SharePoint® 2007 Collaboration For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

How to Use This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Implementing SharePoint Collaboration

Part II: Managing Your SharePoint Data

Part III: Getting the Most Out of Your SharePoint Site

Part IV: Using Office Programs with SharePoint

Part V: The Part of Tens

Conventions Used in This Book

Special icons

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Implementing SharePoint Collaboration

Chapter 1: Collaborating with SharePoint

Using SharePoint to Collaborate

Discovering what SharePoint is and how it works

Understanding SharePoint as a Web-based technology

Discovering how teams can use SharePoint to successfully collaborate

Exploring the SharePoint Home Page

Checking out the typical components of a SharePoint site

Navigating a SharePoint site

Getting Online SharePoint Help

Finding Your Way on the SharePoint Site with Search

Chapter 2: Setting Up the SharePoint Site for Your Teams

Finding out how SharePoint Sites Are Organized

Checking out the basics

Understanding the hierarchy of a typical SharePoint site

Customizing the Appearance of Your SharePoint Site

Personalizing a SharePoint page

Modifying the Look and Feel options from the Site Settings page

Adding Subsites to Your SharePoint Site

Selecting the right template for the audience of your subsite

Setting permission and navigation settings

Adding Individual Web Pages to a Site’s Document Library

Editing Web Parts on the Pages of Your SharePoint Site

Adding Web Parts

Rearranging Web Parts

Deleting Web Parts

Chapter 3: Giving Your Teams Access to the SharePoint Site

Adding Team Members as Authenticated SharePoint Site Users

Understanding SharePoint Groups and Permissions

Adding or removing site collection administrators

Adding a Site Users Web Part to your SharePoint home page

Assigning Individual Team Members to SharePoint Groups

Creating a new SharePoint group

Adding authenticated users to a SharePoint group

Managing SharePoint Users and Groups

Modifying a SharePoint group’s site permissions

Modifying a particular team member’s site permissions by reassigning his group

Editing a team member’s user information

Removing a team member from the SharePoint site

Modifying Site Permission Levels

Part II: Managing Your SharePoint Data

Chapter 4: Creating and Maintaining SharePoint Lists

SharePoint Lists 101

Adding Lists to Your SharePoint Site

The different types of standard lists

Creating a new list for the site

Entering data into a new list

Entering and editing data in a list in Datasheet view

Importing data from another compatible application program

Adding columns to a custom list

Modifying or creating a new view for a SharePoint list

Chapter 5: The Care and Feeding of SharePoint Libraries

Understanding What Makes SharePoint Libraries Tick

Using the Default Shared Documents Library

Uploading Documents to a Documents Library

Creating folders for the documents you upload to a library

Uploading your documents

Uploading and copying files via an Internet Explorer window

Uploading files by creating a document library as a Network Place

Creating a New Word Document for a Library

Adding New Libraries and Folders to Your SharePoint Site

Creating a new document library

Creating a new picture library

Customizing a Document Library

Modifying a library’s General Settings

Modifying a library’s Permissions and Management settings

Modifying a library’s Communications settings

Adding Columns to a Document Library

Modifying and Adding Views to a Document Library

Sorting and Filtering a Document Library

Part III: Getting the Most Out of Your SharePoint Site

Chapter 6: Using Meeting Workspaces to Plan and Manage Team Meetings

Understanding How You Can Use Meeting Workspaces

Creating New Meeting Workspaces

Creating a meeting workspace from scratch

Creating a meeting workspace from a SharePoint calendar item

Creating a meeting workspace from an Outlook meeting request

Linking a Calendar Event to an Existing Meeting Workspace

Adding a Button to Launch a Yugma Web Conference

Chapter 7: Getting Team Feedback via Surveys and Discussion Boards

Using Surveys to Poll Your Teams

Understanding branching in surveys

Creating a new SharePoint survey

Editing a survey

Adding branching to a survey

Responding to the survey

Viewing the survey results

Using Web Parts to add a survey summary list to the home page

Exporting survey results to an Excel worksheet

Using Discussion Boards to Get Team Feedback

Adding a new topic to a site’s discussion board

Posting a message to a discussion topic

