notes - getting the most from sharepoint

RM Seminarsspring 2013

Getting the most from SharePoint

Introduction

Microsoft® SharePoint® is an online collaborative platform which supports a wide number of activities from online collaboration, to document management, to web content management and much more.

SharePoint 2010 is based around six ideas, known as the six pillars of SharePoint. These are sites, communities, content, search, insights and composites. This session will concentrate on sites, content and search. Everything on SharePoint is essentially site based and these sites can be accessible through an intranet, extranet or the Internet. Sites can be collaboration workspaces, portals, a school’s public web presence, etc. SharePoint also supports personalisation via the ‘MySites’ feature, content targeting and tagging.

Whether an intranet, extranet or public website is being built on SharePoint, the tools needed are similar and any/all of the six pillars can be leveraged across any type of site required.

This session will take a look at the tools available to configure and customise a SharePoint 2010 installation and walk through the steps to create a custom intranet site structure.

SharePoint Online

SharePoint Online is part of Office 365™, the cloud-based productivity platform from, Microsoft which offers hosted versions of certain Microsoft Server products (including Exchange® and SharePoint).

SharePoint Online is based on SharePoint 2010 so most customisations in this session should apply equally to SharePoint Online and onsite SharePoint installations, however where there are differences these have been highlighted.

Customisation via the web browser

The initial setup and customisation of SharePoint is achieved via a web browser, using either the SharePoint central administration website for an onsite SharePoint server, or the SharePoint administration centre for SharePoint Online. These tools can be used to manage site-wide settings, create site collections and define audiences among other things.

RM Seminars spring 2013 Getting the most from SharePoint

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Site collections

All sites in SharePoint exist in a site collection: by default, there are two site collections created in an onsite SharePoint installation - one contains the site root and the other is for the MySites feature. In addition to those two collections, SharePoint Online also contains a search collection by default.

There is no requirement to create extra site collections, sub sites can simply be created in the root collection and this would work. To get the most from SharePoint, however it is sometimes useful to separate related sub sites into site collections. Administrators are then able to define quotas for each site collection and also specify an administrator for the collection. Each sub site in a site collection also shares security groups, workflows and a single search scope.


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To create a site collection using SharePoint central administration:

1. Click the ‘Create site collections’ link in the Application Management section.

2. Enter a title and website.

Site collections can exist under either the /sites/ or /my/personal/ folder by default, however, custom paths can be added.

3. Specify a primary administrator and, optionally, a secondary administrator (these must be users, not groups).

4. Specify a quota template.

To create a new quota template using SharePoint central administration:

1. Click the Specify Quota Templates link in the Application Management section.

2. Select ‘Create a new quota template’.

3. Optionally select an existing template as a base.

4. Specify the desired storage limit and warning level.

5. Click OK.

To create a custom site collection path using SharePoint central administration:

1. Click the Create site collections link in the Application Management section.

2. Select Define Managed Paths.

3. Enter the desired path and click Add Path.

To create a site collection using the SharePoint online administration centre:

1. Click the Manage Site Collections link.

2. Select Private site collection.

3. Enter a title and website address.

Site collections can exist under either the /sites/ or /teams/ folder.

4. Specify an administrator (this can either be a user or group).

5. Specify a storage quota then click OK.


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Audiences

In SharePoint, audiences are groupings of users that can be used to target content. The groupings are determined by members in Exchange distribution lists, SharePoint groups, Active Directory Groups or custom rules configured by an administrator.

Audiences are not a substitute for configuring SharePoint user and group permissions. They are designed to allow content to be targeted at groups of users, allowing fast access to relevant documents, not to restrict access.

By default, there is one audience created, all site users, which contains all users who have access to the site.

To create a new audience using SharePoint central administration:

1. Click the Manage service applications’ link in the Application Management section.

2. Select User Profile Service Application and click Manage.

3. Select Manage Audiences in the People section.

4. Select New Audience.

5. Enter a name and owner for the new audience.

6. Select ‘Satisfy all of the rules’ to require that all of the rules specified on the next page need to be satisfied for a user to be included in the audience, or select ‘Satisfy any of the rules’ to allow membership of the audience as long as any of the rule are satisfied.

7. On the ‘Add Audience rule’ page, do one of the following:

• To add a rule based on a user, e.g. all users who are members of a specific department:

1. In the operand section select User.

2. In the operator section, select Member Of.

3. In the value box enter the group or distribution list which the user must belong to to become a member of the audience.

• To add a rule based on a user profile property, e.g. all users who have a job title of teaching assistant:

1. in the operand section select Property and then select a user profile property from the list e.g. ‘Job title’.


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2. From the operator list, select an operator for the property.

