I’m on a project where we need to collect metrics around a function named "Share a Story." The idea is very simple — as jy op soek na 'n interessante artikel op die intranet en die wil om dit te deel met iemand, click a link labeled "Share this story" e-pos dit aan jou buddy.

Ons speel rond met 'n persoonlike vorm vir hierdie doel, maar op die ou end, gesonde verstand het die dag en ons gebruik net die bekende <a href = mailto:…> technique. (<'n href mailto:…> is 'n verbasend sterk bietjie van HTML; as 'n bonus, skakel bring my terug na my ou UNIX man bladsye dae; Dit was die dae!).

Hierdie tegniek bied 'n groot koppelvlak vir eindgebruikers, aangesien hulle hul bekende MS Outlook kliënt te gebruik (of enige e-pos kliënt dit geïnstalleer).

Dit maak dinge moeiliker op ons arme ontwikkelaar tipes omdat hulle kliënt * ook * wil 'n verslag in die toekoms wat toon hoe dikwels gebruikers deel stories en selfs watter stories is meestal gedeel uit te voer.

We whiteboarded a few potential solutions. My favorite is to carbon copy (CC) a SharePoint list. That way, the end user still gets the outlook client while we get to capture the event because we’ll get a copy of the email ourselves. There are some obvious drawbacks. The main problem is that the user could simply blank out or otherwise mangle the CC address. En, we need to manage that event library of emails. We have a scheduled job on the white board responsible for that cleanup.

As jy 'n slim benadering tot die oplossing van hierdie probleem, doen vertel.

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As requested and promised, I’ve uploaded my presentation on how to obtain "great" requirements from end users for SharePoint projects and implementations. It’s here: http://cid-1cc1edb3daa9b8aa.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/SharePoint/Paul Galvin Great Requirements.zip

I presented this at the SharePoint Best Practices conference in Feb 2009 (www.sharepointbestpractices.com). If you attended the conference, you’ll also get this on the conference DVD.

The presentation includes a lot of notes with most slides. It’s not just bullet points.

(See here for my other presentation on a governance case study: http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1CC1EDB3DAA9B8AA!3099.entry

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Soos baie SharePoint konsultant tipes, I’ve been exposed to a lot of SharePoint functionality. Sommige tye, I dive pretty deep. Other times I just notice it as I’m flying by to another set of menu options. One of those is "self-service site creation." I haven’t had a need for it until this week.

Hierdie week, I need to solve a business problem which I think is going to become more common as companies loosen up and embrace more direct end user control over SharePoint. In hierdie geval, I’ve designed a site template to support a specific end user community. Folks in this community should be able to create their own sites at will using this template whenever the urge strikes them.

I recalled seeing "self-service site creation" before and I’ve always tucked that away in the back of my head thinking that "self service site creation" is SharePoint lingo betekenis, natuurlik genoeg, something like "turn me on if you want end users to be able to create sites when they want to."

So, Ek draai dit op, probeer om dit uit en vir my, it’s not creating sites. It’s creating site versamelings. Pretty big difference. That’s not what I want, glad nie.

It is possible to let end users create new sub sites via a custom permission level. This is exactly where I would have gone in the first place except that the label "self-service site creation" label deceived me. Via twitter, I learn that it’s deceived others as well 🙂

Ek is nog steeds besig om uit te vind hoe 'n bietjie van 'n meer vaartbelynde proses te voorsien terwyl bly suiwer uit die boks, but there’s a definite path to follow. Just don’t get distracted by that label.

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Ek was een van 20 of 30 (of miskien 100?) paneellede gisteraand by die New York SharePoint Users Group meeting. Instead of the usual presentation format, Dit was al oor Q&A between the audience and the panel members. Early on, Michael Lotter lei my na 'n nuwe idee en ek wou deel.

An audience member described how his company had paid a consultant to write an application for his company. The consultant wrote it as a console application using the SharePoint object model. As 'n gevolg, this meant that the program had to be run on a server in the farm. This meant that anyone that wanted to use the app would have to log onto the server, do the work and log off. Op die eerste, dit was nie 'n probleem, maar gou, meer en meer (nie-tegniese) users needed to use the utility. His question was (parafrasering):

"What are my options? I don’t want to keep letting users log directly onto the server, maar wat hulle nodig het om daardie funksionaliteit."

Michael Lotter het voorgestel dat hy instel van 'n nuwe virtuele masjien, join it to the farm as a WFE and let users run the application from there.

