October 2007 - Posts

• Seek and Ye Shall (Probably) Find...

  Search.  It's definitely a big deal nowadays in this data-driven Information Age.  I would guess that at 25% of my time on the Internet starts with a search of some sort, probably over at the Big G.  And when you have a large number of documents, web pages, or other resources such as forums and wikis, the value of these resources is directly related to your ability to find what you're looking for amongst them. And there's good news: Search in the current version of SharePoint is really pretty effective.  If you happened to have used a previous version of SharePoint, you know that in the past Search wasn't always a winning proposition.  It didn't always find items it should have (I don't know about you, but this is kind of a deal-breaker for me), often buried the item you needed most way below your top results, and wasn't very easy to manage, extend, or enhance.  But with WSS v3 and MOSS 2007, that story has changed, drastically. Now you will see much more relevant results for your searches.  You can create alerts when new items enter your search results, or subscribe to an RSS feed for them.  Additionally, you'll get "modern" search functions such as "Did You Mean" prompting, and duplicate collapsing (prevents the same result showing up in multiple lines of your query results).  And this is just what's available in the basic search capabilities of WSS v3. Probably the best thing in this feature list is the improved results you'll see when you search in SharePoint, wouldn't you say?  Now you have the ability to effectively comb through thousands of your important business documents in seconds and quickly find the one item you need.  (It is important to keep in mind my previous post on the Great Power of Search; you need to remember the things that you don't want people to find.)  One main reason why Search in WSS v3 has so vastly improved is the fact that it now uses the same search engine as MOSS 2007.  WSS v2 used a search function built in to SQL Server, which was too general to be effective for SharePoint and its performance depended on the version of SQL Server you were using.  SPS 2003 had its own custom search engine optimized for the crawling of document and SharePoint content, although it still wasn't perfect.  But with MOSS 2007, Search is definitely a big deal, so the search engine got a big overhaul and was made available to WSS as well.  It's such a big deal that Microsoft has two licenses available for companies that want to run search technology without also implementing SharePoint sites.  These licenses allow you to use the SharePoint search engine to crawl, index, and query your existing sites, documents, and repositories without having to implement the full MOSS architecture. Search in MOSS is even more powerful and extendable, and as you may notice with my title for this post, it's still not perfect.  I'll be covering more of the Search differences between WSS and MOSS in subsequent posts, as well as some ideas on how you can improve on what it provides.  I would also like to thank Rob Bogue of Thor Projects and Leo Doyle of Mondosoft for inspiring this series of posts.  Last week I was able to attend a very informative workshop hosted by Leo where Rob did an excellent presentation on Search in SharePoint and how it can be extended via Mondosoft's Ontolica product.  Please note that other than the free workshop I am receiving no compensation for these posts and hope that fact will be reflected in what I'm writing. Posted Oct 31 2007, 10:20 AM by ferringer with no comments Filed under: WSS, versus, MOSS, Search

