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Posts Tagged SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 My Site

2 06 2010

Posted by Jasper Oosterveld in SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 | No Comments

Hi, in my previous blog post I talked about some of the new social features of SharePoint 2010. The place to be for being social in SharePoint 2010 is the My Site. In comparison with SharePoint 2007 the My Site has been greatly improved. I want to focus in this post on some of the new features.

The My Site is divided into three sections:

  • My Profile
  • My Content
  • My Newsfeed

My Profile

Overview
In my previous post I mentioned the note board. It can be used to leave messages for your colleagues. This works great in combination with the ‘Ask Me About’ section. For instance: you visit the My Site of a colleague and you see that he or she knows something about InfoPath 2010. You can click on the subject and the following screen appears:

You can immediately type and leave a message about InfoPath 2010. The colleague will get an e-mail message and can now easily contact you. This is a great way to connect with people and share information.

My previous post also included the organization chart. This is shown in HTML view on the My Profile page of the My Site. You can see a quick overview of the manager and colleagues.

Tags and notes

You get an overview of the tags and notes you created in SharePoint. By clicking on for example the tag ‘Functioneel ontwerp’ you can see all the activities (the tagged content) of that tag. You can choose to make the tag private so other colleagues can’t see your tag or even delete it. By clicking on the ‘View Related Activities’ link the following screen appears:

All the tags used by yourself and colleagues of the selected content (in this case ‘Standaard template functioneel Ontwerl SharePoint versie 1.0′) are shown. If you click on ‘Go to Tag Profile for..’ the following screen will appear:

This is the tag profile page. This page exists for every tag and note created in SharePoint. It shows an overview of all the activities of this tag. You can leave messages for colleagues, again really useful for getting in touch with the right people. Do you want this tag to be used in your ‘Ask Me About’ section? Just click on ‘Add to “Ask Me About” in My Profile’. Can life get any easier? But this does not end here! Do you want to follow all the activities in your newsfeed? Or view all the colleagues following the same tag? Just click on the link and SharePoint does all the work.

My Content

This part of the My Site is the same as SharePoint 2007 but why not combine it with SharePoint Workspace? Move your shared and personal files to you’re My Site and synchronize it with SharePoint Workspace. Work from home and when you arrive in the morning at the office all the files are automatically synchronized with the My Site and the most recent version can be available for your colleagues.

My Newsfeed

Also entirely new is My Newsfeed. All the activities (you can change these in your profile settings) of colleagues, added in the colleagues section, are being shown. A great way to see what your colleagues are doing and maybe get in touch to talk about a common interest.

I really enjoy these new features of the My Site and hopefully a lot of customers will embrace it.


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FAQ with out of the box CQWP in SharePoint 2010

28 05 2010

Posted by Hannah Swain in SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 | 1 Comment

There have been a number of questions about one of my previous posts concerning filtering in the CQWP (content query webpart) in SharePoint 2010. In this follow up post, I will explain the entire case and process that I used to create a FAQ with out of the box content query webpart in SharePoint 2010.

The cliented wanted a list of frequently asked questions, which they could easily filter per category. Without using a custom solution, the best answer in MOSS 2007 would have been to create a page for each category, then place a CQWP to filter the applicable questions. This solution isn’t particularly satisfactory, as it is difficult to maintain.  The final solution was to use a managed metadata field to filter the query string, thanks to the new and improved CQWP in SharePoint 2010.

Step 0: Term store?

If you’re not too sure about taxonomies, please see my post on Understanding managed metadata. That will give you a brief introduction into what a taxonomy and tagging are.

One of the great things about SharePoint 2010 is the ability to work with a taxonomy – a central set of hierarchal terms which are reusable over multiple site collections. This structure is saved in the term store.  For more information on actually working with the term store and determining your taxonomy, please see Chris O’Brien’s Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010.

Note that you can reach the term store via Central Administration or as an option on the site settings page of each site in your site collection.

Finding the term store

Step 1: Fill the term store

We need to save the list of FAQ Categories somewhere. My current rule of thumb is that whenever there is a site column that I would normally use a choice or lookup for, I now use the term store and make it a managed metadata column. So I made a new term set with a few terms:

You can place something like this wherever it works within your own taxonomy.

