Creating a Custom User Site Provisioning Solution with SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 2 of 2)

Summary: Examine new capabilities built in to the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Edition, which enable business process automation and simplify the business process. This article is part 2 of 2.

Custom Permission Request Workflow

One of the most innovative features of the new MOSS 2007 Enterprise Edition is the workflow feature. The new workflow capabilities are extensive, including built-in support for the following types of workflow:

• Approval

  
  

• Collect Feedback

  
  

• Collect Signatures

  
  

• Disposition Approval

  
  

• Group Approval

  
  

• Translation Management

  
  

• Issue Tracking

As a site administrator, you can instantiate these built-in workflows on any entity within MOSS with a few simple configuration steps.

However, for the permission request solution, a custom workflow is required to emulate properly the manual business process that the workflow is replacing. The workflow must accommodate sending various e-mail messages throughout the process, and depending on whether the request is approved, generate XML to be processed to add the requestor to the Members group within MOSS.

MOSS also provides a mechanism to create custom workflows. There are two primary developer tools to use for this: Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation. Using SharePoint Designer allows a business analyst or a developer to use the workflow activities that come with Windows Workflow Foundation and MOSS. The built-in workflow actions that you can use by default in SharePoint Designer include the following:

• Setting list metadata

  
  

• Creating, copying, deleting, or changing list items (including documents)

  
  

• Checking items in or out

  
  

• Pausing, starting, or stopping the workflow

  
  

• Sending e-mail messages

  
  

• Setting the moderation status of an item

  
  

• Setting an item's metadata

  
  

• Assigning tasks

You can create custom workflows with SharePoint Designer by selecting an existing document library or list within an existing MOSS or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site, and then on the File menu, point to New and then click Workflow. The workflow designer wizard appears, allowing you to create a custom workflow without writing a single line of code. The workflow designer allows you to add conditions and actions to the workflow to determine when to execute specific actions.

For example, using the built-in actions mentioned earlier, you could develop a custom workflow that checks a metadata column of a particular document in a document library, and based on the value send an e-mail message or assign a task to the appropriate team member. In any case, SharePoint Designer allows for great flexibility in designing custom workflows without the need to write code.

Using Visual Studio 2005 with the Windows Workflow Foundation add-in allows you to create custom workflow actions and complex custom workflows. The add-in for Visual Studio imports Windows Workflow Foundation activities that are available by default for you to use in designing workflows. These activities are included in a Workflow toolbox and you can drag them to the design surface of the custom workflow. The next section examines this in more detail and describes the development of the custom workflow activity used in the permission request solution.

Figures 13a and 13b show the built-in workflow activities that are included with the Windows Workflow Foundation add-in for Visual Studio in the Workflow toolbox. Figure 13a shows the built-in activities for a custom state-machine workflow project.

Figure 13a. State-machine built-in workflow activity

Figure 13b shows the built-in activities for a custom sequential workflow project. For more information, see the workflow resources in Additional Resources.

Figure 13b. Sequential Workflow built-in workflow activity in Visual Studio 2005 toolbox

Although most of the actions that must be included in this permission request workflow are available as standard workflow activities with Windows Workflow Foundation and MOSS, a custom activity was developed to generate the XML file from the submitted request, which could then be processed on other servers within the SharePoint farm.

The custom workflow activity was developed with Visual Studio 2005 and Windows Workflow Foundation Extensions add-in. The activity was then deployed to the MOSS environment and used within a custom workflow. The custom workflow was developed by using SharePoint Designer.

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Creating a Custom User Site Provisioning Solution with SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 1 of 2)

Summary: Examine new capabilities built into the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Edition, which enable business process automation and simplify the business process. This article is part 1 of 2.

Overview of a Custom User Site Provisioning Solution

This article examines some of the new capabilities that are built into the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Enterprise Edition, which enable business process automation and simplify the business process. This article demonstrates the tight integration between the Office SharePoint Server 2007 portal, including Microsoft Office InfoPath Forms Services and the Business Data Catalog, and the various other 2007 Office system applications and features, such as InfoPath 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. In addition, the solution that accompanies this article shows how accessing and manipulating various SharePoint Server components programmatically—such as the Member group and user permissions, and Business Data Catalog and legacy line-of-business (LOB) data sources—with the built-in SharePoint Server APIs enable this type of business process automation. The automation was developed primarily by using Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007 Second Edition and the Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation. Additionally, you can develop traditional .NET Framework console and Windows Forms applications to make use of the SharePoint Server APIs and 2007 Office system APIs that will also facilitate the automation and simplification of business processes within the enterprise.

