Sharepoint

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Contact your sales representative if you are interested in obtaining a license for the Sharepoint Module for your SmartIQ environment.

SharePoint is a popular enterprise content and document management platform developed by Microsoft Corporation, and provides a wide range of functions and capabilities including personal cloud, enterprise social networking, enterprise search, business intelligence, workflow management and web content management.

The Microsoft SharePoint Connector for SmartIQ has been developed to provide an integrated experience for customers looking for end to end document lifecycle management, leveraging the powerful e-forms and document creation of SmartIQ and the content management and publishing capabilities of SharePoint.

Components

Action

• Save to Document Library Action
• Save to List Action

Data Connection

• SharePoint Data Source Provider

Features

• Save documents to SharePoint, including documents generated by SmartIQ and any required attachments. This includes adding new and updating existing documents.
• Supports a wide range of metadata, including text, dates, choice and multi-choice items.
• Support for managed metadata based on a taxonomy term store
• Automatic check-out for documents being updated, if required based on the library settings.
• Ability to check-in documents with major, minor or overwrite version settings and provide a custom check-in comment.
• Save documents to existing folders, or create folders if required.
• Define global default connection information, or override per project to connect to multiple SharePoint sites.

SharePoint Service Account

Depending on the authentication method, this connector may use a service account to authenticate with the SharePoint server. This account may be any valid SharePoint user with appropriate permissions to perform the required tasks.

While not a requirement, it is recommended that this account be a dedicated account for this purpose.

SharePoint Data Connection

The SharePoint Connector also includes a data object type for retrieving information from a SharePoint list or folder, in a manner that can be displayed and analyzed. This feature is intended to provide form users with access to relevant SharePoint information or resources without those end users having direct access to the SharePoint environment. For example, external facing portals where users are not part of the organization’s domain.

1. In Manage, create a new Data Connection and select “SharePoint” as the Connection Type.

2. Configure the settings as per the table below:

3. Select No credentials required.

4. Click Save.

5. Click Test Connection to verify that all the settings have been configured correctly,

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Multiple Environments

The data connection is restricted to a single SharePoint site. If you have multiple sites, for example, <https://my.sharepoint.com/internal> and <https://my.sharepoint.com/clients>, etc, you will need to create a separate data connection for each site in Manage > Settings and select the correct account as per above.

6. Click Data Objects > New Data Object.

7. Select ‘List’ from the Object Type drop-down.

8. In the Data Object Name/Definition field, enter a few characters from the name of the list you want to access (or enter a few spaces to view the complete list).

9. Chose the list you want to access and provide an appropriate Display Name for the chosen list.

10. In Available Filter Fields, click Add All.

11. Click Save.

Using the Data Connection in Design

Typical use cases for the SharePoint data connector include allowing selection of items from SharePoint lists, displaying details of documents in SharePoint, and allowing retrieval of documents.

The process for using these data connections is overall similar to other data connections, with only a few items of note:

Document Data Convert

The Data Connector supports the use of the "Data Convert" feature to add retrieved documents to SmartIQ's generated documents at submission time. This allows the document(s) to be used as if it had been generated by SmartIQ.

Direct Document Download

The Data Connector includes the DownloadUrl of each document in the results it retrieves. This allows the designer to display a link that the user can click to open the document in their browser.

For more information, refer to Answers and Data Fields.

SharePoint Versions

This connector is primarily designed to work with SharePoint Online using either Microsoft Graph API or .NET client-side object model (CSOM) to communicate with the SharePoint server.

SharePoint 2013 & 2016 are supported but only for .NET client-side object model (CSOM) and App Only to communicate with the SharePoint server.

For SharePoint 2016+, use the 2013 version flag value.

Authentication

Graph API

SharePoint sites that are configured in SmartIQ Settings to use Graph API will use the REST based Microsoft Graph API to connect to SharePoint. Graph API does not support the creation of Managed Metadata terms from SmartIQ.

Graph API connection is only available if the "Use Graph API for SharePoint" option is checked in the SmartIQ Settings.

To use Graph API with the Sharepoint Connector:

1. Go to Manage > Settings > SharePoint and specify the Default App Id and Default App Secret. Leave the other authentication fields blank.
2. Check the Use Graph API for SharePoint box.
3. Save the changes.

See Microsoft's Documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/auth/auth-concepts) for further information on enabling Graph API authentication for SharePoint sites.

CSOM (.NET Client Side Object Model)

To use SharePoint with the CSOM libraries, sites that are configured in SmartIQ Settings must use either Azure AD Authentication or the legacy App-Only Authentication.

CSOM connection is only available if the Use Graph API for SharePoint option is not checked in the SmartIQ Settings.

Azure AD Authentication

This authentication method requires a username and password as well as the application id to be supplied.

To use Azure AD Authentication:

1. Go to Manage > Settings > SharePoint and specify the Default App Id and Default Username and Default Password. Leave the other authentication fields blank
2. Ensure the Use Graph API for SharePoint box is unchecked.
3. Save the changes.

See Microsoft's Documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/solution-guidance/security-apponly-azuread) for further information on enabling Azure AD authentication for SharePoint sites.

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API Permissions

If API Permissions in Sharepoint are set to Application Permissions and you recieve a "List does not exist at site with URL..." error, please use Delegated Permissions instead.

App-Only Authentication (Legacy)

Basic authentication using username and password on SharePoint instances has been deprecated by Microsoft. Newer instances of SharePoint do not have this option available and Azure AD authentication should be used for CSOM communication, or switch to Graph API.

For older legacy, SharePoint sites App-Only authentication using Client Id and Client Secret is the only option now available in SmartIQ

To use App-Only Authentication:

1. Go to Manage > Settings > SharePoint and specify the Default App Id and Default App Secret. Leave the other authentication fields blank.
2. Save the changes.

See Microsoft's Documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/solution-guidance/security-apponly-azureacs) for further information on enabling Client Id and Client Secret on App-Only SharePoint sites.

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Authentication Methods

If App Id/App Secret and Username/Password fields are populated, SmartIQ will only use App ID/App Secret. If the App-Only Authentication is unsuccessful, SmartIQ will not use the username/password as a secondary authentication option.