Sharepoint Services

What is SharePoint

// June 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // Sharepoint

People ask me what I do all the time. I always have a different explanation based on who they are and what they do. Well here it is: SharePoint in plain english.

Sharepoint Forms Designer: Coming Soon

// April 30th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Sharepoint

A few posts ago we covered the Forms Designer debacle and we gave our views on Infopath, workflow designers and clear lack of design capability in WSS 3.0 and Sharepoint Foundation.

Well im pleased to say the wait is almost over. Our form’s designer is in the build stage. Some screenshots to wet the appetite…

Sharepoint Services: Hiding fields in Sharepoint Display Form

// February 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Sharepoint

Once again Paul Galvin’s Post on how to hide a text field definitely inspired to explore jquery and find other functions. Thanks Paul.

Hiding fields is similar again, just iterating through each form field, checking the name and hiding it. So hiding a field with the name “PAAdminStartDate”:

var K = jQuery.noConflict();
K(document).ready(function() {

});

Dont forget to install the jQuery Smartools feature

Sharepoint Services: Hiding a Date Picker field in Sharepoint Form

// February 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Sharepoint

Following on from Paul Galvin’s Post on how to hide a text field, i have added an extra on how to hide a date picker, similar to the text field except that the table row’s parent needs to be hidden instead:

var K = jQuery.noConflict();
K(document).ready(function() {

});

Dont forget to install the jQuery Smartools feature

Install SharePoint Foundation 2010 – Sharepoint 2010

// February 3rd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Sharepoint

This guide is suitable for a base installation of Windows 2008 Server 64bit with Service Pack 2 installed. I am running this machine on VMWare Version 6.5. I will be creating a basic farm without connecting to a SQL Server 2008 instance. I will use the SQLExpress version provided by the installer.

First off, if you havent found it, here is the Sharepoint Foundation Server download.

Sharepoint Foundation Server Preparation

Before actually completing the install, you will need to download and install the KB971831 and KB976394 fix.

Sharepoint Foundation Server Prerequisites

1.) Double-Click the Sharepoint.exe installer. Sharepoint Foundation server pops up with the splash screen shown below:

2.) Choose to install the software prerequisites

3.) Click next and accept the EULA. It requires internet connection.

4.) It should complete successfully as shown below

5.) At this point i would recommend restarting before attempting the sharepoint install shown below. Once restarted resume the install by clicking Sharepoint.exe and choosing “install Sharepoint Foundation”

6.) I choose to do the standalone option here since this is a development environment. If you are running in production, you should consider using or installing SQL Server 2008/2005 and doing the advanced Sharepoint installation.

7.) It should run through the install shown below

8.) It should complete successfully as shown below

9.) Click Next as shown below

10.) If all your pre-requisites are installed, it should complete successfully. Some of mine werent and this blog post by Bill Baer helped me.

Sharepoint Solutions Design Questionaire

// January 25th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Sharepoint

If solution design for any system in the solution architecture world was just a bunch of standard questions, then most certainly most of us wouldnt have a job. In fact the other day our Sharepoint Sales team member asked whether i could just send a list of questions over to a client so we could use it as a basis for our Sharepoint Governance. I just laughed and explained a little about why we are employed!

What i did send over was a detailed Sharepoint Questionaire which i find gives me a headstart when it comes to approaching the customer. It gives me a little bit of an understanding as to which part of the Sharepoint Pie to focus on. i thought id post it here so that all Sharepoint Solution Architects could benefit….

1. MOSS Questionaire

2. General Sharepoint Questionaire

Here are the questions if you are to lazy to download:

General Sharepoint

:

1. Have you given any thought to your site structure? Successful Sharepoint deployments rely on defining a logical data structure for your employees to navigate and search information. Can you provide us with a basic site hierarchy? Next to each, list the priority for the implementation (High, Medium, Low)

2. Sharepoint is a collaborative platform and is definitely not a platform which is looked after by IT only. Successful implementations rely on the latest content being available, and this done effectively by identifying a key stakeholder for each site. For each of the sites above, try to identify a business owner/champion for the site. These business owners will oversee the content for each particular site, however may not manage individual information stores such as document libraries

Sharepoint Document Management

1. How are your documents currently stored? (eg Lotus Notes, Fileshares)
2. Does the document store have a logical structure? If so, how are the documents currently categorized? (eg by department, by document type)
3. Do your employees currently store documents locally on their system, or within the document store listed above?
4. Do your employees currently collaborate on documentation?
5. Do your documents contain a reference number (unique identifier for each document)? If yes, how is this number generated?
6. What are the pitfalls of the current system? (eg cannot find anything, security not implemented correctly, structure illogical)
7. How are the versions of the documents currently managed?
8. How is the security of these documents currently managed?
9. Do you currently have a change control process (approval/rejection process) for any documentation?

Content Management

1. Would you be interested in providing your users with access to the following? (circle appropriate response)
a) Company News and Announcements YES NO
b) Company Events YES NO
c) Blog Posts/Messages from CEO/MD YES NO
d) Employee Listings YES NO
e) New Employees Listings YES NO
f) Birthdays YES NO
g) Weather YES NO
h) Social photos YES NO
i) External News Sources (eg smh.com.au) YES NO
j) Discussions/Forums YES NO
k) Employee Surveys YES NO

2. Do you currently have a “knowledgebase/how-to” information store? If yes, what types of information do you store here?
3. Does your organisation use blogs in anyway? Blogs are an effective way for Management or Employees in key areas to communicate to their staff and to encourage real feedback through commenting…
4. The Sharepoint platform is vast and is a great base for your organisation to address the needs and requirements of specific business processes or a set of tasks. Sharepoint provides this platform amongst others, for the following types of applications; Please indicate whether you would like to discuss any of the following:
1. Physical Asset Tracking and Management YES NO
2. Employee Training/Classroom Management YES NO
3. Help Desk YES NO
4. IT Team Workspace YES NO
5. Project Management Sites YES NO

