I have just started to look at SharePoint 2010, but one of the first things I noticed, was how cumbersome it was to change view in a list or library. In the default “Browse” layout, you must use at least 4 clicks to change view.

I therefore made this solution to add a SharePoint 2007 style view selector to the top link bar:

As always we start like this:

Create a document library to hold your scripts (or a folder on the root created in SharePoint Designer). In this example I have made a document library named “Javascript” and added “jquery-1.4.2.min.js” and “spjs_customViewMenu.js”:

Add this code to a CEWP in the list view where you want the menu to appear:

<script type="text/javascript" src="../../Javascript/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../Javascript/spjs_customViewMenu.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
	createCustomViewMenu();
});
</script>

The code for the file “spjs_customViewMenu.js”:

/* SharePoint 2007 style view selector for SharePoint 2010
 * Adds a view selector to the Top link bar
 * ---------------------------------------------
 * Created by Alexander Bautz
 * [email protected]
 * Copyright (c) 2009-2010 Alexander Bautz (Licensed under the MIT X11 License)
 * v1.0
 * LastMod: 11.07.2010
 * ---------------------------------------------
 * Include reference to:
 *  jQuery - http://jquery.com
 *	spjs_customViewMenu.js (this file)
 * ---------------------------------------------
*/

function createCustomViewMenu(){
	// Get the view collection for the list
	var viewColl = customGetViewCollection(_spPageContextInfo.pageListId);
	var activeViewName = '';
	var htmlBuffer = [];
	// Build the view selector
	$.each(viewColl.views,function(){
		var viewIcon = 'itgen.png'
		var viewType = $(this).attr('Type');
		var viewUrl = $(this).attr('Url');
		var viewDispName = $(this).attr('DisplayName');
		if(viewType=='CALENDAR')viewIcon = 'itevent.png'
		var thisViewGuid = $(this).attr('Name');
		if(location.href.match(escape(viewUrl))!=null){
			activeViewName = $(this).attr('DisplayName');
			_spPageContextInfo.activeViewGuid = thisViewGuid;
		}
		htmlBuffer.push("<div class='ms-cui-ctl' style='display:block;padding:2px 0px 0px 2px;cursor:pointer' viewUrl='"+viewUrl+"' ");
		htmlBuffer.push("onclick='javascript:selectView(this)'>");
		htmlBuffer.push("<img style='vertical-align:middle;padding-left:2px;' src='"+L_Menu_BaseUrl+"/_layouts/images/"+viewIcon+"'>&nbsp;"+viewDispName+"</div>");
	});
	// Edit view and create view
	htmlBuffer.push("<div style='border-bottom:1px silver solid;height:4px'>&nbsp;</div>");
	htmlBuffer.push("<div class='ms-cui-ctl' style='padding:2px 0px 0px 2px;cursor:pointer;display:block' ");
	htmlBuffer.push("viewUrl='modify' onclick='javascript:selectView(this)'>");
	htmlBuffer.push("<img style='vertical-align:middle;padding-left:2px;' src='"+L_Menu_BaseUrl+"/_layouts/images/modifyview.gif'>&nbsp;Modify view</div>");
	htmlBuffer.push("<div class='ms-cui-ctl' style='padding:2px;cursor:pointer;display:block' ");
	htmlBuffer.push("viewUrl='create' onclick='javascript:selectView(this)'>");
	htmlBuffer.push("<img style='vertical-align:middle;padding-left:2px;' src='"+L_Menu_BaseUrl+"/_layouts/images/createview.gif'>&nbsp;Create view</div>");
	// Wrap the selector
	var htmlWrap = [];
	htmlWrap.push("<div id='customViewMenuWrapper' style='cursor:pointer' class='menu-item' onclick='javascript:customShowMenu()' onmouseout='customMouseOutHideMenu(event)'>");
	htmlWrap.push(activeViewName);
	htmlWrap.push("<img id='customViewMenuWrapperImg' onmouseout='customMouseOutHideMenu(event)' style='vertical-align:middle;padding-left:4px' src='/_layouts/images/ecbarw.png' alt='Open Menu'></div>");
	htmlWrap.push("<div id='customViewMenuDiv' style='padding:1px;background-color:white;border:1px silver solid;display:none;position:absolute;z-index:1001;width:150' ");
	htmlWrap.push("onmouseover='customHideMenu(false)' onmouseout='customMouseOutHideMenu(event)'>");
	htmlWrap.push(htmlBuffer.join('')+"</div>");
	// Append the new menu to the toplink bar
	$("div.s4-toplinks ul").append("<li class='static'>"+htmlWrap.join('')+"</li>");
}

// Overcome the missing onmouseleave event in Firefox
function customMouseOutHideMenu(e){
if(!e) var e = window.event;
	var target = e.srcElement || e.target;
	var relTarg = e.relatedTarget || e.toElement;
	var relTargID = $(relTarg).attr('id')
	isInWrapper = ($(target).attr('id')=='customViewMenuWrapper' || $(target).parents("div[id='customViewMenuWrapper']").length>0);
	if(!isInWrapper || relTargID.match('customViewMenu')==null){
		customHideMenu(true);
	}
}

// Hide menu if user moves mouse outside the container
function customHideMenu(hide){
	if(hide){
		hideMenu = setTimeout(function(){
			$("#customViewMenuDiv").hide();
		},500);
	}else{
		if(typeof(hideMenu)!='undefined'){
			clearTimeout(hideMenu);
		}
	}
}

function customShowMenu(){
	$("#customViewMenuDiv").show();
	// Fix div width in IE 7
	var menuWidth = 150;
	$("#customViewMenuDiv").find('div.ms-cui-ctl').each(function(){
		thisWidth = $(this).width();
		if(thisWidth>menuWidth)menuWidth=thisWidth+10
	});
	$("#customViewMenuDiv").css('width',menuWidth);
}

function selectView(obj){
	var Url = $(obj).attr('viewUrl');
	var activeViewGuid = _spPageContextInfo.activeViewGuid;
	var activeList = _spPageContextInfo.pageListId;
	if(Url=='modify'){
		Url = L_Menu_BaseUrl + "/_layouts/ViewEdit.aspx?List="+activeList+"&View="+activeViewGuid;
	}else if(Url=='create'){
		Url = L_Menu_BaseUrl + "/_layouts/ViewType.aspx?List="+activeList+"&View="+activeViewGuid;
	}
	location.href=Url;
}

/*****************************************************
				Get view collection
*****************************************************/
function customGetViewCollection(listGuid){
	xmlStr = "<GetViewCollection xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/'><listName>"+listGuid+"</listName></GetViewCollection>";
	var result = {success:false, errorCode:'', errorText:'internal error', views:[]};
	wrapSoapRequest(L_Menu_BaseUrl + '/_vti_bin/views.asmx', 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/GetViewCollection', xmlStr, function(data){
		if($('ErrorText', data).length>0) {
			result.success = false;
		}else{
			result.success = true;
			$('View', data).each(function(i){
				if($(this).attr('Hidden')!='TRUE'){
					result.views.push($(this));
				}
			});
		}
	});
	return result;
}

/*****************************************************
				Wrap webservice call
*****************************************************/
function wrapSoapRequest(webserviceUrl,requestHeader,soapBody,successFunc){
	var xmlWrap = [];
		xmlWrap.push("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>");
		xmlWrap.push("<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/'>");
		xmlWrap.push("<soap:Body>");
		xmlWrap.push(soapBody);
		xmlWrap.push("</soap:Body>");
		xmlWrap.push("</soap:Envelope>");
		xmlWrap = xmlWrap.join('');
	$.ajax({
		async:false,
		type:"POST",
		url:webserviceUrl,
		contentType:"text/xml; charset=utf-8",
		processData:false,
		data:xmlWrap,
		dataType:"xml",
		beforeSend:function(xhr){
			xhr.setRequestHeader('SOAPAction',requestHeader);
		},
		success:successFunc,
		error:function(xhr){
			alert(xhr.statusText);
		}
	});
}

Save as “spjs_customViewMenu.js” – mind the file extension – and upload to the scriptlibrary as shown above.