Employee SharePoint Permissions within the Enterprise

Most organizations have an approval process in place that allows employees’ managers to approve any costs that are associated with using new IT resources implemented in the enterprise. Usually the employee who requires access to the new system initiates the process, which spans several approval cycles by various managers, as well as a long delay and many e-mail messages. This is often a monotonous process, which consumes not only the time of the employee, but also that of the approving manager.

This article presents a solution that integrates Active Directory domain controllers, LOB data, InfoPath Forms Services, and workflow with the 2007 Office system to support the submission and automation of such requests. The solution uses employee information contained within the Active Directory domain controller and the human resources database to support the submission of the request. The data pulled from these two sources provides all the employee’s relevant information and the approving cost center manager’s information. In this scenario, an employee uses a solution based on InfoPath 2007, and the Business Data Catalog and InfoPath Forms Services features of MOSS 2007 Enterprise Edition to submit a request for permission to create SharePoint sites within the enterprise SharePoint portal.

The Business Data Catalog is a new, powerful feature of MOSS, which allows developers to surface LOB data up to MOSS from disparate legacy systems and LOB systems that exist within the enterprise. By default, the Business Data Catalog can connect to Oracle, CRM, and SAP databases, and other systems without extra development. The new and powerful InfoPath Forms Services feature of MOSS is a browser-based, thin-client run-time version of InfoPath, which allows users to read and complete InfoPath forms through the browser when the forms are integrated with MOSS.

The solution also allows the employees’ cost center manager to review the requests submitted, and approve or reject them. After the cost center manager reviews the request, the custom workflow and custom workflow activity, designed with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation, automatically sends out the appropriate e-mail messages and adds the appropriate permissions for the employee within the SharePoint portal.

To clarify the overall process of this custom permission request solution, the following diagram depicts the entire process flow logically and all of the various pieces and steps that make up the process.

Figure 1. Overview of entire permission request process

The Request InfoPath Form

The main user-centric piece of this process is the employee request form. This request form is an InfoPath form that the employee submits with the relevant data needed to review the request. Many of the fields on the form are pre-populated when the employee creates a request, to ensure data integrity throughout the process and to eliminate the amount of data that the employee is required to provide.

Figure 2 shows the request form that is used by the employees. The form pre-populates the following fields when the user creates a request:

• Employee NT ID

  
  

• Employee Full Name

  
  

• Employee Email

  
  

• Employee Cost Center

  
  

• Cost Center Approver Name

  
  

• Cost Center Approver Email

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Integrating Siebel CRM with Office SharePoint Server 2007

Summary: Learn how to integrate Siebel CRM 7.8 with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Introduction to Siebel CRM Integration with SharePoint Server 2007

The enterprise domains of most organizations usually have heterogeneous applications, and key business data is available to the users across the applications such as Siebel CRM, SAP, or PeopleSoft. In such scenarios, there is a need to have the key data available to users in a single-stop Web portal. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers one such portal to organizations around the world.

This article provides prescriptive guidance on the appropriate approach to build an integration solution between Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Siebel CRM 7.8 by using Web services. After integration, Office SharePoint Server 2007 users can view key data from the various modules in the Siebel system.

Integration Scope

The scope of this integration is to provide a read-only view of the data retrieved from line-of-business (LOB) applications—in this case Siebel CRM. How to insert and delete data in Siebel CRM from Office SharePoint Server 2007 is beyond the scope of this article.

Integration Benefits and Values

You can achieve the following benefits from this integration solution.

• The solution provides a one-stop data access of different LOB applications.

  
  

• The solution requires no training for SharePoint users in Siebel because they can access the Siebel data on the SharePoint portal.

  
  

• Office SharePoint Server 2007 features enable Siebel data to improve the efficiency of the SharePoint users, and improve the level of service provided to the customer.

  
  

• Users of Office SharePoint Server 2007 can access the different Siebel features from the Office SharePoint Server portal easily.

