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7/3/2008

Do changes happen fast in your organization? Would you like some tools to stay on top of your SharePoint sites? Here are links to some articles that might help you.

Watch this: Run a workflow when a specific field changes, from Office Online

You might already know how to create alerts for lists and libraries, but if you use SharePoint Designer, you can design more advanced notifications through a workflow. This demo shows you how to design a workflow that runs when a specific field changes. For example, you can notify someone when a document is assigned to them, and include workflow status and the previous owner information in the notification.

Monitor items in a SharePoint list with an RSS Feed, from this blog

You may already know that you can subscribe to an RSS feed of a list or library, but you might find it's hard to sort out the information that's most important. By subscribing to a view, you can narrow down the items in the feed. To learn more about views in general, take a look at this video demo.

Thanks,

Toni
SharePoint IW Content Team

Posted at 2:06 PM by | Category: Business processes; Collaboration; Lists; Libraries; Productivity; Team sites | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

7/1/2008

Updated Farm Installation Guide for the Portal Edition of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Training

If you're experiencing issues installing the Portal Edition of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Training on your SharePoint farm, you may find the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Farm Install Guide that was updated on April 10, 2008 helpful.

I hope you find it helpful. I look forward to your comments.

Thanks,

Brian

SharePoint IW Content Team

Posted at 2:52 PM by | Category: Planning & Process | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Monitor items in a SharePoint list with an RSS Feed

If you only need to monitor a few items in a large, active SharePoint list, subscribing to the RSS feed for the list can overwhelm you with information you don't need.

You can create a view that displays only the items you need to monitor and then subscribe to the RSS feed for it. To do this,

In the list, click Views and then click Create View.
Create a view that displays only the items you want to monitor. For more information about creating a view, see Create or change a view on Office Online.
In the view you just created, click Views and then click Modify this View.
Click the RSS feed icon
In the browser, click Subscribe to this feed and follow the instructions.

I used Internet Explorer 7.0 in the preceding example. If you're using a different browser, your steps may vary.

I hope you found this helpful. I look forward to your comments.

Thanks,

Brian

SharePoint IW Content Team

Posted at 1:32 PM by | Category: Productivity; Lists | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/27/2008

Recent cool content about using SharePoint

There's so much great content being created about how to use SharePoint, it can be hard to keep up with it. I thought you might find it helpful if I highlighted some of the recent cooler topics, using my own geeky criteria :-)

Transforming the SharePoint Wiki into a Collaborative Team Site, from this blog.

My take:
A cool approach to configuring and using a SharePoint wiki as a first class SharePoint site. Ryan really hit home with me about how a SharePoint wiki isn't as inviting to use as a SharePoint team site and shows you how to change this.
Adding SharePoint As A Network Location, from EndUser SharePoint.com

My take:
A simple (5 easy steps) way to making a SharePoint library one of the default "Save As" locations for Office application. For all of the times I've saved a file to a SharePoint library and typed out a long cryptic path, why didn't I think of this!
Use a Document Workspace to collaborate on documents in SharePoint libraries, from Office Labs.

My take:
The more I use Document Workspaces the more I'm impressed with how much easier they make it to work on documents with other people. This video does a good job of highlighting the feature and benefits of Document Workspaces and provides links in the "See Also" section to more detailed articles.
Collect signatures in a document by using a workflow, from Office Online.

My take:
Sometimes I find myself focusing on using SharePoint sites from the browser and forget about the great integration from Office applications to SharePoint. This topic does a great job of explaining how to start a workflow from Office 2007 applications, like Word, to get sign-off.

Have a topic about using SharePoint that you think is cool? Share it with us by commenting on this blog post.

Thanks,

Brian
SharePoint IW Content Team

Posted at 5:46 PM by | Category: Collaboration; Business processes; Libraries; Team sites | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/25/2008

Share Community Tips on Office Online

At Office Online, we've opened the site up to more community contributions. (The site has accepted templates from the community for some time.) When you have questions or advice about the content you find, you can sign in with a Windows Live ID and post questions or bits of advice for the rest of the community. It's basically comments like you see on lots of sites, and you can rate the usefulness of the comments.

