Note: This week I am at the Annual National SHRM Convention in Las Vegas, NV. And in case you’re wondering if it it’s hot in Las Vegas in July, the answer is HELL YES. The heat…my god, man, THE HEAT. Not everyone likes to go to conferences. There are a lot of people. Vendors look desperate. There are too many sessions that seem to look the same, and if you have to get on one more shuttle bus, you may burst into tears. Now multiply that by about 15,000.  Because that’s how many HR professionals have descended upon Las Vegas...

I’m Kylie Hutchinson, independent evaluation consultant and trainer with Community Solutions Planning & Evaluation. I also tweet regularly at @EvaluationMaven. Systems thinking and evaluation is a hot topic these days, and as someone who spends a fair bit of time in evaluation capacity building, it has me thinking a lot about logic models. Some of you might recall a post I did for AEA365 back in 2014 on "Are Logic Models Passé?’, where I mused about the utility of static logic models in highly dynamic and complex programs. Since then I’ve been on the hunt for examples of more "fuzzy" logic models but have only been able to find one example. Which leads me to wonder if what programs really need is not something "fuzzy", but rather something that is both structured and flexible at the same time. Sort of like Lego™. Imagine that a program is a bridge, designed to get people from one side of a canyon to another. The program logic model is the bridge’s design, and the better the design, the greater the chances of receiving funding to build it. The bridge construction initially occurs according to plan, however, as time goes on things come up and the bridge contractor wants to make some changes. What do you do? Stick with the original design but risk not reaching the other side? If your bridge is made of steel or concrete, you’re stuck moving forward. But if you build it with Lego™, it’s easier to swap pieces in and out, without having to demolish the whole bridge. Eventually you’ll get to the other side, but maybe the bridge looks a bit different than you originally intended. I know that some funders and government departments aren’t comfortable with the idea of "fuzzy" and I can appreciate that. Perhaps a Lego™ bridge is something more in line with their needs. Rad Resource: Here are two Pinterest pages with resources on both logic models and systems evaluation. Rad Resource: For a quick overview of systems thinking and evaluation, check out this five minute video. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Logic Model Week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from evaluators who have used logic models in their practice. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: SIOP Week: Dale S. Rose on Organization Development: A Program Worth Evaluating (Logically) ECLIPS and Systems TIG Week: Tarek Azzam and Matt Keene Recap Systems-Oriented Evaluation Logic Models Week: Debra Smith and Galen Ellis on How Logic Models Can Be Used to Develop Evaluation Systems

Overview Yammer is a private social networking tool that is best used to collaborate and share within the organization. It provides a single platform connecting people, conversations and data from different business application weaving into a single corporate social experience. Yammer is therefore available for all corporates as free Yammer Basic and for all Office 365 E3 & E4 customer it comes free as Yammer Enterprise.  So what you Get in Yammer Enterprise that Yammer Basic does not Give? Yammer Basic Network: It is FREE Enterprise social networking Basic Social Networking Features >Bring the power of social networking to your company with conversations, user profiles, Inbox, feeds, and more. Collaboration Features >Collaborate with anyone in your company by working in groups, sharing files, co-editing content and more. Yammer Mobile >On-the-go access to Yammer with mobile applications for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Apps >Integrate business apps like Klout, Github and Zendesk with Yammer to boost engagement and productivity. Yammer Enterprise Network: (In addition to the above features, following are unique to Enterprise) It is paid $3 per user Apps >Integrate business apps like Klout, Github and Zendesk with Yammer to boost engagement and productivity. Yammer Enterprise Admin Tools >Take control of your network with administrative tools like network configuration, user management, and more. Network Level Apps and Integrations >Authorize and manage apps for your network. Access advanced integrations like SharePoint, Single Sign-On, and Directory Sync. Support Services >Share content and ideas using SkyDrive Pro and communities Applies to: Yammer is a tool only for an organization and hence you need a valid corporate domain. Hence Yammer Administration can be done by any company designated administrator, who can be person without any specific skillsets. What permission is required? You need to be a Global Administrator for your corporate Office 365 Tenant. So Let’s Get Started!! By Default, Office 365 customer will have Sharepoint Newsfeed as their social networking tool. But you can start harnessing more features and control by Activating Yammer Enterprise 1. Before you can activate Yammer Enterprise, you need to choose Yammer tool for Sharepoint Online by going to Office 365 Admin Centre, Sharepoint -> Settings   2. On the settings page, change the Enterprise Social Collaboration tool to Yammer.com service. 3. However If you’re a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement customer, you can activate Yammer Enterprise for free. Microsoft Enterprise Agreement customers with qualifying license purchases, such as Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E4 plans, are eligible to activate Yammer Enterprise for their users. Qualified customers will need to work with a Yammer Service representative to start the activation process and appoint a Verified Administrator and a Community Manager to manage their company’s Yammer network. Once you activate, The Ribbon would change to Yammer 4. Sign in with your existing yammer basic account associated to your company login. You will be provided with a welcome screen from where you can simply go to yammer site with the same login. 5. Though the screen tell you about Yammer activation but in reality it does not activate and no mails are sent. It simply associates your basic yammer account to Yammer Enterprise. 6. Once logged into Yammer, a global Administrator can perform all Administrative task.

