SharePoint online: Creating managed metadata column using site script and site design

Hi Friends,

Recently I came across a requirement to create managed metadata column through site script which should be available after creating the site.

I tried different approaches and tried to find many alternatives but no fruitful information found after tried multiple column schema xml I got it working.

Will start with showing the term store.

Figure 1: Office 365 – Term store

I have created a sample group ‘Test Group’ and underneath it a term set named as ‘Business Area’ with some sample terms.

Managed metadata column in SharePoint online works same as on premise one. There are actually two columns in the list one column is with of type ‘TaxonomyFieldType’ and other column is created with the with format fieldnameTaxHTField0 of type Note.

The Taxonomy column holds Term name and a lookup with the TaxonomyHiddenList. TaxonomyHiddenList can be found at /Lists/TaxonomyHiddenList/AllItems.aspx this list will hold the details of the terms that are used in any managed metadata column.

Hence for creating managed metadata column through site design we need to create two columns, one of type Note which we need to use while creating actual managed metadata column.

We need multiple GUIDs while creating the metadata column,you need to replace values from your tenant,  as follows –

1. SspId Taxonomy term store guid
2. GroupId Taxonomy term set group guid
3. TermSetId Taxonomy term set guid
4. TextField Note column guid

Following is the site design JSON file. This include both the columns.( Save content in .json file)

schema_json

I have created the site design using ‘SharePoint online management shell’

Figure 2: Office 365 – Setting site script and design through PowerShell

Let’s try now creating new site using the newly created site design.

Figure 3: Office 365 –Create new site with new site design

Looking like we got success with creating new columns.

Figure 4: Office 365 – Success status shown

Let’s add ‘Business Area’ column in document library to test if the column is working or not.

Figure 5: Office 365 – Add column to document library

Let’s try uploading new document in library and check if the column is showing the values form term set.

Figure 6: Office 365 – Terms are displayed for option in column

The column provisioned through the site design is working as expected.

Let’s check the TaxonomyHiddenList now.

Figure 7: Office 365 – Taxonomy Hidden List

And if we check by editing item properties you can see same GUIDs we added in JSON file.

Figure 8: Office 365 – Term store, term set and term ID visible TaxonomyHiddenList

Considering 30 verbs limitation (as on date) per site design, this may not be a good solution to spend two verbs for a single managed metadata column.

The purpose of this article is to save some time if anyone have same kind of requirement.

Sharing is caring.

SharePoint 2013: Identifying the variation source and target with PowerShell

While working with one reporting requirement I needed to eliminate the variation targets and only need to consider variation sources. I struggled to find out the property which will help me to identify the page is variation source or target.

Solution:

Publishing web and Publishing page have the property called as ‘PublishingPage.Label.IsSource’ which we can use to identify the source page and source web. The same way we can use the publishing web level property as well.

if ([Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb]::IsPublishingWeb($childWeb)){
 $spPubWeb =
 [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb]::GetPublishingWeb($childWeb);

 $item = $spPubWeb.PagesList.GetItemById($row.ID);
 $pubPage =
 [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingPage]::GetPublishingPage($item);

 if($pubPage.VariationPageUrls.Count -eq 0)
 {
     #Page directly created in language sites and not Variated from source
 }
 else #Page Variated
 {
   if($pubPage.Label.IsSource) # then check if the web is Label IsSource
   {
     #this page is variation source
   }
 }
}

Hope this will help, happy learning.

SharePoint 2013: Exception while creating default associated groups through PowerShell

While new site collection provisioned default security groups been provisioned when we create it from central administration but not when the site collection was created using script. For that we need to call a function ‘CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups’. This method actually created default associated group example member, Owner and Visitor group and add the group owner as the first parameter provided to the method call.

