Jimirig

Some solutions require a unique ID to be used for identifying forms saved in SharePoint or be used as a customer ID. There is a simple solution that does not use code, which is nice since many, many solutions these days are being generated with code. What some do not know is that so many tricks, solutions, and customized features are already built in, you just have to know how to get to them.

First, in SharePoint create your form library, we will call our UnitqueID. Then open InfoPath and create your form. Open the data connection wizard and create a connection to receive data. Next select that you wish to receive the data from a SharePoint List or Library and click next. Enter the URL to the form library, http://portal/UniqueID and select next.

After clicking next again you will need to select the columns you want to use. For this demo, we only need “ID” to be selected. Now go ahead and click next all the way through the wizard and hit finish.

Now you need to place a Text Field or Expression Box on your form and build a formula for the field.

Next to the Value input select the “fx” symbol to create a formula. You will need to type in max( and then select “Instert Group or Field and browse to the secondary data connection source and drop down until you find the ID and press ok.

Finish the formula by adding )+1 so the whole formula should read max(@ID)+1. Press OK and OK again to close the properties of the field. Publish your form and open the form to test.

(Note: The library needs to have at least 1 item in the library in order for the ID to be generated. The first form will get a “null” response.)

Original Article: http://www.sharepointbriefing.com/spcode/article.php/3816551

By Jason Ruthkoski
April 21, 2009

Have you ever had a requirement stating that a document library needs to have item-level permissions for a large number of items? For example, perhaps you need to create a document library to house customer financial statements or invoices, giving the customers permission to access only their own items.

One approach would be to create a separate document library for each customer, and handle permissions at the library level. However, this solution would be a headache to manage. Having thousands of document libraries to handle only a few documents per library is not a reasonable approach. Besides, do you really want to have to create a new document library for each new customer?

Another approach would be to have one document library for each type of document. For this example, you would create a single document library for customer invoices containing separate folders for each customer. You could then handle permissions at the folder level. Seems reasonable, right?

The Problem

If you’ve ever tried either approach, then you probably know that item-level permissions in SharePoint can cause serious performance issues. That’s because when you create a new item in a document library and “break permissions” (stop inheriting permissions) from the parent library, SharePoint automatically copies all the permissions from the parent document library to the item level.

After breaking permissions you can call the BreakRoleInheritance function in the SharePoint API to clear out the copied parent permissions, setting its CopyRoleAssignments flag to false. However, the API does not do a mass delete of the permissions; instead, it iterates through the permission list, deleting them one by one. For example, if you have 5000 folders, it will need to delete 5000 permissions—one by one—in your new item’s access control list. That’s because each customer needs a “limited access” permission to the top-level library, which tells SharePoint that the user has permission to something at a lower level (i.e., a document or a folder). In the single-library-multiple-folder strategy, each new customer would have “limited access” permission to the top-level library and each new item would automatically copy down those limited access permissions from the library when the item was created. If you do the math, 4000 items * 4000 limited-access permissions per item equals 16 million unnecessary limited access permissions!

I tried using this strategy with a console application that imported documents; it eventually required 20 to 30 minutes for each new customer! After doing some performance testing with this approach, it turned out that the worst-case scenario for uploading 4000 to 5000 documents would have been between 2 and 3 months, which was obviously unacceptable.

So if clearing the parent-level permissions isn’t a good approach, suppose you simply set the CopyRoleAssignments flag to true? SharePoint would still break the permission inheritance of your item, but it wouldn’t clear out all the unnecessary permissions that already existed. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work well either. You might think that it wouldn’t matter whether there are extraneous limited-access permissions in each of the folders—but you’d be wrong! Leaving the extraneous permissions can cause serious performance issues when viewing the document library or adding new permissions, because it exponentially increases the number of permissions SharePoint has to iterate through to figure out what access a logged-in user has. My real-world testing showed that it would take over 15 minutes to view the documents!

So it would seem you’re between a rock and a hard place. Cleaning up the permissions when creating the folder causes your import to be slow, but if you don’t clean up the unnecessary permissions, viewing the documents will be slow. What are you supposed to do?

