Problems with retrieving group calendars in PowerApps

Back in April, I shared [my thoughts](https://www.mcd79.com/here-is-what-i-think-is-going-to-be-announced-for-sharepoint-in-may-2/) on what would happen at the May SharePoint virtual conference and it's fair to say that I missed quite a few things! There's still no story about Publishing Pages (although the hub sites will cover quite a bit more than news will) and there's still not really any standardised bot integration. But there has been a huge amount taking place with SharePoint including my predicted increase in Flow and PowerApps integration and some huge improvements to the development lifecycle of SharePoint Framework later in the year.

The start of 2018 will bring about [Hub sites](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/SharePoint-hub-sites-new-in-Office-365/ba-p/109547) and [site design templates](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/declarative-customization/site-design-overview) but what else do I think will appear?

Here is what I think will happen in the world of office 365 and SharePoint the next 12 months.

## Building on the modern foundations

SharePoint has been held back by legacy back-ends for some time and these have often limited what could be changed. Coupled with many organisations and vendors building solutions that had requirements on keeping the services the same. However, with modern pages, this has changed. There has now been the chance to rework the SharePoint front-end and this has led to the opportunity to start again. New modern, responsive web-parts, a new development framework using modern web techniques, cross-platform apps with PowerApps and Flow to link it all together. It has taken some time to get to this point but now the foundation is ready, the chance will really be there to see what can be done with it. This year will see more built on that foundation with Hub Sites likely to be just the start. Some of the new features have felt a little half finished (e.g. news not available to be aggregated) but I think that this will quickly accelerate. I am hugely looking forward to what gets announced at the SharePoint Conference in Vegas and also how others make more use of these foundations.

## More intelligence powered services

With tools like the designer in PowerPoint and the automatic CV creator in Word, there is a lot of growth of services building on Microsoft's Azure Intelligence services and helping people be more productive. Many of these will be simple and possibly used by a small percentage of users but all of these together will grow and grow the ease of use for all. I already find the ability to add questions from an email as a task with one click as essential to my day to day life and look forward to see what else will come. One area that will definitely improve is search.

## Search and governance

Another huge area of growth that was signposted by Microsoft is in Search where I think that the ability to surface content relevant to the current user and powered by the growing expertise in machine learning will open up a much better basic search experience. There will always be the chance to create greater search experiences and tailored content with delicately set metadata. However, there has often been an issue with the amount of work needed to not only set this up but to keep it this way. For personalised content, this has led to a large amount of governance to ensure that metadata is set correctly and consistently.

Because of this,governance will re-emerge as a massive topic. I know, I know, many of you reading this are saying that it never went away which is true. However, the focus has been on getting content, regardless of how and where. Creating new pages, new teams, Yammer groups - all of these are more focused on ease of creation than management. Great for the end user but not for those administering content. Even with all the intelligence behind what content to show when, there will come a point where distinguishing the useful content from the duplicates and what remains relevant event when it is old becomes too hard with the current solutions. This will lead to either greater governance capabilities as a core service or vendors to quickly fill that gap. Having the right content will be key and vendors like Hyperfish make it easier to get the right content in the right place.

## Vendors around Microsoft 365 will grow massively, be swallowed up or vanish

As the foundations change around Office 365, the push on vendors to adapt will become greater. Some vendorΓÇÖs will fall by the wayside as Microsoft offers services to compete with them like the migration tool but others like AvePoint, ShareGate and Metalogix will still be there and will come up with new and interesting solution is to keep people keen and to fill the gaps that exist.

## A new challenger?

I think Microsoft has done a great job in keeping Office 365 as a key challenger in many different areas. However, I think that there is a chance of something new disrupting the space. Salesforce acquired Quip last year as a disruptor to collaborative services and Slack has shown what is possible as well. I think that some time this year, there will be a challenge across a wider spectrum of the Office capabilities.

At the same time, the excitement and hype around Microsoft Teams will ground out in some reality. However, it will be continued growth of reality with it taking even more of a centre stage. Especially as people in the enterprise move off Skype For Business and start to accept Teams as the new way of working

## New ways of inputting will finally make ways in the enterprise

Amazon made the first big jump ahead of Microsoft with their [Alexa for enterprise](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/29/amazon-is-putting-alexa-in-the-office/) at the end of this year. This will finally see people accepting the ease with which some services can be improved with voice. Taking actions and notes from a meeting, organising leave and other consistent processes, coupled with search to find the right content. Will it become something that people all grumble about? Oh, certainly it will. It will become an easy target for how "these bots will never take over" but it will gradually take hold and acceptance will grow in the way that SharePoint has taken hold.