Step 2: Creating the content type

In  my site collection, I created a content type which inherits from the content type “Article Page”. I used the Article Page content type because I want each of my questions to be its own page – you could do this within a list meant for something completely different if you want to.

In this case, the site columns in Article Page map nicely to most of the site columns that I will need:

Question -> Title
Answer -> Page Content

Finally, I created a new site column of the type “Managed Metadata”,  called FAQ Category. In the column settings, I linked it to the FAQ Category section of the term store.

Step 3: Create the page layout

This is an optional step, but it’s necessary for the things that I want to show later on in this post. So I made a simple page page which shows the title and page contents site columns, linked to my FAQ content type, with the FAQ Category column in the hidden metadata section. I implemented two columns, one is used for the already mentioned columns, the other will be used later.

Remember that to work with SharePoint 2010, you need SharePoint Designer 2010. It is not backwards compatible with SharePoint 2007, nor can you use SharePoint Designer 2007 with SharePoint 2010. You can download it for free from the Microsoft site.

Step 4: Add some content

I created a few questions just to have something to play with in the rest of this post. You might want to do so as well, considering it’ll make it a lot easier to test what you’ve done.

Don’t forget to add the content type to your page library and all that jazz.

Step 5: Showing related questions

Here is where that extra column on the page layout comes in: we’re going to show the related questions so that visitors can click straight through to more interesting information.

On the page layout, add a CQWP.  The easiest way to configure it is to right-click it and then choose “Tag properties…” from the context menu that appears. Configure it as follows:

Show items from the following list

I’ve specifically chosen the page library that my FAQ pages are in. This doesn’t matter that much, it depends on your situation.

Choose content type

Specifically choose the content type you’re using – in my case, FAQ. This ensures that pages which use other content types (such as default.aspx) won’t turn up in the query.

Additional filters

SharePoint 2010 introduces two new filters in the CQWP which are very useful.  Note that there is a question mark next to the title – this has a good summary which always helps me out when I can’t quite remember the syntax.

PageFieldValue – allows you to use the current value of a field on the current page.
PageQueryString – allows you to grab the value of a query string in the URL.

We’ll be using PageFieldValue to get the value of FAQ Category for the current page. Using that, we can filter out other pages in the page library which have the same category.  The correct form is [PageFieldValue: FAQ Category].

When you view your page layout, it’s perfectly normal that the CQWP only shows dummy content. It will be visible when you check your pages via a browser – you can see the pages that have the same FAQ Category.

You can edit the CQWP further, for example to limit the number of results returned, change the sort order, etc.

Step 6: FAQ overview page

We need a good way to show the available questions, so the last step will be creating a page as an overview. I’m just going to use a blank webpart page for this one, though you can make it as pretty as you wish with a page layout.

Summary link webpart

The first necessary webpart is the Summary Links Webpart. I’m going to put this in the right column. For each FAQ Category, I will make a link. That link will point to the current page, with a query string which is linked to the category.

The “cat” is the query string variable. For each link, we’re saying “put the variable called ‘cat’ with the value ‘FAQ Category’” into the URL. This will be picked up on the page that the link goes to.

It is very important that the category that you put into the query string is exactly the same as the name of your category in the FAQ category managed metadata field.

Make a link in the webpart for each of your categories – each link needs to point to the current page.

CQWP

The next step is to place a CQWP in the left column. This will be picking up the correct FAQ pages for us.

The values for this CQWP are pretty much the same as for the CQWP when showing related information. Instead of filtering with the PageFieldValue, we’ll be filtering with the PageQueryString, to grab that variable out of the URL:

When you save/check the page in, the CQWP will be empty. Click on one of the links in your links webpart to see items from that category.

When you link to the page, make sure to include the query string with the category that you want to show by default, e.g. /default.aspx?cat=General info.

Conclusions

Managed metadata with the CQWP are powerful combination in SharePoint 2010. The examples shown in this blog post could not have been done this easily in SharePoint 2007, perhaps only with custom code.

