Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 Unleashed

2017-07-07 02:10:07

One of the greatest benefits of WSS to SBS end users is the ability to customize their WSS site(s) on-the-fly to meet their needs. Users can customize a wide range of items, from adding new lists, adding/removing fields from existing lists, creating custom views of list data, and creating personalized pages.

Applying a Theme to the Companyweb Interface

A simple way of customizing the Companyweb interface is to apply a different theme to the site. By default, WSS ships with 21 different themes including the default blue theme. To apply a different theme to the Companyweb site, access Site Settings. Within the Site Settings page, under the Customization heading, you see a Apply Theme to Site link. Follow this link to see a list of installed themes you can choose from, as well as a preview of each theme. Figure 14.5 shows the default Companyweb page after applying the Compass theme.

Figure 14.5. Companyweb home page after applying the Compass theme.

Creating and Managing Objects and Lists

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the default Companyweb implementation on SBS includes several predefined objects. One of the truly great aspects of WSS is the capability to customize almost everything about the site, including these predefined objects. Not only can you customize the predefined objects, but you also can create your own objects to meet your unique needs.

WSS includes several object templates for you to choose from when creating new objects, including document libraries, picture libraries, links, contacts, events, tasks, and custom lists. Although each of these objects includes predefined fields, you can easily customize any object by adding and removing fields to meet your needs. To customize the field list for an object, open the object (either from the QuickLinks pane on the main page or from the Documents and Lists page); then click on Modify Settings and Columns in the left-hand pane to open the Customize page. On the Customize page, under the Columns section, you will notice links for adding a column and changing the order of columns. You can also edit or delete a column by clicking on the column name.

When adding a new column, you have several options to choose from as far as formatting and contents are concerned. For example, your new field can be a single line of text, a date/time value, a number, currency, or a yes/no value. In addition, you can also have a choice field, a lookup field, or a calculated value. Although it may not be obvious at first, these last three choices provide amazing flexibility when it comes to building SharePoint solutions for your organization. For example, assume that you have decided to use a SharePoint document library to store documents relating to company projects. However, you have specific requirements for viewing and finding documents. Your project documents fall into one of three main categories: correspondence, quotes, and technical specifications. You want to be able to view all documents of a given type (for example, quotes) for all projects; likewise, you want to be able to view all documents for a specific project in chronological order.

To meet your project document management goals, you decide to create additional fields in your document library to store specific data about your documents (also known as metadata, or data about your data). You create two additional fields in your document library:

Document TypeA choice field formatted as a drop-down list with three options: Correspondence, Quote, Technical Spec. Additionally, you require this field to have a value.

ProjectLet's assume that you have already created a SharePoint list for your projectsProject Number, Customer, Start/End Dates, and Project Manager. For the project field in your document library, you create a lookup field that looks up the Project Number field from your Projects list.

Now that you have added these two fields to your document library, you can begin to upload documents and fill in the metadata fields. As you populate your document library with project documents, you can use the Filter button to filter your view, to only show documents for a specific project, for example.

Best Practice: Use Metadata Instead of Subfolders in Document Libraries

Most users are familiar with using multiple folders within a file system to sort and organize documents into similar types or subjects. As a result, users new to WSS and the Companyweb document libraries will feel the need to create subfolders to organize their documents. The problem with subfolders is that they limit what qualities can be used to sort and view documents.

Although many users are familiar with using folders, they often would benefit from being able to sort and view their documents in ways not possible when using a traditional directory structure to organize their files. For example, an organization may have a directory structure where each customer has a folder, then in each customer folder is a folder for each project for that customer, and each project folder has separate folders for document typesfor example, quotes, correspondence, and so on. Although this structure makes it easy to find a specific document when you know the customer, project, and document type, this structure does not allow you to easily view all correspondence to a specific customer for all projects. This is where using metadata instead of subfolders becomes beneficial.

By using metadata to identify your documents, you still can easily find a specific document, only instead of drilling down through subfolders, you filter the document library view to show only the project and document type you're looking for. Additionally, if you want to view your documents in less traditional waysfor example, all correspondence for a specific customer, or all quotes created on a specific dayyou have that ability at your fingertips as well, simply by filtering your view on the metadata fields.

Creating New Views for Objects and Lists

We've mentioned how you can filter object views to get exactly the data you want. However, if you have certain filters you or your users are always entering, you will start to lose productivity as you are constantly filtering your views. The good news for you is that not only does WSS allow you to define custom views, but you also have more flexibility in how you sort, filter, and display your data with custom views than you do with regular filters.

Let's use the project document library example again. You access this document library multiple times per day, and you find that 95% of the time you are filtering the view to show only documents you created. To create a new view, open your document library and click on Modify Columns and Settings in the left pane. At the bottom of the page that opens, you see a list of current views, as well as a link to Create a New View. When you click to create a new view, you see you have several options to customize your view. First, you need to name your view, which should be something meaningful because this name will appear in the list of available views. You can also select whether you want this view to be a public view or a personal view. A personal view appears only in the list of available views for the user who created it, whereas a public view is available to all users. Next you can select what columns you want to see in your view, as well as the order you want the columns displayed. After selecting the columns to view, you can specify how you want the view sorted (for example, ascending on created date), filtered (for example, Created By equals <your display name>), and grouped (for example, ascending on project number). Note that for many of these options, you can select multiple fields. For example, you can have your view show multiple grouping levels, grouping first on project and next on document type as shown in Figure 14.6.