  Last year (#SHRM14) I wrote a blog about how far SHRM had come with its position on social media presentations since my original involvement in SHRM-related conferencing in 2010. So I wasn’t exactly surprised this year when the sessions included one titled "Social Business: Social Media Concepts Throughout the Employment Life Cycle". I had heard that the speaker, Joe Rotella (@JoeRotella) was particularly fun, so off I limped to listen to what he had to say. He had a lot to say, but here are the highlights. MARKETING I have been complaining about SHRM...

I’m Ian David Moss, and I use logic models and theories of change to help people make more strategic decisions. Recently, some smart voices in evaluation and philanthropy have argued that logic models are outdated, as implementation in a complex world too often makes a mockery of those neat and tidy diagrams that supposedly make sense of everything. Call me stubborn, but I’m not ready to give up on logic models. After nearly a decade of working with them, I remain convinced of their value as tools for program design, strategic clarification, defining a measurement regimen, and yes, evaluation. The (cool) trick is to make sure that logic models don’t suck. Here are some ways I’ve found to improve the odds: Lesson Learned: Combine a logic model with a theory of change Logic models and theories of change (here’s a primer on the difference between the two) developed from entirely separate schools of thought. Like Debra Smith and Galen Ellis, however, I’ve found that each of these tools is strengthened by the presence of the other. These days, to ensure a tight integration between the logic model and theory of change, I develop both in a single PowerPoint document. In it, the theory of change (activities, outcomes, and impacts) stands alone on the first slide, then on subsequent slides it appears grayed out with elements of the logic model (inputs, values, environmental factors, target population, assumptions, and measures) superimposed on top. Fractured Atlas theory of change and logic model detail Lesson Learned: Embrace the flywheel A common knock against logic models is that they are too linear. I agree - but that doesn’t mean we have to give up on them! A common situation I run into is when a program is intended to facilitate a virtuous cycle that has self-reinforcing impacts. I depict these dynamics with a "flywheel" to denote the iterative nature of the intended effects. Detail: ArtsWave theory of change Lesson Learned: Different audiences need different things One client I worked with recently, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH), found its logic model invaluable for developing a suite of performance indicators to track on an ongoing basis, but worried that its presentation didn’t reflect the museum’s fun, accessible brand. Solution: commission a graphic artist to make an illustrated version of the theory of change. Voilà - boredom be gone! Santa Cruz MAH theory of change: "artist version" Hot Tip: It doesn’t have to end here There’s plenty of room to innovate beyond what I’ve described above. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have an interactive version that could zoom in or out to the appropriate level of detail? Or a way to reflect levels of confidence in the connections between different elements? Here’s my hypothesis: there’s nothing wrong with logic models that can’t be solved by better design. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Logic Model Week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from evaluators who have used logic models in their practice. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Logic Models Week: Debra Smith and Galen Ellis on How Logic Models Can Be Used to Develop Evaluation Systems Jonny Morell on Logic Models and Unintended Consequences Logic Models Week: Michele Tarsilla on Beyond an Acritical use of Logic Models in International and cross-cultural context: The "Translation" role of facilitators and capacity development specialists

Introduction Some people in the IT world use the terms Adaptive and Responsive interchangeably. True, both follow the progressive enhancement strategy and have a lot of similarities, but are definitely not the same when it comes to their implementation. Let start with the characteristics of Responsive Web Design. Responsive Uses client scripts or media queries to control the design of the page Relies on a fluid grid to shrink and expand to the screen size Examples: TechCrunch Boston Globe Adaptive Can use server or client scripts to determine the design of the page Distinct templates geared for each device Examples Amazon Yahoo Here is a great infographic of some more similarities and differences Conclusion In summary, even though both designs will make your web site look sharp on multiple form factors, they do have differences that make them unique. Knowing those differences will help when planning out your next design.

I’m Gretchen Jordan. I’ve been doing logic modeling and writing and teaching about how to develop them for more than 20 years. I find the process stimulating and fun, and have noticed that the more I do logic models, and the more I learn about the subject matter, the easier it is and the better the model. However, most people do not do multiple logic models in one subject area. Lessons Learned: 1. Generic logic models can be a huge help in evaluation. Evaluation frameworks with a well explained generic logic model and accompanying indicators, building on deep subject matter expertise, can be a huge help to evaluators or program staff. With this as a guide, they can work through a logic model and evaluation plan tailored to their specific program. These generic guides save resources and improve the quality of evaluation studies. If used for a group of related programs the common framework for collecting and analyzing data sets up the possibility of synthesis of findings across those programs. This can point to features of an intervention that matter most and that are not otherwise visible.  Example. The Research, Technology and Development (RTD) Topical Interest Group of the AEA has written a paper "Evaluating Outcomes of Publicly Funded Research, Technology and Development (RTD) Programs: Recommendations for Improving Current Practice." Central to the paper is a generic logic model and table of indicators that could guide evaluation planning for many different types of RTD programs. 2. A generic logic model reflects knowledge of the big picture. Logic modeling is a management and evaluation tool to develop a succinct picture of a program’s goals and the strategies for achieving these within a broader context. It requires a real understanding of the program and its context. This knowledge can come partially from documents (including assessments of similar programs) but ultimately the best information comes from program managers and staff sharing different perspectives and perceptions. Example. The generic logic model in the RTD TIG paper builds on existing theories, evaluation studies, and other generic logic models. The diagram shows two major areas of RTD, research and application of research, to reflect the reality that these are often done by different organizations and evolve over a considerable length of time. The interactions between the two streams occur with four main areas: RTD community, government/policy entities, industry, and public groups. At the top left of this model is the essential step of program design and implementation. At the bottom, related programs and influences are called out in addition to three levels of other external influences (micro, meso/sector, and macro).

