Creating a Planner tab in Teams, including a number of Tasks, in an Azure Function

( Updated 1 March 2023)

As part of an update to a provisioning tool I was looking into creating a Planner, a Bucket and a handful of tasks and finally connecting the Planner to a tab in one of the channels in my Teams Team.   

The tools of choice is an Azure Function running PnP.PowerShell ( version 1.12 )  as this combo allows both us and the client to alter existing functions and create new ones without having to hire a hardcore developer. Quite a few consultants and IT administrators knows enough PowerShell to work with these fairly simple scripts.  💪

Creating the Planner, the bucket and the tasks goes like this: (draft version , not ready for product yet)

$localConn = Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl -ClientId $ClientId -thumbprint $thumbprint -Tenant $TenantName -ReturnConnection -erroraction stop

$PlannerPlan = Get-PnPPlannerPlan -Group $groupId -Identity $PlannerName -Connection $localConn

if(-not $PlannerPlan)
{
    $PlannerPlan = New-PnPPlannerPlan -Group $groupId -Title $PlannerName -Connection $localConn
}

$bucket = Add-PnPPlannerBucket -Group $groupId -Plan $PlannerPlan.Id -Name "Tasks" -Connection $localConn

$newTask = Add-PnPPlannerTask -Group $groupId -Plan $PlannerPlan.Id -Bucket $bucket.Id -Title "Task A" -Connection $conn

$newTask = Add-PnPPlannerTask -Group $groupId -Plan $PlannerPlan.Id -Bucket $bucket.Id -Title "Task B" -Connection $conn

$newTask = Add-PnPPlannerTask -Group $groupId -Plan $PlannerPlan.Id -Bucket $bucket.Id -Title "Task C" -Connection $conn

$newTask = Add-PnPPlannerTask -Group $groupId -Plan $PlannerPlan.Id -Bucket $bucket.Id -Title "Task D" -Connection $conn

$plannerChannel = Get-PnPTeamsChannel -Team $groupId -Connection $conn | Where-Object {$_.DisplayName -eq "RFP"}

However, connecting the Planner to the tab in Teams proved to be a challange as the Add-PnPTeamsTab looks like this:


Prefect, as one of the options in the Type enum is "Planner" this should do the trick:

Add-PnPTeamsTab -Team $groupId -Channel $teamsChannel -DisplayName "RFP" -Type Planner -ContentUrl $contentUrl


But no. Error : Add-PnPTeamsTab: A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'ContentUrl'.


Later in the day I saw that @PaoloPia (Paolo Pialorsi) had released a YouTube video : "Learn how to use Graph to automate provisioning of Planner plans, buckets, and tasks". In that video Paolo was using MS Graph to create the tab and connect it to the Planner.

When I added a comment on Twitter that I most likely was going to use the same approach as the Add-PnPTeamsTab approach apparently didn't work.

Gautam Sheth (@gautamdsheth) saw this and answered that I should use -type "Custom" instead as this would allow me to set the ContentUrl.

This will create a Planner tab to your channel:

$teamsTab = Add-PnPTeamsTab -Team $groupId -Channel $plannerChannel -DisplayName "RFP" -Type Custom -TeamsAppId "com.microsoft.teamspace.tab.planner" -Connection $conn -ContentUrl "https://tasks.office.com/[TenantName].onmicrosoft.com/Home/PlannerFrame?page=7&planId=$($PlannerPlan.Id)"


So thanks to a comment on Twitter and to Paolo and Gautam I learned something new, got the function to work using PnP.PowerShell exclusively. 

In order to ensure that this option reaches a broader audience the documentation for Add-PnPTeamsTab has been updated with a example like the code above.

  
Update 1 March 2023:

Gautam has updated the Cmdlet and I have updated the documentation with this example:

No need to use -Type Custom anymore ✌

Microsoft search : using a DateTime field in your Result Types

In one of our products, we are using a Generic SharePoint list to store some information that is required to be visible within a specific timeslot ( beginDate & EndDate).

In the ol' days we could easily exclude those listitems in a data source derived from the LocalSharePointResults data source using a Date variable.

But these days we are dealing with Microsoft Search and a different set of rules.

 Since Microsoft Search will display those list items by default we have a few options:

Option 1: Create two Result Types and use e.g. ContentTypeId and the RefinableDates to handle the items that should be show and not shown respectively.

 Well, this is as far down that path that I got. Date fields in the Result type builder does NOT have any date variables, and according to a very reliable source with Microsoft there are no plans to offer this option.

So, we are left with Option 2 or 3.

Option 2: For each relevant Search Vertical we must add a filter to hide any item outside the range.

(risky as this rule might be forgotten and not implemented in a Vertical added at a letter date)

Option 3: Use the Result Type without any date filter and set up the Adaptive Card to hide any item outside the range.

I am not happy about having "business logic" in the GUI/Display layer but I guess we will go with Option 3 for now.

Shortcomings of the Managed Metadata fields on a SharePoint User Profile

Summary: This blog post will explain what you can and can't do when the User Profile field is a Managed Metadata field.

This blog post is a fellow up on the previous post about using PnP Modern Web Parts as a department web part.

While working on that blog post I had the idea that it should be possible to show the members of a specific department and a division as well.

