If you’ve just copied your multi-page Power BI report’s URL and pasted into the properties of a Power BI web part on a SharePoint page, you may have noticed your pages aren’t appearing as options in the Page name dropdown.
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This is because the URL you copied from Power BI likely contained a specific page in the URL itself, ending in something like …/ReportSection1 (which is referring to a specific page already).
To fix this and have your pages show up as options in the dropdown, simply remove the ReportSection1 (or 2, 3, etc.) from the end of the URL in the Power BI report link box and try again.
To speed things along, I usually cut (Ctrl+X) the corrected URL, click outside the box to “reset” the web part, then paste (Ctrl+V) the corrected URL and wait for my page names to appear. This is demonstrated below.
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Here’s a related video demonstrating how to embed a Power BI report on a SharePoint page including fixing the multi-page issue mentioned above.
Note: This article pertains specifically to SharePoint Online (M365).
Audience targeting can be used to surface relevant information and resources to specific groups of people throughout SharePoint. This post will focus specifically on enabling audience targeting on your site’s pages and news so that you can create individualized experiences for users based on their identity or role.
The overall process consists of three steps:
Enable the audience targeting ability for all content in your Site Pages library.
Specify the appropriate audience(s) for specific pages/news items within the library.
Modify any existing web parts (news or highlighted content web parts) to enable audience targeting (simply meaning to utilize any audience targeting configurations that have been specified for the content surfacing in that web part).
Step 3 is not required if you only wish to have audience targeting “seen” on the SharePoint start page, mobile app, or other non-customized areas where news may surface.
How audience targeting works
If you specify an audience for content, it will be shown in relevant areas (SharePoint start page, mobile app, news or highlighted content web parts using audience targeting, etc.) to members of the audiences only. This is not a security feature – the content is still discoverable by other users – just not surfaced upfront conveniently for them.
If you are a member of an audience specified on a news piece, you’ll see that news wherever it’s being called up. If you’re not, you won’t see it but can still search or browse to find it.
If no audience is specified for an item, it will be shown to all users. Or if a web part (such as a news web part) has disabled audience targeting, any specified audiences on individual pieces will be disregarded and the content will be shown to all through that particular web part.
Here are the detailed steps to set up audience targeting:
Enable audience targeting for Site Pages (and news)
1. Go to your Site Contents > Site Pages library
2. Select the settings gear > Library settings
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3. Choose Audience targeting settings
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4. Check the box for Enable audience targeting and then click OK.
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Specify an audience for SharePoint pages or news
1. Now return to your Site Pages library and select a page or news item to which you wish to add audience targeting.
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2. Open the details pane (i icon) in the upper right
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3. In the Properties section, enter up to 50 M365 Group names, user names or emails, etc. to whom the selected content should be targeted. Notice it also adds the specified audience in a column in the library. Your additions are saved automatically.
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Modify web parts to utilize audience targeting where available
1. Edit the page on which you’ve placed a news or highlighted content web part.
2. Click the edit icon (pencil) on the particular web part for which you’re enabling audience targeting.
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3. In the Filters section, toggle Enable audience targeting on. (Note: News source must be This site or Select sites. Recommended for current user doesn’t have audience targeting settings).
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4. Republish your page when ready.
This can take some time to fully update in your site, so check back after a while to confirm functionality.
After completing these three sections, you’ve now
allowed content within the pages/news library to be used in audience targeting scenarios,
chosen specific pieces to which you’ll apply audience targeting,
and modified the web parts where content will surface to utilize those pieces’ audience settings when appropriate.
If you’re wanting to add an Asset Library to your SharePoint site but not finding it available as an option, chances are the Video and Rich Media feature for that site collection isn’t activated. This feature enables the asset library which is basically a modified document library but with metadata specific to rich media that can be auto-extracted such as width and height of images, duration of video clips, etc. Asset libraries are good for storing your audio, video, and image content types.
To enable it (as a site collection admin) go to Settings > Site Settings and choose Site collection features from under the Site Collection Administration heading.
Then scroll down and look for the Video and Rich Media feature. Click Activate.
As the description says, this will “[provide] libraries, content types, and web parts for storing, managing, and viewing rich media assets, like images, sound clips, and videos.” Once activated, you’ll now be able to add the asset library to your site(s) in that collection.
Mark Rackley recently tweeted about the ability to create a calculated column in SharePoint online document libraries that would automatically render thumbnails for documents. In the GIF from his tweet, it shows how this works for media files.
— Mark Rackley @NACollabSummit @Techsplaining (@mrackley) May 14, 2020
Naturally curious, I had to see how this worked for documents of .docx, .pdf, .pptx, etc. types. What I found is that it only currently supports some file types:
Supported file types (there’s likely even more I didn’t test):
Word (.docx)
PDF (.pdf)
Emails (.msg)
Images (.png, .gif, .jpg, etc.)
Media (.mp4)
Not-yet-supported file types:
Excel (.xlsx)
OneNote (.one)
PowerPoint (.pptx)
Create a thumbnail column in SharePoint Online document libraries
1. Add a new column to your document library (library settings > Create column).
2. Set the column name to Thumbnail. As for type, you have two options:
Leave type as Single line of text. Thanks to Dario Cassinerio for sharing that Single line of text type works as well as (and more simply than) Calculated set to [Title].
