Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Technologies

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Chapter 18

The Quiesce Farm option behaves similarly to the Quiesce Form Template

option, but instead of disabling a single form template, it disables all

browser-based form templates within the entire farm, regardless of whether

they have been deployed by a user or an administrator.

18.7 Document Information Panel

SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are tightly

integrated with the Office 2007 suite. We have seen throughout this chap-

ter that when we deploy a form to a document library or a site content

type, the data entered into the fields on the form are promoted to columns

in the form library. This type of property promotion is extremely useful

Figure 18.35

Quiescing a form

template.

Figure 18.36

Form template

with quiesced

status.

604 18.7 Document Information Panel

when working with Office applications in general, as a user does not have

to open the complete document or form to reveal a specific property value.

Office applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint have

supported property promotion into SharePoint lists and libraries since the

days of SharePoint Portal Server 2001; however, unless the properties were

one of the default document properties, such as Title, they were unwieldy

to capture and to map to SharePoint. With Office 2007, Microsoft has pro-

vided a convenient interface for you to capture content for the custom col-

umns in a SharePoint library that is consistent across all the Office

applications. The interface we are referring to is the Document Informa-

tion Panel, which is basically an InfoPath form embedded into your Office

application and mapped to SharePoint content. The Document Informa-

tion Panel replaces the Document Properties dialog used in earlier versions

of Office. Figure 18.38 shows the default panel associated with a Word

2007 document. You can replace the default panel with your own custom

Document Information Panel by associating the document with your Info-

Path form template.

Replacing the standard Document Information Panel with a custom

panel is very straightforward and involves creating a new custom template

and associating it with the document site content type associated with the

document library. When you navigate to a document library in SharePoint,

click on the Document Library Settings from the Settings menu, and then

click on the Document content type associated with the library, you are pre-

sented with the Document list content type settings (Figure 18.39). Because

we are accessing the content type settings for the list, any changes that are

Figure 18.37

Quiesce the

entire farm.

18.7 Document Information Panel 605

Chapter 18

made apply only to list’s version of the content type, the Document site

content type remains intact.

On the Document list content type page, there is a link to the Docu-

ment Information Panel settings associated with the content type. When you

access the Document Information Panel Settings page, you will find a link

that allows you to create a new custom template. Clicking on this link

launches InfoPath 2007, and InfoPath creates a data source connection

between the custom template and the library with which the content type is

associated. InfoPath also creates some controls on the form template and

binds them to columns in the SharePoint library. The form template is in

designer mode at this point, and you are free to add and remove layouts, col-

ors, controls, and bindings as needed (Figure 18.40). Once the template has

been designed, it is deployed to SharePoint using the publishing wizard.

When you initiate the publishing wizard during this process, you will notice

an additional option at the bottom of the list of locations that allows you to

deploy your form template as a Document Information Panel for a Share-

Point site content type or list content type (Figure 18.41). That’s really all

Figure 18.38

Default Word

2007 document

information panel.

606 18.7 Document Information Panel

there is to it; clicking Next simply brings you to the verification dialog for

one last check before you decide to deploy the template. Once the template

has been deployed, documents created in that document library adopt the

new Document Information Panel. Figure 18.42 shows the result of creating

a new document in the sample document library to which we deployed the

custom template. The same basic process is involved when you want to create

a custom Document Information Panel for a site content type, as opposed to

a list content type.

Figure 18.39

Creating a new

document

information panel

template.

Figure 18.40

Custom template

designed in

InfoPath 2007.

18.7 Document Information Panel 607

Chapter 18

Figure 18.41

Publishing the

custom template.

Figure 18.42

Custom document

information panel

in action.