Solution Configuration Overview

The Business Data Catalog, a new integration feature in Office SharePoint Server 2007, provides the means to integrate data directly to LOB applications through Web services. The Business Data Catalog enables users to retrieve and display key business data from LOB applications in sites, lists, and user profiles within an Office SharePoint Server portal without any custom coding. The Business Data Catalog also supports features such as specific search, full text search, filtered data views, and so on.

Figure 1 provides a high-level overview of the participating components for this integration solution.

Figure 1. Solution Overview diagram

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Item-Level Auditing with SharePoint Server 2007

Summary: Learn about the auditing support built into Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and how to extend this support with the custom Item-Level Auditing solution.

Auditing with SharePoint Server 2007
Many companies and government agencies have policies and regulations that require them to track carefully where and how users gain access to important records and documents. In particular, they need to maintain audit logs that detail events that track data such as which users viewed and updated records and documents, and when these events occurred.

Previously, Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 did not provide extensive audit support. For example, you could not use components to audit access to pages or access to items within lists. Furthermore, event handlers in Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 document libraries fired only when a document within a library was updated. Therefore, event handlers in Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 document libraries provided no support for auditing events that occur when users view documents.

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Extending the Excel Services Programmability Framework

This first version of Excel Services, available in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, provides a simple yet-powerful programmability framework that you can customize to meet your business needs. However, because it is a first version, you might encounter certain limitations common to version 1 technologies and features. This article discusses how you can overcome these limitations, and how to also expand the following built-in functionality for your Excel Services solutions:

• Consumption of SharePoint lists



• Use of query tables on Excel Services



• Creation of external workbook references



• Exploitation of user-defined functions (UDFs) compatibility with the Microsoft Office Excel 2007 client application

In addition, the article shows how to use SQL write-back to further expand this built-in functionality.

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Integrating SharePoint Server 2007 with Community Server Membership Databases

The business scenario discussed in this article is how to enable Community Server site users to log on to sites that are running Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, by using the same credentials they use to log on to their Community Server site. Much of this article is based on Steve Peschka's post on the official Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies blog.

I recommend reading through his blog to get a better understanding of how this works by using SharePoint Products and Technologies.

The blog entry describes how to integrate the membership database of Community Server with the security model used in SharePoint Products and Technologies.

This article assumes a limited knowledge of Community Server, SharePoint Products and Technologies, and Microsoft ASP.NET.

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Creating a Web Service Connection by Using the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor

Overview of Business Data Catalog Definition Editor

The Business Data Catalog in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 exposes and incorporates line-of-business (LOB) data into other baseline portal functionality, such as lists and Enterprise Search. To incorporate this data into your portal site, you must build an application definition file, which is an XML file that identifies where the data is stored (either in a database, or as a Web service) and what format the data is stored in (for example, what the data types and primary keys are).


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The simple way to reset MOSS page caching

This is so easy solution and will not take time, just reset the IIS from the DOS prompt “iisreset”

But this is not recommended if you are working in a shared environment.

Customising SharePoint Search (MOSS only)

Thought would kill 2 birds with one stone here. First is an example of adding Microsoft Live Search results to the SharePoint Search page. Second is adding custom list/document property value to the search results summary.

Both can be seen in the screen shot below…




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MOSS History

1997 > Site Server

1999 > Digital Dashboard Starter Kit with Nuggets (Web Parts)

Microsoft Upgraded Digital Dashboard to be SPS 2001

2001 > Microsoft acquired content management vendor compass, and re-branded the product CMS 2001

2002 > CMS 2002 Released

2003 > WSS and SPS 2003

2003 > Microsoft Share point 2003

2007 > 2007 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007)

MOSS - Enabling and managing social networks (for business use) with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

While the Microsoft / Facebook expanded partnership announcement made earlier today doesn't have anything to do with SharePoint, the publicity it generated will likely get a lot more people to start thinking or asking about the value of social networking capabilities within an enterprise and between a company and its business partners as well as its customers. Eric Charran (Senior Consultant in Microsoft Consulting Services), Dino Dato-on (SharePoint Ranger), and Greg Lang (Program Manager for Microsoft Enterprise Services Communities Tools and Infrastructure) have written a soon to be published white paper that addresses the topic of the importance of social networking in an organization and how to properly implement MOSS 2007 as a social networking solution. Excerpted below are key portions of the white paper, which I hope will get you to think about MOSS 2007 as your default option for enabling and managing social networks for business use.
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MOSS - Add custom workflow activities to SharePoint Designer

Carlos Segura Sanz mentioned in his blog this useful article

Without a doubts one of the best things of MOSS 2007 is the new SharePoint Designer, and within him, the workflow designer, that allows us speedy and simple form to design workflows.