Personally, I’m looking forward to having many more opportunities to use this functionality in the future!

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SharePoint 2010 Slideshow webpart

18 05 2010

Posted by Jasper Oosterveld in SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 | 3 Comments

Hi! Today I want to talk about a webpart that can be used to show images as a slideshow…‘The Picture Library Slideshow Webpart’.

An easy to use out-of-the-box webpart, for creating a slideshow, was missing in SharePoint 2007 but don’t worry SharePoint 2010 is here.

The webpart is easy to use. You have to create a picture library and upload some pictures. You can also create view that you want to show in the webpart. Click on the ‘Edit hero button’ and the site opens in edit mode. Click on ‘Insert’ and ‘Web Part’. Go to the category ‘Media and Content’ and select the slideshow webpart. The settings of the webpart looks like this:

You can choose from the following settings:

Duration to Show Picture (seconds)
The amount of seconds before a new picture will appear.

Picture library
Select the picture library that you want to use.

Library view
Select the view that you want to use.

Picture Display Mode
Do you want to show the pictures in random or sequential order?

Display with
The pictures can be shown with the title and description.

Show toolbar
A toolbar can be shown for selecting the next or previous picture or to stop the slideshow.

The cool thing about this webpart is the ‘Library View’ option. You can use one picture library for all your pictures and use metadata for instance ‘Category’ and apply that to the pictures. You can now use multiple slideshow webparts for the same picture library but with different pictures by using the views.

I also want to point out a negative aspect of the webpart…you can only use the webpart with the picture library from the same site…that is a shame. But this can solved by a smart developer ;)

ps.

I have one tip:

Try to use pictures with the same size because otherwise the webpart can stretch the size of the site.

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SharePoint 2010 Calendars

17 05 2010

Posted by Jasper Oosterveld in SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 | No Comments

I really like to talk about new and exciting standard functionalities from SharePoint 2010. Today I would like to share a cool new feature introduced with the SharePoint 2010 calendar. 

It is now possible to show multiple calendars, from Exchange and SharePoint, within one SharePoint calendar. To do so you have to go to the ribbon of a calendar and select ‘Calendar’ and ‘Calendars Overlay’. Now choose for ‘New Calendar’ and the following screen will appear: 

  

As you can see it is possible to select an existing SharePoint calendar from everywhere within the current site collection. I don’t know if it is possible to select a calendar from another site collection. Let me know if that works. So to connect the SharePoint calendar you have to choose a name first. Then fill in the URL of the site and click on ‘Resolve’. Automatically the available lists (calendars) from that site can be chosen and even with the available views. Now select the colour you want for the calendar and confirm with ‘Ok’. 

To connect an Exchange calendar you have to select ‘Exchange’ in the figure above (not that surprising right?;)) and the following figure will appear: 

  

The SharePoint calendars are shown with the chosen colours. The title of a SharePoint calendar event is shown but the title of the calendar item from the Exchange calendars aren´t. It shows ´Busy´ if an appointment is set. That is too bad but this is still a great feature for instance for project sites. A project leader can immediately see which project members are available.This new functionality is a huge step forwared, compared to SharePoint 2007, and I know for sure customers will appreciate this feature and developers will extend it with great extra solutions.

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Filtering in the CQWP webpart

20 04 2010

Posted by Hannah Swain in SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 | 4 Comments

For a client I was setting up a FAQ section. Each question is its own page with a publishing page layout and content type attached. The client’s request was that each page include a list of related questions. As each question has a managed metadata field called “FAQ Category”, this shouldn’t be much of a problem – and it wasn’t!

I did the following:

1. Place a content query webpart on the page layout.
2. Configure the content query webpart as normal
3. Set up the filtering:

CQWP Filter

Note that it is possible to filter using the value of a field on the current page and/or using a query string variable (e.g. default.aspx?value=y).

Note: this only appears to work for managed metadata fields – when I tried it on normal single line of text fields, this extra option didn’t appear. And when I tried telling it to use [PageFieldValue: fieldname] as a filter value, the CQWP couldn’t be rendered.

