Shared Points for SharePoint : Sharepoint

Document Management in SharePoint 2010

Thomas Læhren — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:45:58 GMT

SharePoint 2010 has extended its Document Management (and Records Management) capabilities considerably. I have looked into the new capabilities and will give you a quick overview about some of them. This post explains the following functionality:

Document ID
Rating, Tag/Notes
Rule Based Submission

The functionality described in this blog post may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release of SharePoint 2010.

Document ID

At the Site Collection level you can enable use of Document ID’s:

Each document in the Site Collection will get their unique document number (see next screenshot). A document is addressable using the unique document id via a document redirector page (/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID=uniquedocid), and the unique document id can also be used as a property when searching.

Rating, Tag/Notes

I have enabled both versioning and forced check-out on my document library. Rating and adding Tag/Notes does not require a check-out, and users are able to easily rate and add notes to the document.

Just hover over the stars to add rating:

To add Notes, select the document and then click on the Ribbon:

Save the notes by clicking “Post”.

Rule Based Submission

SharePoint 2010 let you define rules on a folder for further routing of the document. Documents uploaded to the folder will be moved to the correct library/folder based on the rules you apply. The rules are depended on the metadata you have available on the document.

The Content Organizer feature must first be enabled on the Site:

The feature creates a document library named “Drop off Library”:

After enabling the feature, go to Site Administration and click on “Content Organizer Rules”. A form pop’s up and this is where you add the routing criteria. I made a rule called “Contracts” and it will move all documents with the Content Type “Dublin Core” to my Contracts document library.

Page 1:

Page 2:

Additional settings are available under Site Administration / Content Organizer Settings:

(Note: the screenshot above doesn’t list all settings)

When users add a document to the “Drop Off Library”, the routing rules kicks in and move the document to the correct location.

I have uploaded a document into the Drop Off Library and the metadata form is presented. I select Dublin Core and fill in necessary metadata:

Then I select “Check In”, and the following pop-up is presented:

The routing rule then moves the document into the correct folder.

Other DMS capabilities

I will blog about the following capabilities later:

Document Sets
In Place Records Management
Hold and eDiscovery
Library and Folder Based Retention
Validate meta data upon submission of documents
Column default value settings
Office Web Apps
Term Store and Managed Metadata

SharePoint 2010 – Records Management

Thomas Læhren — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:41:01 GMT

SharePoint 2010 introduces new capabilities regarding Records Management. The most interesting feature, I think, is In-Place Records management (info at the end of this post) which makes it possible to declare documents as records without moving them to a Records Center. Records and documents live side by side in the site they were created in, and SharePoint 2010 makes it possible to apply different policies (i.e. retention schedules) depending if the item is a record or a document.

The Record Center site template is still available. It utilizes some new functionality like the Content Organizer to route incoming documents to the libraries of your preference. A new “dashboard” gives a record manager faster access to common tasks and to-do actions.

Holds (with discovery), audit and file-plan reports are also new or improved functionality to better control your records.

Other items than documents can also be declared as records in SharePoint 2010; wiki pages, blog posts, article pages among others.

This post gives an overview of two capabilities; Records Center and In-place Record Management. Functionality like Holds, File-plan and other Records management features will be covered in later posts.

The functionality described in this blog post may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release of SharePoint 2010.

Create a Records Center site

Simply create a Records Center by selecting the correct site template:

When creating a Records Center in SharePoint 2010, the following features are enabled:

Content Organizer
E-mail Integration with Content Organizer
Hold and eDiscovery
Metadata Navigation and Filtering
Offline Synchronization for External Lists
SharePoint Server Enterprise Site features
SharePoint Server Standard Site features
Team Collaboration Lists

The new look of the SharePoint 2010 Records Center:

The “Submit a Record” button let users upload (and add metadata to) documents. The documents will be added to the “Drop Off Library” and then moved to the correct library/folder according to the rules added by the records manager.