Creating a new discussion board

Connecting a discussion board to Outlook 2007

Chapter 8: Stimulating Team Interaction with Blogs and Wiki Pages

Using Blogs to Elicit Your Team’s Ideas

Setting up a SharePoint blog subsite

Setting up the categories for your blog

Posting to your new blog

Involving Your Teams in the Care and Feeding of Wiki Page Libraries

Creating a new SharePoint Wiki page library

Syndicating Blogs with RSS Feeds

Adding an RSS feed to a blog in Outlook 2007

Adding an RSS feed to a blog in Firefox

Chapter 9: Editing Collaboratively with Document Workspaces

Creating a New Document Workspace

Creating a document workspace from scratch

Creating a document workspace from a file in an existing document library

Adding a document workspace to the parent site’s Quick Launch

Creating a document workspace from an Office document

Setting Versioning Settings for the Document Workspace

Chapter 10: Managing Tasks, Issues, and Workflows in SharePoint

Using the Default Tasks List

Getting SharePoint to send e-mail when tasks are assigned

Adding new items to the Tasks list

Sorting and filtering the Tasks list in the All Tasks view

Switching the Tasks list to a new view

Creating a custom Gantt Chart view for your site’s Tasks list

Editing items in the Tasks list

Connecting the Tasks list to Outlook 2007

Adding a Project Tasks List

Working with Issue Tracking Lists

Adding an Issue Tracking list

Adding issues to the list and tracking their resolution

Creating a SharePoint Workflow

Understanding the three-state workflow

Using the three-state workflow to automate issue resolution in an Issue Tracking list

Part IV: Using Office Programs with SharePoint

Chapter 11: Integrating SharePoint and Outlook 2007

Connecting Your SharePoint Calendar to Outlook

Modifying the display of the SharePoint calendar in Outlook

Adding events to your SharePoint calendar in Outlook

Managing SharePoint Contacts in Outlook 2007

Categorizing, flagging, and communicating with your SharePoint contacts

Reviewing the e-mail activities that involve a SharePoint contact

Outlook and SharePoint Document Libraries

Chapter 12: Using Office Applications with SharePoint

Editing Document Workspace Files with Their Native Office Applications

Granting team members access to the document workspace

Assigning editing tasks to members of the document workspace

Resolving editing conflicts and deciding which changes to save

Saving Documents Directly on the SharePoint Site

Excel 2007 and SharePoint Integration

Exporting Excel 2007 worksheet data to a SharePoint list

Importing Excel worksheet data into a SharePoint list

Chapter 13: Customizing Your SharePoint Site with Office SharePoint Designer 2007

Getting Familiar with the Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Interface

Viewing Your SharePoint Site’s Structure in SharePoint Designer

Creating a Custom Workflow with the Workflow Designer

Chapter 14: Using InfoPath 2007 with SharePoint

Using InfoPath 2007 with SharePoint

Customizing form templates in InfoPath 2007

Publishing a customized InfoPath form to a SharePoint form library

Using Content Types in SharePoint Form Libraries

Creating a content type for a form in InfoPath 2007

Adding a form’s content type to a SharePoint form library

Creating a form library in SharePoint for your InfoPath form template

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 15: Top Ten Tips for Designing Your SharePoint Site

Tailoring the SharePoint Site for Your Teams

Making a Special Place for Each Team

Supplying Your Teams with the Documents They Need

Using Announcements and the Calendar to Keep on Top of Updates and Events

Organizing and Managing Team Meetings

Enabling Collaborative Editing with Document Workspaces

Getting Feedback from Teams with Discussion Boards and Surveys

Facilitating the Exchange of Ideas with Wiki Pages and Blogs

Assigning and Managing the Tasks Teams Need to Get Done

Automating Standard Business Processes with Workflows

Chapter 16: The Top Ten Challenges to Successful Teamwork

Unambiguous Team Responsibilities

Effective Team Leadership

Easily Accessible Information

Universal Team Participation

Competent Communication

Timely Team Feedback

Straightforward Issue Resolution

Resourceful Idea Sharing

Sound Task Management

Measuring Success

Glossary: SharePoint Technical Jargon

SharePoint® 2007 Collaboration For Dummies®

by Greg Harvey

SharePoint® 2007 Collaboration For Dummies®

Published by
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Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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About the Author

