Essential SharePoint 2007, 2nd Edition

Putting SharePoint to Work

If you followed along carefully this far, you should now know how to:

• Customize pages by adding or changing web parts

• Add content to lists and libraries

• Create sites

• Control who can see and use a site

Congratulations! That's about 90 percent of what most folks need to know about using SharePoint. Of course you are more than just a user, so I'll go on for a few more chapters. Right now, I'd like to put what you've learned to work by walking you through "the big three" applications for SharePoint. Specifically, I want to show you how to:

• Create a company-wide phone list

• Replace shared drives

• Control document revisions

The following tutorial sections walk you through creating those applications. Please follow along using SharePoint as the tutorials teach you the core skills you will use when creating many different types of applications.

Tip

You will be prompted for your username and password at various times in the following procedures. In each case, enter the user name and password you use to sign on to your network (usually you can substitute your full email name and password). In Chapter 2, I'll show you how to use your network credentials automatically.

Creating a Company Phone List

Many companies still distribute printed employee phone lists. Those go out-of-date quickly and are a pain to keep up-to-date—this is a perfect first application for SharePoint! Creating the phone list involves these major tasks:

• Create a list based on the Contacts template.

• Customize the list to add a Departments column.

• Create a new view to simplify data entry.

• Place the list on the home page as a web part.

SharePoint comes with a set of predefined list templates, and the Contacts template most closely fits the needs of a company phone list. By basing our new list on an existing template, we save the effort of creating columns for name, phone number, and so on.

To create the phone list:

1. Navigate to the top-level web site in SharePoint.

2. In WSS, click Site Actions → Create in the upper-right corner of a page. In MOSS, click Site Actions → View All Site Content → Create.

3. Click Contacts under the Communications heading on the left of the Create page. SharePoint displays the New page.

4. Name the list "Phone List" and click Create. SharePoint creates a new phone list based on the Contacts list template.

The Contacts template doesn't include a Department column, which is useful for grouping employees. So, we'll need to add that column next.

To add a Department column to the list:

1. Click Settings → Create Column on the Phone List toolbar.

2. Fill out the Create Column page as shown in Figure 1-13 and click OK to create the column.

3. Click OK to add the Department column to the list.

Figure 1-13. Adding a column to a list

The Contacts template includes a lot of columns we don't really need. We could delete them, but it doesn't really hurt to leave them there—it just makes data entry more complicated. To simplify that data entry, create a new datasheet view for entering records in bulk.

Tip

The datasheet view is only available if you have Office Professional Edition (or higher) installed.

To create a datasheet view for the list:

1. Click Settings → Create View on the Phone List toolbar.

2. Click Datasheet View under the "Choose a view format" header on the left of the Create View page.

3. Name the view Edit Data and select the following columns in the Columns section of the Create Datasheet View page: Last Name, First Name, Business Phone, Department, and Mobile Phone.

4. Deselect all other columns.

5. Change the "Position from Left" number for the Department column from 8 to 1.

6. Click OK when done. SharePoint displays the new view of the list as shown in Figure 1-14.

Figure 1-14. Adding data to the phone list

Add some names and numbers to the phone list. If you have an existing phone list in an Excel workbook, you can actually cut/paste columns of data from that workbook into the list. Be sure to add numbers for a few different departments, since we'll use this list in the next task.

Phone lists should be easy to find, so I usually put them on the home page. To do that, create a web part for the phone list on the home page and customize the web part to display phone numbers by department.

To add the phone list web part:

1. Navigate to the home page and click Site Actions → Edit Page. SharePoint displays the home page in Edit mode.

2. Click "Add a Web Part in the Right web part zone" on the right side of the page. SharePoint displays the Add Web Parts to Right page.

3. Select the Phone List web part in the Lists and Libraries section of the page and click Add. SharePoint adds the phone list to the page as a web part.

4. Click Edit → Modify Shared Web Part on the Phone List toolbar. SharePoint displays the web part properties page on the right.

5. Click "Edit the current view" under the Selected View heading. SharePoint displays the Edit View: Phone List page as shown in Figure 1-15.

6. Deselect the E-mail Address column, scroll to the end of the page, expand the Group By section, and select "First group by the column: Department."

7. Click OK. SharePoint displays the phone list as shown in Figure 1-16.

Figure 1-15. Editing the web part view

Figure 1-16. Using the new phone list from the home page

Replacing Network Drives with Libraries

Most companies store shared files on network drives. These are usually mapped to drive letters on employee desktops—for example, P: for personal files, R: for released files, and so on. Learning those drive letters and their folder structures is often one of the first things a new employee needs to know.

By replacing those network drives and their folder structures with SharePoint libraries, you get some big benefits very quickly:

• Files are discoverable. SharePoint uses a web page interface, which is easier to navigate than network drives.

• The contents of documents stored in SharePoint are searchable.

• Libraries support version control for files.

• You can filter, sort, and format views of the library in useful ways, such as only showing recently changed files.

