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Jan
25
Published: January 25, 2012 16:01 PM by
Nancy Brown
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What's a concurrency conflict? Picture this: Zach fires up a WPF application that does CRUD operations on a SharePoint List, the app loads a bunch of List Items, then Zach pauses to answer the phone. Two seconds later, Rebekah browses to that same SharePoint List, and updates Item 3. Zach gets off the phone, updates the same item in the same list, and clicks the Save button. (There was a little office miscommunication.) The WPF app detects a concurrency conflict - the item it is trying to update has changed since the app read it from the server.
How are these concurrent updates handled? Typically there are two kinds of concurrency options: pessimistic and optimistic. Pessimistic concurrency involves locking the entity being updated, so that nothing else can change it until after the current update operation finishes. Optimistic concurrency does not lock the entity being updated, so it is possible that the entity on the server changed in the time between reading it from the server's data source and attempting the update, resulting in a concurrency conflict.
SharePoint REST supports optimistic concurrency, and monitors concurrency conflicts by ETags, which are sort of like version numbers. (ETags, or Entity Tags, are part of the HTTP protocol: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec3.html#sec3.11) When the ETag in a WPF application (or Windows Forms or Silverlight or …) does not match the ETag in the REST service, that's a concurrency conflict. Sometimes changes should be pushed through, even if such conflicts exist. In SharePoint REST, there are at least a couple of different persist-in-spite-of-concurrency-conflicts scenarios that might occur.
The first scenario occurs when there are detached entities- entities that are not part of a Data Context collection- the client ETag can be set to * with an overload of the Data Context AttachTo method. The REST service will interpret the * ETag from the client as a "we don't care about any concurrency conflicts" message, and do the update. Detached entities typically occur when there is no query filling the collection. Instead, perhaps a list of known IDs is passed to some method, and it creates entities for existing List Items, then attaches them to a Data Context collection for updating purposes. That could look something like this for a SharePoint List called ProjectMembers:
OperationsDataContext ctx = new OperationsDataContext(
new Uri("http://intranet/operations/_vti_bin/ListData.svc"));
ctx.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
ProjectMembersItem pmi = ProjectMembersItem.CreateProjectMembersItem(10);
pmi.ProjectID = 4;
// Set various properties...
ctx.MergeOption = MergeOption.OverwriteChanges;
ctx.AttachTo("ProjectMembers", pmi, "*");
ctx.UpdateObject(pmi);
try
{
ctx.SaveChanges();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// network conditions, server availability...
}
The Data Context's MergeOption setting determines what happens when the SaveChanges method is called. Merge option OverwriteChanges causes all current values in the client collection, (ProjectMembers in this example), to be overwritten with fresh data from the REST service, effectively syncing what's already in the local collection with the data source. This overload of the AttachTo method adds a detached entity to the Data Context collection, and sets the ETag value. Since the Data Context was not tracking this entity before, (but it is now), UpdateObject is called to explicitly set the freshly attached entity's state to Modified.
Note that the DataContext method AttachTo is used for existing entities, which can be modified or deleted. In the proxy classes created by adding a service reference, there are methods with the naming convention AddToListName, like AddToProjectMembers for the ProjectMembers List. These methods are wrappers for the Data Context's AddObject method, which creates a brand new entity in the Data Context collection, ready to be inserted in the data source.
The second scenario involves a Data Context collection that has been filled by a query. In that case, persisting updates in spite of concurrency conflicts looks a bit different. Consider this demo WPF application, which updates a SharePoint List called Members; just a DataGrid, a button, and a TextBlock.
Here's the initial load code, with the query using a view projection to grab just two columns for updating purposes:
OperationsDataContext ctx = null;
IQueryable<MembersItem> query = null;
DataServiceCollection<MembersItem> members = null;
public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
ctx = new OperationsDataContext(new Uri("http://intranet/operations/_vti_bin/ListData.svc"));
ctx.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
query = from m in ctx.Members
select new MembersItem
{
MemberName = m.MemberName,
LoginName = m.LoginName
};
members = new DataServiceCollection<MembersItem>(query);
dataGrid1.ItemsSource = members;
}
When this first loads, the Data Context begins tracking all the entities loaded by the query, which means they have ETags already, they are already attached to the collection, and their state is Unchanged. Since the Data Context collection provides change tracking, the entity state for each item will be automatically updated to Modified, Deleted, or Added as the business user makes changes in the WPF application. In order for any of these updates to be applied by the SharePoint REST Service, the ETags in this local collection have to match the ETags in the service.
When a concurrency conflict occurs in this situation, it is possible to reload the local collection from the REST service, updating the ETags, but preserving the changes that were made in the client, so the ETags in the client collection match the service ETags, and the update can be tried again. Unless another concurrency conflict occurs, (not likely, but possible), a second call to SaveChanges() after that reload will probably push all changes through, except for Delete operations on already-deleted entities. If that WPF app attempts to delete an entity, but somebody else already deleted it on the server, the delete operation can fail on both first and second attempts, leaving the deleted entity hanging around in the local collection. So, after a second attempt to push through updates, it may be reasonable to just refresh the local collection.
The Data Context's MergeOption controls how queries load the local collection, as well as how SaveChanges updates that local collection. It is set to a value in the enumeration System.Data.Services.Client.MergeOption: AppendOnly, PreserveChanges, OverwriteChanges, NoTracking. The Save Changes and Refresh button code from the WPF app demonstrates this:
private void saveButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
try
{
// If all updates complete successfully, a response object will be returned
DataServiceResponse response = ctx.SaveChanges(SaveChangesOptions.ContinueOnError);
this.textBlock1.Text = "Update successful!";
}
catch (DataServiceRequestException dse)
{
// If any update fails, the response object can be found
// as a property of the DataServiceRequestException
foreach (ChangeOperationResponse cor in dse.Response)
{
// if details are needed, process each ChangeOperationResponse
}
// Try to persist updates, ignoring concurrency conflicts
// Execute query again, getting fresh data from OData service,
// preserving any uncommitted changes in the local collection (members),
// and refreshing ETags
ctx.MergeOption = MergeOption.PreserveChanges;
members = new DataServiceCollection<MembersItem>(query);
this.dataGrid1.ItemsSource = members;
try
{
DataServiceResponse response = ctx.SaveChanges(SaveChangesOptions.ContinueOnError);
this.textBlock1.Text = "All updates persisted";
}
catch (DataServiceRequestException dse2)
{
// It is unlikely, but possible, that more concurrency conflicts occurred.
// However, an attempt to delete a List Item that is already deleted
// in SharePoint will create the DataServiceRequestException - but isn't
// really an issue, since the end result (deletion) is the same.
this.textBlock1.Text = "Some updates may not have been persisted";
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Other issues may cause errors - server availability, network
this.textBlock1.Text = "Unable to persist all updates. Error=\"" +
ex.Message + "\"";
}
// Refresh local collection
// Execute query again, getting fresh data from OData service,
// overwrite any lingering uncommitted changes in the DataGrid
ctx.MergeOption = MergeOption.OverwriteChanges;
members = new DataServiceCollection<MembersItem>(query);
this.dataGrid1.ItemsSource = members;
// Set Merge Options back to default
ctx.MergeOption = MergeOption.AppendOnly;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Other issues may cause errors - server availability, network
this.textBlock1.Text = "Unable to persist all updates. Error=\"" +
ex.Message + "\"";
}
}
Another enumeration, SaveChangesOptions, can be used to tell the REST service whether to stop on the first error - that's the default, SaveChangesOptions.None - or to try all change operations in spite of errors, as in the code above, (SaveChangesOptions.ContinueOnError), or send the changes as a single batch, or use the PUT verb for updates. (MERGE is used by default.) If details of each change operation are needed, the DataServiceResponse object can be inspected. This is returned by the SaveChanges() method if all goes well, or found on the DataServiceRequestException exception if not. If it is needful to sort out which changes failed, any entity in the DataServiceResponse object with a state other than Unchanged denotes a failed operation.
To see what happens in these exchanges, it can be helpful to check things out in the QuickWatch window. Set a break point and drill down into the Data Context object like this:
Another way to see what's happening is Fiddler2, a free and wonderful tool for web debugging ( http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/). In this screenshot, a successful update by the WPF app can be seen, with before (W/"12") and after (W/"13") ETags visible. When an update operations succeeds, the HTTP response is 204 No Content.
Happy RESTful coding! |
Jan
23
Published: January 23, 2012 10:01 AM by
Mike Walsh
When I was working in a company that had Microsoft Premium Support, I used to get extremely annoyed with the first reply I got from the Nordic support centre in Stockholm because typically I had given all the detail necessary and that reply very rarely asked me anything at all useful for solving the problem.
When I was later on a Nordic MVP tour of the MS Nordic Support Centre, I found out that one of the two criteria on which the boss of the support people was measured on was the quickness of that reply (the other was the speed in which a problem was "solved" which was why they spent half their time asking their customers if they could close the thread). Needless to say in a world run by meaningless statistics it didn't actually matter that the first reply was meaningless, the only important thing was that it came quickly.
The cheap man's version of Premium Support is the TechNet (and MSDN) Subscriber Support program. Now I've already mentioned in a recent blog that whereas one web page from that program offers a guaranteed reply within 48 hours, another web page says this guaranteed reply will come from an MVP or a peer - neither of which Microsoft can possibly guarantee.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the TechNet support threads are beginning to feel more and more like my old Premium Support ones.
Because, you see, lately I've been seeing a mass of threads with a question and then a reply (often between 24 and 48 hours after that question) from a TechNet Subscriber Support person (you can tell from the sig they use). The text of that "reply" is invariably
Hello,
Thank you for your post.
This is a quick note to let you know that we are performing research on this issue.
