Integrating SharePoint with SAP Demo from SharePoint Business Intelligence Conference Bellevue

Ways to look at data in SharePoint from lob apps. User experience accessing core business systems. SharePoint as a future OS. Hey, I have saying this for years, similarities with documents, creation on the desktop. Goal to get management the data in a safe and secure manner. Reduce training costs. Is this the costs or is it the time to market for reports and bad data from manually created reports, ad hoc apps, to support decision making and costs of decisions based on incorrect assumptions.

IP form for w4 integrated with SAP useful example.

BCS updates to SAP for customer record interesting. CRM application.

SharePoint Intelligence Conference Bellevue KeyNote Take Aways

In Bellevue for the conference, key takeaways from keynote.

Self service BI tools
Unified Infrastructure reducing impact to IT freeing time for strategic initiatives

Demo Outlook 2010 Ignore Button?

Integrated Voice Messaging (Interesting feature in Outlook that summarizes cm in text and search)

Unified Communications offer potential ROI opportunities

Outlook Integration with MS CRM

More….

SharePoint Intelligence Conference Bellevue KeyNote Take Aways

In Bellevue for the conference, key takeaways from keynote.

Self service BI tools
Unified Infrastructure reducing impact to IT freeing time for strategic initiatives

Demo Outlook 2010 Ignore Button?

Integrated Voice Messaging (Interesting feature in Outlook that summarizes cm in text and search)

Unified Communications offer potential ROI opportunities

Outlook Integration with MS CRM

More…

Consolidation of existing services into less tools in context of user and tasks.

Lync-skill search is similar to mysites
Social technology in the enterprise, intranet provides secure alternative to popular social networking platforms for business related collaboration.

Video calling is easy, pop-up video cool feature on multiple monitors. Transfer call from office phone to mobile.

Integration with analysis services, dashboards, decomposition trees, Office Web apps, self service reporting provides business users control of formatting while ensuring decision support based on approved enterprise data.

Content Management

Folders is not the best approach for categorized content. Doc sets and content. Dahh.

Co-authoring Demo
Word, PowerPoint, and Visio
Did this come from?

Mobile Views
Synchronization in browser

Customers

Tyson
Qualcomm

Tips/Tricks: EndUserSharePoint.com moved on to NothingButSharePoint.com

Mark Miller announced  Dec 10, 2010 the closing of endusersharepoint.com but good news is the new NothingButSharePoint.com launch from Mark Miller, Jeremy Thake, and Joel Oleson with sections for End User, Developer, and IT Pro.

This is wrong…so wrong.

Cool pic from http://jalopnik.com/5715603/this-is-why-you-park-your-ferrari-in-a-garage 

Holiday Gift SharePoint to help others during the holidays

Using SharePoint to help others during the holidays

For the past several years, our employees have helped make the holidays very happy for many local children.  Because of thier thoughtfulness and generosity, these children woke up to presents and a wonderful Holiday Season.   Last year you helped a homeless family of six move into an apartment for the holidays – and if that wasn’t enough, fulfilled the kid’s wish lists! 

Again, this year we have a wonderful family who is going through some hard times.  A single mom with four children who works full time but struggles to make ends meet.  Last year, she was only able to get a few gifts for the youngest child.  We thought it be great if we could make this holiday a good one for all of them and knew this family would appreciate any help we can offer.  

This year we have a Holiday Gift SharePoint!

How SharePoint can help:
In previous years we sent out an email similiar to the above.  Thanks to the generousity of our employees many of the gifts came in time for the holidays, some even 2 or 3 times! 

Preventing duplicate gifts:

This year we wondered if we could provide the holidays wish list that could work much like a wedding registry preventing duplicated gifts.  When employees purhase a gift, they could go to the list and mark off that it is fulfilled. 

 

In SharePoint this turned out to be easy and fast to implement: 

1. Create a custom list to store the holiday gift wish list items.
2. Add fields for a picture of the gift, title, family member, and check-off field.
3. Populate list with gift items.
4. Create a new site page and add the gift list as a web-part to the page.
5. Configure the list view to enable inline editing.
6. Add content explaining how to view and select items from the list.
7. Optional: Create a SharePoint Designer Workflow to automatically send out a thank you email.

Increasing Participation:

To increase participation we made the SharePoint accessible to more employees and also partners by enabling claims-based authentication and providing access through the firewall. 

Happy Holidays!

Configure Dataview Webpart to display results from a centralized list regardless of what site level

If you need to deploy a customized dataview web-part (customized in SharePoint Designer) across multiple sites within a site collection this may be a good option particularly if you want each instance of the dataview web-part to query and render the data from a single list.  Useful anytime you want to store the data in a centralized location, customize the dataview web-part in SharePoint Designer, and upload to the web-part gallery for use on any subsite.    Applies to SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2007 and WSS as well. 