• The Ecstasy and Agony of MOSS's Enterprise Functionality and Licensing

  NOTE: Updated 10/29/2007 with corrections With the release of MOSS 2007, Microsoft and the SharePoint blogging community have spent a good chunk of time and effort touting several great features that are completely new to SharePoint.  The three most prominent features are so important that they can almost be considered applications on their own, except that they have to run within a SharePoint site to be used.  These three features are: Excel Services - allows for the presentation of Business Intelligence and raw data within a SharePoint site Business Data Catalog (BDC) - allows for the integration of business data from external sources into SharePoint InfoPath Forms Service - allows for InfoPath forms to be hosted, viewed, and created in a SharePoint site without requiring software on a local workstation Sounds great, right?  Believe me, these features are great.  They can give you and your fellow users the ability to do things with data in SharePoint that otherwise isn't possible.  Or at least it's not possible with the same kinds of opportunity for collaboration, integration, and security all in one central location.  And they put this power in your hands, allowing you to enhance your use of business data without always having to involve your IT department every time you want to take a step forward. But here's the thing: these features are not cheap.  They're not included in the Standard license for MOSS 2007.  They are only available in the Enterprise or Internet-Facing Licenses.  Let me run down approximately what these licenses will cost although I'm going to warn you, it may start to get a little frustrating... NOTE: pricing of Microsoft server software products is subject to change and/or discount.  You should always work with your Microsoft sale representative to determine your actual costs. Let's assume you have a simple MOSS environment, with a single server and your SQL databases hosted remotely on a different server (keep in mind that I am excluding SQL licensing costs from these numbers).  The Standard license of MOSS for that server costs approximately $4,500.  In addition to that server license, you must also buy a Client Access License (CAL) for each authenticated user who will be logging into your server for approx. $94.  With the Standard License, all users must be authenticated; you can not allow anonymous users to use your site.  If you decide to expand your MOSS farm with an additional server at a later date, you must purchase another server license for $4,500 but do not need to buy more CALs (I can't remember for sure, but CALs may need to be renewed on an annual basis, at their full price). But let's assume that you've heard all sorts of great stuff about the BDC and are all fired up to use it to integrate data from your ERP system into a SharePoint site.  You have two license choices that allow you to install and enable the BDC on your MOSS server: Enterprise or Internet-Facing.  I'll start by covering the Enterprise license, be ready for some sticker shock.  Per server, the Enterprise License costs approx. $58,000.  So if you have two MOSS servers in your farm, that's $116,000 for the MOSS licenses.  Additionally, there is an The Enterprise CAL adds approx. $75 to the price of the Standard CAL, for a total of about $169 per user.  If you only want to host InfoPath forms for consumption via authenticated users, a license is available for about $4,400 per server and a $54 CAL per authenticated user. <Retraction> I initially misread the Enterprise Search Server license and its entry in the MOSS Pricing link below, thinking that it was also required to enable the Enterprise feature set.  For that I wholeheartedly apologize.  This does change my thinking, somewhat, on MOSS's licensing situation.  The Enterprise feature set is now much more affordable without that per server charge of over $50,000.  Whew!  But, the additional cost per user is still nothing to scoff at, especially for larger organizations.  Finally, as a very weak defense of my point , I would suggest that my error does point out how difficult it is to comprehend the licensing options available for MOSS.  I've read these things over numerous times before and never realized my mistake.  Thank you to everyone who commented on the issue, I really do appreciate the assistance. </Retraction> By comparison, the Internet-Facing license seems almost reasonable .  Per server, this license will cost approx. $41,000, and the good news is that it does not require a CAL to be purchased...sort of.  The thing that's not readily apparent with the Internet-Facing license is that only anonymous users do not require a CAL.  If you are going to have any authenticated users with specific accounts accessing your MOSS site, you must purchase an Enterprise CAL for them.  The other requirement of this license is that some portion of your site must be accessible via the Internet and open to anonymous users.  So you cannot purchase the MOSS Internet-Facing license and then lock it down behind a firewall; in that case you must buy the Enterprise License.  Finally, there is a license for Forms Server for Internet Sites, it costs about $22,000 per server and specifically geared towards hosting InfoPath Forms for consumption via the Internet by anonymous. I'm going to include some links regarding this topic below that I found to be useful sources, I highly encourage you to check them out for more information about how MOSS licensing.  If you note any discrepancies in this post, please do not hesitate to let me know.  This post reflects my best understanding of what has become a very difficult aspect of using MOSS. Links: How to Buy MOSS 2007 - Microsoft MOSS 2007 Pricing - Microsoft Complete MOSS Licensing Info - Cornelius J. van Dyck's SharePoint Brain Dump MOSS Licensing - Spencer Harbar Posted Oct 26 2007, 10:37 AM by ferringer with 10 comment(s) Filed under: MOSS, Licensing, Excel Services, Forms Server, BDC