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SIG netwerkdag 2010

30 03 2010

Posted by Natasja van Doorn in Education, Microsoft SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2010, Wortell | No Comments

Op 14 april vindt de SIG netwerkdag plaats in het meeting Plaza te Utrecht. Tijdens de middag sessie zal mijn collega Danny Burlge de inleiding verzorgen. Zijn onderwerp is “de SharePoint omgeving als “hybride” leer en werkomgeving.

Hierbij wat meer (achtergrond) informatie.

In 1999 startte SURF het onderwijsvenieuwingsprogramma: instellingen voor hoger onderwijs konden met subsidie van SURF ICT-vernieuwingsprojecten uitvoeren. In de afgelopen 10 jaar zijn ruim zeventig projecten uitgevoerd in door instellingen die hun vernieuwingskracht binnen de projecten bundelden. Het onderwijsvernieuwingsprogramma wordt in het voorjaar van 2010 geëvalueerd door een internationaal reviewpanel. Via een publieksprijs worden de beste onderwijsvernieuwingsprojecten genomineerd. De prijs voor de beste drie projecten wordt tijdens de SIG Netwerkdag 2010 uitgereikt.

De laatste jaren heeft er een verschuiving plaatsgevonden, van ICT als doel naar ICT als middel. Naar aanleiding van de evaluatie van het onderwijsvernieuwingsprogramma staat de SIG Netwerkdag 2010 in het teken van deze verschuiving. Het onderwijsvernieuwingsprogramma, dat gericht was op het onderzoeken van de mogelijkheden van ICT in het onderwijs, werd opgevolgd door het Nationaal Actieplan e-Learning. Projecten in dat programma gebruiken ICT om het studiesucces in het hoger onderwijs te verbeteren: projecten met een duidelijke strategische doelstelling.

Nu onderwijsvernieuwingsprojecten worden ingezet om bijvoorbeeld de kwaliteit van het onderwijs en het studiesucces van studenten te verbeteren, wordt de vraag interessant hoe (en of) je kan meten of je doelstellingen zijn behaald. Tijdens deze dag onderzoeken de SIG’s wat deze verandering voor hun eigen werkzaamheden betekent, en of en hoe onderzoek naar resultaten en effecten een plek kan krijgen in de planvorming.

Tom Dousma, manager van het Platform ICT en Onderwijs, stond aan de wieg van het Onderwijsvernieuwingsprogramma, en aan de wieg van het Nationaal Actieplan e-Learning. Ruim 10 jaar gaf hij leiding aan het platform. Met ingang van februari 2010 heeft hij het platform verlaten, en is hij gestart bij Studiekeuze123. Tijdens de SIG Netwerkdag zal op feestelijke wijze afscheid worden genomen van Tom Dousma.

10:00 uur – Inleiding: Onderwijsvernieuwing: van doel naar middel

10:45 uur – Pitch van 7 beste Onderwijsvernieuwingsprojecten naar aanleiding van publieksprijs

11:15 uur – Pauze

11:30 uur - Discussie in groepen over projecten uit het verleden, door de bril van toekomst

12:30 uur – Prijsuitreiking beste Onderwijsvernieuwingsproject

13:00 uur – Lunch

14:00 uur - SIG bijeenkomsten: Wat betekent “Onderwijsvernieuwing: van doel naar middel” voor de SIG?

16:00 uur – Plenaire presentatie van belangrijkste conclusies

16:30 uur –  Borrel, afscheid van Tom Dousma

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Masterclass SharePoint in het Onderwijs

24 03 2010

Posted by Natasja van Doorn in Education, SharePoint, Wortell | No Comments

17, 18 en 19 mei vindt weer de Masterclass SharePoint in het onderwijs plaats. Deze drie daagste Masterclass wordt georganiseerd door APS IT Diensten.

Hierbij de aankondiging:

Steeds meer school besturen werken met Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. En of het nu gaat om SharePoint 2007 op zich of enige variant daarvan, SharePoint in het Onderwijs is een toepassing die aan populariteit wint.