Thanks,
I guess their managers too have been given "a reply" within 48 hours as one of their success criteria ...
Jan
21
Published: January 21, 2012 08:01 AM by
Bill English
As I write this post, I'm flying to Austin, Texas for the SharePoint Saturday event in the middle of January. I always like it when the southern cities hold events at which I can speak – it gets me out of the frozen Minnesota tundra for a few hours. All things being equal, I prefer warm weather over cold. But I still enjoy living in Minnesota because I know that in time, the weather will warm up and it will be summer again. I can't think of a better place on the planet to have summer than Minnesota.
The SharePoint market is also heating up as the ECM market finds itself in the midst of significant change. The traditional leaders in the ECM space – IBM, EMC, OpenText and Oracle – are facing shifts in a traditional, paper-based, stable market. As companies continue to move to electronic platforms for long-term storage of information that exists in an increasingly variety of formats, the paper-based methods of managing information are transitioning to a wider variety of rules and methodologies based on specific format needs. Organizations are increasingly implementing specific content-related applications that extend the traditional ECM suite of services, such as workflow, collaboration, search and built-in security tools (The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Content Management, Q4 2011).
For over 30% of SharePoint adoptees, SharePoint represents their first ECM deployment. Many have reported that their 2007 deployment was disappointing and that their 2010 deployment is a "do-over". What many don't understand is that successful ECM implementations don't start with selecting the right ECM vendor and product. Instead, it depends on an organization's strong understanding of their content and how that content should define the characteristics needed to effectively manage said content. From that point, business requirements can be developed with a view to selecting a software platform for that content type. Content assessment is foundational to a successful ECM deployment.
Content management features are usually adopted in a serial (as opposed to parallel) fashion. This means that content mapping and vendor selection should be conducted independently. For example, I recently spoke at a chapter ARMA meeting on the East coast. When I showed them what SharePoint allows the site collection administrator to do in terms of record declaration, they just sat there shaking their heads. They were stunned. One guy said "You don't edit a record. You just don't do that." It is interesting to note that Forrester's report (SharePoint Adoption: Content and Collaboration is Just the Start) shows that of the major features deployed with SharePoint by Microsoft customers, records management didn't even make the list. This supports the Forrester report cited above: the characteristics of the content should drive the management requirements for the content and in turn, that drives the platform selection.
A major characteristic that is swiftly driving manage platform choices is compliance. Coupled with regulatory factors, compliance issues drive a number of purchase decisions. No longer does the one-size-fits-all ECM suite hold sway for most CIOs. Instead, aligning their enterprise application architecture for compliance, greater ROI and organizational impact, CIOs are finding themselves integrating business and strategic issues with ECM technologies in ways that force them to spend most of their time finding buy-in for innovative (disruptive?) plans and new technologies while paying attention to reducing IT costs, leveraging automation to lower costs and mitigating enterprise risks. SharePoint's "ECM for the masses" provides many CIOs a low-cost way to get much of what they need as the management of information becomes more socialized in a diverse workforce. But that sword cuts both ways: compliance and socialization are often clash-points between usability and risk management. Moreover, CIOs universally acknowledge that some of their most important objectives too often seem to clash: How can we support the introduction of new services while avoiding the disruption of existing services? How can I reduce costs while improving services? How will I balance the need to influence business strategy with the need to provide top-notch IT support? While they are not magicians, they are certainly jugglers and their work is both highly visible and highly core to the success of the organization.
So, how does an education company like Mindsharp thrive in a complex, maturing market like this? How do we add value through education? I'd like to suggest that we accomplish this in several key ways:
- We develop education that teaches the masses who are managing information how to solve their business problems using SharePoint. But we don't start with the technology – we start with the business problem, discuss how to resolve that business problem and then go on to discuss how we implement that resolution in SharePoint.
- We openly acknowledge the weaknesses of SharePoint without bashing the product overall or Microsoft itself
- We focus on maturing integrative skills at the desktop such as security management, the organization of information or the surfacing of critical data that drives better decision-making or learning how to filter and visualize information using Excel or Visio.
- When possible, we integrate into our education pragmatic ways to resolve the thorny problems described above.
Mindsharp has been known as a "SharePoint training company" – and with good reason, since this is our pedigree. But we are moving out into the business side of technology by providing integrative education that bridges the gaps between technology and business. Our education is increasingly focused on providing real-world solutions through both knowledge and skill development while continuing to be a leader in the SharePoint community.
Our vision – to be a strategic partner with our customers, helping them realize they can do more than they thought possible through the people and software they already have – cannot be realized if we don't address the business issues that give rise to the use of technology in the first place. This is why, by the summer of this year, you'll be able to sit through an entire track of education that is written for the non-technical, non-IT, information worker. We personify this person as hard-working, focused on their area of expertise, not focused on "cool" technology and yet needing to use technology to get their work done. It is these folks for whom we are writing our courses. Our Dashboards and Business Intelligence course is in beta right now. I hope we're able to release our Organizing Information in SharePoint course in February. And we have other courses on the docket, such as building an intranet in SharePoint, managing projects using SharePoint and collaborating with remote team members who rarely synchronize their watches.
Stay tuned. We're just now warming up. Summer will soon be here.
Bill English, CEO
Mindsharp
Jan
16
Published: January 16, 2012 16:01 PM by
Tamara Bredemus
Connect Web Parts on a Page
· I have a list of tasks.
· Some tasks, but not all tasks have supporting documentation.
· The supporting documentation requires versioning.
· A lookup column in the document library is used to create a relationship between the document and the task.
Assumptions:
Tasks list, Shared Documents library with lookup column to Task list Title column.
Create a Web Part Page
1. Site Actions > More Options. (Do not select New Page. This will create a Wiki page and web parts cannot be connected on a wiki page)
2. Under Filter By: select Pages.
3. Select Web Part Page and click Create.
4. In the Name input box, type TaskDocs.
5. From the Layout drop-down select Header, Right Column, Body.
6. From the Save Location drop-down select Site Pages.
Add List Web Parts
1. On your new Web Part Page in the Body Web Part Zone, click Add a Web Part.
2. If the Lists and Libraries Category is not selected, click on Lists and Libraries.
3. From the Web Part area, click on Tasks.
4. Click the Add button.
5. In the Right Column Web Part Zone, click on Add a Web Part.
6. If the Lists and Libraries Category is not selected, click on Lists and Libraries.
7. From the Web Part area, click on Shared Documents.
Connect Web Parts
1. On the Tasks Web Part, click the Tasks Web Part Menu drop-down.
2. From the drop-down, select Connections.
3. From the Connections drop-down, select Send Row of Data to.
4. Select Shared Documents.
5. From the Choose Connection – Webpage Dialog box, leave Connection Type set to Get Filter Values From.
6. Click the Configure button.
7. In the Configure Connections – Webpage Dialog box in the Provider Field Name drop-down select Title. You’ve just selected the Title column from the Tasks list.
8. In the Configure Connections – Webpage Dialog box in the Consumer Field Name drop-down select Tasks. You’ve just selected the Tasks lookup column from the Shared Documents library.
9. Click Finish.
Do Not Send First Row of Data
1. On the Tasks Web Part, click the Tasks Web Part Menu drop-down.
2. From the Tasks Web Part Menu drop-down select Edit Web Part.
3. In the Web Part Tools Pane at the right of your screen, expand Miscellaneous by clicking on the + sign.
4. Deselect Send first row to connected Web Parts when page loads.
5. Click the OK button.
Congratulations!
You have just created a page that allows your users to find all documents associated with a task. All your users have to do is click on the two-way arrow next to the task and the documents will appear on the right side of the screen.
For Extra Credit
Add a Content Editor Web Part from the Media and Content Category to the Header Web Part Zone with instruction so your users know how the system works.
Jan
13
Published: January 13, 2012 13:01 PM by
Penny Coventry
Well, 2012 is looking like a very busy year. I am lucky to have been accepted to speak at four conferences in the next few months:
- 3rd Annual Australian SharePoint Conference, 20th - 21st March 2012 at Hilton Park, Melbourne, Australia
- 4th Annual New Zealand SharePoint Conference, 28th - 29th March 2012 at The Langham Hotel, Auckland, NZ
- The International SharePoint Conference, 23rd - 25th April 2012, QEII Conference Centre, London, UK
- SharePoint Summit, 14th - 16th May 2012, The Fairmont Royal York, Toronto, Canada
I'll be speaking on a variety of topics: Fiddler, SharePoint Online (Office365), Ribbon Customization, branding and workflows.
Oh! and did I mention that I'm writing another book (my husband's words were: you are kidding aren't you?). This time it's on Business Connectivity Services and my co-authors are Brett Lonsdale - @brettlonsdale and Phill Duffy - @phillduffy. It should be out in June 2012 - ready for the North America and European TechEd conferences.
Jan
12
Published: January 12, 2012 05:01 AM by
Timothy Calunod
As a start of a new year of blog posts and informational sharing, I will begin a new aspect of my posts I will call Word Problems, which will focus on one-off issues, concerns, questions or challenges I have encountered related to SharePoint. At this point the plan is to slip these in between my more serial posts, but as they say, even the best laid plans and whatnot…
A very recent question that was brought up was related to the availability of terms from the Managed Metadata Service to its subscribers, in particular, what terms from the Managed Metadata Service are available for a user to see. For example, if Zoe is only allowed to see certain terms from a Managed Metadata Service, how can the Site Owner or SharePoint Administrator restrict his viewing and using of such terms? This is the gist of the scenario, but not the complete description, as we need more information before we can proceed.
Terms Management Overview
To understand the scenario a bit better, a quick review of how Terms are stored and managed is necessary. I have previously discussed this with a bit more depth in my discussion about Choice Term Sets, but to keep in focus for this discussion, we will review this at a very simple level.
