SharePoint Document Libraries and users

A very nice article by Ian Morris for IT professionals to understand the different ways a user can interact with files stored in a SharePoint document library.

http://www.wssdemo.com/Blog/archive/2008/05/10/sharepoint-document-libraries-and-users.aspx

Sharepoint STSADM.EXE Command line parameters

Download posters that show the stsadm.exe command line parameters for MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0.

1. Stsadm parameters poster for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 : (jpeg | png | visio)
2. Stsadm parameters poster for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 : (jpeg | png | visio)

Customized version of stsadm online reference by Ian Morris of Microsoft : http://www.wssdemo.com/Lists/stsadm/AllItems.aspx

Folder Content Types in Sharepoint

Most of the SharePoint enthusiasts probably know quite a bit about content types in SharePoint. They provide the means to organize metadata in an extremely flexible manner and provide the context for workflows, custom menus, and document templates. However, due to the document centric nature of Microsoft Office and SharePoint, the most commonly used and discussed content types are the document content types. Well, there is another lesser-known character in the content type story of SharePoint--it is the folder content type.

One reason why the folder content type is less popular is that the default SharePoint installation comes with only one of them--the Folder content type. Compared to dozens of out-of-the-box document content types, the Folder is clearly outnumbered. So let's have a closer look at this lonely hero and create a couple of folder content types so that we can find out how to use them to further enhance the user experience and data management of a document library.

To put things into perspective, let's look at how the fictional environmental foundation Rain Forest can use folder content types to improve its excising document library. The foundation staff stores all documents in a document library and they already use several document content types to support their activities. The document types are separated into two functional groups:

• Project Documents (Additional Fields: Due Date, Assigned To)
  • Application for Grant (Word document)
  • Financial Memorandum (Excel document)
  • Formal Acceptance Document (Word document)
• Internal Documents (Additional Fields: Contact, Status)
  • Purchase Order (Word document)
  • Invoice (Excel document)

The document library looks very familiar, and all document types are listed in the New menu:

The IT team of Rain Forest also defined some views based on document content type to make the filtering of each document type group easier and to be able to display content type specific fields such as Due Date and Assigned To:

All documents are stored in the root and occasionally employees will create folders at their discretion. However with time the clutter of folders makes locating documents really hard. All users also notice considerable slow down in view performance. After a few months, the root folder contains more than 4000 documents and is expected to grow. What can be done? This is when the little known character from our SharePoint story--the folder content type--comes in to help.

One reason for the performance hit is that folders in SharePoint have some limitations by design. Nevertheless if we partition the documents by financial quarters or other perpetual attributes, we can keep the total number of documents in a given folder within the high performance zone. That’s why we decide to create a folder for internal documents and project documents using the respective folder content types for every quarter of the year.

Furthermore we can provide some structure and boundaries for the employees, so that they cannot create folders anywhere in the document library. To help users locate documents, we’ll use a great feature of SharePoint, which allows us to bind views to a specific folder content type. This will provide context for each folder, so that when a user enters a folder with internal documents, the view will automatically change to display relevant metadata.

First let’s create a folder content type for each of our document groups. The steps are no different than creating any other content type. The only difference is that our content type will inherit from the Folder content type.

Next, let’s add the folder content types to our document library:

n addition, we would like to remove the default Folder command in the New menu, so that only our custom folder options are available. To do that, open the advanced settings of the document library and disable the New Folder option.

After these changes we will add our two new folder entries to the New menu.

Now, when a user wants to create a new folder for the next quarter, he or she will select the appropriate folder types from the New menu, and give the folder a descriptive name such as Internal Q1 2008. The process of provisioning a new folder can be automated and extended by using calculated fields or other programming techniques.

To provide the appropriate views, we create one view for the root folder and separate, unique views for each folder content type. The root view will display only folders from the newly defined content types.

Each custom folder content type will have a view that displays metadata specific to the type of document contained in the folder. These folder views are marked as default but are assigned to the specific folder content type.

Let’s see the result by creating a folder of each type.

You’ll notice that if you click the folder Internal Q1 2008, the view automatically will change to the Internal Documents view; similarly opening the folder Project Q1 2008 will change the view to the view Project Documents.

To add additional context sensitive behavior, you can also limit the New menu items displayed for each individual folder, so that only Internal documents show in the New menu of the corresponding folder. From the drop down menu of each folder select Change New Button Order, and hide the appropriate document types.

When you enter the folder you’ll notice that only the contextually correct New menu items exist.

Similarly you can hide the documents from the new menu of the root folder. Open the document library settings and in the content type section click Change new button order and default content type. Hide all but the folder content types.

Sharepoint Site for Users Training

A sharepoint site from Microsoft that can be hosted in the local sharepoint portal for providing user trainings. The package includes articles, videos and interactive materials that describes various functionalities and usages of sharepoint portal.

There are two types of packages.
1. The desktop version can be installed in any stand-alone PC and run.
2. The server version can be installed in a Sharepoint 2007 server.

Download link: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA102488011033.aspx