3. In the value section, type a value to use when evaluating the property against this rule e.g. ‘Teaching Assistant’.

To create a new audience using the SharePoint online administration centre:

1.Click ‘Manage user profiles’.

2. Click ‘Manage Audiences’ in the People section.

3. Click ‘New Audience’.

4. Enter a name and owner for the new audience.

5. Select ‘Satisfy all of the rules’ to require that all of the rules specified on the next page need to be satisfied for a user to be included in the audience, or select ‘Satisfy any of the rules’ to allow membership of the audience as long as any of the rules are satisfied.

6. On the ‘Add Audience’ rule page, do one of the following:

• To add a rule based on a user, e.g. all users who are members of a specific department:

1. In the operand section select User.

2. In the operator section, select Member Of.

3. In the value box, enter the group or distribution list which the user must be a member of to be included in the audience.

• To add a rule based on a user profile property, e.g. all users who have a job title of teaching assistant:

1. In the operand section select Property and then select a user profile property from the list e.g. ‘Job title’.

2. From the operator list, select an operator for the property.

3. In the value section, type a value to use when evaluating the property against this rule e.g. ‘Teaching Assistant’.

When audiences have been created, audience targeting then needs to be enabled on the required libraries.

To enable audience targeting in a library:

1. Open the library.

2. Click Library then Library Settings.


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3. Select Audience Targeting Settings from General Settings.

4. Tick the box to ‘Enable audience targeting’ and click OK.

Once audience targeting has been enabled, items in the library get an extra property item called Target Audiences which can be set with the desired audiences. When target audiences have been set, the last task is to pull relevant data together for members of the target audience. To achieve this, SharePoint includes a WebPart called the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) which allows content to be filtered based on various options.

To enable the CQWP for a site collection:

1. Select Site Settings from the Site Actions menu.

2. Click ‘Site collection features’ in the Site Collection Administration section.

3. Find SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure and click Activate.

The CQWP can then be added to any page and configured to display a relevant selection of library content.

To add the CQWP to a page:

1. Select Edit Page from the Site Actions menu.

2. Click Insert from the Editing Tools menu.

3. Select Web Part.

4. Select Content Query from the Content Rollup category and click Add.

Finally, the CQWP needs to be configured to run the desired query. To configure the CQWP:

1. Select Edit Web Part from the web part menu as shown below.

2. Expand the Query section and select the desired source. The query can be run across all sites in the collection, a specific sub site or a specific library.


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3. Select the desired source and click ‘Apply audience filtering’ in the Audience Targeting section.

4. Click OK.

The CQWP will now query the specified source and return items targeted to any audiences of which the user is a member.

Audiences are a very effective method of collating relevant data from across the site or site collection and presenting it to the user, saving time navigating through the site to access important documents.

SharePoint Designer

Although most of the configuration and customisation of SharePoint can be accomplished using the web interface, it is sometimes easier and faster to use SharePoint Designer, especially during the initial setup of the site structure and template customisation.

SharePoint Designer is a web and application program used to build and customise SharePoint sites and applications. It provides a single interface to create a site, customise the layout, design the logic and deploy the finished site. SharePoint Designer also allows a customised site to be saved as a template, saving time when creating the initial SharePoint site structure.

To open a site in SharePoint Designer, choose ‘Edit in SharePoint Designer’ from the Site Actions menu. If SharePoint Designer is not currently installed on the machine, a popup will appear with links to download the software, otherwise the site will open in SharePoint Designer.


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The home screen shows general information about the site, including its name and description, web address, SharePoint version, storage space used and quota limits.

Creating the site structure

SharePoint is made up of site collections which contain top level sites and can also have sub sites created beneath them. The example structure which was used during this session is shown below:

/ (Root)

Departments (site collection)

English (site)

KS3 (sub site)

GCSE (sub site)

A Level (sub site)

Maths (site)

KS3 (sub site)

GCSE (sub site)


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A Level (sub site)

Science (site)

KS3 (sub site)

GCSE (sub site)

A Level (sub site)

Music (site)

KS3 (sub site)

GCSE (sub site)

A Level (sub site)

Computing (site)

KS3 (sub site)

GCSE (sub site)

A Level (sub site)

Library (site)

Clubs (site collection)

Chess (site)

Band (site)

Computing (site)

Staff (site)

Governors (site)

To create sites and sub sites using the web interface:

1. Browse to the site collection or site where a new sub site should be created.

2. Select New Site from the Site Actions menu.

3. Enter a title for the new site and enter the desired address.

4. Select a template - Team Site is the default.

5. Choose whether permissions and the top link bar should be inherited from the parent site or not then click Create.


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SharePoint Designer can be used to quickly create sub sites and the site hierarchy without having to navigate the web based menus.