Managed Terms are stored in the MMS (Managed Metadata Service Application) and are organized at two levels: Term Groups, which provide a layer of management security, and Term Sets, which organize a group of terms into a hierarchy. The Term Groups are necessary to have Term Sets, and will define who can control the editing of any Term Sets in that Group. The Term Sets only define the hierarchy of terms, including the root term of the grouping, but can be used to open a set of terms for editing if necessary. This latter part is important for allowing users to define a managed set.
The entire scenario looks like this: There are two Term Groups, Marketing and Sales. The Metadata in Marketing should be restricted to only users of the Marketing Term Group, and thus should not be seen or accessed by the users of the Sales Term Group. Now, if Zoe is setting up a a local Site Content Type in the Sales Site Collection, and she applies a new Managed Metadata Column to the Site Content Type, when she goes to select which Term Set to use for the column, can she see and use the Term Sets from both the Marketing Term Group and the Sales Term Group? And, depending on the answer, how can we control this, if it is possible?
Terms Availability Basics
According to this Technet Article about planning for Terms and Term Sets, specifically when planning for Term Groups, when separating Term Sets for visibility purposes, a Term Store Manager should create different Term Groups and create the specific Term Sets into the proper groups. However, when we do this, such as creating a Marketing and Sales Term Groups, we find that a Site Owner can create a Managed Metadata Column using either of the Term Sets from either Term Group:
 
Thus we see that Zoe can still access the Marketing Term Group and associated Term Sets despite the separation of Term Groups. This is not unexpected, but as limiting as it could be. There are several possible solutions that can help to control both management and visibility, and each one requires some consideration when planning to implement them.
It is important to remember that all users are provided the ability to apply or tag metadata through the Managed Metadata Column if they have Edit access to a List or Library, so visibility and access can begin with simply ensuring that the Site Owner creating a Managed Metadata Column only select the Term Set or Term they wish to be applied to a List or Library. This will prevent suggestions from other Term Sets automatically.
Solution #1 – Separate Term Stores
The most obvious conclusion for a SharePoint Administrator when deciding on how to separate Term Sets from availability is to create multiple Term Stores (via MMS) and thus limiting which Web Application will subscribe from the proper Term Store. In application, this would mean that two Managed Metadata Service Applications, such as MMS-Marketing and MMS-Sales would need to be created, and two Web Applications, such as Marketing and Sales, would also need to be created and associated with the correct MMS. In this case, the Marketing Web Application could be associated with both MMS Applications while the Sales Web Application would only be associated with the Sales MMS. The major limitation is in the architecture, as this would complicate matters tremendously and would not scale well at all. And while this can have application in some scenarios, in a single Web Application, single MMS, this would not apply.
Solution #2 – Local Term Sets
When working with Term Sets, a SharePoint Administrator will work with Global Term Sets, which are Term Sets that are made available to all associated Web Applications. A Local Term Set is a Site Collection-bound Term Set, in that it is created from the Site Collection and only visible and available to that Site Collection. A Local Term Set is generated when a Managed Metadata Column is created; instead of applying an available Term Set from the associated Term Store, the Site Owner can customize options by creating their own Term Set. This in effect will create a specialized Term Group for that Site Collection and will automatically limit visibility of that Term Set to prevent others from viewing that content.
When generating a new Managed Metadata Column, the name of the column automatically becomes the name of the Term Set, logically associating the new Term Set with the column. Once a Local Term Set is generated, it can be managed and accessed like any other Term Set in the Term Store for any other Managed Metadata Column, but only for that Site Collection. The Term Group will be named after the URL of the Site Collection with a Site Collection label as a prefix, but this can be changed as well.
 
In order for this to work, two important configuration on the MMS must be set: first, the MMS must be set to be the default location for column-specific sets, as configured on the Proxy Service Connection properties of the MMS, and second, there can only be one default store for one MMS associated with one Web Applications, similarly to how Enterprise Keywords are associated with one MMS to one Web Application. In fact, the Local Term Sets appear beneath the System Terms (where the Enterprise Keywords and Orphaned Terms are stored) in a similar fashion.
Thus we find an effective method for creating secured Term Sets per Site Collection, and thus limiting other Site Collections from seeing and accessing these terms. Additionally, these Terms and Term Sets can be copied, moved and reused like other terms, although the Term Store Manager cannot access them except through the Site Collection Term Store Management Tool directly.
Our only issue now is that if we have users in the same Site Collection, we cannot limit the visibility of specific Term Sets using this method, as the Local Term Sets are still available throughout the Site Collection as the Global Term Sets are.
Solution #3 – Unavailable for Tagging
Another possible solution, with limited application, can be configured using the Term Set configuration for Tagging. By default, all terms in a Term Set are available to be applied or tagged to items in List and Libraries as needed, but this can be changed either at the Term Set level or at an individual Term level by the Available for Tagging checkbox. By deselecting this checkbox, a Term or entire Term Set will be unavailable for choice in a Managed Metadata Column and thus cannot be applied at all. This can be useful if certain terms should be completely managed by a limited body but not available to the general public.
 
To further limit access to restricted terms, a Local Term Set could be generated first, and then a specific Term Set could be marked as unavailable for tagging as well, to create, at least at this point, the most granular level of visibility limitation we can configure at this point.
The major limitation is that the Term or Term Set must be toggled to make it available to be applied and then retoggled to remove its availability for tagging. Thus a very limited application would ensue, one that would require some, if not significant, administrative overhead to manage.
Observation
Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010 can be quite fantastic, but there are still many interesting limitations and shortcomings that may need to be addressed before it can be flexible enough for a complete metadata management system. However, even at this stage, using Local Term Stores and possibly even using Tagging limitations can provide a degree of control expected in an organization's metadata management governance. Until then, some careful or thoughtful (or both) planning should be made when determining how to apply term availability through Term Sets.
Thank you for joining me in this interesting challenge, and we will examine another Word Problem in a future post.
Stay Tuned!
Jan
11
Published: January 11, 2012 09:01 AM by
Bill English
I have not read a better, more succinct explanation and assessment of our current economic environment. Richard Fisher is top drawer in my book. I especially like this paragraph:
"I maintain that no matter how much cash you have on your balance sheet, or how compliant your banker might be, or how cheap the cost of money, you will not commit substantial capital to expanding your payroll or investing significant amounts to expand plant and equipment until you know what it will cost you to run your business; until you know how much you will be taxed; until you know how federal spending will impact your customer base; until you know the cost of employee health insurance; until you are reassured that regulations that affect your business will be structured so as to incentivize rather than discourage expansion; until you have concrete assurance that the fiscal "fix" the nation so desperately needs will be crafted to stimulate the economy rather than depress it and incentivize job creation rather than discourage it; or until you are reassured that the sinkhole of unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security that Republican- and Democrat-led congresses and presidents alike have dug will be repaired so that our successor generations of Americans will prosper rather than drown in dark, deep waters of debt."
Rarely do I laugh out loud when reading a white paper or a speech, but this comment got me laughing pretty good because it seems that so many economists do speak in technical terms:
"My colleague Sarah Bloom Raskin—one of the newest Fed governors, and a woman possessed with a disarming ability to speak in non-quadratic-equation English…{emphasis mine, on the part I found funny}"
I encourage everyone to read this speech.
Bill English, CEO
Mindsharp
Jan
04
Published: January 04, 2012 13:01 PM by
Kay F. McClure
Happy New Year 2012 !!!!
I hope all of you had a fantastic holiday season … so – what’s new with me?
Well – in addition to being the Product Manager for Business User Products here at Mindsharp, as well as the primary instructor for that course, I am now teaching InfoPath Designer 2010 (two teaches under my belt so far with more on the schedule). Teaching a new class is always an interesting challenge for an instructor as we need to trust our instincts and knowledge and not let any inner insecurities pull us down (which students don’t typically ever see as we don’t let them show)!
In December, I hosted a webinar here at Mindsharp where I discussed SharePoint Training Best Practices. It received some pretty good reviews, so I thought I would also write a blog post series about this topic since my post audience may be different than my webinar audience.
One of the most important things that you can do to gain success (in addition to overall planning for your SharePoint implementation) is a solid training plan. What does that mean?
Let me break it down to a more manageable focus. At the very least, your organization needs to look at and for the following:
• Look for a training company with a solid, repeatable training curriculum
• Take a good, hard look at the training company’s reputation in the industry
• Make sure the company is willing to customize to your requirements
• Ask the right questions to get the training you REALLY need (sometimes it’s not exactly what you THINK you need).
• Get recommendations
• Attend conferences and other SharePoint events
• Look for great instructors
– Get their bio
– Be able to conference with them ahead of the teach
– See if they’re willing to conference with the proposed class ahead of the teach
• Make sure the class offers lots of hands-on lab time
While this is just a start – it’s a good start. Please look for the continuation of this topic over the next couple of weeks … be safe and happy!
Kay McClure
Dec
04
Published: December 04, 2011 23:12 PM by
Brian Alderman
Data redundancy provides you the capability to recover your SharePoint data quickly and without any data loss. There are several ways to provide data redundancy to assist in business continuity; SQL Server clustering, database mirroring, and SQL Server log shipping are just a few of these ways that are managed by the DBA’s in your SQL Server environment.
Log shipping not only provides data redundancy, but also provides entire server redundancy being an entire server (usually referred to as the secondary server) is hosting a duplicate copy of your SharePoint database content and all the SQL Server configuration settings. This can be helpful if you need to quickly failover to this secondary server in the event your primary server fails. This server can also be used to perform DBCC (Database Console Commands) to verify the integrity of your SharePoint database content so it doesn’t just sit their idle waiting for a failure to occur.
