Article last updated on the 4th of July, 2024.
Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. Connecting WorkPoint to Teams
2. Requirements
3.1. Action Management configuration
5. Videos
6. Notes
6.1. Security
When a WorkPoint 365 site is converted to a Microsoft Teams-enabled site (a process known as 'teamification'), there is an observed issue where site collection administrators are stripped of their administrative rights. This loss of rights occurs because the site collection administrators are being automatically added to the Owners group. This issue can result in conflicts especially when there are pre-existing security rules for Office 365 groups that inadvertently override the membership of the Owners group.
Workaround: To counter the issue of administrative rights loss during the teamification of WorkPoint 365 sites, the following workarounds can be considered:
1. Manually Add Administrators: After the teamification process has been completed, manually re-add the desired users as site collection administrators to ensure they retain the necessary permissions.
2. Configure a Security Rule: Establish an Office 365 group security rule targeting the Owners group permissions and the personnel who needs access, to maintain consistent and correct permissions post-teamification.
1. Introduction
For information about adding WorkPoint webparts to Microsoft Teams, visit this section of this article.
For more information regarding the WorkPoint Builder for Microsoft Teams, please visit this article.
Microsoft Teams is a complete collaboration and online meetings solution. With Microsoft Teams you can host audio and/or video meetings and carry out online conferences. It also lets you communicate with other members of your organization, or even people outside your organization, through an intuitive chat feature.
This provides the users with a unique intuitive interface from which all the necessary features required for team work on various projects can be accessed.
By using automatic integration between Microsoft Teams and WorkPoint through Office 365 Groups, documents created, uploaded or edited are stored in the same location, regardless of whether the user is working through the Microsoft Teams interface, or through the WorkPoint/WorkPoint Express interface.
You can read more about Microsoft Teams specifically by visiting this link:
One use case could be instances where a specific project team wants to use Microsoft Teams to organize and work with their project. Perhaps because they are used to the Teams interface, or for some other reason.
Additionally, Microsoft Teams is integrated with Microsoft’s online office suite Office 365. This means that it is tied together with other apps such as Word as Excel, as well as cloud storage and services such as SharePoint, PowerPoint, OneNote, Planner, Power BI and Delve. As a consequence of this, any document, presentation, and spreadsheet shared within a Team are automatically synced with a copy stored in Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage as well as a local SharePoint environment. This makes it easier to keep track of all of the Team’s shared documents, and to not miss any updates, both in communication and in documents.
Microsoft Teams also has the capability to connect to outside services such as GitHub, Zendesk, Evernote, and SAP SuccessFactors. It can even connect to businesses' own internal apps through an API.
Access to files, internal sites and dashboards is controlled by Office 365 Groups and SharePoint. Users can create a new Group or attach the Team to an already existing one when creating the Team.
Security-wise Teams meet all the same security standards as Office 365 and is Office 365 Tier C compliant. The service enforces two-factor authentication, single sign on through Active Directory, and encryption of data in transit and at rest.
1.1. Connecting WorkPoint to Teams
It is possible to activate integration to Microsoft Teams in WorkPoint. The integration links entities to Microsoft Teams through Office 365 Groups. On each individual business module Office 365 Groups can be activated, given the use of the one-site architecture with the one-site-pr-entity option.
Once an entity has been connected to an Office 365 Group, a Microsoft Teams site is automatically created for that entity.
When activated, WorkPoint can automatically make sure that an Office 365 Group is created for each entity, which is linked to the site collection that WorkPoint set up. It Is, however, optional whether WorkPoint should create an Office 365 Group for each entity. This means that for e.g. a Projects module it is possible for some entities to have Team/Office 365 Group integration, while others do not.
It is also possible to make the creation of the Office 365 Group happen when certain conditions are met. An example would be that the Office 365 Group should not be created until a Project reaches the “Active” stage. All these functions can be done through Action Management.
2. Requirements
Teams Integration is set up using Action Management, thus a specific Action Management license is required. Furthermore, Teams integration is an additional feature that is not standard with WorkPoint. If your organization would like this feature, please contact WorkPoint Sales at sales@workpoint.dk.
Furthermore, the following is required for Groupify, and therefore integration with Teams:
- Your WorkPoint 365 solution is running Modern UI.
- Your WorkPoint 365 solution is set up with one site collection to each entity site.
