We are all ready for the the release of the Microsoft Office 2010 products. Many have already used the beta releases and found the points that we didn’t like or really did like. Myself personally I am on a tightrope with this keeping my balance, but this article isn’t about that. In the SharePoint world, designers use the SharePoint Designer product to enhance, develop, and manipulate SharePoint. The new SharePoint Designer 2010 does exactly that. One difference…it is not backward compatible so you cannot connect to previous versions with it.

Microsoft has made this have the ability to work side-by-side though with SharePoint Designer 2007, well with some prerequisites.

1. Must use 32-bit (x86) versions. Recommeneded to use 32-bit on all Office products doing this BTW.
2. Must install SPD 2007 first, reboot (to be safe) before installing SPD 2010.

Reference: SharePoint 2007 Download Details – Click Here

According to Microsoft this will work. Good Luck!

Related posts:

1. User Profiles and Audience Targeting in SharePoint 2007
2. Save with InfoPath and SharePoint
3. Utilize SharePoint @ Home

Managing Sites and Site Collections
SharePoint organizes its data in sites and site collections. When you design a site for a client, you must evaluate a number of pros and cons as you choose between a site and a site collection for a particular set of data. Irrespective of what you picked, you’ll encounter times where you wished you had picked the other. Or sometimes, you just need to shuffle or move things around because the requirements changed, the databases grew, or any other reason. Stsadm is incredibly helpful in such scenarios.

You may backup a site collection using the following command:

   stsadm -o backup -url
   -filename

Similarly, you may restore a site collection using the following command:

   stsadm -o restore -url
   -filename  

stsadm -o export -url Now note that I mentioned “site collection” and not site. In order to backup a site, you may use the following command:

   -filename

Similarly, in order to import a site you may use the following command:

   stsadm -o export -url
   -filename

To import and export single sites need you to pay extra attention to site GUID identifiers, and the versions of items/documents in the site.

Now, this brings up some interesting permutations and combinations. Using the preceding commmands, you could:

• Move site collections to/from servers, or within the same website.
• Move sites up or down in the hierarchy of a site collection.
• Convert a site into a site collection.

Now, why would you ever want to convert a site into a site collection? Because, you cannot split a site collection between multiple content databases, and sometimes content databases get too huge to manage. As it turns out, Stsadm can also help you manage your content databases.

Managing Content Databases
Sometimes you might land in a project where you have a content database that is bursting its seams. Usually, when a content database grows to over 50GB, a SharePoint architect’s warning lights should turn yellow. If it crosses 200GB for high I/O sites, or 500GB for read-only sites, the warning lights should glow red. Note that you can tweak these soft limits beyond the numbers I mentioned, but—sooner or later—you’ll have to face the problem of taking an existing website with numerous sites or site collections, and splitting them up into manageable chunks containing separate content databases.

To do so, use the following command to force the creation of a new site collection in a new content database:

   stsadm -o createsiteinnewdb
   -url
   -owneremail
   -ownerlogin
   -databasename

After running the preceding command successfully, you may verify under Central Administration → Application Management → Content Databases that a new content database has indeed been added, and that the single site collection specified in the preceding code was created.

You can use the following sequence of commands to move a site collection from <oldUrl> to <newUrl>:

   stsadm -o backup -url
   -filename
   stsadm -o deletesite -url
   stsadm -o restore -url
   -filename  -overwrite

As you can see, the commands back up the site from the old URL, delete it, and then restore it at the new URL, which exists in a new content database. You accomplished all this with only a few lines usingStsadm, which supports a number of other commands that let you work with content databases.

Related posts:

1. Fast Backup and Restore for SharePoint
2. Utilize SharePoint @ Home
3. SharePoint – More Than Just a Technical Solution

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.)

Related posts:

1. TIP: Save an InfoPath Form in SharePoint
2. SharePoint Workflow – Part 1
3. Save with InfoPath and SharePoint

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!