To configure log shipping you stand-up a second server that mirrors the configuration of your primary SQL Server and then create automatic shipment of transaction logs from the primary server to the secondary server. You can use the following steps to configure SQL Server log shipping of your SharePoint content databases:
1. Go to secondary SQL Server (we’ll call it SQLBackup) and create a folder called LogShipping and share it as LogShipping
2. On the primary SQL Server (we’ll call it SQLPrimary), open SQL Management Studio, and add the SharePoint farm account to the security logins and map the user as a dbo of each SharePoint content database.
3. Make sure the SQL Server Agent is started and configured to automatically start on both the SQLPrimary and SQLBackup Servers.
4. On SQLPrimary locate and right-click on the SharePoint content database and click Properties.
5. Select Transaction Log Shipping, and then select Enable this as a Primary database in a log shipping configuration.
6. Click Backup Settings and use \\SQLPrimary\LogShippng and c:\LogShipping
7. Change Schedule to 5 minutes, and then click OK.
8. In the Secondary Database section, click Add and then click Connect and connect to SQLBackup. Ensure your SharePoint content database is selected as the database for log shipping configuration.
9. Select the option: Yes, generate full backup and create secondary database.
10. Click Restore Options and type c:\LogShipping on both fields.
11. On the Copy Files tab use \\sqlBackup\LogShipping, and then change the schedule to 5 minutes
12. On the Restore Transaction Log tab click Standby Mode (read only when restored) and make sure the Disconnect users checkbox is selected or transaction logs will not be applied later. Click OK.
13. Select Script Configuration and choose Script Configuration to clipboard, open Notepad and paste.
14. Click OK, and then click Close after completion.
15. Go to SQLBackup and refresh the databases to see your SharePoint content database exists in standby / read only mode.
16. In the event the SQLPrimary SQL Server fails you can simply modify the SQL Alias to point to the SQLBackup SQL Server so it now responds to all SQL Server requests after the failure of the SQLPrimary server.
Oct
17
Published: October 17, 2011 13:10 PM by
Catherine Sheridan
The UserVersity Course My Sites and Social Media is complete!
The My Sites and Social Media course is the first of the additional courses that UserVersity will release to expand on the Core Curriculum.
This course consists of 8 lessons and runs approximately an hour and a half and is designed to help users connect with others by sharing skills and interests. The following lessons and topics are included in the My Sites and Social Media Course :
· Overview of My Sites:
· Create a My Site and Personalize My Profile
· My Sites and Personalization Sites
· Manage Colleagues and Memberships in My Sites
· Manage My Content
· People Search
· Use Tags, Notes, and “I Like it”
· Work with Social Collaboration Web Parts
This course is not included with the Core Curriculum, and is the first of a planned list of courses covering specific topics and concepts in SharePoint 2010. Please contact your sales rep for more information on the My Sites and Social Media course or any of the planned additional courses.
Oct
15
Published: October 15, 2011 18:10 PM by
Steve Buchanan
Microsoft has released a web based tool that can be used to build PowerShell cmdlets for SharePoint. This is a great tool for those that are new to SharePoint PowerShell or PowerShell in general. It allows you to drag and drop a PowerShell verb and noun into a design surface and then input your specific SharePoint information such as farm, site collection database etc to complete the cmdlet. Once you have the cmdlet designed you can copy it out and can run it on your server.
Microsoft announced this tool At the 2011 SharePoint Conference in Anaheim, CA which I was at. I missed that announcement and learned about this tool from Russ Kaufmann’s blog. Thanks Russ!
Here is a link to more information about PowerShell for SharePoint and this tool:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff603532
Here is a link to the tool itself:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/TechNet/en-us/Office/media/WindowsPowerShell/WindowsPowerShellCommandBuilder.html
Jun
01
Published: June 01, 2011 09:06 AM by
Todd Bleeker
Wednesday, June 1 8:30-5:00: SharePoint 101 The Developer (W-2 in Back Bay A) This session is a day-long overview of development on the SharePoint 2010 platform. Increasingly, organizations are developing SharePoint based solutions. This workshop is designed to give developers basic and intermediate information about how to leverage the SharePoint platform to create enterprise SharePoint applications. Ideally, attendees will already have some SharePoint end user experience, be familiar with Visual Studio, and possess some knowledge of .NET programming language. Thursday, June 2 1:15-2:30: Developer's Intro to Imperative Workflow in SharePoint 2010 (301 in Commonwealth Ballroom) Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Project Items for Workflow, Workflow State (Declarative properties, Imperative properties, Bind to existing property, and Bind to new property), Fault Handling, Start to Stop > Remove to Allow, Creating a SharePoint Task, Stop for Green Activities: OnTaskChanged, Correlation Tokens, Guid.NewGuid() not new Guid(), Property Bags, CodeDOM and Code Conditions, If/Then/Else Activity, While Activity, Send Email Activity, and Association/Initiation Forms. Hold on to your hats for this supercharged introduction to Workflow.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: Intermediate Friday, June 3 10:00-11:15: Creating Custom Service Applications (601 in Back Bay D) SharePoint 2010 includes a new facility for moving intensive processing from the Web Front End servers and onto load-balanced application servers. A Service Application Farm can even be configured to allow other Farms to offload their processes to a centralized and/or dedicated set of application servers. However, with over a dozen moving parts, Service Applications can be quite overwhelming to create. In this session, Todd will simplify the process so that everyone can be successful implementing a Service Application.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: Expert 11:30-12:45: PowerShell - The Power of the Pipe (708 in Back Bay D) Windows, Active Directory, SQL Server, Exchange and now SharePoint use a common administrative environment called PowerShell. This session will cover the constructs of the new language, explore some of its nuances, and demonstrate how to use it to query and manipulate a SharePoint environment. Come see what PowerShell has over a traditional Console Application or VBScript. If there's time, we'll end with details on creating a simple custom PowerShell cmdlet.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: Intermediate <Todd />
Apr
22
Published: April 22, 2011 12:04 PM by
Dave Pileggi
Back story: Sitting with a client, their entire focus for their SharePoint project was geared around the social networking abilities of SharePoint 2010. What I did know, was area got a huge upgrade between 2007 and 2010. I also know how MySites work, how they are configured. I would even go far as to say, I am quite comfortable with setting up Profile Synchronization despite its idiosyncrasies. The SharePoint 2010 proof of concept was up, everything was running smooth, and AD was synchronizing nicely. Lets see how this bad boy works with Office 2010. Then to my stark realization the supposed super cool, outrageously awesome tie in to SharePoint and Outlook information called the Office Social Connector was blank. NOTHING! Its just a flick of the switch, right? Not exactly. I walked into this looking at Office 2010, Outlook 2010 specifically, as a black box that knows what to do.
Wowsers, where’s the info!? The Problem: So here is the problem I encountered. SharePoint and Office do work well with each other, BUT… There is more to the Office Social Connector than meets the eyes. There are more steps involved depending on what you want to display. The problem lies in, there is very little about it in one place. Needed Information: After several days of piecing fragmented information together, the black box began to become more translucent. Let me share with you my findings. This is not going to be a huge developer deep dive of vast proportions to break the code to the Fort Knox of Microsoft Code. This is to try and give to you what I learned in layman’s terms in every day speech. This way you know what is needed to make the Office Social Connector work with your network. Minimally. If your looking to tie it to other sources, such as Facebook, LinkedIn etc. No soup for you. Nothing was in the social connector, not even emails related to that individual. How could that be? What was wrong? What needs to be put in place? Windows Desktop Search. Yeah you heard me correctly. It makes sense when you think about it. My client is still running on a Windows XP image. Windows Desktop Search was not a part of the image. So this is why even this information was not available. Here is where I got found the fragment that pointed me in that direction. “To take advantage of the features that are available with the Outlook Social Connector, you must run Outlook 2010 in Cached Exchange Mode with Windows Desktop Search and have Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 My Site configured for users. In this configuration, local items — such as e-mail messages, meetings, and attachments from the sender — will be included in the communication history. Additionally, with My Site configured you can view the activity feed from the sender’s My Site.” This can be found Determine which features to enable or customize in Outlook 2010. Once I installed Windows Desktop Search and it indexed my machine, as if like magic most everything started up. Sweet! Oh yeah baby! Out of morbid curiosity, I switched over to my laptop which is running Windows 7. I found a pleasant surprise. My information was already showing. Suddenly I remember, Windows Desktop Search is baked into Vista and Windows 7. No wonder why I was just expecting it to work. Certainly good to know. As for the feed updates. not nearly as difficult. Click the big green + Add under any of your pictures and let it rip. Type in the URL to your MySites, then username and password. BAM! There it is. This was not difficult. No worries, there. 
Last thing, seems to be a wall bigger than the Great Wall of China… photos. Why are they not there? We all put our images in our SharePoint profiles. Yeah… Yet, nothing. Grrrrr! It took several days of research and redesigning my Bing (see that Microsoft!  ) searches to get the information I was looking for. When I finally came to the answer I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. I was certainly not expecting it. I knew at the clients many of the executive board want the images populated. I also knew we were going to be in a battle with the AD owners. Let me give you the excerpt from the Blog post the Office team put out there about this very thing that helped me understand what needed to happen. “ I’ll use Active Directory since it will be the most common type of server used. What is the benefit of storing pictures in Active Directory? Well, the new Outlook social connector will pull from what is stored in the thumbnailPhoto attribute so a picture of a sender is visible in email. SharePoint 2010 will sync users pictures directly to the thumbnailPhoto attribute.” Found at SharePoint 2010 Profile Picture Property 101. Now if you are like me you are going to say, what was that? Store the images in AD? Really? I have to say… Really. We tested the theory and sure enough, the images once all the AD servers synchronized. So this is where it gets interesting. How are you going to get the images in there? Well SharePoint can do it! BUT (There always is a big butt with these, isn’t there?) This means the battle with AD team members will have to be picked up again. This time they are going to have to give your LDAP service account even more privileges to make changes in AD. Good times will be had with your governance committee to give solid business reasons as to why you want to increase the permission radius of your LDAP account. Unless you have the trump card, “Because the executives said so.” Everyone has to give their LDAP account Replicate Directory Changes permission. That was a battle to let them understand that without it SharePoint Profile Synchronization would not happen. Here is the excerpt from the TechNet article of what needs to be added. “If you will export property values from SharePoint Server to AD DS, the synchronization account must have Create Child Objects (this object and all descendants) and Write All Properties (this object and all descendants) permissions on the organizational unit (OU) that you are synchronizing with. See Grant Create Child Objects and Write permission for instructions to grant this permission.” Yeah, this is to allow you to change SharePoint from import to export. Solution Had: Once these changes were put in place the Office Social Connector worked like a champ. Lesson learned, SharePoint touches everything. Its no longer the simple plug and play of 2001. (If you could even call that plug and play) I needed to put this out there because I know many of you are looking for the same answers. With them being spread all over the internet, having it in one area, certainly helps.