To create a sub site using SharePoint Designer:

1. Select Subsites from the Site Object list.

2. Click New Subsite.

3. Select a site template - Team Site is the default.

4. Specify a location for the website and click OK.

When using SharePoint Designer, the site will be named after the template used e.g. Team Site. Sites can be renamed by right-clicking on their entry in the sub sites list and choosing rename.

Whichever method is used, when the first sub site has been created it can be customised and then saved as a template which can be used when creating future sites.

Permissions

To make administration easier, when a site is created it contains three standard security groups - ‘Site name Owners’, ‘Site name Members’ and ‘Site name Visitors’ which are used to assign permissions at the site level. It is recommended that most users who need to access the site are made members of the ‘Site name Visitors’ or ‘Site name Members’ SharePoint groups. It is not a good idea to add every user to the ‘Site owners’ group. By default, site members can contribute to the site by adding or removing items or documents, however they cannot change the structure of the site or change the site settings or appearance.

If required, it is also possible to grant individual users and SharePoint groups specific permissions for a securable object (a site, list, library, folder, item or document). A single user can be directly assigned permissions without needing to be a member of a SharePoint group, however this is time consuming and it is recommended to use SharePoint groups to set permissions.

Different SharePoint groups can be assigned different permissions levels for a specific site, list, library, folder, item or document.

Anyone with the manage permissions can create new SharePoint groups and assign permissions levels for the site as a whole, however they may not be able to add or remove users or domain groups to or from SharePoint groups. By default site collection administrators and site owners have this permission.


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Inheritance

By default, permissions for lists, libraries, folders, items, and documents are inherited from the parent site. It is possible, however, to break this inheritance for any securable object at a lower level in the hierarchy by editing the permissions for that object (this creates a unique permission assignment for the object).

Sites themselves are a securable object which permissions can be assigned to. Sub sites can be configured to inherit permissions for a parent site or the inheritance can be broken to create unique permissions for a particular site. If a sub site inherits permissions for the parent, those permissions are shared.

Owners of a sub site which inherit permissions from their parents’ site can edit the permissions of the parent, so any changes made to the parent site permissions must be appropriate for the parent and all sub sites which will inherit the permissions.

In the example above, sub site one inherits permissions from the top level website, this means that changes made to SharePoint groups and permissions on the top-level site also affect sub site one. Sub site two is also inheriting permissions from its parent (sub site one), and because sub site one is also inheriting permissions from its parents, changes made to SharePoint groups and permission levels at the top level site affect both sub site one and sub site two. This is because permissions cannot be managed on a sub site which is inheriting permissions. Instead permissions need to be managed for the parent - the top level website in this case. The other option is to break inheritance and create unique permissions

Sub site three has unique permissions, this means that is does not inherit permissions from its parent site. Any changes made to the permission levels and SharePoint groups on sub site three do not affect its parent site. As sub site four is inheriting permissions from sub site three, any changes to permissions on sub site three affect both sites.


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To set site permissions using the web interface:


2. Click Site Permissions from the ‘Users and Permissions’ section.

From here you can see the permissions currently set on the site.

3. Click on a group to view its members.

4. Click New to add users or Active Directory groups to the SharePoint group.

In SharePoint designer, permissions are displayed on the home screen of SharePoint designer as shown below

To add members to a group using SharePoint Designer:

1. Click ‘New...’.

2. Enter the user or group names to add.

3. Either choose to make them a member of an existing group, or set permissions directly.


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To set permissions on a library using the web interface:

1. Open the library.

2. From the Library Tools menu select Library.

3. Click Library Settings.

4. Select ‘Permissions for this library’ from the ‘Permissions and Management’ section.

5. By default, permissions are inherited from the parent site. To set permissions directly for the library click Stop Inheriting Permissions.

6. Click OK to confirm, then permissions will be copied to the library and can be edited.

To edit permissions, select a group and click Edit User Permissions.

To remove a group, select the group and click Remove User Permissions.

To add permissions, click Grant Permissions then enter the desired user or group and choose which SharePoint group to add them to or select the appropriate permissions.


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If permissions need to be reset click Inherit Permissions to replace the currently set permissions with the permission set from the parent site.

To set permissions on a library using SharePoint Designer:

1. Open the library from ‘Lists and Libraries’.

2. Click ‘Permissions for this list’. This will open the library permissions page.

3. By default, permissions are inherited from the parent site. To set permissions directly for the library click Stop Inheriting Permissions.

4. Click OK to confirm, then permissions will be copied to the library and can be edited.

To edit permissions, select a group and click Edit User Permissions.

To remove a group, select the group and click Remove User Permissions.

To add permissions, click Grant Permissions then enter the desired user or group and choose which SharePoint group to add them to or select the appropriate permissions.

