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How to View Content from Document Sets and Folders in SharePoint?

For decades, SharePoint has been a preferred platform for organizations to manage, organize, and share documents within and outside an organization. It provides users with multiple ways to group, organize and view their digital content, ensuring accessibility and security of data. Two primary ways users organize documents in SharePoint 2013/2016/2019 and SharePoint Online are Document Sets and Folders. Irrespective of whether an organization is using Document Sets or Folders, it is easy to view the content within them with the right search techniques.

However, over time, SharePoint has become increasingly popular among large enterprises. They leverage the platform to store and share an exorbitant quantity of business data and manage workflows across teams and departments. And as the amount of data and content in the SharePoint environment grows, it becomes difficult for users to find and view the information they need, impacting the efficiency of the business processes.

Complexities in Viewing Voluminous Content on SharePoint

Some of the most common issues faced by large enterprise users are:

  • Slow Page Load Times: Huge data and content in SharePoint sites can reduce the loading speed of the pages, which can directly impact user productivity. This issue can be particularly frustrating for users who need to access important information quickly.
  • Inaccurate Search Results: When there is a large amount of data and content, it can be difficult to find precisely what users are looking for, even when using the search capability of SharePoint. This is because the search algorithms used by SharePoint can sometimes return irrelevant or incomplete results.
  • Poor Navigation: With large amounts of data and content, navigating through SharePoint sites and libraries can be challenging. Users can get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, thereby reducing productivity.
  • Delayed Reporting: SharePoint lists and libraries become unwieldy and slow to process voluminous data. As the amount of data increases, it takes longer for the users to retrieve and analyze the information needed to generate a report.

To overcome the limitations posed by SharePoint out-of-the-box functionality to access data from SharePoint document sets and folders quickly, AgreeYa brings to you an award-winning solution QuickApps.

Leverage QuickApps Web Apps to View Enormous Content Stored in Folders/Document Sets

QuickApps is an innovative ‘No-code’ solution with a set of pre-built templates and 21 powerful web apps that help business users to enhance their SharePoint experiences. Leveraging these web apps, users can quickly overcome the challenges associated with accessing traditional out-of-the-box folders and document sets. QuickApps’ qListView web app enables users to aggregate their SharePoint data from multiple SharePoint sites and site collection and access it quickly in their desired formats.

SharePoint Out-of-the-box functionality VS. QuickApps qListView Web App

Quick and flexible search based on Document Set content type: Users get an improved search experience as they can customize their search based on the “Document Set” content type. Refer to the following image:

Figure 1:Search data using Document Set content type

Furthermore, users can refine their search based on the associated fields of the selected document set, as shown below:

Figure 2: Search files based on fields of selected Document Set

Better visual experience with folder tree view: While using the out-of-box functionality, users had to click on each folder/document set in the list/library to view its contents. On the other hand, while working with qListView webpart, users can leverage the folder tree view to get folders list with expanding and collapsing nodes containing nested items.

Figure 3: qListView Folder tree view

As illustrated, you can expand the folders to view their subfolders, and so on.

Search faster with qListView folder search functionality: Linear search can be time-consuming, especially when dealing with large lists. It could be quite cumbersome to check each element one by one, which can take a lot of time when searching for an element in a long list.

qListView webpart takes over the out of box linear search by providing folder search functionality to the users.

Figure 4: Search data using qListView folder search

As illustrated, while working with lists containing large number of folders and/or document sets, the users no more need to spend time on checking each element to get the desired data. Users can rather just type in the document set/folder/sub-folder’s name and get the required data in a blink of an eye.

Refine your search based on folder fields: Users can further refine their search by searching data based on the associated fields of the folder/document set:

Figure 5: Search files based on folder/subfolder/document set’s fields

Download the 30 days free trial to see the innovative solution in action. You can also download the Trial version from Microsoft Appsource.


How to Visualize External Data on SharePoint Charts and Lists?

The data visualization market is expected to reach a value of nearly $20 billion by 2031.

  • Allied Market Research

Viewing and understanding data is more critical in an increasingly data-driven business world than ever. Visualizing voluminous data enables organizations to make better business decisions and catalyze growth. Not too long ago, data visualization was a nice asset for organizations, but not anymore! The present-day shift for organizations, wherein organizational decision-making is increasingly reliant on vital data, has made data visualization an essential aspect of organizations’ operations. Before delving deeper into the matter, let us discuss some basics.

What is Data Visualization, and why is it important?

Data visualization refers to the graphical representation of information and data. This technique enables users to classify and organize data in different categories and sub-categories, making it easier for them to break down voluminous data and make it understandable for even non-technical audiences. Visual elements such as graphs, charts, maps, etc., enable users to understand patterns in the data and identify market trends. Some other significant reasons why organizations should visualize data are:

  • Data Democratization: Ensures that every employee, regardless of their technical background, can access and work around the data whenever required.
  • Revealing Fundamental Values: Helps organizations glean valuable insights from scattered, voluminous data. Data visualization helps the management understand the fundamental values of data. 
  • Identify Patterns: Enables business users to recognize relationships and patterns between historical data, giving it greater meaning. 
  • Faster Decision-making: Empowers the stakeholders to glean analytical insights, act on them and accelerate decision-making.

Why Visualize Data on SharePoint?