Note: Activate the “In Place Records Management” feature on the Site Collection level to fully take advantage of the Records Center. The feature has to be activated to mark incoming documents as records:

Create / enable Content Types

The Content Organizer uses Content Types (and related metadata) as criteria for where to move incoming documents. Content Types must therefore be created (or enabled) before routing functionality are enabled.

Create libraries for storing Records

I created a document library; “Contracts 2009” and added a rule “Contract” to the Content Organizer. When documents are submitted, the Content Organizer will move any documents related to the Content Type “Document” into the “Contracts 2009” library. You can create as many libraries/folders and content organizer rules you need to best control your records.

In my “Contracts 2009” document library, I went to Library Settings and enabled “Automatically Declaration”. Now, all documents added to the library are automatically flagged as records.:

Create Content Organizer rules

I added rules by selecting: Site Settings / Site Settings / Site Administration / Content Organizer Rules:

What happens if my target library doesn’t have the necessary Content Type enabled? I tried to create a rule which is using the Content Type “Dublin Core” as a criteria. I wanted all documents related to “Dublin Core” to be moved to the “Contracts 2009” library. As you can see from the message below, all target libraries also need necessary Content Types enabled for the Content Organizer to be able to move documents into the library.

Retention Schedule

Retention Schedule is, per default, enforced on the Content Types, but it is possible to define retention schedules on library/folder level too.

Retention schedule using Content Types

I went to Site Action / Site Settings / Galleries / Site content types (on Site Collection level), then I clicked on the content type “Document”.

Then i clicked on “Information management policy settings”, checked the “Enable Retention” and was given the choice of running different retention schedules on Non-Records and Records:

I chose to use a different retention schedule, and clicked “Add a retention stage for records…”. I was given the choice of setting different actions when the event fires.

It’s possible to add multiple actions, and each stage will occur one after the other in the order they appear on the page:

Retention schedule using Library/folder

Retention schedules are possible to configure directly on a document library. I went to my “Contracts 2009” library and selected “Document Library Settings. Under “Permission and Management” I clicked “Information management policy settings”. Here, I changed the source of retention by clicking on the “Change source”.

When choosing a different source a message will pop up, that basically says that you’re overriding the retention schedule at the Content Type level:

Then a form was presented, where I added my retention events and actions.

In-Place Records Management

A new capability in SharePoint 2010 is In-Place Records management. Instead of moving a document to a specific Records Center, you declare the document as a record and it will be handled as a record in the site it was created in. After the the document is declared as a record, it can have policies and restrictions different than when it was a document. The policies are added to either the Content Types or directly on the document libraries (see the Retention Schedule paragraph above).

Documents can be declared as records either manually or automatically.

Manual record declaration can be configures on Site Collection level and overridden in each document library. In Site Collection settings you have the following options on how declarations of records should be done:

When Record Declaration Availability is set to “Available in all location by default”, a new icon appears on the Ribbon:

A document will get a padlock added to its icon when declared as a record:

Again, you can override the record declaration availability on the document library level:

Automatically declarations of records is possible by checking the “Automatic Declaration” option in the document library settings.

Undocumented stsadm command “stsadm –o uninstall”

Stian Kirkeberg — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:11:52 GMT

Unfortunately I discovered an undocumented stsadm command today; having gotten into the habit of typing in “stsadm –o commandname” to get the list of parameters needed, I got stung by entering the wrong command name.

I was looking for the parameters to “UninstallFeature”, but I typed only in “uninstall”:

“stsadm –o uninstall”

You should think that this is not a command so it doesn’t matter, even if you type in “stsadm –help” this command will not be listed. OK, I’ll admit my approach to typing in these commands is probably not the best way around, but that is not really the point.

The point is that this command is undocumented, it doesn’t take any arguments, and it will start uninstalling SharePoint without even a warning. So will have to do some manual cleanup and then run the configuration wizard again…

Hope this can warn you before you try this out and thanks to Roy for asking me about uninstalling features, before the coffee had time to kick in.