Ask if something is unclear!
Alexander

Guest Author: Alexander Bautz
SharePoint JavaScripts

Alexander Bautz is a SharePoint consultant/developer (mainly JavaScript/jQuery solution) living in Norway. Alexander spends a lot of his spare time blogging on the same topics. His focus area is "end user customizations" with no (or as little as possible) server side code.

Guest Author: Asif Rehmani – SharePoint Server MVP, MCT
SharePoint eLearning

This article is the third in the series trying to demystify all that SharePoint Designer 2010 has to offer. Check out the other two articles here:

User Interfaces of SharePoint Designer 2010

Site Level Customizations and Settings using SharePoint Designer 2010

Also, related to this article, you can watch the SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflow videos we have available here:

Create a Site Workflow and modify its form using InfoPath

An end to end process using InfoPath 2010 for forms and Visio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 for Workflows

Create Reusable Workflows using SharePoint Designer 2010 and attach to Content Types

Note: I am trying something new with this blog entry and would Love your feedback (in the comments area). Check out the animation at the bottom of this blog entry. If you like it and would like me to continue using this feature, let me know please. Thanks!

Types of Workflows

The Workflow Designer in SharePoint Designer 2010 is used to create workflows on the currently opened SharePoint site. There are 3 types of workflows that can be created using SharePoint Designer: List, Reusable, Site.

Each type of workflow has its reason for existence and will be (should be) used by used by Site Admins, Power Users and Designers of the site. Workflows in SharePoint sites are used to create robust processes using components of the site. They can interact with users, lists and libraries. The other ways to create workflows on top of SharePoint are Browser based and using Visual Studio. Out-of-box browser based workflows are good for many scenarios, but they are simpler in nature and cannot be modified further using the browser. While Visual Studio workflows are extremely powerful and scalable, but require coding skills to implement.

Following is a quick breakdown of how the 3 SharePoint Designer workflows are used and why you would use them:

List Workflow – Using this mechanism, you attach the workflow directly to a list or library on the site. Use this workflow when you are making a workflow that’s very specific to a list or library and does not need to be later used on a different list or library.

Reusable Workflow – This type of workflow is created with reusability in mind. Create a reusable workflow when you intend to attach it to a content type and use that content type in a list or library.

Site Workflow – Site based workflow does not require to be attached to a list or library. It works on the site itself. Use this workflow if you do not want to restrict the automated process to a list or library on the site. For example, you can use the site workflow to take a survey of the site members or to execute a process on a Document Set (new functionality in SharePoint 2010).

You don’t necessarily have to start creating a workflow from scratch. The out-of-box workflow templates (Approval, Collect Feedback and Collect Signatures) that can be used in the browser can also be extended using the workflow designer. Meaning, if you like the way these workflows work, but just want to tweak it to your liking, you can do that! These workflows are categorized as Globally Reusable Workflows and are visible and available at every site in the site collection.

A word of caution: Be careful while working with these! If you modify any of these from directly the root site of your site collection, then you are modifying the actual workflow template that’s in use at your site collection. Whatever changes you make will take effect everywhere in your site collection where this workflow is being used. If you click on any of these workflows from a subsite, it will instead inform you that a copy of the workflow will be made that you can further modify (I would recommend doing this and Not changing the out-of-box workflow template).

Workflow Designer Interface

Let’s look at the workflow designer interface that’s used to configure the workflows. You get to the design interface by either creating a new workflow or by clicking on an existing workflow and then clicking on the Edit Workflow link on the summary page of the workflow.

The workflow designer interface is where you define the complete logic of the workflow. To put it simply, SharePoint Designer workflows consist of steps which are executed sequentially in the order they are placed in the workflow designer. Clicking on the Step button in the ribbon inserts a new step in the workflow designer interface. Within the step, you can place Conditions and Actions. Clicking on the Condition button will show you all of the conditions that are available.

A conditional logic statement is used to look out for a specific possibility. If the condition is true, then whatever is encapsulated within the conditional block will be executed. Otherwise, the workflow process will move on to the next conditional logic statement (if one exists). Programmers have been using the conditional logic construct (If… Else If… Else) for decades now. Now information workers also have the power to write their own business logic without coding!

Actions are the actual statements which execute a certain activity (ex: Creating a List Item, Checking in an Item, Sending Email etc). The image below shows a snapshot of a partial list of the actions available in the designer environment.

Parallel Block

Each of the actions and conditions can be moved around rather easily within the step or even from one step to another. Just click on the action/condition you would like to move and click the Move Up or Move Down button in the ribbon. The default nature of the actions you place in the workflow steps is sequential. The first action takes place then the next and so on. This is made evident by the word then that appears preceding every action within the step after the first action. There will be many instances where you need the actions to take place in parallel. For example, if an action calls for collecting data from a user, the process will not move on to the next action until that action is accomplished and the user who the data is being fetched from provides the data. If you want actions to fire in parallel, you can use the Parallel Block functionality. You first start by placing the parallel block within the step right up close to the actions you want to run in parallel and then by clicking on the Parallel Block button in the ribbon.

The below animation highlights the following:

• Moving actions up and down
• Parallel block

Remember that there is no Undo button in the workflow designer so that if you make a mistake, you just need to undo it manually the old fashioned way .

That’s it for now. I’ll be back with more information on workflows in my next article. There are still many things to be discussed such as workflow settings, impersonation steps, parallel blocks, association columns, nested steps and a whole lot more. Stay tuned…

Guest Author: Asif Rehmani – SharePoint Server MVP, MCT
SharePoint eLearning

Asif has over 10 years of training and consulting experience in the IT industry. He has been training and consulting on primarily SharePoint technologies for over 4 years. He is a SharePoint Server MVP and MCT.

Asif is the co-author of the book “Professional SharePoint Designer 2007“ by Wrox publications. He has also been a speaker on SharePoint topics at several conferences over the years including Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference, SharePoint Connections, Advisor Live, and Information Workers Conference.

Asif runs a SharePoint eLearning website (http://www.sharepoint-elearning.com) which provides dozens of SharePoint Video Tutorials. He was the co-founder and is currently one of the active leaders of the Chicago SharePoint User Group.

Guest Author: Asif Rehmani – SharePoint Server MVP, MCT
SharePoint eLearning

In the last article, I described the screens and interfaces that users would interact with in SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD). This article will dig into working with specifically the settings and customizations you can make at the SharePoint site level using SPD. So let’s dive in!

As far as site creation is concerned, SPD can be used to create subsites using any of the available site templates. However, SharePoint Designer cannot be used to create a top level site or a site collection itself. You would need to perform these actions using any of the following options:

• Central Administration
• PowerShell
• Programmatically using the object model
• Stsadm.exe (this utility was heavily used in administering SharePoint 2007. However, PowerShell is recommended for SharePoint 2010 administration)

SharePoint Designer can open any existing SharePoint 2010 sites (SharePoint 2007 is not supported). The image below shows the Summary Page of a site. Each area on the summary page is marked with a number. Right below the image, each of the areas is discussed in detail.