The voice input will also be backed up by the bots explosion where developers realise the ease of use of giving access to their services and users realise that not clicking and typing can be much easier. More and more people in the modern workplace travelling around will open up the need for faster access without keyboards as I often find the need to take notes and reply to emails while in the car. Hopefully next year, this will finally be rounded off as a complete service.

## In the development world

After the rise and rise of React, Angular Elements will finally give Angular a leg back in. There are so many devs who feel more comfortable with Angular that I see this growing back in to being the framework of choice again. With Elements, it will meet the needs of being the newest toy on the block but also back up people who have dabbled with Javascript frameworks without going fully JS. Once a few start backing this, the examples will be there and it will be the new challenge.

## TL;DR

More new stuff coming, the old stuff staying around but looking shinier than ever AKA same most years recently! But I am looking forward to it and it feels full of opportunity for all.


What will happen in the world of Office 365 and SharePoint in 2018?

Thanks to the amazing people at Collab 365, my virtual conference presentation on building an intelligent Office Add-In using Cognitive Services is now available at https://collab365.community/using-cognitive-services-build-intelligent-office-add/. It covers how to build an Add-In for Outlook using the modern tools (good old Yo Office), how to bring in Cognitive Services for sentiment analytics and a little bit of SharePoint Framework at the end.

I always love feedback so please do let me know what you think. All the code is available at https://github.com/kevmcdonk/YouveGotSentiment and other links in [my earlier post](https://www.mcd79.com/using-cognitive-services-to-build-an-intelligent-office-add-in/).

![](/images/2017/12/Collab-365-app.JPG)

![](/images/2017/12/Collab365-code.JPG)


Presentation now available for using Cognitive Services to build an intelligent Office Add-In

Digital workplace, artificial intelligence, big data, social intranets, the latest phrase out there - all of the key SEO words but do you know what they actually mean? Are you slotting these in to presentations and discussions with staff and clients and assuming they know what you mean by them? Are you hearing others use these in different contexts when meaning very different things?

These phrases take on a life of their own when they start to be used wider and wider and the original aim for what they were for can often be lost. So should you avoid using them and aim to be a lot more specific when it comes to what youΓÇÖre talking about?

## Catching people's interest

What often changes is the fact that people donΓÇÖt know the details of the phrases. I work a lot in the digital workplace space and listen to a lot of discussion from people with plenty of experience like the [Digital Workplace Group](https://digitalworkplacegroup.com) and [Christian Buckley](https://twitter.com/buckleyplanet) of [CollabTalk](https://collabtalk.com/), among others, and they have a good understanding of what they mean when they use the phrase and are clear on this. However, when talking with clients, they often have different expectations of the phrase intranet and digital workplace just sound like a fluffy thing where you will be sitting in a virtual reality room looking around with your headset on -not something they see happening so any time soon. As is right, they do not live their life reading about intranet and digital workplace and their understanding is sculpted by little snippets of info they have heard from others.

The reality, though, is that the world of work has changed a lot now, even if it is not immediately obvious. They work a lot more with their documents and their files from anywhere. Their applications are starting to move away from being Excel spreadsheets to PowerApps and other digital based media. Many organisations are really pushing away from their paper based forms, taking things like expenses to be tracked electronically from wherever you are instead of having to sign a piece of paper and hand it over. They are using the digital workplace, they just donΓÇÖt know it and they donΓÇÖt necessarily bring all the individual elements under the same umbrella. So the benefit of these buzzwords is to help bring each of these together for people to understand.

## The Future of Work

The future of work will sneak up on many people, it wonΓÇÖt be a massive step change to what they do now. It will just be a gradual change and sneak in to what people are doing - then they look back on the way we worked was very different. So if you are out there and talking about digital workplace and artificial intelligence itΓÇÖs okay, yes. Yes artificial intelligence can be highly clever and complex to create but people can understand exactly what you wanted and take you to the right things. Or it could just be something that looks at the last few items youΓÇÖve opened and get your recent items from whatever device, as you do with Office 365. So itΓÇÖs easy to bunch a load of things together under artificial intelligence that may mean very different things as long as youΓÇÖre being more specific when you need to be.

