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April 19
Discussion Board 'Posted By' Field Changes on Content Approval
by  Michelle Le Fevre  on 4/19/2012 7:45 PM

Recently we were tasked with using the out of the box SharePoint discussion board for a client.

The Requirements:
The requirements were to use the OOB Flat view in a custom Publishing Master Page and only show one post with replies to that post, and any replies to the replies. Any replies submitted would have to be approved before they would be visible on the page to any other users.

The Solution:
We created a Discussion Board with the following:

  • SharePoint 2010 OOB Approval Workflow
  • Configured Content approval for Items submitted
  • Configured User permissions to read all and only edit their own item.
  • Dis-inherited permissions from the parent and added:
    • Authenticated Users with a custom permission level to Add and View Items to the list.
    • HRAdmins group – Full Control, Approve
Once the top level post was created we navigated to the Flat View of that Post and exported the XSLT List View to the Web Part Gallery in SharePoint Designer.Then the page was created and the exported part was added to the page. We made one minor change to the XSLT on the ‘View Properties Link’:
  • ‘View Properties’ was changed to ‘Edit’
  • Made the link viewable using conditional formatting: IfHasRights(4)(if a user has rights to edit)

The Issue:
When a message (reply) was approved, the Posted By information changed to the Approvers name.

After searching numerous tech posts and trying different Content and Publishing approval settings, we were able to confirm that this is OOB behavior and is a known issue with no quick OOB fix. 

There were two workarounds suggested:

  • Customizing the XSLT – This solution was not acceptable! This would cause confusion for moderators using other views of the list and to customize all of the views would take way too much time.
  • Using a Code Snippet – This solution was not acceptable because the client was trying to keep customizations to a minimal.

The Workaround:

The workaround that was implemented consists of the following:

  • Created an Impersonation workflow due to the fact that Users are not allowed to edit items only view and add. This workflow will run only when a User creates an Item.
  • Created an associated column in the workflow called ‘Posted’ with a field type of Person or Group. ‘Posted’ was used to avoid customization to the XSLT in the title area.
  • Configured the ‘Posted’ column to only choose People and All Users
  • The workflow has only one step. It captures the ‘CreatedBy’ (Name with picture and link) column and populates the ‘Posted’ column.
  • Once again this workflow only runs when the item is created, we wanted to only capture this information once and we do not want it to change.
  • Saved and published the workflow.
  • In the Flat List View on the page, the view was adjusted to hide the original ‘Posted By’ column and to show the new ‘Posted’ column in the number one spot.
  • Copied the out of the box SharePoint 2010 workflow because we wanted to add a step to avoid collisions.
  • Added a top level step that will Wait until the new ‘Posted’ column is “not empty” and then run the workflow.

The Outcome:

This solution worked and provided the Client with the behavior that they were expecting while keeping customizations to a minimal.

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April 19
SharePoint Business Intelligence
by  Brian Wolfe  on 4/19/2012 10:40 AM

Most people don't realize how easy it is to build business dashboards in SharePoint 2010. There are a variety of tools to use depending upon what you're trying to accomplish; some of the options available are Excel Services (which can pull data dynamically from a variety of sources), Visio Services (which can show different diagrams or symbols based upon data pulled from lists or databases).

There is also PerformancePoint which has a variety of scorecards and indicators that can be used, but most people don't realize how easy it is to use  status lists and indicators. They can be used  to provide the typical stoplight visual queues based on data coming from SharePoint lists or SQL Reporting Services.

We'll talk more about that shortly.​

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April 12
SharePoint Managed Services
by  Michelle Le Fevre  on 4/12/2012 1:16 AM

​

Many small and midsize organizations are starting to recognize the business value to using SharePoint for collaboration, managing documents, automating workflow and leveraging enterprise features to create composite applications or gain insight into their business data.
The primary challenge these organizations face is that SharePoint is complex and the skills to properly manage and maintain SharePoint cannot be acquired quickly by an existing employee "part-time". Usually what​ occurs as a result of making an existing employee responsible for SharePoint is delays in getting projects completed properly and user adoption issues related to deficiencies in information architecture, and various aspects of governance.
The root cause for this goes back to the inherent complexity of SharePoint and a steep learning curve which leads to the need for architects and administrators to gain experience through many deployments with varied requirements and approaches before they gain enough experience to effectively architect and administer SharePoint. Learning is often through participation and collaboration as part of a team deploying SharePoint.
It isn't realistic for someone new to SharePoint to step into this role part-time with no experience and start architecting and maintaining SharePoint effectively for an organization's first green-field deployment if it is going to offer non-trivial functionality, or for that matter, to successfully migrate from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. Experience counts for a lot, everything actually.
So what other options exist?
For a fraction of the cost of hiring an employee that is already a SharePoint expert (if you can even find one that is available), Laurus offers a SharePoint Managed Service.
Our SharePoint Managed Service provides your organization with the knowledge and expertise behind dozens of deployments to proactively manage your SharePoint farm 24x7. The SharePoint Farm Administration is now delegated to experts and the organization will be better served than by a single experienced SharePoint administrator who may transition out at any moment. When you have just one SharePoint administrator on staff it's likely they won't implement all of the governance processes you need and documentation without someone to guide (prod) them every step of the way anyway.
If managing SharePoint is a pain point that you would like to go away while still benefiting from all of the value that SharePoint provides, please drop us a line.

 

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