Geeky Girl : WSS 3.0

The Housing Analogy

JessMeats — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:54:00 GMT

I’d like to share an analogy for SharePoint. Just imagine you’ve bought a new house. That house is SharePoint.

The chances are, you will have had some help in the process from the likes of solicitors, estate agents, removals companies and so on. Those guys are the SharePoint partners. Their job is to help you find the house and get settled in.

And maybe that’s it. Maybe the house is exactly what you need. After all, SharePoint out of the box does provide a lot of features that can be used to solve business problems. But the chances are that you’ll want to do something. It could be as small a thing as a fresh coat of paint and some new curtains, or it could be a loft conversion, or it might be a whole new extension. Depending on how major the work is and what your skills are, you might try some DIY. Or it might be time to call in the partners again.

I’ve had people ask me why go with SharePoint they then need to do loads of customisation work. The answer is that it’s a lot quicker and easier (and generally cheaper) to do a bit of adaption to something that already exists than it is to start from scratch, in the same way that it’s easier to do a kitchen refurbishment to an existing house than it is to build your own home from nothing. Plus, you can move into a house and start getting the benefits of living there; the construction work can take place later as appropriate. You can deploy SharePoint and start getting some return on investment and add in the customised features at a later stage of the project.

We can take this metaphor a step further, because there is more than one type of house and more than one type of SharePoint. You could have a little terraced house, a spot in the suburbs or a large place in the country. You can have Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard, or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise.

In this economy though, not everyone can afford to buy a house of their own. What do they do? They rent. SharePoint Online.

InfoPath in the real world - Care Services

JessMeats — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:07:00 GMT

I’d like to continue talking about the use of InfoPath in the real world by talking about Children’s Electronic Social Care Record. If you’ve been following local events in the UK over the past months, you may be aware that we’ve had some problems in identifying children who are at risk and working to protect them. In answer to this problem, Microsoft Gold Partner Deverill created a solution using SharePoint and InfoPath.

The situation was such that social services care team staff were being put under pressure to have more visits to children who were at risk. For each visit, staff had to fill out a thirteen page paper form. This form was manually handed to an administration team to be processed, which took days and could include many errors. As staff were being told to go on more visits, the increase in administration was going to be unmanageable.

Deverill created a solution using WSS 3.0 and InfoPath. The social care staff were equipped with tablet PCs with InfoPath installed. The original paper-based form was converted to an electronic form with handwriting recognition capabilities. The staff could fill out the form on the tablet, which would automatically save the form to a portal area on the network. The administrative team could then access this portal area to progress the case and collaborate. This has significantly reduced the amount of administrative work needed per form, removed the need for a typing pool and made report data more readily available. The data is now more accurate and entered more efficiently, allowing for significantly improved care levels in the community.

Partner Training

JessMeats — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:16:00 GMT

The SharePoint partner team in the UK have been planning training and readiness for the next year and we've got a series of web seminars lined up. These seminars are sales training focussed around different aspects of SharePoint and how to sell WSS or MOSS as a solution to a particular type of business problem. Each of these seminars will be about an hour long and can be viewed either on their own or as a whole series.

If you're a Microsoft partner, you can register for these seminars using the following links.

Live Series – Portals and Collaboration

Live Series – Document Management and Records Management in SharePoint Server 2007

Live Series – E-forms in SharePoint

Live Series – Search in SharePoint Server 2007

Live Series – SharePoint Workflows

Generating a unique form number - a SharePoint counter

JessMeats — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:06:00 GMT

I’ve had a request to expand on my post about generating automatic numbers for InfoPath forms. I was asked to go into more detail about how to set up a SharePoint list to act as a counter.

Go to the SharePoint site where you have your document library and create a custom list by the standard process. There are a couple of different ways to do this. You can click Site Actions, then create. Or you can click on lists to get a list of all the lists on the site, and then click create. Or you can click on view all site content, then create. Either way, you will be taken to a menu screen offering a selection of things that could be created. The top link in the fourth column is custom list. Click this.

Now you have a new list with only one column showing, title, and no elements.

Click on settings and then create column. Add a column that contains a number with no decimal places. I’ve called this count. It doesn’t really matter what you call this column, so long as you remember the name.

