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7/1/2009

Make your SharePoint pages pop with the Content Editor Web Part

I spend a lot of time managing and updating Web pages on our internal Microsoft Office SharePoint Web site. MOSS is great for displaying lists, libraries, and calendars of shared items and events using Web parts. When I first starting creating pages, though, it wasn’t clear to me how to do things like add headings, add explanatory content, or use formatted text to make a page look more appealing. Then I found the Content Editor Web Part, which is now one of my favorite Web parts. It allows you to add HTML, formatted text, tables, and images to a page to help clarify, explain, or add emphasis to whatever you’re trying to communicate. For example… here’s a typical default SharePoint page with an Announcements Web part and a Calendar Web part at the top of the page.

Default page

This a good start for a page, but it doesn’t quickly communicate what the page is about, grab the attention of your audience, or look very appealing. That’s where the Content Editor Web Part comes in. You can use this versatile Web part to add a heading, graphic, and introductory paragraph to your page, like this:

Content Editor Web Part

To create something similar with a Content Editor Web part on your Microsoft Office SharePoint Web page, follow this procedure (which assumes you have permissions to edit the page you’re working on):

1. On your page, click Site Actions, and then click Edit Page.

2. In the area where you want to add the Content Editor Web Part, click Add a Web Part.

3. In the Add Web Parts dialog box, scroll down to the Miscellaneous section, and then click Content Editor Web Part, and then click Add.

4. The Web Part is added to your page. Click the link that says open the tool pane...

5. The tool pane usually displays on the right of the page. You may need to scroll to find it. Once you find it, click Rich Text Editor to start adding formatted content and images. Or, click Source Editor to add HTML code. See the Tips and Tricks below for info on styles, graphics, and more.

6. Add your content, and click OK (in the rich text editor) or Save (in the source editor) when you’re done.

Tips and Tricks

· In the Rich Text Editor, use the buttons on the toolbar for formatting, adding tables, hyperlinks, and images.

· Images: Upload your image to your site before attempting to add an image to the Web part. Once you’ve uploaded your image to the site, you can add the image to the Web part by clicking the Image button (or CTRL+SHIFT+G) and click browse to find your image on the site. Then, you can choose how to display the image within the text. For example, under Alignment in the Edit Image Properties dialog box, choose Left to place the image to the left side of the text (as in the screenshot shown above). To add space between the image and the text, add a number under Horizontal Spacing (pixels) or Vertical Spacing (pixels). I always start with 10.

· Styles: Want to use predefined styles? Don’t click the Styles button. Instead, click the paragraph mark button and select a style such as Bulleted List, Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on.

· So what is the Styles button for? I use it when I paste content into the Rich Text Editor from another source, and it doesn’t look quite right. So I click Remove Inline Styles under Styles to remove stray formatting brought in from the other source, and then reformat the text in the Rich Text Editor.

· Title (Chrome): When you’re using the Content Editor Web Part to display a heading, you might not want the Content Editor Web Part title to show. To remove it, expand the Appearance section in the tool pane, and under Chrome Type, select None or Border Only.

· Height and Width: You can specify a height and width for the Web part by expanding the Appearance section and clicking Yes under Height or Width, and then entering the size you want. You can choose to represent the size in Pixels, Inches, Points, and more.

· Editing the HTML: If something just doesn’t look right and you can’t change it using the Rich Text Editor, you may need to edit the HTML directly. You can do this by clicking the Edit HTML Source button in the Rich Text Editor, or by closing the Rich Text Editor and clicking the Source Editor button in the tool pane. In cases where there is a lot of HTML to work with, I copy the HTML out into Notepad where I can wrap the text and use the Find tool to find what I’m looking for, make my changes, and then copy it back into the Source Editor. For especially complex HTML, I will copy the code into SharePoint Designer and work with it there.

For more information, see About the Content Editor Web Part on Office Online.

This post also appears on Inside Office Online, where you can find the helpful news and tips on using Office programs.

Loreen

Posted at 8:24 AM by | Category: Web Parts; Design | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/29/2009

Lessons from Building a Community Site

by Greg Shymko, MCTS
FiveSix Consulting | fivesixconsulting.com

Recently I noticed a message go by in my inbox, and it led me to discover that it was the one-year anniversary of the creation of a community web site I helped organize while working at the University of Washington.

I know this because the welcome announcement – done in SharePoint – still sat unexpired and date stamped on the site!