- Your WorkPoint 365 site, you want to connect the group to, is not the root site.
Attempting to groupify the root site can cause your WorkPoint 365 solution severe problems (read: most likely an irreversible crash!).
3. Configuration
Connecting a WorkPoint business module entity to an Office 365 Group is primarily done through the Action Management in WorkPoint. Generally, an action is set up to establish the connection, and this action can then be triggered in various ways. It can either be triggered manually, or dynamically based on entity data. If dynamic, establishing connection can be made conditional based on data.
3.1. Action Management Configuration
Through the Action Management settings for a given module, an Action of type “Connect to Office365 Group” can be added.
The interface for setting this type of action up is shown below:
- A Service User must be set when Groupify Action is active. You can click the first “here” link to go to the setup for Service User. This service user must have the SharePoint administrator role and be Site Collection Administrator on the WorkPoint solution. Additionally, a tenant administrator must give consent to use groupify functionality. You can give consent to this by clicking the second "here" link. This Service User MUST also have a valid user license for Microsoft Teams. Please visit this article for information about how to set up a service account.
Please note the following important factors in regards to the Service User:
If Azure Conditional Access is set up, ask the customer to alter the policy to exclude the service account.
If the feature Security defaults in Azure AD is enabled on the tenant, set up 2FA on the service Account and create an App Password for the Service User.
You can manage app passwords here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/manage-app-passwords-for-two-step-verification-d6dc8c6d-4bf7-4851-ad95-6d07799387e9#:~:text=To%20create%20app%20passwords%20using%20the%20Office%20365%2cthe%20App%20password%20page%2c%20and%20then%20select%20Done.
- The title field holds the title of the action
- The action can either be active or non-active and can be toggled using the checker.
- A column can be selected for WorkPoint to pull data from for the Group Alias. Note that only columns of type “Single line of text” are allowed. The group alias may not exceed 64 characters in length.
- A column can be selected for WorkPoint to pull data from for the DisplayName. Note that only columns of type “Single line of text” are allowed. The display name may not exceed 256 characters in length.
- A column can be selected for WorkPoint to pull data from for the Description. Note that only columns of type “Single line of text” are allowed. The description may not exceed 1024 characters in length.
- A group can be set to either be Private or Public. The state is selected from the drop-down menu. Note that a state of “Yes” means that the group is Public, while a state of “No” means that the group is Private.
The fields under Dynamic called “Confidential” and “GDPR” are custom made columns of type Yes/no-choice on the module current business module. Using a dynamic value means that, should the value change, so does the privacy state of the group. Other custom columns can be created for this purpose if needed.
This action can now be set up to be executed via button in the My Tools menu of the solution, or automatically upon a specified event, such as a stage change.
In this example, we create an Entity Creation trigger to execute the Connect to Office365 Group action:
- In the Action Triggers section, we select the "Entity Creation Trigger"option.
- We then click the "Add" button.
- A title if given to the trigger.
- The Connect to Office365 Group action is selected to be executed.
- We finish creating the trigger by clicking the "Add" button.
The trigger is now active and shows in the list of triggers:
Another example could include creating a manual trigger for the Connect to Office365 Group action. This trigger could then be executed by the press of a MyTools button. In that case, a user would have to press the button to manually connect the entity to a Microsoft Team.
This example is used in the end user guide for this article.
3.2. Team tabs
By default, teams in Microsoft Teams are provisioned with the following tabs:
- Posts
- Files
- Wiki
You can add custom tabs containing various types of information. Examples could be tabs containing WorkPoint webparts.
The following image shows a custom tab setup for the Master Site team on a Projects business module:
In this example, we have created a custom tab called "Tasks" which displays a Task Overview webpart.
Tab setups can be replicated to future teams created on the same business module as the master site.
To do this, we need to configure the settings for Master Sites in the WorkPoint Administration:
- In the WorkPoint Administration, click the business module for which you have made a custom tab configuration on the Master Site team and select "Master Sites".
- In the Master Sites page, scroll the the "Master Team Settings" and enable "Replicate Teams". This will replicate the tabs on the Master Site team to projects being connected with a team in the future.
- If you would like to remove all tabs not on the Master Site team when provisioning a new team for a project, enable the "Remove Additional Team Tabs" checker.
- Click the "Save" button to save the settings.