Data visualization tools enable organizations to visualize data and reap maximum benefits from their data. They are versatile, easy to use, and allow users to visualize data in various ways according to their business needs. While many Commercial Off-the-Shelf Software (COTS) data visualization tools are available in the market, not each one is suitable for every business. Organizations leveraging SharePoint as their document management and collaboration engine can leverage the platform to visualize their SharePoint and external data. Such an approach enables the maximization of SharePoint ROI and reduces costs.

However, the only challenge with visualizing data on SharePoint is the time-consuming and cost-intensive process involved in creating SharePoint custom apps and dashboards. Customizing and developing SharePoint apps, when done the traditional way, requires long hours of complex coding and the expertise of SharePoint developers. In most projects, there is a considerable gap between the expectations of business users and what the SharePoint developer delivers. This mismatch in expectations leads to further delays in custom app creation. This is one of the major reasons organizations cannot leverage SharePoint sufficiently as their data visualization platform. However, the rise of No-code solutions has delivered a feasible way for organizations. 

No-code Solutions to Visualize Data on SharePoint

In the past few years, No-code solutions have penetrated the realm of SharePoint app development and altered the existing edifice. This development approach has mitigated the roadblocks organizations faced with the traditional SharePoint development approach.

No-code solutions allow business users to leverage their knowledge to build impactful SharePoint solutions and visualize data on SharePoint without coding or IT dependence. This has significantly reduced the costs and complexities involved in a SharePoint custom app development project. No-code tools enable users to build solutions rapidly with point-and-click configuration and pre-built templates. As a result, solution development timelines can be reduced by up to 80%, allowing an organization to keep up with the dizzying pace of technology development.

Visualize Data from SharePoint Lists and External Sources with QuickApps (On-premise)

QuickApps (on-premise) is an innovative No-code platform that enables business users to customize their SharePoint environment and visualize data seamlessly. It comes with a suite of 21 powerful web apps that make it easier for users to aggregate data from multiple sources and present it in an impactful format without needing custom coding. Some of its popular web apps that help in data aggregation and visualization are:

qListView

qListView web app empowers SharePoint users to classify, filter, and view SharePoint data in relevant and meaningful ways without writing a single line of code. Users can roll up information from multiple SharePoint lists, sites, site collections, and web applications. Features include:

  • Helps customize the look and feel using pre-packaged skins or creating a custom skin.
  • Exports aggregated data into Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PDF, or CSV formats.
  • Configures parent-child relationships in a two-level hierarchical list view.
  • Creates complex filters and sort list view data in meaningful ways.
  • Delivers unlimited grouping capabilities.
  • Enables point-and-click roll-up of data in multiple lists.
qChartView

qChartView allows users to quickly create visually compelling SharePoint charts and dashboards with dynamic filtering, drill-down reporting, and a rich user experience. Given that there is no native chart web app in SharePoint, QuickApps’ chart solution is ideal for BI and dashboard scenarios. Its features include:

  • Aggregates chart data from multiple SharePoint lists, sites, site collections, and web applications.
  • Customizes chart elements, such as fonts, labels, backgrounds, canvas, logos, and tool tips.
  • Delivers an assortment of 40-plus chart types to satisfy a wide range of visual, BI, and dashboard requirements.
  • Filters values from other QuickApps web apps that allow for powerful dashboard capabilities.
qSIListView

qSIListView enables business users to aggregate organizational data stored in third-party databases and display it on SharePoint dashboards as SharePoint lists.

qSIChartView

qSIChartView enables business users to aggregate organizational data stored in third-party databases such as Oracle or Salesforce and display it on SharePoint dashboards as compelling 3-D charts.

QuickApps, when integrated with SharePoint, immensely improve the capability of business users and other knowledge workers to represent data with impactful visualizations. Take QuickApps (on-premise) 30-day free trial to visualize external data on SharePoint and realize the actual value of data.


How do SharePoint Web Parts help maximize SharePoint Adoption?

Today, the market is swamped with numerous document management systems, but what makes SharePoint the choice of over 200 million users worldwide is its accessibility and flexibility. It enables users to store, manage, and view the data in accordance with their specific requirements using a wide range of out-of-the-box (OOTB) web parts. SharePoint web parts enable organizations to unleash the true power of enterprise data. With proper implementation of web parts, users can create applications and customizations to simplify data analytics and visualization, thereby extending the OOTB functionalities of SharePoint.   

What is a SharePoint web part?

SharePoint web parts are the basic building blocks that enable organizations to give a modern look to an ordinary SharePoint page. One can define a web part as a self-contained application used to showcase the content stored in a SharePoint site in an easy to comprehend manner. SharePoint web parts can also be defined as widgets that enable users to customize the user interface (UI) and make it easier to edit the content of a SharePoint site page. 

According to Microsoft, “a Web Part is a Microsoft ASP.NET server control that serves a particular purpose, such as displaying data from a spreadsheet or streaming stock quotations from an online Web service.”

Benefits of SharePoint Web Parts

SharePoint web parts are the reusable components that can be added to multiple pages of a SharePoint site replicating the same functionality. Users can add text, images, files, videos, dynamic content, and more to their SharePoint site using certain web parts. Web parts facilitate organizations to break down data silos, enabling them to make better decisions, serve better customer experiences, accelerate innovation, and respond to crises faster.

Which Web Parts are currently available in SharePoint?