• With Great Power: SharePoint Search

  By now it shouldn't be a secret that SharePoint can be a very powerful and useful tool for your organization or business.  Its features are highly touted, and I'm definitely a big fan of them.  Sometimes we're not aware of how powerful SharePoint can be until it's too late.  So its important to remember that with great power comes great responsibility (if you're at all a fan of Spiderman you'll recognize that quote). From time to time I'll be writing some posts with the prefix "With Great Power:" in the title.  These posts will cover issues or functionality that you, as a responsible user, should try to keep in mind when using SharePoint.  If you don't, it may come back to haunt you at a later date. With that intro out of the way, let's talk about the great power of SharePoint's search engine.  If you ever used a version of SharePoint prior to WSS v3 and MOSS 2007, you know that search is vastly improved in the current release.  But even with WSS v2 and SPS 2003 you should be careful with search.  Why? Because using a search engine to crawl and index your content and documents you are going to make those items very, very accessible to anyone with the permissions to view them. The gotcha that I've seen all too often is around that permissions issue.  It never fails.  You configure MOSS to index a file share (you can't do that in WSS, I'll cover this later), and people are really happy because now they're able to easily find all kinds of documents without having to navigate away from the SharePoint site.  And then someone finds a document that contains information that they're not supposed to be able to see, such as how much the management team makes.  Probably isn't a good thing, right? The thing to keep in mind is that this problem is not caused by SharePoint.  It is caused by the permissions on the location where the document resides.  If the document is in a folder that is publicly viewable, it will be publicly viewable in SharePoint's search results.  The same goes for documents stored in a SharePoint document library.  Prior to SharePoint crawling and indexing it, the payroll document was hidden from public view because it was not easily accessible unless you knew where to find it (Admins jokingly refer to this as "security through obscurity", because it means there is no security at all).  The good news is that SharePoint search results will only show a user documents that they have access to.  So if you lock a document down properly, you don't have to worry about it showing up to someone in their search results when they shouldn't be able to read it. One of SharePoint's Great Powers is its ability to easily make documents throughout your organization immediately available to end users.  Your Great Responsibility as the owner of a document or content area is to keep track of who should be able to view your documents and ensuring that only those people have access to them.  Otherwise, you are at risk at telling people more than you really want. Posted Oct 25 2007, 01:45 PM by ferringer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: WSS, MOSS, End User, Search, Great Power

• A fundamental element of SharePoint sites

  I considered titling this post "The Grand Unifying Theory of SharePoint Sites", but it just sounds too lofty... A concept that has really helped me understand how sites in SharePoint work is the fact that just about everything within a site can be considered as a part of a List.  Consider the following: Document Libraries: viewable as a list of document files Subsites: viewable as a list of sites created beneath the current site Web Parts: viewable as a list of the web parts on the page Users: viewable as a list of names and permissions Discussion threads: viewable as a list of posts Now, I realize that each of these items really are diverse and that as a user we can do a lot of different things with them.  But they all inherit some structural and organizational behaviors from the basic SharePoint list.  Each of them can contain one to many items (I know, big revelation there).  They present similar user interfaces for adding new elements to the list, and they do the same for removing new elements from them.  For example, do you know how to open the Web Part Maintenance Page for any webpage in SharePoint?  Simply append      ?contents=1 at the end of any SharePoint URL and click the Go button in your browser.  You'll see a page which lists each of the web parts on the previous web page, data about each of the web parts, and some options at the top of the list.  From this page you'll be able to Close, Reset, or Delete any of those web parts in the list.  And you may notice that the page looks very similar to a standard list view for a document library or links listing. Understanding that pretty much everything within a SharePoint site is going to be an item in one list or another has really helped me start to see how things relate to one another and get a feel for a site's hierarchy. NOTE: the Web Part Maintenance Page is a handy thing to know if you have a web part that is throwing an error and causing an entire page to show up as an error in your browser.  You may notice that you can't easily edit remove the web part since the Site Actions menu option isn't shown when the page throws an error.  You can get around that by adding       ?contents=1 to the end of the .aspx in your URL and take the offending web part off your page. Posted Oct 23 2007, 04:47 PM by ferringer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: End User, Sites, Lists

