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eMagazine Acrobat version with hyperlinks

for le b a il a v a n io t a inform t r e p x e h it w d qty.) d e it m li ( t in 60 pages fille ® r p and in ® Reader , e-Reader Acrobat From file shares to document libraries Roundtrip between SharePoint and Navision Making collaboration easy Navigation in SharePoint Mega Tip Building a no-code products and services catalog with SharePoint Server 2013 SharePoint 2013 and Office Web Apps Sync SharePoint document libraries to your local drive

#11 November 2013

eMagazine #11 - November 2013

Contents From file shares to document libraries

5

Roundtrip between SharePoint and Navision

13

Making collaboration easy

19

Navigation in SharePoint

26

Mega Tip

35

Building a no-code products and services catalog with SharePoint Server 2013

40

SharePoint 2013 and Office Web Apps

49

Sync SharePoint document libraries to your local drive

54

About the Authors

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Colofon DIWUG SharePoint eMagazine Nr. 11, November 2013 Publisher: Stichting Dutch Information Worker User Group (DIWUG) http://www.diwug.nl Editors: Marianne van Wanrooij [email protected] Mirjam van Olst [email protected] Special thanks to: All authors and sponsors! Design and layout: Barth Sluyters [email protected] ©2013. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any way without prior written permission of DIWUG or the author. All trademarks mentioned in this magazine are the property of their respective owners. 2


Events to come After the celebrative 10th edition of the DIWUG SharePoint eMagazine we are now back to normal with this 11th edition. Thankfully normal still means that we have a lot of very high quality articles from great authors. Apart from the magazine and the regular DIWUG events we also have some great SharePoint Conferences coming up over the next few months. The first one will be the SharePoint Connections event in Amsterdam on November 19 and 20 2013 If you register using the DIWUG discount code (TD935) you get a 25% discount. The event has some great speakers and sessions lined up, so register now! You can meet DIWUG organizers Marianne van Wanrooij and Mirjam van Olst along with Bram de Jager, Donald Hessing, Waldek Mastykarz, Joke Feije, Robin Meure and Spencer Harbar at the Ask the Experts area. The next event is the European Office 365 Connect event in Haarlem (Netherlands) on January 28 and 29 2014 Again some great speakers will be at the event. Use the DIWUG code (RC836) for a 25% discount when registering for the Office 365 Connect event. If you are inspired by the magazine and you have any ideas for an article today, don’t hesitate to contact Marianne or Mirjam, we are always looking for authors! The deadline for articles for the next magazine is January 1st 2014. If you want to sponsor the magazine that has a world-wide audience with around 10.000 downloads and 750 printed magazines, please contact us as well. Mirjam van Olst, Editor DIWUG SharePoint eMagazine, [email protected]

This issue is sponsored by

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From file shares to document libraries by Jasper Oosterveld End-users love their files shares with folders, there I said it! There’s no denying it. They really do; why you may ask? They have been working with folders for many, many years. It has become a familiar face staring back from the monitor screen. End-users also find folders easy to use; they know where to find their documents, even if this means browsing through many layers of sub folders. Let’s be honest: it’s really easy to create new folders, pretty much child’s play. That’s fine for them because they are used to it and have accepted this working method. And here you show up, telling them folders are bad! Very bad! Metadata is the new cure for finding and structuring documents by creating new columns, views, applying a taxonomy and maybe even document sets (isn’t that a folder?). Just remember the look on your end-users faces, when you are explaining this, because they aren’t buying it. This is a very common scenario for every SharePoint Consultant. I have been there many times before. By writing this article, I want to help you convince your end-users of the power of SharePoint Document Management with useful tips and tricks.

File Shares There isn’t anything wrong with file shares because they serve a useful purpose. A file share stores files you don’t want to save in SharePoint. For example: database or large video files. These file types aren’t suitable for SharePoint. You don’t store a database in a database. SharePoint, especially 2013, comes with great video management features! But still can’t store 4GB video files in SharePoint. SharePoint offers several features though that are really helpful when managing documents. Some of them are: 1. Versioning 2.

Custom metadata

3.

Offline access

4.

Custom permissions

5.

Restore deleted documents

Let’s take a closer look.

Versioning SharePoint is kind enough to provide versioning within one document. This isn’t the case with file shares. The only option is creating a new document per version.

Custom metadata You are “stuck” with the metadata provided by Office such as author or subject. You cannot create your own custom metadata. For example a category field with multiple categories. This is the reason end-users start creating a folder structure.

Offline access No network access? No more access to your precious documents. This is one of the reasons end-users start saving documents on the desktop. SharePoint comes with useful tools such as SkyDrive Pro or SharePoint Workspace. These tools provide your end-users with offline access to their documents.

Custom permissions Assigning custom permissions to documents isn’t an easy process and not user friendly at all. SharePoint 2013 made this process a lot easier with the Share option.

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Restoring deleted documents Another major issue with file shares! Accidently deleted a document? Time to call your friends from IT Support and we all know how much they love these kind of calls. SharePoint has a personal recycle bin where deleted documents stay put for 30 days. Maybe even longer depending on the kindness of your SharePoint Administrator.

Structure your documents with document libraries SharePoint document libraries to the rescue! The following features can be your solution to structure documents: 1. Folders 2. Views & custom metadata 3. Taxonomy 4. Document sets

Wait! I can use folders? Yes you can; you do have the option to create folders in document libraries. Why would you use folders you might ask? It can be acceptable in the following scenarios: 1. Archiving old content 2. Migrating content from file shares Folders are perfect for archiving documents you aren’t using on a daily basis. In this case you are just using SharePoint as a storage platform. This scenario isn’t meant for daily collaboration! Is your file share going to be shut down? Or you don’t have time to setup a metadata structure but you need to migrate to SharePoint? You can use the Explorer View to drag and drop your complete file share folder structure to one or more document libraries. Be careful! Your network connection can disconnect and you won’t have a clue which documents have transferred and which haven’t. Either migrate small badges or use a third party tool. Although these two scenarios can sound acceptable, you shouldn’t use folders in SharePoint. This is why: 1. Unfriendly navigation 2. Duplication of documents 3. Undermines Search results 4. Time consuming to switch to metadata

Unfriendly navigation No matter how well you think it through, navigation through a folder structure is not user friendly. For example, a sales library has the following structure: Customers Proposals Presentations

Digital Workplace

SharePoint 2013 Lync 2013

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Figure 1 shows what this looks like in SharePoint.

Figure 1: A folder structure isn’t user friendly You completely lost sight of the overall folder structure.

Duplication of documents Where is the latest sales presentation about Lync for Enterprise? In the Digital Workplace folder? Or in the Presentations folder? SharePoint won’t alert you when the same document is uploaded in different locations.

Undermines Search results Metadata is extremely powerful in combination with Search. You can enhance the Search refinement panel with custom metadata. This isn’t possible with folders.

Time consuming to switch Switching from a complex, and deep, folder structure to metadata is going to be a very time consuming process. You need to find a poor intern or use the power of a third party tool. You now have valid arguments and examples to teach your end-users about the disadvantages of folders. Time to show the power of SharePoint!

Views and custom metadata A really cool document library feature is the ability to create custom metadata by adding new columns. For example, the Sales department wants to centrally store their meeting documents. Every document has a date and a category. This is easy to facilitate by creating two columns: One for the meeting date and one for the category. This results in the example displayed in figure 2.

Figure 2: Creating your own custom metadata fields

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You have an overview of all of the meeting documents. In case of many (let’s say above a hundred) documents, every end-user can use the filter to select all the agendas. This is a really intuitive feature and most users have used this before working with Excel.

Figure 3: Every end-user can apply a filter SharePoint 2013 makes it even easier to find documents with the search bar, a great feature to find the document you are looking for. Another handy feature is group by, as you can see in figure 4.

Figure 4: Use the group by feature for a user friendly overview of all your documents

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All of the documents are grouped by the date and category column. Personally, I find this a bit easier than filtering.

Taxonomy Working with custom metadata and the group by feature works perfectly until the metadata has multiple levels. For example: Funds

Global Consumer Trends

Fundamental Framework

Car industry

BMW

Daimler

Media

Presentations

This cannot be solved with a choice column and the group by feature. This is where managed metadata steps in! Since SharePoint 2010, it’s possible to apply a taxonomy within your SharePoint portal to structure its content. This is done through the Term Store Management Tool that is shown in figure 5.

Figure 5: An example of a taxonomy 9

This is where it gets very interesting for end-users used to working with deep folder structures. This is a suitable replacement and easy to use! After uploading a document, an end-user has two option to assign metadata. He or she starts typing and SharePoint provides a suggestion as shown in figure 6.