This is a pretty stunning idea for me. Generalizing this solution brings to mind the notion of essentially temporary, almost disposable WFE’s. I think it’s a pretty neat concept. This temporary WFE can run a console application that uses the SharePoint object model. You could also use it to run stsadm commands. It doesn’t have to be part of regular local balancing. If it goes down or gets wrecked, you can just spin up a new one. I repeat myself, maar ek het om te sê dat ek dink dit is 'n baie netjiese idee.

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Die afgelope week, iemand het 'n vraag gevra oor die skep van 'n SharePoint-omgewing wat 'n redelik hoë volume van nuwe dokumente hanteer (10,000 +/- in hierdie geval). I don’t know much about this, maar te danke aan hierdie wit papier, Ek voel baie beter ingeligte.

Vir my, hierdie wit papier is pretty much net 'n boek merk op die oomblik, but I did start reading through it and thought I’d highlight my main take-away. SharePoint can be scaled to handle, teen 'n minimum, hierdie las:

• 50k nuwe dokumente per dag.
• 10 miljoen dokumente totale.

I write the 50k/10MM figures because they are easy enough to remember. As long as you know they are minimums, you won’t get into trouble. The maximums are at least 10 persent hoër as dit en met uiterste tuning, moontlik 'n baie hoër.

Dankie, Mike Walsh, weer vir sy weeklikse WSS Vrae updates en regstellings post. If you’re not subscribed to it, jy moet ernstig dink oor die doen dit.

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Gedurende die afgelope week, my kollega and I were doing some work for a client in NYC. We were testing a different aspects of a MOSS implementation using their "standard" werkstasie bou (in teenstelling met ons skootrekenaars). While doing that, Ons het in 'n paar foute deur die volgende stappe:

• Oop te maak 'n MS Word dokument via Windows Explorer (wat gebruik maak van WebDAV).
• Maak 'n verandering.
• Stoor dit.

Ons het gekom om te besef dat 'n paar keer (gewoonlik die eerste keer) ons gered van die dokument, the save didn’t "stick." Save did not save. We would pull that document back up and our changes simply were not there.

Ons verstaan ​​nie die wortel probleem op hierdie punt, but we figured that we should make sure that the latest MS Office service pack had been installed on that work station. The IT folks went and did that. We went through the test again and we discovered a new problem. When we saved it, Ons het nou het hierdie fout:

Hierdie keer, dit lyk soos elke verandering was, in werklikheid, gered, whether we answered Yes or No to the scripts question.

Ons het uiteindelik 'n blik op die werklike weergawe van Office en dit blyk dat die werkplek MS Office hardloop 2000 met Service Pack 3 wat verskyn in die Hulp -> About as "Office 2002".

Die moraal van die storie: Ek sal altyd Kantoor 2003 as my minimum basislyn kantoor weergawe wanneer die gebruik van WebDAV en mos.

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(Vir die soektog doeleindes, dit is die fout se teks):

Line: 11807

Char: 2

Fout: Voorwerp ondersteun nie hierdie eiendom of metode

Kode; 0

URL: http://sharepoint01/DocumentReview/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?location=Documents/1210/testworddocument.doc&dialogview=SaveForm

Wil jy om voort te gaan uitvoer van scripts op hierdie bladsy?

In one or my very first blog posts, Ek beskryf die algehele proses wat ons volg op 'n kliënt van SPS te migreer 2003 to MOSS. A reader left a comment asking for more detail and here it is.

Vir dat migrasie projek, Ons het 'n goeie manier om 'n klomp van SPS te beweeg om uit te vind 2003 documents over to MOSS. The initial load was easy enough. Create a new target document library in MOSS and use windows explorer to move the documents.

This is the new document library:

Open up two windows explorers. Point the first at SPS 2003 and the second at the new document library in MOSS. The following screen shot shows this. Note that the top browser is actually pointing at my c:\temp drive, but you can imagine it pointing to an SPS 2003 document library:

After that drag and drop operation, my target looks like this:

Now it’s time to deal with the metadata. Assume we have just one column of metadata for these documents named "location." We can see from the above "all documents" view that the location is blank. It’s easy enough to use a data sheet view to enter the location, or even go into each document’s properties one by one to add a location. Let’s assume that there is no practical way to assign the location column a value automatically and that end users must do this by hand. Verder, let’s assume there are hundreds of documents (maybe thousands) and that it will take many many days to update the metadata. As we all know, no one is going to sit down and work for four of five days straight updating meta data for documents. In plaas daarvan, they will break that out over a period of weeks or possibly longer. To facilitate this process, we can create an "untagged data" view as shown:

Nou, when someone sits down to spend their allocated daily hour or two to tag migrated documents, they can use the "untagged documents" view to focus their effort:

As users tag documents, they drop off this list.