## So are the trends for 2018 just a load of BS?

Gartner recently released the trends for 2018 (https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3812063) and there are plenty of those buzzwords, especially as many of them seem to be exactly the same as last year suggesting nothing has changed. AI, digital, bots, blockchain - they are many of the same phrases that cropped up in similar reports last year. What is changing is that these are reaching people as real products rather than just ideas. There are articles (https://chatbotsmagazine.com/trends-driving-the-chatbot-growth-77b78145bac) highlighting (http://uk.businessinsider.com/chatbot-market-stats-trends-size-ecosystem-research-2017-10) the growth of bots and the amount that they are being used. The ever increasing price of bitcoin highlights the excitement about blockchain along with the new games starting to impact the speed of ethereum (https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609669/ethereums-first-killer-app-is-here-and-its-a-game-where-you-create-digital-cats/). These buzzwords aren't going away any time soon.

## You're still going to get annoyed

You will still hear people talking about things they don't know much about. You will still hear people using phrases in completely the wrong way. You will still not know what some people are on about. Use the phrases to know that people are interested in these things and find out more. Find out the facts to back up the buzz and be ready to talk about it.


Why it is ok to use buzzwords and phrases but still hate them

I hit a very strange issue this week, one of those classic ΓÇ£this part will only take 5 minsΓÇ¥ but three hours later you are still on the same thing. The task was simple - delete all the folders in Shared Documents and replace with a new set. As I had a few sites to do, I wrote a PowerShell script using the ever helpful PnPPowershell. Then it errored on the first one with a message saying I had to delete each subfolder first.

![Issue with having to delete all items in the folder](/images/2017/12/Retention-policy-issue.JPG)

Odd, as I was sure I had been able to do this before. I did some Google diving on the exact message and many of the posts referenced the retention policies. This is one of the areas of SharePoint I havenΓÇÖt spent much time on before, especially online. I had heard issues with it being enabled incorrectly on OneDrive so wondered if it was related. We hadnΓÇÖt turned on SharePoint retention for the client but it may have been set by others.

I started in the site collection settings but nothing was set there so I went on to the Security Admin Centre. The only retention policy set was for all email so I moved on. Next step was to check other tenancies for the same issue but found nothing on my tenant or my Dev tenant. I found a bit more on retention policies and saw it created a library called the Preservation Hold Library. This existed on the Site with issues and a few others but I noticed that it didnΓÇÖt on the root site. Tried to delete full folders in the UI and it worked. Intriguing.

![Preservation hold library](/images/2017/12/Prservation-hold-library.JPG)

Soon I realised that the issue only occurred in Group Teamsites - classic sites and Communication sites were fine. It was time to return to the Security Centre and dig more on the policies.

What I found was that While SharePoint was not ticked under the email policy, Office 365 Groups were. Suddenly it all made sense. The policy extends to all supported elements of that group.

![Retention policy applied locations](/images/2017/12/Retention-policy-applied-locations.JPG)

Unfortunately at this point, I have the cause but not a solution as I need to be able to retain the Group mails. I deleted the folders by looping through and deleting each item but there will still be a user impact for this later on. Why does retention policy stop you deleting full folders? Why can you not exclude Group Teamsites from retention? Who is Snope and are they really ReyΓÇÖs parents? So many questions for Microsoft...


When Office 365 groups actually mean SharePoint in the world of retention policies

On 2 November, I presented virtually at the [Collab 365 Virtual Conference](https://collab365.conferencehosts.com/confs/global2017) on building an intelligent Office Add-In. I will be publishing the video here shortly after the conference but for anyone interested, below are a few of the useful links and info related to the presentation.