Related posts:

1. Utilize SharePoint @ Home
2. Backup your files free with Live Mesh
3. SharePoint Workflow – Part 1

By Eric Landry
February 6, 2009

This is not an IT story, it’s a business story. Customers often hear only the high-level, feature-centric, compelling version of the SharePoint story: SharePoint does document management; SharePoint does workflow; SharePoint does collaboration, etc. But what do these features really mean from a business perspective, and how can a business prioritize, operationalize…manage them—all while ensuring that SharePoint continues to satisfy strategic business objectives and most importantly, that it’s adopted by your users?

The SharePoint Double Fantasy

SharePoint consultants, engineers, and developers tend to believe that end users will:

1. Love SharePoint. We love SharePoint! We believe our users will, too. We believe people will naturally use the system as originally conceived, designed and delivered. After all, why wouldn’t business users flock to use a centralized portal? Why wouldn’t they want to use online workflow approvals? Why would people still send documents as email attachments when they have SharePoint?
2. See the light. We dream that—given the opportunity—end users will adapt and change to become good “SharePointers.” In other words, rather than following their pre-SharePoint procedures, they’ll quickly learn to open a browser, do a document search, open the found document, update it, send it for approval… all centralized, and all through the browser!

Reality Check

Figure 1

But the double fantasy isn’t how most people think or behave, much less work. That’s not a slam against users; by nature, humans are creatures of habit. With the rush of daily business demands, old habits prevail. The first reality check when deploying SharePoint is to accept that fact. Deploying SharePoint without a structured SharePoint governance model will eventually lead to a return of the old, ineffective, decentralized information management habits you’re seeking to solve.

Governing SharePoint requires a clearly defined and managed governance model consisting of user, contributor, approver and senior stakeholder roles, each with specific responsibilities and procedures.

SharePoint Touches the Entire Enterprise

SharePoint, and by extension portals, are not IT projects, they are strategic business and information management projects. Cross-functional governance is the key to implementing and maintaining an effective SharePoint portal. The best and most deeply embraced sites are owned by HR, Communications, or some other non-IT organization. IT is one of the key stakeholders, but the ongoing business information management should be assigned to a different body, outside of IT.

One large Canadian insurance company with 35,000+ users had the best model I’ve experienced. The governance model was led by a cross-functional Executive Steering Committee, while the site was managed by a collaborative and accountable Working Committee. Figure 1 illustrates the entire model.

Governance Model Breakdown

Figure 2

Here’s a more detailed description of each role involved in governance (see Figure 2).

Steering Committee

Each steering committee member is a senior-level executive charged with ensuring that his/her strategic objectives are both clearly defined and being addressed via the portal. The Steering Committee also approves funding and resources for portal initiatives.

Portal Program Manager

While it’s common for the Portal to be managed by IT, you should instead assign portal management to an organization outside of IT, usually either the Communications or Human Resources pillar.

The program manager reviews various site traffic metrics and trends, and analyzes site visits, views, and user paths through the site. The program manager presents these findings to the working committee for discussion, evaluation, opportunities, and next steps. The program manager will (in most cases) manage portal projects and initiatives, and handle the overall budget for the portal.

Working Committee

This team is responsible for the overall management, quality and maintenance of portal content. The working committee should meet bi-weekly or monthly to review current issues, action items, and program status. This group will review and approve new functionality requests, as well as changes/additions to portal navigation and metadata classifications (content types). The committee will also create proposals for new functionality—especially those with associated costs—for funding approval by the Steering Committee.

A key responsibility of the working committee is to ensure all pillars of the enterprise are conforming to the portal’s guiding principles, including labeling, look and feel, and style.

Content Stewards

Usually this is a “power publisher” representing a pillar of the business whose members are both experienced with and passionate about the best practices and principles of information design and web publishing. Content stewards present new functionality requests on behalf of their users for initial approval by the working committee. They also review and present new navigation/taxonomy/information architecture requests for approval by the working committee.

