SharePointDIY.com

The other day I came across an issue with a user.  My user was uploading a number of documents by the click and drag method that I have discussed in a previous blog about mapping a shared document location.  He had all the permissions set up correctly for other MOSS user to view his documents.  However, he was the only one that could see the documents he uploaded.  He was using the out-of-the-box Document Center that comes included with the Collaboration Portal site template.

As with any concern with a document library, it is always good to start with the Document Library Settings. 

Go into your Document Library in question.  Click on the Settings drop down and select Document Library Settings.

On the next page, select Versioning settings from the General Settings column.

On the Versioning settings page, you will see options for setting up content approval as well as version settings.  For this blog, we will pay attention to the last setting known as Require Check Out.  To turn off all the documents being automatically checked out to the user uploading, select No for Require Check Out.

Now all the documents my user uploaded are visible to everyone he has set a viewing permission for. 
Required Check Out can be useful to assist in keeping changes limited to one user at a time.  However, for my user it became a pain because he was uploading 20+ documents at a time and then he had to check them in individually.  Experiment with it to see what works best for your SharePoint environment.

On a number of the site templates such as Team Site, you will find that you get an Announcement web part to begin with.  After you have used the Announcement web part that the SharePoint template provides for you, you may decide you have another list of Announcements to add. 

So as the site administrator, you go to Site Actions >> Edit Page.  You then figure out which web part zone you want to add your new Announcements web part to and click “Add a Web Part”.   In the “List and Libraries” section, you simply click Announcements and hit OK to add this as a new web part.

Seems simple enough, right? …………..  WRONG!  The web part you have added is tied to the same announcements list as the first one.

This will actually duplicate the default Announcement web part that the site template provided for you.  You need to take a couple of different steps to add a different Announcements web part to the same page.  What you need to do is to create a new announcements list first.

Go to Site Actions >> Create

Choose Announcements from the Communications section.

Give it whatever name suits the purpose of the announcement.  For this demonstration, I will name it Announcements2.  Click Create.

Now go back and go thru the original steps I described earlier. 

Site Actions >> Edit Page >> Add a New Web Part. Now I can see both my existing Announcements and my new Announcements2.  Choose your newly created Announcements2 or whatever you named it and add you content.

 
For a future reference, when you’re adding a web part, the List and Libraries section is directly linked to any lists or libraries you have created within your site.  They will be there if you choose to show them as web parts.  The world of SharePoint makes sense again!

SharePoint makes uploading documents easier than ever.  “Out-of-the-box”  SharePoint has an upload button located within every Document or Picture library.  But wouldn’t it be easier to simply click and drag documents to a specific location within SharePoint?  Here is how to do it.

These directions are for Vista but you will find many similarities with whichever Windows OS you are running.

Go to My Computer

Click Map Network drive

Choose a Drive: Letter.  Copy and Paste in the address of SharePoint where you want to click and drag documents to.  Then Click Finish

After this is completed, a window should open up.  Now you can click and drag documents to this location.  Then the next time you are in SharePoint these will appear in your document library!  It is the easiest and fastest way to upload documents.

Continuing with further exploration of custom permission levels, I feel it is very important to create a Group to put users in specifically.  For example, you may have an Accounting team.  You want to make sure they all have equal rights to do things within their site collection. You have already created an “Accounting Team” permission level.  The next step is for a site administrator to create a new group with this specific access. 

Go to the same area for adding new users:  Site Actions >> Site Settings >> People and Groups.

Under the New dropdown, select New Group

Here you will have similar options you see elsewhere in MOSS or WSS 3.0.  You can name the group, give certain rights to viewing, and set permissions.

In the bottom section, select your custom Permission level you want for this group.

Click create and you now have a new group with the permission levels you set.  Add users to this group and you are finished.

By the previous post by me, I showed you how to create a custom Permission level.  Now I will show you how to assign this to users.

If the user is new, go to Site Actions >> Site Settings >> People and Groups.

Add a new user.