Luckily, there’s a neat little trick that allows you to do both. If you move a folder within a document library to another location in that library, SharePoint moves its permissions along with it. In other words, if you create a new folder in a library with zero permissions, and then move it, you won’t have to do any messy cleanup of limited-access permissions.

With that background under your belt, here’s the process:

Follow this process to solve the item-level permissions problem:

1. Create your new document library and elect to copy and then stop inheriting permissions from the parent site. Because you’re going to handle security at the folder level, that will work fine.
2. Clear out the permissions in your new library, which will have inherited permissions from its parent site. You can do this manually or by calling the BreakRoleInheritance API function. Either way, this operation might be a little slow if you have a lot of permissions set at the site level.
3. Create a new folder in your library called BlankFolder and break its permissions. Because you’ve already cleared the library’s permissions, the new BlankFolder folder should now have zero permissions.
4. In your import process, create a new folder within BlankFolder, called BlankFolder2 and break its permissions. Then use the MoveTo function in the API to move the new folder to the base level of your library. Finally, rename it to something descriptive (a customer ID works well for this example).

The code should look something like this:

SPFolder blankFolder;
// either get or create a blank folder
try
{
   blankFolder = workingFolder.SubFolders[
      "BlankFolder"].SubFolders["BlankFolder2"];
}
catch (ArgumentException) // if blankfolder2 does not exist…
{
   blankFolder = workingFolder.SubFolders[
      "BlankFolder"].SubFolders.Add("BlankFolder2");
   blankFolder.Item.BreakRoleInheritance(true);
   blankFolder.Update();
}
//Now move the new folder to the base level of the
//doc library and rename it
SPList tmpList = ParentWeb.Lists[
   rootFolder.ContainingDocumentLibrary];
blankFolder.MoveTo(_sharePointLibrary + "\\" +
   subFolderName);
tmpList.Update();

5. Grant permission to this new folder to the appropriate customer. Keep in mind this will automatically add a “limited access” permission for the customer to the document library’s access control list, because the customer needs access to something at a lower level in the library (the new folder). That’s why you needed the top-level BlankFolder with zero permissions from step 3—it acts as the parent for new folders, ensuring that SharePoint doesn’t have to copy all the limited-access permissions from the top level library, only the permissions from BlankFolder.

Here’s some example code that assigns permissions to a new folder:

SPRoleAssignment assgn = new SPRoleAssignment(
   groupName, null, groupName, null);
assgn.RoleDefinitionBindings.Add(roleDef);
item.RoleAssignments.Add(assgn);
item.Update();

That should do it! Your users should be able to access the documents without performance issues, and the import process should work at an acceptable speed as well.

As you’ve seen, creating item-level permissions in SharePoint can be tricky, but if you’re careful, they can be an effective tool for meeting business requirements. The trick described in this article is a good one to keep in your back pocket in case you ever need it!

For backup and restoration of SharePoint, we have always used the STSADM.exe command for SharePoint. Note: It is highly recommended that a backup is also created for the SQL Database. The STSADM.exe utility is a very simple command line tool used to modify several different parts of SharePoint. Our main use is disaster recover. It is very simple. Log on to the SharePoint server or use remote desktop. Open the command prompt, and browse to the following:

SharePoint 2007 – c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin\

SharePoint 2010 – c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\bin\

Now type in the following for a backup:

stsadm.exe -o backup -url http://enterurlhere -filename c:\enterbackupnamehere.bak

Wait for the operation to complete. Hey look, you have a backup that holds all permissions, settings, content, etc.

Restoring the site is like this:

stsadm.exe -o restore -url http://enterurlhere -filename c:\enterbackupnamehere.bak -overwrite

Other commands can be used can be found here. (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261956.aspx)

Original Article: http://bit.ly/4lkbXq

January 27, 2009
By Dustin Hannifin

Organizations around the world have been adopting SharePoint rapidly as their collaboration platform of choice. In fact, SharePoint usually becomes so popular that organizations quickly want to expand its use beyond the corporate firewall. That’s because businesses, besides sharing information via SharePoint internally, also want to share it externally, by providing vendors, business partners, and clients access to their SharePoint sites. IT is then faced with the challenge of making these sites securely accessible from the Internet.

