A Matter Of Degree

Read-only document from SharePoint displays “Check Out” option

I don't like to post issues without solutions, but a client alerted me to this one today and I couldn't find an answer; I wanted to put it out there in the hope that someone can offer some input. Here's the scenario:

In your MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 implementation, you have a document library with checkin / checkout enabled. If a user with read-only ("Visitor") permissions looks at the document options from the drop-down menu on the document name, they have no option to check in or check out:

However, if the same user opens a document from that library, the document will open as read-only in its MS Office application (Word, Excel, etc.), but the user will see the "Server Document" bar with the message "To modify this document, you must check it out" and the "check out" button.

When the user tries to check the document out, they are asked to authenticate, they try three times, and then receive the error "Cannot perform this operation. The file has been deleted or someone else has it checked out."

The good news is that the application won't actually let you check out the document – it knows you shouldn't be able to authenticate.  The bad part is that that toolbar shows up at all, and the user has to go through the authentication / bogus error process.  How is it possible to prevent a user with read-only rights in SharePoint from seeing the "Check out" option in Word or Excel?

I posted this to the MSDN forum for Sharepoint general questions. (I've got a private bet with myself that someone will tell me this is supposed to be posted to an MS Word discussion group instead.)

How to insert SharePoint metadata into your Word or Excel document using Quick Parts and Content Types

I just learned this from a colleague who learned it at a SharePoint Developer class: When you create a custom Content Type for a document template, and add custom metadata fields to it, you can insert the metadata values into your document as Quick Parts.

Several elements need to be in place to make this work smoothly. In my example:

1. I created a Content Type for a NonDisclosure Agreement (NDA)
2. I created a Site Column for Opportunity (i.e., the client name)
3. I added the site column to the NDA content type
4. I added the content type to one of the document libraries on my SharePoint site
5. I created a new NDA from the "New" menu on the document library and
6. IMPORTANT! I saved the document back into that document library. (The Properties Quick Part will appear grayed-out until the document is saved.)

Then, with the document still open in Word, I was able to choose Insert -> Quick Parts from the ribbon, and my "Opportunity" field is available.

If the metadata field is already filled in for the document, you will see the actual data appear in your document (just as when you add the a Date field and today's date appears).

If the metadata field is empty, you can type the information into the document field, and you will see it will appear in the Properties (Server) window in the ribbon..

Lots of potential for bringing your paper forms online and ensuring better metadata compliance!

Here's a nice post from the Microsoft Word team on the subject – they refer to it as XML Mapping.

No Exit - Document Update from Outlook to SharePoint

Let's say you've connected one or more SharePoint document libraries to your Outlook, perhaps using these well-written directions from the MS Office Outlook Team Blog.  While offline, you edit several of the documents in one of your synched document libraries via the folder pane in your Outlook.  When you connect to the network again, you want to update the live document library with your changes. 

You might expect there to be a means of batch updating the documents, perhaps by right-clicking the document library name in the Outlook folder pane, or by hitting the Send/Receive button.  But in fact you need to open each changed document in order to prompt the update. 

That's clunky, but clunkier is the message box you get to perform the update:

If you click the Update button, the server is updated, the message box goes away and the document remains open (no feedback for "successful update").  When you attempt to close the file, the same message box appears.  You need to click "Do not update server" in order to be able to close the file.   

Why make the message appear twice in order for me to be able to get out of my document?  How about an "Update and close" button?    If I have to do this for every document I've edited while offline, the amount of time it takes to update, try to close the file, and click the "do not update" button will become significant.

Search Relevance Tip - Best Practice - Spaces in Filenames / Title Field

I'm in my third and final day of MOSS 2007 Enterprise Search Advanced Training.  There's a best practice from yesterday's session that I want to discuss.  Microsoft recommends that content owners / end users use spaces in filenames to make them searchable (i.e., "MOSS 2007 White Paper" and not "MOSS2007WhitePaper").  The indexer treats a filename without spaces as a single word.  Tests during the session proved that filenames using underscores ("MOSS_2007_White_Paper") and dots ("MOSS.2007.White.Paper") also are not indexed as individual words but as a single word.  Therefore a search on a keyword that is a part of such a filename ("MOSS") will not show up in search results.

That's significant, but spaces in filenames can cause issues.  (Another example.  And another.)  These may not be SharePoint issues, but it's possible that you'll have compelling reasons not to use spaces in your file names.  At the very least, it could be difficult to enforce a file-naming convention across an organization, especially when there's no out-of-the-box validation at the time of upload.

My recommendation is to require the Title field in Sharepoint document libraries, and/or to train content managers on the importance of using this field.  Title is very important in ranking and relevance, so much so that MOSS 2007 search uses a text extraction algorithm that generates TWO title values for every MS Office document - the actual title field from the document property sheet, and a "shadow" title based on formatting and placement of the words at the top of the document.  If content managers populate the Title field with meaningful words, the formatting of the original filename is not so critical to search results.

MOSS 2007 - How to activate the SharePoint Slide Library

If you want to use a slide library on a SharePoint site but the feature is not available when you click Create, here's how to activate it:

Choose Site Actions / Site Settings / Site Features (under Site Administration)

or, if on a Publishing site, choose Site Actions / Site Settings / Modify All Site Settings / Site Features.

The feature that needs to be activated is "Office Sharepoint Server Standard Site features," as shown below. 