Figure 6: Providing suggestions while typing The user can also click at the symbol at the end of the field to view the complete taxonomy and select the corresponding metadata. The one issue with custom metadata in SharePoint involves uploading multiple documents. Upload one document and SharePoint asks you to assign all the custom metadata. Uploading multiple documents? No such thing! The documents are checked out and you have to manually add the metadata. This is something end-users can’t understand and neither can I. There are of course smart workarounds such as the Quick Edit view but this view doesn’t work with Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010. You can apply the following workaround: Set the default value of the managed metadata field at a value corresponding to the documents you are about to upload. Repeat this process until all documents are uploaded. This is still time consuming but there is nothing you can do. This isn’t necessary in SharePoint 2013. The Quick Edit view is compatible with Managed Metadata and you can easily assign your metadata. Figure 7 shows the Quick Edit view functionality.

Figure 7: Edit Managed Metadata with the Quick Edit view

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Document sets Are your end-users still not convinced? Tough crowd! One final feature to get rid of their endless love for folders: Document sets. A document set looks and acts like a folder but is so much more. There are a couple very cool features! One of these features is the option to assign custom metadata and a dedicated view. What does this mean exactly? The Contoso financial department has a funds document library with different kind of funds as displayed in figure 8.

Figure 8: Document sets organized with the group by feature The library groups the document sets based at type of fund. Figure 9 shows the homepage and contents of a document set.

Figure 9: Different view and new metadata within the document set

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The document set has its own view and new metadata. In this example, the column category is a managed metadata field, connected to a taxonomy, and only applicable to the documents in the document set! You are now able to replace complicated folder structures with the combination of document sets and managed metadata. This is a great solution for customer dossiers or project documents. I want to talk about one final document set feature before we conclude this article. In the previous example, you could see the metadata field type of fund. The value of this field can be automatically synchronized to the documents within the document set by using the Shared Columns feature that is shown in figure 10.

Figure 10: Select the metadata to synchronize to the documents within the document set This is an amazing feature because this really improves your search results! Looking for Venture capital content not only results in finding document sets, but also the documents within the document sets! You only have to upload the documents and SharePoint does the job as you can see in figure 11.

Figure 11: Type of fund is automatically synchronized to the documents!

Conclusion We, the SharePoint experts, all know SharePoint is a powerful platform with excellent Document Management features but do your end-users agree? They have been working with folders and file shares for many years and it is hard to convince them of the power of SharePoint. They love their folders. SharePoint is the way forward when it comes to storing and structuring documents. In this article, I gave you five arguments against file shares and folders: 1. Versioning 2. Custom metadata 3. Offline access 4. Custom permissions 5. Restore deleted documents Don’t just mention these arguments to your end-users but show them how it really works in SharePoint! Create a demo site with multiple scenarios. Build a document library with custom metadata, managed metadata and document sets. Try to use these features to replace the current folder structure. Get people excited about all the SharePoint structuring possibilities. I really hope this article provides you with useful tips and tricks to convince even the most stubborn end users with a passion for folders.

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Roundtrip between SharePoint and Navision by Wilhelm Rojer In this article we describe a possible connection between SharePoint and Navision on a high level. This bird view makes it clear how easy it can be to make such a connection between these two important back office elements of many organizations. It will make it clear how well SharePoint can be integrated with Navision and vice versa. Through SharePoint important assets can be added to Navision and within Navision extra metadata can be added of changed which will be directly reflected in SharePoint solutions. Needless to emphasize the organizational power realized through such a combination; it speaks for itself.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Microsoft Dynamics NAV is Microsoft company software with extensive functionality for controlling company processes. A unique combination of business intelligence, collaboration functionality and communication tools connect the mutual processes in your organisation and gives you a better insight and more control on what happens in your company. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/default.aspx

Why Microsoft Dynamics NAV For the past 30 years Microsoft Dynamics NAV has been offering possibilities, performance and user-friendly solutions, benefiting more than 94,000 different organisations in more than 40 countries. NAV offers extensive functionality for general company control, including sales, marketing, finance, supply chain management, services management and more. With Microsoft Dynamics NAV you take proactive and informed decisions that directly influence productivity to increase margins and improve cash flow.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV with SharePoint 2013 The Project Portal is a complete standard SharePoint set-up with a database per project. The Project Portal can be easily installed at the customer in an existing SharePoint environment. The Project Portal is set up with functionality by default, including a clear overview of project members, announcements, milestones, tasks and project impressions. The Project Portal contains the following libraries for documents: Design, Process, Purchase and Contract. The metadata used to classify and easily trace documents are also predefined.

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If a new project is created in the company’s (4PS) Construct, a new site for that project can be created with the push of a button. The site is fully set-up and can be used immediately. People responsible for the project and project authorities can be specified per project. This may be project members in SharePoint, who can then also access the portal of the corresponding project. Roles and rights for libraries and documents in the Project Portal can be set quickly and easily in NAV Construct. Documents generated for the project in Construct are automatically stored in the Project Portal. External documents that are uploaded into the Project Portal can also be stored in Construct.

Project Portal Solution

Figure 1: project portal architecture

COM Wrapper The COM Wrapper is specifically used for the communication between Nav2009 and SharePoint 2013. The reason for this is that Nav2009 uses Automation which can’t communicate with .NET 4.0 or higher which is needed to communicate with SharePoint 2013. Because of this the decision was made to use the COM Wrapper for its ability to translate our library .Net interface into a compatible interface which Nav2009 can use.

Construct SharePoint Integration The Construct can be considered one of the two lifelines for communication between Navision and SharePoint. The Construct is specifically dedicated for bringing information from Navision to SharePoint. The Construct is a library of methods to create and fill a project site with data. This includes the following activities: Creating SharePoint site Creating SharePoint groups Adding users to a SharePoint group Removing users from a SharePoint group Adding users to a SharePoint group Adding documents to a document library Updating documents in a document library Removing documents from a document library The Construct is installed on the Navision server. The Construct can talk to SharePoint directly though. This means that there is only one component between Navision and SharePoint which make it easier to maintain the software in the future. For the communication between SharePoint and Navision a web server is used, which will be discussed later in this article.

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Navision imports the Construct and calls the methods inside. Once a method like “createProjectSite” is called with the appropriate parameter values, a new project site will be created, groups will be made, authorisations on all groups will be set and the people that were selected in Navision will be added to the groups. The code behind that was created for this is based on .Net 4.0 and “SP.ClientContext” is used as the basis for every method that makes a call to SharePoint.

SharePoint Solution The SharePoint solution can be considered the heart of this project. It consists of two different projects of which the first one is the portal itself. The portal project has two primary tasks to fulfil. The first task is to make templates accessible for all the features attached to it. The technique of feature stapling is used to control the activation and dependencies between these features. The functionality in these features includes: Standard and custom Lists Web Parts Placing Lists on the page Placing Web Parts on the page Navigation Page Layouts Creating and organizing Content In Navision you can select the template that you wish to use. This will make sure that the right content is placed on the page during the provisioning of the page.

Figure 2: project portal flow The second task is to handle the events on all the lists we wish to perform custom actions on. This is very important because Navision and SharePoint must both have the latest content and the content should be synchronised. This means that whenever something changes in a SharePoint list or library, a message has to be send to Navision to inform Navision of the change in metadata or the new document that has been added to the list and to update the content in Navision. New documents can only be added when there is a connection with Navision, because the document needs to be registered in Navision and a key has to be generated that will be used to identify a document when communicating between Navision and SharePoint. When adding a new document it is important to only allow it when there is a connection with Navision because the document needs to be registered and a key needs to be generated for future communication about that document for Navision

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and SharePoint. If there is no connection between Navision and SharePoint creation of new documents has to be disabled to ensure that they both know the unique key for the document and that they can keep synchronising content. To ensure this, one of the first things done in the event receiver when it is triggered is to check if there is a connection with the Navision Web Service. After this check is completed successfully, the changes are allowed to be processed and finally the web service is called again with the updated data and the content in Navision will be updated. The second project is the logging core which will be responsible for logging all error messages generated by the solution. This is to make it easier to pinpoint the source of an error. Because the solution is talking with lots of different components and even has to translate between two different platforms it is important to quickly find the source of the error to make sure that a developer won’t have to go digging in the code of both applications and the custom components.

Figure 3: project portal solution

Procedure Within a Navision database different companies can be created. Each company has its own set of data that needs to be available on a SharePoint project site. For this reason each company has its own landing page that consists of a subset of sites (project sites). When a user visits the landing page it only displays the project sites that the current user is a member of.