All the code is available at https://github.com/kevmcdonk/YouveGotSentiment

Azure Cognitive Services - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services
Build your own Cognitive Services from Azure - https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.CognitiveServices
Text analytics - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/cognitive-services/text-analytics/overview

![](/images/2017/11/cognitive-1.png)

Creating Outlook add-ins - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/add-ins/addin-tutorial
Debugging add-ins - https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/testing/debug-add-ins-using-f12-developer-tools-on-windows-10

Andrew Connell's SPFX course - https://www.voitanos.io/
Yo Office - https://github.com/OfficeDev/generator-office
Outlook manifests - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/add-ins/manifests
Office UI Fabric - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric

Azure CDN - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cdn/cdn-overview
Deploy to Azure - https://www.geekhive.com/buzz/post/2014/09/gulp-js-azure-blob-storage/
Disabling webpack errors when running locally - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42121991/webpack-disable-hmr

> Images courtesy of [Pixabay](https://pixabay.com)


Using Cognitive Services to build an intelligent Office Add-In

You can read part 1 about [Searching Bing with an Azure Function](Searching Bing with an Azure Function).

Well, it's been a little longer than I'd hoped, partially through business (job, new baby, bla bla bla) but also because in the time I have had, I've been looking at adding some more features as well. These are around adding more image services (Flickr and Pixabay), some more filters so you have some choice around what is displayed and finally saving the image to a site. But first, how was it created.

## Yo SharePoint

The first place to start is creating the framework. Support around this is great, both from the [official docs](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/spfx/sharepoint-framework-overview) and the [PnP Community](https://dev.office.com/pnp). If you prefer a training course, then check out Andrew Connell's [Voitanos](https://www.voitanos.io/) course.

The first step was to be able to show a static image. This is a nice quick change to the main component render method in FindANewsImage.tsx:

    <div className={styles.helloWorld}>
        <div className={styles.container}>
          <div>
            <img data-sp-prop-name="imageSource" src={this.props.imageLocation.ImageUrl} width="100%" />
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>

The imageLocation property is based on an IImage object and is set in FindANewsImageWebPart.ts. Initially, I had this hardcoded and it neatly displayed on the page. However, it would not show the image on the roll-up page. After trying several different things, I eventually found that you needed to set the PreviewImageUrl property.

    protected get previewImageUrl(): string {
    	return this.properties.imageLocation.ThumbnailUrl;
    }

This then showed the thumbnail in any news page roll-up:

![](/images/2017/11/News-rollup.JPG)

The next step was to build out functionality to be able to search for the images. The way that I worked on this was to look at how Olivier Carpentier created custom fields which were used across the amazing SPFX40 examples:

https://github.com/OlivierCC/sp-client-custom-fields.

I used the PropertyFieldColorPicker.ts example and extended it with Office UI Fabric. All the data objects used are defined in IPropertyFieldImagePicker although there is quite a bit of tidy up needed in this. The actual search and rendering of the images takes place in IPropertyFieldImagePickerHost. A search is triggered whenever the text changes in the search box although with a delayed search:

    this.delayedImageSearch = this.async.debounce(this.performSearch, this.props.deferredValidationTime);

The search function uses standard jQuery ajax calls to call the Azure function and return the images that match the query text. You can see an example in the video at the bottom.

    private performSearch(value: string): void {
      let functionUrl = this.props.searchFunctionUrl;

      //console.log('Perform search:' + value);
      var timeoutSelf = this;
      setTimeout(function(){
        console.log('timeout set: ' + value);
        var self = timeoutSelf;
        $.ajax({
            url: timeoutSelf.props.searchFunctionUrl + "&query=" +  value + "&pixabay=true&flickr=true",
            method: "GET"
        }).done(function (response) {
            var responseCount = response.length;
            //var response = JSON.parse(data);
            //console.log(response.value);
            self.props.initialValue.ImageUrl = response[0].ImageUrl;


            var oldValue
            if (self.state && self.state.selectedImage) {
                oldValue = self.state.selectedImage;
            }

            self.setState({
                images: response,
                selectedImage: response[0] //default to selected image being the first
            } as IPropertyFieldImagePickerHostState);
            self.props.properties[self.props.targetProperty] = response[0];
            self.props.onPropertyChange(self.props.targetProperty, oldValue, response[0]);
            if (!self.props.disableReactivePropertyChanges && self.props.render != null)
                self.props.render();
                });

        return '';
      }, 1500);
    }

Clicking on the image saves it in to Site Assets and changes the image reference to that. This means that you have local control on the image rather than relying on a link to an external site. It uses blobs to upload the file using direct Javascript:

    private saveImageToSiteAssets(selectedImage: IImage): Promise<IImage> {
      var self = this;
      return new Promise<IImage>(resolve => {