While the announcement content was a bit stale, the contributions were not. Information Technology support staff from across campus are actively using the site. They share solutions and report issues with the campus Exchange service used by around 4000 staff members from across dozens of departments.

It remains an active community, and that fact led me to think about why this effort didn’t die on the vine like many community sites do. There are probably several parts to the complete answer. This post is about the mechanics of why SharePoint was a fit and how we used it.

Requirements

The site was driven by the needs of a natural community of people who tackle similar problems, but perhaps haven’t solved them on their own before.

A good community site had to be a place where busy IT support staff could find answers quickly, but also ask for help from other people similar to themselves. It needed to be peer-based and solution-oriented, with a little bit of information to orient new folks to the service. We also wanted a way to get announcements about changes or outages to the right people in a timely fashion.

And it had to be easy for people to contribute. This meant a simple, flat group permission structure, basic document library functionality, and the ability to interact with a discussion list by using email.

SharePoint was a good fit for two main reasons: it had the right features, and it allowed us to ramp very quickly.

Mechanics

We started with the Fab40 template for “IT Team Workspace”, then pared that template down to include:

· an announcements list

· a discussion board

· an FAQ library

· a knowledge base library

· a link list

· custom tracking lists for group membership and service feature enhancement requests

We had one planning meeting after setting up the basic site layout to create a simple taxonomy of FAQ keywords and to clarify ownership and maintenance roles.

We configured site owner and contributor groups, and did a bit of cleanup on the Quick Launch, and after a review meeting to validate that things would all work as expected, we were ready to go.

Top of page Web Part layout

In the span of two planning meetings and a day of prototyping and testing, we were able to meet the requirements and get the site launched. A year later, it’s still running.

Summary

After thinking about it, I think the site remains active a year later primarily because there is a compelling need for the types of communication it facilitates. Email alone wouldn’t work. File shares wouldn’t do the trick.

But a simple mix of web-based collaboration features worked well enough to be useful, and by building something functional for a group of people who had a common need, we found a recipe for success.

Posted at 3:45 PM by | Category: Building Solutions; Collaboration | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/26/2009

HTML Dog: Cool content for a hot summer Friday

While surfing for cool content on this hot summer’s day, I came across Matthew McDermott’s SharePoint MVP profile. Turns out, Matthew and I share something in common besides SharePoint; we train dogs.

Matthew, and his dog Willa, Matthew and Willa founded K9 SEARCH, which serves the FBI, and Austin and San Antonio Police Departments. Looks like the K9 SEARCH website is running on SharePoint Server 2007. Pretty cool, on both counts, Matthew!

What do dogs have in common with SharePoint? It must have been this connection with dogs that led me to notice Matthew’s recommendation to HTML Dog: The Best Practice Guide to HTML and CSS, Patrick Griffiths' website and book.

HTML Dog: The Best Practice Guide to HTML and CSS

As you'll soon find out, there’s nothing doggie about the HTML Dog website! From the Beginner HTML Tutorial to the more Advanced HTML Tags and CSS Properties references Patrick provides easy to read, step-by-step instructions, unraveling the seemingly deep, dark mystery about how HTML and CSS works. He augments the tutorials and references with articles, examples, and an invaluable list of external links.

As you may already know, when you view content on a Web page in SharePoint you’re looking at HTML and CSS that's coming from page templates and style sheets that reside on the front-end web servers (unless the page has been customized, but that's another story). The content is arranged on the page depending on the site template or the Web Parts in which it appears. If you're viewing content in a list or library you can change the way it looks by using a view.

Many of these choices are available “out-of-the-box,” but in most cases you can customize the look and feel of SharePoint. That means that the team site that I use does not look like the team site that you use.

We think this is cool, because, let’s face it, one size, color, and shape doesn’t work for everyone, right? But, it seems as though this confuses people. I think that’s where Patrick’s site can help. You don’t have to be an expert on HTML or CSS to use SharePoint, but it does help to understand the basics of what’s going on; especially if you’re a site administrator.

If you’re new to SharePoint or just need a good reference, give Patrick’s site a try. Thanks for the tip, Matthew. Just in time for the “dog days” of summer!

…Renée

SharePoint End-User Content Team

Posted at 2:02 PM by | Category: Cool Content; Building Solutions; Design; Publishing; Site Admin | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

6/25/2009

Update available for 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2

An update for 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 is now available. The update resolves a problem in SP2 where the product expiration date is improperly activated. The update applies to the following products:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
Microsoft Search Server 2008
Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express
Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007

For more information or to download the update, read KB Article 971620.

