Geeky Girl : Excel

Office 2010 beta is here!

JessMeats — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:51:00 GMT

It’s time to have a play.

The public beta has launched and now you can get hold of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. You can download it from www.microsoft.com/2010 and try out some of the new features such as:

· Conversation threading in Outlook

· Improved rules management in InfoPath

· The ribbon UI in SharePoint

· InfoPath “quick” publish functionality

· The Business Connectivity Services for SharePoint (a much improved version of the BDC)

· The new SharePoint Workspace

· Tighter integration between SharePoint and Office (including InfoPath list editing)

· New InfoPath controls

· Slicers in Excel

· The Office “backstage” tab

Personally, I’m really excited about some of the major improvements in InfoPath 2010. I think this means I’ve spent way too much time dealing with forms in the past if I get this excited about a piece of forms creation software!

SharePoint for Business Intelligence

JessMeats — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:50:00 GMT

Final video in this series showing how SharePoint can be used to solve a range of business problems. This demo shows how SharePoint can be used for Business Intelligence.

Better with Office - Data Connection Libraries

JessMeats — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:02:00 GMT

Previously in this series, I’ve talked about general Office documents, which might be Word files, PowerPoint slide decks and so on. In this post, I’m going to go a bit more specific. I’m going to talk about data connection libraries and how they are they can accessed using Excel 2007.

A data connection library, as the name might imply, stores data connections. But what do I mean by data connections? Let’s say that you’re creating a spreadsheet that using information from somewhere else. Maybe you’re using Excel to make graphs of sales trends based on figures in a company database. Maybe you want to use SharePoint and Excel’s capabilities to create a visual representation of stock levels in a particular location and tie in a workflow for restocking. Whatever the data is, the point is that you have information stored somewhere that you want to use in Excel. You probably don’t want to manually copy the data over because this is time consuming and would mean you’d have to manually update your spreadsheet whenever the data is changed.

So, you create a data connection. This links your spreadsheet to Access, a web source, a SQL databases, an Analysis server report or a few other options. This allows the data to remain centrally stored but you still get the ability to analysis, view and visualise using Excel’s capabilities.

These data connections are part of Excel’s Business Intelligence offering. My focus is SharePoint, so I’m not going to go into too much detail about how to set up and use these connections. What I am going to talk about are data connection libraries, which are a feature of SharePoint 2007.

The idea is that more than one person is likely to want this data. If you have a database or a SharePoint list storing information that people are going to create connections to, there’s no point each of them having to go through the process of setting up the connection. It’s always possible people will link to the wrong table and bring back incorrect data. Instead, one person, who knows exactly which table or list is the relevant one, will create the data connection and put it in this SharePoint library. From then on, users will be able to access this data connection and don’t have to worry about setting up their own.

There are a few different ways to add a data connection to this library. The first is to simply upload a pre-made data connection file.

If you have a data connection already set up for a spreadsheet, you can open up the properties for this and choose to export the connection. You can then save the connection file into the SharePoint library.

Finally, if you’re connecting to a SharePoint list, you can save it to the library when creating a connection from SharePoint. In a SharePoint list, there is the option to export to spreadsheet from the actions menu. Choosing this option will create the necessary data connection and, at this point, you have the option to the save the file and can choose the data connection library as the location.

Once you have your data connection library populated with this connection files, users can access them from Excel. From the data tab, users should click existing connections then to browse for more. In the browse window that opens, users can go to the address of the data connection library and pick the correct file. If you’re going to be putting a lot of connection files into this library, it’s absolutely vital that you name your files clearly, otherwise users won’t know which is the correct connection.

Better with Office - Workspaces

JessMeats — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:37:00 GMT

Continuing this series of blog posts, I’m going to talk about document workspaces. The idea behind these is that sometimes a document needs multiple people working together on it. A document workspace is a site in SharePoint that can be used for collaboration. The standard template for this site includes a document library, discussion board, list of users, task list and a few more features to make it easier to work together. The normal method to create a document workspace would be to go through SharePoint’s menus and select create and then choose the appropriate template. But that’s not the only way.

When you’re using an Office program, for Excel Word or Excel, you can go to the main menu, go down to Publish and then choose Create Document Workspace from the options. This will open up a new area to the right of the document (but you can move it) to enter a name for this workspace and select the URL. All you need for this is to know the address of a SharePoint deployment where you have permission to create sites. You may be prompted to save the document, but that’s all it takes to create the site.

The workspace information will be displayed on the right hand side of the document. This contains five tabs: status, members, tasks, documents and links. These items are synchronised between the document and the SharePoint site. Initially, the status will have one item in it and will display the whether or not the document is synchronised with the version on the workspace. This is because you have a local copy of the document open. This status tab will allow you to make sure that the local copy and the version on the server are the same, even when other people are editing it.

The member tab displays information about the people who have been added as users of the SharePoint site. If you have a Microsoft Unified Communications solution, you will see presence icons so you know whether they are available, busy, offline and so on. Initially, this tab will just list yourself. You can click on the “add new members...” link to, unsurprisingly, add new members. This opens up a little window that you use to type in usernames or email addresses. You then choose what level of permissions to give to those users. Do you want them to be able to edit content or just view it or to have control over the site?

