Home - SharePoint Web Sites Blog

11/11/2008

How to setup a SharePoint website for Anonymous Access

How to setup a website for Anonymous Access

From the Home page go to Site Actions and click on Site Settings

From the Site Settings page go to User Permissions and click on Advanced Permissions

From the Permissions page go to Settings and click on Anonymous Access

From the Anonymous Access page select Entire Web Site click OK.

Posted at 10:04 AM by Bill Thompson | Category: SharePoint 2007 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

9/30/2008

Track important changes with alerts and RSS

Alerts and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) are two services for staying updated with new information and content changes. Both alerts and RSS reduce the need for team members to search for new information.

Alerts and RSS can keep users updated on changes to a site, but how users receive the information differs for each service. Alerts send the information as e-mail messages, if the server is configured to send outgoing e-mail. RSS technology enables people to receive updates, known as RSS Feeds, that are collected with the feeds from other sites that they subscribe to, such as news and blog sites. There are several programs that read or collect RSS Feeds, including Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Windows Internet Explorer 7.

For example, the Adventure Works Marketing team uses both alerts and RSS Feeds. The group uses alerts to track announcements that are of interest to the group. They use RSS Feeds to accumulate new information that members can retrieve by using Web browsers.

Using alerts

In Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can sign up for alerts for the information that you to want to receive in your mailbox. If you have permission to manage the list or library, you can also set up alerts for other people on your team.

You can use alerts to track announcements, tasks, calendars, and other list items for your team members or yourself. For example, if you are a project manager and have permission to manage lists, you can send alerts to people who may be affected by changes to your project.

For example, the Adventure Works Marketing team uses an Announcements list in its workspace. The manager configures an alert to send e-mail to each team member when any of the following events occurs:

A change is made to an existing announcement.

A new announcement is added.

An announcement is deleted.

If you want to stay informed by using alerts but don't want to receive an alert for every change, you can customize which changes you want to be notified about, or you can receive alerts in a daily or weekly summary.

Using RSS Feeds

RSS technology enables readers to consolidate updates from different sites in one location, such as a browser page or an e-mail folder.

When people visit a list or document library, they can click a button to open a page where they can subscribe to the RSS Feed. The RSS Feed contains the title and some other properties of the recently updated document or list item. From the RSS Feed, people can click the title of the item to view the latest information.

If multiple readers are available, people can choose which reader will receive the RSS Feeds.

For example, the Adventure Works Marketing team uses RSS readers to learn when updates have been made to calendars and document libraries.

The behavior of RSS Feeds may differ, depending on your situation. Site administrators and owners can customize the RSS settings and frequency for site collections and sites.

Posted at 8:49 AM by Bill Thompson | Category: SharePoint 2007 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Customize pages on a site by adding Web Parts

If you have permission to edit pages on your site, you can use Web Parts to customize your site to display pictures and charts, portions of other Web pages, lists of documents, customized views of business data, and more. Depending on the Web Part, users also might be able to work with or modify the data in the Web Part through the browser.

What are Web Parts and Web Part Pages?

A Web Part is a modular unit of information that forms the basic building block of most pages on a site. A Web Part Page is simply a Web page that is composed of Web Parts. For example, the home page of the site for the Adventure Works Marketing team is a Web Part Page that contains Web Parts called Announcements, Calendar, and Links. You can also create a blank Web Part Page and choose the layout of the Web Part zones, which are the areas of the page that contain Web Parts.

The following schematic drawing shows Web Parts on a Web Part Page.

Web Part zone containing a single Web Part

Web Part zone containing two Web Parts

Ways you can use Web Parts

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes many Web Parts that are ready to use on your site. The Web Parts that actually appear depend on which site template was used to create your site, and which lists, libraries, and Web Parts are available on your site.

