Category: SharePoint

  • Site scripts and the content type hub

    Site scripts and the content type hub

    Introduction

    In this post, I will walk you through the process of creating a content type for SharePoint Online and publishing it to the content type hub for use across all site collections.

    NB: You’ll need to be a SharePoint administrator to publish to the hub

    What is the content type hub?

    Each SharePoint site uses content types, a site comes pre-populated with a set of content types and a set of lists and libraries that use these content types. You can also create your own content types, either being a site content type or list content type, but you can also consume content types from a central location: the content type hub.

    Building the content type

    In this section, we’ll look at how you can use a combination of JSON and PowerShell to create site columns and content types and then publish them to the content type hub.

    The beauty of this approach is, once you’ve created the necessary assets, they become reusable. That means you can edit the code to easily create new content types and even publish content types to multiple tenants.

    Create the site columns

    The below JSON can be used to create the site coumns we want to use in the training request content type. Create a new file (preferably a JSON file in Visual Studio Code), copy the code, paste and save.

    Things to note about the column structure;

    • internalName should not include spaces
      • including spaces can cause issues later
    • group
      • Default is “Custom Columns”, but I have decided to use a group of my own “Additional 365 Evergreen Columns”
    {
    "$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/json-schemas/sp/site-design-script-actions.schema.json",
    "actions": [
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Text",
            "internalName": "TrainingID",
            "displayName": "Training ID",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns"
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "DateTime",
            "internalName": "TrainingDate",
            "displayName": "Training Date",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns"
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Text",
            "internalName": "EmployeeName",
            "displayName": "Employee Name",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns"
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Text",
            "internalName": "Department",
            "displayName": "Department",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns"
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Text",
            "internalName": "TrainingCourse",
            "displayName": "Training Course",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns"
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Text",
            "internalName": "Trainer",
            "displayName": "Trainer",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns"
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Text",
            "internalName": "Location",
            "displayName": "Location",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns"
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Number",
            "internalName": "DurationHours",
            "displayName": "Duration (hours)",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns"
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Choice",
            "internalName": "CompletionStatus",
            "displayName": "Completion Status",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns",
            "choices": [
                "Completed",
                "Pending",
                "In Progress"
            ]
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Choice",
            "internalName": "CertificateIssued",
            "displayName": "Certificate Issued",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns",
            "choices": [
                "Yes",
                "No"
            ]
        },
        {
            "verb": "createSiteColumn",
            "fieldType": "Note",
            "internalName": "Notes",
            "displayName": "Notes",
            "group": "Additional 365 Evergreen site columns"
        }
    ]
}

    Create content type

    Next, we can add add below code to create the content type

    Add the site columns

    Add the below

  • Streamline the employee onboarding journey

    Streamline the employee onboarding journey

    Welcome to the era of digital employee onboarding! In today’s remote, or hybrid working landscape, it’s crucial to have a seamless and engaging onboarding process for your new hires. Say goodbye to traditional onboarding programs and embrace the power of digital solutions.

    With Microsoft Teams, you can create an easily accessible and efficient digital onboarding experience. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of digital onboarding, and showcase how Microsoft Teams can transform your onboarding programs.

    On-site, Hybrid, or Remote Working – Digital Onboarding is the way to go

    Digital employee onboarding offers scalability and flexibility, no matter if your new hires are starting in the office or remote working.

    Remote and hybrid working has become the norm, and digital employee onboarding is the key to success. Embrace the flexibility and scalability of remote work by utilizing digital processes. Leave behind the hassles of traditional onboarding and welcome new hires with open arms through a digital onboarding experience. Offer them easy access to information, resources, and tools necessary for a smooth transition.

    Digital onboarding solutions streamline the way you welcome new team members. Simplify administrative tasks and make the onboarding process a breeze. Say goodbye to stacks of paperwork with digital offer letters and contracts. Create a digital onboarding process with digital onboarding checklists that guide new hires through essential tasks. Boost employee engagement with interactive training materials, fostering a positive digital onboarding experience. These digital processes enhance efficiency and create a seamless

    Microsoft Teams: Your Digital Onboarding Ally

    Microsoft Teams is the ultimate tool for transforming your digital employee onboarding process. It provides an all-in-one platform for communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.

