The next user group meeting for the SharePoint UK User Group (South) is at Southampton University in the evening on the 24 June. We’ve some great speakers, and SharePint afterwards.
Sign up here http://suguk.org/forums/thread/24475.aspx
Ian
Archive for the 'SharePoint' Category
SharePoint User Group Meeting – Southampton 24 June
Published June 21, 2010 Business , Events , SharePoint , SharePoint 2010 , User Group Leave a CommentTags: Southampton, SUGUK
Document IDs and the Managed Metadata Service
Published June 21, 2010 Records Management , SharePoint , SharePoint 2010 , Technical Leave a CommentTags: SharePoint 2010, Document ID
If you are publishing content types via the managed metadata service, you either have to have the Document ID feature turned on at both publisher and consumer sites, or you have to have it turned off at both.
So in reality, if you want to use document IDs anywhere, you’ll probably end up with them everywhere. If for example you have a records centre, and you want to send documents to the records centre from a team site that shares content types with the records centre, you will have to enable document IDs on your team site.
Not a major problem, but certainly something to be aware of, as some user education clearly will be needed.
Microsoft Partner Customer References/CSATs/PinPoint References – Jumping Through Hoops
Published March 12, 2010 SharePoint , SharePoint 2010 1 CommentTags: CSATs, Customer, Microsoft Partner, PinPoint, Reference, Satisfaction surveys
There was a time when, after having completed some work for a customer, we simply got a reference from them on the Microsoft partner site. Apart from a bit of a battle with a rather clunky tool while we tried to input a UK telephone number (yes it may come as a shock to some people in Redmond that not all telephone numbers in the world have a US format), it was kind of ok. Customers got an email, clicked on a link, job done.
Then someone had the bright idea of customer satisfaction surveys. So when a customer has spent tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds on a solution, we have the slightly embarrassing/patronising issue of having to ask them to do a survey, similar perhaps to what you might get when buying a pizza online or booking a budget hotel. Clearly someone considers this superior to personal account management. We send out the surveys using a Microsoft supplied tool. Microsoft Outlook then treats them as junk email. The irony of this Outlook junk email filter issue is not lost on the customers. One of mine remarked “What are Microsoft doing sending out an e-mail that to their own systems look like junk mail?” Nice professional touch that.
So we’ve got the customers to do references and customer satisfaction surveys for Microsoft. Job done? Not quite…
Someone decided that the partner finder tool needed to be rewritten and called “PinPoint”. Fair enough. But unfortunately they decided to jump on the “Web 2.0″ bandwagon and ask our customers to “rate and review” us on PinPoint.
Come on Microsoft, stop and think about this. Are you seriously expecting our customers to give feedback in three different ways? They are busy people with jobs to do, after all! It adds to our workload, adds to their workload, and makes us and Microsoft look disorganised and amateurish.
SharePoint 2010 Overview Videos
Published March 11, 2010 Functionality , Records Management , SharePoint , SharePoint 2010 , Technical Leave a CommentTags: Overview, Video
We have created some videos on collaboration in SharePoint 2010, Records Management in SharePoint 2010 and PerformancePoint in SharePoint 2010.
These can be found by following the links below:
Collaboration in SharePoint 2010
Records Management in SharePoint 2010
PerformancePoint in SharePoint 2010
Chris
Bristol SharePoint User Group Meeting 27th Jan 2010
Published January 30, 2010 SharePoint , Technical , User Group 1 CommentTags: bristol, SharePoint, User Group
Some piccies of the event
Andy Ginn on HP white papers and sizing tool (not a great picture, blame the iPhone)
Below, Lee Fedder describes his SharePoint integrated web application for managing shipping insurance claims
Below, Mark Macrae on Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode
See you all at the next one, which will be in Southampton!
Ian
How to Integrate Outlook Email with SharePoint?
Published January 4, 2010 Records Management , SharePoint , SharePoint 2010 , Technical Leave a CommentTags: Email, Exchange, Integration, Outlook, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010
I often get asked how best to integrate emails in Outlook with SharePoint. Here is my answer.
Three options, and which is best really depends on what your requirements are – from simple sharing of emails, to organisation wide records management, or somewhere in between!
- Use Exchange 2007/2010 managed folders in conjunction with email enabled SharePoint document libraries. Allows emails to be dragged and dropped to a folder in Outlook, and for those emails to be copied to SharePoint, using the journaling feature of Exchange. Best done as part of the implementation of an organisation wide records management system. See George Khalil’s article for an example of setting up Exchange and SharePoint to do this.
- Use one of a number of third party tools to enable drag-and-drop between SharePoint and Outlook, from within Outlook. Examples are Colligo Contributor and KnowledgeLake Connect.