Site Information

1.  The summary page is broken up into multiple sections. These sections show you a variety of information about the site. The sections themselves are not customizable. More cannot be added and the existing ones cannot be deleted. You can minimize these sectional panels by clicking on them, but that’s about it.

2.  Title and Description of site are completely configurable. Just click on the existing wording and start typing to change it. Once done, don’t forget to press the Save button at the top left to commit your changes.

3.  The Web Address link takes you directly to the site’s home page in the browser.

4.  SharePoint Version – The build number of the SharePoint deployment

Server Version – Just shows you that SharePoint is running on Internet Information Services

5.  Total Storage Used – This number is deceiving. Upon first look, it seems like this is site focused. It’s not. This number shows you the current storage used by the site collection.

% Available Storage Used – Quota templates can be created through Central Administration and assigned to a site collection. If the quota is set, this value would show the % of quota already used up.

Customization

6.  Edit site home page – The first thing a site admin would usually do is to edit the home page and modify its content. That’s why this link is available here in the customization section. Clicking this link will open up the home page (Home.aspx) of the site in safe editing mode. The safe editing mode makes sure that none of the edits in the page will cause it to become customized (or unghosted). This also means that the Master Page, which provides the chrome of the site, cannot be customized in this mode. There is another mode (Advanced) available if needed. You can get to Advanced mode by going to the Home.aspx page through the Site Pages library section in SPD.

7.  Change site theme – Changing a site’s theme is not supported within SPD. When you click on this link, it takes you to the page in the browser where you can apply any one of the available themes to the site.

Settings

8. Display Quick Launch – Shows/hides the Quick Launch of the site

Enable Tree View – Shows/hides the Tree View of the site

Notes:

1. It’s a good idea to use one and not both. Otherwise, you will end up with links to the same resources in two different places thus confusing your users.
2. Both show links which are security trimmed.
3. Quick Launch is configurable so you can hide or show links to site components as needed to not clutter up the navigation too much.
4. Tree View shows all of the site components that the end user has permission to see.

Recommendation:
Use Quick Launch for a nicely grouped organization of your site components.

9.  Enable Site RSS Feeds – Enables/disables the RSS feed for the site. This is a good way for end users to keep abreast of changes happening to their site by subscribing to the site’s RSS feed.

Subsites

10.  The list of subsites directly under this site appears here. This view is also security trimmed so that if a user does not have access to a site, he won’t see that site in this list.

Permissions

11.  This view shows the SharePoint groups who currently have permissions on the site. It also shows what permission level each group has. Using this section, you can also configure user permissions for the site. Security configuration options within SPD are a deep topic and will be covered in another article.

Hopefully, this post gave you a good perspective on the type of site level setting and customization options available within SharePoint Designer 2010. Future articles will attempt to detail other areas of this application.

Guest Author: Asif Rehmani – SharePoint Server MVP, MCT
SharePoint eLearning

Asif has over 10 years of training and consulting experience in the IT industry. He has been training and consulting on primarily SharePoint technologies for over 4 years. He is a SharePoint Server MVP and MCT.

Asif is the co-author of the book “Professional SharePoint Designer 2007“ by Wrox publications. He has also been a speaker on SharePoint topics at several conferences over the years including Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference, SharePoint Connections, Advisor Live, and Information Workers Conference.

Asif runs a SharePoint eLearning website (http://www.sharepoint-elearning.com) which provides dozens of SharePoint Video Tutorials. He was the co-founder and is currently one of the active leaders of the Chicago SharePoint User Group.

Guest Author: Adam Macaulay

The Quick Launch is a site by site navigation panel which you can use to access any link that has been specified. By default you will see options such as Libraries, and Lists. Technically the Recycle Bin and (View) All Site Content are not a part of the Quick Launch and are instead their own links that live beneath the Quick Launch.

The Quick Launch hasn’t changed much since 2003 except in how you can manage it. In 2003, we could only manage it through Frontpage to add Headings and navigation was managed through FrontPage navigation. In 2007 you were allowed to manage the Quick Launch through Site Settings which enabled us greater flexibility without using SharePoint Designer. We also saw the introduction of new headings such as Sites and People and Groups. This continues into SharePoint 2010 with some of the terms and link locations being altered once again, for instance we no longer see Sites by default and the People and Groups heading has been removed. Another difference in 2010 is the Quick Launch will be visible on all pages inside of the site, even if inside of Site Settings. This was not the case on 2007.

2007 Quick Launch    2010 Quick Launch

Now that we know what the Quick Launch is, let’s focus on managing it. To manage the Quick Launch we will focus on 5 key areas.

1. Display/Hide
2. Create List and Site Settings
1. Create Site
2. Create List
3. List Settings
4. Look and Feel – Quick Launch Settings
1. Headings
2. Navigation Links
3. Order
5. SharePoint Designer
1. Display Quick Launch in a Site
2. Display List in Quick Launch
3. Modify the Quick Launch Design – the v4.Master
1. ScrollBars
2. Height

Display/Hide

The simple question is do you want or not want to display a Quick Launch. I will show you how via the browser you can control this. You can also use SharePoint Designer  to this and the instructions are below in the SharePoint Designer section. You will need Web Designer right to modify this.

To display or hide your Quick Launch, go to your Site settings. This can be found within the Site Actions dropdown.

Under Look and Feel, click “Tree View”.

To display the Quick Launch check “Enable Quick Launch” and to disable it uncheck “Enable Quick Launch”.

Once complete, click the OK button to save your changes. You should now see or not see the Quick Launch bar on page based upon your choice.

Create List and Site Settings

When we create a list or site we are given the option of controlling if the site or list should be made visible. Unlike in the list, if we choose not to display the site in the Quick Launch there is no way to have it automatically added to the Quick Launch and we will have to do so manually.  

If you have used SharePoint 2010 and tried to create a site or list you likely have done so through the Silverlight picker and have not seen the option I speak of. That is because the option is not presented unless you choose the “More Options” button when creating the list or site. If you are not using the Silverlight picker then this option will be displayed to you during site or list creation. Note, when creating a list, it will automatically be added to the Quick Launch however when creating a site it will NOT be added automatically to the Quick Launch.

Let look at the two options.

Create List

When creating a list and we have clicked on the More Options button, under the navigation group we are presented with the ability to display or not display the list in the Quick Launch. As you can see the default is Yes. Choose Yes to show the list in the Quick Launch and choose No to not. These options look identical in the ASPX version of the “New List” option.

Create Site

When creating a site and we have clicked on the More Options button, under the navigation group we are presented with the ability to display or not display the site in the Quick Launch. As you can see the default is No. Choose Yes to show the site in the Quick Launch or choose No to not. Remember if you choose No, you will have to manually add this later if you want it in the Quick Launch. These options look identical in the ASPX version of the “New SharePoint Site” option.

List Settings

After you create a list you can choose to hide or show the List Name in the Quick Launch. You can do this by modifying the List Settings in the browser or in SharePoint Designer. You will find instructions for using SharePoint Designer in the SharePoint Designer section below. We will focus on using the browser. For this you will need either Site Web Designer rights or Designer rights to the list.

Enter the list that you want to show or hide in the Quick Launch. Click on the “List” tab in the ribbon and click on “List Settings”.

Inside of List Settings, under General Settings click on “Title, description, and navigation”.

Under the Navigation group, to enable the Quick Launch, choose Yes otherwise choose No.