Most importantly, content stewards review and discuss issues of style or content that are not in keeping with the guiding principles for the portal. In this way, the portal is QA’d by the working committee rather than being “policed” by the portal program manager.

Contributors

The Contributors group includes anyone who creates content for the portal. Some will have self-approving rights, others simply the ability to submit content for approval.

Governance in Action

To view this model in practical terms, here’s an example of governance in action. The scenario is that two pillars of the business are vying for funding and resources to support their portal initiatives; one is for the Call Center, one is for Finance.

The Call Center has identified a number of strategic objectives for the coming year, including reductions in:

• Call-handling times
• The number of call transfers to other staff with expertise in a given subject
• The number of call backs to customers

The portal has been gaining traction as the company’s centralized information resource. One site within the portal is dedicated to Call Center content, policies, procedures and regulatory information. But the wheels are coming off; the portal has become a dumping ground, a place where people blithely post documents and web content, with little regard to usability, classification, hierarchy, or search. Consequently, Call Center staff have reverted to using non-SharePoint ad hoc repositories (LAN drives) rather than the portal.

After discussing the strategic requirements with users, Fiona, the Call Center’s content steward, is proposing a Call Center-oriented information hub that will be deemed a business-critical initiative for the portal.

Fiona needs a clearly defined and enforced document library template, associated with new content types. She needs a new search box, scoped to just those Call Center libraries and its unique information types, and a customized document type dropdown box. She needs a news and information web part to inform people of new content and changes to existing content. She’d like to create a RSS feed and encourage people to subscribe.

Brian, the Finance content steward, is also proposing a Finance-oriented project, a new site that will display key performance indicators from the backend finance system, detailing performance of the company’s financials against its yearly plan. He’ll need connections to the financial system via SharePoint’s Business Data Catalogue (BDC) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) designed to show various metrics. He also has some scenario-based interactive spreadsheets he’d like to post via Excel Services.

Working Committee Presentations

At the bi-monthly Working Committee meeting, Fiona, the Call Center content steward, presents her case. She outlines her proposal’s alignment to both the company’s and the Call Center’s strategic initiatives, outlines various stages of her project, and seeks buy-in from the other content stewards on the Committee.

Brian also makes his case by outlining its alignment to Finance’s strategy. All the staff need to understand where the business is from a performance and profitability perspective.

The working committee decides that both projects have merit. The next step is to present them to the Steering Committee for approval.

Steering Committee Approval

In its monthly meeting, the two content stewards present the Steering Committee with their project ideas. By this time, the portal program manager has also analyzed, defined deliverables and created cost estimates for each project.

After hearing both presentations, the Steering Committee notes that Finance already produces a monthly performance report that is posted in PDF format on the portal, which they feel will do for the time being. In contrast, the Call Center is the first line to the company’s customers, so the Steering Committee selects and approves funding for the Call Center initiative.

With the project approved, the portal program manager submits the project plan, identifies key stakeholders, secures resources, and proceeds to create and manage the project.

The Payoff

Creating this sustainable user- and business-centric portal management model will ensure that your SharePoint implementation stays aligned with the business’ goals. It also ensures that the deployed system remains flexible, so that it can continue to evolve and cater to business’ and users’ changing needs.

For more information, check out these related resources:

• Sample Governance Plan
• Key Governance Considerations in a SharePoint Deployment
• Governance Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007
• Sample Governance Plan
• SharePoint Governance Checklist Guide

Related posts:

1. SharePoint – More Than Just a Technical Solution
2. Structure and Mature the Business/IT Relationship
3. SharePoint Records Management

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)

Related posts:

1. Utilize SharePoint @ Home
2. STSADM.exe is your friend
3. SharePoint Workflow – Part 1

Read More at – SharePointBriefing.com – http://bit.ly/KJrUG

A suggestion box allows individuals to provide feedback on various topics, and SharePoint lets users submit anonymous suggestions or ideas. This article discusses how to create both anonymous and “signed” suggestion boxes that you can customize to fit your business needs.