When you select a new user from your Active Directory, you should see a section where you can assign access.  Select “Give users permission directly”.  Then you can check any out-of-the-box or custom created permission levels.  For this purpose, select the one you created.

Click OK.  Now the user has been granted that access specifically.

You can also create a new group with this specific access. 

Go to the same area:  Site Actions >> Site Settings >> People and Groups.

Under the new dropdown, select New Group

Here you will have similar options you see elsewhere in MOSS.  You can name the group, give certain rights to viewing, and set permissions.

In the bottom section, select your custom Permission level you want for this group.

Click create and you now have a new group with the permission levels you set.  Add users to this group and you are finished.

1. Create a calendar list on your WSS site.
2. Export your Outlook Calendar into a Excel file format with the following column:
   - Subject
   - Location
   - Start Date
   - Start Time
   - End Date
   - End Time
   - All Day event
3. Go to the Calendar list and switch to All Event View
4. Export this empty view to Spread and open it.
5. Open your exported Outlook Calendar, merge Start Day and Start Time to a fingle column
6. Merge End Date and End Time to another single column. Both of these two column should have two sapces between date and time and YY as year, not 4 digits.
7. Copy Subject from exported to Title column of the Calendar list. The rest are straight forward. Do not put naythng to WorkSpace column since it’s read-only.
8. Correct any errors if you have. Then sync this list.

With SharePoint it is possible to go beyond the out-of-the-box permission levels that are given.  Perhaps you like the out-of-the-box permission level known as “Contribute”; however you wish you could restrict 1 or 2 things that this permission level allows.  The simplest solution is creating your own permission level for certain users to be associated with.

In MOSS, go to Site Actions >> Site Settings.

Select People and Groups under the Users and Permissions column.

On the next screen, click Site Permissions on the left Quick Launch bar.

Next, under the settings drop down, choose Permission Levels.

Then Click Add a Permission Level.

Now you are on the Add a Permission Level screen.  You have the opportunity to select certain permissions for this new permission level.  You might come across the scenario that when you check a box, other boxes are immediately checked for you.  For example, if you select “Create Groups” under Site Permissions…..”View Pages”, “Browse User Information”, and “Open” are immediately chosen for you.  SharePoint is making it easier on you by letting you know that these permissions will also be needed for the “Create Groups” selection.  When you are finished naming, writing a description of the permission level and selecting the permissions desired, just click the Create button at the bottom.

The screen will go back to the previous Permission Levels screen and your new Permission Level will appear in the list!

You might have noticed that your Web Part page is missing the Quick Launch bar that you see on you master page.  This can be easily remedied.

Open the page you want to add the Quick Launch bar to in SharePoint Designer.  You’ll see on the left side of the page there are a number of small squares that are known as place holders.  When you slide your mouse over these place holders, you will see an “arrow head box” appear.  Click the “arrow head box” and choose Create Custom Content.

After you have chosen Create Custom Content, right-click on that same place holder and choose Default to Master’s Content.

Click Yes for the message that appears.

You will have to repeat these steps for all of the remaining place holders on the left side.  We you have finished you will be able to see the Quick Launch bar.  Then save your changes to the page and you will be all set.

This can easily be done is SharePoint Designer. If you have not installed SharePoint designer as a part of Office 2007 Enterprise, I highly recommend it. If you do not have Office 2007 Enterprise edition, MS offers a free 30 day trial of SharePoint Designer to test out as well.

In SharePoint Designer, open the site where you saved the web part page you created. In my case it is located in http://wss. When I created the web part page, I chose to save in Shared Documents. Hit the + and expand the Shared Documents folder to find you Web Part page. Drag the page out of the folder and below the default.aspx page.

This takes it out of the place is SharePoint where is it was stored to prevent other people from making changes. Now it is associated with the site only.

Right click on your web part page and select Set as Home Page

Click OK to the message.

Click OK to the next message if it appears.

To test out all the changes you made, click the Preview in IE button.

Now you can see that your site has the web part page you created earlier, and you are able to edit the page accordingly. SharePoint Designer is incredibly powerful and you can do things much faster here than in SharePoint itself. Try it out for yourself