Figure 4: project portal – project site creation flow

Navision Web Service The second lifeline of this project is the Navision Web Service. This Web Service is important to ensure that SharePoint can communicate with Navision. The web service is used to inform Navision of new metadata that is added to documents in SharePoint. The web service is hosted on the Navision server and you only have to add a reference to it in the solution on the SharePoint side. The web service is added to the solution 16

by using Visual Studio. To do this add a “service reference” to your project. Make sure you fill in the web service’s address on the Navision server and give it a name. After these steps have been completed the web service is added and ready for you to use it. Of course we are aware of dynamic patterns that you can use to set up your web service addresses and configuration, but that is outside the scope of this article.

Figure 5: Navision web services

Deployment For the deployment of our SharePoint solution we use the “SharePoint Solution Deployer” (SPSD). The use of this program is very simple. In Visual Studio you build your project and then package the whole solution. This generates a .WSP file for each project in your solution. You simple copy the file you wish to deploy and put it in the SPSD Solution folder.

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Then in the main folder you can select the option you want: Deploy Retract Update Redeploy

Figure 6: SPSD solution deployment After running the script each project you have put in the SPSD Solution folder is deployed or retracted depending on the choice made. The whole process only takes about two minutes, which makes it easy to use it for multiple SharePoint servers. Again, we are aware that the deployment of the solution can be done by script and setup dynamically. That is outside the scope of this article. http://spsd.codeplex.com/

Did you know…

SharePoint 2013 Depreciated features - Document Workspace site template You probably have noticed that when you create a site in SharePoint 2013, the Document Workspace site template is no longer available. The scenario of collaborating on a document is now provided by the Team Site site template. The Document Workspace site template was removed from SharePoint 2013 to simplify the list of templates that are available when a user creates a new site collection. Existing sites that were created by using the Document Workspace site template will continue to operate in SharePoint 2013. The Document Workspace site template will be removed completely from the next major release of SharePoint and sites that were created by using the Document Workspace site template will not be supported. More depreciated features: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607742.aspx

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Making collaboration easy by Amancio Quant End users are complaining about the extensive procedures needed each time a document is stored in a repository on the Intranet. It is, or it should be, our mission as consultants to make life easier for the end users. A dialog tells them which mix of mandatory and normal fields need to be filled out with information already present in their document or within the architectural structure of the repository. This will not give us the strongest position in the end user adoption phase thus weakens the long-term success of the platform. SharePoint has the functionality to come with a solution. Combining some old and some new features will do some magic in providing the end users with a better SharePoint experience.

The Challenge Reducing the user interaction by 80% in such way that you only add meaningful context to the information. This can be done with standard functionality such as: The Custom Entity Extraction; Configuring the refinement panel; Column default value settings; Metadata first;

Custom Entity Extraction With the introduction of FAST Search in SharePoint 2013 we have a new method to extract and map keywords based on a .csv document. These keywords can be used in the refinement panel section of the search center. We call this feature “Custom Entity Extraction”. Let’s create the dictionary in Notepad with the following schema: “Key,Display form”, “Key” is the information that the crawler extracts and maps to the keywords from the dictionary and “Display form” is what you will see as clickable keyword within your refinement panel: Key,Display form SharePoint 2013,SharePoint 2013 Contoso ICT,Contoso ICT Contoso Document Center,Contoso Document Center Customer overview,Customer overview Save the file as “CustomEntityExtractionDictionary.csv” and import the dictionary via the SharePoint Management Shell. Make a choice based on the extraction type: Word Extraction – Case insensitive, dictionary entries matching tokenized content, maximum 5 dictionaries Word Part Extraction – Case insensitive, dictionary entries matching un-tokenized content, maximum 5 dictionaries Word Exact Extraction – Case sensitive, dictionary entries matching tokenized content, maximum 1 dictionary Word Part Exact Extraction – Case sensitive, dictionary entries matching un-tokenized content, maximum 1 dictionary 19

I made my choice based on Word Part Extraction and imported the dictionary with the following script: ImportSPEnterpriseSearchCustomExtractionDictionary -SearchApplication $searchApp -FileName \CustomEntityExtractionDictionary.csv -DictionaryName Microsoft.UserDictionaries.EntityExtraction.Custom.WordPart.1

Listing 1: Script for dictionary Open the Managed Property “Body” and select the Word Part Extraction – Custom1 (telling search that we want to look at the body text of a document and match it to our custom dictionary):

Figure 1: Select your type of extraction Start the “Full crawl” and wait until it has finished.

Did you know…

SharePoint Search Tips The search box in the SharePoint user interface is a lot more powerful than you might expect! To search for all people whose last name is Smith use: LastName:Smith To search for all people whose first name starts with S: FirstName:S* To find out what communities a user belongs to:

Smith ContentType=”Community Member”

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Configuring the Refinement panel Now go to your search results page en edit the “Refinement Panel”. Choose “WordPartCustomRefiner1”, give it a display name and publish the page.

Figure 2: configure the refinement panel Do not fear that it’s going wrong if you’re not getting any results in the sample results section! Search for a keyword that you added in the “CustomEntityExtractionDictionary.csv”:

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Figure 3: Custom Entity Extraction Search result

(Sub)Conclusion A nice feature for documents that you index from a file share and it also works for documents that are already stored in SharePoint. Hard to maintain and in my opinion you should be able to manage a custom entity extraction dictionary like you manage a term store and not via PowerShell.

Column default value settings The end-users always want to use folders and I always tried to explain that you should use metadata instead of folders, familiar discussion? Well what I didn’t know was the Column default value settings option (also available in 2010!). Create a few folders in your library and go to Library Setting > Column default value settings and select the folder name you’ve created earlier, in my example “General” and “Installation”.

Figure 4: Determine the default value(s) of a folder On the left you select the folder and from there you are able to determine the default values on different (managed) columns on the right. All documents that you store from now on in that folder will get the default value(s) you’ve set. If these are managed you’ll have new documents to be shown within the refinement panel and you at least able to create some views based on the default values (also with the use of Windows Explorer).

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(Sub)Conclusion A really nice feature because you can let the end-users work as they “used to” on the file share. We need to think of extra folder navigation to make it easier to go back and forth between folders. But why not making an add-on so that you can set the default value of the folder while creating it?

Metadata first Next to adding different Office templates (content types) to the different document libraries, we’ll have to change the concept of opening a document from within SharePoint. Creating a document will present the template without the context from the library from which you create a new document. Also, the hierarchy of the document is known and should be automatically added as metadata. It will make searching easier if you are able to select for which client, brand or type of training you want results from. In this new concept the document is not stored while saving it from the Office client, but while opening the document. This will give you all of the above metadata so the end-user immediately knows the context and can use the metadata directly in the Office templates (Quick Parts).

(Sub)Conclusion We have created this solution for a client and the only important decision to make is what to show in the document properties dialog to the end-user. Only serve them the context they need writing a proper document and let the known properties flow into the template.

Final conclusion If there is anything left to select, make it smart. Give the end-users the opportunity to add free context (Folksonomy) and make sure that the taxonomy is added automatically. If there is anything to add, reduce it to selecting the proper content type and let the content type determine which metadata automatically will be added to the document. All other metadata based on business drivers can be added by using different workflows (Approval, a Project Phase or any type of status) with one or two fields where you can type the name of the client or the type of product and SharePoint will automatically show the suggestions as you type. I think that we can reduce the end-users interaction with 80% by tailoring out of the box SharePoint functionality plus adding the metadata first concept and smart Office templates. The ingredients are available but need to be streamlined into a proper solution. If implemented correctly they will give a huge advantage in the adoption of the intranet and thus increases our long-term success with our clients. Do not forget for whom you’re creating/developing the intranet!