Mark Rackley suggests sticking with Calculated set to [Title] (see example screenshot) to prevent users from editing the text field in forms.
3. Click OK.
Supported file types will have thumbnails rendered (like .docx and .pdf in the example below) and others will just be blank (like .pptx and .xlsx in the example below).
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Here is an animation demonstrating the entire process, start to finish using Single line of text as column type:
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And another animation but using the Calculated column set to [Title] type:
Setting a hyperlink column’s value using Power Automate is a bit different than setting other column types’ values. In SharePoint, a hyperlink column has two components – address and description. If you update this column type using Power Automate’s “Update item” action, your address and description are both set to the same value.
In SharePoint Designer workflows, we could do this easily with the usual “Set field” action:
But in Power Automate, we only get one field which maps to the URL/address part of the hyperlink field, and is duplicated as the description as well in SharePoint.
And if you’re thinking it could work with a comma, as some other field types might, it won’t. You’ll get “Enter a valid uri.”
To get this to work so we can set both address AND description as separate values, we have to use an HTTP request action instead of (or in addition to) the Update item action. This isn’t as complicated as it may sound. Here are the steps:
1. Add the Send an HTTP request to SharePoint action
2. Choose or enter your site for Site Address
3. Set Method to POST
4. Set the Uri to the following, changing List Name to your list’s name, and replacing [ID] with the ID field from dynamic content
Test that out. When it’s working and you’re ready to take it to the next level, you can replace the static url (like Google’s in my example) with dynamic content. For example, you could create convenient one-click links to an item’s version history:
If you’re trying to import a spreadsheet as a new list in SharePoint, you’ll need to use a browser that supports ActiveX controls or you’ll get the error:
“This feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls.”
Chances are you’re running a browser other than IE, or you’re running IE version 11. ActiveX controls are not supported in IE11, or most browsers. We can work around this error message by having IE pretend it’s version 10 momentarily.
Open SharePoint in Internet Explorer (IE)
Quick access: Hit Windows key, type IE, hit enter
Press F12 to open Developer Tools and select the Emulation Tab
Change Document mode from 11 to 10 (supports ActiveX). Page will reload so you can try again in version 10.
Now try to import the spreadsheet again and it will work fine, opening your spreadsheet and prompting you to select the table or relevant data for import.
You may have already seen some new options when sharing links to files in SharePoint (and OneDrive). Here’s what’s available in my tenant today:
If you use the “Anyone with the link” option (for anonymous access) you can choose a date on which the link will expire and access will no longer be granted via that link.
You can block people from downloading only if you uncheck “Allow editing” for the link types that support it.
Your basic options are to allow anonymous users (with or without an expiration date) to:
Edit & Download
View & Download
View Only
You can also easily share with people only in your tenant, even if they don’t have prior access, and choose whether they can edit, view and download, or just view.
People with existing access is useful just to Skype/Teams someone a quick link to get to the file. Their pre-existing permissions apply.
Finally, “Specific People” can allow you to share with external users but they must use the address you share with, as they’ll be sent a verification code to validate their identity. This adds a layer of security to otherwise anonymous share links.
Enter addresses you’re sharing the file with and click send or copy the URL to share through another avenue.
The user receives an email with a link that takes them to a page to validate the email address.
Then they’re emailed a unique security code to validate their identity/ownership of the email address.
Note: You may not be prompted to enter your email address if opened directly. But if the email is forwarded, user will be asked to verify email before they’re able to send a code.
A newer feature in SharePoint allows you the option to “Notify your team” after a new file is uploaded. Your upload process is the same, but then your “upload complete” dialog now has an additional option:
When you select “Notify your team” you’re presented with options like sharing with SharePoint groups, or just individuals manually entered.
When finished, click “Notify” and the intended recipients receive a link that only works for them when logged in.
If you attempt to share with someone not in your tenant, you will receive an error as you can only notify people with existing access.
For these external users, you can instead separately share via the usual “Share” dialog when a file is selected. Here you’ll also find a newer feature that allows for blocking downloads if the “Allow editing” box is unchecked. This would prevent people making edits offline and creating multiple versions in silos.
I’ll be speaking this Saturday at SPS Cinci (#SPSCinci2018). I’ll be presenting my brand new, magical session on content management, archiving and retention for the third time this year. Don’t miss it!
SharePoint wizardry for content management, archiving & retention
Are your muggles muddying up your servers and site storage with duplicate files, pictures from a 2008 staff party and files named “April” in folders called “Jane’s stuff”? Learn how to most effectively destroy the 8th horcrux using out-of-the-box functionality in SharePoint brewed with bits of governance, content strategy and just a little help from SharePoint Designer to help automate processes. It’s just like magic!
I’ll be speaking this Saturday at SPS Baltimore (#SPSBMORE). I’ll be presenting my brand new, magical session on content management, archiving and retention for the second time this year. Don’t miss it!
SharePoint wizardry for content management, archiving & retention
Are your muggles muddying up your servers and site storage with duplicate files, pictures from a 2008 staff party and files named “April” in folders called “Jane’s stuff”? Learn how to most effectively destroy the 8th horcrux using out-of-the-box functionality in SharePoint brewed with bits of governance, content strategy and just a little help from SharePoint Designer to help automate processes. It’s just like magic!
