Enhanced Video Experience in SharePoint 2013

A picture is worth a thousand words, but did you know that a video is worth a thousand pictures? Videos are revolutionizing the way teams and organizations communicate with each other and are increasingly being used to facilitate knowledge-sharing and training within organizations. Intranet video portals for the enterprise are gaining popularity because they are effective for sharing information across the entire organization. SharePoint 2013 does a great job supporting video communications-from sharing a video across a team site to building a knowledge management/video portal for the enterprise.

The video experience in SharePoint 2013 is enhanced greatly-the videos are easier to upload, the UI is clean and simple, videos are easy to search, and more! 

IFrames support in SharePoint 2013

IFrames - SharePoint 2013 added an Out-of-Box Support for IFrames. Admins can now embed dynamic content from other sites, such as videos or maps to any SharePoint site by using IFrames in an HTML field. Admins would need to add the Domain for the external site in “HTML Field Security” first.

Document Library SYNC

Document Library SYNC - With the Introduction of new SYNC button, users can now have any Document Library SYNCed to their Local Including the SkyDrive PRO Library.Once the Library is SYNCed users can Open, Edit and Add Files and Folders to the SYNCed Library Folder that gets created on your Local. These additions can be Synced back to the Library either Everytime when you connect to SharePoint or On-Demand with “Sync now”.

Geolocation Field Type

SharePoint 2013 Introduces a new field type named Geolocation that can show Bing maps instead of location entered in list item. In a Column of type Geolocation, you can enter location Info as a pair of latitude and longitude coordinates in decimal degrees or retrieve the coordinates of the user’s current location from the browser.

Digital Asset Content Types

In SharePoint 2013 MS has introduced a new set of content types called “Digital Asset Content Types” for better use of Audio, Video and Images as Web Content. These content types can be added to any library and be used as a one of the items\files.

SharePoint 2013 PDF supprt

1) Print to PDF - “Print to pdf” solves two purposes converting your Word doc to PDF and letting you Print the PDF right from the document library.

2) PDF Support - SharePoint 2013 now offers Out of box PDF Support.PDF icon is now natively supported and when a PDF is Opened SharePoint will try to open

3) PDF file in the Adobe Reader and prompt user to either checkout & open or open the file in PDF directly.

Sign in as different user is missing in SharePoint 2013..

Sign in as different user is missing in SharePoint 2013. It will be very difficult for testing scenarios with different users. I use this functionality very frequently. I guess Microsoft wants that user don’t hack the site by typing wild guessing the passwords.

There are three options to sign in as different user

1)  Just go to start->programs->IE and shift-right click and “run as different user”

2)    a) Locate and then open the following file in a text editor:  C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES\Welcome.ascx and add the following element before the existing “ID_RequestAccess” element:
” Description=”<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_loginasdifferentuserdescription%>” MenuGroupId=”100″ Sequence=”100″ UseShortId=”true” /> and save the file.

3) Access the SharePoint site by using the following URL:
http:///_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true

Hide Ribbon on SharePoint 2013 using CSS

In SharePoint 2013 MS has divided whole ribbon in two section: s4-ribbonrow and suiteBar.



Step 1)  Add the style tag to hide the ribbon for all the user in master page
#s4-ribbonrow, #suiteBar { display : none; }

Step 2) Find out the

tag and insert the following code inside this div:

Connect to Outlook greyed out in SharePoint 2013?

You might notice some inconsistency with the “connect to Outlook” button in SharePoint 2013.  Sometimes it seems to work, other times you may see this “control is greyed out” message below. 

 

It's because of the effect of one of 2013’s coolest new features – the Minimal Download Strategy. You can find more  about here in one of my blog here

 just hit F5 & try it again. You should be able to see that the  control is functional. It should temporarily allow you to work instead of waiting.

Minimal Download Strategy in SharePoint 2013

Minimal Download Strategy in SharePoint 2013 is one of the coolest features that got introduced in SharePoint 2013 and is enabled by default and can be disabled using EnableMinimalDownload property and settings its value to False. It improves client rendering performance and fluidity when navigating from page to page by download only the changes between two compatible pages. Fewer bytes will be downloaded and the page will appear more quickly.


In previous versions of SharePoint, unlike with Minimal Download Strategy, when a user navigated between pages the entire page (chrome and content area) were reloaded. Minimal Download Strategy significantly reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded and reduces the amount of markup, css, scripts, etc. that the browser needs to parse and render improving overall performance and provides smoother transitions.


As previously mentioned, Minimal Download Strategy is made possible through a new download manager that interfaces between the client and server. The download manager understands controls whose display context is the current Url, controls that can potentially change a Url (I.e. Quick Launch), controls that both have a display context of the current Url and change change a Url (breadcrumbs), and controls that do neither such as images.


Minimal Download Strategy uses a single .aspx file (start.aspx) for your pages, with the actual URL encoded in the text following the hashmark (‘#’). When navigating from page to page, only the changes between two compatible pages will be downloaded.


The download manager follows a subscriber/publisher model therefore each control must register its events with the download manager for example when navigation download starts, ends, is cancelled, or fails. The download manager is also responsible for managing the delta or the difference between the source and destination page.

Search Videos with the new “People in videos” column in SharePoint 2013

A new Column “People in videos” of Video Content type has been Introduced where you can specify people who are in the Video to be included in Video Metadata.The column is available when you edit the properties of your Video that you uploaded in Site Asserts library.

if you enter someones name in the site Search box and select the scope “Videos”, you will find all videos where this person was added in “People in videos” column.It looks like a facebook Photo tagging fetaure.

SharePoint 2013 RTM Now Available

SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 RTM are now available publically for MSDN subscribers. Following are the links.

SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 RTM now available on MSDN

SharePoint Server 2013 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/#searchTerm=&ProductFamilyId=492&Languages=en&PageSize=10&PageIndex=0

Office 2013 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/#searchTerm=&ProductFamilyId=475&Languages=en&PageSize=10&PageIndex=0

Project 2013 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/#searchTerm=&ProductFamilyId=477&Languages=en&PageSize=10&PageIndex=0

Others http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/

What is SharePoint 2013 App

SharePoint 2013 App


In simple words, some of the SharePoint Components like Lists, Libraries,Sandbox or  Custom Applications,few Features like Event Receivers(remote) or Field types (based on existing field types) are termed as “Apps”. So now if someone want to say “Add a new List” to SharePoint, they should probably say “Add a List App” to SharePoint instead.