SharePoint Online - Viva Connections Dashboard Web Part

How to Use the SharePoint Viva Connections Dashboard Web Part on Your Home Site

Bringing personalized, actionable content to your SharePoint Home Site is easier than ever with the Viva Connections Dashboard web part. This web part allows you to display your Viva Connections Dashboard cards directly on your SharePoint home site, enhancing the employee experience by providing quick access to resources, news, and tools—all in one place.

What Is the Viva Connections Dashboard Web Part?

The Viva Connections Dashboard web part is a modern SharePoint web part that surfaces the cards you create in the Viva Connections Dashboard directly on your SharePoint Home Site. This means users can interact with important information without leaving the intranet home page.

Prerequisites

• You have a SharePoint communication site designated as your Home Site.
• The Viva Connections Dashboard has been created and published.
• You have the necessary permissions to edit the Home Site pages.

Step-by-Step Guide to Add and Configure the Viva Connections Dashboard Web Part

Step 1: Open Your Home Site’s SharePoint Page for Editing

1. Navigate to your SharePoint Home Site.
2. Click the gear icon (Settings) at the top-right.
3. Choose Edit page or Edit from the menu.

Step 2: Add the Viva Connections Dashboard Web Part

1. On the page, click the + icon where you want to insert the web part.
2. In the web part toolbox, search for Viva Connections Dashboard.
3. Click the web part to add it to the page.

Step 3: Configure the Dashboard Web Part

Once added, the web part will automatically display the cards from your published Viva Connections Dashboard.

You can adjust the layout and section width as per your design needs. The web part is responsive and will render well on both desktop and mobile devices.

Step 4: Save and Publish Your Changes

After adding and configuring the web part, click Publish or Republish to save your changes and make the dashboard visible to all users.

Benefits of Using the Dashboard Web Part on Your Home Site

• Centralized access: Employees get immediate access to important cards like quick links, tasks, and organizational news.
• Improved engagement: Surface personalized content that drives productivity and employee connection.
• Consistent experience: Align your SharePoint Home Site and Viva Connections experience.
• Mobile-friendly: The dashboard is optimized for viewing on all devices.

Tips for Optimizing Your Viva Connections Dashboard

• Regularly update cards to keep content fresh and relevant.
• Use Adaptive Cards for interactive experiences such as forms or approvals.
• Segment cards based on audience targeting to personalize content.
• Combine the dashboard web part with other Home Site components for a richer intranet experience.

Additional Resources

• Viva Connections Overview
• Set up a SharePoint Home Site
• Customize your Viva Connections Dashboard

SharePoint (Online and On-Premises) - Thresholds and Limits

In SharePoint (Online and On-Premises), there are several thresholds and limits you should be aware of to ensure performance and avoid unexpected errors. Below is a categorized list of important thresholds:

1. List and Library Limits

Feature	Limit
List view threshold (items per view)	5,000 items
List row size limit	8,000 bytes per row
Maximum number of lookup columns	12
Unique permissions per list	50,000 items (performance may degrade after 5,000)
Maximum list items	30 million
List size	Recommended under 100 GB

2. Document Library Limits

Feature	Limit
File upload size	250 GB (SharePoint Online)
Maximum files per library	Up to 30 million
Number of major versions	511
Number of minor versions	511
OneDrive sync limit	Up to 300,000 files across all libraries

3. Site Collection and Web Application Limits

Feature	Limit
Site collection size	Up to 100 TB
Subsites per site collection	2,000
Webs per site collection	2,000
Items per site collection	30 million

4. SharePoint Online Specific Limits

Feature	Limit
Total storage per tenant	1 TB + 10 GB per licensed user
Site collections per tenant	2 million
Hub sites	Up to 2,000
SharePoint group membership	5,000 users per group
People in a Microsoft 365 Group	25,000 users

5. Search Limits

Feature	Limit
Indexed items per tenant	500 million items
Search result limit (UI)	500 items per query
Refiners per query	10
Displayed refiners	15

