About MacroView Standardiser

MacroView Standardiser is a Windows application that automatically captures metadata for all emails in a given SharePoint location so they can easily be filtered and searched upon using MacroView DMF.

• Set and forget - Standardiser will automatically run and capture metadata for all emails stored in a given SharePoint location
• Standard naming convention - Standardiser will rename your emails to prevent duplicates being saved. By default, it will capture the name of the sender, sent time, date and subject of an email. For example, John Smith_01Jan18 12.59.59_Important Update.msg
• Consistent styling - Standardiser automatically creates MacroView columns and content types for storing email metadata and a custom view to display your emails
• Easy to use - Does not require any setup or manual configuration to your SharePoint tenancy
• Supports large environments - update email metadata in libraries exceeding the SharePoint list view threshold

Prerequisites

• MacroView Standardiser currently supports:
  • SharePoint Online / Office 365
  • SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019
• The account used must have Administrator or Owner rights to the site collection if you plan to provision the site columns and content types required to store the email metadata.
• The account used must have the Manage List permission on the site if you plan to add the email content type or email view to a library.
• The account used must have Edit rights to the emails being standardised.
• If you do not have these rights, you will not be able to successfully use MacroView Standardiser.

Before starting: Download and install MacroView Standardiser

1. Download MacroView Standardiser:
   
   • A free trial is available when you install the software
   • To get the full version, Contact MacroView Services.
2. Double-click the downloaded file to open and run the installation wizard. Once the installation is complete a new shortcut to MacroView Standardiser will be placed on your desktop.
3. To open the application, double-click the MacroView DMF Standardiser icon on your desktop.

Step 1: Provide credentials and enter the SharePoint libraries to Standardise

1. Using MacroView DMF Explorer or the MacroView pane in Microsoft Outlook, right-click the parent site of the library/libraries to standardise, then select Copy as Link or copy the link to the site from the browser.
   • Note: The link should be in the following format and not contain any trailing information (e.g. /SitePages/Home.aspx):
     • SharePoint Online / Office 365: https://organisation.sharepoint.com/sites/sitecollection
     • SharePoint Server (on-premises): http://sharepointservername/sites/sitecollection

 Important: You must copy the URL of the direct parent, not the URL to the library itself to standardise. If you use the direct library link, the process will fail.

 Above: To standardise the Emails, Emails 1, Emails 2 libraries, right-click the parent site and select Copy as Link.

Select Libraries from the left menu, then click the Site URL text box and paste the URL.

Click the Load button or press the enter key.

If the user has permission to the site the libraries will be loaded and displayed.

 Important: before proceeding please decide which settings to enable.

Step 2: Enable settings in the Options dialog.

If this is the first time you have used Standardiser please click the Options button left, and go through each tab in the Options dialog to configure the settings as per your requirements.

For information about what each setting does please see the following article.

Standardiser 4.0 settings

Step 3: Select libraries to standardise

Toggle selection for all items:

• Tick selection for all items for all libraries to be selected
• Untick selection for all items and manually select libraries to standardise

 Important: Libraries must be indexed by SharePoint search to be discovered by Standardiser. To check if a library has been crawled by SharePoint, try searching for it using SharePoint search in the top right of the browser window. If your library is not returned in the results, you will need to run a search crawl before continuing. 

Step 4: Specify File ID Range (Optional step)

Standardiser provides flexibility when selecting which emails to standardise within the nominated library/libraries.

By default all files in the selected libraries will be standardised.

However, if you would like to standardise a specific range of files then select (tick) one library only as per the image below.

When one library is selected the following options will appear at the bottom of the page.

All files: Standardiser will scan all files in the library, check to see which are emails, then process each email.

Files in this ID range: this setting is designed to support SharePoint admins working with document libraries containing a large amount of files. It allows you to separate the standardisation of large document libraries into batches using SharePoint List IDs if you cannot run the process in one sitting.

To display the ID column in the default view in your SharePoint library:

• Using your web browser, go to the SharePoint library you are standardising.
• Click the Library tab in the ribbon and select Library Settings.
• Scroll down the page until you find the View subheading, then select your default view.
• Under your list of available columns, find the ID column, tick the appropriate checkbox, scroll down the page and click OK.
• Once ID has been added to your view, you will now see every file's corresponding ID value in your library. This will be helpful in finding which files to process using the Files in this ID range only setting.

Once you have chosen which files to process in your library, click the Standardise button to begin the process.

Standardiser will now begin the process of validating your input, adding MacroView columns, content type and view (if applicable) then start the email standardisation process.

Subsites and libraries 

To standardise libraries in a site including its subsites the Subsites option is available. 

Selecting Load will display related subsites in the site URL. 

Standardiser will attempt to standardise libraries within the selected site and subsites.

After the sites and subsites have been loaded two options will appear at the bottom.

If the "All libraries" option is selected, if there are any libraries you do not wish to standardise, update the Libraries to ignore list in options and reload before you Standardise.

If the "Only there libraries" option is selected, click the View Libraries button to enter the titles of the libraries you want to standardise.

Enter the titles of the libraries you want to standardise.

 Important: Each document library must be on a separate line. You will encounter an error if multiple libraries are on the same line.

Click the OK button to close the Libraries dialog.

Click the Standardise button to start the process.

Standardising with a batch file

If you want to standardiser more than a single site or various libraries , you can generate a batch file.

The generated CSV file contains all the libraries you wish to standardise.

To generate a batch, enter a site URL and click the Create Batch button to generate a CSV file.

The batch file can be viewed and edited using the Batch Files button.

To standardise the batch, "Select Batch File" and then Standardise

View your results

A progress report will be shown on the right-hand side of the window, detailing progress in real-time.

Standardiser will also create reports and store them in a results folder on your local machine (click the Email Results button for a shortcut to the folder location). These files include:

A direct copy of the progress report shown on the right-hand side in Standardiser, in a plain text file (.txt).

For more information see: Viewing your Standardiser results.

Email conditions

Standardiser cannot process emails if:

• The email contains # or % in the subject/title
• The email does not contain a sender or a sent date (e.g. if you have saved a draft email to SharePoint)
• The email is 'checked-out' by you or another user
• The email content type contains required metadata columns

If any emails fail to standardise based on one or more of the above conditions, Standardiser will skip them and log the skip in the results file.

To be able to standardise them, you must correct the issue, then run standardiser over the files again.

Known limitations 

• Does not support SharePoint 2013 Server (on-premises) or earlier.
• Required checkout for editing must be turned off on the library you are standardising - since the standardisation process includes renaming the email .msg file.
• Note MacroView Standardiser when not licensed  - will require user intervention every 10 transactions.