SharePoint Liz

So You Want to Rename Your SharePoint Online Tenant? Read This First Let’s be honest, choosing a tenant name isn’t always a carefully considered decision. Maybe it was chosen in a rush during initial setup, or maybe it made perfect sense at the time but no longer reflects your organization after a rebrand or merger. Whatever the reason, the good news is that Microsoft allows you to rename your SharePoint Online tenant. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should jump in without a solid plan. I’ve performed several tenant renames since this feature became available, and where it fits as a solution, it’s a great alternative to migrating everything into a brand-new tenant just to change the name. I recently worked with a client to rename their tenant, and while the technical steps were fairly straightforward, the overall impact reached much further than many expect. I thought it was a good opportunity to share what I’ve learned after managing multiple renames over the years. At ...

As a SharePoint consultant with a deep love for punk rock, I easily find parallels between the two. One of my favorite t-shirts says, "Old punks never die we just stand in the back," which accurately describes SharePoint Online's evolution.  SharePoint's wild, early days were like the mosh pit of a punk show in a small smoke-filled club—chaotic, loud, and full of custom-built solutions that felt like DIY band flyers scattered everywhere. Still Rocking, Just a Bit Different In the early days of punk, everything was raw, fast, and loud—much like the early days of SharePoint. Early iterations of SharePoint were rough around the edges. Configuring sites and managing content was a DIY experience, where every admin had their approach, often involving custom development or workarounds. But just like the punk scene, SharePoint matured. It's cleaner, sleeker, and more polished, but the fundamentals remain the same: empower users and deliver collaboration in ways that fit a...

Navigating bias based on perceptions is something we all deal with—whether based on appearance, gender, age, cultural background, educational background, or whether you like pineapple on pizza 🍕+🍍. Assumptions based on perceptions can shape how we are seen and treated, even if the assumption does not reflect reality. From my own personal perspective, my vocal cords are damaged, leaving my voice soft and easily fatigued. My quietness is often mistaken for shyness, but I constantly evaluate situations to avoid unnecessary speaking to conserve my voice. It's frustrating to be misunderstood based on superficial perceptions. Still, I've learned to handle it with resilience (mostly 😀) and determination, and I use my not speaking time to constantly improve my listening skills—not just hearing but actively listening. My personal experience is an excellent example of perception bias, and it mirrors a broader challenge that I often see organizations face when planning and implementing...

Depeche Mode, Barclays Center  When I have a SharePoint migration planned it is typically a weekend long affair. Friday night into Saturday is reserved for party time, aka final migration deltas 😆 It is the culmination of the weeks of initial data and permissions migrations, followed by countless delta's, remediating issues, and verifying the file counts and permissions align.   A part of me secretly loves these Friday nights (why else would I do it, right?), I usually spend the days leading up to it firming up my final delta schedule, ensuring that I select 8:00 PM and not 8:00 AM, I have made that mistake before.  It also means queuing up my playlist.  I love all types of music, side note - the most fun job I ever had was as a sales clerk in a record store. I will sit and watch the migrations kick off, make sure that everything is behaving itself. I am a night owl, and I can not fully trust that any tool is going to kick off when I told it to 😅 Once I am con...

  Tjörnin Pond, Reykjavik Iceland Once during an interview, I was asked to describe myself in one word. Without hesitation, I said, "resilient." The interviewer, looking somewhat perplexed, responded, "Like a duck?" I laughed and replied, "Exactly. Like a duck."  I was offered the role—one of many where I transitioned from being a technical writer to a SharePoint person. I wrote workflows in Visual Studio, fought to get approval for a paid version of SharePoint (which sadly went nowhere), and eventually I moved on to a contract role. Life at the time required flexibility, and unfortunately, that role was not as "duck-like" as I'd hoped. Words like resilient, adaptable, and flexible have become buzzwords, but that doesn’t mean embodying them is easy. I struggled when transitioning from SharePoint On-Premises to SharePoint Online. I feared that I would lose control over my environment and, with it, my job. But what I found instead was relief—fr...

Well, how did I get here? A great line from an epic song, Talking Heads'  "Once in a Lifetime,"  is a thought I ponder almost every day. How did the kid who started writing poetry and short stories alone in her room end up architecting SharePoint Online solutions, migrating millions of sites, lists, files, and folders, and espousing her love of all things SharePoint to anyone who will listen? It all started with a newly minted degree in English Literature and a minor in Sociology. I chose English because it was what I loved, and for a time, I even considered becoming a lawyer. But at the urging of those close to me and with a knack for all things tech, I found my way into a professional services company as a Documentation Specialist—thanks to a friend who was kind enough to refer me. Following the dot-com crash, I found myself in a series of roles: technical writing, dabbling in Micro-Focus COBOL, Process Analysis, and working with early intranet systems. One thing was t...