    When used to its full potential, Microsoft Teams can become a truly powerful onboarding platform.

    When onboarding new hires, many players are involved, including the IT team, the HR department, and the hiring manager. The responsibility for kicking off the digital onboarding process often falls on the shoulders of the IT team, but should it?

    With the help of advanced Microsoft Teams templates and a well-defined Teams provisioning and approval process, it doesn’t have to. Harness the potential of Microsoft Teams templates designed specifically for onboarding new employees to jumpstart your digital onboarding program.

    A Team template pre-built by your IT team can come with pre-built channels, tabs, documents, links, and integrations. Using the new team the new hires can connect with their team members, ask questions, and access important resources. The HR rep or the hiring manager can create a new Team from a template when the digital onboarding process is started.

  • The five benefits of content types in SharePoint and Teams

    The five benefits of content types in SharePoint and Teams

    SharePoint Online (and its stablemate Teams) is a powerful platform for document management, collaboration, and content sharing within organizations, especially when it’s properly governed. One of its standout features is content types, which offer a structured way to manage and organize documents, images, list items and other files. In this post, we’ll explore the 5 key benefits of using content types in SharePoint Online and Teams and delve into the details of each one.

    1 – Create consistency

    Content types allow you to define a specific template structure and metadata and for documents, forms, images or list items. By using templates, you can ensure that every piece of content created is based on a predefined, approved foundation, reducing the chances of errors or data inconsistencies.

    • ‍Metadata – By attaching metadata columns to content types, you can ensure that critical information like category, department, or client is consistently applied to relevant content.
    • Document templates – Content types can be associated with MS Office document templates (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), ensuring that each document created from that content type starts with the same format and structure.

    2 – Improve search and discoverability

    SharePoint’s search capabilities are enhanced when content types are used. Content types make it easier to categorize and classify documents, making them more searchable and discoverable by users.

    • Custom metadata – You can add custom metadata fields to content types, allowing users to filter and search for content based on specific criteria, such as document type, project name, or client.
    • Managed metadata – Content types can be associated with managed metadata, creating a hierarchical structure that helps users navigate and find content more efficiently.
    • Search schema – Content types can be added to search schema that allow users to search for content across your organization with a particular content type.

    3 – Streamline your workflows

    Content types can be integrated into Power Automate workflows, making it easier to automate business processes and document approvals. This streamlines operations, saving time and reducing errors. For example:

    • Document approval – By defining a content type for approval documents, you can create a workflow that automatically routes documents for review and approval to the appropriate individuals or teams based on selection of say a category, client or product type.
    • Document retention – Content types can be used to enforce retention policies, ensuring that specifically categorized documents are archived or deleted according to compliance requirements.

    4 – Simplify your content management

    Content types simplify content management by enabling you to organize and classify documents logically. This enhances the user experience and reduces the learning curve for new team members.

    Folderless document libraries

    The use of content types allows for folderless document libraries, where content is organized into views based on the metadata each file is associated with and the content types themselves. This means that instead of navigating through a complex folder structure, users can filter and sort content based on content types and their associated metadata.

    Content type hub

    In SharePoint Online, you can create and manage and publish content types directly from the SharePoint Admin Center. By doing this centrally, you can use the same set of columns across multiple content types and use the same content type in multiple locations in your tenant, reducing data inconsistency.

    For example, one department may refer to a document as a Standard Operating Procedure whilst another exclusively uses the term SOP. By reusing the same column for both departments, you can standardize the term used when adding the metadata for SOPs, improving searchability of your content.

    5 – Add scalability and future-proofing

    As your organization grows and evolves, content types provide the flexibility to adapt to changing needs and requirements. They offer a scalable solution for content management.