When you create a list or library, a Web Part of the same name is created automatically. For example, if you create a library named Contracts, a Web Part named Contracts is also created. The Web Part displays a view of the data from the library that you created. You can change the view that the Web Part displays without changing the library itself. By default, your team site has Web Parts for the following lists and libraries: Announcements, Calendar, Links, Shared Documents, Tasks, and Team Discussion.

If you have permission to edit pages on your site, you can add Web Parts to a page or edit the current Web Parts on a page by clicking the Site Actions menu and then clicking Edit Page, which places the page in Edit Mode.

This picture shows a Web Part Page in Edit Mode.

In Edit Mode, you can edit Web Parts by clicking the Web Part menu . You can move Web Parts among the zones on the page by dragging the Web Parts to different zones. To add Web Parts, click the Add a Web Part bar at the top of a Web Part zone and then select the Web Parts that you want from the Add Web Parts dialog box.

A common use for Web Parts is to display summarized views of lists and libraries that appear elsewhere on your site. For example, you can insert the Tasks list on any page where you want to be able to view the contents of the Tasks list. You can insert this same Web Part on multiple pages. You can even insert it on the same page multiple times. Each time the data in the Tasks list changes, the changes are reflected in every instance of the Web Part on all pages. If you want to be able to view the contents of another list side by side with the contents of the Tasks list, you can insert Web Parts for both lists on a single page to consolidate the information in one location.

Posted at 8:15 AM by Bill Thompson | Category: SharePoint 2007 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Understand groups and permissions on a site

The permissions you have on a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site determine whether you can access the site and what you can do with the content on it. You can have different permissions for different sites and subsites. You can even have different permissions for different content on the same site.

The content and the menu options that you see on a site vary according to the permissions that are assigned to you. A site owner usually grants you permissions to a site by adding you to a SharePoint group, such as Visitors. The group has a permission level that you receive by being a member of the group.

What permission level do I have on a site?

You can have the following experiences when you access a SharePoint site according to your permission level.

The following assumes the default SharePoint groups and permission levels for a site. Your experience may vary according to how the site owner assigned permissions on your site.

You have the Read permission level

If you can view the site but not make changes to the site or to the content on it, you belong to the Visitors group, which has the Read permission level. For example, if you can view a site but cannot edit a document on the site, you have the Read permission level.

You have the Contribute permission level

If you can view the site and change the content on the site, but not make changes to the site, you belong to Members group which has the Contribute permission level.

You have the Full Control permission level

If you can change the content and the settings on the site you belong to the Owners group which has the Full Control permission level. One of the common tasks that a site owner performs is managing permissions.

You do not have permission to access the site

If you receive the Error: Access Denied message when you attempt to access a site, you do not have the permissions necessary to view the site. Click Request access to ask the site owner to grant you the necessary permissions.

The ability to request access is an optional feature of a SharePoint site. If the feature is enabled, you can request access to a site.

Managing permissions on a site

As a member of the Owners group you determine the level of access to your site. You can grant users access to the whole site, or to specific information on the site, such as a list or even a single file. Assigning permission levels to a specific item can help you to protect sensitive content, such as a contract or budget information, without restricting access to the rest of the site.

SharePoint groups and permission levels help you to efficiently manage access to sites. You add users to SharePoint groups and assign permission levels to your site and to its contents. By default, permissions on lists, libraries, folders within lists and libraries, items, and documents are inherited from their parent site. However, you can assign unique permissions to items at a lower level, such as subsites, libraries, or even files.

SharePoint groups

Each site comes with a default set of SharePoint groups, such as Owners. The name of the SharePoint group matches the name of the site. For example, if the name of the site is Marketing, a group will be called Marketing Owners. You can add people to these groups, so that you can later grant access to the group instead of having to grant access to each individual user. You can also create SharePoint groups to provide custom levels of access. You might want to provide more liberal or restrictive access to a specific group than you would to the default members of your site. For example, if you have a group of marketing managers that often gives confidential presentations, you might want to create a Marketing Managers group that can share information that is restricted from all other users of the site.