The SHRM Young Professional Advisory Council (YPAC) successfully hosted over 200 HR YP’s for a networking party at Luxor Hotel & Casino Las Vegas. It was a blast! Jeromy Manke (@JeromyManke) kicked off the evening with a welcome to our esteemed guests. The greeting included an introduction of the YPAC, Nevada State SHRM Council, and an honored acknowledgement from Elissa O’Brien, VP, SHRM Membership (@obrien_elissa). An evening filled with music, drinks, hors d’oeuvres and making connections (and memories) that will last a lifetime. I was personally blown away by the amount of experience and exposure that my HR counterparts have had. I will never forget one female that...

‘On-Premise IT has no future’ - This may sound little loud but it’s a true fact that with the invent of virtualization, a daily debate on operating expense (OPEX) vs capital expense (CAPEX) is a regular occurrences for all IT Companies. In order to cut down on both expenses, there are many many long term benefits of cloud services. IT Infrastructure has already taken the first step of moving to the cloud. Though on-premise infrastructure will never be redundant, but people like me would always try out products bottom up with an on-premise instance before thinking of the cloud. This is not the right forum to talk about pros and cons of cloud but rather get into the details of how an organization’s infrastructure can be moved to cloud. Here, I am going to post a series of blogs, helping an organization to harness the richness and ease of Microsoft’s offering of its cloud services - Office 365 and Windows Azure. Moving to Office 365/Windows Azure is well documented by Microsoft, but as always, there are pitfalls for which we need to find solutions and that what I have to share with you all. What is Windows Azure? When thinking about a corporate network infrastructure, what comes to our mind is desktops, servers, network switches, Active Directory and so on. Server virtualization has taken these a step forward in enhancing the physical infrastructure and using them optimally. Microsoft has come up with virtual corporate infrastructure including all of the above at just a simple pay as you use philosophy. Hence Windows Azure becomes the backbone of Office 365 that also hosts the cloud version of Active Directory apart from other services. What is Office 365? A Web-based version of Microsoft’s Office suite of enterprise-grade applications is what we know office 365 as. Office 365 is delivered to users through the cloud and includes Exchange Online for email, SharePoint Online for collaboration, Lync Online for unified communications, and a suite of Office Web Apps, web-based versions of the traditional Microsoft Office suite of applications, OneDrive for business for cloud storage and Yammer for social corporate networking. Office 365 users also have the option of accessing the applications in Microsoft Office 2010, 2013 Professional via a monthly subscription. However, Microsoft’s Office 365 business is doing pretty well. It has 5.6 million subscribers, and 1 million of those were added last quarter alone. These figures themselves shows how enterprise has started liberating the fizz out of the cloud services, not compromising what they have on-premise. Yes that’s what I wanted to emphasize, you don’t need to compromise your existing infrastructure, be it Active Directory, SharePoint, Lync or even desktop office applications. However one need to carefully plan before moving into cloud services and in the rest of my blog posts, I will be discussing step-by-step how? I’ll be posting all the blogs in this series here: 1. Installing Windows Azure Directory Sync (dirsync) Tool 2. Error Re-installing AZURE Directory Sync tool 3. Moving Windows Azure / Office 365 Directory Sync to a different Office 365 Subscription for the same domain 4. Create Active Directory OU Filter for Office 365 dirsync tool 5. Exchange Cut-Over Migration to Office 365 6. Errors in Cut-Over Batch execution 7. Post Cut-Over Batch execution configuration Also do not forget to watch out on forth coming series on how to migrate your on-premise SharePoint to SharePoint Online.