    ‍Easy updates

    If you need to modify metadata or document templates, you can update the content type centrally in the content type hub, and the changes will propagate to all associated content across your SharePoint environment, reducing the number of times that you need to make the change.

    Reusability

    Content types can be reused across multiple site collections and sites, reducing duplication efforts and ensuring that changes are applied consistently.

    In conclusion, content types in SharePoint Online offer a wide range of benefits, from maintaining consistency and improving search to streamlining workflows and simplifying content management. By harnessing the power of content types, organizations can enhance productivity, reduce errors, and adapt to changing business needs more effectively.

    Customization

    Whilst content types offer an effective way to standardize the metadata and document templates used, they still allow some flexibility and customization when needed. You can achieve this in two ways:

    1. Parent and child content types – When crafting a content type, you must designate an existing content type as the foundation for the new one. Your freshly created child content type then inherits all attributes from the chosen parent, allowing you to introduce additional customizations. This is useful in the case of content which has unique information that needs to be stored for a particular department, but still needs to have base organization-wide categorization.
    2. Content type instances – Once a content type has been deployed to a list or library, it’s possible to customize the columns available on that specific list or library by changing things such as the default selection of a choice column or adding an additional piece of metadata for capture.

    Final Considerations

    Structured vs unstructured content

    While content types serve as a robust tool for crafting organized and precisely defined content, they may not always align with every scenario. Before implementing content types, it’s a good idea to assess your content and categorize it into structured and unstructured segments.

    The unstructured segments provide flexibility for content creation and manipulation, enabling your users to operate in a manner they find most effective. These unstructured spaces often serve as initial points from which teams can then establish the need for structured content and associated workflow processes.

    Structured content will often require a more formal business process and will be easier to define with a few key pieces of metadata.

    Planning and collaboration

    To implement content types successfully, you will need to work closely with the users that the content types will affect. This will help you to define the metadata required for the content type accurately and also give the users themselves a chance to understand the why and the how of the structure being implemented.

    Incomplete or inaccurate data is worse than unstructured data. When structured areas are not logical or easy to work with, users will often revert to saving content in other areas, such as their OneDrive or desktop.

  • 365 Evergreen empowers the Queensland Police Service to effectively manage training courses

    365 Evergreen empowers the Queensland Police Service to effectively manage training courses

    The challenge

    The Queensland Police Service (QPS) is very proactive in training its officers, so that they better equipped to fulfil their duties.

    To organise this training, QPS has taken to SharePoint Online as way of advertising courses for potential applicants to view and then apply to attend.

    Although the move to SharePoint Online did make things easier, there was a need to streamline the process and make it more efficient. The problems faced included:

    • Applications being received by email, which then had to be forwarded to other personnel to approve or register
    • Delays in decisions
    • No trace of progress for an application
    • Applications not being acknowledged and officers missing the opportunity to attend training

    The task

    QPS reached out to 365 Evergreen to help them use Microsoft 365 and the Power Platform to tackle the inefficiencies of their existing processes within the South Brisbane district.

    What we did

    To help the QPS achieve its goals, 365 Evergreen leveraged the existing SharePoint site that was developed by the SBD team and added additional functionality:

    • A canvas app that allowed applicants to view more details about courses
    • An application form for applicants to complete and submit
    • Workflows that notified senior officers of applications
    • An interface for senior officers to approve applications and leave comments
    • Workflows to update details in SharePoint and notify applicants of the outcome

    The outcome

    The process for managing course applications has been significantly improved, with a big reduction in turnaround time and resources.

    To date, this solution has been rolled out to three QPS districts and the intent is to roll out the solution to all QPS regions within the next few months.

  • Finding your feet with SharePoint PnP search web parts Pt. 01

    Finding your feet with SharePoint PnP search web parts Pt. 01

    Introduction

    PnP modern search web parts allow super users to easily configure search solutions within their sites and are great alternative to the out-of-the-box highlighted content web part.

    In this series we’ll look at deploying the web parts in your tenant and then configuring some search scenarios.