Permission levels

Each permission level has a set of permissions associated with it, based on the intended roles and tasks for that level. For example, the Members group has the Contribute permission level by default. As a site owner, you choose which permissions are associated with each permission level (except for Limited Access and Full Control, which cannot be customized) or add new permission levels to combine different sets of permissions. Some sites have additional groups and permission levels that are tailored to the purpose of the site, such as publishing or records management sites.

Posted at 8:13 AM by Bill Thompson | Category: SharePoint 2007 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Introduction to collaboration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Most people spend the greater part of their work day involved in collaborative tasks. They share information, they work together in teams, and they manage projects. It can be a challenge to collaborate effectively if you do not have tools to easily communicate, share information, and coordinate projects details and deadlines among a large group of people.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help you get your work done more efficiently because it provides organizations with a platform for sharing information and working together in teams. A SharePoint site offers specific kinds of tools and workspaces that you can use to communicate with team members, track projects, coordinate deadlines, and collaboratively create and edit documents.

Improve team productivity

Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes many different kinds of site templates that you can use to create a site. For example, the Marketing Department at Adventure Works uses a site created from the Team Site template to manage a range of team projects and document-related tasks. The members of the Marketing Department use their team site every day to create and manage documents, track issues and tasks, and share links and contacts. Because they have one location for these activities, members of the Marketing Department can save time and enjoy increased productivity.

The site template for a team site includes:

	Shared Documents library
	Announcements list
	Calendar
	Team Discussion list
	Tasks list
	Links list

If you want to get your team up and running quickly, you can easily create a site by using the site template for a team site. This all-purpose template can meet a diverse range of needs. It can store long-term routine information for a single department or short-term information for a special project that spans several departments. By creating a team site to use as a collaborative workspace, your team can become both more efficient and more productive and ultimately achieve better business results. You can also customize your site to meet the needs of your team or project by adding lists, libraries, or other features.

Manage projects more efficiently

An Office SharePoint Server 2007 site includes several features that you can use to manage projects and coordinate tasks and deadlines among people. The Marketing team site at Adventure Works has a calendar that team members use to track important meetings, industry events, and trade shows. Marketing team members link the calendar to their personal calendars in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 so that they can view this information along with their personal calendar information. The Marketing Department also uses a Project Tasks list to visualize and track the key phases of marketing projects.

There are several different ways you can use a team site to manage projects more efficiently:

	Use built-in features such as the Project Tasks list template, which enables you to visualize task relationships and project status with automated Gantt charts.
	Coordinate the team's work with shared calendars, alerts, and notifications. You can connect a calendar on your SharePoint site to your calendar in Office Outlook 2007, where you can view and update it just as you do your personal calendar.
	Create Meeting Workspace sites to gather materials and documents related to a meeting.

Create, review, and share documents

An Office SharePoint Server 2007 site also helps groups of people to create and edit documents collaboratively. For example, the Marketing Department at Adventure Works uses two different kinds of libraries to manage the content that the team creates:

	Team members save general marketing and budget documents to a Shared Documents library, where other team members can easily read them or check them out and edit them.
	The team uses Slide Libraries to save and reuse slides for various presentations.

For special projects that involve only a few people, team members sometimes create Document Workspace subsites on their team site. Document Workspace sites help you to coordinate work on a single document or a group of documents.

There are several different ways to save and work on documents and other files on a team site:

	Use document libraries to store and manage important documents. Features such as versioning help you keep track of revisions to a document. Or you can require check-out for documents in a library to prevent multiple people from making changes at the same time.
	Create Document Workspace sites to coordinate the development of specific documents.
	Use Slide Libraries to share and reuse Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 slides in a central location.
	Take document libraries offline in Office Outlook 2007 to enable people to view and edit documents while they are not connected to the network.
	Use workflows to manage collaborative tasks such as document review or approval. To learn more about workflow, see the Enterprise Content Management section of this training course.

