Making Sense of the SharePoint World

Aug-52009

The Office 2010 Synchronization Center

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As I play around with the Office 2010 client applications, naturally I'm finding some things are the same, while others are different. Today I'm going to talk about how Office 2010 saves files to a SharePoint site.

Reminder: Because SharePoint 2010 is still "under wraps", I'm only talking about using Office 2010 to access a SharePoint 2007 (or WSS 3.0) site in this article. Interaction with SharePoint 2010 may be very different. Also, because this is still pre-release software, things are subject to change between now and future releases.

What has Gone Before

Ever since Office 97 (yes, as in 1997) the Office client applications have had at least some ability to work with online data. By that, I'm not talking about network shares or mapped drives (that goes back even farther), but rather the ability to reach out onto the Internet to open and store files. Now, back then, the Web was just one part of the Internet, and a small one at that.

Most folks' interaction with the Web was read-only, and primarily for HTML text and a few images. If you wanted to move actual documents or other kinds of files around, you used a method called the "File Transfer Protocol" or FTP (original, isn't it). Office 97 had the ability to use FTP integrated just as though it were another kind of shared drive. You just entered the FTP address (e.g. ftp://ftp.example.com) into the file open or save dialog, and there you were!

Office 2000 took that a step further, by integrating the FrontPage communications protocol. This enabled Office client applications to directly read and write to any web site which uses the FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE). In addition, the FPSE themselves had been enhanced to become the Office Server Extensions (OSE). While the original OSE themselves saw very limited use in the real world, they formed one nucleus of what was to eventually become SharePoint.

Starting with Office XP (2002) and continuing on through Office 2007, the core client applications (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) have pretty much used the same method for accessing SharePoint sites. An "enhanced" file dialog, which displays a "web page" listing of the document libraries in your site, and allows you drill into them and select either which file you want to open, or where you want to save your current document. Once you have chosen your file, essentially the same protocol as was introduced in Office 2000 is used to actually transfer it.

In Office 2010, this is superficially the same process, as you can see from the File Open and Save As dialogs below:

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And, when you're opening a file, as far as I can see, it pretty much is the same. But when the time comes to save, things get a little different.

"The Man in the Middle" - Introducing the Office Synchronization Center

If you've done much downloading over the last few years, you have probably become familiar with the concept of a "download manager". This is an application that allows you to queue up a list of files (especially large ones) you want to download, and it handles getting them onto your PC. It compensates for broken connections, and partial communications.

Well, for Office 2010, Microsoft has essentially brought that concept to uploading as well. They have created a new applet called the "Office Synchronization Center". When you tell Word (for example) to save a file, rather than sending it directly to the SharePoint site, it hands it off to the Synchronization Center, which does the uploading, including such niceties as retrying if for some reason the upload fails the first time. It also allows you to continue working once you have started the save process - sort of like a "background save" on steroids.

Most of the time, you won't actually see much of the Synchronization center. By default, it settles into your system tray, and all you see is a little "Office Logo" bug. But, if you hover over it, you can see that there is more going on here than initially meets the eye:

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When you click it, as with most tray icons, you get a nice menu of options:

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So, what if I select the option to "Pause Uploads"? I might do this if I'm in the middle of working on a file at an airport, and I need to go offline to get on a plane. Rather than stop working, or saving a copy of my document somewhere else, I can just hit "save" normally, and continue the upload once I get connectivity back. The same thing happens if I lose connectivity for some other reason. Naturally, if the change hasn't been saved due to lost connectivity and I try to close the document or exit the application, I'd like to know about it. Office 2010 takes this into account, so by default I get a nice warning:

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Office even gives me a link into the Sync Center, so I can see what's going on!

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Once I have connectivity back, I can just click "Upload All" and all will be right with the world.

Conclusion and a Taste of Things to Come

With Office 2010, Microsoft has added the Office Synchronization Center as a method for dealing with uploading files to remote locations. This offers many potential benefits, such as continuing to work if you need to go offline, or not getting stuck waiting for communication if you are working with large files over a slow connection.

Yet this is not the only "offline story" for SharePoint that you will find in Office 2010. There are reasons Groove has been renamed SharePoint Workspace - but that's another story.


Published: Aug-05-09 | 4 Comments | 0 Links to this post
Tagged as: Office, SharePoint, WSS, Office 2010

Jul-192009

Office 2010 - A Quick Look

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This article is the first in what I hope will be a series about Office 2010 and SharePoint integration. In it, I'll talk about the current state of Office 2010, and some brief first impressions. I plan to focus later articles on each application, and how it integrates with SharePoint.