Mar
25
Published: March 25, 2011 08:03 AM by
Jim Bob Howard
Look! It's a weekend! It's a Saturday! It's a SharePoint Saturday. This time, it's just down the road in San Antonio, home of the Alamo. I am honored to have been asked to give two presentations at #SPSSA on April 2.
SharePoint Saturday is a FREE event for those who want to learn more about SharePoint and how they can use it in their organization. They happen all across the country, and all around the globe. If it hasn't come to your neighborhood yet, it will!
Reserve your seat now!
Come stay all day and hear some terrific speakers from all over. I'm on at 9:20 and 2:20:
Alphabet Soup: Intro to HTML, CSS, XML, XSL, SPD, and jQuery
So you DON'T know HTML. That's OK. In this session, we'll start with the basics to help you find what you're looking for on a SharePoint page. Using SharePoint Designer, we'll take a look under the hood of our pages. Using IE Developer Tools, FireFox's Firebug, and a simple View Source, attendees will come away with a clearer picture of what goes on behind the scenes on a SharePoint page.
SHAREPOINT VERSION: 2007 (much will port to 2010)
Level: 100
Audience: End User, Business User, Soon-to-be Power User
Time: 9:20 AM
Don't forget to sign up!
Extending the Data View Web Part (DVWP)
Based on my popular EndUserSharePoint series and eBook of the same name, I will walk through a real-world solution that combines several take-away concepts that you can incorporate into your own SharePoint customization to extend this powerful webpart to meet your company's or client's needs.
PREREQUISITE: HTML (SharePoint Designer 2007 or 2010 required)
AUDIENCE: Power User, End User, Site Collection Manager
SHAREPOINT VERSION: 2007 (much will port to 2010)
Level: 100-200
Time: 2:20 PM
Many other great speakers are coming in from all over the country. So, be sure to R-S-V-FREE now!
If you come, please introduce yourself. I can't wait to meet you!
Mar
03
Published: March 03, 2011 19:03 PM by
Daniel Galant
There have been many changes and improvements with the release of SharePoint Server 2010 and how it implements a number of features and services. One of those features is the manner in which Themes are created, applied and customized in your SharePoint deployment. While playing with the new theming engine, I came across a number of articles and posts dealing with how to create themes using Office applications, such as PowerPoint and Word. However, there were not many that dealt with the customization of your CSS through the use of the new Theme Comments that SharePoint will leverage in order to apply your theme scheme to your customized Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This article deals with that very topic as I’ll endeavor to guide you through how to create and apply theme comments to your custom CSS so you can indeed leverage Themes in SharePoint 2010. To start off, let’s simply take a look at attaching some custom CSS to a Master Page in order to apply our own styles to the SharePoint site. While there are several methods for attaching a custom style sheet to your Master Page, best practice dictates using the <SharePoint:CssRegistration> link in the <Head> of your Master Page. With SharePoint 2010 now supporting the After property, you can ensure that your custom CSS is applied after SharePoint’s core styles. 
Now we’ll also add a custom header image to the page so that we’ll be able to leverage the RecolorImage token as well later in the article. 
Let’s take a look at the CSS itself. 
Notice the body #s4-ribbonrow setting the background-color as well as the TopHeader class pointing to our custom image. There are no theme comments added to the CSS yet, so the ribbon row color won’t be affected when you apply a theme to this site and no changes will be made to the header. Setting the new master page as our default master for the site will now render the site as in the image below. 
If you then apply a theme to the site what happens? Let’s use the Vantage theme and see what the effect is. 
Notice the changes to the TopLink, QuickLaunch and settings page, but the ribbon row and custom header remained the same. In order for these elements to also be affected by applying a theme, you must add the appropriate theme comments to your custom CSS. In order to leverage theme comments when they are added to your custom CSS, you must first be sure to place your CSS files into the proper location within your site so that SharePoint will actually read them and apply the settings to your pages. For theme comments to be read by SharePoint when you apply a theme, you need to place your custom CSS files in a folder called Themable that you create in the Style Library of your site. This folder does not exist out of the box, nor will it be created magically for you when using custom CSS and theming. The Style Library before: 
The Style Library after creating the Themable folder: 
Once you have created the Themable folder, import your custom CSS files into this location and be sure that your registration links are pointing to these files and not somewhere else in your site. Now to make your styles leverage themes when applied, you need to add the theme comments to your CSS. There are three different tokens that can be leveraged by your CSS, ReplaceFont, ReplaceColor and RecolorImage. I’m not going to go into depth on the effects or properties of these elements here but ReplaceFont will let you change certain font elements to use one of the two available theme fonts, ReplaceColor allows you to substitute any of the 12 theme colors into your styles and RecolorImage will allow you to use any of the 12 theme colors in your images. We’ll see more on this later. Right now we are going to add a comment so that the ribbon row will be effected when you apply a theme to the site. Since we are trying to leverage the theme’s colors to apply to the ribbon row, we’ll use the ReplaceColor token. The syntax for the comment is as follows: /* [ReplaceColor(themeColor:”color”, property:”value”)] */ In the above comment, color represents one of the 12 theme color choices that you want to use to replace the color property of your style such as Dark1 or Accent5. For property you can use either themeShade or themeTint to darken or lighten (respectively) your color choice with a value between 0.0 and 1.0. Be aware that if you are not going to use the property:”value” option, do not include the comma in your comment. Doing so will cause SharePoint to skip your comment and you’ll be trying to figure out why your choices are not being applied. The image below shows the theme comment added to the custom CSS file. 
This line simply tells SharePoint to replace the background-color #abc830 with the themes Dark2 color. You’ll now save your modified CSS and try applying a theme. Once again I used the Vantage theme. The image below shows you the 12 colors defined by this theme. 
The result of applying this theme at this time is the following. 
Alright. So what happened to the ribbon row and the custom header we applied? Here you see the first of several issues you can run into when trying to use theme comments with your custom CSS. The site that I am working with in this example happens to be a publishing site and so the Style Library is under content approval. This means that any changes made to its files need to be published as a major version and approved before they can be properly used. Now while SharePoint seems to read and apply changes made to the CSS styles without having to go through all this, it does not process your theme comments until you have an approved major version of the file. As a matter of fact, as can be seen here, it seems to completely disregard the style altogether. After publishing the file as a major version and approving it let’s apply the theme again. Theme comments are only processed at the time the theme is actually applied to the site. Therefore, any time you make a change to your file you will need to re-apply your theme to see the effect. 
Here you can see that the ribbon row has now picked up the Dark 2 color of your theme, but the header is still the original green color. To change this you need to use the RecolorImage token in the header’s style declaration. The syntax for the RecolorImage token is as follows: /* [RecolorImage(themeColor:”color”, method:”value”)] */ Once again color is the theme color you want to use with your image. Value can have one of three values, Tinting, Blending, or Filing. Tinting uses your theme color for the image colors, Blending mixes your theme color with the original color of the image and Filing completely fills the image shape with your selected color. In the image below you’ll note that I am going to recolor the image using the Accent 2 color and tint the image. 
Again you need to publish and approve the CSS file after making the change and then reapply the Vantage theme. The result is as follows: 
If you choose to use the Blending option it would look like this: 
One point I would like to make here, in my experience the value is case sensitive, Blending will work but blending will not. So you can see that you have several options when it comes to themes and your custom CSS. Take some time and play around with the choices provided by using theme comments and see what effects you can come up with for your sites. I hope this article helps you avoid some of the issues I ran into and gets you smoothly on the theme scheme highway. Till next time….
Nov
11
Published: November 11, 2010 11:11 AM by
Paul Schaeflein
I’m excited to be selected to speak at the European Best Practices Conference! The volcano created a major disappointment last year, but Steve tells me that he has had a talk with the appropriate people to sort that out for this year.  It will be the SharePoint conference to attend in Europe in 2011, with 96 sessions from 69 speakers. No other conference outside Microsoft’s in the US will have this many talented SharePoint speakers in one conference. Plus, there will be the usual social events (SharePint) and a DVD full of recorded video, MP3 and PPT’s sent out after the conference. The conference expects to sell out so booking early is recommended.
Aug
18
Published: August 18, 2010 10:08 AM by
Paul Papanek Stork
Are you an experienced SharePoint or ASP.NET developer? If you are, then ShareSquared is looking for you. Our business is expanding and we are hoping to hire some more highly talented people to join our company. ShareSquared architects and developers are seasoned computer science professionals with a thorough understanding of proper software construction, design patterns and best practices. Our team is comprised of: - Microsoft SharePoint MVP's
- Senior .NET Architects and Developers
- 100% Microsoft Certified Professionals
- Technology leaders in the SharePoint community
- Former Microsoft SharePoint Dev-Team Members
If you would like to work with some of the best of the best than please check out: http://www.sharesquared.com/company/Pages/Careers.aspx and send your resume to careers@sharesquared.com.