More info: Custom Entity Extraction according to MS: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219480.aspx Custom Entity Extraction according to Corey Roth: http://w w w.dotnetmafia.com/blogs /dotnettipof theday/archive/2013/01/08/ no-metadata-no-problem-custom-entity-extraction-in-sharepoint-2013.aspx Column default settings according to Mark Jones: http://www.collaboris.com/blogs/collaboris-blog/policy-management/2013/02/27/ how-to-set-default-column-values-on-a-document-in-sharepoint#.UiguyT_pz-o

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ASTRIUM K2 CASE STUDY

ASTRIUM SERVICES LAUNCHES BUSINESS EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENTS K2 - Astrium Services; A case study

LOCATION Netherlands INDUSTRY Communications COMPANY PROFILE Astrium Services is a leading provider of satellite communications services to military organisations, international news groups, overseas charities and owners of aircraft, cargo ships, fishing vessels and passenger ferries. It delivers secure and commercial satcoms and networks, high security and broadcast satellite communications equipment and systems and bespoke geo-information services. PARTNER PROFILE INDOCS specialises in helping organisations to automate business processes, designing webforms and facilitating document management solutions with Microsoft SharePoint. Based in the Netherlands, it has many years of experience deploying solutions based on Microsoft SharePoint and compatible technologies. SOFTWARE K2 blackpearl, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft InfoPath, Microsoft Outlook, Bespoke billing system BENEFITS Credits and rebills authorised in less than a day A more responsive service for customers Less likelihood of human error or omission Greater convenience for senior executives Better process traceability for managers A replicable framework for improving business efficiency

ASTRIUM K2 CASE STUDY PROBLEM The satellite solutions provided by Astrium Services are both sophisticated and extensive. The company delivers technically advanced services to planes, ships and remote parts of the world, and due to their complexity, it often needs to amend and reissue invoices or process credits. Huge sums of money can be involved in these changes, so every time the billing department raises a credit or revises an invoice, it needs to obtain several layers of internal approval. Each week, Astrium Services processes up to 70 rebills or credits, and this used to be a very time-consuming task. The process involved a large team of employees based at multiple locations in different countries, and there was no easy way to coordinate and track their activities centrally. Information was circulated by email, followed up by telephone and monitored through an ad hoc collection of spreadsheets. Astrium Services knew that as the business expanded, its challenges would only increase. It therefore set out to find a way to automate its rebilling and credit process — at a cost that made sense for the business. SOLUTION Astrium Services used K2 software to develop a fully automated business application for reissuing invoices and processing credits. It was able to set up the new workflow itself, with support and training from its IT partner INDOCS. “We considered creating the workflows in Microsoft SharePoint but found that the K2 framework was way more extensive and offered good integration with Microsoft products,” said Ben Jalilzadeh, project manager for IT development at Astrium Services. “K2 is a really mature product.”

“In the past, the process didn’t happen in a structured manner and was very inefficient. Now, credits and rebills can often be processed in a few hours,” said Jalilzadeh. When a customer or account manager raises a query about an invoice, a member of the billing team creates a new task by filling in fields and selecting drop-down boxes in a Microsoft InfoPath form, embedded in the company’s Microsoft SharePoint system. Then, as soon as the employee hits send, the K2 workflow is triggered and the task is passed to the relevant people who need to approve the invoice change or credit. The formal nature of the workflow means that human errors, oversights and unnecessary delays are far less likely to occur. Account managers have clear visibility of the status of billing queries at all times and can keep their customers informed. Billing changes over a certain monetary value need to be approved by senior executives including the chief financial officer. By integrating with Microsoft Outlook, the K2 software allows executives to receive email alerts when they need to authorise a change. Executives can also convey their approval by email, which saves them a lot of time. Following the success of this initial K2 business application, Astrium Services now plans to use K2 software and K2 smartforms to create automated workflows for other core business processes. “Our goal is to automate as much as possible and create more structured processes to further improve the efficiency of our business,” said Jalilzadeh.

The new K2 business application led to considerable improvements in efficiency for the business. Now, revised invoices and credits can be processed and approved in less than a day. As a result, Astrium Services can respond much more quickly to issues and deliver a better quality of service for its customers.

Copyright © 2013. SourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. Patents pending. SourceCode, K2, the K2 logo and logotype are registered trademarks or trademarks of SourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

K2.COM


Navigation in SharePoint by Paul Schaeflein Ever since commercial entities discovered the World Wide Web, designers and web masters have been creating site navigation to help visitors find information on web sites. At first, the navigation was a bar across the top of the page, containing 4-6 links, which were quite common across all sites.(I know this – I was actually using the web at this time, along with gopher, newsgroups and CompuServe!) For extensive websites such as those hosted in SharePoint, navigation can be crucial to a successful deployment. With vast quantities of pages, documents and information, the ability to find familiar pages gives visitors a sense of comfort – just like seeing a landmark or familiar intersection during a road trip.

SharePoint navigation defaults The navigation story in SharePoint has evolved over the years. As of the 2010 release, the default master page has three controls that display navigation. Figure 1 and 2 show the Bread Crumb, Global Navigation and Local Navigation controls enclosed in yellow, red and blue boxes respectively the default master page for SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013.

QUOTE

For extensive websites such as those hosted in SharePoint, navigation can be crucial to a successful deployment. With vast quantities of pages, documents and information, the ability to find familiar pages gives visitors a sense of comfort – just like seeing a landmark or familiar intersection during a road trip.

Figure 1: Navigation Controls in SharePoint 2010

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Figure 2: Navigation Controls in SharePoint 2013

How it Works The actual navigation links are rendered on the page using a control. But a control is only part of the story for navigation in ASP.NET applications (like SharePoint). ASP. NET navigation is actually implemented using three different components: SiteMap – an xml file, or other storage mechanism, that persists the titles and addresses of pages in the site, as well as the hierarchy of those pages. SiteMap data Provider – a .Net class that derives from System.Web. SiteMapProvider that provides an implementation of the methods to persist the site map and provide the relevant site map nodes to its caller. Controls – an ASP.NET web control that renders links to the pages as provided by the SiteMap data provider. These components are all present in SharePoint in varying implementations.


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Working together to orient visitors In the site map file for the SharePoint application pages (shown in figure 2), the page to edit navigation settings is listed as a child of the site settings page.

Figure 3: Site map file for application pages (layouts.sitemap) When the breadcrumb is displayed, the SiteMapPath control queries the site map using the provider to get the current page and its ancestors (see figure 3). Having the site hierarchy represented in the site map makes this possible.

Figure 4: Breadcrumb displayed via the SiteMapPath control Similarly, the Quick Launch navigation displays the child nodes of the current site, without displaying a node that represents the site itself. This is controlled by the “ShowStartingNode” property in the markup of the SiteMap Data Provider in the master page (figure 4).

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Figure 5: Quick Launch SiteMap data provider Lastly, the controls use their context to inspect the nodes returned by the provider to determine the current node. Typically, the current node is rendered differently than other nodes – in the breadcrumb, the current node is text only, not a link. In the global (top) navigation bar, the current node is styled differently. (For an example, look at the “Dev Workbench” node in figure 1.)

Navigation Components in SharePoint Table 1 lists the components and the various implementations in SharePoint. Component Implementations Site Map Central Administration breadcrumbs stored in {SharePointRoot}\ TEMPLATE\ADMIN\admin.sitemap.*.xml Site Settings breadcrumbs stored in {SharePointRoot}\TEMPLATE\ LAYOUTS\layouts.sitemap

SiteMap data provider

Control

Site, library, pages/documents stored in the content database Providers configured in the node in web.config: Microsoft.SharePoint.Navigation.SPNavigationProvider Microsoft.SharePoint.Navigation.SPSiteMapProvider Microsoft.SharePoint.Navigation.SPContentMapProvider Microsoft.SharePoint.Navigation.SPXmlContentMapProvider (and other legacy/My Site providers) Controls used in default master page: Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.AspMenu System.Web.UI.WebControls.SiteMapPath Table 1: Navigation components in SharePoint

SiteMap based on content The site map that reflects content in SharePoint is generated automatically, and has a few configuration options. The Navigation Settings page in SharePoint 2010 (figure 5) provides options for including various types of content in the SiteMap that is then passed to the controls.

Did you know...

List.Items.Add() vs List.AddItem() When you want to programmatically add items to a list there are two methods you can use that will do the trick. Best practice however is to use List.AddItem(). Why? Because List.Items.Add() first queries all items in the list. While List.AddItem also queries the list but with the “” clause that checks if the ID = -1 which returns an empty row. The List.Items.Add() method is there for backwards compatibility only.

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Figure 6: SharePoint 2010 Navigation Settings page In SharePoint 2013, this page is extended to support storing the SiteMap data in the site collection term store (figure 6). Selecting Managed Navigation will display all the term sets in the term store, allowing the selection of the term set to drive the navigation. If the Structural Navigation option is selected, then the “Show subsites” and “Show pages” options are displayed, just like SharePoint 2010.

Figure 7: SharePoint 2013 Navigation Settings page The Managed Navigation option provides flexibility for site navigation. The selected term set can be modified by Term Store Managers, it can be updated automatically when creating a new page in a publishing site, and it can be configured to filter items in a publishing catalog.

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Customizing Navigation In almost every deployment of SharePoint, a request is made to change the navigation. I am convinced that these requests stem from the early days of the web when somebody had to decide which pages were created and linked to the navigation. In large environments, with many different contributors, a dynamic navigation makes much more sense. So dealing with requests for custom navigation requires some understanding of the reasons for the request along with an understanding of the environment in which the navigation will be deployed.

