Article: Effective Site Provisioning for SharePoint

One of the criticisms lodged against SharePoint is that you install it one day and the next day you end up with thousands of sites. Each site brings with it potential security risks from improper security settings and massive storage consumption resulting from, among other reasons, content dumping.

Even assuming you don't have either problem, it's always better to have a well managed SharePoint environment than one without appropriate controls on usage. That's where site provisioning comes in.

To be honest, there's no magic formula for managing the site-provisioning process on SharePoint. Different companies will have success with different approaches. But there are some guidelines that enable every organization to both provide flexibility to its end users and ensure an appropriate framework to help manage growth, security and usage.

URL: http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid1_gci1360488,00.html

NOTE: Beyond what’s mentioned in the article, SharePoint Solutions has a good tool for helping to managing the provision process called siteProvisioning Assistant.  The product provides a nice mix of pre-built approval processes and end user ease of use.

Free Webinar Series: Improving SharePoint Search

I will be joining a list of fantastic speakers on a free four-part webinar series on improving SharePoint search.  The series was developed by Earley & Associates. 

From the web site:

“From basic search scopes to custom properties, unstructured content to structured data, we’ll cover a variety of methods you can use to improve your search experience and results.”

Please join us for one or all of the calls during the month of June.  You can register here.

New Support Offering for SharePoint Farms

Today we announced the availability of a new SharePoint support offering called SharePoint Operational Support Solution or SOSS. 

Consejo has been focused on SharePoint development since our founding.  What we’ve found, particularly with small and medium organizations, is that it’s tough for IT groups to support the relatively new SharePoint implementations effectively.  Most often, we see organizations struggle to create a support plan that addresses all of the critical support areas:

• Level 2 and 3 support
  Level 1 support is typically handled by internal IT staff.  As long as the issue is related to basic usage, IT groups seem to be fine.  However, when the error or issue is more complicated, a number of IT groups have trouble resolving the issue without external assistance (be it a blog entry or a call to Microsoft).   With our offering, we supplement your team by providing the expertise at the ready.
• Farm monitoring to ensure uptime
  Is SharePoint running?  Why can’t users access their documents?  Is my SharePoint server nearly out of disk space?  These are common questions and without proper and active monitoring, you won’t known until your end users are already complaining to find out.  We partnered with Panopta to create a proprietary monitoring agent that leverages their existing global monitoring servers without the need to expose your SharePoint farm to the internet.  Our agent gathers multiple performance and status data points from your SharePoint farm and securely transmits that data to Panopta.  Both you and Consejo can see your SharePoint farm status through the Panopta monitoring dashboards, receive weekly/monthly reports and receive alerts when farm performance is outside of pre-established thresholds.
• Service pack and hot fix management
  It’s a pretty common problem: Microsoft issued a service pack or hot fix and you’re unaware it exists.  Unfortunately, the trouble you’re currently having with your SharePoint farm is fixed by installing the new fix.  The SharePoint Operational Support Solution corrects this problem by enabling Consejo to manage this operation for you:  we monitor Microsoft for all new service packs/fixes related to SharePoint, we’ll notify you about the existence of a fix, identify whether it’s important to install and physically install the update if necessary.
• Periodic strategic reviews of the environment
  Are you making the best use of SharePoint?  Are there ways to improve operations?  Are there new services or features that will impact your operations?  We’ll review your environment on a quarterly basis and identify areas for improvement.  Since we have performance data available, we’ll even be able to tell you if your farm is operating within established thresholds and where you may want to make changes.  

All of these services are delivered through our solution, which is sold as a subscription; we ensure you don’t have to “find” help when it’s too late.

If you’re interested in seeing what we have to offer and how we can potentially help your firm, check out the new solution on our web site or simple contact the Consejo Sales Group.

SharePoint Summit 2009 Recap

I have just returned from a fantastic trip to Montreal for the SharePoint Summit, where I taught one tutorial on making SharePoint work in the Enterprise and one regular session on Web 2.0 and SharePoint.    The sessions were very well attended (partially to my surprise) and I really enjoyed seeing a different side to SharePoint implementations – in the U.S., Consejo tends to see more commercial organizations and, while there were definitely a number of folks from commerical organizations, I saw quite a few Canadian governmental agencies represented as well.

Overwhelmingly, the questions about SharePoint remain largely consistent with the U.S.

1. What does SharePoint do well and where does it falter? 
   The answer to this question really depends on your needs.  I saw quite a few organizations who needed records management, for example.  However, as readers of CMS Watch’s SharePoint Report 2009 know, SharePoint does not have any real depth in records management; if that’s what you need, you should probably look elsewhere or find an add-on to improve SharePoint’s RM capabilities.  Beyond that (and imagining), SharePoint is a pretty mediocre player.  However, Mike Fitzmaurice  from Nintex (and his Microsoft days), made an interesting point: SharePoint doesn’t have to be the best at any one thing as long as it’s pretty good at a lot of things; partners, organizations or even Microsoft can add point capabilities to supplement what SharePoint does natively and cover a good deal of what organizations need to accomplish.  Interestingly, Mike made his point with a little “presentation zen,” by showing images that represented examples of the “best” animals in specific categories (e.g. Cheetah’s are the fastest land animals, the Bull Elephant is the strongest , a specific species of Shark is the fastest sea creature) and then comparing those “best of breed” animals to a human with a tool.  Obviously an elephant could lift, literally, a ton.  However, a human with a crane can best the elephant.
   