Capture and share community knowledge

An Office SharePoint Server 2007 site provides organizations with a central location to capture best practices, share information, and promote standardized business processes. The Marketing Department at Adventure Works uses both a wiki site and a blog site to capture and communicate information of interest to the team. Marketing team members use a wiki to compile general information about company and team processes that will be helpful to new team members. Any member of the team can add information to the wiki or update the wiki posts.

Several members of the team also routinely post industry-related or marketing-related information to a blog site, where other team members can read the posts and comment on them. The marketing blog provides team members with a forum to share new ideas, opinions, or inspiration.

Here are some ways you can use a team site to capture and share collective team knowledge or important information:

	Track updates and information with alerts or Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
	Use blogs to share or promote information.
	Capture community knowledge or document internal processes by using a wiki.
	Use surveys or discussions to gather information or encourage dialogue.

Posted at 8:08 AM by Bill Thompson | Category: SharePoint 2007 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Upload your homepage graphic to a document library

1. Upload your homepage graphic to a document library

2. Click on your graphic in the library

3. Copy and paste the URL of the graphic onto a text file

4. Click on upper right arrow of Home page by Modify Shared Page and mouse over Modified Shared Webparts and then over to Site Image and then Click

6. The site image modify screen comes up and you get the URL from the text file and copy and paste it into the area below where it says “To link to an image file, type url to path”

7 Click on OK button on the bottom of the Site Image modify screen and your new image should appear

Posted at 8:04 AM by Bill Thompson | Category: SharePoint 2003 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/17/2008

Tutorial Learning how to Find Information on SharePoint Sites

Tutorial Learning how to Find Information on SharePoint Sites
In this Article you will learn to:
✔ Search an entire site
✔ Search a specific list or document library
✔ Search multiple document libraries
One of the most efficient ways to retrieve a list of common items or find a specific item is to ask SharePoint to perform a search. Microsoft provides nearly ubiquitous searching in every SharePoint site. Like the list view filters discussed in Chapter 4, a search can be used to dynamically filter the items in a specific list or document library. However, searching isn’t limited to a single list. A search can also return items from any list or document library in an entire site. From within Office 2003, it can even return documents from document libraries across multiple sites.
Searching in SharePoint is enabled by default, simple to use, and doesn’t require any advance setup.
Note If SharePoint is installed using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine
(Windows) (WMSDE) rather than Microsoft SQL Server 2000, the Search box will not be displayed.
Content is indexed as it is created. You simply enter one or more keywords into the Search box press Enter, and items relating to those keywords or containing those keywords are returned in a list of search results, sorted by relevance. To search for a phrase instead of the individual words, include the entire phrase in quotation marks. If you type Project 101 without quotation marks, the search returns results associated with the individual words “project” and “101”. But if you include quotes around the phrase “project 101”, the search results returned will be associated with the entire phrase. Search results are even permission aware. This is because permission information is stored in the index along with the content details, so the results of any SharePoint search are permission specific. That is, only the items that you are allowed to view will be returned when you initiate a search. There are some limits. Searching in SharePoint does not support the use of “AND,” wildcards, the ability to search for the lack of a keyword (called negation), or searching for parts of a word. For example, a query for “break” will not return documents that contain only the word “breakfast”. Although searching does include making the search terms plural and placing suffixes like “ed” and “ing” on the ends of keywords (called stemming) and the removal of noise words like “but,” “yet,” and “or;” thesaurus and best bets are not supported. SharePoint Portal Server provides these types of rich search features and a much higher level of search customization across a much larger set of data; the entire enterprise, if you like, including all SharePoint sites and many other content sources can be indexed using SharePoint Portal Server. However, the focus of this document is Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.
Search can index all text entered into list items and most documents, including all types of Microsoft Office documents. However, indexing files like portable document format (PDF) and AutoCAD require the installation of additional indexing software called IFilters on the SharePoint servers.
If your search does not return any results, you will want to ensure that all keywords are spelled correctly. Otherwise, try different keywords, more general keywords, or synonyms to describe the item you are looking for. If your search returns too many results, increase the number of search words. You can include up to 255 characters in the Search box. You can also use more specific keywords. For example, rather than searching for “tree,” search for the name of a specific kind of tree.
Searching an Entire Site
Searching for information in a SharePoint site works much like searching for information in any of the major Internet search engines. You simply enter one or more keywords into the Search box and press Enter. The search results page will show all the list items and documents that contain one or more of the search terms used. The items that contain the most terms the closest together will be ranked higher than the items that contain fewer terms or terms that are farther apart.
Finding Information on the SharePoint Site
The Search box is located in the upper-right corner of the Home page and all list view pages for all lists and libraries.
To the right of the Search magnifying glass is the Search box where you will type the keywords that best identify the content you are looking for. The green button with the white arrow is the Go button. Clicking on this button will initiate the search.
Tip Pressing Enter while typing in the Search box will also initiate a search.
It may take several minutes for recent items to appear in the search results. By default, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services will index new content or re-index modified content every five minutes.
In this exercise, you will search for content on an entire SharePoint Web site.
OPEN the SharePoint site where you would like to search for content, for example http://shared.sharepointwebsites.com/ProjectTeam. If prompted, type your user name and password and click OK. If you can authenticate, you have sufficient rights to search.
1 In the Search box in the upper-right corner of the home page of the site, type a keyword, for example you could type Functional Requirements. Then press Enter or click on the green Go button.