Sharepoint Workflow and Business Process

1. Do you have any existing paper-based or manual processes within your organisation? Please list if they are Manual (M) or Automated (A) (eg New Employee Process, Expense Report Approval, Travel Request Approval)

Sharepoint Search

1. Have you implemented any type of search within your organisation? If Yes, how does your organisation benefit from it? What systems and information stores does it currently search? What are the pitfalls of the current search provider?
2. Which information stores within your organisation should be searchable? (eg documents, contacts, employees, clients)
3. Do you have any external data systems or business data which should be searchable? (eg existing CRM systems, Retails, Marketing, HR or Finance Systems)
4. Where do you currently store your employee details? (eg Active Directory, HR System)
5. How do currently search/lookup existing employees?

Sharepoint Visual Studio State Machine Workflows: OnWorkflowItemChanged and Infinite Loops

// November 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Sharepoint

Im not sure if it was just me, but everytime i started creating a workflow i would get to the point where id have an infinite loop. This was created in ONE state by:

1. Executing workflowProperties.Item.Update(); on a particular item
2. Creating a onWorkflowItemChanged method which fired obviously whenever an item was updated.

Just a little clear thinking, and perhaps a few more coffees that there is actually a solution. See the onWorkflowItemChanged was executing in the same state (so perhaps the Update() happened in StateInitialized AND onWorkflowItemChanged in the EventDriven). There is an easy solution for this

1. Update your onWorkflowItemChanged to fire in a separate state (call it statepending)
2. Execute your Update() of the item in StateFinalized and then execute a SetState to statepending

I never did find much on InfiniteLoop so i must have been the only one with this problem!

The Expert News Rotator Webpart – V1.1 released

// September 28th, 2009 // 9 Comments » // Sharepoint

After a initial release of the news rotator, ive fixed some bugs based on feedback and rereleased it here.

Bugs fixed include:
1. Images not displaying

Additionally ive added in a couple of extra CSS files. The inital release was optimized to use images with an image uploader column feature which allows an image to be uploaded with the news item. The image is then resized accordingly (settings allow to fix this size). This makes the use of the image uploader column really easy. Ill be releasing this soon.

Building Sharepoint for Business Verticals

// July 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Sharepoint

Ever since the release of MOSS 2007, the growth of businesses leveraging Sharepoint as a tool has been huge. During my time as a consultant, i have witnessed Sharepoint (WSS and MOSS) being used in many different avenues or lines of business.

Some of the projects i’ve worked on have tailored Sharepoint to work as a Fleet Management Software, making effective use of lists and dashboarding using dataviews. Others have included using it as a News, Events and Announcements Source in a collaborative solution, another used it for its powerful Forms and Workflow capability as a store for common forms such as Leave Application, New Employee Application and Travel Requests processes, whilst some have used it as more of a Reporting Dashboard making use of the KPI’s, SQL Reporting Services Webparts and Performance Point Reports. I havent even expanded on its other capabilities in terms of document management or search in which we have provided multiple solutions for.

With all this functionality it seems that many businesses should and could incorporate Sharepoint as a tool. The growing trend in the past few months and possibly since its inception is start targeting the business verticals given Sharepoint’s expanse of opportunity in each section of the business.

Whilst some companies cater to all parts of the business such as Bamboo Solutions or Kwizcom or there’s Nintex’s Workflow 2007
, some focus on the business verticals such as Wennsoft’s Project Management Portal.

This seems to be the future of this highly scalable product where niche solutions and modules which target core areas of any particular business. With Sharepoint’s vast upgrade from Microsoft Sharepoint Portal 2003, came the ability to easily extend Sharepoint’s functionality with the use of features. Webparts, Custom Field Types and Workflows (using the VSTO power tools) can all be packaged up into WSP files – A Sharepoint soultion file. These files, using the Sharepoint Installer are designed such that your custom modules (WSP files) may be deployed easily between sites or when migrating.

Its no secret that these products has been around for a while, but i feel that Sharepoint consulting companies and consultants alike have failed to capatilize on niche solutions, solutions which based on a licensing structure perhaps, extending the core functionality with a solidly packaged product, may be deployed to multiple customers in a short period of time. Microsoft suggested the idea by releasing their free Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 but they are just base templates which definitely provide a quick-win for small deployments, but arent specialized for any particular vertical solution.

Looking around the web however, we see that niche solutions around a large scale product drive business by leveraging existing frameworks. Some web companies have made substantial sums of money, or gained a large user base just from these tactics. Twitter is a prime example of this with products such as twitpic, tweetdeck, tweetie, twiterrific – the list goes on. Facebook, where the applications they released used the same model, leveraging existing functions of a core product. Yes these arent quite the same, as they leverage a core userbase from their product, whilst Sharepoint is a stand alone system….but you get my point – they use an existing product to sell theirs.

With all this in mind, with so many existing tools to extend Sharepoint, is it not wise to target a vertical, study their business, determine the setbacks and create a product leveraging off Sharepoint’s strong base features to extend Sharepoint and provide unique functionality and strong solutions for these verticals?

Here’s hoping we begin to see this movement from Sharepoint Solution companies worldwide.

The Expert News Rotator Webpart: Now Available

// July 6th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Sharepoint

The Expert News Rotator is a Sharepoint webpart based off the jQuery Image Rotator with the ability to scroll through content in an Announcements List.

1. Images per news item
2. Thumbnails for each news item
3. Limit Number of news Items
4. Items filtered by Sharepoint Views

Check out my codeplex release for more details…