• About SharePoint sites

  It probably shouldn't be all that surprising that the core component of SharePoint is the sites that can be created using it, right?  After all, web sites are the basis for content throughout the Internet.  But the great thing about SharePoint that there is a very wide range of site types and styles that you can use to create a site, and that's without even doing any customization.  This gives end users a great deal of flexibility and functionality without requiring a lot of technical know-how or tools. Out of the box, quite a few different site templates are made available for you to base your new site upon.  Even these options depend upon the version of SharePoint you are using, as you progress from Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) version 3 through the various licenses of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 more and more types of sites become available to use.  In SharePoint, each of these site types are referred to as "Site Templates", and each is designed to serve a different purpose and/or audience.  See the listed link below for a rundown of what site templates are available in each version of SharePoint And there are even more site templates out there that you can use to extend SharePoint with different content and functionality.  Microsoft has made available 40 free site templates (sometimes referred to as the Fantastic Forty or Fabulous Forty) that can be installed on a SharePoint server and used to create new sites.  Check out the link below for more information.  The extensibility of the latest version of SharePoint is really a great thing.  It is now easier than ever to create your own site templates, allowing you to specify and reuse site configurations to meet your personal needs.  Doing so does entail some effort and an understanding of tools like Visual Studio 2005 or SharePoint Designer, but the process is vastly improved over previous versions. I will dive into specific site templates with more detail in upcoming posts.  Right now the plan is to outline their features and functionality, as well as when it makes sense to use them. Links: SharePoint features comparison: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101978031033.aspx 40 Free Site Application Templates from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5807b5ef-57a1-47cb-8666-78c1363f127d&DisplayLang=en   Posted Oct 19 2007, 03:44 PM by ferringer with no comments Filed under: WSS, MOSS, Sites, Site Templates, SharePoint Designer

• Remember what Mick says...

  This post should be read with the words of the Rolling Stones echoing through your head... "You can't always get what you want" If you've spent any time researching about SharePoint, reading SharePointBlogs.com, or even just talking to people about SharePoint, you've probably heard quite a bit about all the great things you can do with it.  So now you're all excited, because you're ready to start emailing documents into a library, or using the Content Query Web Part to display the contents of a separate team site in your site.  You diligently find instructions on how to undertake these tasks somewhere out there on SharePointBlogs.com (last gratuitous reference, I promise), log into your SharePoint installation and get ready to rock... Only to find that the function (for example, the ability to email a document into a document library) you want to use isn't available for some reason. What!?!?! How is that possible?  Simple: for some reason or another that the function you want to use is disabled. Now, before you fly off the handle, I would ask that you take a moment and consider the situation.  This may not be happening just because someone made a decision to not allow users to email documents into document libraries.  It could be because that the email function was never turned on for document libraries.  I'm going to tell you this from experience: when installing SharePoint, admins tend to focus on the explicit requirements provided, not what the customer did not ask for.  So if you're not asked to turn on that document library email function, you're not going to do it.  As with everything in this world, I'm not saying this is an absolute, just a pretty good possibility.  It could be that there was a conscious decision not to turn on emailing into document libraries.  Perhaps your IT architects or administrators are worried about the load this may cause on your SharePoint server(s), or your email servers.  Or if you're looking for a feature available only with the Enterprise edition of MOSS 2007, your IT resources may have been put off by its high price. Please don't take these words to mean that you should meekly move along with your desired ability to email documents into a library.  I just want you to be aware of some of the possible forces at work behind the scenes before you submit your request to turn that function on for you to use.  Use that awareness to properly phrase and justify your request, to give it the best chance for approval.  And don't forget how the next line goes... "And if you try sometimes you might find, you get what you need." Posted Oct 14 2007, 09:34 PM by ferringer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Perspective, functionality

• Understanding that "SharePoint" is a really broad label...