Hi my name is Jayne Corso and I am the Community Manager for AEA.  As part of my routine, I use a lot of the typical social media platforms such as Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest, but many tools often get overlooked. SlideShare is a great example of a tool that can help you gain longevity out of your slides and share your content with a larger audience. In this post, I will introduce SlideShare and share a few best practices for using the tool. Rad Resource: Introduction to SlideShare SlideShare was formed in 2006 as a place for people to upload PowerPoint presentations that were presented at a conference or an event. Since then, the tool has evolved into a content marketing platform for any form of digital content.  The tool allows users to easily upload and share presentations, infographics, documents, videos, PDFs, and webinars. SlideShare is among the top 120 most-visited websites in the world. In 2013, the site averaged 60 million unique visitors a month. Hot Tip: Create Attractive Slides Don’t underestimate the power of your title slide. This image will appear everywhere, even as a thumbnail on other social media channels if the presentation is shared.  Pick a design that is eye catching. When you search for a termsuch as evaluation in SlideShare, you will get many presentations to choose from. Make your first impression count. Try using Canva to create a design.  View recent post about this tool. Hot Tip: Use Keywords Use keywords in your presentation description. This will allow your presentation to show up when the term is searched. These keywords can be specific to your topic, but you can also throw in few general keywords such as evaluation, research, or data. Hot Tip: Utilize Links! Include links in your presentations to add value to your content. This can include links to websites, videos, articles, or documents. This is a great opportunity to share your content and improve web traffic at the same time. Rad Resource: Use the Analytics SlideShare allows you to see the effectiveness of your content through analytics. Their analytics can help you better understand the demographics of the people viewing your content, where they are coming from, and when is the best time to post your information. All of these details can help you identify trends that allow you to increase the popularity of your presentations on the site. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Chris Lysy on Slideshare and Slidecasting DVR Week: Juan Paulo Ramirez on Using Google Analytics June Gothberg on How Potent Presentations Changed my Presentation Worldview

Installing Windows Azure Directory Sync (dirsync) Tool Overview Office 365 depends on Azure Active Directory for authentication to all its clouds offering. Hence it is absolutely mandatory to prepare your users in the cloud before you start using any of their cloud services. Though Microsoft offers a free domain for each subscription, but they are actually child domain of onmicrosoft.com. Hence in most cases, we need to keep our owned domain associated to Office 365 services and therefore the directory synchronization is the first step in achieving this. Every existing on-premise infrastructure will have a deployment of Active Directory to which all network objects depends. It’s not easy to give up such setup and adopt cloud Active Directory. Hence Microsoft has neatly provided tools to sync up the users to cloud along with their passwords and other attributes. Directory Synchronization Road Map By using the Microsoft Azure Active Directory Sync tool, your company’s administrators can keep your on-premises Active Directory continuously synchronized with Azure AD. Directory synchronization is intended as an ongoing relationship between your on-premises environment and Azure AD. Active Directory synchronization should be considered a long-term commitment to coexistence scenarios between your on-premises Active Directory and cloud. After you have activated directory synchronization, you can only edit synchronized objects in your on-premises environment. 1. Preparation Work a) Permission required You need a domain admin account to your on-premise Active Directory You need a tenant admin account to your office 365 subscription b) Download DirSync Log into the Office 365 Admin Portal Navigate to Users & Groups > Manage>Active Directory synchronization Set Up Click the download button in step 4 c) Activate Directory Synchronization - you must activate Directory synchronization before running dirsync tool. For Office 365 customer: Log into the Office 365 Admin Portal Navigate to Users & Groups > Active Directory synchronization Set Up Click the "Activate" button in step 3 If you are an Azure customer: Log into the Azure portal Navigate to Active Directory > Directory Integration Click "Activate" in step 2 d) Hardware Software requirements for dirsync tool installation It must be installed on a 64-bit Windows Server OS (Windows 2008 and higher) It must be joined to Active Directory It can now be a domain controller, but if it is then you need to follow the additional instructions in the Best Practices for Deploying and Managing the Windows Azure Active Directory Sync Tool. It can be a virtual machine The full list of requirements/details can be found in Prepare for directory synchronization e) Before you begin you need the following information Ready A Windows Azure Active Directory/Office 365 user account that is a member of the Company Administrator group An Active Directory user account that is a member of the Enterprise Administrators group in all domains in your on-premises Active Directory Forest 2. Setting up DirSync a) Extract the installation binaries Unpack the DirSync installation binaries Run DirSync.exeusing elevated administrative permission. Click Next to move on. Accept the EULA Specify the install path Install the components This will also install SQL Server 2012 Express SP1, the FIM Sync Engine.  3. Configuring DirSync  Once installation is completed, it will prompt to start the configuration wizard. If you are installing the Directory Sync tool on a Domain Controller (supported from Directory Sync tool build 6567.0018), follow these steps: De-select the "Start Configuration Wizard Now" checkbox Log-off (not restart) from your current session and re-login Launch the "Directory Sync Configuration"  by running  as administrator  Click Next to proceed. Provide Windows Azure Active Directory/Office 365 global admin credentials. Before the Sync to is configured, you need an office 365 account with global admin permission to allow the sync tool to authenticate with Azure Provide on-premises Active Directory credentials. The Active Directory credential must be Enterprise admins which will create the necessary service account in the local AD. Hybrid Deployment - There are various features throughout Office 365 and Azure AD that depends on Hybrid Deployment being enabled. You need to decide if you want those features. Password Sync- You can choose to enable Password Sync for your tenant. This lets your users sign into Azure Active Directory (and associated services like Office 365, CRM Online and InTune) with the same password as they use on-premises. If you want to enable this, select the "Enable Password Sync" checkbox.   startsynchronizing If you want to start sync’ing now, select the "Synchronize your directories now" checkbox, and then click "Finish".  

Today is the first full day of #SHRM15 and we bloggers have been busy bees! I’m pretty proud of myself for getting up before the sun over here and cranking out a run AND getting back to the room and ready in time for a 7 am session! By the way, it’s really, really hot here. As our friend Penn Jillette says, "Its 100 and hell out here." This morning’s session is the one I have been looking forward to the most, even more so than the general sessions lined up this week. The session, "The Black Guy in the...