The Search Results page should be returned. Search results include a title linked to the item, the list or document library that it was found in, the date the item was last modified, and the author of the item. Search results are also categorized into the List Items and the Documents in which the keyword was found.
Note In the example, the Functional Requirements is listed in both the List Items and Documents results. A document may be listed in both categories because the keyword may have been found in both the document text and in the metadata in the documents list item, as is the case in this example. The title property for the Functional Requirements.doc file has the keyword in it and so does the body of the document.
Note There is no “advanced search” in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.
Important Remember, it may take several minutes for recent items to appear in the search results.
2 Browse thru the results of your search and click on the link provided to view the entire content.
3 Optionally, search for another keyword directly from the Search Results page.
Finding Information on the SharePoint Site
Searching a Specific List or Document Library
Searching a specific list or document library is very similar to searching for content in the entire site. First you must navigate to a list view page of the list or document library that you want to search. The search results will be limited to that list or document library. In this way, you can swiftly filter the items shown in any list view of a list or document library.
In the following exercise, you will search for content on a specific list.
OPEN the SharePoint site where you would like to search for content, for example http://shared.sharepointwebsites.com/ProjectTeam. If prompted, type your user name and password and click OK. If you can authenticate, you have sufficient rights to search. As before, to have search results you will need content. So, you can complete the previous exercises listed below to generate some content or you can use one of your own existing sites (search results will vary).

1 In the Quick Launch bar on the left of the Home page, click on a list where you would like to search for content, for example, Issue Tracker Task list.
2 In the Search box in the upper-right corner of the default list view page of the list, type a keyword, for example you could type Dead Link. Then press Enter or click on the green Go button.

