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SharePoint calendar all-day events showing as previous day in content search web parts

Despite your regional settings being correct, all-day events for some reason are using UTC time when they’re stored and are likely showing as the wrong day in content search web parts and similar web parts.

Though they look correct as an individual item or on a calendar, the way they’re stored doesn’t acknowledge your regional settings and, when pulled through a search web part, render in UTC as beginning 6 (or other) hours earlier than they actually do.

For example, I have a content search web part that pulls all events in our organization and show’s “today’s events.” If there’s an all day event, it shows as starting 6:00 PM the day prior to its actual day.

I could not find a straightforward solution to fix all affected events. And my solution is not ideal, but it accomplishes a need. You could instead explore the possibility of creating a calculated column that adds hours to fix the alignment. But please share if you’ve encountered the same issue and have resolved it a better way.

To get around this issue, I created a SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflow on calendars that:

  • Triggers on creation or modification
  • “Unchecks” the All Day Event box
  • Sets a specific start time on the start date (I chose 7:00AM)
  • Sets End Time to the original end time (if you don’t do this, it sets end time to blank).
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Solution: “The user who attempted to complete the task is not the user to whom the task is assigned”

You might run into this issue when running task processes in SharePoint Designer.

“Reason: The user who attempted to complete the task is not the user to whom the task is assigned.”

Assuming the person should actually be able to complete the task, check the following:

  • Make sure the user who was assigned the task does not have multiple accounts. If they do, the task could have been assigned to the account that the person isn’t currently signed in as when attempting to complete the task.
  • If it’s someone completing the task on behalf of another, make sure that individual is either:
    • A Site Owner (site settings, site permissions, people and groups, site owners) or
    • Task process owner (in SPD 2010 workflows, go to the properties for the task step and set task process owner. Click OK and republish workflow.):
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SharePoint Designer (SPD) 2010 vs 2013 Workflows

I frequently reference two resources linked at the bottom of this post that speak to the features unique to 2010 and 2013 workflows. Unfortunately, once you pick which workflow platform you’ll be building upon you can’t switch. So it’s important to use these lists in your evaluation phase to make sure you’ll be picking the right platform for the job. Keep in mind, you can always start a 2010 workflow from within a 2013 workflow.

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Use Microsoft Flow to create a “today” column for use in SharePoint list calculations

Note: I previously shared how to do this in SharePoint Designer. The following method utilizing Flow is better, and does not use loops/pauses.

It’s well-known that SharePoint calculated columns don’t permit [Today] to be used as a formula for a calculated date column. And the “default to today’s date” setting only works upon creation, and doesn’t update daily. But we can create a standard date column and have Microsoft Flow automatically update it daily for us, therefore allowing us to effortlessly perform calculations against today’s date such as:

  • Age =(TodayDate-Birthday)/365
  • Years of Service =(TodayDate-StartDate)/365
  • Days Past Due =(TodayDate-DueDate)
  • Weeks until summer break =(SummerStart-TodayDate)/7

Here’s how to create your own, always accurate/updated, today column (see bottom of post for video):

Continue reading “Use Microsoft Flow to create a “today” column for use in SharePoint list calculations”

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Generate and send reports, files or lists regularly with Microsoft Flow’s “recurrence” trigger

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Automatically create and send reports, files and lists on a regular schedule using Microsoft Flow’s recurrence trigger. Whether hourly, daily, weekly or monthly you can deliver the most current and relevant data from SharePoint or OneDrive to interested parties via email without lifting a finger. Combine this with calculated columns in SharePoint and conditions for some awesome possibilities:

Alerts Calendar Relevance Routine
Report costs or expenditures above a certain amount Current month’s birthdays and/or workiversaries to your secretary Send expenses per department or individual to that department or individual Budget and salary or payroll figures weekly
Notify when an open ticket is idle for a week or incomplete Upcoming events per location Share evaluation status with supervisors for just their employees Recently closed deals and contracts
Survey responses or reviews under 3 stars Upcoming deadlines per department Client info and updates to proper salespeople based on location or product Distribute new hires’ contact/location info to the organization in weekly batches

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How to change Microsoft Flow’s default limit of 100 items for “Get Items” and “Get Rows” actions

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The first time I created a flow for a list with over 100 items, I noticed an “Apply to Each” block stopping at 100 items. It’s a simple fix:

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How to make a Microsoft Flow mobile button to be emailed Microsoft Forms or SharePoint data as Excel link or attachment

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Microsoft Flow mobile buttons are magical. One touch on your mobile device, and gears start turning to retrieve and deliver the data you need when and how you need it. Recently, I set out to deliver all Microsoft Forms responses to a recipient on-demand as an excel file using a Microsoft Flow mobile button they could press whenever they wanted the results. I also created a button someone could use to be sent all the birthdays coming up in the next week for our organization whenever they need it. You can adjust the following steps to fit your situation and tools, but the following outlines two ideas:

  • Sending someone all responses to a Microsoft Forms survey whenever they press the button (Take a snapshot in time of responses, or pull up-to-the-minute feedback into your meeting)
  • Sending someone SharePoint list items in an excel sheet that match a certain criteria (Projects ending in the next two weeks)

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Convert SharePoint documents to PDF using Microsoft Flow

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Edited Dec 10, 2018 to include “for a selected item” function in modern sites.

Can you convert SharePoint documents to PDF without leaving SharePoint? Heck, yeah!

Basically we’ll create this flow:

  1. “When a file is created or modified” in SP -OR- “For a selected item”
  2. Create document in OneDrive for Business -OR- OneDrive
  3. Convert document (OneDrive action in Flow)
  4. Create document in SP

It’s a bit of a hack but we get exactly the result often requested: convert SharePoint docs to PDF automatically. Here’s how to set this up. A video walkthrough using the “created/modified” trigger is available at the bottom of this post.

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Dealing with &#39 and &amp in SharePoint Designer document library workflows

If you’re using a document Name field in a workflow but it’s not working as expected, it could be because there are apostrophes (‘) or ampersands (&) in document names. In this case, SharePoint evaluates apostrophes (‘) to &#39semicolon and ampersands (&) to &ampsemicolon As you can see here, most other punctuation evaluates perfectly well:

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Note: This problem only occurs when using apostrophes and ampersands in document names, in document libraries. And we can fix the issue without needing to rename the files.

Document names cannot contain these punctuation marks: \ / . : * # “

Regular lists and document library fields aside from the Name field shouldn’t experience this issue. But if you’re using & or ‘ in your file names, and calling those file names in workflow, here’s how we can make it work:

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Solution: Using a Yes/No checkbox in a Microsoft Flow condition statement

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It’s not uncommon to want to use yes/no checkboxes when building Microsoft Flow conditions. [Field] is equal to “Yes” or [Field] is equal to true won’t work because it reads the Yes or true as a string rather than a value. So when the flow runs, even if the checkbox is checked (true), the run history says the expression result was false.

Fortunately it’s a simple two-step fix. Follow these steps to be able to use yes/no checkboxes as conditions in your flows:

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