      var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
      xhr.onreadystatechange = function(){
          if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200){
              //this.response is what you're looking for
              // just my logic to name/create files
              this.response
              var blob = this.response;//new Blob([this.response], { type: 'image/jpeg' });
              var filename = selectedImage.ImageUrl.substr(selectedImage.ImageUrl.lastIndexOf('/') + 1) + '.jpg';
              let web = new Web(self.props.context.pageContext.web.absoluteUrl);
              let siteAssetsFolderPath = self.props.context.pageContext.web.serverRelativeUrl + "/siteassets";
              web.getFolderByServerRelativeUrl(siteAssetsFolderPath).files.addChunked(filename, blob, data => {
                console.log({ data: data, level: LogLevel.Verbose, message: "progress" });
              }, true).then(data => {

                let uploadedImage = {
                  ImageId: "",
                  ThumbnailUrl: "",
                  Title: "",
                  ImageUrl: siteAssetsFolderPath + "/" + filename,
                  LicenseDetails: ""
                };
                resolve(uploadedImage);
              });
          }
      }
      xhr.open('GET', selectedImage.ImageUrl);
      xhr.responseType = 'blob';
      xhr.send();

    });
    }

## Demo

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VGUBH4fAa_I" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

## So what is next?

My next steps are to add even more providers. Bing, Flickr and Pixabay are currently there but there are a few more providers:

- https://api.everypixel.com/
- https://pixabay.com/api/docs/
- https://unsplash.com/developers
- https://www.pexels.com/api/

Before that, I need to add some filters so that you can choose which providers but also to provide some more checks. For example, some people may be happy to not search for only creative commons image or may want to only view widescreen images.

Talking of licenses, making sure that this meets most license requirements, I would like it to give the appropriate credits clearly for any images used. This will make it far easier to use images in multiple places and should save these details to the file list too.

There is plenty more to do and that could be done. If you have other ideas or things that you find an issue, please do chat to me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/kevmcdonk)


Developing a SPFX web part to find news images

Have you heard about the virtual [Collab365 Global Conference 2017](https://events.collab365.community/collab365-global-conference-2017/) that's streaming online November 1st/2nd?

Join me and [120 other speakers](https://events.collab365.community/collab365-global-conference-2017/agenda/) from around the world who will be bringing you the very latest content around SharePoint, Office 365, Flow, PowerApps, Azure, OneDrive for Business and of course the increasingly popular Microsoft Teams. The event is produced by the [Collab365 Community](https://collab365.community) and is entirely free to attend.

Places are limited to 5000 so be quick and [register now](https://events.collab365.community/collab365-global-conference-2017/).

During the conference I'd love you to watch my session which is called : 'Using Cognitive Services to build an intelligent Office Add-In'

Cognitive Services has opened up the ease of introducing greater intelligence to applications that can take real value from your content. Pulling this together with Office Add-Ins and the SharePoint Framework helps provide people with dynamic integration where they are using it, whether it be Outlook, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams or even the standard Office apps. Learn how to develop Office Add-Ins that will be useful in the enterprise environment.ΓÇïΓÇï

If you join me, you will learn:

Cognitive Services
Office Add-Ins
SharePoint Framework
Sentiment, key phrase and topic analysis
Topic(s):

Office365
Audience :

Architect
Developer
Time (in UTC) :

Thursday, November 2 2017 7:00 PM
How to attend :

Register here.
At the time listed above go here to watch my session. (you can also add me to your own personal planner from the agenda.
Be ready to take notes!


Join me (virtually) at the Collab365 conference

I promised in my [last blog](https://www.mcd79.com/fed-up-hunting-down-images-for-your-news-pages-in-sharepoint/) to follow up with some more details on how the image search wed part application has been created and so this is the first part, looking at how the Azure Function was been created. It would have been great to not need the Azure Function and have the web part call various image APIs directly. Unfortunately, the security is a far more important consideration and so an intermediary is needed. You could create a web api but Azure Functions open up a quick and easy way to wrap code securely and with minimal infrastructure (virtual or otherwise) to be set up.

Just before I get started on creating an Azure Function, I would like to apologise to anyone who tried to access my blog between 29 and 31 July. A few issues with what should have been a routine Ghost upgrade that took longer than hoped.