One Foot in the Future, One in the Present

Last week I (and just about everyone else in the known universe) posted that the Office 2010 Technical Preview had been released to a select group of people, and that SharePoint 2010 was going into technical preview to an even more limited audience. I'm pleased to say that not only I am one of those who has access to the Office 2010 client software preview, Microsoft has lifted the gag order on these client pieces as well. Unfortunately, SharePoint 2010 is still pretty much under wraps (see the Sneak Peek site for the stuff that Microsoft has elected to make available).

That doesn't mean there is nothing to say about Office 2010 and SharePoint. In fact, there is one scenario that is likely to be common for quite some time, even after the public release of SharePoint 2010. That is, accessing "old" SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 sites with the new Office 2010 client pieces.

Note: Depending upon your enterprise, you may also encounter the reverse scenario - attempting to access a server running SharePoint 2010 with Office 2007 (or earlier) client tools. (Obviously, we won't be able to talk about that until the SharePoint 2010 pieces are available.)

Are We There Yet?

One important point to remember is, Office 2010 is still undergoing heavy development. The build included in the preview (4006.1110) is not even considered "beta". That means that even the features Office will support at release are not necessarily ready for prime time now, or features that are in the build may not make it into final production. Because of this, I'm not usually going to be too critical when I find that something doesn't work quite the way I might expect. On the other hand, when something looks pretty cut-and-dried, I'll make sure to point it out, and discuss some of the ramifications.

Getting Started

The Office 2010 preview consists of several independent elements:

  • Office 2010 Professional, which contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, Outlook, and OneNote.
  • Business Contact Manager for Outlook
  • SharePoint Designer 2010
  • SharePoint Workspace 2010 (formerly known as Groove)
  • InfoPath 2010
  • Microsoft Visio 2010

Each of these is available in 32 and 64 bit editions. There are also assorted pieces of documentation.

Setup is pretty much the same as most Microsoft applications over the last few years, so I won't dwell on that. You can install it side-by-side with older versions of Office, or upgrade your existing applications, except for Outlook 2010 and SharePoint Workspace. These must always upgrade/replace any existing version of Outlook or Groove, respectively. One other caution here - if you open an application of a version different from the most recent one, a partial setup will occur, which resets certain defaults (e.g. file associations) to reflect the newly opened version. This can take several minutes, and is a bit of a pain if you open the wrong version by accident. (This has always been the case with multiple versions of Office on the same system, and isn't a 2010 specific complaint.)

At First Glance

Once you have Office 2010 installed, and open an application, it looks pretty familiar. Below, you can see Word, with the by now quite familiar tabbed ribbon (aka Fluent) user interface. One change you may notice is that the big round "jewel", which summoned Office 2007's equivalent of the File menu, has been replaced with a tab.

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Unlike the jewel, however, and also unlike the file menu, this tab reveals one of the first "new" elements of the Office 2010 products - the "Back Stage." As with the jewel menu before it, this includes the typical file-related elements, such as Open and Save, as well as access to utility functions. But, it also now provides a much richer application management experience.

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You might also have noticed the blue background and tab color. This also is new, and provides a way to recognize the different Office 2010 applications. As you can see in the carousel image below, each application has been assigned a different color for its Back Stage.

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A Flexible Ribbon

One of the biggest complaints about the ribbon in Office 2007 has been its "static" nature. Even if you didn't like the order of tabs, or the groups Microsoft supplied by default, you were pretty much stuck. In the Office 2010 clients, that isn't the case. In fact, you pretty much have free reign to rearrange the defaults, or create virtually any custom ribbon you desire.

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A Note About SharePoint Designer 2010

I mentioned earlier that when I encountered something that looked pretty cut and dried, I would point it out, and discuss the ramifications. One of these areas revolves around a product near and dear to my heart, SharePoint Designer. Unfortunately, even though SharePoint Designer 2010 is included in the preview, I won't be able to give you much detail about it until SharePoint 2010 itself becomes more publicly available. Unlike FrontPage and SharePoint Designer 2007, SharePoint Designer 2010 is so tightly linked to SharePoint 2010 that you cannot even open a non-SP-2010 site. If you try, you get the following dialog (which is very similar to the one Expression Web gives when you try to open any SharePoint site):

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Even though the date on SharePoint is wrong (it says 2009 rather than 2010), you get the idea. What's more, SPD 2010 won't even open an individual page from the file system unless you already have a SP 2010 site open.

