Today I will share a short script for getting totals from a list view in SharePoint. Imagine this scenario: you have set up a list view with totals and you want get the totals every day for statistics or some other reasons. Instead of getting all items, and/or fiddling around with CamlQueries, there is a better and quicker way - List.RenderListData. This combined with a tip from Piyush K Singhs blog post Get Aggregate Values… I came up with an idea to read the ViewXml from an existing view and retrieve the totals (in my case Count and Sum). Enough talking, let’s take a look at the code:

This post is about the default language of a new site in SharePoint Online. There are some pros and cons of using English as the default language for Non-English sites.

In my case I want to know what is better for Swedish users:

1. A site with English as default and Swedish as an alternate language (among many other alternate languages)?
2. A site with Swedish as default?

Today, when you create a site, English is pre-selected in the form, you have to choose Swedish actively. When you create a team, the underlying SharePoint Site will have English as the default language.

Just a little tip. When you switched to a Classic View of Site Contents, you can switch back by removing a cookie called “splnu”.

Site Collection App Catalogs (SCAC) are much appreciated, thank you, Office 365 Team. Here is a couple of tips and tricks for SCAC.

Tip #1 You don’t need Tenant Admin rights to add a new Site Collection App Catalog

I have seen many blogs, forum threads etc that state that only Global Tenant Administrators can add new Site Collection App Catalogs. The truth is that a SharePoint Admin rights are enough. The trick is to make that SharePoint Admin Account to a site collection administrator of the app catalog site. To be precise the account that adds a new SCAC must have Manage Web Permissions, as stated in error message:

This is about a topic brought up by Waldek Mastykarz: Just because you can should you use the Office 365 CDN. In my post I want to take a closer look at the private CDN option in Office 365. Please note, the whole thing is subject to change, and it reflects the circumstances at the time of writing - 2019-08-26.

I’ll skip the introduction of Office 365, let’s jump directly to the Private CDN option. Consider following scenarios.

There are many resources on the internet that list _layouts/15 urls in SharePoint. Some are outdated, some are too short, some are to long. Here is my list of the urls, that I am going to update when I need. All the urls start with [Your-Tenant].sharepoint.com/sites/[Your-Site]/_layouts/15/ Here we go:

• viewlsts.aspx - Site Contents, Modern View
• viewlsts.aspx?view=14 - Site Contents, Classic View
• appinv.aspx - Grant Permissions to an App
• appregnew.aspx - Register a new SharePoint Application
• appprincipals.aspx - List Registered Add-Ins
• CreateGroup.aspx - Create Site page (Team and Communication)
• TA_AllAppPrincipals.aspx - List all app principals

Today I have just a little code snippet to share. This code snippet shows how to update the JSLink property for an existing field using JSOM and REST. For REST I use sharepoint-utilities.

var updateJsLinkCsom = function (config) {
  var ctx = SP.ClientContext.get_current();
  var web = ctx.get_web();
  var lists = web.get_lists();
  var list = lists.getByTitle(config.listTitle)
  var fields = list.get_fields();
  var field = fields.getByInternalNameOrTitle(config.fieldTitle)
  field.set_jsLink(config.jsLink)
  field.update()
  ctx.executeQueryAsync()
};
var updateJsLinkRest = function (config) {
  SP.SOD.registerSod('sputils.js', '<your cdn endpoint>/sputils.min.js')
  SP.SOD.executeFunc('sputils.js', '', function () {
    var url = _spPageContextInfo.webAbsoluteUrl + '/_api/web/lists/getbytitle(\''
      + config.listTitle + '\')/fields/getbyinternalnameortitle(\''
      + config.fieldTitle + '\')';
    var payload = {
      '__metadata': {
        'type': 'SP.Field'
      },
      'JSLink': config.jsLink
    };
    var config = {
      'headers': {
        'X-HTTP-Method': 'MERGE'
      }
    };
    sputils.rest.post(url, payload, config);
  });
};
var config = {
  listTitle: '<your list title>',
  fieldTitle: '<your field title>',
  jsLink: '~site/<your jslink>'
};
updateJsLinkCsom(config);
updateJsLinkRest(config);

A couple of notes, to update a field we need:

Today I found out how to start workflows in JSOM (JavaScript Object Model in SharePoint). Nothing special, but since it is not documented, it took me a while to find a solution. Here is the code which I want to keep as simple as possible. What you need to start a SP2010 Workflow for a list item or a document in JSOM, you need to load SP.WorkflowServices.js and you need to create the manager and get the service, then you can trigger a workflow using the workflow name, the list guid and the guid of the list item:

There are many correct ways (1, 2, 3, 4, 5…) of making scripts work with the Minimal Download Strategy Feature (MDS) in SharePoint 2013 and 2016. But to be honest - every time I need it, I get confused. So now it is time to find a simple solution for that. Who is better at it than the developers of the SharePoint themselves? Look at the MDS code in the built-in Display Templates:

We want to use our own Display Templates on Non-publishing sites - our team sites. Without the Publishing Feature activated you have to create an own javascript file. Here is short and concise instructions how to install it: Display Templates on Non-publishing Sites. As described on that blog, you can make copy of an existing Item_Default.js and adjust to your needs. I also asked Elio Struyf and I got the same tip. I did create my starter template. Here I want to share this very minimal javascript based Display Template. The real Minimal Display Template is in the SPCSR github repository: Item_Minimal.js It has been improved by Elio Stuyf himself :)