Posted at 6:06 PM by | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/24/2009

New resources are available about social computing and collaboration

Some new resources are available about social computing and collaboration for SharePoint Server.

The SharePoint Social Computing site launched this week, and it provides case studies, white papers, a demo, and other resources. To keep up with Microsoft news and views on related subjects, you can read the Enterprise Social Computing Blog.

The resources provide insight about using collaboration tools and social media to capture and share knowledge in the workplace. Social networks can make it easy to find expertise and stay connected to key contacts. People can self-organize to solve problems and meet customer needs.

There’s also an Enterprise 2.0 Conference happening this week in Boston, which provides a variety of perspectives and insights on using collaborative and social computing tools to help improve productivity and share insight.

If you’re at the conference, please stop by Booth #507. Some SharePoint flying monkeys, similar to Screech the traveling monkey, are still looking for a good home.

If you use Twitter, you can keep up with SharePoint activities this week by following the @SharePoint account.

For how-to information about social computing and collaboration features, see topics in the People and Personalization category, such as My Sites, and the Collaboration category.

Cheers,

Toni

SharePoint End User Content Team

Posted at 7:15 AM by | Category: Social Networking; Collaboration | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/23/2009

Use SharePoint and Silverlight to display a summary of SharePoint blog posts on any site page

by Rod Stagg, SharePoint Solutions Architect/Developer
http://www.rstagg.com | Allyis Inc., Kirkland, Wa

Overview:

We have been investigating ways on our intranet at Allyis to surface information via a more automatic and less manual process through various features and also to implement multiple ways for discovering data/information across the site. One area in particular we have been looking for improvement has been to increase the discoverability of our leadership blogs and encourage employees throughout our organization to blog as as way to increase collaboration and information sharing.

As a way to address these efforts we recently developed and deployed a suite of web-parts (one of which we call the BlogRollUp web-part) which displays details on the most recent post made to any of our SharePoint blogs. The web-part can be added to any site page, configured to point to a specific blog, and uploaded into the web-part gallery for others to use as well.

Single Post Version

Multi-Post Version

Features:

Displays blog title as a hyperlink to the original full post.

Displays the first 215 characters of the post body as an excerpt.

Displays an image for the blogger or blog.

Displays the post's category as a hyperlink to view all similiar posts.

Displays the number of comments as a hyperlink to the comments page.

Displays an alert icon hyperlinked to the blog's alert page.

Highlights background on mouseover.

Users can configure the web-part settings.

Can be deployed across site collections.

Technical Approach:

The user-interface was designed and developed entirely using Microsoft Expression Blend, Silverlight, and Visual Studio 2008.
Custom SharePoint web-part to host the Silverlight application which allow users to configure which blog, blogger image, and alerts link from the web-part properties pane directly.
The Silverlight application code uses the initParams provided from the webpart or HTML test page and the URL protocol to access the blog's post list directly.
The web-part can be configured once and easily exported from and imported to the webpart gallery and added to any site page on any site collection.
The Silverlight application was deployed into a SharePoint document library for ease of future updates.

Advantages of using Silverlight over a DataView Web-Part for instance include more portability, more rich user experience, and able to migrate to new sites/hardware easily.

Can be added to any site page on any site collection easily by the user without a developer or SharePoint Designer involved.
Can be easily deployed on our customer’s SharePoint sites and do not require a substantial effort to migrate to new hardware.
A more rich UI is possible using Silverlight and development is simplified using Visual Studio and C#.
The project files (.xap) developed in Silverlight are stored in standard SharePoint libraries and can be updated without the need for IT to be involved.

Deployment Methods:

Deployment using only a document library and a content editor web-part without the need to install server-side code and as such administrative access typically not required.

Download the Visual Studio solution .zip and extract the files.

Download BlogRollUp.zip

Create a folder named ClientBin in a SharePoint document library to store the Silverlight application.
Locate the BlogRollUp_Web\ClientBin\BlogRollUp.xap file and copy into your new ClientBin folder
Locate the BlogRollUpTestPage.html, update the initParams to use the settings for your particular blog including siteurl, imagepath, listid, and alerturl.
Copy the updated BlogRollUpTestPage.html file to the root of your new document library.
On a site page add a content editor web-part and reference the BlogRollUpTestPage.html file inside an iframe.
Export the now pre-configured web-part to your desktop and upload back into the webpart gallery with an appropriate name identifying the BlogRollUp webpart so other users can add to their site pages without having to configure themselves.