Because of a phased rollout of the Community Tips feature on the site, most of the SharePoint content won’t get the feature until next month, but SharePoint-related templates and training courses have it now. Here's a list of search results for SharePoint templates and training (Click one of the results from the list and then scroll down the page to Community Tips.):

· http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/CR102146081033.aspx

· http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=SharePoint+training&av=TPL000

Go ahead and try it out.

Matt

SharePoint IW Content Team

Posted at 5:41 PM by | Category: Collaboration; Productivity | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/16/2008

Transforming the SharePoint Wiki into a Collaborative Team Site

By Ryan Gachet

In my time as a consultant, I've come to appreciate the passion of wiki users. They know what they want and they know why they want a wiki versus another tool. This led me to believe that since SharePoint 2007 has a wiki capability that these users would be easy converts and would be great power users to help promote the use of SharePoint within their organization. However, some end users resist the SharePoint wiki because, though the wiki feature is available and there is a wiki site template, the wiki isn't really integrated into a team site/collaborative space. When a collaborative team site is created the wiki is available but it isn't integrated into the team site model. The wiki just stands apart from it. When a wiki template is used, the wiki is forefront but the rest of the SharePoint collaborative features are hidden or not implemented (document libraries, lists, etc.). As such, in both cases, these end users do not get the most out of the wiki experience in a collaborative context and generally see SharePoint as a hindrance to the wiki instead of an enhancement. So to combat this situation, here are instructions for customizing a wiki site template into a wiki team collaborative site template that should help convince these users to adopt the SharePoint wiki.

The purpose of customizing the wiki site template into a wiki team collaborative site template is to surround the wiki with team site features. End users are then able to easily post information to the wiki while still having integrated access to their shared documents, task lists, etc.

Before I get into the steps for creating the template, here is a before and after picture.

Before

After

The new Wiki Collaboration Team Site template has:

The Wiki interface as the centerpiece of the site.
An improved Top Navigation – Giving easy access to collaboration features
Streamlined Side Bar Navigation – Separating the wiki pages from the collaboration features.
Customized Home wiki page – implicitly explaining how the wiki is used as a base for team collaboration.

Now let's go through the process of creating this template.

Step 1: Create a wiki site.

No mystery here. If you have Site Creation permissions, go to: (for sub-sites) View All Site Content/Sites and Workspaces/Create, or (for top-level sites) Site Directory/Create Site. Choose the Wiki Site template.

Step 2: Create the standard Collaboration Team Site Lists

Go to View All Site Content.

You will notice that the wiki site does not have any of the standard collaboration libraries or lists. To create these features click Create and create a Shared Documents, Links, Calendar, Contacts List, and Tasks List.

After you are done, your Site Content list should look like this.

Step 3: Alter the site Navigation

Next, the site navigation needs to be cleaned up in order to remove confusion on how the features interact with each other. To do this we first need to hide the Quick Launch by:

Click Site Actions
Click Tree View under the Look and Feel header.
Remove the check mark from the Enable Quick Launch box.

Now the Team Collaboration Lists that we've created are going to be exposed in the Top Navigation to give them context within the site and to make these features easily accessible. To do this:
Click Site Actions
Click Top Link Bar under the Look and Feel header.
Add the links to the Collaboration Lists (Shared Documents, Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks) by clicking New Link.



After this task is complete, the top navigation bar of the site should look like this.

Step 4: Pre-populate the wiki with default pages to spur and define usage of the wiki

The final step in creating the Wiki Collaboration Team Site is to add some pre-built pages to the site in-order to promote the use of and give guidance on how the site should be used as a collaboration site. To do this:
Go to View All Site Content
Click the Wiki Pages Library and create a new page. Or, you can click the "Home" page, edit the contents, and type [[New Page Name]]. This will create a new page for each [[ ]] you type.

After you are done the wiki page library should look like this.
Now go into each wiki page and alter the content. The content will define what the page is used. The following screen shots show how I altered each page. Notice that I've linked the pages together using the wiki [[title]] syntax, but have also embedded links to the collaboration lists as well to provide additional context and functionality.

In my template, I included pages for the following: General Training, New Hire Information, System Support, Team Vision Mission, and Tools.

General Training

Home

New Hire Information

System Support

Team Vision & Mission

Tools

So that's it. We now have a fully functional wiki based collaborative team site that looks like this.

Step 5: Creating a Site Template

So I'm not going to walk through the steps for creating a site template. If you want to learn more about this, you can find the instructions here.