Once you’ve got the column, add an element to the list. It doesn’t matter what you put in the title field but you need to put 0 in the count column (assuming there are currently 0 forms in your library).

That’s your counter made.

Now, open up SharePoint Designer. You’ll want to create a new workflow. Select the options to attach this workflow to the form library you want to set the auto-numbering in. Disable the options to allow users to manually start the workflow or to start the workflow when items change. Either of these would mess up your numbering.

Click next to get to the next screen in the wizard. This is an extremely simple workflow that only requires two actions. Click on the action button and add the inbuilt actions do calculation and update list item. Click on the first blue “value” links in the do calculation action, then click the function button that appears. This gives you the opportunity to choose an existing value. For source, choose your counter list with the count field as the field. Now SharePoint needs to know which item to bring back from this list, so set the field to be the ID field and the value to be 1 (since there’s only one item in this list). For the second value, just enter 1.

In the update list item action, click the blue this list. From the drop-down menu, choose the counter list. Add a field to be updated and choose the count field, selecting as the new value the calculated value (from the workflow data). Again, you need to specify the exact list item. Select the field ID and the value 1.

Then click finish. Now your counter will increment every time a form is added to your library. You can now reference this list from your InfoPath forms to create the form ID number.

Generating a unique form number

JessMeats — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:15:00 GMT

I’ve had someone ask me about automatically giving InfoPath forms a unique number. The scenario in question was one where the forms were being saved to a SharePoint document library with a unique number attached.

Documents in a SharePoint library do get given an ID, which is unique within document library. This can be used as the unique identifier of the forms out of the box with no additional work. The problem is, this only works so long as your forms remain in that document library. Once you start moving or copying forms (perhaps as part of a workflow) the ID will change.

In those situations, you will have to add a bit of work to your form to generate this number. You just have to be careful about when you generate it. If you have the possibility of multiple people filling out the form at the same time, you need to make sure the number is created in such a way that the method doesn’t result in forms being given the same number. If the form were to create this number on open, basing it on the number of files in the library, you would have issues when someone else opens the form template before the first form has been saved to the library. The easiest way round this issue is to have the number generated on submission.

Here I will describe a simple method of creating this auto number.

Firstly, you will need to create a data connection. If your forms (or a copy of them) are going remain in the document library they are submitted to, then you simply need to create a connection to retrieve data from that library. You only need to retrieve the data from one column. For the sake of argument, we’ll say the unique_number column. I’ll discuss another possibility in a bit for the scenario where forms will be moved or deleted from the library.

Set up the data connection using the wizard as you normally would, but uncheck the box when it asks whether to retrieve data when the form opens. You won’t want to get this information until the end. You will also want to set up the data connection to submit the form to the appropriate form library. Do this as you normally would, but make sure that one of your promoted fields is the unique_number field where you’ll be storing the unique ID of the form. From the submit options menu, uncheck the box labelled Show the Submit menu item and the Submit toolbar button. This is because you don’t want your users to just submit the form; you need the form to perform other actions first.

To allow your users to submit, add a button to the form. You’ll want this button to be set to trigger rules and custom code. Click on the Rules button, then Add, then Add Action. The action you want first is to query using a data connection. Choose the data connection you created to retrieve data from the form library.

The second action is to set a field’s value. The field will be your unique_number field. Click on the function button next to the value field. Insert a function. You have a couple of different options here. You can choose to perform the count function on the items in any field, or the max function on the unique_number field. Either way, you should end up with the most recent unique number assigned. So now, you just add one to get your new one.

The third and final action you need to add to this button is to submit the form.

So there you have it. Your form will now check how many items there are in the form library, create a unique number based on that value and save the form back. Brilliant!

But you can probably see why this method only works for scenarios where you leave the forms in the library. If you have a process that involves moving the form from that library to another, the count value will almost certainly be wrong and the max value might well be. There are probably several different ways to work around this. One simple way is to create a SharePoint list to act as a counter.