2. How do I control (govern) SharePoint in my environment? 
   This is something that I had the opportunity to give a keynote on during the conference.  I’ve also written a little about governance in the SharePoint Report 2009 and on SearchWinIt, in my article “Four steps to creating practical SharePoint governance standard.”  However, the short answer (if you don’t want to read the source material) is really about establishing “how” to use SharePoint within your organization.  Microsoft gave administrators some tools to limit growth or unused sites, but the tool won’t solve any real governance problems or create your policies.  Good governance has to be an explicit effort on your part.  You must actively engage in a process of policy creation and education to ensure your success.
   
3. Do I have to buy add-ons to SharePoint and/or why doesn’t Microsoft handle “this” out of the box?
   The answers to these questions are: “probably” and “by design.”  More often than not, organizations will have to buy/build/download add-on components to supplement SharePoint.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; Microsoft could not be expected to anticipate every need or “solve” any specific requirement in a way that all organizations may require.  In fact, as Mike pointed out, Microsoft explicitly excludes certain features and/or components by design.  Mike shared that even Microsoft does not have inifinite resoures and when deciding on what features end up in a version of the product and which don’t, the product team focuses on “platform functionality” over “improvements to the UI or scenario specific” features.  The expectation is that partners, consultants or customers will fill in the gaps.  This approach doesn’t work for every customer, so be clear about your own goals and how much you’re willing to accept with regard to “missing” functionality and/or capability.
   
4. What’s in the vNext of SharePoint?
   Only the Microsoft product team knows for sure.  However, what I did hear from people in the know is that Office 14 (the version number of the next release) will be largely evolutionary with some slightly cooler, but not revolutionary components.  The one caution I will provide is that point 3 (above) still holds true; don’t expect Microsoft to cover every base and you should still budget for consulting and add-on products in your implementation.

Beyond all of the points I’ve made here, SharePoint is one of the fastest growing portal products on the market.  There were over 300 attendees at the conference and, universally, everyone was legitimately interested in better understanding SharePoint – primarily because they had all committed to using the platform for some web-based application within the enterprise.  I’m excited to see what’s coming in the next release and encouraged by the excitement I saw at the summit. 

SharePoint Migration PodCast

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a podcast regarding SharePoint migrations.  The podcast is in the style of an interview.  We cover topics like: what to watch out for, best practices for migration and practical planning tips.

You can register to hear the podcast here: http://library.theserverside.com/data/document.do;jsessionid=DE5FF872B3C13936ECBD952257887AC9?res_id=1237487165_496

SharePoint Page Layout Error: Only Content controls are allowed directly in a content page that contains Content controls

I recently built a SharePoint feature to provision custom master pages and page layouts for a client.  Overall the solution worked pretty well until one day, while making changes to one of the page layouts, I saw the following error: Only Content controls are allowed directly in a content page that contains Content controls.

Since other blog entries, referenced at the end of this article, can explain the background I'll get right to the cause and the solution.  The cause is improper case for the <asp:Content> control tags in my page layout.  A few contorls used a lower case "c" instead of an uppercase "C" in the word content.  The page layout that had trouble had tags that looked like: <asp:content> instead of <asp:Content>.  The specific offending tag is the one associated with the page title (<asp:Content ContentPlaceholderID="PlaceHolderPageTitle" runat="server">).  The solution was as simple as correcting the case of the tag name and all worked well.

Here's an example of the symptom I saw.  Errant code is inserted in the page layout after it's deployed to the master page library in SharePoint and result is an error when trying to render the page; this errant code will not appear in the source, but you'll see it if you open the layout in SharePoint designer from the master page gallery:

<html xmlns:mso="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"xmlns:msdt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882"><head>
<META name="WebPartPageExpansion" content="full">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<mso:CustomDocumentProperties>
<mso:PublishingPreviewImage msdt:dt="string"></mso:PublishingPreviewImage>
<mso:ContentType msdt:dt="string">Page Layout</mso:ContentType>
<mso:MasterPageDescription msdt:dt="string"></mso:MasterPageDescription>
<mso:PublishingAssociatedVariations msdt:dt="string"></mso:PublishingAssociatedVariations>
<mso:PublishingHidden msdt:dt="string">0</mso:PublishingHidden>
<mso:PublishingAssociatedContentType msdt:dt="string">;#Agenda item;#0x010100C568DB52D...;#</mso:PublishingAssociatedContentType>
</mso:CustomDocumentProperties>
</xml><![endif]-->
<title>Dummy Content Type</title></head>

SOURCE: Tech MOSS Team blog on SharePointBlogs.com

Where I found my solution:

• Rich Finn's Blog



• Tech Moss Team Blog (by Waldek Mastykarz)

Both of these blog articles were older entries, but they saved many more hours of work.  Thanks to both Rich and Waldek!