SharePoint comes with a wide range of OOTB web parts that users can leverage to modernize their SharePoint site. However, which web parts are available to you, depends on the license, SharePoint version, and the features activated on your Site Collection. Some of the most commonly used web parts for modern dynamic SharePoint systems are:

  • Connectors: Allows users to receive messages, alerts, and notifications from external third-party services such as social channels, project management tools, etc.
  • Document Library: Enables users to fetch and view any document from a single platform simply by searching for it using the title, provided that the users have all appropriate permissions required to view the documents from the library.
  • File Viewer: Helps users insert different types of files such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio, PDFs, 3D Models, videos, and more on a SharePoint page.
  • Group Calendar: Enables users to integrate data related to important dates, events, meetings, etc., in a single calendar and display it right on the SharePoint page so that it is easily visible to your readers.
  • List Web Part: Allows users to view crucial data in the form of a list that is customizable according to the needs with your own title, view, and even size.
  • Microsoft Forms: Helps users create surveys, quizzes, polls, and collect responses from their page.
  • Chart Web Part: Displays SharePoint data in the form of 2D and 3D charts.
  • Content Editor: Allows non-coders to add content to their SharePoint pages built using HTML and JavaScript code without coding.

All these OOTB web parts offered by Microsoft are easy to customize and allow users to aggregate content across their SharePoint environment seamlessly. Users can get access to more web parts by visiting the official website, or they can purchase licenses to additional web parts from trusted third-party vendors or Microsoft partners.

Extend SharePoint Functionalities beyond OOTB Limitations

However, OOTB SharePoint web parts are created with the masses in mind and cover various basic business scenarios. They are not meant to address the specific customization or application development requirements of organizations. Such business needs can be addressed by adopting third-party SharePoint web parts from an experienced vendor. AgreeYa’s QuickApps is a prime example of such a product. 

QuickApps is an award-winning suite of 21 SharePoint web parts that simplifies customization and application development. It is an innovative ‘No-Code’ solution that helps organizations customize and develop applications to automate SharePoint processes. Its simple point-and-click configuration allows business users to transform their SharePoint experience much faster and help maximize their ROI.


5 Best Practices for SharePoint Online Application Development

27.5% of organizations feel large-scale migration to the public cloud in 2020 was “essential for survival”.

– International Data Corporation (IDC) Survey in 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting digital-first business practices, including remote and hybrid working, have led to a massive exodus of organizations from on-premise environments to Microsoft 365. As the most popular platform for intranets, content management, and online collaboration, SharePoint Online is an essential part of Microsoft 365’s powerful suite of productivity solutions.

Why SharePoint Application Development is Important?

And a vital part of SharePoint’s appeal has always come from its potential to be expanded upon, taking the functionality of the platform to even greater heights. SharePoint is often likened by experts to the popular Lego. Just like the world’s most popular toy, users can unbox, follow instructions, and utilize SharePoint’s ‘building blocks’ to build their environment in a way that’s most suitable for the organization. SharePoint allows the creation of extensions, customizations, and applications to streamline, enhance and automate business processes.

Today, the need for SharePoint custom applications is explosive. Such solutions allow an organization to increase productivity, reduce costs, remove operational silos, enhance reporting, and stay competitive in the intensely competitive marketplace. As a result, most organizations are investing heavily in SharePoint application development.

Best Practices for SharePoint Online Application Development

SharePoint Online application development, when done right, can add a lot of value and make the platform even more relevant for the organization. However, mistakes in application development have the potential to turn the platform into a confusing mess. Therefore, organizations need to adopt the best practices of SharePoint Online application development and strategize likewise.

#1: Be Careful with SharePoint On-Premise Applications

Organizations have endless app development possibilities when they host their own platform. They can build their own applications that interact with any level of the SharePoint framework. They can also create their own integrations with databases, other applications, and services with endless possibilities. However, Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online within it is centrally managed by Microsoft, and organizations don’t get as much control over the platform’s code as you do for an on-premise environment. And this means most of the on-premise apps would not work on the cloud. SharePoint on-premise applications such as full trust farm solutions, sandboxed solutions, and applications with certain code types (such as SharePoint Object Model, .DLLs, .EXEs, .WSPs, etc.) would most definitely not work in the cloud environment. The functionalities of the few that make it through might be affected when new updates are rolled out. As a result, organizations have to stay prepared to rebuild their applications swiftly. SharePoint No-code solutions, such as QuickApps, can help in this cause.

#2: Leverage Power Platform to Expand the Potential of SharePoint

SharePoint in Microsoft 365 through its deep integration with Microsoft Power Platform enables organizations to take their SharePoint app development to the next level. Power Platform empowers organizations to analyze data, build solutions, and automate processes. Organizations can bring together business-critical data residing in various SharePoint lists, libraries, sites, site collections, and external sources by leveraging Power BI’s capabilities. While Power Apps delivers organizations with the power to turn data insights into impactful low-code solutions. Further, intelligent workflows can be implemented to automate processes and boost productivity by utilizing Power Automate. Power Platform fosters innovation among the end-users. Employees can build their apps with limited assistance from IT or developers. However, to simplify and accelerate app development even further organizations can adopt a No-code solution. QuickApps is a No-code SharePoint app development and process automation solution that users to build impactful apps without any coding or developer dependence. Read our blog on Top Benefits of No-code SharePoint Application Development to learn more on this topic.

#3: Create Governance Policies to Protect & Optimize SharePoint Data

SharePoint Online apps are powered by tons of business-critical and even sensitive information. Therefore, it is necessary to control the employees’ accessibility to its coding and backend framework. Towards this, Microsoft 365 delivers a range of security and governance features to organizations. Utilizing such features, organizations can create access rights based on user profiles. To avert risks, administrators can create a process wherein an automatic notification is triggered when any employee whether a developer or a site administrator tries to alter any part of the SharePoint environment. Data cleansing is another important aspect of governance, and Microsoft 365 allows the administrators to define retention policy. By selecting the right retention policy organizations can keep their SharePoint Online environment clutter-free and vital. At AgreeYa, we can help you assess, understand and establish governance policies to contain content sprawl, keep internal data safe, manage permissions and access levels.