Click save to save your changes and you should or should not see the list in the Quick Launch depending on your setting. That’s the nice thing about the fact the Quick Launch is on every page now, you can see your changes immediately reflected.

Look and Feel – Quick Launch Settings

We can also modify the Quick Launch to include our own links to specific page or other sites. Remember if we didn’t select the Sub Site to be displayed in the Quick Launch bar when we created the site, we have to manually add it and that is what we will do here. We will also discuss how we can manage Headings.  To manage the Quick Launch you must have web designer rights to the site.

To manage your Quick Launch go to your Site settings. This can be found within the Site Actions dropdown.

Click on “Quick Launch” under the Look and Feel Group.

As you can see inside of the Quick Launch manager we can manage the Links, Headings, and Order of content in our Quick Launch. By default there are some which will already exist inside of the Quick Launch. I say this knowing that if you enabled a Blank Site the Quick Launch will actually be empty except with certain headings for each list group.

For our example we will create a link to a site that already exists. Let’s begin, by default unless there is a site being displayed within the Quick Launch there will be no Sites heading so we will need to create one.

Click on “New Heading”

Because we want to display a list of sites that my users will access, I will enter the following web address.

“/sites/Adam/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx?ShowSites=1”

You of course will want to use your own site URL. Notice how I am using the Parameter “ShowSites” and setting it equal to “1”. This will take the user to the ShowSites view of the All Site Content Page if the user clicks on the Sites Heading. By doing this users will be able to see all sites that exists directly underneath the current site without displaying it in the Quick Launch. There a number of other settings you can use here as well such as;

If the list has been hidden then it will not be displayed. This is different from being displayed in the Quick Launch as lists can be hidden from the browser and only managed via SharePoint Designer. If you are coder you can always modify this file to have more abilities, like displaying all webs there are underneath, but that is for an experienced developer only and should not be attempted by an end user. I have tried to override the ListTemplate to something like 104 for announcements but this is not recognized, so stick with the table above.

Next we need to give our heading a title. Let’s use “Sites” for our title.

Your final result should look like;

Click the OK button to save your settings. You should now have a new Sites heading. If we did not do this then the next step to actually add the site under the heading would not have been possible since we wouldn’t have a heading to put the site underneath. Look to the left of your page, do you see your new heading?

Now that we have the heading created let’s add a site beneath the heading. Click on “New Navigation Link” to create a new link and place underneath the heading.

Under the “Type the Web address”, type the URL to the site you wish to make available. The site can live anywhere you like as you can use any link provided it is valid URL. (It doesn’t have to be a valid page just a valid URL.) You can add JavaScript here if you like however there could be a negative reaction if you do so since the JavaScript will be added to the HREF attribute. In my case I am adding the URL to my sub site.

Enter the description of the URL. In my case I am using the Name of my site.

Finally choose the Heading you would like the new link to live underneath.

Once complete click OK and you should see your new link underneath the heading we created earlier.

What we want to do now is alter the location where the Heading Sites is located. We want Sites to be at the top. We will now click on “Change Order”

We are now presented with the Change Order Screen. We are given the option to alter the order by choosing the number of the order that we would like the heading to show up in. In our case we want it to be first, so we will select 1 from the drop down next to the Sites heading. Once we make the change the whole view will alter the order for all items.

Notice also you have the same option for all sub headings which you can do the exact same process for. So if you have multiple sites you could alter the order of the sites to match to your needs.

Click OK to save your change and look at the Quick Launch bar, did it change?

SharePoint Designer

Using SharePoint Designer we manage if a Site display a Quick Launch, if a List is Display IN a Quick Launch, and control the Quick Launch design. Before we begin you must have Web Designer rights and your Farm/Web Application/Site Collection must allow the use of SharePoint Designer. If are you are not allowed to use SPD then you will be presented with an error message indicating that. Talk to your Administrator about attaining the appropriate rights.

Display Quick Launch in a Site

When you open SharePoint Designer to a site for the first time, the first Site Management screen gives you multiple navigation options. One of them is “Display Quick Launch” under the settings panel. Check this option to display the Quick Launch and uncheck to not display it. Make sure you click save to save your changes.

Display List in Quick Launch

Once you open a list within SharePoint Designer the List Management screen gives you the option to hide or show the list within the Quick Launch. Check the “Display this list on the Quick Launch” to display the list within the Quick Launch and uncheck it to not. Make sure you click save to save your changes.

Modify the Quick Launch Design – the v4.Master

We have seen that we manage our Headings and Links in the Quick Launch from within the browser, but how do we modify the design. We can do so from SharePoint Designer. Locate the Master Page “v4.master” within the Master Pages navigation group. Before we modify this note that a new version of the master page will be created each time you save the file so you do not have to save a copy of the file as you will be able to return to a previous version if necessary.

Right mouse click on the v4.master page and choose “Edit File in Advanced Mode”.

You can also edit the file by clicking on it and then clicking “Edit File” in the management screen.

We will now manage some of the properties of the navigation. If you are viewing HTML code right now, you’ll need to get into the Design View. On the bottom of your SharePoint Designer select “Design”.

You are now ready to manage the Navigation. Left mouse click over the Quick Launch bar.

By default, when we click on the Quick Launch we are actually managing the ASPMenu object which is not the object we should manage. We need to manage the SharePoint.SPNavigationManager.  There are three ways to get to this.

1. You can right mouse click on the Object Name above the Quick Launch and choose properties. This will open the Tag Properties for that object. In this case I right mouse clicked on “SharePoint:SPNavigationM…#QuickLaunchNa” and chose properties.


2. You can double click on the Object Name within the Tag Viewer at the bottom of your Designer screen. This will open the Tag Properties for that object.


3. Click on the “View” tab in the ribbon and drop down the “Task Panes” option. Choose Tag Properties. Your Tag Properties Pane should now be open.
1. Now click on “Skewer Click” in the ribbon.


2. Move your mouse over the Quick Launch and left mouse click. Select the SharePoint:SPNavigationManager object. This will select the correct object and display its properties in the Tag Properties task pane.

Now that you have properties visible for your Navigation object let’s enable the Quick Launch so that we lock the height and enable the vertical scrollbar. The height we will use will purposefully be short so that we see the scroll bar activate. You can of course set this to any option you wish but this will stop the long scrolling page should you have a lot of sites, lists, and libraries displayed in your Quick Launch.

In the Tag Properties, locate the “ScrollBars” property under the group “Layout”. If you would you prefer to sort the properties alphabetically please by clicking on the Sort Icon at the top of the pane. 

In the ScrollBars property choose “Vertical”. This will turn the scroll bars on for you. After you make the change, in your design view you will see the following error message. Ignore it, you are still doing a great job.

Let’s edit the Height property which is under the same property group. Set the height to “100px”.

Now that you have completed the change, save your page. You will be presented with the message “Saving your change will customize the page…”. This is just indicating that you modifying the page and it will become unghosted which means that it will no longer use the file on the server as the base page for its design but instead will store the page directly into the Database. Click OK to continue. You can always return the page back to the Site Definition by right mouse clicking on the file and choosing “Reset to Site Definition”.

You may also see an error message “The requested operation cannot be performed on a file with a user-mapped section open.” Click the OK button and then wait. Once it comes up with the file dialogue box, hit your escape button. When back on the page, hit your escape button again and try to save. By hitting escape you remove focus from the control causing the problem. Hitting escape before saving will usually keep this error from happening because you will no longer be editing the properties of user object.