Deployment using the custom web-part where server-side code is installed via the .wsp solution file for the webpart and typically requiring administrative access

Download the Visual Studio solution .zip and extract the files.

Download BlogRollUp.zip

Create a folder named ClientBin in a SharePoint document library to store the Silverlight application.
Locate the BlogRollUp_Web\ClientBin\BlogRollUp.xap file and copy into your new ClientBin folder.
Download the .wsp solution file

DownLoad BlogRollUpWP.wsp

Install the provided .wsp solution file via stsadm -addsolution
Activate the solution from SharePoint Central Administration or stsadm -activatefeature
Upload the provided webpart .dwp file into your web-part gallery via site setting, web parts.
Add the web-part to a site page, update the Silverlight web-part settings section with the appropriate .XAP fullpath, siteurl, imagepath, listid, and alerturl for your particular blog
Export the now pre-configured web-part to your desktop and upload back into the webpart gallery with an appropriate name identifying the blogrollup webpart so other users can add to thier site pages without having to configure themselves.

Summary:

This is just one way of displaying some pertinent details on recent posts from the blogs dispersed throughout the intranet while also making it easy for users to add to any site page. Using Silverlight allows .NET developers to develop rich UI in Expression and Visual Studio and store the .xap files in SharePoint document libraries for future updates.

Posted at 11:15 AM by | Category: Collaboration; Silverlight; Web Parts; Lists and Libraries; Productivity; Publishing; Social Networking | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (4)

6/22/2009

Busy week for SharePoint in the Boston area

Many SharePoint professionals are in the Boston area this week to attend two conferences: the SharePoint Technology Conference and the Enterprise 2.0 Conference.

After landing in the wee hours as a result of weather delays, I attended some Monday workshops at the SharePoint Technology Conference in Cambridge. There are several great sessions and speakers at this conference, and I wish I could attend everything.

View from SharePoint Technology Conference hotel

I want to share a few insights from the morning session I attended, because it resonates with feedback we've heard from customers and our own experiences as SharePoint users.

A key takeaway is for business users to be involved in planning before a solution is developed and rolled out. People and processes should be considered before focusing on tools and technology.

The session was called “Executive Briefing: Empowering Your Organization With SharePoint.” by Dux Raymond Sy, aka “MeetDux.” Assessing business needs and setting priorities are important steps in planning.

Asking questions can help pinpoint the business needs. What problems are users trying to solve? What solutions would help them achieve their goals? How can users be empowered to manage their projects, while at the same time, governing and guiding the implementation for the organization?

Attendees watched this demonstration of an example site in which the business goals have been incorporated to enable project collaboration.

When rolling out a solution, it's important to help end users understand the benefit, such as how an automated solution may reduce paperwork or overhead in their day-to-day work. A phased roll-out may help avoid overwhelming users with too many new tools at one time.

The executive briefing was just one of many sessions, which range from search, administration, design, development, scalability, and governance.

If you use Twitter, you can follow Tweets about the conference with the #SPTechCon hashtag (keyword) and follow the conference's SPTechCon Twitter profile.

You can follow the Enterprise 2.0 Conference on Twitter with the #e20conf hashtag and the conference's e2conf profile.

You can keep up with SharePoint product team this week on Twitter by following the SharePoint account.

Thanks,

Toni
End User Content Team

Posted at 6:17 PM by | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/19/2009

Twynham School shares their story; what's yours? - Friday cool content

We don’t get out much. That's just the practical reality of software documentation. So, when we heard that Mike Herrity and Dave Coleman from the Twynham School in England agreed to take time out of their busy schedule during a recent visit to the Microsoft campus to talk to us about their highly successful SharePoint implementation everyone on our team was front and center.

For days – and now I can say weeks – afterward we’re still talking about what we heard. The reason: It’s so exciting to hear about how SharePoint has made life easier for not only the people who use it, but the people who implement it.

In a nutshell, since Twynham deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 to its staff, students, parents in March 2007, grades and attendance have dramatically improved. Mike, Assistant Headteacher, and Dave, Network Manager, showed us how they’ve implemented SharePoint, and peppered us with statistics and anecdotes about how things are so much better.