Customising SharePoint

Customisation of the layout and branding of a SharePoint site is carried out using SharePoint Designer to edit master pages, page layouts and cascading style sheets (CSS).

Master pages

Master pages are a feature of ASP.NET and are included with SharePoint as a way to design the layout of a site in one place and reuse it as a template for other pages across the SharePoint installation. Every time a page is viewed on a SharePoint site, it is actually two pages merged together - a master page and a content page. The master page defined the common layout and navigation (which typically make up the left, top and bottom portions of a page). The content page supplied page-specific content.

Page layouts

If SharePoint is setup as a publishing site, the appearance and layout of the site can be customised using page layouts.


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Cascading style sheets

Like most websites, SharePoint uses CSS to apply colours, graphics and positioning to the various objects which make up the pages on a site. In many cases, there are multiple style sheets applied to a page. These style sheets can be modified directly in the master page, page layout or site page or modified by directly editing the CSS files attached to a page. SharePoint themes can also be customised using CSS files. CSS files affect the skin of a SharePoint site.

Customising master pages

The v4.master page is the default primary master page in SharePoint 2010. It provides the standard SharePoint look and feel, interface and functionality. The primary master page is used for both content pages and application pages in SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2010 ships as standard with five master pages, four of which are detailed below. The fifth page, simplev4.master is used for SharePoint specific screens such as login.aspx, error.aspx and confirmation.aspx. This master page is located on the server and can’t be customised using SharePoint Designer.

Name & default file name Description Uses on a SharePoint site

Primary master page

v4.master

Used for content and administration pages. Provides the interface and layout for SharePoint 2010.

Team Site home page, list and library pages, and settings page.

Minimal master page

minimal.master

Contains minimal SharePoint content, used for full screen functionality or embedded applications.

The home and search results pages on a Search Centre, pages which host Word® or Excel® web applications

Publishing master page

nightandday.master

Used for pages on a SharePoint Server publishing enabled site

The home page, about us or press release page on a publishing intranet, extranet or Internet facing site.


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Name & default file name Description Uses on a SharePoint site

2007 default master page

default.master

Used to support legacy SharePoint sites, which haven’t been visually upgraded to SharePoint 2010.

Home page, site pages, and list pages on a SharePoint 2007 site before visual upgrade.

Customise the primary master page

1. With the site open in SharePoint Designer 2010, click Master Pages in the navigation pane.

2. For most sites, you see three master pages, v4.master, minimal.master, and default.master, in the Master Page Gallery.

To create a copy of the primary master page:

1. Click Master Pages in the Navigation pane.

2. Right-click v4.master and then press Ctrl+P to paste a copy into the Master Page Gallery.

3. Click v4_copy(1).master to see summary information in the Master Page Gallery.

4. Click Edit File to display the master page.

This opens the master page in the SharePoint Designer 2010 full-screen page editor where the page can be edited in design view, split view, or code view. With design-time support, you can see what the master page looks like as you customise it. There are also tools available to navigate and customise tags, styles, scripts, and content regions.

Master pages and content pages work together using a set of replaceable regions, known as content placeholder controls. Each content placeholder (which is shown as ‘ContentPlaceHolder’ in the page code) represents content that can be overridden on the master page. Any page on the site can replace whatever is contained within the content placeholder by supplying a matching content control. That content control can also be empty, which will remove the element entirely from the rendered page.


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Note: When you customise master pages, avoid deleting content placeholders. Doing so might break some pages and even sites associated with the master page. It’s a good practice to simply hide instead of delete these controls.

The Manage Content Regions feature can be used to locate each content placeholder control on the page and the control can be viewed in both code view and the WYSIWYG editor.

Another content placeholder that is particularly important is ‘PlaceHolderMain’ because this is what gets replaced by each content page when that page is viewed in a web browser.

You can change the layout of content on a SharePoint site by changing the location of the content placeholder controls.

For more information about working with content placeholders, see http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/sharepoint-designer-help/working-with-content-placeholder-controls-HA102265026.aspx

A content placeholder control is a piece of code on a master page which works together with a content control on a content page. The content placeholder control displays default content (which can be no content, if the control is empty) for that region on the page but can also be overridden by unique content from a content control on a content page.

Locate and modify a content placeholder control

To locate a content placeholder control on a SharePoint 2010 master page:

1. In the master page gallery, click v4_copy(1).master.

2. On the master page summary page, click Edit file.

3. If prompted to check out the file, click Yes.

4. In design view, clicking on an area on the page will display the content placeholder control which serves up that content.

5. Alternatively, the available content placeholder controls can be browsed by clicking the style tab and in the master page group, click Manage Content Regions. Content placeholder controls can be quickly and easily located on the master page using this feature.