Figure 1

Typical extranet SharePoint deployments involve deploying SharePoint in an Active Directory (AD) forest on a perimeter network, or DMZ (see Figure 1). This solution lets you use AD as your authentication provider—without the need to create accounts for external users in your internal forest. This solution does, however, create one problem. With no trust relationship between AD domains (internal and external) you will need to create user accounts in the perimeter AD forest for not only clients and vendors, but also for internal corporate users, which obviously means more administrative work for IT departments. Using this solution, you’re managing not only two sets of accounts for internal users, but also accounts from business partners.

This article explains how Microsoft addresses this issue using Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). You will see how to deploy ADFS to provide a single sign-on experience for web applications across AD forests within your organization, as well as AD users in other organizations.

ADFS first appeared in Windows Server 2003 R2, but was somewhat cumbersome to set up and manage, and caused certain SharePoint features to function improperly. Microsoft has addressed these issues with SharePoint 2007 and Windows Server 2008, providing a much more seamless integration.

Figure 2

Before you deploy ADFS you need to spend ample time planning how the infrastructure should be set up to meet your deployment goals. The design of your ADFS infrastructure will vary depending on those goals. In this article the goal is to provide a single sign-on experience for corporate users for the extranet SharePoint deployment. In other words, corporate users should be able to use their internal Active Directory account to log on to a SharePoint server that’s set up as a member server of the perimeter Active Directory forest. To accomplish that design goal, this article used the servers shown in Figure 2.

Those servers are:

• Active Directory Certificate Services or third-party public key infrastructure (PKI) (This is not required, but it is recommended for production deployments.)
• Internal LAN Active Directory Forest
• Internal LAN Account Federation Server
• Perimeter Network Active Directory Forest
• Perimeter Network SharePoint Server w/ADFS Enabled
• Perimeter Network Resource Federation Server

The rest of this article shows how to set up these servers.

ADFS Deployment

Figure 3

If you were one of the early explorers of ADFS you probably remember that you performed most of the ADFS setup and configuration in Windows Server 2003 R2 using the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). That process required detailed guidance to ensure the configuration was done properly. Fortunately, ADFS setup in Windows Server 2008 has been greatly improved; it now uses configuration wizards for many of the components.

After properly planning your ADFS deployment, you can install your federation servers. To install a federation server, use the “Add Roles” wizard to add the Federation Service role (see Figure 3).

Figure 4

ADFS uses SSL for federation communication, so you’ll need to obtain certificates via your own or third-party public-key infrastructure (PKI) providers. However, you can use self-signed certificates for test purposes and deployments (see Figure 4). When installing your federation server you will need both a Server Authentication Certificate and a Token Signing Certificate.

You will need to install a Federation server on both your internal LAN and in your perimeter network. According to the design scheme (see Figure 2), the internal federation server acts as the account federation server, while the perimeter federation server acts as the resource federation server.

Figure 5

After installing the federation servers, you need to install the ADFS Web Agent on the SharePoint server (see Figure 5). Doing that lets the SharePoint server use federation claims for authentication.

ADFS Configuration

After completing the federation server installations, you need to configure the correct settings on each one. If you used the self-signed certification option above, you will also need to install the certificate into the trusted root CA store for the computer account for each federation server and for the SharePoint server.

Configure Internal Federation Server (Account Federation Server)

You need to follow a few basic steps to configure your internal federation server. This is the server that will connect to the internal AD forest and provide tokens for users to connect to the extranet SharePoint server via their internal AD logon. These include:

1. Add the Active Directory account store. This configures the federation server to provide tokens for user accounts in the designated Active Directory domain.
2. Create a new organization group claim. This is a claim or identity passed to the external federation server.
3. Create a new claim extraction for the group claim. This extraction maps the claim to a particular group of users within Active Directory. Members of this AD group will be given access to the extranet SharePoint server via another claim extraction set up on the resource federation server.
4. Set up the resource partner. This step involves setting up the relationship between the two federation servers. Since all traffic is passed over SSL, the two servers communicate via web services. You must also specify the type of claim to pass to the resource federation server. This can be either email address, UPN, Common Name or any combination of the above. These serve as the unique identifier for each member of the claim group.
5. Set up an external claim mapping. This maps the AD group to the claim being sent to the other federation partner.