  So your company has just implemented SharePoint, and you're going to start using it on a daily basis.  That's a good thing, definitely.  You've heard about all the things you'll be able to do with it, and how its going to help you and your teammates work, communicate, and collaborate better (yeah, that last "C" word is probably the one you're going to hear the most).  But there's a problem: you start investigating what SharePoint is and your head immediately starts to hurt thanks to information overload. Why? Because the term SharePoint encompasses a broad range of products, licenses, configurations, and TLAs (Three Letter Acronym ) that are very difficult to differentiate between if you're new to this game.  So I'll try to briefly break down the basics for you, and explain the differences and purposes behind the major components of the SharePoint platform. First, there's Windows SharePoint Services version 3 (commonly abbreviated as WSS).  WSS is a free add-on to Windows Server 2003, much like IIS and Active Directory.  Note the term "Services" in its name; a good rule of thumb to remember is that if you see a Microsoft Product with "Services" in the title, its most likely free (although I'm not sure this is always the case).  WSS is the core building block for pretty much all SharePoint's functionality.  With WSS you have the ability to create sites using several different site templates, including collaborative team sites, document libraries, meeting sites, wikis, and blogs.  WSS sites are intended to act as independent sites centered around a team or group's activities.  A single WSS server or farm can host multiple top-level WSS sites, but out of the box there is no way to easily integrate or aggregate information, users, or content between those sites. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is the full enterprise-ready, collaborative platform product offering from Microsoft, and is definitely not free.  The biggest reason (I think) that things get confusing between WSS and MOSS is because MOSS is built on top of WSS.  MOSS offers all of the features of WSS, but enhances and extends them while also adding new functionality.  So you'll see the same site templates from WSS available to you when creating a new site in MOSS, as well as a host of new options.  The other difficult thing about MOSS is that the features available to users in MOSS is entirely dependent upon which license was selected when the product was purchased.  In the interest of time, I will cover the difference between MOSS licenses in a seperate post. The most apparent benefit of MOSS is being able to wrap top-level WSS sites into a single cohesive portal environment.  That means that a single pool of users can now access multiple top-level sites without their identities and credentials needing to be duplicated across these sites.  MOSS also allows all of the content in these sites to be crawled and indexed, and then made available in a centralized search site.  And of course there is the highly touted features including the portal site itself, tying everything together into a single package for the enterprise and personalized MySites for individual users. One key difference between the two products is their administrative experience.  WSS is designed to managed and operated by its users; once its installed and configured, end users can manage, update, and enhance their sites without a great deal of technical administration required.  This helps to keep costs low because you don't have to have an experienced IT professional directly on hand for your site's care and feeding.  On the other hand, MOSS is a very complicated product, and is designed to be managed by experienced IT professionals.  Its vast scope of functionality and deep technical architecture are not something easily consumed by the basic user, you really need an expert to get the most out of it. Posted Oct 12 2007, 11:45 AM by ferringer with 7 comment(s) Filed under: WSS, versus, MOSS

• SharePoint End-User training resources now available from Microsoft

  I haven't gotten a chance to take a look at this yet, but this is definitely great news: The SharePoint End User Training Kit is now available for download from Microsoft!  The kit is built on top of the SharePoint Learning Kit tool, which is a free WSS add-on designed to provide a delivery and tracking system for computer-based training content.  I can't vouch for the quality of the product, but it is really great to see Microsoft recognize that help for the end user is somewhat sparse right now.  I'll work on getting it installed so I can do a review and run-through of the system here in the near future. Also, I would definitely recommend checking out the Suzanne Ross's GetThePoint blog, its definitely geared toward SharePoint users and already has a lot of great content beyond the post about the SharePoint End User Training Kit.   Posted Oct 12 2007, 10:58 AM by ferringer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: WSS, End User, Training Kit, Microsoft

• Getting Started...

  Typically I can't stand the "Hello World" mentality of first time blog posts, but in this case I think its important. From what I can tell, most of the blogs here at SharePointBlogs.com focus mostly on items and issues relevant to SharePoint administrators and/or developers.  My <sarcasm> brilliant </sarcasm> idea is to focus this blog on content geared towards the end user experience in SharePoint.  I plan to start by addressing some basic building blocks of using this powerful platform, but will also be covering some more advanced or harder to find topics. One other note: I will be focusing on the most recent releases of SharePoint: Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) 2007.  I don't really get a lot of time to dwell on previous versions anymore, so I won't cover much about them unless specifically asked. If you've got any suggestions or questions that you'd like me to cover, please do not hesitate to send them my way.  And please keep this in mind when reading: these posts are based on my experiences and thoughts, your mileage may vary. I'd also like to say thank you to Dustin Miller for providing this outstanding platform for me to share these thoughts with you, I really appreciate it.  Enjoy! - John   Posted Oct 10 2007, 09:33 AM by ferringer with 1 comment(s)