## Creating an Azure Function

Much of what I followed was from the [insightful series of blog posts](http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2017/04/calling-azure-function-from-sharepoint.html) from [Chris O'Brien](https://twitter.com/ChrisO_Brien), particularly the details on holding your code in Github and have that sync up to Azure.

There are three extensions that I would take for this:

## ## #1 - Run functions locally

Azure has made [more capabilities](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-run-local) on this and you can now work on the function locally before deploying up to Azure. This makes it far faster to work on.

## ## #2 - Update the function directly

The code in the portal itself becomes read-only when you use Github (or another source control tool like Visual Studio Online) to sync but you can change this to read-write. This means you can quickly update the code during development - not the best practice but hugely useful. I found this even more useful when running PowerShell scripts as Azure Functions, opening up to IT Pros as well as developers.

## ## #3 - Use a subfolder in Github

Another useful change I found was that you can hold your Azure Function in a subfolder in Github so that you can have other applications in your repository as well, e.g. the SPFX webpart.

To do this, add a key called PROJECT to the Azure Function app settings and provide this with the Folder name or path.

![Azure Function PROJECT App Setting](/images/2017/08/Azure-Function-PROJECT-App-setting.JPG)

## ## Quick note on pricing

Using Azure Functions may put off a lot of people with the thought of having to purchase additional resources. The beauty of using Azure Functions is that they are very low cost. In fact, the first 400,000 GB/s of execution and 1,000,000 executions are free at the moment. You can view more details on the pricing at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/calculator/ but for all but the highest usages, it will be a low cost solution.

## Adding some image searching

I had a few options for doing the searching but having had experience with using the [Azure Cognitive Services](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/cognitive-services/), I chose to start with the [Bing Image Search](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/cognitive-services/bing-image-search/search-the-web). In the future, I plan to give the option to search Google and Flickr as well.

The code to search Bing is relatively short. It uses HttpClient to pass the API key in the header and all the other details as query parameters:

` var client = new HttpClient(); // Request headers client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", "");// put your //key here var queryStringText = ""; queryStringText += "q=" + query; queryStringText += "&license=Share";`

If you are using the code in Github, you will need to set the key at this line. There are further options for filtering the images which are currently commented out in the code but will be included soon to add more options:

`/* aspectΓÇöFilter images by aspect ratio (for example, standard or wide screen images) colorΓÇöFilter images by dominant color or black and white freshnessΓÇöFilter images by age (for example, images discovered by Bing in the past week) height, widthΓÇöFilter images by width and height imageContentΓÇöFilter images by content (for example, images that show only a person's face) imageTypeΓÇöFilter images by type (for example, clip art, animated GIFs, or transparent backgrounds) licenseΓÇöFilter images by the type of license associated with the site sizeΓÇöFilter images by size, such as small images up to 200x200 pixels */`

Next steps (for the next blog) were to use this function in a SharePoint Framework Web Part.


Searching Bing with an Azure Function

This may be a shock to many people but SharePoint is starting to get beautiful. After many years of large lists on a page, never ending documents or acres of white space, SharePoint is focussing more on images. Not just that but it is now easier to upload an image without having to move between different libraries as you often did before.

With [Communication Sites](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEnQKzzbvfo), all this is changing. Large images are the way forward and easy to edit site layouts so most users can make a site look beautiful with some great examples on the [#CommSiteGallery](https://twitter.com/hashtag/CommSiteGallery?src=hash) hashtag on Twitter. However, if you don't have access to a great set of stock photos, how do you find the right content? That's where the Mcd79FindANewsImage webpart comes in - first though, here's the manual way.

> Not got Communications Site on your tenant yet? Check out [Marc Anderson's great blog](http://sympmarc.com/2017/06/29/want-to-get-a-look-at-the-new-communication-sites-heres-a-trick/) to find a trick to enable it for some people. Or if you want to understand a bit about them, check out the [Sharegate blog](https://en.share-gate.com/blog/sharepoint-online-communication-sites-explained).

## Finding images for news pages

I have tended to use three main sources for finding images - Bing, Google and Flickr. This is pretty simple to find specific things but it is important that you consider the licensing options for images. Below are three screenshots of how to set filters on the image search to ensure that you can re-use the license - make sure you read some of the details, depending on whether it is for commercial use or not.