My name is Ann Price and I am the President of Community Evaluation Solutions, Inc.(CES), a consulting firm based just outside Atlanta, Georgia. I am a community psychologist and work to infuse environmental approaches into my work developing and evaluating community prevention programs. Much of my work involves working with community coalitions. Hot Tip: Appreciate how long it takes for community coalitions to mature. Often, community members want to jump in and get right to work. However, the first thing community coalitions need to do is develop structures and processes that will help ensure their long-term success. It may be helpful for you to work with your coalition to develop a logic model that details what steps the coalition needs to take in order to be successful. Here is one example from our work with the Drug-free coalition of Hall County, based on a model by Fran Butterfoss and Michelle Kegler’s Community Coalition Action Theory (2002). Having this Logic Model helped coalition members focus on establishing a good foundation and to recognize the importance of planning and evaluation. Rad Resource: Fran Butterfoss’s book, Coalitions and Partnerships in Community Health (2007), is a great reference book for coalition leaders, researchers and evaluators. It includes surveys that coalition leaders can use to assess the health of their coalition. Rad Resource: Fran Butterfoss has a new book, Ignite! Getting Your Community Fired Up for Change, an excellent and accessible resource for coalition leaders and members filled with tips to inspire coalitions to action.  Hot Tip: Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) is another good resource for both coalitions and evaluators. They host The National Leadership Forum each December in Washington, D.C. and the Mid-year Training Institute held at various locations around the country. Both meetings include one-to one coaching for coalition leaders and a separate tract for youth, the National Youth Leadership Initiative. Lesson Learned: "Evaluation as intervention" is a concept I have been pondering lately. When you find your coalition is stuck in a "meet and talk" rut, think about redesigning the evaluation to focus on the environmental change strategies the coalition has implemented and the community reach of each strategy. Work on documenting the link between their chosen strategies and community outcomes. Then, use evaluation data to provide more timely feedback to the coalition. This would be a great opportunity to involve coalition members in discussions about where they are, where they would like to be and how, working together, they can get there. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating CP TIG Week with our colleagues in the Community Psychology Topical Interest Group. The contributions all week come from CP TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Fran Butterfoss on Evaluating Community Coalitions Veena Pankaj and Kat Athanasiades on Coalition Assessment: Approaches for Measuring Capacity and Impact SIOP Week: Dale S. Rose on Organization Development: A Program Worth Evaluating (Logically)

Overview Content Type Hub is a central location where you can manage and publish your content types. Content type publishing is a feature that will allow you to publish content type to other site collections in SharePoint Online. So you need to create the content type just once and then just publish it so that rest of the site collections can make use of it. As we are familiar with SharePoint 2010/2013, the content type hub is nothing new in O365.  Configuration and functionalities are same in O365, however getting access to the Content Type Hub is an issue.  In this blog I cover the configuration details and how to solve access resolve. The first thing to know is that a content type hub has been set up automatically for us.  We just have to know where to find it.  We can’t get to it from Tenant Administration like we might expect.  Instead, we can find the location by going to the Site Settings page of any site collection and then the Content Type Publishing link.  But getting access to the Content Type Hub page is an issue in O365. OOTB SharePoint Configuration of Content Type HUB Content type hub has been set up automatically. To Find the URL for a hub site Select the Options button and then select Site Settings. Under Site Collection Administration, click Content type publishing. In the Hubs section, you can see the names of any Managed Metadata Service applications that publish content types to this site collection listed in bold text. After the service application names, you can see the URLs for the hub sites. You can also see a list of the subscribed content types. Subscribed content types are read-only on subscriber sites. If you want to change a content type that was published to your site, select the URL for the hub site. In Content type publishing error log section Summarizes issues with propagating Content Types and Site Columns. Access to this site collection Only the original Office 365 account creator has access to the site collection.  The only user that has access to this auto-generated site collection by default is the account that originally provisioned Office 365. This normally wouldn’t be a problem if you could go to your SharePoint admin center and modify the site collection administrators. However, the Content Type Hub is a hidden site collection. Accessing it with another user will get you an access denied error message even if you are a global administrator. Solution for content type hub access denied issue There is a page called TA_SiteCollectionOwnersDialog.aspx that handles the management of Site Collection Administrators. And this page takes a single simple parameter called "site". So if we want to access your Content Type Hub without contacting your original administrator (and you’re a Global Administrator within Office 365) just go to the following URL. https://tenantname-admin.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/online/TA_SiteCollectionOwnersDialog.aspx?site=https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/sites/contentTypeHub

So much information comes from a conference of this size. It is clearly impossible to attend every session and soak up all of the great content shared. That’s why Twitter is amazing. I spent much of yesterday and last evening scrolling through the tweets from day 3 of the conference. I am listing what I think are the best below. Obviously I couldn’t have read through every tweet so this isn’t to slight anyone else’s brilliance, but these are the best of what I read through. I won’t be adding any commentary...