However, if you just want to download my template and use that as a starting point, you can click here.

Summary

Though this site doesn't look dramatically different than the out-of-the-box wiki site template, the small enhancements that were made greatly improve the end user experience and should help convince wiki users that the SharePoint wiki is actually an enhancement not a hindrance. In summary:

By using the wiki site template as a base, the main focus of the site is the wiki instead of the wiki being a secondary list or resource.
By removing the Quick Launch bar and moving the collaborative lists to the Top Navigation, end users are provided with a streamlined look and feel that promotes easy use of the wiki pages as well as the lists.
By pre-building some wiki pages end users are implicitly given context on how the wiki site is supposed to be used.
By pre-building some wiki pages end users are also shown that wiki pages will not only give them dynamic information but links to other collaborative resources (e.g.: shared documents, contacts, etc.).
Though not shown here, the site can further be enhanced by using the web part zones on each page.

Posted at 10:00 PM by | Category: Collaboration; Social Networking; Team sites | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

6/12/2008

Use a friendly SharePoint URL

A coworker recently encountered issues while working with URLs that pointed to files in a SharePoint library. Among the issues:

Some URLs are not very friendly. Some are downright ugly. URLs that point to a folder or file in a SharePoint site in particular can be hundreds of characters long, making them difficult to copy and paste. Furthermore, when you paste a long URL into an e-mail message, sometimes it mysteriously breaks.
In order to support the sharing of metadata between libraries and some documents, the URL fields in a SharePoint list or library have a 255 character limit. This means that, if you paste a URL that is longer than 255 characters into the URL field in a SharePoint list or library, the URL will be truncated and may not work correctly. This is true whether or not the URL points to a SharePoint site or another site on the Web.

Even though URLs in a SharePoint site can be hard to work with, you can use a few tricks to make it easier to share URLs with your friends or coworkers.

A simple example

Let's start by looking at an example URL. The URL we'll use points to a folder in a SharePoint library on a user's My Site. This user's name is Anders Langvad-Nielsen, and the folder -- MyFolder -- is located in the Shared Documents library in his My Site.

If you were to navigate to Anders' MyFolder folder in the Shared Documents library, and copy the URL from the address bar in the browser, the URL would appear something like this:

http://my/sites/AndersLangvad-Nielsen/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fsites%2fAndersLangvad-Nielsen%2fShared%20Documents%2fMyFolder&FolderCTID=&View=%7b952E758B%2d540C%2d4676%2d987B%2d21F7E72D0B6B%7d.

Now that's quite a URL!

A simple process

There's an easy way to simplify a link like that. Using the above URL as an example, do the following to trim it:

Delete everything after and including the word Forms in the URL, leaving Shared%20Documents/ as the final item in the path.
Type the name of the folder – in this case, MyFolder – after Shared%20Documents.
Copy the new path – http://my/sites/AndersLangvad-Nielsen/Shared%20Documents/MyFolder, which is the path to your folder without the parameters – and paste it where you want.

Note: Remember the 255 character limit if you want to use this link in a SharePoint list's URL field. If you just can't trim down the URL to fewer than 255 characters, consider using one of the following approaches to create a redirect link:

Create an intermediate landing page. If the URL points to a document, list or library on your SharePoint site, create a file – a Word doc or an HTML file, for example – and paste the URL into that file. This will be your landing page. Upload the landing page to a library on your site at a path that's shorter than the original URL. Otherwise, you'll again face the same problem you're trying to solve. Copy the link to your landing page and send the URL to your friends or coworkers. When users arrive at the landing page, they can click the link on that page to continue to the final destination. (You'll also want to add some descriptive text so they know why they've landed on an intermediate page.)
Use a meta redirect. If you use an HTML file for the landing page, you can also add a meta element redirect. In the <head> section, add the following: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2;url=http://www.microsoft.com">. Customize the meta element by changing the number, which represents the number of seconds before the browser moves to the new page, and change the URL to your target location. Use this approach with caution: some users consider this type of redirect a hindrance to usability because it essentially changes the behavior of a Web browser's Back button. In other words, pressing Back once from the target page will bring the user back to the redirect page, which will then bring them forward again to the target page.
Use a redirect service. If the URL points to a site on the Web, consider using a service such as TinyURL.com. (http://tinyurl.com/). When you use TinyURL, the service creates a new, smaller URL that you can use in SharePoint URL fields, and that it is not likely to break in e-mail messages. Plus, their Web site claims the tiny URL will never expire.