This notion of an untagged data view can also help with a class of data validation problem people inquire about on the forums. Uit die boks, there’s no way to prevent a user from uploading a document to MOSS and then not enter meta data. We can specify that a particular site column is mandatory and the user won’t be allowed to push the save button. Egter, if the user uploads and then closes the browser (or uses windows explorer to upload the document), we can’t force the user to enter meta data (weer, uit die boks).

This approach can be used to help with that situation. We can use a "poorly tagged data" view to easily identify these documents and correct them. Couple this with a KPI and you have good visibility to the data with drill-down to manage these exceptional circumstances.

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Hierdie week, I’ve struggled a bit with my team to get MOSS installed in a simple two-server farm. Having gone through it, Ek het 'n groter waardering vir die aard van die probleme wat mense verslag te doen oor die MSDN forums en elders.

Die finale plaas opset:

• SQL / Index / Intranet WFE die binnekant van die firewall.
• WFE in die DMZ.
• 'N soort van firewall tussen die DMZ en die interne bediener.

Voordat ons begin met die projek, we let the client know which ports needed to be open. During the give and take, heen en weer oor daardie, ons nooit uitdruklik gesê twee belangrike dinge:

1. SSL beteken dat jy nodig het om 'n sertifikaat.
2. The DMZ server must be part of a domain.

Dag een, we showed up to install MOSS and learned that the domain accounts for database and MOSS hadn’t been created. To move things along, we went ahead and installed everything with a local account on the intranet server.

Op hierdie punt, ons ontdek die verwarring oor die SSL sertifikaat en, ongelukkig, decided to have our infrastructure guy come back later that week to continue installing the DMZ server. In die gemiddelde tyd, Ons oplossing argitekte vorentoe beweeg met die besigheid goed.

'N naweek gaan verby en die kliënt verkry die sertifikaat.

Ons infrastruktuur man opdaag en ontdek dat die DMZ bediener is nie gekoppel aan enige domein (óf 'n omtrek domein met 'n beperkte trust of die intranet domein). We wasted nearly a 1/2 dag wat. If we hadn’t let the missing SSL certificate bog us down, we would have discovered this earlier. Oh well….

Nog 'n dag verby en die verskeie sekuriteit komitees, belanghebbende partye en (nie so) onskuldige omstanders almal eens dat dit OK is die DMZ bediener met die intranet domein aan te sluit (dit is 'n POC, na al, nie 'n produksie-oplossing).

Infrastructure guy comes in to wrap things up. This time we successfully pass through the the modern-day gauntlet affectionately known as the "SharePoint Configuration Wizard." We have a peek in central administration and … Yee Haw! … DMZ server is listed in the farm. We look a little closer and realize we broke open the Champaign a mite bit early. WSS services is stuck in a "starting" status.

Lang storie kort, it turns out that we forgot to change the identity of the service account via central administration from the original local account to the new domain account. We did that, re-hardloop die opset towenaar en voila! We were in business.

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Hoewel dit nie letterlik waar, as 'n praktiese saak, 'n internet-gesig staar web voor die einde in 'n DMZ moet wees in 'n domein (d.w.z. nie 'n selfstandige bediener in sy eie klein werkgroep). It doesn’t need to be in the same domain as the internal WFE(s) en ander bedieners (en waarskynlik nie), maar dit moet 'n domein.

My colleagues and I spent an inordinate amount of time on a proposal which included SharePoint pre-requisites. This included a comprehensive list of firewall configurations that would enable the DMZ server to join the farm and so forth. Ongelukkig, Ons kon nie 'n sin iewers wat gesê het om by te voeg, tot die effek, "the whole bloody point of this configuration is to allow your DMZ WFE server, in 'n domein, die interne plaas aan te sluit."

'N perfekte storm van gebeure, waar ons basies gelyk het toe ons dalk reg gekyk, saamgesweer het om hierdie probleem te verberg ons tot redelik laat in die proses, wat sal verhoed dat my uit te roep my "vertel slegte nuus vroeë" regeer.

Sug.