My name is Susan Wolfe and I am the owner of Susan Wolfe and Associates, LLC, a consulting firm that applies Community Psychology principles to strengthening organizations and communities. A lot of my work involves helping to develop and evaluate community coalitions. Because of the dynamic nature of coalitions facilitating their development and providing evaluative feedback can require a range of approaches and tools. It requires looking inside the group to assess the dynamics and whether the members are working well together, and outside of the group to continuously scan the context for changing political, economic, and cultural factors and to determine whether the coalition is having impact or fulfilling its purpose. Hot Tip: Before you begin to evaluate a coalition, spend time attending meetings and getting to know its membership. Find out as much as possible about the politics, member organizations, community, and its purpose. Determine whether there are hierarchies among organizations and groups and uncover agendas and interests. Rad Resource: One of my favorite coalition-related books is The Power of Collaborative Solutions by Tom Wolff. In addition to Wolff’s six principles for creating collaborative solutions for healthy communities, the book includes an Appendix on Evaluation with tools and access to a website with even more tools for developing and evaluating coalitions. Also check out Tom’s web site at www.tomwolff.com for more resources and sign up for his Collaborative Solutions newsletter. Hot Tip: Use a range of methods to provide feedback to coalition leadership and members. For example, combine results of a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis with those from a member survey. Lesson Learned: When you present the results of a survey use an interactive approach to encourage dialogue about the findings. Include time for members to talk about what they liked and did not like about the survey instrument itself and whether there are unanswered questions. Rad Resource: Attend the Society for Community Research and Action’s (SCRA) Summer Institute workshop on Developing and Evaluating Coalitions which will be facilitated by Tom Wolff and Susan Wolfe on June 24th in Lowell, MA at the UMass Lowell Inn and Conference Center. Stay around for the SCRA 2015 Biennial Conference from June 25th through 28th. More information can be found at www.scra27.org. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating CP TIG Week with our colleagues in the Community Psychology Topical Interest Group. The contributions all week come from CP TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: CP TIG Week: Ann Price on (Re)Invigorating community coalition evaluation efforts Fran Butterfoss on Evaluating Community Coalitions Veena Pankaj and Kat Athanasiades on Coalition Assessment: Approaches for Measuring Capacity and Impact

Introduction Installing windows server and .NET Framework has always been a kids stuff till we realized that Server 2012 R2 release onwards, it is not available by default to be added from ‘Add Remove Windows Server Role Features’. Hence like all, I was stumped at installation of SQL server 2012 which requires Netfx3 and so will the problem appear for any application that depends on .Net Framework 3.5 Problem Description I was installing SQL Server 2012 on a Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard virtual machine, and the installation was already in progress when I received the following error: Error while enabling Windows feature: NetFx3, Error Code: -2146498298, Please try enabling Windows feature: NetFx3 from Windows management tools and then run setup again. For more information on how to enable Windows features, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=227143 Since I did not enable .NET Framework 3.5 before installing SQL Server 2012, setup tried to enable it but failed. I then tried to enable .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows Server 2012 using the "Add Roles and Features Wizard" of Windows Serve 2012 and to my surprise it failed again. Solution On the new Server Manager of Windows Server 2012, we made a click on the Manage menu, and selected the option "Add Roles and Features". On the first page of Add Roles and Features Wizard, click on the Next button. On the installation type page, we chose "Role-based or feature-based installation". On the Server Selection page of the wizard, we selected the actual server where we were installing SQL Server 2012 On the "Server Roles" page of the wizard, we just clicked on the Next button. On the "Features" page of the Wizard, we clicked on the checkbox next to ".NET Framework 3.5 Features", and then clicked on the Next button. On the confirmation page, we just clicked on the Install button. The installation using the "Add Roles and Features Wizard" failed with an error It turns out that Windows Server 2012 does not include NetFx3 when it is installed as .Net Framework 4.5 is provided by default.  It doesn’t mean that it is gone, but it has to be installed separately.   Hence the fundamental problem here is that you need to tell windows where to find the NetFX installation files -simple. Insert the Windows installation media. Start the Add Roles and Features Wizard again. On the Select features page, select the .Net Framework 3.5 Features check box, and then click Next. On the Confirm installation selections page, click the Specify an alternate source path link. On the Specify Alternate Source Path page, type the path of the SxS folder as a local path or as a network share path. The screen shot for this step is listed below. Click OK. Click Install to finish the wizard Conclusion By default, on Windows Server 2012 (R2) the NetFx3 (.Net Framework 3.5) feature is not installed because it has already installed the .Net Framework 4.5; however some applications may require the NetFx3 feature and in this post we have seen how to make server 2012 work backward.

I had no expectations when I walked into SHRM15 this year. There were a few realities I knew would happen. I knew it would be hot in Vegas. I knew it would be cold inside the conference center. I knew it would be a crazy, busy place with over 15,000 attendees. I knew I would see social friends who I have been fortunate enough to meet online and move those relationships into a real life connection that I am deeply grateful for. We talk every day on social media...