I hope you find this information useful.

Thanks,

Anthony

Anthony Labriola
Technical Writer
Office SharePoint Server
Microsoft Corporation

Posted at 11:45 AM by | Category: Collaboration; Team sites | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

6/6/2008

Hello and what do you want to read here?

Hi. As Suzanne Ross mentioned last week, the SharePoint Information Worker Content team is taking over the administration of this blog. First, we want to thank Suzanne for all her great work setting up the blog, recruiting guest bloggers, and doing all the other behind-the-scenes work to keep things running smoothly. Next, we thought we'd introduce ourselves and ask for your feedback on this blog.

So, who are we? Well, we're a team of writers who produce content for end users of SharePoint Products and Technologies. Most of our content is published on Office Online in one of the following locations:

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Help (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX101211721033.aspx)
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Help (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/FX101494691033.aspx)

Over the past several months, we've been branching out to integrate our content with that of the larger SharePoint community, and this blog is a great opportunity to do more of that. Brian Granowitz, Tom Werner, and Cris Berns are a few of the writers on our team who will continue to post here. We also plan to continue featuring guest bloggers from outside our team to help us provide the content you need, which leads to the next question.

What topics do you want to see covered here? Here are a few ideas we have for upcoming posts:

Personalize a site (for example, creating personal view of a list or Web Part)
Tip for finding a friendly URL to link to a site
How teachers can use a site to manage classes
Track service or support issues in a site
Create a slideshow by using a picture library
Tips for creating links in wikis

What do you think of those ideas? Let us know your ideas or any other feedback you have about Get the Point.

Thanks,

Matt Evans

SharePoint IW Content Team, Microsoft

Posted at 11:24 AM by | Category: Collaboration; Planning & Process; Productivity | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (5)

6/2/2008

Videos about SharePoint

There are a number of Microsoft sources for videos about SharePoint products and technologies. In this blog post I provide you with a list of the sources, descriptions of what each offers, and URLs to access the videos. Hopefully this post will make it easier for you to take advantage of these valuable SharePoint resources.

Community Clips on SharePoint products and technologies

Are you aware of Office Labs? Did you know we promote and host videos (referred to as Community Clips) created by the Office community as well as Microsoft employees?

There are currently 30 videos about SharePoint products and technologies on Community Clips. The videos cover a wide range of topics to help you use SharePoint.

Interested? Click the following URL to see the list of Community Clips about SharePoint products and technologies, http://communityclips.officelabs.com/Search.aspx?q=sharepoint

Office Online Demos

Office Online hosts demos for SharePoint products and technologies. There are currently 30 demos, ranging from Search for information on a SharePoint site to A six-part series on getting the most out of SharePoint Designer 2007.

Interested? Click the following URLs to see the list of demos on Office Online for:

SharePoint Server 2007: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/CH102066971033.aspx
SharePoint Designer 2007: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/CH102201271033.aspx

Office Online Training

Office Online hosts training for SharePoint products and technologies. There are currently 17 training courses, ranging from SharePoint document libraries I: Introduction to sharing files to Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company.

Interested? Click the following URL to see the list of training on Office Online for SharePoint Server 2007: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/CR102146081033.aspx

Webcasts and Podcasts on SharePoint products and technologies

There are currently 16 approximately 60-minute recordings of live events by Microsoft Office experts include presentation slides that help further explain specific features or areas of interest. The recordings can be downloaded to your computer for offline viewing.

Interested? Click the following URL to see the complete list of Webcasts and Podcasts about SharePoint products and technologies, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/webcasts/HA102547461033.aspx

Thanks,

Brian

Brian Granowitz
Technical Writer
Office SharePoint Server
Microsoft Corporation

Posted at 4:29 PM by | Category: Collaboration; Business processes; Libraries; Productivity; Team sites | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/30/2008

Good bye!

Suzanne Ross

Hi! This is my last post on the Get the Point blog and my last day in this role for Microsoft. The Office Online team of writers will be taking over the blog. You've seen a few posts from them already. They have great plans to make the blog even more useful for end users, calling on their experience with the Office Online site.

Cheers!

Posted at 2:06 PM by | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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