Als bovenschools ICT coördinator of lid van een projectgroep SharePoint in het Onderwijs weet je als geen ander wat er zoal komt kijken bij een effectieve en efficiënte implementatie van een informatie en communicatie portaal voor het onderwijs.

Waarschijnlijk heb je het afgelopen jaar al de nodige kennis en ervaring opgedaan daar waar het gaat om SharePoint in het Onderwijs. Die kennis wil je graag in eigen huis hebben en houden. Of anders gezegd, SharePoint kennis verkrijgen ten dienste van het eigen school bestuur draagt bij aan een efficiënte en effectieve implementatie die de kwaliteit van het onderwijs ten goede komt.

Graag nodigt APS IT diensten jou uit om deel te nemen aan de drie daagse MASTERCLASS SharePoint in het Onderwijs. Deze drie daagse MASTERCLASS wordt gehouden op:

  • Maandag 17 mei 2010
  • Dinsdag 18 mei 2010
  • Woensdag 19 mei 2010

De locatie waar de MASTERCLASS SharePoint in het Onderwijs wordt gegeven is de Multi media ruimte van APS IT diensten, Zwarte Woud 2 te Utrecht. De MASTERCLASS wordt verzorgd door Jan Ligtenberg, Albert-Jan Schot en Albert Schot.

Voor vragen kan je contact opnemen met:

Albert Schot
M +31 6 53458709
E a.schot@apsitprojecten.nl – ajgschot@xs4all.nl

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Using a Module to deploy a Solution to the Solution Gallery

14 03 2010

Posted by Paul Pascha in SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 | No Comments

For one of our projects I created several WebParts as part of a Sandboxed Solution. These WebParts were developed to be used on sites for which ultimately a SiteDefinition needed to be created. Since the WebParts are part of a Sandboxed Solution, my goal was to provision this solution as part of the SiteDefinition to the Solution Gallery located in the RootWeb.

Since the Solution Gallery is just a specialized Document Library in which .wsp Files get placed, I thought using the Module element would help me here. Off course, you could use the Module element inside as a Feature element too, instead of the SiteDefintion I’m using it in. So, first of all I declared my Module element as follows:

<Module Name="Solutions" Path="Solutions" Url="_catalogs/solutions">
    <File Url="HelloSandbox.wsp"/>
</Module>

After creating a new SiteCollection based on the SiteDefinition containing this Module, I navigated to the solution gallery to find my .wsp file there in order to Activate the solution but it wasn’t there. It took me a while to figure out that in order to actually find the .wsp here, I needed to specify the Type within the <File>element with the value “GhostableInLibrary”.

<Module Name="Solutions" Path="Solutions" Url="_catalogs/solutions">
    <File Url="HelloSandbox.wsp" Type="GhostableInLibrary"/>
</Module>

Changing this made the .wsp appear but I wasn’t able to Activate the solution. I was wondering why until I chose to edit the properties of the .wsp and Save the changes without changing anything. After this, I was actually able to activate the solution!

So, editing the properties apparently caused some properties to be set under the hood. In order to figure out which properties, I decided to fire up SharePoint Manager 2010. This is a great tool to get useful insights. It helped me to figure out the following properties were added after editing the .wsp properties:

  • ContentType
  • ContentTypeId
  • SolutionHasAssemblies
  • SolutionHash
  • SolutionId

I decided to (as far as possible) specify the properties listed above one at a time in <Property> elements within the <File> element within the <Module>. By adding them one at a time I was hoping to find the minimum set of properties needed to be set.

I tried the ContentType property first. The value for ContentType (as I could see in SPM2010) was set to “Solution Gallery” so I declared the following <Property> element:

<Property Name="ContentType" Value="Solution Gallery"/>

I then created a new SiteCollection and now I was able to activate the solution! So this one property did the trick! Switching back to SPM2010 showed me that the other 4 properties from the listing above were also set now…

Hope this helps you too!