Links to related content:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms442691.aspx

http://nerdtastictips.blogspot.com/2009/04/never-ever-type-stsadm-o-uninstall-yes.html

New and updated site for Microsoft Services

Jon Løken — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:19:47 GMT

Microsoft Services has launched a new and updated site where you can find information about services and offerings from Microsoft Services and a new career section. A partner section will soon be available

For information worker capabilities you will find the offerings in the Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization (BPIO) section. Here you will find fact sheets for the capabilities Business Intelligence (BI), Collaboration, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Mobile Messaging, Search and Unified Communications (UC).

Here’s an overview of the MOSS 2007 deployment offerings (The offering Document & Records management decision accelerator, that’s part of ECM, is marked with orange here)

http://www.microsoft.com/microsoftservices/

A good under-the-hood SharePoint book?

Jon Løken — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:49:19 GMT

My former colleague Kjell-Sverre has written a review on the book Building the SharePoint User Experience, where he absolutely recommends reading the book. This is a hardcore book for SharePoint developers. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on its way.

Kjell-Sverre’s review is worth reading, including his follow up post on List Content Type Forms

Building the SharePoint User Experience (Expert's Voice in Sharepoint)

SharePoint book for non-technical project managers

Jon Løken — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:49:15 GMT

Many companies have deployed SharePoint and made it available for their users. SharePoint is a great tool, but if your not familiar with it you may ask: Where do I start?. The book “SharePoint for Project Managers” is a good introduction to how you can use SharePoint for your project. It is written for people with little or no knowledge to SharePoint and for the scenario Project management. It takes you through, step-by-step, how you build up your site and how you should use it. Among the topics is supporting team collaboration, Project tracking and project reporting.

I think this book is good because it cover a business-specific scenario and is written for non-technical people.

SharePoint for Project Management: How to Create a Project Management Information System (PMIS) with SharePoint

Social Computing using SharePoint

Jon Løken — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:48:13 GMT

Do you have an interest in the enterprise social computing as many other? Microsoft has launched a new site at http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/social

Here you will find feature content especially for and about enterprise social computing—why customers should plan for it, what Microsoft offers, and why they should consider Microsoft as their social platform of choice. And in the blog section you will find a new whitepaper worth reading

Go check it out today.

Paper on using Nintex workflow

Jon Løken — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:10:51 GMT

Bjørn Furuknap (his blog here) has written an extensive paper about using Nintex workflow. It’s worth a look if you consider Nintex workflows.

In Bjørn’s own words:

Finally, the Nintex Workflow issue of Understanding SharePoint Journal is complete. And, as you also know, the issue if free, courtecy of Nintex themselves.

Now, a few things about this issue. The reason why this issue is free is that Nintex has agreed to pay for the issue, a cost that would normally have come from regular sales. However, Nintex have had no editorial control, so this is just a plain, normal USP Journal issue, written by me, edited by me, and completely controlled by me.

This is also the longest journal issue yet, with about 125 pages of workflow training. Throughout those pages, I will show you how to install and configure NW, how the Nintex Workflow Designer works, and I will also guide you through a series of exercises, resulting in you learning all you need to create enterprise class workflows.

Oh, and I think the main solution this time is especially cool: A "get well card" workflow, where co-workers are asked to provide greetings to a sick employee, before those greetings are combined into an email sent to the sick employee.

I won't hold you any longer, feel free to grab the issue here:

http://learnnintex.com/freedl/nintex

Copy listitems from one custom list to another, then move them into subfolders.

Stian Kirkeberg — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:01:15 GMT

One problem I stumbled over the other day, was how to copy item from one custom SPlist to another. The two lists are identical and I thought moving the items should be quite easy through use of the object model. It turned out be not so straight forward.

Normally, SPListItem.CopyFrom() and SPListItem.CopyTo() should do the trick:

SPListItem listItem = web.GetListItem(listItemUrl);
listItem.CopyTo(destinationUrl); // Copies the item to the specified destinations

or

listItem.CopyFrom(sourceUrl); // Overwrites the current item with the specified version of the item.