Configure External Federation Server (Resource Federation Server)

Next, you need to finish setting up the external federation server. This server resides in the perimeter network with the SharePoint server. To do that, follow this procedure:

1. Create a new SharePoint application. This configures ADFS to provide authentication tokens for the specified application.
2. Add a new account partner. Add the URI for the account federation server. This configures the resource federation server to accept tokens from the account federation server.
3. Create a new organization group claim, and map it to a resource group. This step creates a new claim and maps it to a group in the External AD forest.
4. Enable the organization group claim for the SharePoint application.
5. Create a new incoming claim to match the outgoing claim from the account federation server. This setting maps the two claims to each other.

SharePoint Configuration

Finally, configure your SharePoint application to support ADFS tokens by modifying the web.config for both Central Admin and the SharePoint application sites. You need to add a new provider for both files. You can do that by manually adding the configuration information to web.config, or by using the ADFS script for SharePoint, a VBScript file that automatically updates web.config to enable SharePoint to support federation.

VBScript Route

If you choose to use the script, after running the script, make sure you log on to the SharePoint site and give access to the group claim resource group. After you do that, internal users should be able to sign on to the external SharePoint site using their internal Active Directory credentials.

Manual Route

If you prefer to modify the web.config files yourself, add the following code to the web.config file for each web application that you want to make aware of claims. Just after the section you will need to add the following lines:

<membership>
  <providers>
    <add name="SingleSignOnMembershipProvider2"
      type="System.Web.Security.SingleSignOn.
            SingleSignOnMembershipProvider2,
            System.Web.Security.SingleSignOn.PartialTrust,
            Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
            fs="https://extadfs.treyresearch.com/adfs/
               fs/federationserverservice.asmx" />
  </providers>
</membership>
<roleManager enabled="true"
  defaultProvider="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider">
  <providers>
    <remove name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" />
    <add name="SingleSignOnRoleProvider2"
      type="System.Web.Security.SingleSignOn.
            SingleSignOnRoleProvider2,
            System.Web.Security.SingleSignOn.PartialTrust,
            Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
            fs="https://extadfs.treyresearch.com/adfs/fs/
            federationserverservice.asmx" />
  </providers>
</roleManager>
 

Save your changes to the web.config file. At this point users should be able to sign on to the external SharePoint site using their internal Active Directory credentials.

As you’ve seen, your business can provide extranet access to SharePoint sites yet still allow internal employees access to those sites using a single signon—their internal Active Directory credentials. As organizations continue to expose SharePoint externally to provide collaboration services for clients and business partners, you can leverage Active Directory Federation Services to provide a single-sign-on experience for both external and corporate users.

InfoPath is a great solution, that not many people are really familiar with to electronically save forms on a computer, network folder, or in a content management system like SharePoint. Here are some instructions on using a sample from InfoPath and adding a save button to save into SharePoint.

Start with your InfoPath Form. Modify anything or start from scratch. For this we used the sample status report that ships with InfoPath. Other free templates can be found at Microsoft Office Online.

Sample Status InfoPath Form

Place a save or submit button accordingly and right click on the button to set the properties. There are two ways to submit a form into SharePoint without the use to code. One is to just submit the form, two is using Rules. For this exercise we will just use submit. Rules and conditions apply more for advanced vallidations, and other actions upon submission like open a different form etc. Select Submit in the drop down and click on the Submit Options button.

InfoPath Submit Button Properties

Next you will need to enable the form to be submitted and then select SharePoint Document Library in the drop down list. Then click Add, to add a data connection for the form.