Have a list with one numeric element. You’ll want to set this list up so that it’s not visible from the menus on the site since you’ll only want to access it through the form and workflows. Initially, this will have the value of 1. Create a one step workflow using SharePoint Designer and attach this workflow to the form library. The workflow should trigger every time an item is created in the form library and all it should do is add 1 to the value in the counter (using the calculate value and update list item inbuilt actions). Then your form should retrieve data from this list instead of the document library and use the counter value as the unique_number.

SharePoint for Business Processes

JessMeats — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:07:00 GMT

Continuing my series of short introductions to how SharePoint can be used to solve various business problems. This video touches on custom and out of the box workflows, as well as browser-enabled InfoPath forms.

SharePoint for Document Management

JessMeats — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:39:00 GMT

Continuing my series of videos showing the capabilities of SharePoint as a solution for various business problems. This video shows some of the features relating to document management.

SharePoint for Search

JessMeats — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:37:00 GMT

This is the third in my series of videos showing how SharePoint can be used as a solution to a range of business problems. This demo shows some of the features that are designed to help SharePoint function as a search solution, such as basic and advanced search, people search and business data search.

SharePoint for Collaboration

JessMeats — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:00:00 GMT

This is the second in my series of videos showing how SharePoint can be used as a solution to a range of business problems. This demo shows some of the features that are designed to help SharePoint function as a collaboration solution, such as discussion boards, wiki pages, project task lists and more.

SharePoint for Portals

JessMeats — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:34:00 GMT

This video is the first of a new series showing how the capabilities of SharePoint fit various business solutions. SharePoint can be used in a wide range of different scenarios to solve a huge number of different business problems. In this series, I will discuss some of the most common ways SharePoint is used and some of the features specific to those.

In this video, I talk about SharePoint as a portal solution and some key features: content query web parts, audience targeting and mysites.

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 - Workflows

JessMeats — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:35:00 GMT

SharePoint has two levels of workflow capabilities. With Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, you get the ability to create your own custom workflows either with code or using SharePoint Designer’s workflow wizard. With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 standard, you get that ability still, but you also get some out of the box workflows for common tasks such as document approval and collecting feedback. These capabilities can be accessed from within Office.

One of the options from the Office menu is Workflows. When you select this option, you get a menu listing the various workflows associated with a document that can be manually started. This will include any workflows enabled over the whole SharePoint deployment as well as any specific to the document library the file is stored in. You can start any of these workflows from right within the Office document.

For the out of the box workflows, this will open up a window within Office to enter any required information, for example, the name of the person to approve the document. With custom workflows, clicking on start from this menu will take you directly to a SharePoint webpage for the workflow to initiate it.

Once the workflow has started, this will assign tasks to the appropriate people. These tasks will be associated to the document. When someone opens this document, SharePoint will check whether that person has a workflow task assigned to them. If they do, a notification is given at the top of the document stating the task and with a button labelled “edit this task.”

If the workflow is one of the out of the box ones, a window will open up within Office to complete the task, otherwise, you will be taken to a SharePoint webpage to complete the task.

So, if using the out of the box workflows, you can complete tasks from within Office without ever needing to open up a SharePoint page. With custom workflows, you can be alerted to tasks and directed to exactly the right place to complete your assigned tasks. You don’t need to check back with a SharePoint site to know what work you’ve got to do or navigate through task lists to do what’s required.

Users get to stay within Office as much as possible and so experience an interface they're familiar with. This can mean significantly lower training costs and much greater product uptake from within the organisation.

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.

SharePoint Hosting Webcasts

JessMeats — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:36:00 GMT

In June, I'm going to be running a series of three webcasts for hosting partners. They will particularly be aimed at sales people. Each session will go through the features enabled by a licensing level of SharePoint, as well as the potential value of those features to end customers. At the end of the three webcasts, attendees should understand what capabilities come in each version and be able to see where the opportunites are to up-sell.

Each session can be attended individually or they can be viewed as a series. To register for any or all of these, click on the links below.

Capabilities and Value of Windows SharePoint Services

Wed 3rd June 16:00-17:00

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032414654&Culture=en-GB

Capabilities and Value of MOSS Standard SAL

Wed 10th June 16:00-17:00

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032414658&Culture=en-GB

Capabilities and Value of MOSS Enterprise SAL

Wed 17th June 16:00-17:00

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032414675&Culture=en-GB