As I have commented in other occasions, if we wish to make more complex workflows, or state machines, we need to use Visual Studio.

SharePoint Designer, allows us to make sequential workflows with predetermined activities. Nevertheless, the possibility to extend the basic activities exists and we can extend the functionality of ours workflows without to write them completely in Visual Studio.

Out-the-box, SharePoint Designer includes 22 actions.





Those actions are defined in the file WSS.ACTIONS, that resides in the directory “C:\Program Files\Common files\Microsoft Shared \web server extensions\12\1033\TEMPLAT\Workflow”.

In this file, the conditions and the actions that appear within SharePoint Designer are defined.

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MOSS - Create a site column

A site column is a reusable column definition, or template, that you can assign to multiple lists across multiple SharePoint sites. Site columns are useful if your organization wants to establish some consistent settings across lists and libraries. You can share the settings across multiple lists and libraries so that you don't have to re-create the settings each time. For example, suppose you define a site column named Customer. Users can add that column to their content types or list. This ensures that the column has the same attributes, at least to start with, wherever it appears.

When you add an item to the list or library, you fill out a form in which each column is represented by a field. Each field is labeled with the name of the column. If you provide a description for the column, the description appears below the field. You can use the description to help team members fill out the form by explaining what kind of information goes in the field.

1. On the portal site home page, click Site actions, point to Site Settings, and then click Modify All Site Settings.


2. On the Site Settings page, under Galleries, click Site columns.


3. On the Site Column Gallery page, click Create.


4. In the Name and Type section, type the name that you want in the Column name box.


5. Select the type of information you want to store in the column.



The following table describes the types of columns that are available, by default

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MOSS - Change the Welcome page

The Welcome page defines the page that is loaded when a user navigates to a site.

To change the Welcome page of a site, do the following:

1. On the Site Actions menu, point to Site Settings, and then click Modify All Site Settings.

    Note   If no menu appears when you point to Site Settings, click Site Settings to open the Site Settings page.

   
   


2. On the Site Settings page, under Look and Feel, click Welcome page.


3. In the Welcome Page section, click Browse to find the Welcome Page that you want to use for the site, and then double-click the item to select it.


4. Click OK.

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MOSS - About publishing-enabled site templates

When you create a site, you select a site template from the Select a template list. For example, to create a site for publishing a team’s Web pages, you select the Publishing Site template.

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Technology Specialist: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Application Development

Well the exam contains 55 questions and it covers all the development topics but so far it’s easy and not hard , I passed it with score 1000/1000 :)


So far there is no classroom training available on Microsoft or E-Learning and finally a book released Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (ISBN 0-7356-2368-6)


Good luck and wish to all of you to pass the exam.


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Whitepaper: Enterprise Content Management from Microsoft

This white paper shows how Microsoft is driving innovation in ECM with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It discusses an overview of ECM drivers and challenges, keys to a successful ECM strategy, and the ECM solution from Microsoft.


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MEA MVP Open Days – Egypt 2007

Well, this is the chance to show how Microsoft keeps an eye on her MVPs.

3 days of sessions, entertainment and community activities. The Agenda for the first day was just meeting in Marriot Zamalik then dinner in Abou Elsied – Really it’s very difficult to describe how to make Besara, Molokhia and Mombar - after that the group went to the hotel to sleep.

Second day early in the hotel to start the sessions with key note from Karim Ramadan about how they keep an eye for the MVPs and how important are the community activities, sessions divided into 3 tracks, development, IT professionals and special interest, defiantly the development track got most of the people.

We finished @ 5 and there were 2 hours break until the time to go out for dinner, in these couple of hours we discussed me and Hussien Zahran some issues with 3 students from MSP who gave presentation about their project, these guys have amazing presentation skills. In the night we went to Marqiz boat for dinner and it was amazing night specially because of Nany :D the dancer.

Last day morning in MS building in the smart village, we got session and after that closing session presented by Ruari Plint MEA MVPs program manager.

After that we went to the pyramids and sphinx.

Overall the event was great and really I’m very proud of it.

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