Jul
02
Published: July 02, 2010 03:07 AM by
Kathy Hughes
[Long post!]
Two weeks ago, the conference I’d been helping organize came to fruition and was held here in Sydney over two days – 16th and 17th June. The conference has since been referred to by many as one of the best and most successful SharePoint conferences ever held! The conference, in its first year here in Australia, had in excess of 600 attendees, it attracted speakers like Arpan Shah from Microsoft in Redmond, Todd Bleeker from Mindsharp (USA), Michael Noel (USA and author of the upcoming SharePoint Server 2010 Unleashed book by SAMS) and numerous other well known and respected international and national SharePoint experts and speakers. Delegates who attended the event travelled from all around Australia, including Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra.
Debbie Ireland – SharePoint MVP from New Zealand (SPEvents) – was at the helm of organizing the Australian (and New Zealand) event/s – this year also saw the second New Zealand conference, held over in Wellington the week prior to the Australian conference, and which saw a 25% increase in attendance on last year’s conference! Debbie, and her team from New Zealand, did an absolutely outstanding job in organizing the conference, conference logistics and behind the scenes project management – it was a pleasure to meet and work with them – and I look forward to working with them and supporting them in future like endeavours. It was also a pleasure to work alongside the other conference organizers (both Australian and New Zealand), including James Milne (Brisbane), Mark Orange (NZ) and Brendan Law (Melbourne).
We had a fantastic line-up of sponsors – we also received favourable feedback from delegates on our conference sponsors, including the fact that exhibitor stands were easily accessed throughout the conference and session breaks. See the conference sponsors page here: - http://www.sharepointconference.com.au/sponsors.htm. Plus, a huge thank you to those sponsors who provided the prize draw prizes for both Day 1 and Day 2.
So, what made the conference a success? I believe the fact that (1) we (the key organizing team) all worked as a team – with a shared vision - from the outset and throughout the 6-7 month period leading up to the event; (2) we are all SharePoint experts (or SharePoint subject matter experts and actively working with (and in) SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 and related technologies), so we had a good feeling for the market and what people would be interested in, and we carried out market research from the outset; (3) we had a good assortment of topics and allocation of speakers; (4) we included a number of tracks to suit all audiences, including business, technical, Voice of the customer (real-life implementation scenarios) and vendor-specific sessions – this attracted a diverse group of people – many from the same company/ies who saw having the multiple tracks of real benefit - including System admins, developers, designers, business analysts, project managers, CTO’s and CIO’s and other business stakeholders – having such a diversity of tracks and people allowed for cross-pollination and sharing of information all at once!; (5) it was a ‘community focussed’ event and we had the SharePoint community behind us who greatly promoted the event and provided support throughout the two days, with the likes of a User Group Community Booth (the go-to spot for SharePoint questions and post-session follow-up) which was manned by the Australian and New Zealand SharePoint community throughout the entire conference; (6) We had Microsoft’s full support, both as a sponsor and as a community-focussed supporter, from the outset; (7) the venue – the Hilton Hotel – was the perfect venue, in terms of location, rooms and comfort – I constantly heard very positive feedback about the food – FOOD is an important part of any IT event! (8) The sponsor/exhibition area was well laid out and easily accessible to delegates throughout the conference; (9) the Ask the Experts panel – this was a great way of winding up the conference on the final day and we encouraged several international and local speakers to get involved and to include a good cross-section of SharePoint skills – including admin, developer and infrastructure.
This post is by no means the first, or only, post-conference write up. We’ve (the organizers) received numerous congratulatory e-mails and feedback; I’ve included a couple of links below:
Craig Bailey (@craigbailey) – convenor of the popular ‘Sydney Business and Technology user group’ and who attended the conference - provided a great post conference review - http://www.craigbailey.net/australian-sharepoint-conference-review/ (thanks, Craig)
IDM – our media sponsor and partner throughout the conference – also wrote a good post-conference review - http://idm.net.au/article/007910-australia-sharepoint-conference-schedule-return-2011 - interestingly, this article cites the percentage of female conference attendees at 25% - a vast (and welcomed) contrast to that number usually seen at IT events.
Also, a big thank you to Rose Stamell, Microsoft, for organizing the wrap-up networking drinks for MVPs and Speakers at The Hilton – it was a nice way for the conference speakers to reflect on the conference and discuss SharePoint goodness. Plus, a big thank you to Emantra Hosting Solutions (Australia) – and Mark Rhodes – for providing and hosting the main MYSPC SharePoint 2010 site used throughout the conference and provisioning and hosting the individual delegates trial SharePoint (server) 2010 sites.
Well, what about next year’s event? We hear you and planning is already underway for next year’s (2011) Australian SharePoint Conference. Thank you to all those conference attendees who completed the preferred conference location survey during (and post) the conference – even those who cheekily completed the survey multiple times! J At this stage, Sydney is the favoured location. In terms of next year’s conference dates, based on feedback received from this year’s event from Microsoft, sponsors and delegates, next year’s conference looks to be 8th and 9th March, 2011, at The Hilton Hotel. Keep an eye on the conference site – http://www.sharepointconference.com.au for further updates. Now is the time to start planning to attend! Also, if you are interested in attending next year’s New Zealand event, then keep an eye on the New Zealand conference site – http://www.sharepointconference.co.nz – for updates, including dates and location.
If you are interested in speaking at next year’s conference, then initial speaker interested is being captured via http://spevents.co.nz/AUSPC2011/default.aspx - simply visit the site and complete the Speaker Registrations survey by clicking on the link in the left-hand column. Similarly, if you are interested in speaking at next year’s New Zealand SharePoint conference, then visit http://spevents.co.nz/NZSPC2011/default.aspx and complete the Speaker Registrations survey.
Hungry for more SharePoint information now? In terms of other SharePoint events happening between now and next year’s SharePoint conference, here’s a list of some of the events happening here in Australia:
SharePoint Saturdays Australia: Sydney (7th August - http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/sydney); Canberra (18th September - http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/canberra); Melbourne (16th October - http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/melbourne) – they are FREE but you need to visit the registration sites shown in order to register for each event.
SharePoint Saturdays globally (some of these happen as online events!) – see http://www.sharepointsaturday.org for a full listing of SharePoint Saturday locations.
TechEd Australia – will include a number of Office and SharePoint tracks - http://australia.msteched.com/ - up on the Gold Coast again this year (2nd year running at the same location!). Don’t forget about user group registration discounts for TechEd AU - if you are involved in a UG then you should ask your UG leader for further details. Unfortunately, I will not be attending this year’s TechEd due to a number of existing Sydney-based commitments.
Office DevCon, Sydney (will include both Office and SharePoint tracks) – http://www.officedevcon.com.au – FREE plus a two-day weekend event – but you must visit the registration site in order to register for the event so we can properly cater for all for both food and space.
Australian SharePoint user groups – see http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/default.aspx - for a user group location near you. SharePoint user groups are a great place for meeting other SharePoint enthusiasts and experts!
SharePoint MVP online chats hosted by Microsoft – these chat sessions happen on a monthly basis (as of writing this blog post) – see details of the latest chat session - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/06/17/live-chats-to-learn-more-about-sharepoint-with-the-mvp-experts.aspx – and are a great place to ask your SharePoint questions, ranging from administration, development, infrastructure and design.
SharePoint 2010 MSDN forums – a great place for asking (and answering) SharePoint 2010 questions - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/sharepoint2010.
SharePoint 2007 MSDN forums – questions and answers specific to the SharePoint 2007 versions - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-AU/category/sharepoint
PLUS, Microsoft has announced their SharePoint 2011 conference, happening over in Anaheim, California, in October, 2011 - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/06/08/save-the-date-sharepoint-conference-2011.aspx.
2010 – it’s a wrap!