#4: Empower Users to Innovate

SharePoint Online apps help the employees perform their daily tasks better and faster, delivering enhanced productivity to the management. However, since its inception SharePoint app development is a task that has been driven by the IT department. But given their priorities and backlogs, the department struggles to keep pace with the SharePoint application demands of the users. Thus, the users have to wait for months to get what they need. This leads to a loss of interest for users and unrealized ROI for business owners. Luckily, the Low- and No-code app development solutions are changing this scenario by enabling business users to build their apps. By implementing proper governance policies, the management can now afford to empower business experts and open up the app development process. With an ever-expanding user base, QuickApps enables organizations to establish an innovation-driven corporate culture.

#5: Enhance Discoverability of SharePoint Data with a Chatbot

Chatbots have been around for many years now and have been automating various support service processes. During the initial days of Pandemic, when many organizations had to make a hurried transition to Microsoft 365, many organizations leveraged Bots to manage change and transition seamlessly to the cloud. Chatbots can be easily integrated with Teams and SharePoint Online. And upon implementation, the virtual agents allow users to discover SharePoint data and locate utility apps better. Chatbots deliver enterprise knowledge at the employee’s fingertips. Towards this, AgreeYa’s AI-powered Chatbot for 365 is a self-learning, voice-enabled, multi-lingual, and scalable solution that can be deployed easily to SharePoint department sites. The solution has already enabled many organizations to minimize time spent searching for information on SharePoint.

Increased adoption of AI, Chatbots, integration of Microsoft 365 applications with other software is certainly pointing towards a future filled with endless SharePoint application development possibilities. All of these will be aimed solely to streamline work, enhance efficiency and augment productivity. AgreeYa can help you introduce the abovementioned best practices through our years of SharePoint expertise and our innovative No-code solution – QuickApps. Contact us now.


5 Best Practices of SharePoint Application Migrations to Cloud

“Cloud computing has been at the forefront of human resilience against the pandemic. It has ensured business continuity across a range of industries.”

– Satya Nadella

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced organizations across the globe to rely on cloud technologies and services to ensure seamless remote work, more than ever before. According to IDG’s 2020 Cloud Computing Survey, 92% of organizations are “somewhat” in the cloud and the cloud computing spend over the last 12 months has increased by a whopping 59% from 2018. As more organizations switch from on-premise to cloud, the popularity of Microsoft’s SharePoint Online is surging. In a recent blog post, Jared Spataro, CVP for Microsoft 365, stated that the number of active monthly SharePoint cloud users is 200 million among which 100 million users were added to the service in the past 13 months.

It’s easy to see why there has been a massive exodus from SharePoint on-premise to SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online enables business users to access Microsoft’s latest features and capabilities while harnessing the benefits of the cloud – scalability, anytime anywhere access to information, and reduced IT costs. However, it is also worth noting that most benchmarking studies have identified employee resistance as the number one obstacle to SharePoint Online change.

Why SharePoint Application Migrations are Vital?

One of the foremost reasons for employee resistance and poor adoption of SharePoint Online is the unavailability of essential SharePoint on-premise applications and customizations in the cloud. In most organizations, the employees have huge dependencies on these. Such enhancements enable employees to perform their daily tasks better and faster, delivering enhanced productivity to the management. Consequently, employees expect the availability of familiar custom solutions in SharePoint Online. And this can be delivered only by meticulously planning for SharePoint application migrations.

However, in most instances, the management and IT teams spend a lot of time and energy strategizing for their content migrations, while SharePoint application and customization migrations take a backseat. It has to be remembered: just like content migration, migrating SharePoint custom solutions to the cloud can be a lengthy, complex, and tedious process. With a solid plan in place for the migration of SharePoint on-premise applications and customizations, organizations can ensure that employees can access their favorite SharePoint on-premise custom solutions with all their functionalities from day one after the move. This goes a long way in reducing employee resistance, ensuring high user adoption, allowing ROI maximization, and enabling successful implementation of SharePoint Online.

Checklist for SharePoint Application and Customization Migrations to the Cloud

Just like all other migration aspects, migrating SharePoint customizations and applications to the cloud should be well planned. Application migration plan should be created after in-depth assessment and creation of a detailed inventory for all custom solutions. While reviewing the existing custom solutions, the purpose and criticality of each application should be carefully considered. Similarly, technologists should judge whether there would be problems with their functionality in SharePoint Online. Apart from this, below are some best practices that organizations should follow while planning for application and customization migrations.

  • Discover: The first step towards ensuring efficient migration of custom solutions involves carrying out a full analysis of all the SharePoint apps and customizations that are currently running on your systems. During this stage, you will come across many long-forgotten custom solutions. It’s essential to create an inventory of all the available apps and understand who uses them.
  • Audit: Once the discovery of all existing customizations and applications is complete, it is time to make decisions. Segregate all existing custom solutions into – must-have, good to have, and not wanted categories. Investigate the usage and migration complexity of applications and customizations belonging to the first two categories. This analysis will enable you to determine which applications should be deleted, archived, migrated, or modernized.
  • Strategize: Now that you have created a list of custom solutions to be migrated or modernized, it is now time to create a proper roadmap for both these approaches. The roadmap should be complemented by reliable estimates around time, effort, and cost.
  • Transform: It is now time to tweak the codes of applications and customizations shortlisted for cloud migration. Unless the custom solution has been built using a No-code solution, it will involve re-coding and re-development. Have a different plan for other applications that need to be modernized or re-created.
  • Implement: The final step is to move and implement all the selected SharePoint apps and customizations in the new environment. It is important to consider where customizations will be deployed and understand how they will interact with SharePoint Online.