You may also see the error message “There are pending updates to one or more ASP.NET controls in the page…”. Choose no, return to your properties, delete the height entry and re-add it. Now try to save your page again. If the same message occurs, click yes. Open the page back up and go back to the properties. Add the properties that were not added before and save your page.

The final results should look like this;

As you can see the Quick Launch is locked to 100px height and is showing a Vertical Scroll bar. Now your page won’t go crazy when you have 50 lists inside of your site and you are displaying them within the Quick Launch.

Guest Author: Adam Macaulay

Adam Macaulay is responsible for research and development of the technology platform driving the success of CorasWorks products. He has over 15 years of experience developing Internet Applications that have taken internal, cost prohibitive solutions and turned them into profitable internet applications that continue to exist today.

Jeremy sent Marcy and me a note pointing to an article by Tom Wilson: “Guys just read Tom’s post on this . I think you should do something similar too to stand out from the crowd.”

Marcy sent back an extended response, which I think might be useful for those deciding when and where to start messing with basic, location based interfaces. The discussion is about the ribbon in 2010, but it could be about moving or altering any major interface piece.

From Marcy
I’ve spent a few hours diving deep into the ribbon over the past few days. You have no idea how far I’ve come in my knowledge of the Ribbon and 2010 elements since we last spoke. I even have custom graphics to help teach and train. I’m excited for the SP Designer 2010 book to be released but it’s impact on my availability is frustrating.

I wish I had a little more time this past week to review more design and content stuff. This is when you guys need me! This is my sweet spot! You are all moving at 100 miles an hour!

I’ve read Tom Wilson’s article, Ribbon Customization: Changing Placement, Look and Behavior, and think it’s great to see what can be done, but I’m not convinced on his reason…nor yours. Is standing out the most important thing or is functionality? Isn’t there something else that can be done to stand out?

Microsoft built an entire architecture and platform around the ribbon. I’d like to test it out the way it was intended first. And then see if it needs to be redesigned. It’s a functional element, not just for looks. Moving it has implications that should be well thought out.

Key Points

• Any break in the positioning decreases usability for your audience. All day every day they will be working with the ribbon in another location. Your users are going to also be using Office 2010 products.
• Moving the ribbon on task oriented site, such as a Wiki, is risky. There will be little annoying cognitive decisions about navigation when moving from program to program. For those of us that will be using SharePoint 2010 in more than one environment (ALL of your authors), it will be confusing, irritating, nettling, discombobulating. As Steve Krug has put it, “Don’t Make Me Think!”

I like that Tom proved it possible. I even think his design is slick. But just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it is good design. We should definitely prototype it first. Just move the position and not brand it. Let’s test it if you really want it.

It might be interesting. We could even implement on a subsite as an example… but for actual use? I don’t’ know.. would you want to make something harder to use to make it prettier on the eyes? I can tell you that sometimes it’s worth it. I’ve got some rockin shoes that aren’t functional. But I have to be hard pressed to wear them.

So let me know what you want to do. Test and prototype a new ribbon or get used to the one MS shipped? I will be on board either way.

SharePoint 2010 will bring significant changes that will likely be both empowering and disruptive for law firm users and technical staff. Unlike SharePoint 2007, which was released when SharePoint adoption levels were still low, the 2010 release finds its predecessor with over 100 million licenses sold and well entrenched in law firms of all sizes. Upgrading to SharePoint 2010 will therefore have a significant impact on both firm users and clients.

Given this state of affairs, it’s crucial to understand the key benefits that might justify the disruption and cost of upgrading to SharePoint 2010. What follows are a list of new enhancements and subsystems that hold the greatest potential for law firms, which deserve consideration when developing your SharePoint 2010 strategy. Combined with an understanding of the unique circumstances at your firm, this information will help you to make the best decision as to whether and when an upgrade makes sense for you.

LARGE DOCUMENT LIBRARY SUPPORT

Microsoft heard the concerns of its customers with regards to scalability of document libraries. Document libraries can now handle millions of documents without difficulty, which makes SharePoint an even more interesting option for general purpose document management. In addition, new capabilities such as records management, tagging, and rating improve the ways documents stored in SharePoint can be managed and found.

RECORDS MANAGEMENT

A growing concern in many firms, as more and more documents have found their way into SharePoint, has been the lack of a robust records management capability. Most law firms found SharePoint 2007 unsuitable to manage records. SharePoint 2010 has reworked and expanded its records management functions to allow for multiple repositories, as well as the ability to designate documents as “in place” records, i.e., without the need to move them from the list in which they reside. Workflows move documents through their various lifecycle stages, including retention, archival, or destruction. Whether or not SharePoint 2010 can replace dedicated records management software for managing all firm records remains to be seen, but the new capabilities for records should greatly reduce concerns regarding the management of content stored in SharePoint.

FLEXIBLE CONTENT STORAGE

With the ability to handle large numbers of documents, there is a need for more flexible storage management. While the default storage option continues to be Microsoft SQL Server, firms now have two additional options based on the External Blob Store and Remote Blob Store models. EBS and RBS both store document content on a file server rather than in a database, and differ primarily in which server on your SharePoint farm does the heavy lifting. With EBS, web front end servers intercept requests to read or write documents directly to a file server. With RBS, read-write tasks are performed by the SQL Server. EBS offloads processing from the SQL Server, but must be installed on all WFEs. RBS adds to SQL Server loads, but does not need to be replicated across WFEs.

IMPROVED SEARCH WITH FAST

The ability to reliably and quickly search across all documents and content related to client matters is a significant driver of law firm efficiency. The right content must be available to attorneys and legal staff, minimizing the need to spend precious time sifting through irrelevant documents. SharePoint 2010 includes the option to integrate the FAST search technology (acquired by Microsoft in 2009). FAST is a enterprise-level search engine that combines scalability to billions of documents, the ability to extract metadata (e.g., client name, industry, or area of law) from within the body of documents, deep-faceted search that enables rapid drill-down to only the needed documents, and thumbnail preview of office documents that allows users to avoid opening documents to determine relevance.

The FAST option will come at an additional licensing cost and increased complexity, so you will want to consider whether the additional scalability and features warrant the expense and effort. Without FAST, the native SharePoint search will still index and search content from SharePoint, Exchange, file servers, the internet, and other line-of-business applications via the Business Connectivity Service, formerly the Business Data Catalog.

USER FRIENDLY WORKFLOWS

Automated workflow was a diamond-in-the-rough in SharePoint 2007. Simple workflows could be created in SharePoint Designer, but there were significant (some would say severe) limitations. Among these was a user interface that made it difficult to visualize any but the most basic workflow logic, and the fact that workflows created through the Designer were tied to a specific list on a specific site. SharePoint Designer 2010 can now create workflows that are portable across sites, allowing non-programmers to author workflows that can be used by others anywhere on your SharePoint farm. In addition, workflows can be visually manipulated in Visio 2010, which makes it much easier to understand the business processes that a workflow is modeling.

IMPROVED PAGE EDITING

Throughout SharePoint 2010 the process by which authorized users edit pages has been significantly simplified; having a similar feel to that of editing a Word document. Users can type text directly into the page, resize images, set colors and fonts, and perform other simple editing tasks in a more intuitive way. This should improve the ability of practice groups and departments to maintain their own content with limited support from IT. However, this ease of use may be a double-edged sword. As more users assume responsibility for authoring their own pages, increased governance around style and content will be required.