    About the web parts

    There are for PnP modern search web parts (all deployed in one package). The parts are:

    • Search box
    • Search results
    • Search filters
    • Search verticals

    Search box

    The ‘Search box’ Web Part allows users to enter free text search queries connected to a ‘Search Results’ Web Part.

    Search results

    The ‘Search Results’ Web Part is the fundamental building block of whole global solution. Its purpose is basically to get data from a specifc source and render them in a specific native or custom layout based on Handlebars and web components.

    Refiners

    The ‘Filters’ Web Part allows to filter the current results displayed in a ‘Search Results’ Web Part. This component is higly configurable to meet you requirements and it works for all data sources.

    Verticals

    The ‘Verticals’ Web Part allows to conditionally render a ‘Search Results’ Web Part according to the selected vertical. It is a simple way to build a complete search center including multiple sources.

    Deploying the web parts.

    The web parts can be downloaded from this page and installed in either the tenant app catalogue or a site collection app catalogue.

    If you don’t have a developer or UAT tenant, I’d recommend creating a new site collection, provisioning a site collection app catalogue and uploading to there.

    Once uploaded to the app catalogue, the web parts are ready to be used.

  • Use Power Automate to deploy a SharePoint site and lists

    Use Power Automate to deploy a SharePoint site and lists

    Back in the day, you could save a SharePoint site as a template (or solution) and deploy it elsewhere. Nowadays, it’s not quite so easy.

    In this post, we’ll show you how to use Power Automate to make a REST API call and create a site and add a new list. This a great way for admins to manage request for new sites.

    The master list

    First of all, create list in a team site. This list will be used to trigger the flow and create the site and list.

    The flow

    Next, create a flow from the Automate button. The trigger will be ‘Complete a custom action for the selected item’

    Then initialise a variable, like so

    Next, we’ll make an API call to SharePoint and create our new site

    Here’s the header and body code for you to copy:

    {
  "Accept": "application/json;odata=verbose",
  "Content-Type": "application/json;odata=verbose;charset=utf-8"
}
    {
"request": {
  "__metadata": { "type": "Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SPSiteCreationRequest"},
"WebTemplate": "STS#3",
"Title": "@{body('Get_item')['Title']}",
"Url": "@{variables('SiteURL')}",
"Description": "@{outputs('Get_item')?['body/Description']}",
"Classification": "",
"SiteDesignId": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
"Lcid": 1033,
"ShareByEmailEnabled": false,
"WebTemplateExtensionId": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
"Owner": "i:0#.f|membership|you@yourdomain.com",
"HubSiteId": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
}
}

#Be sure to change the email address for "Owner"

    Creating the list

    The first step is to create the list. This can be done by inserting a SharePoint HTTP Request Action in your Flow and setting it up like so:

    Figure 1 – Create List Action in Power Automate

    You’ll want to update the Title and Description properties and fill those in with the name and description of your list. The “BaseTemplate” property is what determines the type of list you’re creating. 100 is a blank list and 101 is a document library.

    Creating Fields in the List

    Once you create the list you need to add additional SharePoint HTTP Actions to create each field that you need to add in the list. That action will look like this:

    Figure 2 – Create Field Action in Power Automate

    In the URI input you’ll want to make sure you replace the “getbytitle(‘Name of your list’) with the name of the list you want to add your field to. The body of the action will vary based on the type of field you want to create. For quick reference, I have provided a table with the most common column types and the associated body code needed for the Power Automate action below:

    Column TypePower Automate Code
    Single Line of Text{
    ‘__metadata’: {‘type’:’SP.FieldText’, ‘addToDefaultView’: ‘true’ },
    ‘FieldTypeKind’: 2,
    ‘Title’: ‘Name of Single Line of Text Field’
    }
    Multi Line of Text{
    ‘__metadata’: {‘type’:’SP.Field’, ‘addToDefaultView’: ‘true’ },
    ‘FieldTypeKind’: 3,
    ‘Title’: ‘Name of Multi Line of Text Field’
    }
    DateTime{
    ‘__metadata’: {‘type’:’SP.FieldDateTime’, ‘addToDefaultView’: ‘true’ },
    ‘FieldTypeKind’: 4,
    ‘Title’: ‘Name of DateTime Field’,
    ‘DisplayFormat’: 0
    }
    Boolean (Yes/No){
    ‘__metadata’: {‘type’:’SP.Field’, ‘addToDefaultView’: ‘true’ },
    ‘FieldTypeKind’: 8,
    ‘Title’: ‘Name of Yes No Field’
    }
    Choice{ ‘__metadata’:
    { ‘type’: ‘SP.FieldChoice’, ‘addToDefaultView’: ‘true’ },
    ‘Title’: ‘Name of Choice Field’,
    ‘FieldTypeKind’: 6,
    ‘Required’: ‘true’,
    ‘Choices’: { ‘results’: [‘Choice 1’, ‘Choice 2’, ‘Choice 3’ ] }
    }
    Hyperlink{
    ‘__metadata’: {‘type’:’SP.Field’, ‘addToDefaultView’: ‘true’ },
    ‘FieldTypeKind’: 11,
    ‘Title’: ‘Name of Hyperlink Field’
    }
    Number{
    ‘__metadata’: {‘type’:’SP.FieldNumber’},
    ‘FieldTypeKind’: 1,
    ‘Title’: ‘Name of Number Field’
    }
    Person/Group{
    ‘__metadata’: {‘type’:’SP.Field’, ‘addToDefaultView’: ‘true’ },
    ‘FieldTypeKind’: 20,
    ‘Title’: ‘Name of Person or Group Field’
    }

    Figure 3 – SharePoint REST API Column Types

    Add the Columns to the Default View

    This next step is optional. If you want to make sure that the fields you just created show up in the default view of the list then you need to perform a couple more actions in your Flow. First, you’ll need an initialize variable action which will store an array of all of the column names you want to add like so:

    Figure 4 – Configure the Column Names Variable

    Once you have that, you need an Apply to Each action and within that you’ll make one final SharePoint HTTP action which will take those columns and add them to the default view like so:

    Figure 5 – Add the Columns to the View
  • Employee recruitment and on-boarding with Office 365 and Power Platform – Pt 1

    Employee recruitment and on-boarding with Office 365 and Power Platform – Pt 1

    In the series of posts, we are going to look at how you can utilise the suite of Office 365 and Power Platform products to automate the recruitment and onboarding of new employees. We will use (among other things) SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, PowerApps, Power Automate, Word, Outlook and Power BI.

    We’ll also apply some JSON to format columns and create adaptive cards

    The scenario

    In this scenario, we will start with a request to recruit a new employee, which will then go through an approval process and trigger a series of actions within Power Automate flows.

    During this series, we’ll also create a Microsoft Team to store all details of applications and supporting documents (resumes, cover letters, etc.)

    Request to recruit

    To begin with, we’ll create a SharePoint team site (mine is called People Culture Team). In this site, we’ll create list (mine is called Recruitment Requests). My list has the following columns:

    NameType of column
    TitleSingle line of text
    Type of requestChoice
    (choices are ‘backfill’ & ‘new position’
    Position TitleSingle line of text
    New Position JustificationMultiple lines of text
    Previous Incumbent NameSingle line of text
    Previous Incumbent Reason For LeavingChoice
    (choices are ‘Internal Transfer’ & ‘Termination (including resignation’
    Covered By BudgetYes/No
    Request LocationChoice (for this example, you only need to have two or three choice. In real-life/larger company, you may prefer a lookup column)
    Reports ToPerson or Group
    Reports To PositionSingle line of text
    Employment TypeChoice (My choices are ‘Full-time’, ‘Part-time’, ‘Casual’ & ‘Fixed-term contract’
    Recruitment MethodChoice (My choices are ‘External’ & ‘Internal’)
    Commencement DateDate and time (Date only)
    Position Description AttachedYes/No
    Base SalaryCurrency
    SuperCurrency (might not apply to any readers outside of Australia)
    Mobile AllowanceCurrency
    Laptop AllowanceCurrency
    Link To RequestSingle line of text (we will use JSON to format this column in a later post)
    P&C ApproverPerson or group
    P&C OutcomeSingle line of text
    P&C CommentsMultiple lines of text
    SLT ApproverPerson or group
    SLT OutcomeSingle line of text
    SLT CommentsMultiple lines of text
    GM ApproverPerson or group
    GM OutcomeSingle line of text
    GM CommentsMultiple lines of text