6. User Limits

Feature	Limit
Users per tenant	Unlimited (based on licenses)
Users per SharePoint group	5,000 (recommended)
Concurrent users	No hard limit, but throttling applies

7. Workflow Limits

Feature	Limit
Workflows per list	Unlimited
Actions per workflow	~500 (recommended)
Workflow size	5 MB (compressed XAML)
Power Automate runs	Depends on license (e.g., 2,000 runs/user/month)

8. Other Technical Limits

Feature	Limit
Managed metadata terms	1 million
Columns in a list	276 (including hidden/internal)
Single line text column	255 characters
Lookup field value limit	8 in a view (to avoid threshold errors)
SharePoint group limit per site	10,000 groups

If you’re using SharePoint On-Premises (2016/2019), some of these limits can be modified via Central Admin or PowerShell.

If you need thresholds specific to:

• Performance tuning
• Custom solutions
• Search schema

Power Apps - Introduction to Power Apps

Overview

Power Apps is a robust low-code/no-code development platform provided by Microsoft that enables users to create custom applications quickly and easily. Whether you're a business user, a developer, or an IT professional, Power Apps empowers you to build tailored applications without the need for extensive coding knowledge. In this blog post, we will provide an overview of Power Apps, highlighting its key features and capabilities.

What is Power Apps?

Power Apps is a suite of tools, services, and connectors that allows you to create, customize, and deploy applications for web and mobile platforms.
Low-code/No-code: Power Apps utilizes a visual development approach, enabling users to create apps through a drag-and-drop interface and minimal coding.
Integration with Microsoft Ecosystem: Power Apps seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft products like SharePoint, Teams, Dynamics 365, and Excel, enhancing data connectivity and collaboration.

Key Features of Power Apps:

• App Templates: Power Apps offers a wide range of pre-built templates for common scenarios such as expense tracking, asset management, and employee onboarding, providing a head start for app development.
• Data Sources and Connectors: Power Apps supports integration with various data sources, including SharePoint, SQL Server, Common Data Service (CDS), Excel, and third-party services like Salesforce and Twitter.
• Canvas Apps and Model-driven Apps: Power Apps offers two types of apps. Canvas apps allow you to create pixel-perfect, highly customizable user interfaces, while model-driven apps provide a metadata-driven approach with out-of-the-box components for data entry and validation.
• Responsive Design: Power Apps enables you to build applications that adapt to different screen sizes and orientations, ensuring a seamless user experience across devices.
• Power Automate Integration: Power Apps can be combined with Power Automate (formerly Flow) to automate workflows and create seamless end-to-end solutions.
• AI Builder: Power Apps incorporates AI Builder, allowing you to add AI capabilities like form processing, object detection, and sentiment analysis to your applications.

Use Cases and Capabilities:

• Data Collection and Forms: Power Apps simplifies the process of creating data entry forms, digitizing paper-based processes, and capturing data efficiently.
• Workflow and Approval Automation: Power Apps combined with Power Automate enables the creation of automated workflows for approvals, notifications, and data integration between systems.
• Custom Business Applications: Power Apps empowers organizations to build custom applications tailored to their unique business needs, enhancing productivity and improving operational efficiency.
• Mobile Applications: Power Apps enables the creation of cross-platform mobile apps, allowing users to access and interact with data on the go.
• Reporting and Dashboards: Power Apps can be used to build interactive dashboards and reports, providing real-time insights and data visualization.

Conclusion:

Power Apps is a powerful platform that revolutionizes application development by providing a low-code/no-code approach. It empowers both technical and non-technical users to create custom applications quickly and easily, enhancing productivity, streamlining processes, and driving digital transformation. With its extensive features and integration capabilities, Power Apps is an invaluable tool for businesses looking to build tailored applications and unlock the potential of their data.

SharePoint Framework (SPFx) - Setting up development environment

To set up the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) development environment step by step, follow these instructions:

Ensure you have Node.js installed on your machine. You can download the latest version from the official Node.js website (https://nodejs.org).

