Reusing A Deleted SharePoint Online Team Site Name

I have deleted a SharePoint Team Site (O365), Now I am trying to create Communications Site with the same URL (name) as the SharePoint Team Site that I deleted. (For example https://sp.sharepoint.com/sites/SPadmin)

 

Site is getting created with the appended name “2” after the site name.

 

This article will replicate the same scenario and fix it step by step.

• Creating a team site from the tenant, go to portal https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal select SharePoint from Admin center.
• Click on active sites and create a new team site as shown in the below screenshot. Follow the steps as given below.

• As soon as you are clicking on the Team Site template, you will be redirected to the page where you need to fill site details and click on create.

• Clicking next will start provisioning the site, which will be ready to use in a few minutes.
• You can check in Active site page that site will be ready to use. See below, site is ready to use

• Now for some reason or business requirement, we need to delete this site. We will perform this deletion of this site from the Admin center or we can go to site information (gearbox, select site info and delete this site) and can delete the same. Now I am proceeding to delete this site from the admin center and recycle bin.

• Once the site is deleted, we will create a new site selecting the same template or other template and see is it allowing us to create with the same name which we just have deleted.
• We can see that it’s not giving the desired name before we create it, see below for more info.

• It’s clear that the deleted site still exists on our tenant, which doesn’t allow us to create a site with the same name.

How to resolve

• We need to use online Powershell to fix the same.
• Open SharePoint Online Management shell, and connect your tenant which does have SA permission
• Once connected, Use Get-SPODeletedsite command see, below, it will result in showing you all the deleted sites.

• We have to remove this site from here as well, to reuse the deleted site name as URL.
• Use Remove-spodeletedsite – identity SiteURL or id see below for more details

 

Now, we will try to create a site with the same name and see how it’s going following the same steps as we did above. Go to admin center > Active Site > create > select Template.

• You can see that the desired name is available now and we can reuse the same.

Send an email to distribution groups in Microsoft Flow

In this article, I will be demonstrating how to send an email to Distribution List/Group in MS flow.

It’s been a very common ask from end-users that can we send email from DL using MS flow. What I found sending out email using flow creating bit confusion when we talk about sending notification, email or announcing from MS flow.

Recently, I observed that we got many requests enquiring on email set up to automate your work. As we all know MS flow is replacing SharePoint Designer gradually and it is expected from this product to work like SPD. I got a request where users wanted to send an email via Flow to all the members of a given SharePoint Security Group.

First of all, I would like to summaries you about Office 365 groups vs distribution lists

In simple word, we can explain the difference between Office 365 groups and distribution lists that Office 365 groups are distribution lists plus more/advance features from the distribution group.

Distribution list: This Enables users to send emails to all members of a group with some limitation like it can not be shared, access type is not available, Document library is missing as it’s was coming from the exchange, and last but important can not be restored once deleted.

Where in Office 365 Group, All the features of DL is available plus it has other enhanced feature while DL does not have. The most important reason to use Office 365 groups is enhancing collaboration. While distribution lists have the same purpose, Office 365 Groups go a few steps further.

Hope, we are clear with Distribution list and Office 365 group. As we all in-migration stage from On-premises to online. Local DL allow us to convert to Office365 group without data loss or hampering end users.

Let’s start with How to send an email to distribution list/Group in MS flow. Following below steps by steps with screenshots will achieve the same.

· Login to MS flow and create new instant from blank.

 

· As soon as you are selecting the above highlighted, you will get an intro page of MS flow, you can select options from given and decide the name of WF. Also, you can click on skip and change name later

· In my case, skip the intro and selected Sharepoint on down the page, see the below images and details

         - Select SharePoint, therefore select item created or modified under action by targeting SP sites and List.

         - Once done, click on new actions and select office 365 outlook and select send an email (v2)

 

 

· Now, it will prompt to update the required filed like to address, subject, body and other details which are available in advanced option (attachment and other references)

· In to address, copy your DL email address, under subject field you can define what message you wanted to pass for end-users

· Under body form, you can pass simple or advance message for end-user. There are options available under MS flow actions or can be used for simple HTML page.

 

 

· Later making all the changes, click on the save option.

· Now, create any one item or modified the existing item which you targeted in the SharePoint option.

· While creating items, you can just pass the required detail and click on create.

Note: this action needs to be done on a SharePoint list, hence kindly browse through the site for testing. Also, the flow will be an application to all the users who do have access to modify or create an item to the SPO list.

We can see that emails are getting triggered to all the users who all are the members of the mentioned DL.

Open the outlook for anyone users who is a member of this DL and can be verified that this action is working as expected. See below email for more details.

 

 

In this article, we experienced about, how to send email from DL in SharePoint using MS flow. Following the same steps, we can perform for Office 365 Groups as well. No changes required.