The task list allows you to assign work to the various members of the site. You can create new tasks, set alerts and see what workflow tasks are ongoing. Clicking the “alert me” link will open up the appropriate SharePoint page to enter choices about the type of changes you want to be alerted to. The adding tasks and viewing workflow tasks options both open up new windows within the Office program to complete the actions.

The documents tab shows all the documents that are stored in the SharePoint document library and gives you the ability to organise them, add new documents and set alerts. You can’t create new documents from here, but you can upload existing files to the workspace by clicking on the add option. For the documents in the library, you can view status, open files, delete the file and set alerts.

The final tab is links. This simply allows you to view the links that are stored in the site’s links list and add some new ones from within Office.

So you get access to all these SharePoint collaboration features from inside Office. You can create a site, add users, add documents, work together, share tasks and more, without ever opening up SharePoint. This means that people who are already familiar with Office get to work in an environment they know, but still get the benefits of the rich features SharePoint can offer.

Better with Office - Metadata

JessMeats — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:59:00 GMT

What is metadata? The simple definition is that it’s data about data. In the case of SharePoint, it’s information about files and documents stored within SharePoint. There are some bits of metadata that are included as standard, such as who created a document, who last edited it, where in SharePoint it is and so on. You can add your own metadata as appropriate. If you want to have documents labelled as whether they’re confidential or not, or attach a next review date to official documentation, you can do so.

If you’re running MOSS 2007 standard or enterprise, you can set policies and rules across the whole of the SharePoint deployment. One example of this I’ve seen was a situation where the company wanted to label some documents as being key documents. So every document in SharePoint had this piece of metadata associated with it, which was a yes/no option stating whether or not that particular document was key. Those that were key were then displayed to the users through a portal page. What’s more common would be to create document types and to associate certain pieces of metadata to those types.

Metadata can also be applied at a document library level. This is true for WSS 3.0 and both levels of MOSS 2007. In a document library you’ve created, you can add a column by clicking on Settings -> Create Column. Then you will be given options to set about the data that should go into this column. These options are things like whether it’s a line of text or a number or a choice from a list. You also get the option of setting a default value, calculating the value from other values or setting the column as required. Once you’ve clicked OK, you’ve associated a new piece of metadata to this library. All documents created here or added to the library will now have this bit of information stored about them.

But what’s this got to do with Office?

Well, when you open up a file from this library in an Office 2007 program, you will see a Document Properties section in which to enter this information. This gives the user space to enter metadata, shows metadata already associated and shows which fields are required. This means users can enter information that’s used by SharePoint, without ever needing to go to SharePoint.

If you’ve set some metadata fields as required and the user tries to save the document without them, they will see an error message. This informs them what has happened, takes them to the Document Properties panel and highlights the problems. If data has been entered that’s incorrect (for example, text in a number field) this will shown by a red dashed line around the field. A red asterisk will show required fields that have been missed. The error message explains this formatting to the user so they will be able to see what has gone wrong.

Users can save documents straight to SharePoint document libraries from within Office. This all means that users can be making use of the document management features of SharePoint without actually opening up a SharePoint page to put information in. This makes the process of document management incredibly smooth and efficient, while allowing users to work in an environment they’re familiar with. It can cut down training costs immensely if employees are already used to Microsoft Office.

Better with Office - introduction

JessMeats — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:58:00 GMT

SharePoint is part of the Microsoft product stack. This doesn’t mean that it’s just another item on a Microsoft price list. What it means is that it’s designed to work with the other products Microsoft produces. In other posts, I’ve talked about using InfoPath and SharePoint together, but that’s not where it ends. There’s a lot of integration between SharePoint and Outlook, particularly synchronising lists, forums and document libraries so that you can view things offline, see changes or submit new items via email. There are case studies that show SharePoint working alongside Project or the Dynamics products to deliver valuable solutions. There’s a SQL reporting add-in. There’s a connector to BizTalk Server. The integration with Office Communication Server leads to great Unified Communication solutions.

SharePoint has been designed and tested alongside these various products and gives a great integration story.

What I’m going to focus on though is how SharePoint works with Office 2007. SharePoint can be used as a document management solution for all kinds of files, regardless of the program they’re created in. SharePoint’s document management capabilities can be applied to any files, whether they’re InfoPath forms, PDF files, OpenOffice documents, videos or whatever your company happens to deal in. But when you’re using Microsoft Office 2007, those capabilities come out of SharePoint and are presented to your users through the Office client.

Over the next few posts, I’m going to go into some of the features of SharePoint which can be presented to end users through the various Office programs. I’m going to talk about metadata, versioning, workflows, document workspaces, data connection libraries and slide libraries.

It's not piracy - it's the Ultimate Steal

JessMeats — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:54:00 GMT

If you're a UK higher education student or staff member, you can get Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for the ridiculously cheap price of £38.95 - if you buy before 30th June 2009.

Just go to The Ultimate Steal, register with your academic email address and buy online.