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Forum gebruikers dikwels as vrae soos hierdie:

> Hallo,
>
> Sê asseblief vir my as daar enige moontlikhede om 'n persoonlike lys op te bou met
> meester en detail tipe (soos fakture) sonder die gebruik van Path.
>

SharePoint bied 'n paar uit die boks funksies wat ondersteun soorte van die maatskappy se behoeftes soos wat.

In die algemeen, one links two lists together using a lookup column. List A contains the invoice header information and list B contains invoice details.

Gebruik die addisionele lyste kliënt getalle te handhaaf, produk getalle, ens..

Gebruik 'n inhoud navraag web deel (slegs in Moss) and/or a data view web part to create merged views of the lists. SQL Server Reporting Services (SRS) is ook beskikbaar vir die aanmelding kant van.

Egter, there are some important limitations that will make it difficult to use pure out-of-the-box features for anything that is even moderately complex. These include:

• Grootte van verwante lookup lyste vs. "Intelligensie" of the lookup column type. A lookup column type presents itself on the UI differently depending on whether you’ve enabled multi-select or not. In either case, the out-of-the-box control shows all available items from the source list. If the source list has 1,000 items, that’s going to be a problem. The lookup control does not page through those items. In plaas daarvan, it pulls all of them into the control. That makes for a very awkward user interface both in terms of data entry and performance.
• Soektogte "terug te trek" one column of information. You can never pull back more than one column of information from the source list. Byvoorbeeld, jy kan nie 'n kliënt kies "12.345" and display the number as well as the customer’s name and address at the same time. The lookup only shows the customer number and nothing else. This makes for an awkward and difficult user interface.
• No intra-form communication. Ek het geskryf oor hierdie hier. You can’t implement cascading drop-downs, voorwaardelik in staat gestel / afskakel velde, ens..
• No cascading deletes or built-in referential integrity. SharePoint treats custom lists as independent entities and does not allow you to link them to each other in a traditional ERD sense. Byvoorbeeld, SharePoint kan jy twee persoonlike lyste te skep, "Kliënt" and "invoice header". You can create an invoice header that links back to a customer in the customer list. Toe, you can delete the customer from the list. Uit die boks, there is no way to prevent this. To solve this kind of problem, jy nie normaalweg sou geval hanteerders gebruik.

Dit mag lyk donker, but I would still use SharePoint as a starting point for building this kind of functionality. Though there are gaps between what you need in a solution, SharePoint ons in staat stel om daardie gapings te vul wat die gebruik van gereedskap soos:

• Event hanteerders. Use them to enforce referential integrity.
• Custom kolomme: Create custom column types and use them in lieu of the default lookup column. Add paging, buffer en om AJAX funksies te maak hulle ontvanklik.
• BDC. This MOSS-only feature enables us to query other SharePoint lists with a superior user interface to the usual lookup column. BDC can also reach out to a back end server application. Use BDC to avoid replication. Rather than replicating customer information from a back end ERP system, use BDC instead. BDC features provide a nice user interface to pull that information directly from the ERP system where it belongs and avoids the hassle of maintaining a replication solution.

  BDC is 'n MOSS funksie (nie beskikbaar in WSS) and is challenging to configure.

• ASP.NET web vorm: Skep 'n volle funksionaliteit AJAX-enabled vorm wat gebruik die SharePoint voorwerp model en / of web dienste te hefboom SharePoint lyste, terwyl die verskaffing van 'n baie ontvanklik gebruikerskoppelvlak.

Die laaste opsie kan voel soos jy begin van nuuts af, maar kyk na die feit dat die SharePoint platform begin jy met die volgende belangrike funksies:

• Sekuriteit model met onderhoud.
• Menu met onderhoud.
• "Meester tafel" (d.w.z. persoonlike lyste) met sekerheid, gebou-instandhouding en ouditering.
• Soek.
• Terug einde integrasie gereedskap (BDC).

As jy begin met 'n nuwe leë projek in Visual Studio, jy het 'n baie infrastruktuur en loodgieterswerk te bou voor jy naby wat SharePoint bied,.

I do believe that Microsoft intends to extend SharePoint in this direction of application development. It seems like a natural extension to the existing SharePoint base. Microsoft’s CRM application provides a great deal of extensibility of the types needed to support header/detail application development. Although those features are in CRM, the technology is obviously available to the SharePoint development team and I expect that it will make its way into the SharePoint product by end of 2008. If anyone has an knowledge or insight into this, los 'n comment.

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