Customizing a SharePoint Site's Visual Design

One of the common questions we get from clients is "how do I apply a custom design to my SharePoint site?"  While SharePoint's interface is relatively clean, it has the ubiquitous "SharePoint Look."  Most clients want to make their sites match their brand, palette and navigational style.  However, it's not always easy to figure out the various elements that need to change.

To that end, here's a short list of options for changing SharePoint's look into something more complimentary to your brand:

1. Custom SharePoint Theme
   A Theme, in SharePoint terms, is like a fresh coat of paint over the existing SharePoint interface.  A Theme is driven exclusively by a series of CSS files located on the file system (in the "12 Hive").  The best custom themes simply override styles that can be found in the various CSS files that accompany the SharePoint software, like CORE.CSS.  The advantage to a custom Theme is that it takes very little to create some dramatically different interface styles; since so much of SharePoint's interface is CSS drive (to its credit), you can do quite a lot by simply changing the theme.  The easiest way to create your own theme is to copy an existing one (located in X:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\template\themes where X is your SharePoint installation drive).  Once you've copied the directory, renamed it, updated the included CSS and added your images, just modify the THEMES.INF to point to your new custom theme.  If you'd like detailed instructions, take a look at this MSDN article.
   
   
   Figure 1 - List of Themes included with SharePoint
   
2. Custom Master Page(s)
   In the .NET v2.0 timeframe, Microsoft introduced a concept called a "master page."  A Master Page, in SharePoint vernacular, represents all of the common elements of pages that share that Master Page.  Using an overloaded term, "template" might best describe at least part of the concept.  While Master Pages don't represent that entirety of the visual design, they establish the major elements and then determine where variable elements of a page can be placed.  By using "container objects," called placeholders (another overloaded term), Master Pages can establish the interface framework without interfering in a specific implementation.  Using various Master Pages with the same Page Layout (more on that shortly), you can produce vastly different looking sites.  In fact, SharePoint (MOSS) comes pre-loaded with several master page examples (mostly with names including "band" in them).   If you currently have a publishing enabled MOSS site (collaboration portal, News site or Publishing portal are the standard ones that enable this feature by default), you can change your master page in Site Settings.  There you'll have the option of choosing between various pre-installed Master Pages for both the Site Master Page and the System Master page.  In addition, you can create your own custom Master Page to introduce a radically different look.   If you are using WSS or don't have the publishing feature enabled, you can still use different Master Pages.  However, you'll either have to write a small utility to change the Master Page or you can download an open source extension to SharePoint from CodePlex to assist you in changing your master page (among other visual design elements).  Microsoft published a short article on customizing master pages on their MSDN site.  Remember though, you can have many Master Pages defined in your SharePoint site collection, but you can only use one Master Page per SharePoint site (unlike a traditional ASP.NET application).
   
   Figure 2 - Option in Site Settings for changing Master Page
   
3. Creating Custom Page Layouts
   Page Layouts, like Master Pages, were released as a part of the .NET v2.0 framework.  They are used in conjunction with Master Pages to create the overall visual design of a SharePoint site.  Page Layouts define what content will be placed into placeholders defined by the Master Page.  SharePoint ships with a number of different layouts.  By default, selectable Page Layouts are only available when using a publishing enabled site; you can choose a specific Page Layout for other SharePoint-types.  However, if you are using a publishing-enabled site, you can further refine your SharePoint site's look by leveraging customized Page Layouts.  Just keep in mind that Master Pages and Page Layouts are pretty tied together; if you create a Page Layout that uses placeholders from a customized Master Page, that Page Layout may not be "compatible" with out-of-the-box layouts.  For more information on creating Page Layouts, see this MS Office article.

In many cases, organizations will need to leverage more than one of these techniques to create the look they desire.    The specific technique will largely depend on how different you want your SharePoint site to look.

Once you've completed your changes, the best way to "install" the new, customized look, is through a SharePoint Feature.  A feature can provision all of the files involved in the customizations and programmatically enable them on one or more sites within the site collection.  The advantage to this approach is that by activating or deactivating the feature, the customized look can be enabled or disabled without vastly affecting the function of the site; this approach is also the way Microsoft recommends making changes to your SharePoint site.

Now, if all of this is too much to take in, or if you just need some help, Consejo has recently created a new SharePoint Branding Fast Track offering.  This offering is meant to help organizations quickly develop a customized the look and feel for their SharePoint site.   In a short 11 business days, we create a semi-custom visual design for your site, leveraging our pre-build master pages, page layouts and themes.  For more information or to discuss your needs, contact our sales group.