6. In the list of content regions, select ‘PlaceHolderSiteName’ and click Go To then click Close. The content placeholder control is then selected on the page.


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http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/sharepoint-designer-help/working-with-content-placeholder-controls-HA102265026.aspx






7. From here, its settings and location can be changed, different styles can be applied, etc. It is important to save the master page after making changes

Note: SharePoint pages are, by default, associated with site definition files. When a master page is customised in SharePoint Designer 2010, it is no longer associated with the site definition. This can result in additional work following future updates or upgrades to SharePoint. It is best to create a copy of the master file before editing.

Changes will appear on every page attached to the edited master page unless those pages were customised directly.

Working with styles

The easiest and quickest way to change the styles on a master page is to apply a predesigned theme to the page. The available themes can be accessed by clicking the ‘Change site theme’ link under Customisation on the Site Settings tab in SharePoint Designer.

To match school colours, graphics, text formatting, or other style attributes may require the creation of your styles which can then be added to the master page directly, or placed in external cascading style sheets (CSS) that you attach to the master page.

Edit styles in the master page or create a custom CSS

To edit styles, click the Style menu and then choose from among the options on the ribbon to work with the CSS as required.

New styles can be created and applied, or style sheets can be attached using commands on the ribbon. The Manage Styles command can be used to categorise styles by element, order or type; to show only styles in use on the page or element, and to see previews of styles.

When a new master page has been created in SharePoint Designer 2010, it can quickly be made the primary master page for the entire site.

Note: When a new master page is set as the primary master page, all of the pages that are attached to the default primary master page, including the pages that already exist in the site and any new pages that are created, are attached to the new master page.

To set a new master page as the primary master page:

1. Under Site Objects, in the Navigation pane, click Master Pages.


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2. In the Master Pages list in the Navigation pane, right-click the master page to set as the default primary master, and then click Set As Default Master Page.

Creating custom templates

When a site has been customised to the schools requirements, it can be saved as a template and used as a base to create future sites.

To save a customised site as a template using the web interface:


2. Click ‘Save site as template’.

3. Enter a file name, template name and description.

4. If you have customised workflows or document libraries, click Include Content.

Note: When you save a site as a template, item security is not maintained. Do not choose to include content if the site includes private content.

Item approval

There may be circumstances where a large number of people are able to submit content to a site (pages, documents, etc) which need to be reviewed before being published. An example of this would be a site where pupils are able to upload documents and edit pages for a club, but the leader of the club wants to review changes before items are made visible to others.

This can be accomplished using the approval process built into SharePoint. To enable content approval:

1. Open a library.

2. Select Library from the Library Tools menu.

3. Click Library Settings.

4. Select Versioning Settings from the Document Library Settings section.

5. Select Yes in the Content Approval Section.


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6. To hide unapproved items select ‘Only users who can approve items’ in the Draft Item Security section.

7. Click OK.

This adds an extra column into the library called Approval Status. New items will appear in the list with the approval status of pending as shown below.

Members of the ‘Site name Approvers’ groups can approve or reject documents and optionally provide a comment.


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Workflows

For more complex requirements than simply approving or rejecting documents, SharePoint provides in-built logic in the form of workflows. Workflows can be created using SharePoint Designer and added to any library. Workflows are designed to allow processes to be mapped to SharePoint logic e.g. a new school policy gets approved by senior staff, circulated to all staff members before being approved by governors.

Before beginning to create a workflow in SharePoint it is sometimes useful to map the process. Using the example above, a process map can be created as below:


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When this is converted into a simple SharePoint Workflow it would look similar to this example.

To begin creating a workflow using SharePoint Designer 2010:

1. Open a site.

2. Select Workflows from the Site Objects list.

3. Click List Workflow.

4. Select the list or library which the workflow should apply to.

5. In the pop-up window, enter a name and description then click OK.

A new blank workflow is created, ready for logic to be added.

SharePoint workflows are built around steps, conditions and actions. Steps are containers for grouping actions and conditions into logical units and can be embedded in other steps to create sub steps. SharePoint 2010 also includes a special type of step called an impersonation step. Workflows run with the same permissions as the user who initiates the workflow and sometimes these users may not have the correct permissions to perform some of the actions, to deal with this issue, actions which are included in impersonation steps run with the permissions of workflow author instead of the initiator.


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When using SharePoint Designer to create or edit workflows, the current insertion point is shown as a flashing orange line - any steps, condition or actions will be added at this point. In the example below, the next item would be added in step 1 between the Start SLT Approval and ‘Copy item’ actions.

Conditions in SharePoint Designer

There are two ways to view workflow conditions in SharePoint Designer: by clicking on the conditions button in the insert group at the top of the edit workflow screen or by double-clicking in a step and using the search box which appears to search for the required condition.