However, even after such detailed planning and strategizing you will find that most on-premise applications and customizations built with the traditional coding approach will cease to work, either partially or completely, in the new platform. It should be remembered that SharePoint Online is centrally governed and continuously improved by Microsoft so most of your on-premise customizations and applications would not work on the cloud. The functionalities of the few that make it through might be affected when new updates are rolled out. The best way to avoid such a situation is to adopt a robust and adaptable No-code SharePoint application development and customization solution while developing application in On-Premise environment which makes the migration process smoother as compare to custom developed solution. Moreover, it also helps to quickly rebuild or re-engineer the business application in SharePoint Online environment.

Get over your Cloud Migration Challenges with QuickApps

QuickApps is an innovative No-code SharePoint application development and business process automation solution. With QuickApps business users can build SharePoint applications 80% faster to rapidly automate time-consuming business processes. Additionally, applications and customizations built using QuickApps are seamlessly supported in QuickApps for Microsoft 365. Further, AgreeYa’s industry-proven SharePoint migration services helps organizations rapidly and efficiently move applications built using QuickApps in On-premise to online faster than re-development.

With QuickApps and AgreeYa, organizations can ensure that their favorite SharePoint on-premise applications and customizations are available to the business users with all their functionalities from day one after the move. Get a Free Trial to watch QuickApps in action!


How No-code Application Development is Transforming Industries?

Today, application development is everyone’s business — whether or not your organization belongs to the tech industry. Applications have become the fundamental drivers of business transformation and underlie just about every modern-day innovation in today’s technology-driven world and will continue to do so in the future. However, as organizations strive to develop business apps to transform the way they work and operate, they come across many hurdles.

Enter No-code solutions, which enables organizations to reduce costs, time, and complexities involved in the app development process. It empowers everyone within your organization by providing the ability to create custom, scalable business applications all without help from professional developers. Such solutions enable business users (who don’t code) to develop applications up to eight times faster with point-and-click configurations and generate powerful reports without custom coding. A Gartner research suggests “that Low & No-code application platforms will account for 65 percent of all app development by 2024.” While Forrester predicts that the market for such solutions will top $21 billion in spending by 2022. It is quite clear that the “future of coding is no coding”.

As a result, No-code application development is catching pace among most industries. Gone are the days when organizations had to tolerate year-long app development cycles and spend exorbitantly for hiring a development team to build an app just because they weren’t a technology organization. No-code solutions are empowering organizations across diverse industries to easily and rapidly build essential business applications. It allows them to support employees’ and customers’ expectations and lays the cornerstone of a long-term IT strategy.

Now, let us take a look at how No-code development is proving to be a gamechanger and shaping the future for various industries.

Banking and Finance

The banking industry is always in a constant state of flux. The adoption of No-code solutions helps banks to stay nimble and respond to the new regulations across different jurisdictions. It enables financial organizations to stay agile and match customer expectations. No-code solutions also transform the back-office processes by automation of reporting tasks, daily workflows, and other routine tasks. It enables timely insights into consumer behavior and other aspects to allow management to make data-driven decisions.

Healthcare

The adoption of No-code solutions enables healthcare providers to improve their efficiency across the entire operations. Data security and regulatory compliance are the top priorities while developing a healthcare application. No-code solutions allow healthcare providers to easily develop HIPAA-compliant and secure apps to fulfill compliance requirements. Such solutions empower the organizations to build apps at fraction of the cost and time to enhance the patient journey. Additionally, No-code solutions provide templates to build administrative dashboards and custom database apps in a code-free manner. As a result, organizations have better insights to stay on top of budgeting requirements, revenue management, data sharing, and document management.

Insurance

Apps developed utilizing the No-code solutions enables insurers to drive customer excellence and reduce operational costs. Insurers can develop rapid solutions to track and manage claims better. It can be used by insurers to decrease underwriting and claims-processing costs. As a flexible solution, No-code allows organizations to implement new regulations quickly and reduce legacy IT debt.

Public Sector

The No-code movement has been a major contributor to government digital transformation initiatives. It has facilitated government organizations and agencies to drive change and ensure better citizen experiences by empowering the government staff to turn their ideas into apps and facilitating the IT to breeze through app development. While No-code solutions can be leveraged to build innovative citizen-centric applications, it can also inject speed and increase the efficiency of government processes through the implementation of workflows and other automation. The dashboards and reports created through the No-code solution can act as a stimulus for change and help the organizations implement new policies confidently.

Retail and Manufacturing

No-code solutions allow flexibility to the retailers and manufacturers. Organizations can come up with several essential business process management apps that facilitate the work of various departments, including sales, finance, purchasing, and inventory. With the use of No-code tools, retailers and manufacturers can create apps that deliver real-time inventory information, sales tracking, and several other key insights. Organizations can leverage sales data to create more penetrative marketing plans and launch offers. 