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SharePoint 2010 eind gebruikers training video

12 03 2010

Posted by Luc Joziasse in SharePoint 2010 | No Comments

Gisteren weer een filmpje opgenomen op het IPON onderwijs congres, de filmpjes blijven komen het YouTube kanaal begint al aardig te vullen. Voor vandaag een video die ik heb gevonden binnen deze (Engelse) instructiefilm is te zien hoe de nieuwe gebruikersinterface van SharePoint 2010 is opgebouwd. Wat zijn de verschillen met SharePoint 2007, binnen de video word ondermeer de ribbon besproken, drag and drop functionaliteiten, in en out checken van documenten integratie met Office 2010 en het aanpassen van de layout van pagina’s. Video komt uit het SharePoint team van Microsoft.

Klik hier voor de video

 
 

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Understanding SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata

4 01 2010

Posted by Hannah Swain in SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 | 1 Comment

Metadata in SharePoint 2010 has been a huge topic of discussion. I have had some time to look into it, supported by articles such as Understanding SharePoint 2010 by An Introduction to SharePoint Managed Metadata. However, this article is more of a high level overview of what managed metadata is and a little bit less of how it is actually implemented.

Taxonomy

In SharePoint 2010, Microsoft has started talking about taxonomy a lot. Taxonomy is defined by Wikipedia as:

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification.

…

In addition, the word is also used as a count noun: a taxonomy, or taxonomic scheme, is a particular classification (“the taxonomy of …”), arranged in a hierarchical structure.

[ Source ]

It has its roots in subjects such as classification of living creatures such as plants, animals, etc.

The information architecture of a site consists of thing such as the navigational elements, site structure and taxonomy. Within SharePoint, you can also think of things like content types and site columns. The point of taxonomy in a website? Classifying a piece of information, such as an image or a page or even a paragraph of text into a certain category.

Metadata

A picture may be worth a thousand words – but not to a computer. To give an image context and make it possible for search machines to properly add it to their search indexes, metadata must be added. This is done in the form of having meta data fields available, such as a title, a description, the date the image was taken, etc. An image library in SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 works along similar lines.

Tagging in a folksonomy

In a previous paragraph, I mentioned that taxonomy is classification of information and is part of the information architecture of a site.

One of the best examples of tagging has been implemented by the picture management site, Flickr. When you upload an image, you are given the option of filling in metadata fields such as the title and description of the image. Flickr also allows for “tagging” of images: adding key words that you think are relevant to an image. This allows you to decide which terms make sense for that image, without having to add them to your title or description. This also makes it easier for searches later, as the search machine knows what the most important words are.

Flickr is a “folksonomy” because users can fill in any term they like as a tag. There is no hierarchy, no structure and really – no rules. The definition of the data is created by the people. This works well in a very unstructured environment such as Flickr.

Tagging with managed metadata

SharePoint 2010 now allows for tagging. In theory, you could allow users to create their own taxonomy by allowing any tag they want to use. However, SharePoint 2010 allows for managed metadata – create a centrally defined hierarchy of terms from which users can choose when tagging information.

An example for defining the location of where an image was taken could be defined something like: Continent < Country < City. When adding the metadata, it would be easy to see which terms are available. A user searching for images could then filter the images by continent, country or city.

Technet lists the following benefits of using managed metadata, which can be contrasted with Flickr’s unstructured metadata:

Managed metadata Folksonomy
More consistent use of terminology Mispelled terms are possible
Better search results Search results are dependent on potentially misspelled terms
Dynamic Static

A little bit more explanation about the static versus dynamic properties: in SharePoint 2010, if you change the metadata definitions, the changes are applied to all of the items that are tagged with that tag. Furthermore, if you combine two tags to form a new one, these changes are applied to all items – plus when you try to choose the old tag, SharePoint will automatically supply you with the new tag.

Conclusions

Admittedly, there’s a lot more to tell about metadata in SharePoint 2010, but I need to save things for other articles.

Managed metadata adds a lot of functionality to SharePoint 2010. I am very much looking forwarding to adding taxonomy to new projects and seeing how it works in the real world.

For more information, I can strongly recommend An Introduction to SharePoint Managed Metadata and SharePoint Taxonomy Hierarchy.

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