This section describes the Configuration for Connection used by the Sharepoint Online Connector Seeds.

Step 1. Open the Aspire Admin UI

Browse to the Aspire Admin UI. It is typically located at http://localhost:50505.

Step 2. Select the Connection option from the Left-hand Menu

The “Connection” option, identified by a “connection” image , is located on the left side of the application, between the “Credentials” and “Connector Instances” options. Click on it to navigate to the “Connection” page.

Step 3. Specify Connection Description and Type

Once on the “Connection” page, click on the “+New” option to create a new Connection or select an existing one to modify it.

• Description: specify a description for the Connection. It is advised for it to be concise and meaningful.
  
• Type: select “Sharepoint-online” as the type for the Connection.

Step 4. Specify Connection General information

Once the type has been selected, you will be presented with the “General” section of the “Connection” page. Here, you need to enter the following information for the Connection:

• Server URL: Hostname where SharePoint is located
• Index Containers: if enabled, index the SharePoint Containers.
• Scan recursively: if enabled, scan discovered items recursively.
  
• Use Aspire Snapshots for Incrementals: if enabled, process incremental crawls using Aspire Snapshots instead of SharePoint's Change log.
• Stop Crawl on Scanner Error: if enabled, stops the crawl if an error occurs during the scan phase.

Step 5. Specify Scope (Optional)

The “Scope” section is located between the “General” section and the “Security” section of the “Connection” page. Here, you can specify document inclusions and exclusions, based on the regular expression patterns:

• Exclude using SharePoint “No Crawl” property: if enabled, crawl will exclude sites and lists using SharePoint's NoCrawl property
• Crawl Attachments: if enabled, crawls list item attachments.
• Log the REST Request And Responses (debug mode): Check to add debug log information about the rest requests and their responses.
• Scan excluded items: if enabled, scans excluded container items so documents inside them can be processed.
• Replace content field with CanvasContent1/WikiField content in .aspx items: If selected, the content field of the .aspx items will be filled with the contents of the CanvasContent1/WikiField fields. If CanvasContent1 and WikiField fields are empty, no content will be assigned to the content field.
• Download large files: if enabled, download a file that exceeds the Data Size Threshold to disc instead of leaving the connection open.
• Include patterns: list of regular expressions to match documents to be included in the crawl.
• Exclude patterns: list of regular expressions to match documents to be excluded from the crawl.

Step 6. Specify Security (Optional)

The “Security” section is located between the “Scope” section and the “Network” section of the “Connection” page. Here, you can specify groups prefix separator and use azure group expander

• Groups Prefix separator: Prefix used to separate users and groups on ACL's.
• Lowercase Group Expansion Entries: if enabled, all entries extracted from the cache groups process will be in lower case.
• User/Group request page size: Page size for fetching users and groups
• Use Azure Group Expander: If enabled, Azure AD group will be used when caching groups for expansion

Step 7. Specify Network (Optional)

The “Network” section is located between the “Security” section and the “Delegated Permissions” section of the “Connection” page. Here, you can specify proxy settings, custom HTTP Headers and network settings.

• Use proxy: check if proxy is required for connecting to SharePoint.
• Custom HTTP Headers: Extra HTTP Headers to be included with the request
• Request Retry Count: Number of retries for failed documents.
• Request Retry Sleep: Time to wait in between failed requests.
• Socket Timeout: Time of inactivity to wait for packets to arrive.
• Connection Timeout: Time to wait to establish a connection with the remote host.
• Connection Request Timeout: Time to wait to fetch a connection from the connection pool.
• Idle Connection Timeout: Time to wait to close an idle connection.
• Maximum Connections: Maximum numbers of open connections,
• Maximum Connections Per Route: Maximum numbers of open connections per route.

Step 8. Specify Delegated Permissions (Optional)

The “Delegated Permissions” section is located between the “Network” section and the “Credentials” section of the “Connection” page. Here you can click that allows you to get or update the refresh token in the “Credentials” Page when using Azure Delegated Permission as an authentication method.

Step 9. Specify Credentials

The “Credentials” section is located between the “Delegated Permissions” section and the “Policies” section of the “Connection” page. Here, you have to select a set of previously created SharePoint Online Credentials to be used from the Credentials' combo box.

Step 10. Specify Policies (Optional)

The “Policies” section is the last section, located right below the “Credentials” section of the “Connection” page:

• Throttle Policy: here, you can select a previously created Throttling Policy from the Throttle Policy combo box.
• Route Policy: here you can select a previously created Routing Policy from the Route Policy combo box.
• Delete Policy: here, you can select a previously created Delete Policy from the Delete Policy combo box.

Step 11. Save the Connection

Click on the "Complete" button to save the new Connection (when updating, the button option will read "Save" instead of "Complete").