Creating Power Apps with SharePoint on-premises data

Power Apps now supports creating an app from data stored in lists on a SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016 on-premises site.

Below are the steps for creating a Power App based on on-premises data

1.      From the Power Apps studio  click New from the left navigation bar.

2.      Under “Create app from your data” select SharePoint.

3.      In the next screen select “Connect using on-premises data gateway” to connect to SharePoint on-premises.

4.      This would display additional fields for connection details.

5.      From the Authentication Type drop down choose your authentication type. Currently Windows and Basic authentication are supported for SharePoint on-premises.

6.      Provide user name and password for the connection.

7.      A gateway is required for creating an on-premises connection. If you don’t already have a gateway, you can create one by following the details listed here.

8.      Click “Connect” button to create the connection.

9.      In the connect to SharePoint site page enter the URL of SharePoint on-premises site and click Go

10.  This would display lists within the site. Select the list based on which you want to create the Power App and click Connect.

11.  The App screens with the fields form the list you had selected will be created.

12.  You can make required changes to the field and layout and save the App.

Note:

When you share a Power App that uses SharePoint on-premises connection, the gateway used by the SharePoint connection will also be shared implicitly.

PNP Responsive UI Package for On-Premise SharePoint 2013 and 2016

Last month the SharePoint Patterns and Practices (PnP) group released the Responsive UI Package for SharePoint, a solution that makes SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016 sites more responsive in tablets and mobile phones.  The solution uses JavaScript embed pattern to embed the styles and scripts to the site without making changes to master pages.

Installing the Responsive UI Package

1.      Before installing the Responsive UI Package, the below prerequisites have to be setup

a.      SharePoint 2016 or SharePoint 2013 with SP1 and April 2015 CU

b.      Download and install Office 365 Dev PNP commands from GitHub

2.      Download the Responsive UI Package zip file from GitHub and unzip them in a folder on SharePoint server

3.      Open PowerShell and navigate to the folder where the Responsive UI package files are unzipped.

4.      Then execute the Enable-SPResponsiveUI cmdlet against the site collection which you want to be responsive. The command takes 3 parameters

a.       TargetSiteUrl -  The URL of the Site Collection, where the Responsive UI will be enabled. for example: http://mysharepointintranet.com/sites/Site1

b.      InfrastructureSiteUrl - Is an optional parameter, which specifies the URL of Site Collection, where the JavaScript and CSS files used by Responsive UI solution will be uploaded.

c.       Credentials – Is the user credentials that will be used to authenticate against both the target Site Collection and infrastructure Site Collection and should be the credentials of a user with Site Collection Administrator rights. If the parameter isn’t provided PowerShell will prompt for credentials.

Example syntax: Enable-SPResponsiveUI.ps1 -TargetSiteUrl "https://mysharepointintranet.com/sites/site1"

5.      Executing  Enable-SPResponsiveUI cmdlet  will install the Responsive Package to the target site and if successful will display Responsive UI application succeeded in green font.

6.      The responsive UI Supports 3 rendering modes, desktop, tablet and smart phone. Below screenshots shows how the default SharePoint 2016 UI renders in these modes after Responsive UI Package is installed for a site collection.

Desktop Rendering

Tablet Rendering

Mobile Rendering

7.      To deactivate the Responsive UI, execute the Disable-SPResponsiveUI cmdlet by passing TargetSiteURL and Credentials parameters.

SharePoint 2016 Durable Document Links

One of the new feature available in SharePoint 2016 is Durable Links which provides resource id based links for documents. This feature protects the integrity of document links even if the document is renamed or moved to. When links to documents with resource id are used SharePoint 2016 looks up the document by resource id and opens in Office Online.

An example of how durable link in SharePoint 2016 works

1.    User uploads a document named TestDoc.docx to a document library in SharePoint 2016 sites.

2.    User shares the document to other users in his organization by using Share option in document preview page

3.    An email is sent to users with the link to the document TestDoc.docx.

4.    If you notice the link it will have a reference to the resource id like https://SharePoint Site /Documents/TestDoc.docx?d=wc0309c29bbf74b26be00d97cd54b9a79

5.    Clicking the link will open the document in Office online web app

6.    If the document creator changes the name of the document say to TestDocUpdated.docx the link that was shared earlier will work without breaking as office online loads the document based on the resource id

 

SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016 Preview limitations in Edge browser

SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016 Preview has limitations when accessed from Edge the latest and fastest browser from Microsoft that comes with Windows 10. Below are some of the functionality that will not work in SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016 preview when using Edge browser

Drag and Drop for file upload

Files can’t be uploaded to libraries using Drag and Drop. When you try to do so, a not supported icon would be displayed

  

Features that require ActiveX components

Some features in SharePoint require ActiveX components and will not work in Edge browser. These features include Open with Explorer, Open with Access, Open with Project. These options would be disabled on the list\library ribbon

Customize in InfoPath
Clicking Customize in InfoPath from the ribbon would say that you’ll need Internet explorer to use the feature.

Export to Excel will show a warning
Clicking Export to Excel from the ribbon will show a warning stating that you will require compatible application, however the functionality will work.

 

Lync Contact Card
If the user has Lync\skype for business client installed on their machine and they hover over user name in SharePoint, the Lync Contact Card pops up showing information such as email, phone etc. This functionality depends on Active X and doesn’t work with Edge browser.