Note that the configuration in step 14-16 only applies to future teams being created. If you would like to replicate tabs from a Master Site team to existing teams, you must run a Master Site Synchronization using the following settings:
4. End User Guide
Click here to go to the end user guide article for Teams Integration.
5. Videos
This video section contains a three-part video series of the configuration of the Teams Integration for entities.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
6. Notes
When a WorkPoint 365 site is converted to a Microsoft Teams-enabled site (a process known as 'teamification'), there is an observed issue where site collection administrators are stripped of their administrative rights. This loss of rights occurs because the site collection administrators are being automatically added to the Owners group. This issue can result in conflicts especially when there are pre-existing security rules for Office 365 groups that inadvertently override the membership of the Owners group.
Workaround: To counter the issue of administrative rights loss during the teamification of WorkPoint 365 sites, the following workarounds can be considered:
1. Manually Add Administrators: After the teamification process has been completed, manually re-add the desired users as site collection administrators to ensure they retain the necessary permissions.
2. Configure a Security Rule: Establish an Office 365 group security rule targeting the Owners group permissions and the personnel who needs access, to maintain consistent and correct permissions post-teamification.
6.1. Security
Additions have been made to WorkPoint’s security rules. It is now possible to make security rules which target Office 365 Group membership specifically. This means that “owner” and “member” of the Office 365 Group can be fetched from attributes of the entity in WorkPoint (e.g. Project Manager or Project Team). This has been made possible through the addition of new scopes on new security rules on relevant modules where the Office 365 Group feature is activated (shown below).
Once Office 365 Group has been chosen, the administrator can choose which group membership to target. Group memberships can be the standard Office 365 group memberships, e.g. “owner” or “Member”, but can also be customized groups. An example is shown in the image below:
Please note, that when selecting "Owners" for Group permission, only required People fields on the Business Module list are available in "Field name". Setting the field required on a content type will not make it available in "Field name".
Should an entity not be linked with a group, the security rules of groups are ignored.
6.2. Adding WorkPoint Webparts to teams
Later in this section you will need a file called "workpointteamswebparts.sppkg". You can download this file via this link.
It is possible to add WorkPoint webparts to Teams pages in Microsoft Teams. Before this option becomes available, some configuration is required. Follow these steps:
- Navigate to the SharePoint Admin Center for your solution. You can nagivate to here by going to "[TENANT NAME]-admin.sharepoint.com" in your browser. If e.g. the tenant name where the solution is located is CalperITCompany, the SharePoint Admin Center is located at "CalperITCompany-admin.sharepoint.com". In the Admin Center, click "More features" in the left side menu.
- In the "More features" page, in the "Apps" section, click "Open".
- Click "App Catalog".
- In the App Catalog site page, click "Apps for SharePoint".
- In the "Apps for SharePoint" page, click "Upload".
- Click "Choose Files" and select the "workpointteamswebparts.sppkg" file. You can download this file via this link.
- Click "OK".
- In the "Do you trust WorkPoint Teams Webparts?" dialogue, check the "Make this solution available to all sites in the organization" checker.
- Click the "Deploy" button.
- When the file is added to the app catalog, select it from the list.
- Click and open the "Files" panel.
- Click the "Sync to Teams" button. This process may take a small amount of time, but eventually the system should let you know that the synchronization was successful.
WorkPoint webparts can now be added when inside a Microsoft Team that is hooked up to a WorkPoint solution:
- In the Microsoft Teams interface, inside a team click the "+" icon in the top panel.
The "Add a tab" window now opens, from where the following WorkPoint webparts can be added:
- In this case, we have searched for "workpoint" to have all WorkPoint webparts be shown in the "Add a tab" window.
- For demonstration purposes, we add a "WorkPoint - List View" webpart.
- In the "WorkPoint - List View" window, click the "Save" button.
The webpart can be configured in the exact same way as on a workPoint 365 solution:
- A title for the webpart can be defined.
- The scope can be set, e.g. "Current site".
- A list can be selected to be shown in the list view. In this case, we select the "Documents" list from the current site.
- We can select which view from the list to show in the webpart.
- We can enable sorting.
- We can define filtering if necessary
- We can enable Grouping if necessary.
The webpart tab in Microsoft Teams can also be renamed to better fit the webpart functionality:
- Click the "˅" icon for the tab
- Click "Rename"
- Type in a new name for the tab.
- Click the "Save" button.
The tab is now renamed:
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