SharePoint provides several different ways right out of the box by which you can implement a suggestion box feature without having to write custom code. You can expose the suggestion box in both pages and web parts; however, using the suggestion box in web parts is outside of the scope of this article.

There are three ways to implement suggestion boxes in a SharePoint page: using the discussion boardfeature, the survey feature, or custom lists. In the rest of this article, you’ll see a demonstration of how to use each feature to create a basic anonymous suggestion box. Additionally, at the end of each feature section, you’ll see how you can take the underlying feature to the next level.

Building a Suggestion Box using a Discussion Board

Using the discussion board page, users may post topics—both to request answers and promote discussion. Originally, the discussion board page was intended to provide a way for team members to collaborate collectively about business topics. However, for purposes of this article, the discussion board will be used as a suggestion box, to pinpoint one area of discussion and request feedback for it.

The discussion board attributes enable users to discuss their answers about a topic openly, similar to a wiki, but by adjusting a few of the discussion board page’s permissions and attributes, you can change the functionality so that posters’ names remain private. In the following example, posters will be able to see only their own posts, maintaining a one-way means of communication.

Implementation

To create the discussion board suggestion box:

1. Go to the Site Actions menu and click the Create button. You’ll see the SharePoint layouts screen. The selections you make here determine which type of tool will be created.
2. Locate the Discussion Board item under the Communications label. Click the discussion board link, which takes you to the discussion board creation page (see Figure 1).
3. Type a name that clearly and concisely represents the type of suggestion information you want to receive. You may also type in a brief description that further defines the purpose of the suggestion box. This is a great place for the creator to specify how he wants the question answered or state exactly what he is looking for in more detail.
4. Click the create button. You’ll see a Discussion Board page.
   
   
5. Click Discussion Board Settings, which takes you to the SharePoint List settings page for the Discussion Board.
6. In the General Settings area, click Advanced Settings (seeFigure 2). This section lets you manage the Read and Edit access settings for the Discussion Board. Selecting the “All Items” settings makes the Discussion Board public (everyone may see and edit what others post). To make this Discussion Board anonymous, the read and edit access should be set to “Only their own.” In this case, make sure that “Only their own” is selected for both Read and Edit access. Click ok to apply your settings.
7. Finally, to make the posts anonymous, you need to modify the views on the Discussion board page, removing the “Modified by” and “Created by” columns. Even though you previously selected Read and Edit settings to ensure that users may see only their own posts, you need to remove the columns; otherwise, administrators will be able to see who posted each item.

When you complete these final modifications, users will be able to create and post discussions/questions to the page anonymously (see Figure 3), giving them the privacy to communicate without worrying about being identified.

Related posts:

1. SharePoint Workflow – Part 1
2. Getting to Know SharePoint
3. Fast Backup and Restore for SharePoint

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!

Related posts:

1. Unique ID in InfoPath Using SharePoint
2. Save with InfoPath and SharePoint
3. SharePoint Workflow – Part 1

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!

Related posts:

1. TIP: Save an InfoPath Form in SharePoint
2. Save with InfoPath and SharePoint
3. Unique ID in InfoPath Using SharePoint

Microsoft’s SharePoint Thrives in the Recession

Hang around at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters for five or ten minutes and someone dressed in khaki pants and a blue shirt is bound to tell you about the wonders of SharePoint — one of the company’s most successful and increasingly controversial lines of software.

Think of SharePoint as the jack-of-all-trades in the business software realm. Companies use it to create Web sites and then manage content for those sites. It can help workers collaborate on projects and documents. And it has a variety of corporate search and business intelligence tools too.

Microsoft wraps all of this software up into a package and sells the bundle at a reasonable price. In fact, the total cost of the bundle often comes in below what specialist companies would charge for a single application in, say, the business intelligence or corporate search fields.