![Bing filtering](/images/2017/07/Bing-filtering.JPG)
![Google filtering](/images/2017/07/Google-filtering.JPG)
![Flickr filtering](/images/2017/07/Flickr-filtering.JPG)

However, I have never found it quite as simple as that. For example, searching for collaboration brings all sorts of random things back. My favourite of the sources is Flickr as you get far more photos of real people that are more generic. Instead of just searching for collaboration, search around similar phrases like "working together" or "togetherness". These less specific phrases tend to bring out more images and more options.

Also, use the filters to help get the right size and orientation for the image that you want. Landscape and panorama photos work best for a news page.

Susan Hanley also identified the following stock photo sites on her very useful 8 tips to get started with SharePoint Communication sites post.

- Pexels.com
- Pixabay.com
- Unsplash.com
- Everypixel.com
- Stocksnap.io

This does still require you to download the image somewhere and then upload it to the site. In this world of automation, we should be able to do better than that.

## The Mcd79 Find a News Image web part

The initial version is quite simple. Edit the webpart and you can open a search box to select an image. By default, it will search for the page title and bring back the first image. Once you choose the image and publish the page, it will also use this as the roll up image on the news listing page as well.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IymUSZcnzCM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It is a first version and plenty more that can be done with it. Currently, the Azure Function only uses Bing to search for images. I'd like to expand this to Google and Flickr as well. More filters should be added so that you can select specific orientations and sizes and further details on the licensing. Finally, it would be great if it saved the image to SharePoint and referenced that to reduce cross site warnings.

You can take a look at the code on my [Github page](https://github.com/kevmcdonk/Mcd79FindNewsImage) and I will be covering it in detail over the next few blogs. Feel free to use as it is now and feedback on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/kevmcdonk) for any problems or suggestions.


Fed up hunting down images for your news pages in SharePoint?

Feedback is great, isn't it? You get to know what people think and you can help improve your service, whether it's a Digital Workplace, custom application or customer services. Getting to know what the users of your service think is vital to making sure you offer a worthwhile service. Feedback should be easy to give and should be simple to be followed up on.

So what about in SharePoint? I love that with SharePoint Online, there is a bold feedback button at the bottom of many of the pages. It doesn't interfere too much and makes it easy when you find something you think could be better.

## So what's the problem?

![SharePoint Online feedback button](/images/2017/07/SharePoint-feedback-and-mobile-app.JPG)

My issue with this is that the feedback goes straight to Microsoft. While it's great that they get that info, it's not obvious that it is going to Microsoft at all. Most users will think that they are providing some thoughts to their SharePoint team on how the site could be laid out better or maybe a typo on a news article. Instead, they are sending this up to someone who can't actually help with it.They get frustrated that nothing changes and the admins who can help don't get any the wiser.

## But there's a bigger problem...

![Privacy concerns](/images/2017/07/Gagged_by_Privacy.JPG)

> "Hey Adam, did you know that the client ABCMNO Consulting has got their old logo on that page? The phone number should be 12345 and the main contact is John Smith."

A helpful staff member has just fed back on a out of date page and shared what the latest info should be. This wings its way on to the user voice survey and is there for the whole world to see. This is private information on a company (a fictional one in the case above in case you hadn't guessed) and should be held so. For the many out there considering GDPR implications, this is a great example.

## Can we do anything about this?

I have raised a [User Voice](https://sharepoint.uservoice.com/forums/329214-sites-and-collaboration/suggestions/20072722-send-feedback-to-site-admins-first) request to have feedback sent to admins first - it would be great to build some momentum on it. Feel free to add your feedback in the comments too, naturally!


Feedback box in SharePoint - great or a pain in the....

## What does your day look like?

Do you drive to work, head into your own or a shared office and get on with work? Do you have a desk in an open plan office, perhaps with hot desking? Or maybe you are on a laptop all day, moving between locations or sat at home keeping the cat off the keyboard? The nature of the workplace has shifted over the last twenty years with far more remote working and offices more likely to be open plan.

![An open plan office - very open](/images/2017/06/open-plan-office.jpg)

But it seems that there is a backlash building against open plan offices with [studies](http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=12347) [noting](https://www.steelcase.com/research/articles/privacy-crisis/) that there is a big dent to individuals productivity against the benefits of collaboration. It has even been noted that using headphones to concentrate does not completely help as the movement in people's peripheral vision still leads to distraction and loss of focus. Throw in a [2013 survey from Canada Life](https://www.employeebenefits.co.uk/issues/february-online-2017/42-staff-overeat-eat-unhealthily-due-workplace-stress/) that found that people working from home had 70% fewer sick days than those in open offices and you have some serious considerations to make.