IMPROVED WIKIS

SharePoint 2007 wikis were clearly an afterthought. SharePoint 2010 significantly improves on the wiki functionality of its predecessor in several ways. First is support for multiple wiki page templates – for example, you might create different templates for a forms library or a general procedure. Second is the significantly improved page editor, which has the ability to embed web parts directly into wiki pages, enabling quite complex “mash-ups” of unstructured and structured content. As with all lists in SharePoint 2010, users can rate and tag pages, making it easier for others to find the wiki pages of greatest interest to them.

READ-WRITE ACCESS TO EXTERNAL DATABASES

Many readers may have worked with the Business Data Catalog in SharePoint 2007. The BDC provided a means for connecting to external data stored in SQL Server, and displaying that data through the BDC web parts, or indexing it through SharePoint Search. Microsoft has re-branded the BDC as Business Connectivity Services, and expanded its functionality to allow for full read-write operations. This functionality is exposed through what appears to be a SharePoint list, so the user’s experience in editing SQL data is similar to that of editing data in a native SharePoint list. This opens up a host of possibilities to develop applications for which storing data in a SQL table is preferable to storing it in a SharePoint list.

OFFLINE ACCESS VIA SHAREPOINT WORKSPACE

SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove) provides the ability to take SharePoint documents and data offline, edit that content, and resynchronize it back to SharePoint at a later time. This provides intriguing possibilities for travelling attorneys who need access to client or matter specific documents while at locations without easy access to the internet. For example, if an attorney will be appearing in a court without Wi-Fi, or is on an airplane in route to a client’s location, they could use SharePoint Workspace to view and edit copies of the needed documents until a connection becomes available.

Note, however, that offline access may be a feature with diminishing returns. The number of locations without internet access is rapidly diminishing. Also, one needs to consider the number of documents that will require synchronization. For small document libraries an offline copy may be feasible, whereas for libraries holding tens-of-gigabytes of content it may be better to require a direct connection through the SharePoint web interface.

CONCLUSION

The next version of SharePoint contains hundreds, if not thousands, of significant changes to its predecessor. They range from architectural enhancements to promote scalability to user-interface enhancements that bring SharePoint into conformance with Office 2007 and 2010 and everything in between. Given the sheer breadth and depth of these changes, most legal IT departments are likely to take an iterative approach to evaluating and deploying SharePoint 2010 — selecting those features and subsystems that offer the most value first, and then gradually layering on additional components as the benefits become clear.

This article is reprinted with permission from the April 19, 2010 issue of Law.com. ©2009 ALM Properties Inc.

Guest Author: Mark Gerow
Fenwick & West

Mark Gerow has more than 20 years of experience in IT, professional services and software product development and has provided consulting services to hundreds of companies throughout the San Francisco Bay area and Northern California. He currently works for Fenwick & West, where he leads the application development team and is responsible for defining and implementing the firm’s intranet and extranet strategies using SharePoint technologies.

Microsoft got it right this time around!   The Business Data Catalog (BDC) in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 was missing one vital ingredient when trying to use the BDC.  The missing ingredient was a tool to generate the Application Definition File (ADF) which was imported into SharePoint and described the data that you are connecting to and how to connect to it.  Without tooling you had to create the Application Definition File by hand. This task was excruciatingly painful even if you had written hundreds of them before.  We are actually quite thankful to Microsoft as this missing ingredient enabled us to write a tool and start a business providing tools specifically for the BDC and later on – other areas of SharePoint.

In SharePoint 2010 the now named Business Connectivity Services comes with two tools for two different calibres of user; SharePoint Designer 2010 for Power Users, and Visual Studio 2010 Professional BCS Tooling for Developers.  The purpose of this article is to describe when to use either tool.  

Firstly, let’s discuss what the tools actually do for us.  In Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 you were creating something called a LOBSystem which stood for Line of Business System.  Each LOBSystem contained Entities, and these Entities described the Table, View or Stored Procedure that you were going to be connecting to.  Terminology has changed! Now you create a Business Data Model instead of a LOBSystem, and an External Content Type (ECT) instead of an Entity. A model can contain 1 or more ECTs which can also be associated.  Below you can see the New External Content Type creator screen in SharePoint Designer 2010.

The SharePoint Designer 2010 External Content Type Page

An External Content Type describes the data that you will display and how to display it.  It describes each column such as Name, Address, Phone Number and the data type of each column e.g. String or Date/Time.  The External Content Type now has many methods that allow you to read, create, update and delete the data.  Both SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 Professional will provide you with a way to create the Business Data Model and External Content Types.  So let’s find out which tool is write for you…

SharePoint Designer 2010

The coolest thing about SharePoint Designer 2010, is that you don’t have to write any code.  Yes, I know – you’ve heard THAT before.  Honestly, you don’t.  Well, assuming that what you want to achieve is within the boundaries of what SharePoint Designer 2010 enables you to do.  I guess it is like saying that you can create workflows in SharePoint Designer without writing code.  That is also true, but depending on your requirements of the workflow, sometimes you have to turn to code.

SharePoint Designer 2010 allows you to connect to three different types of Data Source; SQL Server, .NET Shim, or WCF Web Services.  I’m imagining readers raising eyebrows right now thinking ‘My users won’t know what an earth a .NET Shim or WCF Web Service is!’.  Quite right – So let us first concentrate on SQL.  If you are connecting to a SQL Server, the only information that you need to be armed with is the name of the SQL Server, how you are going to authenticate, and which tables, stored procedures or views you are going to connect to.  With this information to hand, you can connect easily to the datasource selecting the columns to display, and the methods that you want to create.  It takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you have the hang of it, you can connect to SQL and have your data displayed on the page in the format of an External List in just a few minutes.

Here is the ‘What if’. What if the data that you connect to is remote, very heavily normalized, or even you don’t use SQL.  You happen to have Oracle, DB2, Lotus Notes, or any other data source for that matter.  I’m going to chuck SAP and Siebel in there just for Bing and Googles sake J. The below image shows you the available data sources in SharePoint Designer 2010.

Selecting a data source in SharePoint Designer 2010

You can connect to a WCF Web Service.  The WCF Web Service would help you to connect to data that perhaps isn’t on your network and has to travel through a firewall.  Unfortunately, not any WCF Web Service will do.  BCS if very specific about how it wants the data presented so that it can be consumed.  So even if you have WCF Web Services already, you may find yourself creating new ones that work with BCS. Visual Studio would be the tool of choice to write the WCF Service.

What’s a .NET Shim?  Well, that is new to BCS.  A .NET Shim is an assembly that contains a Business Data Model  which has all of the necessary BCS methods to connect and retrieve business data from your Line of Business Systems and pretty much does the same thing as a WCF Web Service except for the remote bit.  You can connect to any data source, create mashups of data from different data sources, transform your data, and then present it for consumption to BCS.  So, already we are talking about writing code, unless you fit snugly into this box that says you simply want to connect to a few tables from a SQL Server database.  None the less – It is a HUGE improvement over BDC.

Visual Studio 2010 Professional

VS.NET 2010 is armed with SharePoint Tools for Visual Studio which allows you to create a Business Data Model Project.  The beauty of this is that you can achieve whatever you want to achieve because you are writing code.  (Don’t stop reading though – at the end of this is a happy ending). It doesn’t matter what you want to connect to, using Visual Studio you can connect to the source, create your Business Data Model and BCS will consume your data.  You can also write the WCF Services, and .NET Shims that SPD 2010 allows you to connect to.

Using Visual Studio 2010 you will see the ability to create a Business Data Model diagram which allows you to specify each method or property that you are likely going to need.  When you are finished doing that, it will create a stub for each method.  Your job is then to write the code for each method.