One of my favorite stories: One summer Dave converted all of the school’s physical media assets to digital format, so students and teachers now have 24/7 access to video files directly from a browser. One teacher was so reluctant to relinquish her TV and VCR that Mike finally convinced her to put it in a closet. After it had been there for months, Mike asked her to think about how long it had been since she needed to use it. Turns out, she hadn’t used it for years!

Other stories: They’ve shown that students who are able to view their grades and attendance records by using SharePoint Web Parts achieve better test scores and show up at school more frequently.

Mike and Dave illustrated a clear picture of how user involvement in SharePoint can make a big difference. At various milestones during implementation they used surveys to make sure that students and teachers would be happy with the plans and the user interface; or at least to learn about the issues that they might face with the adoption of the plans.

What’s unique about Twynham is that they have shared the nuts and bolts of implementing SharePoint with several hundred other schools to help them get up and running faster, and we think that's cool!

Do you have a SharePoint story to share? We’d like to hear about how SharePoint has changed the way you do business or influenced the culture in your organization. Drop us a line at gtpteam@microsoft.com if you're interested in writing a post on the subject.

We're probably not the only ones who don't get out much.

...Renée

SharePoint End User Content Publishing Team

Posted at 1:52 PM by | Category: Cool Content; Education; Collaboration; Building Solutions; People Wrangling; Planning & Process | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

6/16/2009

Screech the Travel Bug seeks SharePointers

Last Friday, members of the SharePoint End-User Content Team went geocaching and launched Screech the SharePoint Travel Bug on a quest to meet other SharePoint geeks like us.

What's this all about? Well, it's just an experiment to bring geocaching and the SharePoint community together for a little fun. Screech is a SharePoint screaming monkey with a mission: to travel the globe from cache to cache and meet other SharePoint geeks like him.

We'll be tracking his progress on his Screech profile on the geocaching site. If you want to join the fun, get yourself a GPS receiver and hunt him down. When you find him, tell him what you like or don't like about SharePoint or give him a tip. Better yet, tell everyone in the cache log or in the comments on this post. Then move him to another cache. Before you let him go, make you sure you try launching him as shown below.

We're curious how far he'll go, how many people he'll meet, and how much he'll learn along the way.

Have fun out there,

Matt Evans

SharePoint End-User Content Team

Posted at 4:37 PM by | Category: Feedback; Social Networking | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (3)

6/15/2009

Updating Metadata on Files in SharePoint: Low Cost, High Reward

by Mike Doane

Ascentium | www.ascentium.com

Once documents are in SharePoint libraries, there’s always going to be a need to update metadata, whether it’s because the original author didn’t apply metadata correctly, or there’s a need to add new metadata. Finding documents is a high priority for all clients we work with, but many don’t have the resources or big budgets to do the work manually with their dwindling resources.

We see this scenario all the time with clients: one person (who may no longer work for the company) created a template for a Word doc, and someone borrowed it and started working on a new doc, etc. The original author’s name is still in the Properties field, so it appears that s/he has written half the company’s documents. I’m exaggerating, yes, but the story rings true with many customers who laugh at that scenario.

So, once docs are in place, yes, you can go to Spreadsheet view and make changes, but a much easier and more comprehensive way to do this is to use DocKIT’s “Apply metadata to documents from metadata file” feature, which basically works like the migration tool, except that it simply updates the metadata already attached to the documents in SharePoint.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1 – Review documents to be changed in your SharePoint site. Below I’ve identified five documents that need a metadata “refresh”.

Step 2 - Create a spreadsheet with the URL of the documents you want to change (see above) and the new metadata in columns that match the Site Column names/values in the SharePoint site. Below you can see that I’m going to make changes in Profession, Professional Organization and Author.

Step 3 – Start DocKIT and use the Apply metadata to documents from metadata file (the Excel file above) option.

Step 4 – Make sure to identify what columns you want to change.

Step 5 – Run the Wizard to update the metadata. When DocKIT is done, the metadata are updated and ready to be indexed for search. Old author names are gone, new metadata are in place.

Step 6 – Create Views to take advantage of the new metadata. For example, you cold sort a View by Professional Organization.

Hope this makes sense! Post a comment if you need more explanation. The idea works great if you’ve got a lot of old metadata (or NO metadata) on documents that you want to update, and if you don’t have a lot of time/resources to do it manually by hand.

There are a lot of other uses for the tool, but those are some we’ve done with clients so far. Thanks for reading.

Posted at 1:02 PM by | Category: Productivity; Search ; User Experience; Compliance | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (5)

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