### So why have open plan offices?

For the time being, I will gloss over the cost implications and think about the benefits to people of more open plan working. If you have a more open area, you encourage greater interaction and this helps foster better collaboration and also innovation. The [CEO of Kellogs](https://thinkgrowth.org/what-the-ceo-of-kelloggs-taught-me-about-keeping-it-real-14a7acdc62be) also noted that it allowed the culture of a company to spread more effectively and foster greater connection between management and other staff as well as between different teams. Others can overhear when you're having issues and help out. Your team near you have better ideas on what you are working on and if it is related, can quickly bring ideas together. We can all live in one big happy family, holding hands and making the world a better place as there is nothing better than forcing innovationΓÇª

![Disgruntled workers](/images/2017/06/disgruntled-workers.jpg)

Apologies to non-British readers but I lapsed into too much British sarcasm here. Much of what I said is true but the reality also gets hampered by annoying habits of colleagues and people who have far more time for your job than theirs. The studies mentioned earlier found little evidence for the benefits of collaboration although the [increased employee engagement through greater control](http://www.cmiworkplace.co.uk/well-designed-offices-improve-employee-engagement/) offers many benefits. For work to actually get done, there are times that you need to be able to just get on with what has been assigned to you.

### So that's some of the problems, what's solutions are there?

As with many things, the solution is to find a balance. Companies internal real estate teams are realising that **different people need different solutions at different times**. Where the Digital Workplace has offered plenty of solutions for collaboration (such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint etc) and for staying focussed (https://medium.com/@producthunt/11-apps-to-help-you-find-your-focus-35dc52952af7), physical workspaces are evolving to become more flexible. This is not as easy with physical equipment but desks designed to not all be in rows and instead having areas where groups can be sat closer while other areas are more secluded. Smaller pods for private meetings or a bit of quiet focussed work. Electronic whiteboards or devices like the Surface Hub to collaborate
across locations and naturally in groups . Floor panels that allow power sockets to be more easily aligned to different desk layouts and increasing availability and security around wireless networks. All these are giving diversity to styles of office working that can adapt to a team's and organisation's needs over time.

![Modern office example](/images/2017/06/modern-office.jpg)

### Can I just work from home when I need to get things done?

Many people find that working from home, even if the office is not too far away, allows them to focus more and get things done without distraction. When you have a large report to write, this can be a good way to remove some more of the distractions inherent to the office. However, one of the pioneers of large scale remote working, IBM, has recently [decided to bring their US remote workers back in to regional offices](https://www-foxbusiness- com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/18/ibm-pioneer-remote-work-calls-workers-back- to-office.amp.html). The benefits to employees and reduced office costs have been offset by the increasing lack of collaboration between team members. While digital tools can help bring people together, they are still not the same as being there in place and working on joint projects. Executives are beginning to look at these benefits which are not as tangible but bring greater innovation

### Can't the Digital Workplace solve all these issues?

I love the Digital Workplace potential. I love being able to find relevant documents straight away. I love being able to chat and get trips booked online wherever I am, even if it is with a bot and not a human. I love organising when everyone is available by entering a few dates and letting people vote for the best. I love being able to find useful knowledge in one easy to search place for my clients when someone is not available.

However, that doesn't mean that having the right tools mean that the right things will happen. Digital and physical workplaces are most effective when they are built around what staff in the organisation need to be most effective. It is important to communicate the potential but if your shiny new pods lay untouched and your Surface Hub shines on the wall with not one finger print on it while your paper flipboards are all used up, then that solution isn't for your organisation. If people are cramming round a small laptop touch screen on a regular basis while they share with a team in San Diego, then maybe it's time to get the sales guys from Microsoft in.

### So...collaboration...productivity...which wins?

Does there have to be a loser? Keep employees engaged, give them options and make sure that they know how to use them. Clearly define expectations to people and ensure they have the right tasks to do and connections to the right people to do them with. There shouldn't be a loser then.

![Everybody wins](/images/2017/06/everyoneWins-300x300.png)


Remote working and open plan offices = Productivity vs Collaboration?

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