the workaround.

The scenario I’ll be using is my cross-site publishing alternative using Microsoft Flow where I’m basically copying data from list items in one site collection to create new list items in a different site collection. This is helpful when someone does some sort of data entry once, and other people are then entering much of the exact same data. This copies all of the overlapping data to a new list item for the second site collection to reduce duplication of work.

It sounds simple but with a lookup column in the destination list we get the error. For this I’ll be using SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Flow (of course) in combination, though you could certainly try it all in Microsoft Flow. I just find parts of the process simpler in SPD. And while your origin data may be different (MailChimp, Twitter, etc.), and your exact scenario may differ, this workaround should still have value in concept.

Continue reading “Solution: Microsoft Flow error “The field ‘…’ is not supported in query. The lookup list is in another web.””

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Creating a “Today” column in SharePoint that always gives today’s date

Update 12/8/17: There’s a better way to do this using Microsoft Flow, if that’s available to you.

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You may, at some point, find yourself working with calculations among dates, including “today’s date” which conceptually seems simple but requires a bit of work to function correctly. You may have even created a “today” column that defaults to “current date” or attempted a calculated column only to find that the date will not automatically update each day or that calculated columns cannot show dynamic data like that. Fret no more.

Today columns are essential for use in calculated columns that tell you things like “days until event”, “days without incident” or “years of service” without needing to click any buttons or take any additional steps. Here are some ideas for how you can use the “Today” column in calculations. We’re going to create our solution via SharePoint designer workflow and a new Today column.   Continue reading “Creating a “Today” column in SharePoint that always gives today’s date”