All of these conditions are available for list workflows, irrespective of the list of content type associated with the workflow.

If value equals value - compares one value against another, values can be static text, dynamic strings and lookups of variables, context information or SharePoint fields. It is also possible to select operators other than equals for this condition, including contains or ‘is greater than’ or ‘is less than’.

If field equals value - this condition is displayed similarly to if value equals value, however the first item allows the selection of any field in the list that the workflow is associated with.


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Created by specific person - checks if an item was created by a specific user. The user can be specified as an email address or selected from SharePoint, Exchange or Active Directory users. The username or email address provided is case sensitive.

Created in a specific date span - this checks if an item was created between specific dates and can use the current date, a specific date or a lookup.

Modified by a specific person - use this condition to check if an item was modified by a specified user. The user can be specified as an email address or selected from SharePoint, Exchange or Active Directory Users, just as with the ‘created by a specific person’ condition.

Modified in a specific date span - checks if an item was modified between specified dates and can use the current date, a specific date or a lookup just as with the ‘created in a specific date span’ condition

Person is a valid SharePoint user - this checks if a specified user is a member of the SparePoint site. It is possible to include anyone outside the domain in workflows using SharePoint Designer 2010 (known as external participants) and this condition allows you to check if a user being assigned a task is a member of the site.

Title field contains keywords - checks if the title field for an item contains a specific word that can either be specified directly or use a lookup field or variable. It is not possible to include multiple keywords in this condition, if multiple keywords are required use the ‘if field equals value’ condition to search the title field with appropriate operators between the keywords (|| for or or && for and).

There are also some extra conditions that, for security reasons, are only available in an impersonation step, these are:

Check list item permissions - this condition checks if the users have at least the specified permission level on a selected list. For this condition to evaluate as true, the users must have at least the permissions that the permissions levels provide, however they do not need to get these permissions from the specified permission level.

Check list item permission levels - checks if the users have the specified permissions levels for an item in the list. For this condition to evaluate as true the user must have the permission level specified.

Finally, there are some conditions that are only available when the workflow is associated with a document library

The file size is a specific range of kilobytes - this checks if the file size of a document is between the specified sizes, in kilobytes. The specified sizes are not included in the evaluation so a check for files between 2048 and 4096 would not


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evaluate as true for files with size 2048kb or 4096kb, only sizes in the range in between.

The file type is a specific type - checks if the file type of the current item is of the specified type.

Actions in SharePoint Designer

As with conditions, there are two ways to view workflow actions in SharePoint Designer, by clicking on the actions button in the insert group at the top of the edit workflow screen or by double-clicking in a step and using the search box which appears to search for the required action.

Actions are grouped into categories based on their area of application in a workflow.

Core actions

Action Description

Add a Comment

Allow comments to be placed in a workflow for documentation.

Add Time to Date

Addition or subtraction of Minutes, Hours, Days, Months, or Years to a Date field.

Do Calculation Simple arithmetic functions such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and determining a remainder on two values in the workflow.

Log to History List

Allows items to be written to the hidden History List – is very useful for showing the progress of a workflow process.

Pause for Duration

Causes the workflow to wait a specified amount of time before proceeding to the next action. This is not exact, but will wait at least the specified time before continuing.

Pause Until Date

Causes the workflow to wait until a specified date and time before proceeding to the next action. Again this is not exact but will wait until at least the specified date and time before continuing.

Send an Email Sends an HTML email to a user or set of users.

Send Document to Repository

Sends the document to another repository – for example another document library in a different site collection which functions as an archive.


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Set Time Portion of Date/Time Field

Overrides the time portion of a Date/Time lookup value. It leaves the date the same but changes the time, and stores the result in a new variable.

Set Workflow Variable

Directly sets the value of a variable.

Set Workflow Status

Sets the status of the workflow to Cancelled, Approved, Rejected, or a custom status.

Stop Workflow Stops the execution of the workflow immediately.

List actions

Action Description

Add List Item Permissions

Specify Users and/or Groups and give them a specific level of permissions on any item in the site. This action can only run as part of an impersonation step.

Check In Item Checks in and sets Check In Comment.

Check Out Item

Locks an item to the person who performs action (Checks Out the document).

Copy List Item Copies items between two compatible types of lists e.g. from one document library to another.

Create List Item

Creates a new item in any list in the site and returns the ID of the new list item into a variable.

Declare Record

Declares the current item as a record, which (depending on settings) will protect the record from being edited or deleted.

Delete Drafts Deletes all minor versions (drafts) from the current item.

Delete Item Removes the specified item from the list or library.

Delete Previous Versions

Deletes all versions that are not the current version of the item.

Discard Check Out Item

Undoes the check-out and reverts back to the state it was in before being checked out.