InfoPath Submit Button Options

After clicking add you will be asked to point to a document library for the form to be saved. At this point, since you haven’t already published the form, the libray probably doesn’t exist so you will need to go into SharePoint and add a new form library.

Create a SharePoint Form Library

Back to InfoPath, enter the name of the form library (full URL – http://domain/Form%20Library/) and then you will need to change the name of the form. By default the program chooses “Form.” This doesn’t work for multiple forms. So let’s concat a name based on information from the form. Click on the button to the right and you are prompted to enter fields, or formulas. We will concat a formula.

Concat Name Formula

Click OK and you will be back to the wizard and your naming convention will be in the name field. You should also check the box to Allow overwrite.

InfoPath Data Connection Wizard

Click Next and Finish. You have now created a new data connection for your form. Click OK until you are back at your form. Now it is time to Publish to SharePoint. Click File from the top menu bar, and the publishing wizard will open.

Publish InfoPath

InfoPath Publishing Wizard

If you haven’t saved your form at this point InfoPath will prompt you to save. Here you will select that you want to publish to a SharePoint server and click next. Enter the URL to the form library that you wish to save the form to and click next.The next screen you will need to select document library, and hit next. It is OK to leave the check box for Form Services checked if you are running Form Services. Next you want to update an exisiting form library. Select the appropriate library and hit next. Then hit next and then Publish.

InfoPath Publishing Wizard

After the form is successfully published go ahead and give it a test. Using InfoPath you can simply click preview at the top or go into SharePoint and click new in your document library. After saving the form you should have something like this in SharePoint.

Have fun!

Managing the relationship between an organization’s business units and IT is a strategic initiative that can support corporate objectives, bolster program planning, help set implementation expectations, and improve operational score cards … or, it can become a burden and a detriment to open lines of communication.

A liaison model should take into account several company parameters, including sponsorship, size, governance, and collaboration levels, and be tailored to an organization’s culture and design. An effective communication program should be designed to fit within the current environment and have a plan to mature into a model that supports the future state of an organization if it is going to be sustainable.

A well operated and sponsored program has direct benefits including faster time to market, lower overall cost, fewer defects and misinterpreted expectations, and a more collaborative working style that raises the likelihood of success for cross-functional programs and organizational transformation.

Leadership

Stakeholder involvement is typically a catalyst to a program’s success or failure and this is no different with a liaison model. The liaison team should be led by an executive team member, someone with enterprise visibility and the ability to interact with senior management. With this level of sponsorship, strategic initiative support is encouraged and business unit conflicts are mitigated.

Depending on the executive sponsor, the group will probably have an affinity to that leader’s goals. If the group is expected to review spending habits, reporting to the CFO would be an advantage; if the technology portfolio is in need of support, the CIO would be an excellent sponsor. Ideally, the liaison model would be part of a more robust governance effort, as the team’s objectives are invariably linked to corporate improvement initiatives, including balanced scorecard, enterprise risk management, governance and compliance, and process improvement. A model that reports to a chief administration officer or corporate strategic planning will help the group evolve beyond business/IT communication and provide value for multiple stakeholders.

Business/IT communication can be implemented by taking into account team member roles and team structure. Herein, three roles are defined―communicator/contributor, facilitator/educator, and planner/improver―along with three structures (individual, pool, and center of excellence) to provide a framework for initiating and maturing a liaison team.

Team Roles

The role a liaison team plays depends on not only the current state, but what the existing challenges are. Understanding the pain points of the relationship will guide the selection of the appropriate style.

Communicator/contributor – This role tends to be most effective where the relationship is strained or where there is a “super-hero” environment. The liaison would focus on opening the lines of communication and rebuilding trust. With a superhero-oriented IT department, business users must learn to engage the entire department and not to call their IT buddy directly. IT must also respond efficiently. The communicator liaison becomes the bridge between the business and IT. They must be aware of the players, the projects, the insiders, and contribute to planning so that groups feel they have an advocate.

A communicator/contributor should be open and trustworthy with a high emotional intelligence to help diffuse tense situations where blame might traditionally be freely assigned. The liaison might be challenged to redefine the relationships. With patience and several trust building conversations, the communicator will begin to participate in planning and delivery and become the advocate for different groups and perspectives.