Error Re-installing AZURE Directory Sync Tool Overview By using the Microsoft Azure Active Directory Sync tool, your company’s administrators can keep your on-premises Active Directory continuously synchronized with Azure AD. Directory synchronization is intended as an ongoing relationship between your on-premises environment and Azure AD. Active Directory synchronization should be considered a long-term commitment to coexistence scenarios between your on-premises Active Directory and cloud. However in case if you have directory sync tool setup in a system that for any undefined reason cease to work, you need to get the tool up and running quickly in another server - to be more precise, we need to know how we can move the dirsync to another server. Here are the steps to be followed. Clean up dir sync tool uninstallation The Setup Wizard has detected a previous installation of the Directory Sync tool. The previous installation is incompatible with this newer configuration of the Directory Sync tool. Please uninstall the previous version of the Directory Sync tool and run this installation wizard again. After removing dirsync tool from Windows Add Remove Programs, the uninstallation process does not clean up all the necessary files. Hence we need to manually remove them before we can re-install the dirsync tool. Remove the local service account created by dirsync tool, with username starting with AAD_……. Delete the local user groups created by dirsync tool that starts with FIM…… Remove the directory C:\Program Files\Windows Azure Active Directory Sync Delete dirsync database files located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSONLINE\MSSQL\DATA Restart your computer and run the dirsyn tool using alleviated administrative permission and you should be good to start now Conclusion In a nut-shell, we all must have backup plan and dirsync is a mission critical application that we all must ensure running 24×7. Hope the above steps would save our day.

Hi, my name is Courtney Barnard and I am a social worker at a children’s health care system in north Texas. I spend half my time out in the community coordinating a coalition and the other half evaluating seven other community-based coalitions and programs. You can use evaluation to help plan for the sustained impact of a coalition’s efforts. The long-term goal is not always to sustain the coalition itself, or even its main activities, but to sustain the change in knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors that have occurred because of the community’s work. Our sustainability plans are based on three core concepts of sustainability, as outlined by Monte Roulier with Community Initiatives Network. Hot Tip: Begin the sustainability conversation with a visioning activity, using this prompt: "Imagine that it is [three years in the future] and your coalition has been extraordinarily effective for the past three years. Write a letter to a colleague describing what’s now going on as a result of a fruitful past 3 years." Building an effective coalition and "backbone" support - Successful coalitions share a common vision based on mutual benefits and prioritized strategies and outcomes aimed at shared goals. A strong backbone is needed to guide the group in articulating their goals and in planning how they will get there. Lessons Learned: Backbone supports are able to offer structure (e.g. bylaws, coordinators), lead strategic planning processes, and engage others in the community. Although this structure takes time to develop, it is essential for long-term functioning.   Employing the right mix of strategies - Use easily-achievable actions to engage members and build momentum. These quick wins will help the coalition spring board into longer-term, more complex actions. Rad Resource: Use the Spectrum of Prevention from the Prevention Institute to assess where your strategies fit. If your coalition chooses not to take action at one of the levels, make sure someone else in the community is acting on that level. Hot Tip: Use this "formula" for Impact when prioritizing strategies/action steps to see how you can get the biggest bang for your buck. Securing diverse resources - Braid and pool separate sources of funding when possible and leverage non-financial resources (communication, staff, volunteers, office space, food, research, fiscal management, etc.). Lessons Learned: Make your propositions compelling so no one can say "no". Be clear and specific about real needs. Demonstrate results and your plan for future outcomes. And frequently praise contributors, no matter how small the contribution. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating CP TIG Week with our colleagues in the Community Psychology Topical Interest Group. The contributions all week come from CP TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: CP TIG Week: Ann Price on (Re)Invigorating community coalition evaluation efforts Fran Butterfoss on Evaluating Community Coalitions Veena Pankaj and Kat Athanasiades on Coalition Assessment: Approaches for Measuring Capacity and Impact

Moving to Windows Azure / Office 365 Directory Sync to a different Office 365 Subscription for the same domain Overview: In my endeavor of setting up / planning office 365 migration, we always start with a trial subscription and finally when the preparation goes as planned, we realize that the trial setup is not good enough to be a production. Hence with the same setup we must migrate the dirsync to a different subscription to start all over again. Here are some steps that can be followed to achieve this. A. Prepare existing subscription. 1. Deactivate Directory Sync to stop user from On-Premise Active Directory to be synced to Office 365 Goto Admin Centre Users and Groups Select Deactivate option against Active Directory Synchronization Confirm Deactivation. This is to stop further synchronization of users to Windows Azure 2. Remove User UPN suffix from office 365 for the deactivated domain. The domain that will be removed needs to be de-associated from all the existing users. This is done by changing all the user’s UPN suffix and change to the default office 365 domain (i.e.yourdomain@onmicrosoft.com) Goto Admin Centre - Users and Groups Select user by check box Click on Edit button on right option panel If there are multiple users, you can select all users and bulk edit them Select the domain drop down box and changed the domain to yourdomain@onmicrosoft.com Choose not to change any license assignment or plan 3. Delete the verified domain from the current subscription. Goto Admin Centre - Domains B. Prepare new subscription The new subscription should have already come with a free domain like yourdomain@onmicrosoft.com. However you need to add the domain that you have removed from your old subscription into the new subscription. However, before you do that you have to add the necessary dns record with your domain registrant so that office 365 can verify your domain ownership. Add the new domain in your Office 365 subscription After you add the new domain, office 365 auto detects the domain registrant and will prompt you for confirming ownership. If you have admin access to c-panel of your domain registrant, you can simply click on confirm ownership in the screen shot below and office 365 will automatically add all the necessary dns record to point the domain to Office 365. However, in case you do not happen to have domain registrant admin credentials, then you can fetch the manual dns records and pass it on to the admin who can add the dns record in their domain registrant and you can simply confirm the domain from the office 365 admin centre. Following are the manual dns records that needs to be added in the domain registrant c-panel. The list will give step by step details of all the dns records required. You can also choose your domain registrar from the drop down list. Once the dns records are added, you can select confirm ownership. On successfully verifying your domain, you should now see your domain active in office 365 admin centre Now you are ready to download, install and configure the dirsync tool. C. Prepare Directory Synchronization for the New Subscription. Activate Directory Synchronization in office 365 Goto to users and groups and select Active Directory synchronization setup and choose ACTIVATE Directory synchronization is activated, it should reflect Deactivate Conclusion As we delve further into this series, I will be coming up with few articles that we all need sooner or later to tackle office 365 through script. You guessed it right, Windows Azure PowerShell and some quick command reference to perform the most common tasks.