Changing nodes in the SiteMap In a collaboration site, changing the nodes in the SiteMap should be resisted. (Collaboration sites is a term used to generically reference sites that are based on templates in the Collaboration group such as Team Site or Project Site.) In these sites, it is quite common for many different users to be creating lists, libraries and subsites. The automatic, dynamic nature of the SiteMap provider configured in these sites helps to discover content. Switching to a static set of links, either in the Structural or Managed navigation modes, would likely require constants updates. In publishing sites, however, the opposite is generally preferred. Publishing sites have a small number of authors, and the site contains curated content. It is often desirable to have a controlled navigation in these sites. Managed Navigation in SharePoint 2013 provides a well-defined vehicle for maintaining a hierarchy of labels and links for navigation. In addition, the catalog list functionality provides a balance between automatic updates to navigation and a curated list.

Managed Navigation The Managed Navigation capability that is new in SharePoint 2013 is based on the Term Store for the site collection. The Term Store Management page has been extended to allow entry of additional properties for a term. The Navigation tab (figure 7) controls the inclusion in the Global and Local Navigation SiteMaps and per-language labels while the Term-Driven Pages tab (figure 8) controls the Target Page (URL) for the node. The target page can be a specific page, or a catalog item page for displaying pages from a catalog.

Figure 8: Term Store Management Page, Navigation settings tab

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Figure 9: Term Store Management Page, Term-Driven Pages settings tab To learn more about publishing from a catalog list in SharePoint 2013, refer to Configure web content management solutions in SharePoint Server 2013 (http:// technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj656776.aspx). Also, the 9th Edition of the DIWUG SharePoint eMagazine contains an article by Waldek Mastykarz describing the Cross-site content publishing capabilities (http://www.diwug.nl/DIWUG_SharePoint_ eMagazine9.pdf).

Change SiteMap provider As an alternative to using Managed Navigation or the out of the box Structured Navigation SiteMaps, a custom SiteMapProvider control can be used. In the out of the box masterpages, the data sources used for Global and Local navigation are added to the page via SharePoint Delegate controls. Figure 9 shows the data source for the Global navigation. The SPNavigationProvider is used and the starting node is set to a well-known node for that provider.

Figure 10: Default master page showing Global Navigation data source delegate control The SiteMapProvider attribute of the SiteMapDataSource control must be a string that matches the name of a provider registered in the web.config file of the host web application. In a SharePoint web application, there are 26 different providers configured. You can see these, including the classes that implement them, by reviewing the node in the web.config file. The first thought of many programmers tasked with changing the SiteMapProvider in SharePoint is to code a custom class that derives from SiteMapDataSource and deploy it using the Control element. However, SiteMapDataSource controls must also be registered in web.config. This registration in a SharePoint web application must be performed using the SPWebConfigModification class. This approach requires a full-trust (farm) solution. Be advised – the SPWebConfigModification class is very difficult to code, and the solution deployment process has known issues with this class. Creating and registering a custom SiteMapDataSource class is discouraged within the SharePoint community. 32

An alternative is a custom class that derives from HierarchicalDataSource or XmlDataSource. Before choosing to go down this path, you should consider the maintenance and storage of the nodes that these data source controls provide. It makes little sense to create custom pages to maintain a hierarchy of labels and URLs, since you would then be replicating the Managed Navigation functionality.

Changing navigation UI Changing the look and feel of site navigation is far more common, and has less ramifications than changing the SiteMap. Since the rendering of the navigation nodes is performed by controls, it is quite straightforward to change the rendering. The default controls have many different properties, and there are many different controls that support a hierarchical data source. (A navigation SiteMap can be processed as a hierarchical data source.) In addition, there are many JavaScript/CSS based navigation controls published as open source that can be adapted to work on a SharePoint page. The navigation controls in the default masterpage are not in Delegate Controls. This makes the deployment of a replacement a bit more involved. The best approach is to use a custom masterpage in which the custom control is added. Or, if the navigation control might differ from site to site, the custom control could be wrapped in a Delegate Control.

Conclusion The navigation of SharePoint sites is not a simple matter. There are several components that work together to present the information on the page. Understanding these components and the out of the box capabilities (in particular the Managed Navigation capabilities introduced in SharePoint 2013) can help to meet customer requirements and minimize customizations.

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CGI goes Las Vegas

Ga jij met ons mee? CGI - CGI goes Las Vegas

Wil jij je kennis verbreden op hét #1 SharePoint Congres in de wereld? CGI geeft je deze unieke kans! Van 3 t/m 6 maart 2014 vindt de SharePoint Conference 2014 plaats. Deze conference is niet in Amsterdam, London of Barcelona, maar in Las Vegas! Samen met een flink aantal (nieuwe) CGI collega’s kun jij hier ook bij zijn. In 4 dagen tijd word je in meer dan 200 sessies compleet bijgepraat over alle nieuwe ontwikkelingen op SharePoint gebied. Als ervaren SharePoint Professional mag én kun je dit evenement niet missen! Zie jij jezelf als ervaren SharePoint Developer/Architect of heb je potentie om hier snel naartoe te groeien? Dan is dit je kans! Stuur ons vóór 31 december 2013 je CV onder vermelding van SPC14. We nemen dan snel contact met je op en plannen eventueel direct een gesprek in. Kijk op www.cginederland.nl/SPC14 voor meer informatie. We kijken ernaar uit om samen met jou naar Las Vegas te vliegen.


Mega Tip by Stefan Strube – Strukton Blog: http://theressomethingaboutsharepoint.blogspot.nl Custom e-mail notification without SharePoint Designer: Three-state workflow Someone asked me whether it is possible to send an e-mail notification with custom text after a request form (list item) is submitted to a list. These requests are personal so alerts are not an option. Of course it’s easy to create a custom workflow with SharePoint Designer but what if you won’t / can’t use this tool? Well, the good old three-state workflow is your friend here! So how does this work? 1. Create a Tasks list called “Request status”.

2. Change the Tasks list settings to secure the personal data.

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3. Create a custom list called “Requests” to be able to fill out a request form. 4. Add a column of the type Choice with the name “Request status” and the following choices: “Submitted”, “Being processed”, “Completed”. Default value is set to “Submitted”.

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5. Be sure that the Three-state workflow feature is activated at site collection level. 6. Add a standard workflow to the list Requests: select the Three-state workflow template.

7. Configure the workflow settings.

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8. Test.

9. Results.

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It’s an amazing discovery!

Notice: Since it’s a three-state workflow it will only be completed when the choice field is set to the last state, in this case “Completed”. Else the workflow will stay In progress.

THE DIWUG eMAGAZINE The SharePoint eMagazine is a periodically issued eMagazine for SharePoint specialists in the domain of development, IT-pro and no code solutions by power users. The authors, members of the SharePoint community, are from all over the world and are mostly well-known MVP’s or MCM’s. The eMagazine is free and can be downloaded from the DIWUG site. On average each edition of the magazine is downloaded about 10.000 times. The eMagazine comes in pdf format in two versions: Adobe® Acrobat® Reader and eReader. Both versions contain the same info and ad’s.

YOUR AD 1. Your ad will be placed among the articles, not in a commercial cluster vulnerable to deletion. 2. Your ad will be placed in both versions. Even eReader users will note your message. 3. Your name will be mentioned in the list of sponsors at page 3 with a direct link to your ad (not supported by all eReaders). 4. Your ad will be linked to your website (not supported by all eReaders).

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Building a no-code products and services catalog with SharePoint Server 2013 by Rick Bakker Having a products and services catalog as part of an intranet is a topic which is often discussed during sales conversations. SharePoint Server 2013 includes a specific site definition (the “Product Catalog”) for such a solution. However, building a complete products and services catalog is much more than just deploying a product catalog site, deploying a publishing portal site and doing some configuration. This article describes a case in which a no-code (no Visual Studio solutions) products and services catalog is built for a client with SharePoint Server 2013. This article includes a description of the solution and steps involved creating it.

Requirements Requirements are the elaboration of goals to be achieved. For this case, goals were targeted at cost reduction and simplifying the ordering of products and services for employees. The last goal was translated to a central products and service catalog for all employees. Costs reduction will be achieved by maintaining less systems (less licenses, less training and less systems to maintain). It goes without saying that drafting good requirements is very important for a successful solution and the related project. Drafting requirements is however not a single independent step when building a solution. There is a clear interaction between the technical possibilities and available resources like budget, people and infrastructure components. The requirements drafted at the start of a project will therefore most likely not be the same requirements at the end of the project. The project approach should take this into account. Requirements may be related to several topics like the project, the solution (functional and non-functional) or the implementation of the solution. From the point of view of the solution, the (non-)functional requirements are the most important. For this case, the requirements in table 1 were drafted at the start of the project. # 1

2

3 4

5

6 7

Requirement The solution must be integrated into the existing intranet which is built on SharePoint 2013. The solution must be a no-code solution.

