Penthara Org Chart for Microsoft Teams

Penthara Organization Chart for Microsoft Teams is a custom-built App for Microsoft Teams that works in conjunction with SharePoint App. Penthara Org Chart for SharePoint needs to be installed as a pre-requisite from SharePoint Store to be able to use Penthara Org Chart for Microsoft Teams App in Microsoft Teams. This app comes with a host of new features like Advanced Search, Custom SharePoint User Profile Attributes, Azure Active Directory Extended Attributes and much more.

How to create custom User Properties in SharePoint Online:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/add-and-edit-user-profile-properties

How to update Azure AD Extended Attribute via Graph Explorer:

1. Navigate to Graph Explorer and login with a Global Admin account.

2. On first login, you will be required to grant a consent to Microsoft Graph Explorer on behalf of the organization.

4. Once logged in, you need to consent the User.ReadWrite.All permission in the Modify permissions (Preview) tab of the Graph Explorer.

5. You then need to use the Get user by email query.

6. Ensure you are selecting the beta version from the dropdown and that you are replacing the {user-email} string with the email ID of the user to get user properties.

7. You then need to replace the get method with the patch method to update user attributes. Ensure you are passing the values in double quotes (“###”).

Sample of Request Body:

{

"onPremisesExtensionAttributes":

{

"extensionAttribute1": null,

"extensionAttribute2": null,

"extensionAttribute3": null,

"extensionAttribute4": null,

"extensionAttribute5": null

}

}

8. Repeat step 5 to confirm successful patch.

We are mapping the SharePoint User Profile Custom properties to Managed Properties to search users in the advanced search based on these custom SharePoint User Profile properties.

Custom SharePoint Properties in Admin Settings Panel:

In the Admin Settings Panel of the Penthara Organization Chart for Microsoft Teams, there are three partitions: Pre-Defined Azure Properties, Extended Azure Properties, and SharePoint Properties.

In the SharePoint Properties, there are default user properties and custom SharePoint user profile properties (We will be guided on how to create these properties later in this blog).

We can see an input field adjacent to custom user properties; there is no compulsion to fill that input field. But what is the significance of that input field?

1. Fill in the input field with the right value:

As the placeholder says, “Mapped Property,” we need to give the value of the mapped property against that SharePoint custom property. We will create a managed property and map the SharePoint custom property to it.

2. Leave the input field blank:

If we leave the input field blank, we will not be able to search users based on that SharePoint user property, but that property will be visible in the Person card in Org Chart.

Here we can see that the property is available in person. Still, OfficeHybrid was not given any value in the “mapped property” input field, so this property will not be available for search in advance search.

Now we will look into creating a custom SharePoint user profile property and mapping it to a managed property.

Creating Custom SharePoint Properties

1. Go to SharePoint Admin center. Click on the “More Features” option in the left pane.

2. Click on the “User Profiles” option.

3. Click on “Manage User Properties” under the People menu.

4. Here, we can see all the user profile properties. To create new SharePoint custom user profile property, click on the “New Property” in the ribbon menu.

5. Now, fill in the new SharePoint custom property details. Few things to keep in mind

a. Name property is the value we will see in the Org Chart, not the “Display Name.”

b. Right now, Penthara Organization Chart only supports the following data types .

i. Big Integer

ii. Date

iii. Date no year

iv. Date time

v. E-mail

vi. Integer

vii. String (Multi Value)

viii. String (Single Value)

c. Penthara Organization Chart can show all these property values in the Person Card in Org Chart. But the properties marked with “Green Square” are the ones that can be used for advanced search right now.

d. While filling the form for SharePoint custom User Profile Properties, we will come to a section named “Policy Settings” here, we see two options: -

i. Policy Setting: -

1. This property is responsible for validating the field, whether required or optional.

ii. Default Policy Setting:

6. This property is responsible for the visibility of this property to other users. To use this SharePoint User Profile Property in Penthara Organization Chart for Microsoft Teams, this option should be set to “Everyone.” When this property is set to “EveryOne,” other users can also see this property of a specific user.

7. After filling in all the details, click on the “OK” button in the bottom right corner. This property will be saved.

8. We have created a SharePoint custom user profile property.

Note: - Penthara Organization Chart cannot do the search query on parameters containing special characters in it.

9. Before going to the next step, ensure that at least one user has value for this SharePoint custom user profile property. This is required for these properties to get crawled and be available for mapping in the next step.

Mapping Custom SharePoint Properties to Managed Properties

1. Go to SharePoint Admin Center once again. Click on the “More Features” option in the left pane.

2. Click on the “Search” option.

3. Click on “Manage Search Schema.”

4. Click on “New Managed Property.”

5. Fill in the details about the new Managed Property. Key steps to follow:

a. Check the “Searchable,” “Queryable,” and “Retrievable” checkboxes.

b. Click on Advanced Searchable Settings. Now change the value of “Full-text index” from “default” to “PeopleIdx.” Scroll down and click on “Save.”

6. Scroll down and click “Save” in the bottom right corner.

7. We created a new managed property. This property name will go in the input field adjacent to the SharePoint custom property in the Admin Settings Panel in Penthara Organization Chart.

8. Now, we will go to the crawled properties section. Click on the crawled properties option.

Crawled properties are the SharePoint custom properties that are shuffled and can be searched, but for them to be searched, they need to be mapped to a managed property.

9. It takes about 24 hours to get the SharePoint Custom User Profile Properties to get crawled from their creation time provided, that the SharePoint Custom User Profile Property is being populated for at least one user.

10. Search the property that you created in SharePoint Custom properties. The property name will be prefixed with “People.” This is a category of property. In our case, it is the “People” category.

11. Click on the SharePoint Custom property we created to map it to the new managed property.

12. Click on “Add a Mapping.”

13. Search for the newly managed property we created, click on it, and click on “OK .”

14. Scroll down and click on “OK.”

15. This crawled property will take 24 hour to get mapped to the managed property.

16. It will take another 24 hours for the users to appear in the search results. This time is not fixed. It depends on how large the user database is.

17. Once the crawled property is mapped to the managed property, you will be able to see results in the advanced search in Penthara Organization Chart for Microsoft Teams.

Conclusion

We have created a SharePoint custom User Profile property and mapped it to a Managed Property so we can search for a user based on that SharePoint custom user profile property. We mapped this property to managed property because we cannot directly search a user based on SharePoint user profile property. Keep in mind that it takes 24 hours(approx.) for the properties to get crawled, and then it will take another 24 hours to get those properties mapped to the managed property and be available for searching a user based on that.