That is where BCS Meta Man comes in.  BCS Meta Man is a tool for Visual Studio 2010 Professional.  It does really just one thing, but a very useful thing.  It writes the code for you! So you can connect to SQL and Oracle and get the code written for you.  All you really need to do is tell BCS Meta Man the server names, table names etc and then hit F5.  Of course, you may want to tweak the code a little bit, which you can do, it is all there in the Visual Studio project allowing you to modify it. Below is a Business Data Connectivity Model in Visual Studio 2010.

So now with BCS – we have two tools SharePoint Designer 2010 and BCS Meta Man that allow you to connect to your data source without writing any code.  You can download a beta version of BCS Meta Man now by visiting www.lightningtools.com.  Our blog site also has endless information on BDC and BCS which can be found at the same location.

Guest Author:Brett Lonsdale
Lightning Tools Ltd

Brett Lonsdale is a SharePoint developer who specializes within the Business Data Catalog, co-owner of Lightning Tools Ltd, Co-host on The SharePoint Pod Show www.sharepointpodshow.com..  Strategically (kind of) Brett has based himself in Florida where he lives with his wife and daughter.  You can read Brett’s blog on www.brettlonsdale.com, and also follow him on twitter @brettlonsdale

Every once in a while your customer might ask you to customize permissions for a document library in such a way that authors can only change their own documents. There was no such feature for document libraries in SharePoint 2007, and the “problem” is still present in v2010. (Both versions support automatic item-level permissions OOTB for other lists like Tasks).

In Part 1 of this article I tried to solve the problem for SharePoint 2007 with Workflows, but never found the time to complete it and create custom workflow activities for SharePoint Designer. In 2010, SharePoint Designer comes to the rescue, as it has similar workflow activities OOTB!

In this article we will examine how you can create a workflow that will customize item permissions for each document submitted to a document library (only the Author will have contribute permissions). These SharePoint Designer 2010 workflow activities can also be used in various workflow scenarios where permissions need to be revoked after an item is submitted (e.g. Annual Leave Requests, various approvals etc.).

Here is what you need to do:

• Create a new Document Library (e.g. Top Secret Documents)
• Go to Document Library Settings > Permissions for this document library
• Click on the Stop Inheriting Permissions command from the ribbon


• Revoke permissions for all but a few important groups (e.g. Portal Owners and Portal Members).
  Please note: Steps 2. – 4- are optional but the workflow is going to be much simpler if there are fewer permissions to manage
• Open your site in SharePoint Designer, and select theWorkflows option and your list from the ribbon


• Type the name for the new workflow (e.g. Customize Permissions)
• Insert a new Impersonation Step. This special step runs each activity as workflow author.
  Make sure the workflow author (you) has proper privileges to manage permissions for this list.


• From the list of workflow actions choose “Replace Item Permissions
• Click Replace these permissions


• In the dialog click Add
• In the Choose permission to grant dialog click Contribute, and then click the Choose… button
• Add User who created current item to the Selected users list
• Click the workflow name (e.g. “Customize Permissions”) to manage workflow settings


• Make sure you have selected the correct Start options


• Publish your workflow

Once a user adds a document to a document library this workflow will revoke permission from other users and grant contribute permissions to the document author.

You can also customize this workflow and add permissions for other users as well.

Guest Author: Toni Frankola
SharePoint Use Cases

Toni started his Web adventure in late 90’s and has been working with various web technologies ever since. These days his main focus is SharePoint technology. He is active in the SharePoint community via his SharePoint blog at http://www.sharepointusecases.com/ and Twitter http://twitter.com/tonifrankola, and also speaks about SharePoint at various SharePoint conferences. Toni runs his own company Acceleratio Ltd., that specializes in SharePoint consulting and developing software products, and leads the Croatian SharePoint User Group. 

Last week I stumbled upon some pretty neat functionality of the out-of-the-box List View Web Part in SharePoint 2010: the AJAX Options. When you add a Web Part from the List and Libraries category (that basically shows you every List and Document Library you have on the SharePoint site) behind the scenes the Data View Web Part is being used to display the List or Document Library data.

When you edit such a Web Part once it has been added to a page, you’ll notice there is a new AJAX Options section in the Web Part properties. AJAX stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML and is a web development technique to build more interactive, rich web sites. The AJAX Options are disabled by default, but by enabling you can get some pretty cool results:

• Enable Asynchronous Update: enabling this option will make paging, sorting, filtering work without full page refreshes.
• Show Manual Refresh Button: enabling this option will show an icon to allow the user the refresh the data manually, once again without refreshing the rest of the page.
• Enable Asynchronous Automatic Refresh: when enabled, the Web Part will dynamically refresh the date it’s showing, without completely reloading the page. The interval can be specified in the textbox below.
• Automatic Refreshing Interval: specifies the interval used in the previous option.
• Enable Asynchronous Load: when enabled, the Web Part will initially be displayed without any data in it. But once the page is loaded, the Web Part will asynchronously fetch the data afterwards. When the data is being loaded, the Web Part will display an animation. This option will speed up the initial page load.

This article was originally published on Jan’s blog.

Guest Author: Jan Tielens

Jan Tielens is a.NET Architect and Trainer at U2U. He focuses on Information Worker technologies including SharePoint and Office.

Jan is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Office SharePoint Server and he is well known in the SharePoint community as the author of the SmartPart. You can read his weblog at http://weblogs.asp.net/jan and follow him via twitter at http://twitter.com/jantielens.

At the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, I had the distinct pleasure to present the Introduction to SharePoint Designer 2010 session. The early estimates are that over 1000 people attended that session. I personally had a real good time talking about SharePoint Designer since, aside from the facts that it’s my favorite tool to customize SharePoint and that I co-authored the book on SharePoint Designer 2007, so many enhancements have been made to this product that I didn’t have to use the “maybe this feature will be included in the next version” answer even once in the session Q&A! Awesome! .

As they say, best things in life are Free

First, let’s talk about the price of SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD 2010)… well, or the lack of a price tag. Just like SPD 2007, SPD 2010 will also be a free product. Once it’s available (it will be released with SharePoint 2010 itself which is going to be sometime in the first half of 2010), it will be available at the following site: http://www.microsoft.com/spd. The question that might come to mind is “does this mean that Microsoft will not be further enhancing the product or supporting it fully since it has gone down the free route”. The answer I can confidentially say is Absolutely Not! The product is and will be supported as part of your SharePoint deployment. The reason Microsoft has decided to make the product free is because they did not want the price point of the product to be the barrier in trying to customize and extend SharePoint to its full potential (before jumping into code). You can only do so much within the web browser window. To take ultimate advantage of your SharePoint deployment, it is almost (dare I say) a necessity to use either SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio.

What’s in a Name anyway

The last word in the name of this product confuses many people who first hear about it (IMHO). SharePoint Designer to them insinuates that it must be a product for people who need to do branding or styling in SharePoint. While it’s true that SPD is really good at letting you apply style sheets to your sites, modify existing SharePoint themes, alter or create new Master Pages etc, this is only one part of its functionality. In my own case, for example, I use SPD for all the non-branding reasons. I use it to create end to end solutions on top of SharePoint using functionality such as the Data View web part, Workflow designer, manipulating web part zones, creating page layouts, using the built in reports etc. just to name a few. I truly believe and always mention to my customers to very seriously consider using SharePoint Designer in their environment to take full advantage of their SharePoint investment.