More information The actual version is SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise Edition. The client has no developers employed and wants to maintain and extend the solution themselves. JavaScript, CSS, HTML and PowerShell knowledge is present. SharePoint Designer is also allowed.

The solution must be implemented within 3 months. The solution must contain an online The actual processing will depend on ordering and processing functionality. the already present ordering solutions for products and services. The solution must have an overview The overview functionality should functionality. contain the products and services ordered and used by the employee. The solution must provide a good user experience for employees. The solution must be accessible for all employees. Table 1: Requirements

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Normally, more requirements will be defined. Table 1 only shows some examples of requirements that have a big impact on the final solution and its implementation. Several interactive sessions were held with the client to come to a final solution. The following paragraphs describe this solution and how it was implemented.

Roadmap Having the total solution ready for production in 3 months was not a realistic timeline. During the interactive sessions, a roadmap was defined in which phase “One” would be ready for production within 3 months. Phase “One” will be a fixed price and fixed time subproject. Phase “Two” will not be a fixed price or fixed time subproject due to the nature of the activities (mainly creating a workflow per item). The first few items will be done by the contractor, who will train the client at the same time. The client would then take care of the remaining items. Phase “Three” is a stabilization phase. Phase “Four” and “Five” needed more investigation. Table 2 lists the different phases and describes what happens in each phase. Phase Zero One

Two

Three Four Five

Description Interactive sessions to come to a solution. Two-thirds of all available products and services are listed in de products and services catalog. The client is responsible for the content delivery. An administration site is available per product/service 100% of all available products and services are listed in de products and services catalog. The client is responsible for the content delivery. Online ordering is available. Adjusting the solution: Fixing bugs and adding some new (non-)functional requirements based on employee feedback. Adding an overview functionality. Adding a shopping basket functionality to add multiple items to one order. Table 2: Roadmap

Phase “One” does not include an online ordering options, meaning only information about how to order the product or service is given. A mobile device project is taking place at the client. This could potentially influence the roadmap for the products and services catalog (PSC) solution.

Solution design – A more detailed description The core of the solution are products and services, or items. All items have one owner. Owner details will be given on the item detail page. One or more content editors are responsible for keeping an item up-to-date. For each item, a work site is created. This work site is only accessible by the related content editors. It will contain all functionalities needed to do their job like draft versions of documents. A central work site will contain information for content editors. This central work site is maintained by the catalog administrators. All employees are able to order items but certain items can only be ordered by authorized employees (like department managers). This will be described in the ordering information. An employee can work for multiple departments. Items are shown in a catalog. Category pages contain an overview of all items which apply to the selected category. A detail page shows the details of a single item, including owner information. All items can have none or more documents attached to it. These documents are offered in the detail page. The catalog owner is responsible for the catalog as a whole and catalog administrators will maintain the catalog. Metadata is what an item really defines. Two types of metadata exist: Metadata containing useful information for employees and metadata for things like navigation or showing/hiding a link. Adding, updating and removing items will be part of operations. Lifecycle procedures should therefore be present to maintain the catalog. 41

Figure 1 shows the solution relationships described in this section.

Figure 1: Solution relationships It was decided that not all items which could be ordered would be placed in the catalog, but that a higher level of categorization would be used. Some clarification is perhaps needed. What this decision means is that not all laptops that can be ordered are listed in the Products and Services Catalog (PSC), but only one item will be listed: Laptop. On the item page of this item, documents are offered which include the specifications and price of all the possible laptops. Only the documents and in a later phase also the online ordering information needs to be changed with this setup. Figure 2 shows content relationships between an item, owners and documents. It should be possible to connect one owner to multiple items and multiple documents to multiple items. An item could also belong to one or more categories and one or more departments. Category and department is item metadata.

Figure 2: Content relationships

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Solution Design – SharePoint The solution consists of several sites, each with their own function. A clear structure, achieving a no-code solution, using different site definitions, security and graphical design choices were important reasons to use several separate sites. Site PSC

Description A site collection with a top-level site which contains the products and services catalog. The PSC site is the site where items are presented (not stored). It is based on the site definition “Publishing Portal”. All items are presented to all employees. Online ordering will take care of the security. No item-level security was therefore needed. All employees have read permissions in this site. Only catalog administrators have full control permissions. My PSC A site collection with a top-level site which contains a products and services catalog similar to the “PSC” but filtered to only show generic items and the items which are offered to the departments where the employee belongs to. All employees have read permissions in this site. Only catalog administrators have full control permissions. PSC Content A site collection where the top-level site is based on the ‘Product Catalog’ site definition. This site contains the actual items. All employees have read permissions in this site. Only catalog administrators have full control permissions. PSC Assets A site collection containing two asset libraries. One for the item images and one for the documents which can be offered on an item detail page. Each document has a metadata field containing the related item ID’s. All employees have read permissions in this site. Only catalog administrators have full control permissions. PSC Processing A site collection for the ordering and processing of items. For every item, a list is created. When an employee All employees have read permissions in this site. Contribute permissions depend on the workflow. Only catalog administrators have full control permissions. PSC Administration A site collection containing a top-level site for general information and a subsite (work site) per item. Content Editors have contribute permissions to their work sites. Only catalog administrators have full control permissions. Table 3: The PSC sites


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Content Editors have no direct access to the content which is shown in the PSC site (items, owners and documents). They will submit a request to the catalog administrators to update the information from the related work site. The reason for this setup was to avoid item-level permissions. The default setup in the SharePoint 2013 “Product Catalog” is not suitable for the required solution. Perhaps the most important technical design decision was to create a termset in the managed metadata service application which contains all the item ID’s. This termset is used by all 3 categories (item, owner and documents) hence linking these content types. This setup also makes it possible to use multiple item ID’s (terms), and thus items (products and services), for a document and owner. Also the default behavior of the field “Item Categories” and the related termset was changed. It was set to allow the selection of multiple terms. An extra metadata field was added which was connected to a termset in the managed metadata service application holding the departments. This termset was also used for a custom user profile property. This user profile property makes it possible to assign multiple departments to one employee. The solution is integrated into the intranet by using a global navigation link for the “PSC” site and by using a similar look and feel. The “PSC” site homepage contains a global navigation with links to the intranet and the PSC Processing site. A link to the “My PSC” site is added on the “My Site Host”.

Figure 3: A SharePoint point of view

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The client agreed that with this setup, the PSC was now more regarded as a separate solution than an integral part of the intranet. The client liked the idea of using SharePoint as a solution platform. The available item categories only had to be available in the current navigation and not in the global navigation. Also, all item categories had to be visible no matter which category was selected. Default behavior of managed navigation is that the visible categories depend on the level of the selected category. Consequently, categories could only be one level deep. In other words, no child terms are allowed in the categorization termset. This setup was approved by the client.

Wireframes Figure 4 gives an impression of an item on a category. It contains a picture representing the item. Below the image, the title of the item is given. The title is clickable and will redirect the user to the item detail page. The image has an overlying ‘Order now’ box. This box is transparent and the text ‘Order now’ is clickable. When the item can be ordered online, it will redirect the user to an ordering page or error page when the user is not allowed to order the item. When the item cannot be ordered online (like in phase “One”), a message will be shown that online ordering is not possible and that more information is given on the detail page. The title has a tooltip showing the summary text.

Figure 4: Item on a category page Figure 5 gives an impression of an item detail page. For consistency, it contains the same image and ‘Order now’ option as is given on a category page. Left of the image are three buttons which influence the information which is shown directly below the image: Summary, Detailed information and Ordering information. By default, the summary is shown. Below, all related documents are offered (if any). To the right, information about the item owner is given. It includes the owner’s name, e-mail address, telephone number and a picture.

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Figure 5: Item detail page

Building activities This section contains a summary of the most important building activities.

SharePoint Farm Creating a termset (Item ID’s) to contain a term per item ID. Creating a termset (Departments) to contain a term for every department. It will also contain a term for generic items. Creating a user profile property connecting to the termset “Departments”.