Inherit List Item Parent Permissions

Inherit the permissions of the item’s immediate parent. This action can only run as part of an impersonation step.

Remove List Item Permissions

Specify Users and/or Groups and remove a specific level of permissions to any item on the site. This action can only run as part of an impersonation step.


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Replace List Item Permissions

Replace the permission level of the specified item on the site. This action can only run as part of an impersonation step.

Set Content Approval Status

Changes the status of the content approval of the current item and sets the comment.

Set Field in Current Item

Sets the value of the specified field to either a hard-coded value or a lookup value.

Undeclare Record

Undeclare the current item as a record – makes the item behave as any other items in the list or library.

Update List Item

Enables fields of an existing item in the site to be changed.

Wait for Change in Document Check Out Status

Waits for the document to be in a certain checkout state, such as Checked Out, Checked in, Unlocked by document editor, or Discarded.

Wait for Field change in Current Item

Pauses the workflow until a field in the current item matches a particular condition.

Task actions

Action Description

Assign a Form to a Group

Allows the creation of a survey which everyone in a group must complete before the workflow continues to the next action.

Assign a To-do Item

Creates a standard task that must be completed before the workflow continues to the next action.

Collect Data from a User

Queries a single user with custom fields which must be completed before the workflow continues to the next action. The ID of the task created is assigned to a workflow variable.

Start Approval Process

An entire tasking process based on the built-in Approval workflow template. This action allows various pieces of the process to be defined using the Task Process Designer.

Start Custom Task Process

Similar to the Start Approval Process action, however this action lets you define the process from scratch.

Start Feedback Process

An entire tasking process based on the built-in Collect Feedback workflow template. This action allows various pieces of the process to be defined using the Task Process Designer.

Utility actions


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Action Description

Extract Substring from End of String

Copies the specified number of characters from the end of a string and saves the result in a new variable.

Extract Substring from Index of String

Copies a part of the string from a certain place within the string and saves the result in a new variable.

Extract Substring from Start of String

Copies the specified number of characters from the start of a string and saves the result in a new variable.

Extract Substring of String from Index with Length

Copies a part of the string from a certain place with a certain length within the string and saves the result in a new variable.

Find Interval Between Dates

Determines an interval in Hours, Minutes, or Days, between two dates and saves the result in a new variable.

Relational actions

Action DescriptionLook up a Manager of a User

Retrieves the manager of the specified user from the User Profile database.

Document Set Actions

Action Description

Capture a Version of the Document Set

Creates a new version for the Document Set.

Send Document Set to Repository

Sends the document set to another repository – for example a document library in another site collection.

Set Content Approval Status for the Document Set

Changes the content approval status and sets a comment.

Start Document Set Approval Process

An entire tasking process based on the built-in Approval workflow template, which works on an entire Document Set. This action allows various pieces of the process to be defined using the Task Process Designer.


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SharePoint Search

Both SharePoint Online and onsite SharePoint include powerful search features, allowing users to search an individual SharePoint site, a Site Collection or even a whole SharePoint deployment. The built in search also has the ability to index other sites, Exchange public folders and shared drives as well as perform federated searches on other locations.

Every page in SharePoint has, by default, a search bar included, which gives access to basic site search functionality. To make use of some of the more advanced search features, a search center can be added. As discussed earlier, SharePoint online already has a default search center created.

To add a search center to an onsite SharePoint installation using SharePoint central administration:

1. Click Create Site Collections in the Application Management section.

2. Enter a title and website address.

Site collections can exist under either the /sites/ or /my/personal/ folder by default, however custom paths can be added.

3. In the Template Selection section choose Enterprise Search Cente’ from the Enterprise tab.

4. Specify a primary administrator and optionally a secondary administrator (these must be users, not groups).

5. Specify a quota template.

For the rest of this section, it is assumed that the search center site collection has been created at /sites/SearchCenter

When the enterprise search center has been created, site collection can then be configured to use it to perform searches. This allows keywords, synonyms and best bets to be configured in one central location and also gives users the option to search all sites.

To configure a site collection to use the enterprise search centre:

1. At the top level site for the collection, select Site Settings from the Site Actions menu.

2. In the Site Collection Administration section click Search Settings.

3. Select ‘Enable custom scopes’ and enter the URL to the search center e.g. /sites/SearchCenter/Pages/results.aspx.


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All sites in the collection will now use the search centre to find and display results.

Keywords, synonyms and best bets

SharePoint supports the creation of keywords, which can be used to return specific information alongside the standard search results. Keywords can also be linked to synonyms and best bets.

There may be times when a single keyword can be referenced using different words or phrases. For example, someone might search for ordering, finance and bursar and be looking for the same thing - the bursars office. Synonyms allow these extra words to be associated with a single keyword and return the same results. A keyword called Bursars Office can be created with the synonyms ordering, finance and bursar.