As the market for No-code development proliferates widely across different industries, the adoption of such a solution seems a wise choice. Implementation of this transformative technology provides many opportunities and benefits towards growth, diversification, and integration. Organizations empowered with No-code solutions can quickly adjust to new circumstances and efficiently address their customer needs. It is evident from the above arguments that No-code solutions are indispensable for organizations across any industry that want to inspire innovation and stay future-ready. QuickApps is a No-code solution meant to simplify SharePoint application development and customization. It enables business users to create applications and automate business processes up to 80% faster with a simple point-and-click configuration. Download a FREE TRIAL to experience how the product can transform your business.


4 Great Use Cases of Process Automation with SharePoint

The global pandemic and its after-effects have redefined the way businesses operate. According to a recent study by Deloitte, the Covid-19 pandemic has hastened business leaders’ plans to automate their organizations – with more than two-thirds deploying technologies such as Business Process Automation (BPA) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in their response to the crisis. Automation has shifted from a business priority to an imperative, with the emergence of the Pandemic and its resulting remote/hybrid working scenarios.  

SharePoint delivers various out-of-the-box workflows allowing organizations to get started on their process automation journey. Further, SharePoint’s flexibility as a platform encourages business users to implement more focused and customized automation to simplify their cumbersome processes. Towards this, the new age Low/No-code tools have ushered in a new era in SharePoint Business Process Automation (BPA). Such tools have enabled organizations to easily and quickly apply automation across a range of business specific use cases and meet the demands of these critical times.

Best Use Cases of SharePoint BPA

Today, SharePoint BPA is being used extensively across various departments and processes. However, below are four use cases where the benefits of SharePoint BPA implementation are simply unmissable.

#1: Business Reporting Automation

Data is the new currency of the times. Today, business-critical decisions, future expansion plans, business investment, and divestment decisions, and everything else hinge on the complex reports made after analyzing massive amounts of data. As the most popular repository for enterprise information, SharePoint lists, libraries, sites, or site collections are filled with insights that can propel an organization to the next level.

However, SharePoint offers limited out-of-the-box data dashboarding, aggregation, and reporting capabilities. Fetching useful data from SharePoint requires not only an in-depth understanding of SharePoint as a platform but also needs specialized coding skills. As a normal practice, the users have to approach the IT department to get the necessary customizations and visualizations done on their report. This is a big roadblock for organizations in an era when real-time data has become the basis of business decision-making. Automation of business reporting enables business users to fetch data, filter/customize it, and prepare impactful reports at the shortest time lapse.

#2:Operations Management

In a hybrid working world, organizations need to manage operations efficiently. However, without the right tech, operations management can be very tough. It can be difficult for the management to understand how projects or processes are going without getting in touch with the team leaders or supervisors. SharePoint’s integration with various powerful Microsoft 365 workloads makes it an essential platform for operations management.

SharePoint BPA helps organizations to keep a track of all the operations – the who’s, what’s, and when’s of your business. It allows organizations to introduce custom workflows, thereby automating the entire logistical part of a process. It enables a process to live on its own. An employee finishes a task, and the system automatically notifies the next person within the workflow that they have a new task. This makes operations management much easier and more efficient.

#3: Task or Project Management

Organizations that don’t have a streamlined task management process in place face challenges with inefficient task execution, deadlines being missed consistently, and lack of proper team collaboration. Emails, information, files, to-dos – everything can end up being lost in miscommunication unless organizations have a standard process to prevent it.

Organizations can address such challenges by creating a detailed, multi-step process using SharePoint. Managers can have an insightful project or task dashboard developed with SharePoint No-code application development solutions in no time. The dashboard would contain details about every team member’s tasks, deadlines and other requisite details. It can tackle various project management challenges and simplify tasks for the management.  

#4: Purchase Orders Processing

Purchase Order (PO) requests are recurring processes in most organizations. The requesting team fills out a form and sends it to the purchasing team. The approving authority then examines the request and rejects the request in case information is inadequate or if there are budgetary constraints. It is then sent back to the requesting team. If approved, a purchase order is created and copies are sent to the supplier as well as the inventory team. Without automation, there could be several issues with PO processing. Manual processes could lead to delayed approvals, low productivity, incomplete records, errors in PO, and errors while taking delivery from suppliers.   

SharePoint BPA can help improve accountability, transparency, and enable accurate data recording, which can be accessed by relevant stakeholders when necessary. It will also retain all process-related communication to make execution easier and faster. SharePoint BPA is the way forward for organizations. When implemented effectively, it can deliver various advantages to the organizations. QuickApps, as a No-code SharePoint application development solution, allows organizations to rapidly build powerful applications and automate business processes. Business users can leverage its rich assortment of powerful web apps and point-and-click configuration to automate tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks.


How to make the most from SharePoint Business Data with a Line Chart?

SharePoint is often described as a “Swiss Army knife”. It empowers organizations to create a modern workplace through its various capabilities. While SharePoint is widely popular as a Content (Document) Management and Collaboration platform; SharePoint lists, libraries, sites, or site collections are filled with insights that can propel an organization to the next level. It can enable organizations to take data-driven and confident decisions regarding future expansion, business investment & divestment among other business-critical decisions.   

However, to make the most out of their SharePoint data modern-day organizations need to invest in creating beautifully designed, hyper-responsive, amazingly cogent dashboards displaying all the key performance indicators (KPIs), report updates, big data analyses, and business intelligence of the day. Such big-picture and pleasing to the eye score sheets can be remarkably useful to get a point across and transform business decision making.