Sadly, this does not work with custom lists or custom properties. A small search on live.com showed that I was not the only one struggling with this. Several solutions are available like:
http://www.communardo.de/techblog/2008/01/08/sharepoint-listenelement-splistitem-in-eine-andere-liste-kopieren/ (you can read the code… )
http://www.informationworker.co.za/blogs/mirror/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=312

http://www.k2distillery.com/2007/10/copy-version-history-with_5.html

So, there is not really need for another posting of this code. Except for the fact that I wanted to move the copied item into subfolders. Trying to do so resulted in the error:
”Source item cannot be found. Verify that the item exists and that you have permission to read it.”
It doesn’t tell you much now does it?

But, if I combined the logic from the posts above with a SPFile.MoveTo(…) it was finally working OK.

SPListItem item = Web.Lists["Announcement"].GetItemById(5);
SPFile file = Web.GetFile(item.Url);
file.MoveTo("New location...with the ID_.000");

http://blogs.inetium.com/blogs/khofer/archive/2008/03/16/fix-can-t-move-copy-an-splistitem.aspx

Summarized:

1. Copy the item by iterating through all fields, and optionally for all versions of the item

2. Copy the attachments.

3. Delete the original item, if applicable.

4. Move the new item into appropriate subfolder.

Hope this can save you time if you need to do the same sort of thing.

Case study: Aker Solutions published

Stian Kirkeberg — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:37:08 GMT

Enterprise Speeds up Intranet Development by 50 Per Cent with Communications Solution

Information sharing is crucial to Aker Solutions. With thousands of employees in more than 30 countries, the company’s intranet is an important business tool. Previously, its intranet—called eNet—was based on Microsoft® Content Management Server 2002 and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003. In 2007, the company’s IT team worked with Microsoft Services and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Tieto to update eNet, with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as its foundation. Now, employees use powerful search functionality to find documents and people quickly, and collaborative working features to connect with colleagues. Most importantly, the intranet is highly flexible and the company’s IT team can implement features faster.

Read on at:

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003882

SharePoint Pod Show

Stian Kirkeberg — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:53:20 GMT

SharePoint Pod Show has been around for a little more than half a year. They podcasts on various SharePoint development tools and techniques, and a bit on architecture.

Great to have something meaningful to listen to while one commute. Check them out at http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/

New Version of SharePoint SiteConfigurator Feature Released!

Stian Kirkeberg — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:37:39 GMT

We have just released a new version of the SharePoint SiteConfigurator feature on codeplex.com.

In this release we have focused on some new features and making sure the build is stable. This involved some refactoring as well as splitting the project in three parts, one for the code and logic, one part for the feature and one test project. This new structure will make it much easier and faster to reuse the project from farm to farm.

As the release notes states, we also focused on:

split VS project in two for easier maintenance and upgrades
added Type Mock project (simply remove that project from the solution if you don't use it)
rewrote log functionality
added verbose logging option
fixed disabling of web part toolbar (still some minor issues here)
made the complete solution independent of it's features names.
Added provisioning of files and make it possible to choose welcome page based on xml parameter
Added support for links with parameters in AddQuickLaunchLinks
Created support for QuickLaunchHeading and
DeleteQuickLaunchHeading elements.
Rearranged and refactored the main project
Fixed some bugs

Enjoy the new release and please give us feedback so we can improve it further!

Unit testing MOSS part 2 (of 2)

Jan Tore Lamøy — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:29:00 GMT

In the 1. article on Unit testing MOSS I described some of the findings and experience on unit testing SharePoint applications using the TypeMock Isolator framework. In this 2. article I will provide some examples of unit tests. Code under test You should...(read more)

OneNote and SharePoint – the basics

Thomas Læhren — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:51:14 GMT

OneNote is a hidden gem in the Office suite. I use OneNote for all my notes during meetings, workshops etc. As described on Office Online “Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 is a digital notebook that provides a flexible way to gather notes and information,...(read more)

Unit testing MOSS part 1 (of 2)

Jan Tore Lamøy — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:53:00 GMT

Some of our team members, including me and Frank Jusnes , were recently responsible for providing recommendations on how to unit test in SharePoint projects, and this is an overview of our findings and experiences. This is the first of two posts on the...(read more)