All posts in Configuration

How to Auto-Generate SharePoint Audit Reports: The GUI

A question I get often, especially around solutions where security is a big concern is “how can we see who looked\opened\updated\deleted an item in our document library.  Updates, are easy if you have versioning enabled as it tracks each update in the version history, but what if you don’t want versioning enabled or you need to track the other items?  Enter SharePoint audit reports.  I previously blogged a detailed post on the audit logs within SharePoint.  Basically, once enabled they will record everything that occurs within the site depending on the settings you select.  You can find more information on it here.  However, the problem with audit reports is you need site collection admin access to see them.  This does not work in many instances as most end users don’t (and shouldn’t) have that level of access to your site collection.  So how do you get them the reports without manually running the report for them each time they require it?  This is what we are going to cover in this series.  This post specifically will assist you in preparing the data for your users from the SharePoint GUI.

Quick Note: this may be an old topic, in fact I know it is.  I started this blog two years ago and apparently forgot about it.  I was going to trash it when I came across it but remembered that I still see a number of requests for setting up audit reports to automatically run for others.  So I decided to complete it since it is still relevant for all versions of SharePoint including SharePoint Online

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Quickly Build a Multi-Server SharePoint 2013 Developer Environment (Part 1) – Provisioning VMs

The other day I was taking a look at Vlad Catrinescu’s blog on quickly creating a SharePoint 2013 dev farm. It’s a great blog and provides some good information on creating a dev environment much faster than you could ever do it manually.  I like to develop in an environment as similar to the production environment as possible and I also have the hardware to do it. With this in mind I wanted to come up with a way to quickly build a multi-server SharePoint 2013 developer environment. The problem is that for a single server install you could be looking at hours to install and configure, a multi-server environment could take even longer. I set out to build scripts that would not only deploy the SharePoint environments but would also create the VMs, deploy Active Directory and SQL Server, and configure the network. In addition, I wanted to be able to do this more than once (as different environments are sometimes needed at different times).

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Out-Of-The-Box (OOTB) Reporting in SharePoint (Part 1): Web Analytic Reports

I have seen over time that new users have asked about reporting in SharePoint.  Usually it is in a forum post which isn’t always the best place to provide an answer as the answer can be quite detailed, so I decided to do a write-up and if someone asks, I can direct them here instead of re-writing in a medium that isn’t quite as nice for the requirements of the answer.  Not only that, I have seen blog posts with posts that are only about one report and not about any of the others.  I would like to discuss all the OOTB reports in one place so anyone looking can find them all.  This isn’t going to be anything new or cutting edge for the experienced SharePoint user.  It’s intended for the person that is new to SharePoint or looking for basic info on SharePoint.

To put it bluntly, SharePoint doesn’t have a lot of OOTB reporting.  You aren’t going to find a lot of user reports or detailed usage logs within SharePoint.  Microsoft provides methods to build reports, but doesn’t provide a lot within SharePoint itself.  Companies like AvePoint, Share-Gate and Metalogix have provided user teams with much needed reporting, but we are here to talk about what SharePoint gives you OOTB.

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Leading Practices for Planning and Implementing a SharePoint Environment

This month I traveled to Saskatoon, Edmonton and Calgary to present on the Leading Practices of Planning and Implementing a SharePoint Environment.  This was not meant as a technical discussion, but instead a discussion on implementing a SharePoint environment.  There is a bit of technical topics within it, but the focus is how to plan out your entire project to get the best SharePoint implementation you can.  I had a lot of great discussions and questions from everyone that attended and really enjoyed myself.   I promised everyone I would post my slide deck so they could reference it and use it should they choose to.

I would really like to thank the Saskatchewan SharePoint User Group,  Edmonton Microsoft User Group, and the Calgary SharePoint User Group for hosting me for these presentations.  I really enjoyed myself and hope to return soon with another presentation.  I would also like to thank Solvera Solutions for making this all possible as well.

As promised… the slide deck.

Leading Practices for Planning and Implementing SharePoint