Charts are an inseparable part of SharePoint dashboards. Though there are many visual charts and graphs utilized by modern businesses to spice up their SharePoint site, the line charts remain and will continue to remain the most popular chart types. Most amazing SharePoint dashboards utilize line charts to establish facts in an easy to comprehend manner. With that in mind let us take explore various important areas of line charts.

What is a Line Chart or Line Graph?

Line charts are the most basic, ancient, and efficient graphical representation showcasing a series of data points (markers) in a straight line. The roots of the line chart, also known as the line graph, can be traced as far back as the 10th century. While humankind has moved a long way in creating way more complex charts since those times, but the line chart can still pull its weight, especially when a user wants to plot continuous data in a chart and identify certain trends or patterns in them. This makes line charts a favorite chart type for SharePoint developers and power users.

Powerful use cases of Line Charts

Line charts are ideal for scenarios where the user is looking for large changes in the data values over a period of time. Some of the best use cases of the humble line chart, when it comes to SharePoint dashboarding are:

  • Track changes that occur on data over a designated time: Line charts are great options for showing trends chronologically and can easily be interpreted at a single glance. Business users can use this graph to track sales performance, employee or team performance, the status of projects, among other things. By showing a trend, the line chart helps organizations plan efficiently for the future.
  • Compare between two groups of data over a period of time: For example, users can compare the number of leads a particular salesperson has created in a year against those of the other team members with a simple line graph. You can plot the number of opportunities on one axis and the relevant quarter on the other. Each line would represent the performance of a salesperson. By doing so, you can quickly spot when the performance of a salesperson was good, average, or poor.

Tips to build better Line Charts

Line charts can help organizations build insightful, beautiful, and easy to comprehend SharePoint dashboards, which continuously provide useful data insights to users. But these charts still have to be built properly, so below are some tips to build better line charts to powerpack your SharePoint dashboards.

  • Always begin axes from the zero point: Many users start a line graph from a random numeric value to fit their purpose. However, the best practice is always to start from the zero point. This practice makes it easier for users to gauge the rises and falls in the data values.
  • Restrict the length of axes: Ensure that the line(s) of the chart takes up around 50%-60% of the total area. This makes the finished chart appear better and neater. If the axes overstretch this limit then the chart would look too crowded and if the proportion is any less then the chart might look less significant.
  • Omit the legend when possible: Line graphs are meant to be simple and having a legend defeats that purpose. Many users create a legend with names for the individual lines, while this might be your approach towards creating a graph, it takes away the simplicity from the line graph. The viewers have to go back and forth between the chart and the legend to comprehend the value. It would be a better practice to put the corresponding names beside the lines themselves. This way, the viewers can study and understand the line chart faster.

As evident, line charts help viewers in identifying trends from a series of values over a particular period at a single glance. It can be helpful to almost anyone – from CEOs to business analysts. QuickApps for SharePoint On-premises and SharePoint Online enables organizations to display SharePoint data with line charts thereby helping users make the most from SharePoint business data. QuickApps is a set of powerful web apps enabling organizations to create impactful dashboards and automate their processes. qChartView is a popular QuickApps web app that allows organizations to create compelling charts (including 3D varieties) utilizing data from multiple lists across sites, site collections, and web applications. It contains 30 plus popular chart types, including line charts, to satisfy a wide range of visual, BI, and dashboard requirements. Gather more information about QuickApps features and capabilities here.


Tech Update: New Release 6.14 for QuickApps for SharePoint (On-Premise)

QuickApps; AgreeYa’s award-winning solution empowers SharePoint business users to automate their critical business processes and customize applications without any coding. This innovative ‘No-Code’ solution comes with a set of pre-built templates and 21 powerful web apps to help organizations rapidly automate and customize multiple critical SharePoint processes. This accelerates the SharePoint application development process, thereby saving both time and money for the organization.

One USP that most QuickApps, business users appreciate is, it can build or customize applications up to 80% faster using its simple point-and-click configuration instead of expensive and time taking custom coding. As a result, it frees up your expensive SharePoint development resources.

Another reason why SharePoint users love QuickApps is, it helps deliver sophisticated applications that are easily upgraded when new versions of SharePoint are released. Consequently, No-Code platforms are seeing a massive increase in popularity and adoption.

To summarize, using QuickApps SharePoint users can:

  • Create insightful dashboards & charts
  • Automate business reports
  • Data consolidation and aggregation
  • Create dynamic navigation and dynamic forms

The best just got even better!

We are happy and excited to share that we have recently released the latest version of QuickApps; QuickApps 6.14 for SharePoint (On-Premise). It comes loaded with lot of amazing features and benefits.

Let us have a look at what more it helps achieve and the benefits it provides to its users.

1. QuickApps Webpart qChartView now enables creation of an organization chart by connecting to both SharePoint and different external data sources like SharePoint Profile, SharePoint List, CSV file and, XML file.

  • This makes it easy for the users to implement organization structure irrespective of the data location.
  • Organization chart helps drill down and explore the organizations structure and hierarchy to the required levels.
  • It provides various views for displaying organization breakdown structure (OBS) like graphical, grid view, hierarchical tree view.
  • Business users can add organization charts adding parent-child relationship as per their requirement and data source available.
  • Organization chart enables searching the right contact even in a large organization very fast and easy. You can get all the details about the contact, including name, designation/role, reporting manager, etc.
  • Organization chart eliminates the need to look for employee details in the HR portal or any other external system. Business users can easily display employee details from external source into SharePoint. There by eliminating the need to maintain and look for employee data/organization contact information from different systems.
  • Further, not just organizational hierarchy, users can maintain hierarchy for any data stored in your data sources.
  • Users can also decide the configuration of the data. You can also select the columns you would like to show in the organization view type(s) you have selected.
  • Further, the look and feel of the organization chart can also be customized to match your company brand.