Figure 14.6. A custom document library view with multiple grouping levels.

It is important to note that when creating custom views, WSS includes two global variables when defining filters: [Today] and [Me]. [Today] obviously returns the current date, and [Me] returns the current user. In the custom view example used previously, if you wanted this custom view to be available to each of your users (allowing them to see the documents they created, grouped by project and document type), you could either help each of them to create a personalized view with a filter value of Created By equals < user display name>, or you could create one public view with a filter value of Created By equals [Me], which provides the same results.

Best Practice: Premium Customers: Upgrade Your SharePoint Database Engine to Full SQL Server

Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition includes Microsoft SQL Server 2000. By default, Companyweb on SBS uses the Microsoft SQL Data Engine (MSDE), which is the little brother to full-fledged Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

The primary benefit of upgrading your SharePoint data engine to full SQL is the ability to enable full-text search on your Companyweb site. Enabling full-text search not only allows you to search list contents within your Companyweb site but also allows you to perform full-text searches against indexed contents of any document stored in a SharePoint document library.

To upgrade your SharePoint data engine to full SQL and enable full-text search for SharePoint, follow the instructions in the premiuminstallsteps.htm file on the Small Business Server Premium Technologies CD.

By default, SharePoint is capable of indexing Microsoft Office documents to support full-text search. If you want to have SharePoint index other document types (for example, .pdf files), you need to install an iFilter for that document type. Note that most vendors (including Adobe) provide iFilters free for download.

Creating Personalized Pages

In addition to creating personalized views for SharePoint libraries and lists, users can also personalize most web part pages on a SharePoint site, including the companyweb main page. For example, on the Companyweb main page, you have a link for Modify Shared Page. If you choose to add web parts or design this page, the changes made are visible for everyone. However, if you click on Modify Shared Page and choose Personal View, you will notice that the Modify Shared Page link changes to Modify My Page. As a result, any web parts you add or any other design changes you make affect your personal page only.

Understanding and Working with Web Parts

So you've heard the term before, but what exactly is a web part? Simply stated, a SharePoint web part is a container for displaying information on a web part page, which is nothing more than a SharePoint web page that holds web parts. By default, any list or library you create in a SharePoint site can be displayed as a web part. The Companyweb main page is itself a web part page, with the SBS image, Links list, and Announcements list each being a web part.

Customizing a web part page is simple. As mentioned earlier, you can customize the Companyweb main page by clicking on Modify Shared Page and selecting either Add Web Parts to add a new web part to the page, or Design This Page to rearrange existing web parts on the page. Whether adding new web parts to the page or simply rearranging existing web parts, the process is literally drag-and-drop.

As mentioned previously, any list or library you create in a SharePoint site can be viewed as a web part. In addition, you can customize a web part view just like you can customize a list or library view. First select Modify My Page and then browse for a web part. In your company web part directory, find the document library or list that you want to display, and drag that web part to your Companyweb page. After the web part is on the page, you can access the web part menu by clicking on the down arrow icon at the right side of the web part header bar and selecting Modify Web Part. The right-hand pane of the page that was displaying your available web parts changes to show options for this one particular web part. By default, the selected view field displays Current View; however, you can select any of the views you may have already created for this particular list or document library. Alternatively, you can click on Edit the Current View to customize the view to meet your needs.

Besides being able to display SharePoint lists and libraries as web parts, there are also many third-party custom web parts that provide a variety of functionality, from displaying data from foreign systems (for example, accounting applications or even Outlook/Exchange) to displaying current information such as weather and news to simply giving you more options on how you display your native SharePoint items. For example, many free SharePoint web parts are available online, from Office integration web parts from Microsoft to the MSNBC web parts available by default in the SharePoint Online Gallery to Tim Heuer's RSS FeedReader web part available at www.smilinggoat.com. In addition to free web parts, a growing number of companies sell high-quality web parts, which range from the effective and affordable, such as Programs Unlimited's (www.programsunlimited.com) calendar web part, which lets you have a web part calendar view of any library or list with a date column, complete with color coding, to CorasWorks' (www.corasworks.net) lineup of impressive workflow and integration web parts, which includes its Outlook Integration web part.

Best Practice: Create a Separate Document Library to Store Your Web Part Pages

Web part pages created within the SharePoint interface must be stored in a document library. To keep your SharePoint site as organized as possible, a best practice is to create a separate document library solely for web part pages instead of using one of your existing document libraries.

In addition to keeping your site better organized, creating a separate document library for web part pages also gives you better control over those pages. By using a separate document library, you can customize the permissions on that document library (as discussed earlier in this chapter) to prevent users from deleting web part pages from the library. Note that users you want to be able to create web part pages will need to have Web Designer permissions for your SharePoint site.

Besides the Companyweb main page, you can create additional web part pages. To do so, begin by clicking on the Create link at the top of the main page to open the Create page. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click to create a new Web Part Page. The New Web Part Page page allows you to enter a name for your new web part page, select a layout, and choose which document library you want to save the page in. Click Create to create your new web part page. When the page opens, you can place web parts where you want them to build your own custom web part page. One example use for a web part page would be to place multiple copies of Tim Heuer's RSS FeedReader all over the page, with each individual web part subscribing to different RSS feeds, thus creating your own RSS feed page for you and your users.