Greg Harvey has authored tons of computer books, the most recent being Manage Your Life with Outlook For Dummies and the most popular being Excel 2007 For Dummies and Excel 2007 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies. He started out training business users on how to use IBM personal computers and their attendant computer software in the rough and tumble days of DOS, WordStar, and Lotus 1-2-3 in the mid-1980s of the last century. After working for a number of independent training firms, he went on to teach semester-long courses in spreadsheet and database management software at Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

His love of teaching has translated into an equal love of writing. For Dummies books are, of course, his all-time favorites to write because they enable him to write to his favorite audience: the beginner. They also enable him to use humor (a key element to success in the training room) and, most delightful of all, to express an opinion or two about the subject matter at hand.

Greg received his doctorate in Humanities in Philosophy and Religion with a concentration in Asian Studies and Comparative Religion last May. Everyone is glad that Greg was finally able to get out of school before he retired.

For the past two years, he has been actively researching productivity in the modern workplace and the various ideas and systems developed for improving work/life balance and improving teamwork and ensuring successful collaboration, using Microsoft’s Outlook and SharePoint software, respectively.

Dedication

To all the readers who supported my work over my astonishing and long-lived career in technical publishing

Author’s Acknowledgments

Let me take this opportunity to thank all the people, both at Wiley Publishing, Inc., and at Mind over Media, Inc., whose dedication and talent combined to get this book out and into your hands in such great shape.

At Wiley Publishing, Inc., I want to thank Andy Cummings and Katie Feltman for their encouragement and help in getting this project under way and their ongoing support every step of the way. I also want to thank Paul Levesque for his encouragement and for making sure that the project stayed on course and made it into production so that all the talented folks on the production team could create this great final product.

At Mind over Media, I want to thank Christopher Aiken for his review of the manuscript and invaluable input and suggestions on how best to address both the theoretical and more practical concerns of forming successful teams and collaborating using SharePoint.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial

Senior Project Editor: Paul Levesque

Senior Acquisitions Editor: Katie Feltman

Copy Editor: Virginia Sanders

Technical Editor: John Mueller

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Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

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Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

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Introduction

SharePoint has certainly come a long way since the days of SharePoint Team Services, an early attempt by Microsoft to offer the general business user an opportunity to participate directly in online information sharing. I’m happy to say that SharePoint 2007, through the combination of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 technologies, now offers you a plethora of collaborative tools. These tools make all sorts of information sharing and collaboration not only possible but easily within the reach of any businessperson with a modicum of computer experience using a Web browser and common Office applications such as Outlook, Word, and Excel.

This book on using SharePoint 2007 for information sharing is very different from the many others published to date. It is not intended for the IT professional who wants to know what makes SharePoint tick and how he can get under the hood and rev it up for the enterprise solutions at hand. (Please see Vanessa Williams’s excellent book, Microsoft SharePoint 2007 For Dummies, from Wiley Publishing, if this happens to be you.)

Rather, this book speaks directly to the business users who have absolutely no interest in SharePoint beyond what it can offer them in the way of information sharing and team collaboration. Here, there’s no peeking under the hood. In fact, I purposively shy away from discussing the technical underpinnings of SharePoint. I assume that this kind of chatter is of no interest to the typical business user and does little or nothing to answer the essential question of this work; namely, “How do I make this rather strange, Web-oriented space a place where my teams can readily access the information they need and successfully collaborate on the project that brings them together?”