Mar
16
Published: March 16, 2010 20:03 PM by
Christina Wheeler
Introduction I have a client that wanted to convert their outdated HTML district website to an external facing SharePoint portal. The client was brand new to SharePoint and brought me in to build an external facing portal using MOSS 2007 Enterprise. After setting up the new farm it was time to brand the site and create content. The one thing I had the client do before I started branding the site was have them send me references to sites they liked along with a list of elements they liked about the sites. Read the full Article on EndUserSharePoint.com 
Dec
20
Published: December 20, 2009 10:12 AM by
Corro'll Driskell
Corro'll Driskell December 20, 2009 Happy holidays to all, I am Corro’ll (Corel) Driskell, a SharePoint Architect on the SharePoint platforms. As many of you know I do many things around the SharePoint platforms and found it difficult to pick a starting place since my involvement on the TAP program. So, I wanted to kick off my blogs, referencing the SharePoint 2010 platform and its tools, with SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta). I will post a number of blogs, as a part of this blog series, referencing the many features of SharePoint Designer 2010, such as, the new User Interface (UI), the ribbon, and a number of other features. Bottom line, this blog provides an overview focusing on the UI of SharePoint Designer 2010. This is not a deep dive into the capabilities of SharePoint Designer 2010 (BETA). Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) allows Designers – non-programmers - and, encourages, Developers, and I mean encourage, to build web based applications on SharePoint’s latest platforms (SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010). To start, you must locate SharePoint Designer 2010 in the Microsoft Office application group – its default location. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 1 One of the great things about the, new, SharePoint Designer 2010 experience is the initial start. Immediately, the user (Designers and Developers) is provided visual feedback upon the start of the application. It is my experience that the loading is rather quick versus the experience with the previous version, SharePoint Designer 2007. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 2 After SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) initially starts, you will notice that there are two primary focuses. The user has the option to Open a SharePoint Site or Create a New SharePoint Site. The new initial UI is a far step from the traditional experience of SharePoint Designer 2007. In fact, the user does not need to browse around the interface attempting to introduce them to the application. It is all there front and center. In contrast, the fact that there is an option to use SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) on the My Site is discouraging. In another blog posting we will discuss the new features available on the, new, SharePoint 2010 platforms that afford the SharePoint administrators and Site Collection Administrator better control now is not the time to dive into those features, also, we will focus on the various options in more detail in a future blog as a part of this series. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 3 After, either, Opening the Site or Creating a New Site, the user is presented with the Site Setting information page. Of course, the most notable change, in the SharePoint Designer 2010 UI, is the presentation of the, new, Ribbon. Again, I will dive deeper in the various features afforded by the Ribbon in a later blog as a part of this series. The Settings Page provides a significant amount of information , such as, the Site Information, Permissions, SubSites, also known as Webs, Settings and Customization. The fact that this Designer Dashboard, yes, I called it a dashboard, and no it isn’t Microsoft’s official terminology, is forthcoming with quite a bit of information. This information was, either, lacking or wasn’t as easy to obtain in SharePoint Designer 2007. Again, we will dive deeper into many of the features during this series in a future blog. Although the tab interface is not new to SharePoint Designer 2007, I find the tab interface in SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) a bit more inviting and user friendly. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 4 Lists and Libraries are nested in a simple view in SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta). It is more similar to a report versus a hierarchical structure, as leveraged in SharePoint Designer 2007. Also, I want to encourage you to focus on the changes in the context of the Ribbon’s interface as we navigate from the Site Settings page. Of course, we can witness a heavy use of the bread crumbs in the SharePoint Designer 2010’s interface. The bread crumb was presented as a simple navigation control in the SharePoint Designer 2007 interface. Again, there was an emphasis on the hierarchical structure. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 5 Workflows are also presented in a report form. The Workflows’ report provides summary information referencing workflows leveraged by the site or web. In the SharePoint Designer 2007 interface, Workflows were presented nested in a Workflow library or folder, depends on whom you ask. Again, there is an emphasis on the actual artifacts’ hosted on the SharePoint 2010 platform. Of course, there is a significant amount of new features for SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) and its capabilities to build flexible workflows. Again, we will dive deeper into those capabilities through-out this blog series. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 6 The Site Pages provides summary information about located in the Sites Pages Library. The Site Pages Library is used to create and store pages for a specific Site or Web. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 7 The Site Assets provides a reports view of files that are included on the pages of a Site or Web. In the SharePoint Designer 2007 UI, the storage locations for files included on the pages were stored in a number of locations, such as, the images folder. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 8 The Content Types page provided a summary report about the various collection of content types, leveraged by the Site or Web, to establish consistent management of content. Immediately, you will find information, such as, Group, Parent, Source and Description. Most importantly, the UI provides quick access to manage the various content types. SharePoint Designer 2007 did not afford users this type of reporting feature. We will explore this new feature further as a part of this blog series. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 9 The Site Columns UI provides a summary report referencing a collection of columns available to Lists, which includes, Column Name, Type, Group and Source. In the SharePoint Designer 2007 UI we did not have a central presentation of the linked columns for a Site or Web. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 10 The External Content Types summary reports provides information, such as, Display Name, Name, External System, Type and Namespace, about External Lists, also known as SharePoint Lists, that exposes data from various back-end repositories – databases, web services and other Line-of-Business applications. The beauty of it all is that this feature is provided in the SharePoint Designer 2010 UI. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 11 The Data Sources summary report provides information, Name, Type and Description, about the various data sources available to the Site or Web. The report is categorized based on type, for instance, Lists and Libraries. Again, this is a great presentation in the UI so that users are not required to leverage the hierarchical structure to obtain the information similar to the SharePoint Designer 2007 UI. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 12 The Master Pages summary report provides information, Name, Title, Content Type, Size, Modified Date, Modified By and Comments, about all of the artifacts, Master Pages, Page Layouts, images and xml files, found in the Master Page Gallery. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 13 The Site Groups summary report provides some information, Group Name and Description, about the various Groups with, some level, of access to the Site or Web. You have to ask yourself, where are the contributor settings. Again, we will dive deeper into the many changes in a later blog. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 14 The SubSites summary reports provide a list of the Sites or Webs within the hierarchical structure. The report provides information, such as, Site Name, URL and Modified Date. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 15 Finally, the All Files provides a summary report of all content for a Site or Web, which includes the SubSites. The information provided includes, Name, Title, Size, Type, Modified Date, Modified By and Comments. The significance here is users have a more efficient way to ascertain the information about the artifacts that make up SharePoint 2010 sites. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 16 The overarching selling point is that SharePoint Designer 2010 encourages rapid building and deployment of, web-based, solutions that meet business needs, leveraging the various features – lists, content types, workflows and a number of other features – of an organization. Here is the catcher, there is no-coding. Included in this blog series, I will work to cover the various use cases and features.
Dec
08
Published: December 08, 2009 13:12 PM by
Kim Lund
Depending on who you are in your organization, you may either LOVE SharePoint or HATE it. There are many promises on what SharePoint will deliver; however, have those promises become a reality in your organization? The answer may be the key to why your colleagues, employees, and end users use SharePoint or create work-arounds to avoid taking the time to understand it.
If you find that user adoption of SharePoint is avoided or slower than anticipated in your working environment, you are not alone. Many students that I have trained, consulted and listened to have expressed their pain points for SharePoint adoption. As I am blessed to work with and interact with many SharePoint users I have discovered and witnessed what works and what doesn't for successfully increasing people's use, acceptance, knowledge and confidence of SharePoint.
Pain Points
Some of the Pain Points I've heard expressed as it relates to slow user adoption are:
- Employees Unaware of Powerful SharePoint Features
- SharePoint Deployed Without Governance
- User Community Not Involved in Planning SharePoint Site Use
- End Users Expected to Create or Manage SharePoint Sites
- Inefficient Use of Document Management Features
- Uncertainty that Confidential Information is Secure
- Added Training Needs Burden Staff
- SharePoint Training Not Based on End User Needs
- Help Desk Unable to Answer SharePoint Questions
- Change in Organizational Culture Required for SharePoint to Be Accepted
How to
The key to overcoming these pain points and increasing end user adoption of SharePoint and achieving better buy-in from users at large is to develop a plan that includes:
-
Governance planning that includes:
- Key members from various business units - not just IT
- Focus on the vision and long-range goals
- Ability to adapt to changes in requirements
- Relevancy to needs of the organization
-
Taxonomy planning that includes:
- Governance team that will own and manage the taxonomy
- Classification of information according to categories
- Focus on the business, not on SharePoint
-
Communication plan that includes:
- What SharePoint is
- Governance and taxonomies for use in SharePoint
- Building excitement for what SharePoint will be able to do in their environment
- How it fits into the existing ecosystem of technologies
- What it might be replacing
- Discovering and building SharePoint advocates
-
A training plan that provides succinct training that:
- Focuses on the needs of individual users
- Available when needed
- Holds users accountable
- Teaches the technical "how-to" about SharePoint
- Shares the reasons and best practices for using SharePoint
- Incentivizes employees
- Provides key competency certifications that encourage and build confidence when key concepts are mastered
If any of these important steps are missing in a SharePoint adoption plan, you will find that the effectiveness of the other steps will be less. For example, if you have not provided governance and have a poor taxonomy plan, use of SharePoint will be inconsistent. When this occurs, even if users receive useful training, there will be confusion about the proper use of SharePoint features. Even if governance and taxonomy planning has been completed but this information is not communicated to employees, there will still be confusion and inconsistency with the use of SharePoint. Lastly, if you have planned for proper governance and taxonomy, communicated to your employees that SharePoint is coming, but then fail to train employees, end users will not know how to utilize the new features provided by SharePoint.
For this reason, in order to receive the anticipated return on investment (ROI) of a SharePoint deployment, the key for success in usability and user adoption is tied closely to implementing a plan that includes governance and taxonomy, communication to employees, and relevant training.
First Get Help!
If you think the suggestions included in the previous section are a tall order, you are right. You are probably not staffed to handle all of the steps that are recommended and you likely do not have the SharePoint expertise in-house to accomplish this plan. Mindsharp has the expertise, services, and products to help you implement all four key areas mentioned above. The biggest struggle for any company is a well thought out, effective training plan that meets the needs of the end user population.
That is why we developed UserVersity to deliver an end-to-end turnkey SharePoint communication and training program. We work with your staff to compliment the talent you have in-house, and then provide expertise in areas you may not have. UserVersity provides communication tools and a variety of training tools including:
- Adoption Manager
- E-learning
- Online or in person instructor-led training
- Quizzes
- Certifications
- Incentives and motivation for employees you would like to target
We are excited to be the first to offer such a flexible solution that encompasses all of your needs and provides a customized approach to training.