Download the appropriate version of Node.

Follow the instructions on the installation wizard

Click Finish once the installation is complete.

Verify the version of node on your computer. Go to command prompt and type: node -v

Install Yeoman and Gulp globally by running the following command in a command prompt or terminal:

Install Yeoman SharePoint Generator:

Create a new directory on your machine where you want to store your SPFx project.

Open a command prompt or terminal, navigate to the newly created directory, and run the following command:

You will be prompted to enter the solution name, description, SharePoint Online or on-premises version, and framework to use. Follow the prompts to set up your project. Choose the desired options based on your requirements.

To run the project locally, use the following command: gulp serve

This command will start a local development server, and you can access your SPFx project in your browser using the provided local URL.

To connect your project to a SharePoint site, run the following command: gulp trust-dev-cert

That's it! You have now set up your SPFx development environment. You can start developing and customizing SharePoint components using the SharePoint Framework.

SharePoint Framework (SPFx) - An Introduction

SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a development model for SharePoint that allows developers to build custom web parts, extensions, and other components using modern web technologies such as TypeScript, React, and Node.js. SPFx was introduced by Microsoft in 2016 and has since become a popular choice for SharePoint developers looking to build customized solutions for their clients.

What is SPFx?

SPFx is a client-side development model that allows developers to build custom solutions for SharePoint using modern web technologies. It is designed to be used with SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2019, and SharePoint 2016 Feature Pack 2 or later. With SPFx, developers can build web parts, extensions, and other custom components that can be added to SharePoint pages and used by SharePoint users.

Why Use SPFx?

• SPFx offers several advantages over traditional SharePoint development models such as server-side development and sandboxed solutions. Here are some of the reasons why developers might choose to use SPFx:
• Modern web technologies: SPFx uses modern web technologies such as TypeScript and React, which are popular among developers for their performance, maintainability, and ease of use.
• Client-side development: SPFx is a client-side development model, which means that all the processing is done on the client-side rather than on the server-side. This results in faster load times and improved user experience.
• Cross-platform support: SPFx solutions can be used across multiple platforms and devices, including desktop, mobile, and tablet.
• Easy deployment: SPFx solutions can be easily deployed to SharePoint, making it easy to add custom components to SharePoint pages and make them available to SharePoint users.

Microsoft 365 apps to cease Internet Explorer 11 support

Microsoft has announced that going forward Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support Internet Explorer 11.

Summary

• Beginning November 30, 2020, the Microsoft Teams web app will no longer support IE 11.
• Beginning August 17, 2021, the remaining Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support IE 11.
• Customers will have a degraded experience or will be unable to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE 11. 
• Customers should be using the new Microsoft Edge to get the most out of Microsoft 365 . 
• The new Microsoft 365 features will not be available or certain features may cease to work when accessing the app or service via IE 11.
• Customers’ own legacy IE 11 apps and investments will continue to work.

References

• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/microsoft-365-apps-say-farewell-to-internet-explorer-11-and/ba-p/1591666

SharePoint 2010 - Workflow retirement announcement

SharePoint 2010 workflows will be retired starting August 1, 2020. This applies to all environments, including Government Community Cloud (GCC) High and Department of Defense. If you’re using SharePoint 2010 workflows, migrating to Power Automate or other supported solutions is recommended by Microsoft.

Timeline

• Aug 1, 2020 - SharePoint 2010 workflows will be turned off for any newly created tenants.
• Nov 1, 2020 - SharePoint 2010 workflow services will be removed from existing tenants.

Replacement Platform

After August 1, 2020, new Microsoft 365 customers can use SharePoint 2013 workflows or Power Automate. 

Note: As per Microsoft, SharePoint 2013 workflows will follow a similar retirement path in the future, so it's highly recommended to use Power Automate or other supported solutions. 

Also, no contents will be lost during the transition. However, all migration of workflows is a manual process.

References
Please read the entire deatils in the following link:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepoint-2010-workflow-retirement-1ca3fff8-9985-410a-85aa-8120f626965f