It can’t do everything. Executives at Microsoft will readily admit that the bits and pieces of SharePoint lack the more sophisticated features found in products from specialist software makers.

“We don’t claim we do everything,” said Chris Capossela, a senior vice president at Microsoft. “If we do 50 percent of the functions that these other companies do, but they’re the ones customers really want, that’s fine. The magic is that end users actually like to use the software.”

This strategy seems to have worked even during the recession.

While Microsoft’s Windows sales fell for the first time in history this year, its SharePoint sales have gone up. Microsoft declines to break out the exact sales figures for the software but said that SharePoint broke the $1 billion revenue mark last year and continued to rise past that total this year, making it the hottest selling server-side product ever for the company.

Companies like Ferrari, Starbucks and Viacom have used SharePoint to create their public-facing Web sites and for various other tasks. All told, more than 17,000 customers use SharePoint.

In many ways, SharePoint mimics the strategy Microsoft took with Office by linking together numerous applications into a single unit. This approach appeals to customers looking to save money and also represents a real threat to a variety of business software makers.

Many of these specialists like Cognos, a business intelligence software maker, and Documentum, a content management software maker, have been gobbled up by larger players looking to create their own suites. I.B.M., for example, bought Cognos, while EMC bought Documentum. Other companies like Autonomy, a maker of top-of-the-line corporate search software, remain independent.

Crucially, Microsoft has found a way to create ties between SharePoint and its more traditional products like Office and Exchange. Companies can tweak Office documents through SharePoint and receive information like whether a worker is online or not through tools in Exchange. These links have Microsoft carrying along its old-line software as it builds a more Internet-focused software line.

“SharePoint is saving Microsoft’s Office business even as it paves the way for a new era of Microsoft lock-in,” said Matt Asay, an executive at Alfresco, which makes an open-source content management system. “It is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology, and has largely caught its competitors napping.”

Along these lines, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, has talked about SharePoint as the company’s next big operating system.

Microsoft has managed to undercut even the panoply of open-source companies playing in the business software market by giving away a free basic license to SharePoint if they already have Windows Server. “It’s a brilliant strategy that mimics open source in its viral, free distribution, but transcends open source in its ability to lock customers into a complete, not-free-at-all Microsoft stack – one for which they’ll pay more and more the deeper they get into SharePoint,” Mr. Asay said.

A number of smaller software companies have been eager to piggyback on SharePoint’s success. Based in San Diego, Sharepoint360 provides consulting services and software development help around the product. The company started after employees at a construction company built some Sharepoint applications and decided to market the software to other construction firms.

The start-up has helped construction companies create systems for managing projects, allowing various people to check-in on the progress of a building and keep track of documents tied to the site. It has also expanded beyond the construction area doing work for NASA, Nestle and Toshiba, according to Paul West, a co-founder of SharePoint360.

The company offers to host SharePoint applications for customers. Microsoft too wants to host more software for companies as it moves toward the cloud computing model.

Mr. West recognizes that Microsoft may begin stepping on its partners’ toes. “It may certainly come to pass that they pull the switch,” he said. “That would have implications for us.”

In the meantime, however, Microsoft subsidizes training courses and consulting work for companies like Sharepoint360.

Next year, Microsoft plans to release a new version of the software packed full of more advanced features, including stronger ties to the corporate search technology it acquired in the $1.2 billion purchase of Fast Search and Transfer, a Norwegian start-up.

Best Buy uses the Fast technology today to provide on-the-fly pricing information to customers performing product searches on its Web site.

By making these more sophisticated tools available to customers, Microsoft thinks it can keep pushing niche software makers out of the way and give business people, rather than just the tech folks, a way to work with business applications.

“We believe customers can turn off some of these point solutions,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, a general manager in Microsoft’s business software group. “With SharePoint, we can deliver a very, very approachable application to end users.”

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