Verifying Product License and Deploying with Site Creator

Installing Akumina Workspaces requires a Product Feature License.  To check to see if you have a license to use the Akumina Workspaces, check the “Product Feature Key” section on the “Settings” page of your AppManager.

If this license is active, then the Site Creator can be used to either generate a new Digital Workplace Foundation Site with Workspaces, or to add Workspaces to an Existing Site.

Important Notes:

• If deploying a new Foundation Site with workspaces, ensure that the “Workspaces Feature Enabled” is checked in the Foundation Site setup screen in Site Creator and that Enable AzureAD is checked and the required AzureAD fields are complete. Reference the “Configuring the GraphAPI Connection for Foundation Site Deployment” document for creating the AzureAD application and the required settings.
• If Adding Workspaces Support to Existing Site, Akumina Framework Version 4.0 or greater is required.  Versions prior to 4.0 (any 3.4 or 3.3 versions) do not support Workspaces.  An upgrade to the 4.0 Framework version must be completed prior to adding Workspaces.  Also, the connection to AzureAD is required.  Even if you have an existing AzureAD app, the settings have been updated to support Workspaces.  Reference the “Configuring the GraphAPI Connection ” topic for updating your AzureAD application.

 

Registering Workspace Extensions with the GraphAPI

Once Workspaces are deployed to a site, there is a registration process that is required to enable the connection between the Workspace pages and the GraphAPI.  To register the extensions, navigate to the home page of your site and access the “Debug” screen by holding the “Ctrl + uparrow” keys.  At the bottom of the Debug screen, click on the “Register Workspace Extensions” button to enable the connection.

Then access the debug screen again and “Refresh All Cache” to ensure the settings take effect. You should see the "Workspace extensions already registered" message on the debug screen indicating the registration was successful.

Note: If the "Register Workspace Extensions" step is not executing correctly (i.e. the button does not change to "Workspace extensions already registered") it may be caused by restricted access permissions on the Office Groups.. You may want to check with your tenant admin to ensure the current logged in user has permissions to the Graph API and to modify Office Groups to add the schema. You can also use the Microsoft Graph Explorer (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/graph-explorer) to log in with the current user and check permission levels.

 

Install and Configure the PeopleSync Console App using the Workspace Extensions

Workspaces use the groups and user information that is stored in the aadusers.xml file that is generated by the PeopleSync Console App.  This app must be setup or updated before Workspaces can be used.

 

To support Workspaces, the PeopleSync Console App requires the “syncTags” and “syncTypes” values that were generated in the site when you clicked on “Register Workspace Extension” in the previous step.   To access these values, navigate to the “DigispaceConfigurationIDS_AK” list in SharePoint.  You will see an item named “WorkspaceSchemaExtension”.  Edit that item and copy the following two highlighted values that are specific to your GraphAPI app and tenant:

 

{"tags":{"id":"extxxxx_grouptags","description":"Workspace Tags Support","targetTypes":,"status":"InDevelopment","owner":"aaaaaaaa-40fb-aaaa-92cd-aaaaaaaaaaa","properties":},"type":{"id":"extxxxxxxx_grouptype","description":"Workspace Types Support","targetTypes":,"status":"InDevelopment","owner":"aaaaaa-40fb-aaaaaa-92cd-aaaaaaaaaaa","properties":}}

 

To install the PeopleSync Console App and configure for Workspaces, refer to the following document “PeopleSync Console App”.  Ensure that the PeopleSync has completed at least one sync prior to accesses the Workspaces Listing page, otherwise there will be no data.

 

Add a link to the Workspaces Listing Page to your site

If you deployed the Foundation Site, a link to Workspaces will already be part of your Main Menu.  If you added Workspaces to an existing site, add a link in your site that accesses the Workspaces Listing Page at the following URL:

 

{siteURL}/pages/workspaces.aspx

 

Setting Permissions on the “Create A New Workspace” Button

If you want to control who has access to create a new workspace, the “Create A New Workspace” button on the listing page can be controlled using a SharePoint Group.  To enable, use the following steps:

1. Create the SharePoint Group that you want to use to control the permissions.  Add members to the group as needed
2. In the “DigispaceConfigurationIDS_AK” list, add a new item with the following Title and Value which will cause the SharePoint group to be read into the site:

• • Title: LOADER_STEPS_ENABLE_FETCHSPGROUPS
  • Value: True

3. Set the name of the SharePoint permission group in the listing widget

• • Access the widget edit view on the Workspaces Listing page and click on the listing widget that contains the Create A New Workspace Button
  • In the widget properties edit modal, set the name of the SharePoint Group that you created to controls the permissions, then click Update.  The button will now appear ONLY for users in the designated SharePoint group.

Installing Workspaces when Office 365 Group Creation is Restricted

When you create an Akumina Workspace, you are provisioning an Office 365 Group with its associated components: Outlook (for Conversations and Milestones), Planner (for Tasks) and SharePoint (for Documents).  That is why the O365 Group creation capability (which leverages the GraphAPI functionality) must be enabled for users to be able to create Akumina Workspaces.  There are some cases, however, where the permissions policy for the company has been setup to prevent some or all users from provisioning Office 365 Groups.  Akumina Workspaces can still be used in this mode, but requires additional setup to do so.

Tip: For more information on controlling permissions to create Office Groups, see the Microsoft documentation "Manage who can create Office 365 Groups"

Note: This capability is only available beginning with the 4.0.1712.1100 release.

 

Akumina Workspaces can be configured to allow the GraphAPP application that is connected to the site to create the required O365 Group on behalf of the user.  The user is still added as the Owner of the Workspace, but does not have to be directly permissioned for O365 Group Creation.

 

To use this configuration, enable the following key in the interchange.settings.config file:

 

<add key="akumina:AddGroupAsApp" value="true"/>

 

In addition, ensure that you have provided the “Subscription ID” value in the “Digital Workplace Core Site” – Update Configuration Settings screen found in the Site Creator Management App.

To maintain governance over who can create Workspaces in this model, you can combine this with the “Create a New Workspace” button permissioning functionality described above.