- If you want a fairly low tech way to get emails into SharePoint by dragging and dropping from within Outlook, use a discussion board. Simply ensure incoming email is enabled on your farm, create a discussion board in SharePoint, then from within SharePoint click on Actions/Connect to Outlook. You can now drag and drop emails to the discussion board from within Outlook, and they will be copied across to SharePoint.
If you have any other ideas or suggestions please leave a comment!
Electronic Records Management (ERM) Using a SharePoint 2010 Records Center (Centre)
Published January 4, 2010 Business , Records Management , SharePoint , SharePoint 2010 , Technical Leave a CommentTags: Records Management, SharePoint 2010
As a UK based Brit I will refer to “Centre” rather than “Center”, apologies to overseas readers…
The Records Centre capability in SharePoint 2010 provides relatively straightforward, easy to use, ERM capability. It may lack the sophistication of some specialist high end solutions, but it lacks the price tag as well. For all but the largest, most complex of ERM scenarios, SharePoint 2010 is a product worthy of consideration. In this article, the capabilities and features of SharePoint 2010 Records Centre are reviewed. The target audience is information officers, records managers and similar, who are interested in finding out a bit more about how Records Centres work in SharePoint 2010.
SharePoint 2010 provides two options for ERM, namely Records Centres and In Place Records Management. The latter is suitable for content that is already in SharePoint, and it does not allow for implementation of a fileplan. This article gives an overview of Records Centres in SharePoint 2010.
The home page of an out-of-the-box Records Centre is shown below.
Records can be added by users clicking the “Submit a Record” button, or if content is already in SharePoint there is an option to “Send to Records Centre”, which can be configured to leave a link to the record in the original location. Multiple Records Centres can be configured if required.
Records added to the Records Centre are initially placed in a document library named “Drop Off Library”. At this point they are subject to Content Organizer rules. Content Organizer rules determine the final location of a record, based on its content type and metadata. If a matching Content Organizer rule is found for an incoming record, it is automatically moved to its final destination. If no Content Organizer rules are applicable then the record will remain in the drop off library until correctly classified by a records manager. An overview of Content Organizer rules is given below.
Incoming records are also assigned a unique document ID, which is retained even if the document moves location. This ID can be used to search for the record in future.
The Records Centre Management page is shown below.
Content Organizer Rules
Content Organizer rules specify the target location for records, based on their content type, and metadata. The target location may be a document library or a folder within a document library. A sample rule is shown below.
Rules need to be set for each content type and if multiple conditions are set on metadata then they must all match for the rule to be applied.
Retention Schedules
Retention schedules can be set for content types, or for document libraries and folders. Retention schedules comprise one or more stages, with each stage being triggered by an event (typically a certain amount of time elapsing since the record was created or last modified). When an event occurs the actions that can be performed are
- Move to Recycle Bin
- Permanently Delete
- Transfer to Another Location
- Start a Workflow
- Skip to Next Stage
- Delete all Previous Drafts
- Delete all Previous Versions
The page for setting up a stage is shown below.
Holds
Holds can be used to retain content related to litigation, investigation or other content. Holds are created by searching for content, as shown below.
It is also possible to manually add or remove items from a hold, subject to having appropriate permissions.
Summary
Overall the Records Centre capability in SharePoint 2010 provides relatively straightforward, easy to use, ERM capability. It may lack the sophistication of some specialist high end solutions, but it lacks the price tag as well. For all but the largest, most complex of ERM scenarios, SharePoint 2010 is a product worthy of consideration.
Of course, there is far more to implementing ERM than the technology, and investment in requirements gathering, information audit, RM policy, file plan and project management is essential. The key, as with all ERM implementations, is to ensure that this work is done thoroughly, and that the fit with the chosen technology platform (SharePoint 2010 or other) is validated.
Boot from Hyper-V image
Published December 24, 2009 SharePoint , Technical Leave a CommentTags: Hyper-V, SharePoint 2010, Windows 7
In the quest for giving my Hyper-V images maximum performance, I stumbled across this blog article detailing how you can boot your physical box from a Hyper-V vhd file. Now all the RAM in my physical server can be given to the virtual machine. SharePoint 2010 can now get all the memory it deserves.
The article describes booting from a Windows 7 virtual machine, note that you must use either the Enterprise or Ultimate edition of Windows 7 for this to work, not Professional, otherwise a licence error will be encountered.
SharePoint UK User Group South – Meeting 27th Jan in Bristol
Published December 20, 2009 SharePoint , User Group 1 CommentTags: SharePoint, SUGUK, User Group
The next SUGUK South meet will be in Bristol on 27th Jan.
Topics include the latest research from HP labs on sizing and configuring SharePoint, plus SUGUK’s own Mark Macrae on getting the most out of SQL Server Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode.
Sign up here: http://suguk.org/forums/thread/21874.aspx, see you there!