PSC Content Creating custom site columns, including:

A managed metadata site column connected to the termset “Item ID’s”. Creating a custom site content type. The parent content type is “Product with Image” and it contains the custom site columns. Adjusting the list “Products” so that only the custom content type is used. Allowing the site collection termstore for categorization (column “Item Category”) to be accessed by the sites:

PSC

My PSC Configuring the “Suggested Content Browser Locations” to direct to the assets site. Adding items to the list “Products”, either with PowerShell or the UI. Make sure the items are approved. Configuring the list as a catalog. Make sure that only the new column “Item ID’s” is used for the option “Catalog Item URL Fields” and not the column “Item Number”. 46

PSC Assets Creating 2 asset libraries:

Images.

Document. Creating custom site columns, including:

A managed metadata site column connected to the termset “Item ID’s”. Creating a custom site content type for documents. The parent content type is “Document” and it contains the custom site columns. Filling the asset libraries, either with PowerShell or the UI.

PSC Connecting the site to the product catalog. Configuring managed navigation on the current navigation and not on the global navigation. Creating a custom page layout for the categories and item detail page. SharePoint Designer 2013 is used for this. Creating a custom display template for the categories page. Adding and configuring a categories and an item detail page. Configuring the search query on the categories page to only show the items which belong to the selected category. Configuring the search queries (item, owner and documents) on the item detail page to filter on the item selected. Adding some custom CSS and JavaScript. Creating a new homepage to show all items. This page looks similar to the categories page. Adding a link in the global navigation of the intranet.

My PSC Connecting the site to the product catalog. Configuring managed navigation on the current navigation and not on the global navigation. Creating a custom page layout for the categories and item detail page. SharePoint Designer 2013 is used for this. Creating a custom display template for the categories page. Adding and configuring a categories and an item detail page. Configuring the search query on the categories page to only show the items which belong to the selected category and to the departments the user is member of. A query variable with multiple values is used for this (http://technet. microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj683123.aspx). Configuring the search queries (item, owner and documents) on the item detail page to filter on the item selected. Adding some custom CSS and JavaScript. Creating a new homepage to show all items. This page looks similar to the categories page. Adding a link to the My Site Host.

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PSC Processing For every item, a list is created. When an employee wants to order an item online, it will be redirected to the “newform.aspx” page of the list. Adding workflow on all lists. The required processing steps for an item determines the actual workflow on the corresponding list. Workflow can and will differ for items. Online ordering is added in phase “Two”.

PSC Administration Creating a top-level site which contains a list with owner information for items. Creating a subsite for every item. A custom site template is used for this.

Conclusion and recommendations Building a complete products and services catalog (PSC) is more than deploying a product catalog site, deploying a publishing portal site and doing some configuration. This article should give the reader an impression of a possible solution and the steps involved creating it.

Key success factors for a PSC solution are: A detailed insight about the content, the relationships between content and the responsibilities. Clear ownership (catalog and items). A good user experience. This not only includes the solution itself, but also includes how the solution is implemented within the organization. A realistic timeline. Taking operational activities into account from the start of the project.

Recommendations If time and/or budget is an issue, focus on the graphical design for the “PSC” and “My PSC” sites. Use consistent images for a good look and feel.

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SharePoint 2013 and Office Web Apps by Marianne van Wanrooij We all know that one of the SharePoint biggest and greatest features is Document Management. Working with documents, versioning, store them with metadata, finding documents, share documents, work together on documents. Office integration is a big part of it. This article describes some of the new features in SharePoint 2013 (SP2013) in Office Integration and Document Management; Office Web Apps; what you can do with it and what you can’t do with it.

Office Web Apps (OWA) Office Web application already existed with SharePoint 2010 (SP2010). An Office Web App is the online version of Office Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint applications. It’s a browser based representation of the office document and it enables the user to edit and view documents in the browser. In SharePoint 2010 you could view the documents and had some basic editing tools. As you can see in figure 1 with Office Web Apps 2013 you’re now able to have a (almost) full Office Client experience with more editing options.

Figure 1: PowerPoint Web App user experience If you need a feature/tool that is not available in Office Web Apps you can open the document in the Office Client and continue editing from there. Figure 2 shows you the button that opens the presentation in PowerPoint.

Figure 2: Button to open the document in the Office client

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Some of the features that aren’t available in OWA: Copy and paste with formatting between documents Copy and paste pictures between documents References (table of contents, footnotes etc)

You can view them in Reading mode. In editing mode they are hidden. Mail merge Reviewing tools (track changes, mark ups)

Check spelling and set the proofing language, using the built-in dictionary. Word Web App does not use a custom dictionary and does not include grammar checking, translation, or a thesaurus Tables: More sophisticated table features--such as table styles, cell size, text direction, and sort order--are preserved in the document, but cannot be configured in Word Web App. Shapes, charts, text boxes, Smart Art, Word Art display in the document as expected in Reading view. In editing mode they appear as placeholders that you can delete but not edit. They cannot be moved or resized in Word Web App Macros

You can’t run Macros in Office Web Apps Styles

You can use styles but cannot create new styles or modify styles in Word Web App. Find

You can search for words in the document by using the Find in the Reading mode. Find and Replace is not available. Theme, page color, watermarks are preserved in the document but you can’t edit them in Word Web App.

This is not the complete list, but a list of the most common features users use in the Office Client. Other features that are new in OWA 2013 are: Track changes

You cannot turn on/off track changes, but you can review the marks in Word Web App Comments

Users can view, add, and reply to comments in Word Web App and PowerPoint Web App. You can add comments when the document is in Reading mode. Co-Authoring

Co-Authoring was already available in Office WA 2010 for Excel and OneNote Web Apps. With OWA 2012 you’re also able to co-author Word and PowerPoint Web Apps.

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Figure 3: Adding comments to a document in Word Web App

SharePoint 2013 Document Preview Another great feature of Office Web Apps is the preview and thumbnails. A preview shows you a snapshot of the document, without opening the document in the client tool or browser. In SharePoint 2010 you could enable previewing, but it would take a developer and a lot of JavaScript to make it happen. Now with Office Web Apps you can enable Document Preview in SharePoint 2013. When you’re in a document library or search result you can click on the 3-dots button to open the menu. This menu opens a window associated to the item and it will render a document preview as shown in figure 4.

Figure 4: Document preview in Office 365 document library (Dutch) 51

In the preview you can read and scroll through the document. There is a menu which allows you to download the document, print the document to pdf and gives you the embedded code. The embedded code is similar to what YouTube offers to embed videos. It gives you the code – an iFrame – that enables you can embed the preview in other sites. Of course the user must have sufficient rights to the document in order to preview the document from another site. An example of an embedded preview is shown in figure 5. It’s a simple page with only the code provided by the preview.

Figure 5: Example of an embedded preview


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The preview can be a powerful resource when you want to check whether or not the document is the one you want to open or if the document is the one you were searching for. Not only text will be previewed also inserted pictures or videos will appear in the preview. You can even start the video from the preview. But when you’ve started the video and you close the menu, you will still hear the sounds of the video for as long as the video is buffered in memory.

Availability SharePoint Web Apps is available through; SharePoint Online and Office 365

Office Web Apps is one of the cloud services available with SharePoint Online and Office 365 SkyDrive

SkyDrive offers Office Web Apps as a free service. On Premises in SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010

Office Web Apps is part of the Volume Licensing Program when you have a Volume License for Office 2010 On Premises in Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013.

SharePoint 2013 provides new license enforcement that works with Office Web Apps. If no Office Web Apps editing licenses are applied for users, only viewing is supported. For more information about how licensing works in SharePoint 2013, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219627.aspx

Best practice is to install Office Web Apps Server 2013 on a separate server in you SharePoint farm. Installing OWA on the same machine/server will cause SharePoint not to work properly. This is due to conflicting IIS configurations.

Conclusion The document preview is the “cool” part about Office Web Apps server but not the business value part. The business value is the ability to edit and work with Office documents in the browser without the need for local Office applications. Office Web Apps allows business users to interact with Office documents through SharePoint directly in the browser on any device. It doesn’t matter if you use a mobile (smart) phone, a laptop or even an iPad, you can always make those last changes to your documents. The business value of embedding document previews could be when you want to “broadcast” articles, presentations or excel reports with a preview to your visitors in a way YouTube and SlideShare does.

