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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Site Manager Error

Topic: Error message: "The object invoked has disconnected from its clients"
When modifying a rights group in the Site Manager I get the following error message.
Error: 0Description: Automation Error: The object invoked has disconnected from its clientsSeverity: 5Source: AdmnToolClient Source: OEFUsers::HandlePropDlg
How can I resolve this problem?
Answer
This can happen when the Data Execution Protection feature (new with Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows XP SP2) is enabled.
You would need to add NRClient.exe to the exclude list and to solve this problem.
You will find the option to enable/disable this option or to modify the exception list using the following steps:
Go My Computer – Properties – Advanced tab – Performance Settings button – Data Execution Tab.
check MCMS

Displaying the document URL in a document library column

Can you answer the following question?

I am trying to do something that I think should be simple in SP: display the URLs of Word docs in a doc library. I can send the URL as a link in an e-mail, but I can't figure out how to display the URL in the public view. Please help.

The answer is here