The liaison is cautioned in aligning too closely with newly opened relationships as group-think might ensue. Liaisons should also be careful not to provide all the initial suggestions or answers as they will not be effective if viewed as the single point of contact and only trusted resource.

After reading several articles about the built-in Workflow in SharePoint, I wanted to reach out and set a more advanced example. Many articles always state the obvious approval workflow, or check in/out. Well there is much more that can be done with ease. Why other authors do not discuss these, I don’t know, lack of knowledge, who knows. So here we go.

1. Using workflow with data in a document or form library.

Custom Column for Article Type

When storing a document in SharePoint, by default there is not any meta-data entered. These have to be configured with custom columns. Not a difficult ordeal. Simply create a document library, and add columns to the library. Now when you upload a document you will be asked to enter the information pertaining to the document.

So now you can select a type of article like Customer, Management, HR, etc. This tells users more information about that document without opening it. You can add as many columns as needed to describe the data. This also creates more content for the search to index, better qualifying your document for best results.

Now once you have selected a type you now have data to work with. Using SharePoint Designer you can create a workflow for that library. You can make this workflow react based on that information. For example, when a document is uploaded and the article type is HR, then you can start an approval process only to HR, or whomever is selected in the data. A workflow can also write the data associated with the file if that is needed.

If this were an InfoPath form you would add the columns in the InfoPath publishing wizard.

Document Properties

Instead of uploading you can use your own document template living in SharePoint. Notice what happens in Word when you create a new document directly from SharePoint. You have the option of completing these fields directly in Word and they will be published into SharePoint with the document when it is saved. Requirements can also be configured in SharePoint.

***Caution – If a workflow is enabled using this information variables must be set in the workflow to guarantee that the document is complete and ready for the process to start. Even creating a column that must be checked for the workflow to start would be sufficient.

2. Manipulating data in SharePoint Lists

One of the nice features of SharePoint is the ability to create your own custom lists. This is a very simplified usage of forms without using InfoPath. It has many limitations however that we don’t need to discuss. We will go ahead and use a guestbook list as an example here. This guestbook will be for a wedding and we will have thank you emails sent automatically 7 days after the wedding.

Custom Calculated Formula

Start by creating a custom list in SharePoint. “Title” is a default column name in SharePoint, and can be changed to a different name on the list. We will change that to Last Name and create several other colums, First Name, Relationship (drop down list), email address, and guest names. Additionally we will need to create a calculated value column which reads:

=Modified+”7″

This formula will make a date that is 7 days after the modified date.

New Guest List

Your list should look something like the image to the right. Now open SharePoint Designer and create a new worflow. Set the condtion to be a compaison of data and set as Email Date is equal to Today. This will make the workflow wait to send email until then.

The action needs to be set to email a message. The “To:” field is the email address entered in the form. You can even get creative with the names. Remember the guest names that were asked to be entered? Well you can set an else if condition also which states that if the guest name field is not empty to send a different message which would include all the names in the greeting.

Workflow Conditons

These are two very simple examples of uses with SharePoint workflow. Many other functions are available without writing code. All of these features can be used to create many different applications for SharePoint like a support ticket system, remiders and more. Many of these are never mentioned and should be.

Advanced? Check out the things you can do with adding a third party workflow solution like K2 BlackPearl!

Part 2 of SharePoint Workflow next week!

Save as new file - Google Docs

Do you use Google Docs and would love to have a company letterhead? Although you cannot use templates in Google Docs, create one your self with a blank document. Configure the Header and Footer by clicking on Format on the top menu. SAVE the file. Now when you need to write a company document simply open that file in Google Docs, and imediately select File in the top menu and select Save as a new copy. This will open a new Tab or Window and just rename the file as needed.

http://www.mesh.com

Do you have all your family pictures, resumes, and other important documents living in the “My Documets” on your PC? Most people do. Well there is a free way to save all this information in a location that is secure, and on one of the most reliable networks in the world. It is very easy to do. First go to http://www.mesh.com and sign up. If you do not have a Windows Live Account you will be provided the option to create one. Once you can log in to the Mesh download the software and install on your computer. After the installation you need to sign in. I usually just tell the software to remember my password and always sign me in. Once that is done you will see a folder on your desktop called Mesh Documents.