I recently spent some time looking for this even though I knew where it was.  The Slide Library is not specifically mentioned anywhere on the Site Features page.  Hope this post saves someone a few minutes of frustration.

Error using "Import Spreadsheet" in MOSS 2007 - Method 'Post' of object 'IOWSPostData' failed.

I used the "Import Spreadsheet" command in SharePointfor the first time this week, and got the following error after going through the steps of naming the list, browsing to the spreadsheet, and selecting a range:

Method 'Post' of object 'IOWSPostData' failed

I then tried exporting the list from the Excel side, and was also not successful.  I'm running Office 2007, MOSS 2007, and Vista.  What ended up fixing this for me was to repair MS Office via the Control Panel / Programs and Features function.  At first I tried modifying the the Excel Add-In EXPTOOWS.XLA as described in this forum:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1330234&page=1

It worked (I used lver=3 and commented out the previous line),  but I wasn't able to save the file, which meant I'd have to modify that piece of code every time I wanted to upload a spreadsheet.  Happily, a repair of MS Office did the trick.

Execution vs. Innovation (and how Microsoft SharePoint is positioning itself these days)

I attended the AIIM expo today to hear the keynote speech by Microsoft's Jeff Teper, with demo by Arpan Shah.  Teper's talk, "From Business Intelligence to Blogs and Workflow to Wikis: Accelerating Both Empowerment and Governance in a Rapidly Expanding World of Information," discussed the difference between companies that are execution-oriented and those that are innovation-oriented.

The execution-oriented companies are concerned with governance, control, and regulating their internal content.  The innovation-oriented companies are concerned with collaboration and empowerment of their users.  The two types appear to have different strategic and infrastructure needs, but in reality, all companies need to combine the right amount of both.  Execution-oriented companies need to innovate in order to survive in the marketplace, and innovation-oriented companies need some standardization of their work process and product so that they don't end up with duplicative effort and chaos. 

Teper showed how Microsoft designed SharePoint (MOSS 2007) with both sides in mind.  It has what Teper called the Governance Accelerators:

• Consistent site & information architecture
• Information management policy
• Rights management
• Auditing

And it has the Empowerment Accelerators:

• Employee self-service
• Role delegation
• Intuitive User Interface
• Pervasive Collaboration

Which way does your company tend - toward execution or innovation?  Is one of these words part of your mission statement?  Have you experienced situations where you needed to enable your organization to work in a different direction than you usually do?  I'd love to hear stories or examples from the real world, now that I'm looking at things through execution-vs.-innovation-tinted glasses...

Reasons I'm no longer so enamored of the "Publish to Blog" feature of Word 2007

1. You can't choose when the post will be published (i.e. to schedule a post for tomorrow or other specific date)
2. You can't control the settings when you insert an image.
3. You can't assign metadata when you publish.
4. A Word numbered list doesn't translate, all numbers revert to 1 and have to be reformatted.

I realize that all the different blog providers have varying settings, so going with the lowest common denominator makes sense for Microsoft.  For folks who mostly publish text and don't do a lot with images or categories, it's a great tool.  Still, if you want the higher level of control that TypePad (or other blog service) provides, the Word publish-to-blog feature isn't that valuable.

Site Membership, Group Membership, and My Sharepoint Sites in MOSS 2007 and Office 2007

 

In Office 2007 with MOSS 2007, the "My Network Places" location for saving files has been replaced by "My Sharepoint Sites."

 

In the "My Sharepoint Sites" list, you are only able to see the sites of which you are a member, and you can't add sites as you could to My Network Places.

 

If you are unable to see a list of your sites, it may be because:

1. You have not set your MySite as your default MySite
2. You are not individually listed in the "Members" Sharepoint group. If all domain users are listed in the Members group, and you are part of the domain, it is not enough to display your sites. I have tested this over the last week and I had to be individually listed in the Members group in order to see the SharePoint sites of which I am a member. This also affects the "My Sharepoint Sites" web part on MySite.

 

Hard to believe that administrators will have to maintain individuals in the Sharepoint Members group in order to give their users full functionality. I couldn't find any details online about whether this is considered an area for improvement, or whether admins are on their own to find some way to sync the Members group with the list of domain users.

 

As a potential workaround, commonly-used sites can be published to Office 2007 clients – see details at the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog. (Search the page for "publishing links to the Office client')

 

Here's the discussion thread that initially helped me learn about this:

 

http://msmvps.com/blogs/obts/archive/2007/02/02/537645.aspx

 

 

 

 

The Office 2007 User Interface - coming to an application near you?

Wednesday I posted about the seductive YouTube "play" button in its external video player.  That night I was thinking about the Office 2007 Ribbon, and how the new File menu icon is not exactly seductive.    I've heard quite a few folks in a range of professions (legal secretaries, senior .Net developers, etc.) say it took them 30 - 45 minutes to realize they needed to click on it.  The Ribbon may have a lot of advantages over the old menu system, but it doesn't exactly entice a new user to use it.

Microsoft has recently announced a royalty-free licensing program for their new user interface.  As Office 2007 adoption grows, so will the number of non-MS applications that have the same look and feel.  But does this make sense for applications that don't have a zillion features to navigate?  I'm all for standards and a consistent end-user experience, but the Ribbon was designed around a complex set of requirements that not every application will have.  Should developers eschew more seductive/fun/innovative user interfaces because Microsoft's massive R&D investment in a popular suite of products demands their respect?

Just asking...