So, what does this mean? Essentially, if you want to customize WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 sites, you still need to keep a copy of SharePoint Designer 2007 around. In addition, SPD 2007 is a great tool for editing non-SharePoint web sites (including legacy FrontPage based sites) which it appears will not be the case for SPD 2010.

Summary

In this article I talked about the Office 2010 preview release. We looked at the components, as well as some of the User Experience changes - particularly the color-coded Back Stage feature. I also talked briefly about SharePoint Designer 2010 and the fact that SharePoint Designer 2007 will be needed as long as SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3 are around. All of this, and we have just barely scratched Office 2010's shiny-new surface.


Published: Jul-19-09 | 1 Comment | 0 Links to this post
Tagged as: General, Office, SharePoint, SharePoint Designer, Office 2010

Jul-132009

Taking the Stage - Office and SharePoint 2010

In conjunction with the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), Microsoft has started showing off a bit more of the next versions of Office and SharePoint. Still no bits for most of us* to play with, but there are some preview videos talking about the changes. Click the link below to check out the Sneak Peek site, and stay tuned!

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx

* Note: There is an invitation-only preview program. Tech-Ed 2009 attendees got invitations for the Office client pieces. I'm not sure at this time about SharePoint Server.

Published: Jul-13-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post
Tagged as: Conferences, SharePoint, Office, General, 2010

Jul-82009

Share the Power

A Tale of Two "Points"

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… No, wait – that's the wrong tale!

It was the best of Points, it was the worst of Points…

Today I'm going to talk about PowerPoint, and how the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Slide Library takes it to the next level.
(Note: I originally wrote and published this article on my original blog site when MOSS was first released. It is just as relevant now, so I've decided to repost it here to be seen with fresh eyes.)

PowerPoint presentations are the lifeblood of many a corporate meeting; however, getting a consistent message across has been difficult due to the fact that a PowerPoint deck is one big file. Sometimes, it is one really big file. If you have certain key business information and you want to ensure everyone presenting "gets it right", your choices have generally been limited to providing a "standards" deck, containing all of your company's boilerplate, and making everyone pull out the slides they need; or going through the tedious process of saving each slide or small block of slides individually, then having your users merge each file them into their working presentation.

That can be very difficult, not only because you might have many such standard slides, but it means that the user needs to try to copy and paste them from the base presentation into their working copy, or merge many separate files. Finding just the right slide can be a task as well. Wouldn't it be great if you could just have each slide in its own file, and easily pick and choose which ones you wanted in your presentation? Well, with PowerPoint 2007 and MOSS, you can!

The slide library feature of MOSS allows you to create a repository of standard company slides, that is true, but because it is based on SharePoint, you can do so much more! Your library can include custom fields so you can make it easy to find just the slides you are looking for (e.g. sales figures, company policies, key executive bios), either by search, or by filter. You can separate slides for internal use only from those suitable for public consumption.

Creating a Slide Library

Creating a slide library in MOSS 2007 is just as easy as creating any other type of list or library - just go to the Create page, and select Slide Library:

You will then be asked the normal questions, like what you want to call it, if you want it on the quick launch, etc...

Accessing your library

Once you've created your slide library, you will want to populate it.

Open a presentation that has some slides you wish to re-use. Then, from the Office menu, select Publish, and click Publish slides.

Use the Browse button to select your site and library (and optionally folder), as normal. Now you can pick and choose which slides you want to save in the library, optionally renaming them and giving them new descriptions at the same time!

Now, what about getting the slides into a new presentation? Easy as can be! Open your slide library, tick the boxes beside the slides you want, and click the "Send to Presentation" link. You will be asked if you want to create a new presentation, or insert the slides into an existing one.

You can have the slides retain their original formatting, or assume the format of the target presentation. You can even have PowerPoint tell you if the source slides have changed since you inserted them into the presentation!

Conclusion

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 are both great products on their own, and even greater together. The MOSS slide library brings this integration to the next level. With a final apology to Charles Dickens:

It is a far, far better thing that they do, than they have ever done; it is a far, far better combination they bring than we have ever known…


Published: Jul-08-09 | 2 Comments | 0 Links to this post
Tagged as: Classic, Office, Lists and Libraries, SharePoint