Please refer to the below image for see how you can create organization chart using qchartview app

2. QuickApps 6.14 (On-Premise) also supports multi-series charts such as Multi Series Bubble chart, Multi Series Marimekko chart, and Multi Series Scatter chart in qChartView.

Using these multi series charts users can present their data in a more visually appealing and easy to understand way. This certainly helps improve the understandability and consumption of information.

Have a look at the images below to know how these different multi-series charts present data.

3. Using the related item field in qListForm users can also add, modify, delete, and save records directly to the child list item displayed on the form. This can be achieved using the Quick Edit functionality for child forms.

Direct editing of records to the child list item was not possible in the earlier versions. However, QuickApps 6.14 allows business users to add multiple child items to the parent item. Please refer to the screenshot below to see how multiple new records of child item.

4. Talking about qSIListView, the quick edit feature now also supports the SharePoint list field types like Boolean and Choice along with other data types.
Quick edit is a much-enhanced feature. With this QuickApps now supports more data types than it did earlier.
Please refer to the image below for see how you can use Quick Edit feature in qSIlistView App

5. qListView and qSIListView both now support configuring the column level conditional formatting. The user can do so by selecting the field name for the main view appearance using add row appearance in ezEdit. Earlier this was possible only at row level in the grid.

In this release of QuickApps, business users can apply conditional formatting at field level using different color appearance in qListView and qSIListView. The below screenshot depicts the same.

6. QuickApps 6.14 also enables to apply Form Component Behavior on a required field that is configured in display fields, on the form in qListForm. Business users now have a feature to hide or disable any field label or tab, etc. So, any time they require to not show any specific field or tab, it is possible now.

7. In QuickApps 6.14 full-page refresh does not take place when qSIListView, qSIChartView or qSIListForm data is filtered using qSISelector. As a result, it enables faster page load; improving the user experience.

8. Similarly, full-page refresh does not take place in QuickApps 6.14 when qItemDisplay is filtered using qSelector or qMultiSelector. This feature enables quick rendering of data on the page.

All of these new features in this release of QuickApps will take user experience to another level.

QuickApps 6.14 helps exceed user expectations by offering the above shared benefits. Apart from this there are other features like the use of tabular forms to save screen space. It also enables parent-child relationships to ensure reliable data entry. Additionally, there is a hide/show feature to govern what data users can see and what not.

QuickApps 6.14 will ensure that SharePoint users can easily extend applications (including CRM, and help desk applications) beyond their native capabilities and are also easily supported, and maintained to benefit the organization in the long run.


Automate Dashboards and Reports on SharePoint with QuickApps

SharePoint is a great platform for enterprise collaboration and content management. Organizations also use it as an intranet and document management system. To maximize their investment in SharePoint, organizations utilize it in various ways such as a to create intranet sites, a secure place to store, organize, share, and access information.

Organizations store a lot of information in SharePoint in the form of spreadsheets, doc files, etc. All of his data and information when presented in the form of a dashboard or report can be utilized for making data-backed business decisions. Hence business reporting becomes an important aspect of SharePoint usage.

As per your organizational needs, you can create various dashboards and reports like sales dashboards, marketing dashboards, procurement/purchase dashboards, etc. These dashboards and reports can be created using organizational data available in SharePoint.

SharePoint offers a variety of tools like Excel Services, Visio Services, and Performance Point Services to create, publish, and share a variety of reports including scorecards, and dashboards However, sometimes, users have to take help from SharePoint developers and IT professionals to get the desired reports and tailor-made dashboards, especially the complex ones that require data from different sites.

Before the advent of custom SharePoint solutions, it was difficult to process data from different sites and sites collections. But today, this task had been much simplified by using No-code platforms such as QuickApps. QuickApps can collate all the data from different sites to custom design a dashboard and report. In addition to this QuickApps enables users to create, manage, and share reports and dashboards over SharePoint without coding. Hence, using QuickApps, users can create complex dashboards and reports on their own, without any support from SharePoint developers. This greatly reduces dependency on IT professionals/SharePoint developers.

QuickApps is available for both SharePoint On-Premise and Office 365. QuickApps offers a set of 21 pre-built templates and powerful web-apps for SharePoint On-premise and 9 WebApps for Office 365. Users can choose the WebApp as per their reporting requirements and create desired reports and dashboards real fast and easily without coding. Users can customize SharePoint solutions up to 80 percent faster using point-and-click configuration of QuickApps instead of custom code.

Follow the below steps to create a report using QuickApps

  1. Prepare the data in SharePoint List/Library if not already available
  2. Create a SharePoint Page
  3. Select the Web App as per your requirement. For example –
    • If you want to display data in tabular format by applying grouping and filtering add the list view app on the page
    • Else if you want to represent the data in graph or Chart format the use the qChartView app on the page.
  4. Now configure these apps by selecting the SharePoint list, fields, and other configuration to generate the view/report.
  5. You can use other QuickApps Apps such as qSelector/qMultiSelector in combination with the above apps to filter the data dynamically.
  6. Depending upon your environment, select the WebApps that meet your business need.

Have a look at the screenshot of the sales dashboard created using QuickApps