The purpose of this book is to open the door for the typical businessperson to the multifaceted world of information sharing offered by SharePoint 2007. I wholeheartedly believe that this software offers you a great environment for collaboration, and it’s my sincere hope that this book helps you make the most of it.

How to Use This Book

This book isn’t meant to be read from beginning to end or from cover to cover. Although its chapters are loosely organized in a logical order, each topic covered in a chapter is really meant to stand pretty much on its own. It’s really up to you to figure out where you need to go and what information will be of most help.

This book is like a reference in which you start out by looking up the topic you need information about (either in the table of contents or the index), and then you refer directly to the section of interest. I explain most topics conversationally (as though you were in my office). Sometimes, however, my regiment-commander mentality takes over, and I list the steps you need to take to accomplish a particular task in a particular section.

I do recommend that you start, at the very least, by perusing the glossary and the Part of Tens. Starting at the end of the book can help you get a handle on the unavoidable SharePoint jargon and grasp some of the basic steps that you’ll need to take to get your SharePoint site ready for collaboration. After that, it’s off to the chapters that give you the detailed information you need to shift the collaboration into high gear.

Foolish Assumptions

The only assumption I make about you, dear reader (other than you’re highly motivated to find out what exactly SharePoint is and what it can do for you), is that you have access to a new SharePoint site (using at least Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, if not Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as well). And further, you must customize this new SharePoint site and get it ready for your teams to use in some sort of collaborative project.

I also make one other foolish assumption; namely, that your new SharePoint site has the same basic layout and elements as the one shown in many of the figures throughout this book. Just be aware that although the layout shown in these figures is the one that most new SharePoint sites are based upon, it is by no means the only one that can be used; your IT department may select a different layout for your new site.

Also, be aware that SharePoint comprises a wide variety of different technologies and features, not of all which may be installed and activated by your IT department or SharePoint hosting service on your new SharePoint site. This means that your site may have some additional options that you don’t see in the figures shown in this book. Likewise, some of the options shown in a few of the figures may not be available on your SharePoint site. By and large, however, you shouldn’t have any trouble following along with the text and figures in this book, because the vast majority of the features and options that I cover here are standard to all SharePoint sites.

As for your experience and skill level with SharePoint, it really doesn’t matter whether you’ve ever had the opportunity to visit a SharePoint site, let alone customize one. The important thing is that you maintain a willingness both to explore aspects of this program that are new to you and to adopt a new perspective towards those aspects with which you’re already familiar.

Beyond that, you simply need to be open to developing the skills you need to provide your teams with everything they need to successfully collaborate. Remember that there are no gold stars for knowing more about SharePoint and its hundreds of features. In fact, the only brownie points given are for knowing how to use those SharePoint features to your best advantage in fostering information sharing and collaboration among your teams.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is organized in five parts. Each part contains two or more chapters with related content. Each chapter is further divided into loosely related sections that cover the basics of the topic at hand. You should not, however, get too hung up about following along with the structure of the book; ultimately, it doesn’t matter at all if you find out how to manage your SharePoint Tasks lists before you find out how to schedule events for your teams in the SharePoint Calendar list. The important thing is that you find the information — and understand it when you find it — when you need to explore a new aspect of teamwork using SharePoint to achieve it.

In case you’re interested, here’s a synopsis of what you find in each part that follows.

Part I: Implementing SharePoint Collaboration

The three chapters in this part set the stage for using SharePoint as your primary collaborative tool. They not only give basic information on what SharePoint is and what it can do for you, but they also give you the basics on customizing the site to suit your teams and giving them access to the new SharePoint site.

Part II: Managing Your SharePoint Data

The two chapters in this part give you an overview of SharePoint’s data capabilities. Chapter 4 acquaints you with data lists, the fundamental SharePoint component used in information sharing. Chapter 5 then gives you the lowdown on using libraries, the basic SharePoint component used to give your teams access to all the supporting documents they need.

Part III: Getting the Most Out of Your SharePoint Site

SharePoint 2007 features many specialized components designed to foster different collaborative experiences. The chapters in this part explore the major ones that you’ll typically use in the course of your collaboration.