• Employees can get to their files securely from home or while on the road without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

The hardest part of migrating from network drives to SharePoint libraries is determining how you want to organize the files you move over—it is best to flatten deep folder structures. For example, a path like R:\Departments\Legal\Templates\Contracts might map to the Contract Templates library in the Legal Department site. Also, since libraries can keep version history, you might want to change naming conventions that incorporate version information into the filename. Those aspects of the migration generally require some discussion and planning. The actual migration is much simpler and involves these major tasks:

• Create department sites.

• Create libraries for the department.

• Upload files to the libraries.

To create a department site, follow the instructions in the section "Creating Sites," earlier in this chapter. Use the title "Legal Department" and the address "Legal" as shown earlier in Figure 1-13.

To create a library in the Legal Department site:

1. Click Site Actions → Create in the upper-right corner of a page.

2. Click Document Library under the Libraries heading on the left of the Create page.

3. Name the library "Contract Templates" and select Yes under "Create a version" at the bottom of the page as shown in Figure 1-17; then click OK. SharePoint creates a new, empty library with version control.

Figure 1-17. Creating a new library with version control

To upload documents to the library:

1. On the Contract Templates toolbar, click Actions → Open with Windows Explorer. SharePoint opens the library in Windows Explorer.

2. Open the network drive folder that you want to move files from, select the files to move, and drag them onto the library's Windows Explorer window as shown in Figure 1-18.

Figure 1-18. Uploading files from a network drive to a SharePoint library

The address in the library's Windows Explorer window (for example, \\wombat6\legal\Contract Templates) is the Windows notation for the address of the library. You can drag the folder icon to your desktop as a shortcut to the library, map a drive letter to the address, or use it in command scripts.

Using Document Version Control

Now that you've migrated your network drives to SharePoint (grin), employees can manage revisions to documents through shared workspaces. Shared workspaces are special sites that allow team members to work together privately on revisions and then publish those revisions once approved. SharePoint can also track version history and control access to documents through a check-out/check-in procedure.

For example, suppose the Legal Department needs to make changes to the standard non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that was uploaded to the Contract Templates library in the preceding section. The author performs these major tasks:

1. Checks out the document.

2. Creates a workspace for the revision.

3. Revises the document and collects feedback from the reviewers.

4. Publishes the approved document back to the library.

5. Checks in the final document.

Checking a document out prevents others from making changes and indicates to others that the document is under revision. To check out the document:

• Navigate to the Contract Templates library and click Check Out from the NDA document's Edit menu. SharePoint adds a little icon to indicate that the document is checked out.

You handle revisions through a shared workspace rather than through email so that comments are shared among reviewers and can be stored for future reference. To create the shared workspace:

1. Click Send To → Create Document Workspace from the NDA document's Edit menu as shown in Figure 1-19. SharePoint displays the Create Document Workspace page.

2. Click OK to create the workspace. SharePoint creates a workspace and copies the NDA document into the Shared Documents library.

3. Click "Add new user" in the Members section on the right side of the page. SharePoint displays the Add Users page.

4. Type the reviewers' email addresses and select Contribute in the list of permissions, and then click OK. SharePoint adds the user to the Members list for the workspace.

Figure 1-19. Creating a shared workspace

Only the members of this shared workspace can view the page in Figure 1-19, and it is not automatically added to site navigation. The author must notify reviewers that the workspace exists and send them a link to it asking for their feedback. To make changes to the document and send it for review:

1. Return to the workspace home page.

2. Click Edit in Microsoft Office Word from the NDA document's Edit menu. SharePoint prompts you for your user name and password and then opens the document with Word in Edit mode.

3. Turn on change tracking and edit the document in Word as you would normally. Click Save when done and close Word.

4. Click Send To → E-mail a Link from the document's Edit menu. SharePoint creates an Outlook email message containing a link to the document.

5. Fill out the email's To, CC, and Subject fields; compose a message instructing the reviewers to use the Team Discussion to submit their comments; and click Send.

Once all the comments are in, it's time to publish the document back to the library so others can start using it. To publish the approved document:

1. Click Edit in Microsoft Office Word from the NDA document's Edit menu, accept all changes to the document, and then save and close.

2. Click Send To → Publish to Source Location from the document's Edit menu. SharePoint displays the Publish to Source Location page.

3. Click OK to confirm that you want to publish the document. SharePoint copies the completed document back to the Contract Templates library.

4. Return to the Contract Templates library and click Check In from the NDA document's Edit menu. SharePoint displays the Check In page.

5. Enter a comment in the Check In page and click OK to make the changes visible to others.

The shared workspace does not go away after the document is published. The author may choose to keep it in place for a period of time or request that the SharePoint administrator archive it. It's a good idea to have some policy in place for how that is handled.

The preceding review process requires a lot of management on the author's part. If reviewers don't respond, the process can stall, and multiple reviewers might have conflicting changes. MOSS addresses those problems with workflows. Workflows are a set of tasks that must be completed in a particular order within a specified time frame. That topic is beyond the scope of this chapter; see Chapter 8 for more information.