Open that folder and you will be prompted to set the synchronization. Just select Ok. Open the Mesh Documents Folder and create a new folder inside called Documents. Now if you are using Windows Vista you will have to do this several times for documents, pictures, videos. So if you are on Vista, Open you personal home folder. Mine says Cory (Jimirig). Then right click on the My Documents folder and select the tab that says location. Then select Move and browse to your desktop and tell the files to the folder called Documents that you created earlier in the Mesh Documents folder. Once that is completed select Ok on the properties of My Documents and you will be prompted to move the files. Select Yes and your files will move automatically. Repeat this process for your library to include pictures and videos.

With the Windows Live Mesh you get 5GB of storage space and all your files will be there even if your computer breaks. Simply repeat the process after the computer has been fixed and your files will download automatically to your PC. For Windows XP you only can synchronize the My Documents since the Pictures and other folder live in the My Documents only.

Written by: Cory (cory@jimirig.com)

Like most household these days there is usually more than 1 computer (I am a geek so I have 6 PC’s plus 7 servers) on a workgroup. Now that can cause issues with sharing of documents, pictures, etc. on a workgroup. I know that many people take their pictures and download them on one computer, and others on a different computer and the same with music, which makes for an organized nightmare. Well what if all that “information” was located in one place, easily accessible from any computer? Yes that can be done with folder shares, but for recovery purposes that isn’t safe anymore. You can easily install Windows SharePoint Services (free!!!) on a home network and store your “information” and create some new things also. You don’t need anything fancy for this. Get a used computer from Craigslist or something and it is not required to have Windows Server either, you can use Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Here are some examples:

• Photo Libraries
• Document Collaboration
• Custom Lists for recipes or chores
• Calendar for birthdays or sporting events
• …many more

One of the things that I setup is a document library that we keep our tax documents, family letters, warranty information for things that we have purchased. Things like that and both myself and my wife can access at anytime. We also can just simply click new on the menu and start a brand new document right there or upload any email attachments if needed.

Secondly I created a Picture Library for all the pictures and little videos we have. SharePoint has a built in slide show feature, download options, and email sharing. It is really easy just select the photos you want to send and hit email. Along with the documents, you can tag the files with certain information like who is in the picture, what year and so on. That in turn gets indexed by the Windows Search feature of SharePoint so you can just do a search for “Cory” and anything pertaining to me that you have permission to see is there.

Third, I made a recipe system for my wife. This is a bit more custom than the average user would do, but I am a SharePoint guru. So I made a list with the name of the meal, selection for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, a description, ingredients, directions, and finally a picture. Depending on the selections while filling out the recipe determines where it will be shown since it is categorized by meal type. I also changed the navigation to reflect these selections to make it easier. What I like about this is, that I can add a new recipe if I find one I like and then email it to my wife.

There are many things you can do with SharePoint that are not just for business. Still within the household you can setup the SharePoint alerts, customize the permissions so kids can’t delete things or get into the taxes and since SharePoint has a recycle bin, if you accidentally delete something it can be restored pretty easily. Now since all this information is being store in a database you can easily backup your data and if you want to get real fancy you can customize the look and feel of the site with you favorite colors using SharePoint Designer (free download).

Installation Instructions for XP, Vista, Server:

• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows Server

Backup and Restore (Coming Soon)

• SharePoint Integrated
• Advanced Backup

Browse to c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin\ in the command prompt.

Type in the following   stsadm.exe -o backup -url http://yoururl -filename c:\backupfilename.bak Your URL might be http://computername

• Advance Restore

Browse to c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin\ in the command prompt.

Type in the following   stsadm.exe -o restore -url http://yoururl -filename c:\backupfilename.bak -overwrite Your URL might be http://computername