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Sync SharePoint document libraries to your local drive by Christiaan Blaauw Synchronizing document libraries to your local drive can be interesting in case you want to work on documents offline. There are two ways to synchronize documents from the SharePoint Document Library to your local drive. SkyDrive and SharePoint Workspace. ‘SkyDrive’ seems to be the most popular product name amongst Microsoft Product teams these days. That leaves us with (at least) 4 different products that use this name at this point in time. This article describes the use of ‘SkyDrive Pro client for Windows’, which should not be confused with: ‘SkyDrive’; which is the 7GB (free) online document storage from live.com that has been around since February 2008 (in the Netherlands), ‘SkyDrive Desktop app’; which is the Windows client tool to sync files from the above mentioned ‘SkyDrive’, or ‘SkyDrive Pro’; which is the SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 personal storage that we used to call ‘MySite’ or ‘personal site’ in SharePoint 2010 and earlier versions. According to Microsoft the ‘SkyDrive Pro client for Windows’ aka ‘SkyDrive Pro 2013’ aka ‘SkyDrive Pro sync client’: “allows users of SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online in Office 365 to sync their personal SkyDrive Pro and any SharePoint 2013 or Office 365 team site document libraries to their local machine”. ‘SkyDrive Pro client for Windows’ was first introduced as part of Office 2013 in the summer of 2012. On May 20th of this year Microsoft released it as a stand-alone download (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39050). What is especially nice about that is that you can install it side-by-side with previous versions of MS Office (Office 2010, Office 2007, etc.). So now we can make use of Microsoft’s newest synchronization technology without upgrading to MS Office 2013.

Figure 1: ‘SkyDrive Pro client for Windows’ available in Download Center To install, just download the appropriate file (32bit or 64bit) from the Microsoft Download Center (see also figure 1) and follow the installation wizard. The default settings are just fine.

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Syncing SharePoint 2013 libraries After installing you can start syncing your SharePoint 2013 document libraries. This can be done in two ways: 1. You enter the URL of the document library you want to sync manually, or 2. You use the ‘Sync’ button. For every SharePoint library you sync, you will get a folder with the following syntax: “ – ” like in figure 2.

Figure 2: Synchronized SharePoint 2013 document library in Windows Explorer When saving (or copying/ moving) documents to the local (SkyDrive) folder you will get the same behavior as you save directly to SharePoint. You will, for instance, get prompted to enter content type and required metadata when saving from MS Office. Copying files in bulk will keep them checked out until you have entered all required metadata.

Manually syncing libraries If you want to manually sync several libraries, you’ll need to choose the ‘Sync a new library’ option from the SkyDrive Pro menu in your Windows Notification area. The “blue clouds” icon is the one you need as you can see in figure 3.

Figure 3: SkyDrive Pro settings in Windows Notification area 55

Then copy and paste any SharePoint document library URL, click the ‘Sync Now’ button and you’re good to go. Figure 4 shows you what this should look like.

Figure 4: Specify document library to synchronize If you want to stop syncing a folder just choose the ‘Stop syncing a folder’ option in the before mentioned menu.

Use the Sync button In a SharePoint 2013 document library in the right corner of the page you will find the “SYNC” button (figure 5). This will sync the documents to your local drive. If you haven’t used the sync button before you will get the window as shown in figure 4 where you can determine the folder where you want to sync the documents to.

Figure 5: Sync button SharePoint 2013

Using SharePoint Workspace There are a couple of reasons why you want to use SharePoint workspace. SharePoint Workspace synchronizes all list content types. Not just libraries but also other list types. SharePoint Workspace can be used with both SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 document libraries. If you have large lists and you don’t want to sync all the documents in the list, SharePoint Workspace is a better solution. SharePoint Workspace provides a “Headers only” function. This will only download the document header and metadata. In the SharePoint Workspace you can determine which file should be downloaded en synchronized. You can create workspaces for synchronizing SharePoint content on your local computer, which are intended for your own exclusive use, from a SharePoint site from the SharePoint Workspace Launch bar.

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Figure 6: ‘Sync to SharePoint Workspace’ button from the document library ribbon

Sync SharePoint 2010 document libraries with SkyDrive Pro When adding a SharePoint 2010 document library to SkyDrive client as shown in figure 4 you might get the same sync functionality as if you’d had a SharePoint 2013 document library. Because the ‘SkyDrive Pro client for Windows’ was built on Groove technology (or is actually just the newest version, as shown in figure 7), we can also use the ‘Sync to SharePoint Workspace’ button from the document library ribbon. Figure 6 shows you what this button looks like.

Figure 7: Microsoft SkyDrive Pro (Groove.exe) properties Although it did until recently! On October 8th, just after I had handed in this article, Microsoft released an update for SkyDrive Pro (KB2825633) that disables the possibility to sync SharePoint 2010 libraries. If you try, you’ll get an error as depicted in figure 8. 57

Figure 8: SkyDrive Pro Error connecting to SharePoint 2010 SharePoint 2010 libraries that were added before October 8th, still seem to synchronize fine. You just cannot add any other libraries. Temporarily uninstall KB2825633, connect your libraries and let Windows re-install the update will work but is not a supported method. Be aware that this only works if you do not have SharePoint Workspace installed on your computer, otherwise SharePoint Workspace will take preference.

Limitations Are there any limitations? Sure there are. First of all, files are being synchronized to your local hard disk, so you’ll need enough disk space for all the files to be stored. Furthermore, according to Microsoft, you can (only) sync up to 5000 items, including folders and files, not exceeding 2 GB per library.

Conclusion ‘SkyDrive Pro client for Windows’ is a great and most of all user friendly way to bring SharePoint documents to your local machine. It just makes working with documents in SharePoint a lot easier. Whether it is copying and moving files, saving attachments from MS Outlook or using MS Excel sheets as input for your mail merges, SkyDrive Pro is your friend. If you have a SharePoint 2010 environment SharePoint Workspace gives you the same possibilities and more… Just give it a try!

About the Authors Roundtrip between SharePoint and Navision Wilhelm Rojer is a SharePoint Developer at 4PS in Ede, the Netherlands. Since 2008 he’s focused on the development and implementation of SharePoint and .NET solutions. During his career he has been involved with SharePoint projects of all shapes and sizes for different companies in the Netherlands.

Making collaboration easy Amancio Quant is SharePoint Consultant, working for Imtech ICT since February 2009. Strongly focused on embedding and adoption of the SharePoint platform within the organization.

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From file shares to document libraries Jasper Oosterveld is an active member of the SharePoint community. He has been a speaker at community events such as DIWUG, SharePoint Saturday, SharePoint Connections and the European SharePoint Conference. He is the co-founder of the site SPCNL and the SharePoint Business User Group NL. SPCNL collects Dutch SharePoint articles written by SharePoint experts and enthusiasts. The SharePoint Business User Group NL is dedicated to the business users working on a daily basis with SharePoint. Topics such as Document Management, User Adoption and Governance are discussed. He is also a co-author for two SharePoint books: The SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 Handbook. In February 2012 he received the Microsoft Community Contributor award for supporting the SharePoint community at the TechNet forums. In 2013 Jasper was listed at number 17 in the top 25 European SharePoint Influencers. Navigation in SharePoint Paul Schaeflein is a solution architect/developer/trainer with experience in all versions of the SharePoint platform. This experience covers a vast range of technologies, languages and industries. Paul is a top-rated speaker, having presented at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference and TechEd conferences, as well as user groups. In recognition of these community efforts, he was awarded as a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) four times. Paul is also a Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) for SharePoint. Building a no-code products and services catalog with SharePoint Server 2013 Rick Bakker works as a SharePoint consultant for ETTU, a SharePoint specialist in the Netherlands. His first SharePoint project started in 2008 and since 2010 he is working solely on SharePoint projects. Rick has a focus on Enterprise Content Management, Governance, PowerShell, Search and Solution Design. Much more than what is written in this article can be said about the topic. Go and check Rick’s blog at https://rickscaveat.wordpress.com for future in-depth posts about the products and services catalog solution. SharePoint 2013 and Office Web Apps Marianne van Wanrooij manages her own company Connected Solutions where she mainly focuses on the education market. Having her own company means different roles and responsibilities, such as developer, project leader, trainer and consultant. She a driving force behind the SharePoint community co-running the Dutch Information Worker User Group (DIWUG), for which she organizes free events. Marianne is also the lead editor for the DIWUG SharePoint eMagazine. She speaks at both local and international conferences and has written a number of articles about SharePoint development. In 2010 she was awarded MVP for SharePoint. Twitter https://twitter. com/mariannerd; LinkedIn nl.linkedin.com/in/mariannerd Using Skydrive Pro 2013 with SharePoint 2010 Christiaan Blaauw works as a senior SharePoint Consultant and Business Analyst at Winvision in the Netherlands. Christiaan has been working as a full-time SharePoint consultant since 2006, but his relationship with SharePoint dates back to the days of SharePoint 2001. Christiaans main focus is on getting as much “out-of-theSharePointbox” as possible to fulfill client’s requirements. InfoPath and SharePoint Designer are the tools of his trade, but he doesn’t shy away from Visual Studio if the situation calls for it. 59

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