MacroView Push Favourites for SharePoint Online and Teams

Favorites in MacroView DMF and Message and in MacroView Mail allow users to quickly navigate to certain areas of the SharePoint document store.  Favorites are particularly useful in organisations where Browse mode  displays a large number of nodes in the SharePoint document store.

MacroView Push Favorites is an optional module for MacroView DMF and Message, or included with an Enterprise MacroView Mail license, that automates the creation of favorites for users. MacroView Push Favorites is managed by using a subscription list in your SharePoint environment. 

MacroView Push Favorites can be used with MacroView DMF or Message against any SharePoint Online (Office 365) tenant or on-premises SharePoint 2013, 2016 or 2019 running in Client Side Only mode.

MacroView Push Favorites can also be used with MacroView Mail against any SharePoint Online (Office 365) tenant.

Contact MacroView Services for information on these other Push Favorites solutions:

• MacroView Push Favorites (for SharePoint Server)
• Custom Push Favorites solutions (e.g. to call a custom web service)

How MacroView Push Favorites works

When Favorites Subscriptions are enabled on a server entry in DMF Options or under settings in MacroView Mail, details of subscriptions for the current user subscriptions will be retrieved from a subscription list in the root site collection of the tenant or server (or the configured location in the case of MacroView Mail) and create a favorite node under My subscriptions in the Favorites mode of DMF or Message, or under the Subscriptions section of the Select where to save  panel in MacroView Mail

Then whenever the favorites in DMF or Message are refreshed they will be updated to reflect any additions, edits or deletions in the subscription list.  In MacroView Mail, subscriptions are refreshed whenever the Subscriptions node is expanded. 

Favorite locations in the subscription list can be a site, library, folder or document set.

In MacroView DMF and Message favorite locations can be organized into favorite groups and you can also add an entry in the subscription list for a user to follow another user's subscriptions in which case an additional top level node is created in Favorites mode with the title Username's subscriptions. The other users subscriptions are listed under this node.   This can be particularly useful when teams want to share favorites or a user (e.g. an executive assistant) needs to see their colleague's favorites. 

Configuration

Configuring MacroView Push Favorites is easy. The first step is to obtain a MacroView Push Favorites license from MacroView Services. Then follow these steps:

• Enable Favorites Subscriptions on the DMF server entry
• Ensure the client side Push Favorites extension is enabled
• Create a Subscription list
• Add subscription entries to the list

Enable Favorites Subscriptions in MacroView Mail

• Simply enter the URL to the site where the subscription resides under Settings
  
  
  
  Scroll down for information on creating an populating a subscription list.

Enable Favorites Subscriptions in MacroView DMF and Message

• Open the DMF Options dialog and select Servers, click the Advanced tab, then select the required server and click Edit

• Check the Enable Favorite Subscriptions option. 
  
  To enable via Group Policy set the following registry key:

  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MacroView\DMF\Servers\<server>\"SubscriptionsEnabled" =dword:00000001

Ensure the Push Favorites extension is enabled

• Open the DMF options dialog and select Support then check the Push Favorites option under Extensions.
  
  

Create a Subscription List

A subscription list can be created in any site collection that users can access via MacroView DMF, Message or MacroView Mail.  This includes a Microsoft Teams site.

If you have MacroView DMF or MacroView Message installed on your computer:

• The user or administrator can create a subscription list by installing MacroView Solution Provisioning and right-clicking on the site collection, choosing Provision > Add Site Collection Components and selecting Push Favorites - Subscriptions List.
  
  
  

• If your subscription list is not being added to the root site of your SharePoint tenant or farm (i.e. https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com) then you also need to specify the server relative path to the site that’s hosting the subscription list so DMF knows where to find it. You can do this via the registry or group policy by setting the following string value:

  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MacroView\DMF\Servers\<server>\"SubscriptionsServerRelativePath"="/path/to/site"

If you are using MacroView Mail but do not have MacroView DMF or MacroView Message installed on your computer you will need to create the list manually. 

• Download the MacroView Push Favorites Subscription List template and upload it to your SharePoint site from Site Settings > Web Designer Galleries > List Templates
  
  
  
  
• Then create a new list to your site using this template by going to Site Settings > Add an app
  
  
  
  
• Name the list Subscriptions
  
  
  

Add subscription entries to the list (via Browser)

Open the subscription list in your browser by right-clicking on the site collection where the subscription list is located and select Open in Browser.

Adding a Subscription

In the subscription list, select New then Subscription and enter a title, subscriber, URL and Favorite Type for the favorite.

Note: The URL must not contain escaped characters.  For example a space represented by %20 should be replaced with the space character.

You can also optionally assign the favorite to a group if groups have been defined in the Push Favorites term set for the site collection.

Note: Push Favorite Groups are not supported in MacroView Mail

Adding a Following Subscription

In the subscription list, select New then Following Subscription and enter a title, subscriber and the user being followed.

Note: Following Subscriptions are not supported in MacroView Mail

Add subscription entries to the list (via MacroView DMF or Message)

In versions of MacroView DMF and Message after 8.7.100 you can add a subscription entry by right clicking on the location that you want to add as and selecting New Subscription

Then select the server where the subscription list resides from the Server drop down menu on the New Subscription dialog.

Enter the Subscription Type, Title, Subscriber and optionally the Favourite Group and click OK.

The Title and Subscriber fields will default to the title of the selected location and the current user.  These can be changed if required to add a subscription on behalf of another user.

The New Subscription right-click menu option will only be enabled when one or more of the servers (excluding OneDrive servers) have Favourites Subscriptions enabled.  To remove the right-click menu option all together, uncheck the New Subscription Command extension under DMF Options > Support.