Chapter 6 shows you how to use meeting workspaces to manage your team meetings. Chapter 7 acquaints you with using surveys and discussion boards to get feedback from your teams. Chapter 8 discusses enhancing interaction among team members using SharePoint blogs (Web logs) and Wiki pages (Web pages that the teams can easily edit and change). Chapter 9 takes up the subject of the team editing of documents that you place in a special document workspace. Finally, Chapter 10 looks at task management by showing you how to create and use various types of task lists and workflows to assign tasks as well as to monitor them.

Part IV: Using Office Programs with SharePoint

SharePoint’s tight integration with many of the programs in the Office 2007 suite is the subject of this part. Chapter 11 explores ways you can connect SharePoint to Outlook 2007 so that you can access its information from the comfort of your own Inbox. Chapter 12 looks at ways you can use the two mainstays of Office, Word and Excel, with SharePoint. Chapter 13 introduces you to Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (Microsoft’s new Web design software for SharePoint sites) and shows you how you can use its Workflow Designer to create custom workflows for your SharePoint task lists. Chapter 14 investigates the connection between InfoPath 2007 (Microsoft’s electronic forms application) and SharePoint and how to use InfoPath to customize form templates that you publish in special SharePoint form libraries.

Part V: The Part of Tens

The two chapters in the final part give you access to two of my top ten lists. Chapter 15 gives you my top ten tips on customizing a new SharePoint site and getting it ready for your teams. Chapter 16 then gives you the rundown of the top ten challenges that you must meet in order to ensure a successful collaborative experience with SharePoint.

Conventions Used in This Book

When it comes to menu commands, this book uses command arrows to lead you from the initial pull-down menu, to any submenus, finally to the command option you ultimately want. For example, if you need to customize the content of a particular Web Part (a special box in which reusable content is displayed) on your SharePoint page using the pull-down menu on its Edit button, that instruction would look like this: Choose Edit⇒Modify Shared Web Part.

Also, if you’re really observant, you may notice a slight discrepancy between the capitalization of the names of options in windows and dialog boxes (such as headings, links, option buttons, and check boxes) as they appear in the book and how they actually appear in SharePoint on your computer screen. I intentionally use the convention of capitalizing the initial letters of all the main words of a dialog box option to help you differentiate the name of the option from the rest of the text describing its use. So, for example, you may see the instruction, “type the name of the new site’s Web page in the URL Name text box” in the book even though this text box actually appears as “URL name” on the New SharePoint Site page.

Special icons

The following icons are strategically placed in the margins to point out stuff you may or may not want to read.

This icon alerts you to nerdy discussions that you may well want to skip (or read when no one else is around).

This icon alerts you to shortcuts or other valuable hints related to the topic at hand.

This icon alerts you to information to keep in mind if you want to meet with a modicum of success.

This icon alerts you to information to keep in mind if you want to avert some dire future problems.

Where to Go from Here

I have a couple of suggestions for where to go from here (after you get a chuckle from the great Rich Tennant cartoons). You may want to go directly to the glossary to check out the SharePoint jargon and then take a gander at the Part of Tens to check out my top ten lists: Chapter 15 describes ways to customize your SharePoint site, and then Chapter 16 explains the challenges you and your teams need to meet to ensure a happy and productive collaborative experience with SharePoint. Otherwise, I suggest you start by taking a look at the material in Chapter 1 and using its information and suggestions to get a feel for what SharePoint is and what it can do for you.

Part I

Implementing SharePoint Collaboration

In this part . . .

Getting your SharePoint site ready for your teams to use is the theme of this part, and it’s one of the most important tasks you’ll undertake. Here, you get a basic overview of what SharePoint is and how you can use it to further collaboration. You also get vital information on how to customize your SharePoint site to fit the needs of your team. Finally, you find out about giving your teams access to the new SharePoint site and inviting them to start using it.

Chapter 1

Collaborating with SharePoint

In This Chapter

Using Microsoft SharePoint Services to effectively collaborate

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!