Following the same example, when someone searches for Bursars Office (or one of the synonyms configured earlier), the first result returned should always be a link to the SharePoint site for the bursars office. This can be accomplished using best bets. These work in a similar way to sponsored links in a search engine and will appear at the top of search results for the specified keyword as shown below:

Keywords should be configured in the SearchCenter site collection created earlier.

To add keywords:


2. Click ‘Search keywords’ in the Site Collection Administration section.


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3. Click Add Keyword.

Synonyms and best bets can be configured while adding the keyword, however they can also be edited afterwards simply by editing the keyword properties.

Searching other locations

With onsite SharePoint, it is possible to search many different locations and return items from all configured locations in a single set of search results. SharePoint 2010 supports searching file shares, Exchange public folders and other websites (either by crawling those websites itself of using federated search). These features are not available in SharePoint online currently.

Crawlers are used to index data for all searches, except for federated search locations, where the query is simply handed off to the third party website and the results returned. Federated searches can be used to get results from any site which supports the OpenSearch standard (e.g. Wikipedia).

To configure a federated search location using SharePoint central administration:

1. Select Manage Service Applications from the Application Management section.

2. Click Search Service Application.

3. Select Federated Locations from the Queries and Results section of the left-hand panel.

4. Click Import Location.

5. Browse to the location of the .OSDX search connector.

6. Click OK to import the connector.

A list of available search connectors can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-GB/sharepoint//ff727944.aspx

To search Exchange public folders using SharePoint:

1. Select Manage Service Applications from the Application Management section.

2. Click Search Service Application.

3. Select Crawl Rules from the Crawling section of the left-hand panel.

4. Click New Crawl Rule.

5. Enter the public folder URL as the path and tick Match Case.


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http://technet.microsoft.com/en-GB/sharepoint//ff727944.aspx




6. In the Crawl Configuration section choose ‘Include all items in this path’ and check Crawl Complex URLs.

7. Click OK.

8. Select Content Sources from the Crawling section of the left-hand panel.

9. Click New Content Source.

10.Enter a name for the source and select Exchange Public Folders as the content source type.

11.Enter the public folder URL as the start address.

12.Select a crawl schedule.

13.Click ‘Start full crawl of this content source’ then click OK.

When the initial crawl has completed, results from the Exchange public folders will start to appear in search results for users who have at least read permission on the public folder.

To crawl another website, follow the instructions above, using the sites URL instead of the Exchange public folder URL as required and select Web Sites instead of Exchange Public Folders at step ten.

To search a file share using SharePoint:

1. Select Content Sources from the Crawling section of the left-hand panel.

2. Click New Content Source.

3. Enter a name for the source and select File Share as the content source type.

4. Enter the UNC path to the shared folder as the start address.

5. Select a crawl schedule.

6. Click ‘Start full crawl of this content source’ then click OK.

Tagging and notes

Notes and tags attached to content can make it easier to find relevant content and make others aware of helpful resources. Tags can be applied to both documents and pages and can improve the quality of search results as users are able to filter search results against specific tags.

When viewing content on a SharePoint site, there are buttons which can be used to apply tags and notes. Content can simply be tagged using the I Like It button which


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creates a link directly to the document or page from the users My Site or by clicking Tags & Notes which allows custom tags to be entered. As tags are typed, SharePoint will provide suggestions of previously used tags. Tags can be made private by clicking the ‘Private: Other people cannot see that you tagged this item’ - the tag text is still public, but the name of the user who tagged the content is hidden. Notes can be added within the same Tags & Notes pop-up using the Note Board tab. Notes written by other users also appear in this location.

Summary

SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Online allow easy to use, yet powerful, online collaborative websites to be quickly created, which support teams can then easily manage using built in web based administration features and the free SharePoint Designer software to:

• Create site collections and specify collection administrators using SharePoint central administration or the SharePoint online administration centre.

• Define audiences to target content to specific users and collect relevant content into a central view using the content query web part.

• Use the free SharePoint Designer to quickly set up the site structure, permissions and inheritance.

• Customise master pages, page layout and CSS styles to apply the school’s online look and feel.

• Save sites as templates and use these to quickly deploy future pre-customised sites.

• Set up an approval process for document libraries and define who can approve or reject documents.

• Map school processes to logic and task based workflows to allow for automation within SharePoint.

• Configure powerful search features to search SharePoint, Exchange public folders, file shares and third party websites (onsite SharePoint only).

SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint online can be customised to meet almost any online collaboration, document management or content management requirements. By using the pillars of SharePoint - Sites, Content and Search, anything is possible!


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notes - getting the most from sharepoint

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