Note Any content that satisfies the search criteria will be returned, so if you have other content your search results may include that content. Again the search results page is returned, but this time it looks just like the list view that was showing when the search was initiated and only items from this list that have related keywords are displayed. The columns showing are based upon the columns that would be showing for the list view that is selected.
Tip You can work with the list items on this Search Results page similar to the way that you work with list items on any list view page. Columns can still be sorted by clicking on the column header.
3 Optionally, search for another keyword directly from this Search Results page.
Searching Multiple Document Libraries
What if the documents that you want to search for are not all in one document library or even all in one Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services site? Microsoft Office 2003 provides a means by which to search multiple Windows Explorer Web folders simultaneously. Since Windows SharePoint Services document libraries can be represented as Windows Explorer Web folders, we can use Office to search them too. In the following exercise, you will set up a Web folder to search and then you will search for documents using the File Search option in a Microsoft Office 2003 application, for example Microsoft Word 2003.
OPEN Windows Explorer.
OPEN Microsoft Office Word 2003.
1 In Windows Explorer, in the left pane, click My Network Places. It will be near the bottom. If you already have some Web folders setup they will be listed in the right pane.
2 If you don’t see an option to Add a Network Place, deselect the Folders button on the Windows Explorer toolbar.
3 Click Add a Network Place.
4 On the Welcome page of the Add Network Place wizard, click the Next button. A downloading information from the Internet page will briefly display.
5 On the next page of the Add Network Place wizard, click Choose another network location and click the Next button.
6 On the next page of the Add Network Place wizard, type the Internet address for the document library you want to search, for example http://shared.sharepointwebsites.com/ProjectTeam/Planning Descriptions. Click the Next button.
Tip Navigate to the document library in the browser and copy the entire URL up to, but not including, the word Form from the Address bar of Internet Explorer, and paste it as the Internet address for that document library. If the URL includes %20 for spaces, replace with actual spaces, otherwise, Word might have problems searching.
7 This is an example using my site so of course you may not get access (I’m working on a safe way to do this) but hopefully you will get the idea on how to do this.
8 On the next page of the Add Network Place wizard, type the name you would like to see in Office 2003, for example, Planning. Click the
Next button.
9 On the final page of the Add Network Place wizard, make sure the Open this network place when I click Finish check box is selected and then click the Finish button.
10 A window containing the contents of the selected document library will be displayed.
11 Click the Folders button on the Windows Explorer toolbar.
12 This is now a searchable folder from within Office 2003.
13 Close Windows Explorer.
14 In Microsoft Office Word 2003, click the File menu and then click File Search.
15 This will display the Basic File Search tool pane.
16 In the Search text: box, type the keywords you want search to use, for example you could type Project.
17 Click the Go button.
18 The Search Results tool pane will be displayed and the default Selected locations and Selected file types will be searched.
Tip If you want to stop the search before it completes, click the Stop button.
19 The results of the default search do not look for documents in our SharePoint document library. So, click the Modify button to return to the Basic File Search tool pane.
20 In the Selected locations drop-down list, unselect My Computer, expand My Network Places, and select the Web folder you just created; for example, select Project. Then click the Go button again.
21 The Search Results tool pane will show the status while Office 2003 performs the search and then the results will be displayed.
22 In the Search Results tool pane, move your mouse over a document you want to access and click the down arrow that appears.
23 If you have the necessary permissions, you can click Edit with Microsoft Office Word, make changes, and save them directly back into the document library.
CLOSE Microsoft Word 2003.
Key Points
■ SharePoint search is a powerful way of locating information on your SharePoint sites. ■ Searching in SharePoint is enabled by default. ■ Only results that the searcher has permission to see will be returned in the search results. ■ Search can index list items and all types of Microsoft Office documents. ■ From the browser, you can search an entire site or just a specific list or document library. ■ From Microsoft Office 2003, you can search across SharePoint sites.

Posted at 11:33 AM by Bill Thompson | Category: SharePoint 2003 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Welcome to your Blog!

To begin using your site, click Create a Post under Admin Links to the right.

What is a Blog?

A Blog is a site designed to help you share information. Blogs can be used as news sites, journals, diaries, team sites, and more. It is your place on the World Wide Web.

Blogs are typically displayed in reverse chronological order (newest entries first), and consist of frequent short postings. With this Blog, it is also possible for your site visitors to comment on your postings.

In business, Blogs can be used as a team communication tool. Keep team members in touch by providing a central place for links, relevant news, and even gossip.

Posted at 10:41 AM by Bill Thompson | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

RSS Feed

SharePoint Web Sites Blog