    If you don’t want to manually create this list, here’s a flow I created for you. You just need to change the URL to one that sits inside your tenant, e.g. https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/peoplecultureteam, and run the flow.

  • Use Power Automate to create terms in the term store

    Use Power Automate to create terms in the term store

    Introduction

     With the introduction of SharePoint V2 REST API for Managed Metadata services, it has become very easy to create a term in term store using REST API. But what if we would like to automate things? In such cases we can use the help of Power Automate. In the automation, we would create a simple custom SharePoint list with only title field, and when a user enters the item in the list we would create a term for that particular title. 

    Steps to be used to create flow using Power Automate

    Step 1 – Select the trigger (when an item is created) We require this flow to trigger when a new item is created in the list, so we select the trigger as “when an item is created”. Once we have selected the trigger we need to select the site collection where the list is present and the list for which we need this trigger to work, 

    How To Create Term In Term Store Using Power Automate

    Step 2 – Create variables (Initialize variable) We will create two variables with the step named “Initialize variable” Let us set the name of the variables as mentioned below:

    1. GroupId
    2. TermSetId

    We will use string as the type of both the variables. We can provide the value as Group Id and TermSet Id. To fetch the Id of group and term set we can navigate to the SharePoint admin center and expand the content service section present in the left navigation and click on Term store. Click on the group under which we need to create the term and copy the “Unique identifier” field value. In the same process for the term set, we can select the term set under which we need to create the term and copy the “Unique identifier” field value. 

    How To Create Term In Term Store Using Power Automate
    How To Create Term In Term Store Using Power Automate

    Step 3 – REST API (Send an HTTP request to SharePoint) We will now send the REST API to create the term, for that we will add a step named “Send an HTTP request to SharePoint”. This will allow us to use the SharePoint REST API v2 for Managed Metadata service for creating terms. Site Address – We can select the site address from where we need to post the API.Method – We will Select POST as the method value. Uri

    1. _api/v2.1/termStore/groups/@{variables(‘GroupId’)}/sets/@{variables(‘TermSetId’)}/children   

    NoteWe will use the groupId and TermSetId variables in the URI. Body

    1. {  
    2.     “labels”: [  
    3.         {  
    4.             “name”: “@{triggerBody()?[‘Title’]}”,  
    5.             “isDefault”: true,  
    6.             “languageTag”: “en-US”  
    7.         }  
    8.     ],  
    9.     “descriptions”: [  
    10.         {  
    11.             “description”: “@{triggerBody()?[‘Title’]}”,  
    12.             “languageTag”: “en-US”  
    13.         }  
    14.     ]  
    15. }   

    NoteWe have used the title as name and description of the term but we can use another field value created in the list as described. 

    How To Create Term In Term Store Using Power Automate

    Conclusion

     Term creation is automated by using flow in Power Automate. This can be helpful as most of the users will not have access to term store but they can create an entry in the list and if the user who has created the flow has proper access to create the term, then the terms get created in Term Store.

  • Build a policies and procedures hub with Microsoft 365 – Part 02

    Build a policies and procedures hub with Microsoft 365 – Part 02

    Introduction

    In the previous post, we created and configured a SharePoint team site for storing policy and procedure documents and a list that will be used to track who has and who has not read a document.

    In this post, we’ll create a PowerApp that will list documets that are assigned to each user.