When I tried it some cases it worked and in some cases I was getting error “Exception calling “CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups” with “3” argument(s): “User cannot be found”

While analyzing the issue the issue I found that I am passing only first mandatory parameter as the user logon name of the group owner. Like –

$sps_web.CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups("MyDomian\spadmin","","");

And then I was getting error Exception calling “CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups” with “3” argument(s): “User cannot be found.” And the default groups are not getting added.

Further analysis concluded that the user I was passing as group owner was not getting added and hence the exception is thrown.

We have used EnsureUser before calling CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups function to make sure that before the call user should be available in user information list like –

$sps_web.EnsureUser("MyDomian\spadmin");
$sps_web.CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups("MyDomian\spadmin","","");

SharePoint 2013: How to add Promoted Sites programmatically

Hi Friends,

We were facing one more problem some days before where we wanted to add Promoted sites in User Profile Service application à My Site Settings à Manage Promoted Sites using PowerShell.

First of all we will find what is Promoted Sites?

If we want to promote some of the sites to all or specific user group we can use Promoted sites.

Following steps shows how to add promoted sites in central admin manually-

1. Go to ‘User Profile Service application’ –> ‘My Site Settings’ –> ‘Manage Promoted Sites’ under central admin.
   
2. Now select ‘New Link’ and fill the required details for Promoted site as shown in below image
   
3. Save the Promoted link and go to ‘Sites’ navigation added on Right Top in SharePoint page, you will able to see the newly added promoted site like following.
   
4. You can also add the promoted site by using the ‘Manage’ link available, as shown in bellow image.
   

Now let’s see how to add the Promoted Sites link using server side c# code-

SPSite siteColl = new SPSite("http://abc.com/");
using (SPSite ElevatedsiteColl = new SPSite(siteColl.ID))
{
SPUser newUser = ElevatedsiteColl.RootWeb.EnsureUser(@"mydomain\user");
SPServiceContext serviceContext = SPServiceContext.GetContext(ElevatedsiteColl);
PromotedSitesViewWorker.AddSiteLink("http://abc.com/test1", "test1", "test desc1", string.Empty);
}

You need to add references and following Using statements –

using System.Reflection;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.UserProfiles;

Following PowerShell Snippet will add promoted sites-

Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue;
$site=Get-SPSite "http://abc.com/";
$currentUser = [Environment]::UserDomainName + "\" + [Environment]::UserName;
$serviceContext=Get-SPServiceContext $site
$spuser=Get-SPUser -Web $site.RootWeb.Url -Identity $currentUser
$imgUrl="";
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c");
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.UserProfiles.PromotedSitesViewWorker]::AddSiteLink($serviceContext,$spuser,"http://abc.com/test1","test12","test 12 decription", $imgUrl);

Enable Rating or Likes Settings in SharePoint 2013

Hi Friends,

It was a tough time to find the PowerShell or a C# API to enable or disable Rating/Likes Settings in SharePoint 2013. I found a helpful post from Nanddeep for c# equivalent. I have converted it in PowerShell, hope this will help some of SharePoint developers and admins.

Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

$web=Get-SPWeb "http://abc.com/test";
$list=$web.Lists["Pages"];
if($list -ne $null)
{
 Write-Host $list.Title "not null";
 $assembly=[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c")
 $reputationHelper =$assembly.GetType("Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.ReputationHelper");

$bindings = @("EnableReputation", "NonPublic", "Static");
 [System.Reflection.BindingFlags]$flags = [System.Reflection.BindingFlags]::Static -bor [System.Reflection.BindingFlags]::NonPublic;

 $methodInfo = $reputationHelper.GetMethod("EnableReputation", $flags);

#For enabling Ratings
 $values = @($list, "Ratings", $false);

#OR for enabling Likes
 #$values = @($list, "Likes", $false);

$methodInfo.Invoke($null, @($values));

 #For disable Rating or Likes
 <#$methodInfo = $reputationHelper.GetMethod("DisableReputation", $flags);
 $disableValues = @($list);
 $methodInfo.Invoke($null, @($disableValues));#>
}