Showing the members of a department was easy, however I had a hard time getting the division to work.

According to an article from Mikael Svenson, I should be able to query for the Marketing Division by using the GPP|#c  syntax, which should return User Profile Accounts where the Department field was a term beneath the Marketing Division. 

Looking at the data using the excellent SP Editor extension for Chrome/Edge I found that the data looked just as expected where the Department termset was using on a Site Column. The search worked just fine.

So why didn't it work in People Search? 

After inspecting the Managed Property ( in this case ows_taxid_spshdepartment was mapped to RefinableString100) in SP Editor this showed up:

Once the Department field on the User Profile Account is crawled it does NOT contain the same value as if the field had been using on content.

So the short story is that we can use the PnP Modern Search solution to show departments and all employees, but not the levels between.

It is of course an option to set the query like ows_taxid_spshdepartment:[ID for Marketing] OR ows_taxid_spshdepartment:[ID for Sales] and so on. However, this option is brittle and will require an update each time a department is added or removed from the Division.

Using the PnP Modern Search Results web part as a Department Web Part

Update: If you prefer the video version you can find it here: Using PnP Modern Search As Department Web Part - YouTube

Occasionally we get the request to display the members of a department on a modern SharePoint web page. Using the People Web part is out of the question as this web part only shows a static list of people, and we want the listing to show the members of the Department at any given time.

The Organization Chart is an option if your departments always have one manager, and each manager only has one department. 

However you might be looking for something a little more flexible than the Org Chart, and the PnP Modern Search solution can provide just that 😀

Before you can start using PnP Modern Search the solution must be installed in the App Catalog as per the official guide to PnP Modern Search

Even before we start working with the web part we need some information, the ID number for the department in question.

You find the list of departments in the Term Store. Find the department in the People group and select the Usage Settings in the right hand section, and there you will find the unique ID for that department. 

Back on the modern page again.

Once the App is installed in your site the steps are as follows:

1) Edit the page

2) Insert the Web Part (PnP Search Results)

3) Select Configure or click the Edit Web part Icon

4) Select SharePoint as the Data Source

5) Enter owstaxIdSPShDepartment:"THE_ID_OF_THE_DEPARTMENT" in the Query Template Field, in this case it will be owstaxIdSPShDepartment:"2ce09d31-c9d3-4265-abd7-5ac99fc3a060"

6) Scroll down and select LocalPeopleResults in the Result Source Id/Scop|Name field

7) Now you should see some results in the web part, however we are currently using a wrong layout/Display. Scroll further down and change to Page 2.

8) Select the People Layout 

9) Scroll down and enable the field "Show persona card on hover"

10) Change the Component size to a value that fits your design.

11) Rename the web part to the title of the department.

And here you go, an always updated department web part free of change. 

 

Deploy a custom Form Formatting as part of your Site Provisioning

 

Sometimes the default list "new Item"/Edit form is just not well suited as the number of fields causes the form to start scrolling and thus hiding some of the fields.

In the dark ages the default option was to use SharePoint Designer to modify the forms 😟, but today we have more choise based on your needs: 

• Are you limited to only use out of the box SharePoint
• Do you need to have logic in the form like if you entered option A in a field  then the options in the next field must be limited to a specific subset of options.
• Should this list be provisioned to new Site Collections using a provisioning engine

If you need logic between the fields you will most likely choose to customize the list using PowerApps , however as far as I know is is not possible to deploy the PowerApp customization on multiple site collections.

If however you can do without the logic the most likely choice is to use Form Formatting  This will enable you to use the entire screen for your form and manage both the header, body and footer. The body can segregated into sections, making it easier for the end user to locate the fields:

        The PnP community maintains a repository of Form samples if you need some inspiration.

Once you have completed the Form customization it is time to extract it. The JSON configuration is a property on the Content Type, and the PnP sample provided by Kinga Kazala shows how to extract the JSON to a file.

Store the JSON file in SharePoint, setup an Azure Function as I have shown in the sample here, and you are done 👌

Yeah, SharePoint custom Search Display Templates are back*

Once upon a time (before SharePoint Modern mode, circa 2016) we were able to create  custom display templates for search results. This was a great option when your search query was returning a specific Content Type and you could display the various fields in a way that fit the content e.g. showing a red traffic light for expired content.

However when SharePoint Modern appeared on our tenants Microsoft decided not to provide any option to customize the out of the box search, a decision that is hard to understand.

Luckily for Microsoft and us the M365 Community rose to the challenge and the PnP Modern Web Parts project was born.

 

As of today, you can add additional MS Search Vertical on the Site and Tenant level, and we can only hope that one day we will be able to assign an Audience to a Vertical in order to ensure the relevancy for the end user. (hint hint)

 

And NOW (public preview late Dec 22 and complete mid Jan 23) we can create custom item display templates in the shape of Result types with associated Adaptive Cards:

 

 

 

Please note that the Rules is using KQL so all the old queries you have been using for years still works !!!

 

And the skill set required for beautiful looking Adaptive Cards is on my wish list for X-mas but at least I can cheat and learn from the masters at https://github.com/pnp/AdaptiveCards-Templates

 

(Hey it works 😊 )