    Before we start:

    • upload at least one document to the library that houses your policies and procedures
    • create a task in the task list and assign it to yourself

    Creating the app

    Follow these steps to create a simple app that will list a user’s outstanding documents and allow them to complete an acknowledge task.

    1. Go to https://powerapps.microsoft.com and create a new canvas app from blank
  • Build a policies and procedures hub with Microsoft 365 – Part 01

    Build a policies and procedures hub with Microsoft 365 – Part 01

    Introduction

    Policies and procedures play an essential role in any organisation and it is essential that employees have access to the latest documentation.

    By combining SharePoint and the Power Platform, it is quite easy to create a robust solution that can mange the creation and dissemination of these documents, as well as tracking who has

    In this series of posts, we will:

    • create a policies and procedures team site SharePoint
    • create site columns using the tenant-wide term store
    • use Power Automate to send notifications to readers and creators
    • create a PowerApp to allow users to acknowledge that they have read and understood the document
    • create a policies and procedures hub (using the PnP modern search web parts)
    • create a Power BI dashboard to show reports

    Pre-requisites

    The following instructions are written with the assumption that you have exposure to SharePoint and the Power Platform, as well as sufficient privileges, e.g., Tenant global admin, Term store admin, etc..

    Create terms

    We’re using the term store to provide values for the metadata in the site columns used in the policies and procedures document library.

    You can always skip this step and create other types of columns, e.g., choice or lookup.

    The beauty of using the term store is that the metadata can be used in sites across your whole tenant, i.e., you don’t need to replicate terms for each site collection.

    To create new terms in the term store:

    • Go to Microsoft 365 admin center
    • Select see all > SharePoint
    • Select Content services > Term store
      (https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/online/AdminHome.aspx#/termStoreAdminCenter)
    • Select Add term group
    Modern term store experience
    • Give the term group a name (we’re using Policies and Procedures)
    • Within this group, create the following term sets and values:
      • Business unit
        • Accounts
        • Business support
        • Finance
        • HR
        • IT
        • Operations
      • Document type
        • Guideline
        • Manual
        • Policy
        • Procedure

    For information about the term store, click here.

    To learn how you populate the term store using Power Automate, click here.

    The SharePoint team site

    Now, we’ll create a SharePoint team site to store the policy and procedure documents. This site will also contain the lists that will be used to track the status of documents, e.g., who has and who hasn’t read a document.

    The team site we are using is called Polices & Procedures Team (https://TENANT.Sharepoint.com/sites/PoliciesProceduresTeam).

    Site columns

    We now need to create the site columns (they need to be site columns to make use of the search functionality later on).

    Use a good naming convention for the internal name for your columns, e.g., create a column called BusinessUnit and rename it Business unit afterwards. This prevents special characters appearing the name of the column.

    The site columns we need to create are:

    NameType
    Business UnitManaged metadata
    (use Business unit term set we just created)
    Document typeManaged metadata
    (use the Document type term set we just created)
    Document ownerPerson or group
    Published dateDate and time
    (Date only)
    Next review dateDate
    (Date only)
    Date assignedDate
    (Date only)
    Assigned toPerson or group
    Acknowledgement statusSingle line of text
    (Default value is Assigned)

    Content types

    Next we need to create the content types and add the necessary site columns.

    NameParentColumns
    Policy and procedure documentDocumentBusiness unit
    Document type
    Document owner
    Published date
    Next review date
    Policy and procedure taskItemAssigned to
    Date assigned
    Acknowledgement status

    Library and list

    Next, we need to create a document library (rather than using Shared documents) and a task list. We’re calling our library ‘Policy and Procedure documents’ and our list ‘Acknowledgements’.

    To make things easier and repeatable, e.g., to move between environments, we have created a site design that you can download from here.

    Next steps

    In this post, we have configured the SharePoint team site that will be used to store our policies and procedures, as well as a list that will track who has and who has not read each document.

    In Part 02, we’ll use PowerApps to create a simple canvas app that displays a list of documents for a user to acknowledge.