The wonderful thing about SHRM’s Annual Conference is that there is "something" for everyone.  The networking opportunities are endless; the speakers’ topics have a wide reach; and the Tuesday night concert always brings energy.  This year, my "something" came from a concurrent speaker on Tuesday morning by the name of Jeff Goins.  Jeff’s session was titled "The Art of Work: Discovering What You Were Meant To Do."  Now, I didn’t attend this session because I am unsure that I am meant to be in HR.  I chose Jeff’s session because I want to help others find where they are meant...

Hello! We are Natalie Wilkins and Courtney Barnard, and we are members of the Community Psychology TIG leadership team. Community and stakeholder engagement is a core principle of both evaluation and community psychology. As evaluators and community psychologists, it is not surprising that we are very interested in learning about how stakeholder engagement strengthens our work and how we can continuously improve the ways we include communities in our work. We have compiled some of our favorite resources for evaluating community collaborations and coalitions. We hope they will be helpful in your work too! Rad Resources: The National Cancer Institute has developed the Level of Collaboration Scale. This scale is a composite of other existing models and instruments and its purpose is to assess collaboration among partners. Check out these great tools from Fran Butterfoss and Coalitions Work Are You Ready to Evaluate Your Coalition? 15 questions can help you decide whether your coalition is ready to evaluate itself and its work! Coalition Initial Needs Assessment A form for assessing coalition resources, structures and functions. Coalition Member Survey A 49-item survey for members to rate the coalition on aspects related to planning, implementation, leadership, local and statewide involvement, communication, participation, progress and outcomes. Coalition Effectiveness Inventory (CEI) A diagnostic checklist for coalition staff and key leaders to assess coalition effectiveness. Meeting Effectiveness Inventory (MEI) A tool for evaluating work group and coalition meeting effectiveness and productivity. Is This Group Really A Coalition? 10 questions that can clarify whether an existing community group is a coalition. Granner and Sharpe have developed An Inventory of Measurement Tools for Evaluating Community Coalition Characteristics and Functioning. This inventory provides a list of assessment tools to assess characteristics and functioning of a community coalition. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating CP TIG Week with our colleagues in the Community Psychology Topical Interest Group. The contributions all week come from CP TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: CP TIG Week: Susan Wolfe on Engaging community coalition members in evaluation CP TIG Week: Ann Price on (Re)Invigorating community coalition evaluation efforts EPE Week: Tina Phillips on Developing Validated Scales

Why these companies need to collaborate? With the world moving to the cloud, wouldn’t it be nice to have the two biggest cloud companies collaborate?  Microsoft and Salesforce have finally announced a partnership and are looking to integrate their products closely.  Microsoft is also a guest speaker at the 2014 Dreamforce conference to be held from Oct 13th in San Francisco.  I would not be surprised if Microsoft shares several interesting integration scenarios at the conference. I have worked with many organizations that use SharePoint On-Premise, Office 365, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and many other Microsoft products.  Many have approached us for integration.  Below is a list of some of the integration scenarios that we have identified: Linking a site collection or site in Office 365 SharePoint to an opportunity in Salesforce Sales Cloud Linking One Drive documents in Office 365 to Salesforce Sales Cloud Integrating a workflow that spans across Salesforce Sales Cloud and Office 365 Sales Cloud reporting using Power BI for Office 365 Synchronize Microsoft outlook contacts to Salesforce Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud Ability to search content from both SharePoint and Salesforce Integrating Yammer to Salesforce Sales Cloud opportunities These integration scenarios provide immense benefit to end users who use both Microsoft and Salesforce products.  Both companies have significant presence in the small to medium size businesses who could benefit from better integration. Please find my subsequent posts below where I will be discussing each of these scenarios in greater detail. Microsoft and Salesforce - Part 2 - Notes from the Dreamforce Conference Microsoft and Salesforce - Part 3 - Analytics Cloud from Salesforce