February 2008 - Posts

• Document libraries: Specify which items users can edit/delete

  While working on the SharePoint implementation I encountered a problem with delete permissions. SharePoint document libraries do not allow you to set permissions in such a manner to allow users editing/deleting only their own documents. Similar feature exists for other lists like team discussions and blog comments but it does not exist for document libraries!? The lack of this feature is not so problematic for editing items because users can be easily controlled with approval workflow in place. But how can you control if someone wants to delete a document? As a site owner you have two options: 1)    You can setup an alert that will inform you upon deletion; you can recover a deleted document from the recycle bin 2)    If you prefer more control, there is one alternative. Revoke all delete permissions for your users. Create a Delete workflow. This workflow should work similar to the default approval workflow. User should initiate workflow instead deleting a document. After "approval", document will be deleted. Posted Feb 19 2008, 01:12 AM by toni with 7 comment(s) Filed under: permissions, document libraries

• SharePoint vs. File Share – Part 2

  Customers upgrading from file shares to SharePoint will probably want/demand to preserve parts of their daily routine. As I wrote before, SharePoint is good but is not perfect. It will take some time for end users to get use to the new way of thinking. Here are two very good articles on how to ease the adoption of a SharePoint deployment: - Can I Map a Document Library as a Mapped Drive? - What is the difference between a file server and SharePoint? Posted Feb 14 2008, 09:37 PM by toni with 1 comment(s) Filed under: sharepoint, file shares, tips&tricks

• Key benefits of the SharePoint platform

  While talking to customers they often ask a simple question: What are the key benefits of the SharePoint platform over classic file shares? Microsoft always tries to provide customers with a lot of marketing like: Easily manage documents and help ensure integrity of content, Get users up to speed quickly, Deploy solutions tailored to your business processes. Most end users are not really interested in integrity of content or tailored solutions. They are interested in day-to-day benefits, one being the ability to work with documents. Here is my SharePoint vs. File share overview: Feature area SharePoint File Share Usability / Working with documents Interface might seem complicated; you can do one thing from a number of views: using web browser, explorer view or via a network place. Network places are hard to manage and get use to. Explorer view misses a folder structure navigation and it does not work on all computers/browsers. While you are using the above two, you cannot profile your documents. It is fairly simple. It has been here for a long time. Search Very good, it is not Google, but works just fine. There is no out of box search available for a network file share. Document properties Completely extensible. Only basic properties available. Folder structures Built in folder navigation is complicated and hard to manage. Great folder navigation. Permissions Completely flexible but interface for setting permissions is hard to use. There is no permission report for sites and document libraries. Flexible. Permission report is missing. Templates Completely flexible. A great feature! Content types also allow you to manage policies (expirations for each content type separately). There is no support for templates Managing large amount of files If not planned correctly you might end up with all your files stored in a single database. That might be a problem. Although you can easily move files and free some space, it might be difficult to manage a great number of files. Creating views This is great for a single document library; however it is not so great when you want to pull all files from a site or site collection. There are no views on file shares. Collaboration / Approving / Versioning This is very good when you have a team of people working on documents. Not supported From the overview you will see that there are real benefits of using SharePoint. However this really depends on the end user. If usability and ease of use are the most important thing to you, stick with file shares. SharePoint is great, but it requires a user with at least intermediate knowledge, a user that is willing to learn new stuff and to use the whole potential of the SharePoint platform. Posted Feb 13 2008, 10:11 PM by toni with 7 comment(s)