If you would like to learn more about this you can also attend a free 30 minute webinar about Increasing End User Adoption and about our UserVersity program. Please check out our website at https://mindsharp.com/Default.aspx?top=TRAINING&left=END_USER_ADOPTION
The following chart summarizes how Mindsharp and UserVersity can assist organizations when dealing with one or many of the pain points highlighted in this paper.
|
Pain Point |
How Mindsharp Can Help |
|
Pain Point 1: Employees Unaware of Powerful SharePoint Features |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides a communication plan that informs users about the key SharePoint features. Our communication plan includes e-mail templates, posters, and additional resources as requested. |
|
Pain Point 2: SharePoint Deployed Without Governance |
Mindsharp has SharePoint experts that can guide your governance and taxonomy planning or provide you with resources to assist your team in planning these important components. |
|
Pain Point 3: User Community Not Involved in Planning SharePoint Site Use |
Mindsharp can help obtain feedback about who should be part of the team that develops your SharePoint governance and taxonomy plans. |
|
Pain Point 4: End Users Expected to Create or Manage SharePoint Sites |
Mindsharp's UserVersity includes training in various formats that provides end users with the information they need to create and manage sites. |
|
Pain Point 5: Inefficient Use of Document Management Features |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides training on correct document management including topics such as:
- Creating and saving documents
- Adding metadata
- Searching
- Collaborating
- Using check in and check out
- Version history
Users can choose training that meets their needs and fits into their busy schedule. |
|
Pain Point 6: Uncertainty that Confidential Information is Secure |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides training for end users on the topic of security. We provide thorough coverage on how SharePoint security works, as well as how to add or remove users from the SharePoint groups and permission levels. Users will gain confidence that they are securing their content appropriately. |
|
Pain Point 7: Added Training Needs Burden Staff |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides an adoption manager that guides you through the program so you can make training decisions confidently. The advantage is that you are working with a SharePoint expert with years of training experience. |
|
Pain Point 8: SharePoint Training Not Based on End User Needs |
Mindsharp's UserVersity is structured to provide specific training for every role and function in your organization to ensure competency in appropriate SharePoint functionality. UserVersity provides over 90 different lessons that simplify SharePoint by breaking training into six key functional competencies. This allows end users to focus on the aspects of SharePoint that relate to them currently, and then grow into other areas as their use and knowledge of SharePoint expands. Training can be repeated when knowledge of a skill needs to be refreshed or reinforced. |
|
Pain Point 9: Help Desk Unable to Answer SharePoint Questions |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides multiple ways to assist your Help Desk including:
- Mindsharp has the leading SharePoint experts on staff who can answer questions from your Help Desk employees.
- UserVersity has help desk crash courses to provide your IT and Help Desk staff with a thorough understanding of SharePoint.
- The Help Desk can refer employees to specific computer-based training modules that address the user's problem. This is another way to provide the needed help without the Help Desk employee guiding users through each step.
|
|
Pain Point 10: Change in Organizational Culture Required for SharePoint to Be Accepted |
Training with Mindsharp's UserVersity helps users understand the value of using SharePoint functionality. It goes beyond showing the "how" to teach the best practices and answer the "whys" in SharePoint. This approach helps increase end-user adoption and satisfaction. |
Summary
SharePoint is one of the fastest growing corporate technologies on the market today. In fact, SharePoint has surpassed anticipated sales within Microsoft but has the frequency of its use in your organization surpassed expectations? Just because your organization has deployed SharePoint does not mean it is being used successfully.
I have identified some of the reasons end user adoption of SharePoint is slow in companies and offered ways to change that slow adoption. If companies create a SharePoint adoption plan that meets end user needs, SharePoint will be a tool they depend on to work smarter and faster.
If you would like to learn more about this you can also attend a free 30 minute webinar about Increasing End User Adoption and about our UserVersity program. Please check out our website at https://mindsharp.com/Default.aspx?top=TRAINING&left=END_USER_ADOPTION
Nov
15
Published: November 15, 2009 12:11 PM by
Ben Curry
The topics are:
| Session 1 |
Installing SharePoint Server 2010 |
| Topic Description |
Much has changed from the 2007 version of SharePoint. I'll be discussing a server farm installation of SharePoint Server 2010 to include the new Shared Services model (service applications), how those will upgrade, and limitations of 2007 and 2010 integration. Just for fun, I'll also give you a quick demonstration of building service applications and configuration using Central Administration and PowerShell! |
| Session 2 |
Enterprise Content Management Upgrades in SharePoint Server 2010 |
| Topic Description |
Wow! We have some really cool features that are new to SharePoint Server 2010 - DocumentIDs, robust Information Management Policies, and Document Sets. BUT, one of the most anticipated features is the centralized taxonomy and content type hub. Come see a live demonstration and early best practices for creating a content type hub and managed metadata service. |
My apologies for posting this late. I hope to see you there!
Ben Curry
Oct
19
Published: October 19, 2009 17:10 PM by
James Curry
But for DBAs, you will have to set configure it. So no worries about SharePoint doing SP evilness.
May
22
Published: May 22, 2009 05:05 AM by
Enrique Lima
Something has just come to light, here is an extract of the posting found on the SharePoint Team Blog ...
"During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes. Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users." Jeff Teper/Microsoft Corporate VP/SharePoint.
Here is the link to the full text on plans to resolve and manual resolution of the issue.
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx
Mar
04
Published: March 04, 2009 22:03 PM by
Tami Bolton
Folders can be used for large list support.
But...
01. Folders organize content when a item is saved, rather than when it is displayed
02. Folders/subfolders make finding an item difficult
03. A folder obscures the number of items it contains until the Folder is opened
04. Sort, filter, group, and paginate can only be applied to items within one folder at a time or to the entire list
05. It is more difficult to move an item between two folders than to change the value of a property
06. A single list item can have multiple properties but cannot be presented in two folders
07. A list item can have a required property but a folder can never be required
08. The browser URL is limited to 255 characters; nested folders make the URL unnecessarily long
09. Properties on a folder cannot be used to sort, filter, group, or paginate list items within that folder
10. New columns are added to the list items within the folder but not the folder itself
Jan
23
Published: January 23, 2009 10:01 AM by
Daniel Webster
There are many manual methods for making a central search center available across your SharePoint implementation:
· Adding to either Global (Top Nav Bar) or Local (Quick Launch) navigation in each site collection and/or site.
· Adding Links to pages
· Teaching Users to add to My Links list
In this post, I would like to suggest three methods of automating the publication of centralized search center access without having to touch individual SharePoint sites. The first two preferably use Active Directory group policies but are achievable for users on machines that are not members of your domain.
Add as Search Provider for Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer now supports multiple Search Providers for its built-in search box as shown in the figure below.
Your users can use the built-in tools to create a search provider for your central search center or you can provide a file which they can use to place the correct settings in their local registry.
To create this file, place the following test in Notepad:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\{1EF4B245-681F-493C-9EF7-7AAE8262CC81}]
"DisplayName"="Portal"
"URL"="http://moss01/search/Pages/Results.aspx?k={searchTerms}&s=All%20Sites"
"Codepage"=dword:0000fde9
Replace “Portal” with the name you want displayed. Quotes are required.
In the URL, replace http://moss01/search/Pages/results.aspx with the location of your search results page. You could also change or remove the default scope (&s=All%20Sites).
The save the file with a .REG extension.
To share the file via email or in a document library, you may need to save the file with a .TXT extension and instruct your users how to download the file, change the extension back to .REG and import into their registry.
Add to Internet Explorer Links Toolbar
Although some users do not like to give up the space occupied by Internet Explorer’s Links toolbar, I am addicted to it for the sites that I use frequently. Also, it can quickly be activated / deactivated from the Tools menu as needed as well as collapsed / expanded.
Like most configurations of Internet Explorer, the contents of the Links toolbar can be pushed out to members of the domain using group policies. I find the easiest method of creating this policy is to configure IE in the desired format on a machine from which I can open the domain (or OU) group policy. Then I can simply import the local settings into the group policy and tweak them within the policy.
However, for those users whose machines are not members of your domain, the links shortcuts are contained in a folder in their favorites (C:\Documents and Settings\username\Favorites\Links). So your options are to train them how to go to the site and create the shortcut on the links toolbar or save as a Favorite in the Links folder. I suppose that zipping a links folder and sending out to users to place in the Favorites folder but that would probably be harder to teach them than saving as a favorite.
Add Link to Site Actions
Making the link to the site available to all users globally across your SharePoint farm is relatively easy even for administrators who do not normally write code.
Additions to the Site Actions menu are deployed as features. For the non-programmers, do not stop reading at this point. We are just going to do some simple cut and paste.
As long as we understand the basic components of a feature and have the basic code for two XML files, we can easily modify the menu.
A feature requires a folder containing two files, Elements.xml and Feature.xml. The folder should have a name that identifies the feature to administrators and must be unique within the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES folder. In my example, the folder (and feature) is named EntSearch for Enterprise Search.
The contents of the Elements.xml file are:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction Id="CustomWebManagementPage"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
GroupId="SiteActions"
ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/search.gif"
Sequence="1000"
Title="Enterprise Search Site"
Description="Use this site for Enterprise and Internet Searches.">
<UrlAction Url="HTTP://moss01/search"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>
The Sequence entry controls the placement of the link on the menu list.
The Title controls the menu item name and the Description text appears below the menu item name as shown in the figure below.
The UrlAction Url is the link that is opened when the menu item is selected.
The contents of the Feature.xml are:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Feature xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" Id="BEA70765-63BB-4bd1-927C-E72C3559D07D" Title="Enterprise Search Site" Description="This site is customized for Enterprise and Internet Searches." Scope="Farm">
<ElementManifests>
<ElementManifest Location="Elements.xml" />
</ElementManifests>
</Feature>
The crucial line in this file is the Feature xmlns= line. In this line the Id must be a unique guid. Since we are not developers and probably do not have Visual Studio installed, we can use http://createguid.com/ to generate a new guid. The Title and Description need to be identical to those in the Elements.xml. for this feature, we want the scope to be Farm so that it does not need to be activated at lower levels. Farm level features are automatically activated.
Place the folder containing your two modified files in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES folder. The feature is then deployed with the following command line:
"c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin\stsadm.exe" -o installfeature -name "EntSearch" –force
Now across all sites and pages in your farm, your Site Actions menu contains an item as shown below:
Remember that a Site Actions menu does not appear unless a user has access to a link in the menu due to security trimming. So, for many of your users this may be the first time they have seen this item.
Hopefully, this post will at least cause you to think about some options for making your central search center more accessible for all your users.
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