The bells and whistles of SharePoint Designer 2010

In my session at SPC, I presented 10 features of SharePoint Designer 2010. I also did plenty of demos related to these features. Whether you attended the conference or not, you can find the video demos for all of them at the SharePoint-Videos.com site here: http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/free-sharepoint-sharepoint-designer-and-infopath-2010-videos/. The features that I highlighted are listed below. Keep in mind, that there are more great things about SPD 2010 then are listed below. Also, not all of them are new, but they are all very useful. This is just to give you a taste of the power of SPD.

1. New User Experience with Summary Pages, Ribbon and Quick Launch navigation

Just like the rest of the Microsoft Office suite, SPD also now has a Ribbon on top that changes depending on the object (site, list, workflow etc) you are focused on. Of course there is a learning curve if you are not comfortable with ribbons yet, however, once you do get comfortable with it, it makes you Really productive and efficient! The Summary Pages show you the settings and summary of an object that you are currently viewing. For example, if you are focused on a list, it will show you the name, description, views, forms etc for the list. The Quick Launch navigation on the side gives you a quick way to get to different categories of objects within the site (lists, workflows, site pages etc.). Overall, it’s easier to navigate a SharePoint site using this new user experience.



2. Creating SharePoint Content structure

Once you start out with working in a SharePoint site collection, the types of things you will need to create will consist of subsites, lists for content, and pages to display the information among other things. While creating these objects, you will need to manipulate their name, description, schema and other settings as needed. You can do all of this in the browser or you can do it in SPD. My reason for doing this in SPD is that it’s much faster and efficient than going to the web browser and waiting for each page to load after clicking on a link to, let’s say, change the title and description of the site. The web browser is much slower than using the SPD client application. That’s a fact!



3. Configure Site Security

Until SharePoint 2007, you had to go through the browser to configure the security for your site. It didn’t matter what your credentials were. You could be the SharePoint server admin, but still you had to resort through using the browser. Not anymore! You can configure security directly in SPD now. Creating new SharePoint groups, associating them to the appropriate permission levels and adding users to the groups is all built into the environment now.



4. Create Content Types and attach to Lists directly

Having a good solid content type design in your SharePoint deployment is always a good idea. It is basically how you are telling SharePoint what types of content you will be generating in your environment. If you have not looked into content types, I advise that you read up on it. Using SPD 2010, you can now create your content types hierarchy without going to the browser. Adding site columns (or creating new ones) to content types is also pretty simple to do within SPD.



5. Create Site Assets for your site

There is a new type of library now included in SharePoint 2010 called Site Assets. The objective of this library is to store the files that are used as resources for the site such as style sheets, JavaScript files, xml files and even images which need to be served up on site pages. You can create these resource files in site assets library directly through SPD. Since SPD supports intellisense for JavaScript, style sheets, and also xml, it is a much more conducive environment in which to author these files.



6. Use XSLT List View web parts to show dynamic views of your data

In SharePoint 2007, we had List View web parts (LVWP) to show our list or library content in a page on the site. They worked fine, however, they were not very extensible. Meaning, if you wanted to manipulate their look and feel, you could only get as far as using the pre-built styles and layouts either through the browser or through SPD. On the other hand, we had the XSLT Data View web part (DVWP) which you could configure visually using only SharePoint Designer. That web part lets us manipulate any data points at a very granular level since all data was fetched as XML and manipulated using XSLT which is a very flexible way of transforming and presenting your data. The problem with this approach was that once the web part is deployed, it could not be easily changed or manipulated using the web browser. Enters XSLT List View web part! It gives us the best of both worlds. All lists and libraries are now deployed on pages as XSLT LVWP which can be easily configured using SPD and also extended further as needed using the browser.



7. Connect to Data Sources outside of SharePoint

More often than not, you will need to display data on SharePoint pages that’s coming from outside of SharePoint. SPD provides an easy to use interface to make a connection to a data source that you have access to. It’s a fairly simple wizard driven process to connect to external data sources such as databases, xml files, server side scripts (including RSS feeds), and web services (also included in this release is the support for connecting to REST web services). The best part about this functionality is that you can link the data sources together and then show a unified view of the data. So for example, let’s say you’re in a retail business… your category information could be in a xml file, while your subcategories could be accessible through a vendor’s web service and then your actual products information is in your database. You can first create the connections to your data sources and then connect all of this information together to display a combined view of the data for your users. End users don’t need to know where the actual data is coming from as long as it all just works together ‘automagically’.



8. Create External Content Types using Business Connectivity Services

SharePoint 2007 introduced a new functionality called Business Data Catalog. That functionality has now been renamed Business Connectivity Services. The idea behind this functionality is to expose Line of Business data from your back end services (such as People Soft, SAP, custom databases etc.) to business analysts so they can use them within SharePoint. Each piece of information (for example a table in a database that has your Customers information) can be exposed as an External Content Type (ECT) by an IT professional or a developer using SharePoint Designer. Then a business analyst can use SharePoint through the web browser to make an External List which uses this ECT. The result will be that they have a list now showing information straight from the Customers table in the database (following the example from earlier). When anyone (who has permission of course) manipulates the information in that External List, it will actually be written back to that table in the database.



9. Create Powerful Reusable Workflows

SharePoint Designer 20007 came with a very versatile platform to make really powerful Workflows. These were rule based workflows and utilized the ‘Activities’ already deployed at the server level. Aside from all the good stuff that these workflows provide, there was one big problem… You could not copy these workflows from one list to another or one site to another site. That quickly became a big problem if you had invested hours or days in making the workflow and then found out you couldn’t replicate it anywhere else. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can create reusable workflows! These workflows can then be attached to lists, libraries or even content types. Not only that, but you can even package your workflows as a .wsp (solution file) and extend it further using Visual Studio! In addition to the reusable workflows, you can also create workflows which are specific to a site so there is no need to attach to a list or library at all (called Site Workflows). Oh, did I mention that workflows can now be modeled in Visio 2010 and then exported to SharePoint Designer? There are so many improvements in SPD workflows that it will take a separate blog post to dig into it all.



10. Restrict SharePoint Designer usage as needed

SharePoint Designer 2010 is a powerful application. The usage of this application can be controlled at the Web Application and at the Site Collection level. A Site Collection admin, for example, can decide if she wants her Site admins to be able to utilize SPD at all. Not just that, but various functions within SPD can also be restricted. An example of that is creation and management of Master Pages and Page Layouts. Another facet that can be restricted is customization of pages and detaching them from the site definition.

As you can tell, this is a very exciting new release of SharePoint Designer and it will change the way we manage, customize and configure our SharePoint environments. Each of these 10 things I mentioned above (and more that I did not get a chance to mention), deserve their own separate blog posts. Over time, I will be digging deeper into each of these things to provide you more perspective of how you can best utilize the features to your advantage. For now, I would recommend checking out our free 2010 videos that highlight many of the features listed above and more.

Guest Author: Asif Rehmani – SharePoint Server MVP, MCT
SharePoint eLearning

Asif has over 10 years of training and consulting experience in the IT industry. He has been training and consulting on primarily SharePoint technologies for over 4 years. He is a SharePoint Server MVP and MCT.

Asif is the co-author of the book “Professional SharePoint Designer 2007“ by Wrox publications. He has also been a speaker on SharePoint topics at several conferences over the years including Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference, SharePoint Connections, Advisor Live, and Information Workers Conference.

Asif runs a SharePoint eLearning website (http://www.sharepoint-elearning.com) which provides dozens of SharePoint Video Tutorials. He was the co-founder and is currently one of the active leaders of the Chicago SharePoint User Group