Steps:

1) Convert your dataview web-part to XSLT in SharePoint Designer

2) Locate the SharePoint:SPDataSource control in code view

3) Locate the SelectCommand section and add the webs scope to your dataview web-parts SelectCommand directly preceding the select query:

SelectCommand=”<Webs Scope=’Recursive’></Webs>&lt;View&gt;&lt;Query&gt;&lt;OrderBy&gt;&lt;FieldRef Name=&quot;Order&quot;/&gt;&lt;/OrderBy&gt;&lt;/Query&gt;&lt;/View&gt;”

4) Add or Modify the WebUrl parameter in your <SelectParameters> section of the datasource ontolr and update the DefaultValue to {sitecollectionroot}:

<asp:Parameter Name=”WebUrl” DefaultValue= “{sitecollectionroot} “/>

5) Save the page, open in browser and export dataview web-part to your computer.

6) From Site Action, Site Settings select the link to the webpart gallery and upload the web-part to the web part gallery or Import the web-part on any site page.

Exporting/Importing SharePoint webparts 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/manage-and-share-web-parts-and-web-part-pages-HA010024106.aspx#BM4

Have fun.

Rod

<SharePoint:SPDataSource runat=”server” DataSourceMode=”List” SelectCommand=”<Webs Scope=’Recursive’></Webs>&lt;View&gt;&lt;Query&gt;&lt;OrderBy&gt;&lt;FieldRef Name=&quot;Order&quot;/&gt;&lt;/OrderBy&gt;&lt;/Query&gt;&lt;/View&gt;” UseInternalName=”True” IncludeHidden=”True” ID=”datasource1″><SelectParameters><asp:Parameter DefaultValue=”{5942043E-EC50-41A2-8A06-513CA392FE65}” Name=”ListID”></asp:Parameter><asp:QueryStringParameter QueryStringField=”RootFolder” Name=”RootFolder” Type=”String”></asp:QueryStringParameter><asp:Parameter DefaultValue=”0″ Name=”StartRowIndex”></asp:Parameter><asp:Parameter DefaultValue=”0″ Name=”nextpagedata”></asp:Parameter><asp:Parameter DefaultValue=”100″ Name=”MaximumRows”></asp:Parameter><asp:Parameter Name=”WebUrl” DefaultValue=”{sitecollectionroot}”/>
</SelectParameters><UpdateParameters><asp:Parameter DefaultValue=”{5942043E-EC50-41A2-8A06-513CA392FE65}” Name=”ListID”></asp:Parameter>
</UpdateParameters><InsertParameters><asp:Parameter DefaultValue=”{5942043E-EC50-41A2-8A06-513CA392FE65}” Name=”ListID”></asp:Parameter>
</InsertParameters><DeleteParameters><asp:Parameter DefaultValue=”{5942043E-EC50-41A2-8A06-513CA392FE65}” Name=”ListID”></asp:Parameter>
</DeleteParameters>
</SharePoint:SPDataSource>

Another SharePoint Guru born:)

Jordan

Does FaceBook flavor of social networking work in the enterprise?

Interesting post by Johns Brunswick, Senior Consultant for Oracle Corporation:

http://aiimcommunities.org/e20/blog/you-dont-want-facebook-enterprise

How to bulk upload and synchronize data into SharePoint using the Excel Add-in and SharePoint Designer Workflows

Overview
Provide the ability for selected individuals who need to continue to maintain data in Excel and also share the data with users via SharePoint taking advantage of all SharePoint’s built-in features for lists. 

This solution provides the ability for Excel users to select data stored in their Excel spreadsheet and synchronize the data to a custom SharePoint list eliminating the sometimes redundant and time-consuming process of entering each item individually.

Screenshot from a table in Excel spreadsheet:

This scenario is part of an overall solution that takes advantage of SharePoint’s out-of-the-box features including SharePoint Designer workflows and custom lists to provide an online database for event tracking, a database of subject matter experts, workflow processes for resourcing, and incorporating scoring data imported from pre-populated reports downloaded in Excel format.  
In addition the solution uses the new document sets in SharePoint 2010 to allow user to upload and share supporting files and tag supporting files at a folder level eliminating redundant input.

Configuring SharePoint

• Create a new custom list to serve as a public list that will display the data to end-users.
• Create a new custom list to serve as an import list supporting the import workflow process.  This list is created directly from the Excel spreadsheet using the Excel Add-in’s Publish and allow Sync command (more later on this).
• Create a new site column named BulkImportID and that will be added to both the Import List and Public list.  
• Create a new SharePoint Designer workflow to handle the import process.  Set the workflow to execute when a new item is added to the Import List. 
• Add logic to the workflow detect whether a new item should be added or whether the item has been previously added to the public list requiring only an update to the list item.  The purpose of the BulkImportID is to be used to evaluate the workflow condition.
• Using the create item function in the workflow populate the public list with the appropriate values from each newly added item in the import list and set the BulkImportID for each added list item. Delete each list item in the import list using the Delete Item function when the workflow has succeeded for the item.

Installing and Configuring the Excel Add-in

• Install the Excel Add-in to the user’s desktop or laptop (individuals contributing data to the system) This provides the mechanism to synchronize the data from the user’s Excel spreadsheet to the Import List in SharePoint.
• Save the spreadsheet as Excel 2003-2007 format as described in the Excel Add-in configuration instructions.  You can also create a copy of the original to support the import process to maintain the original’s advanced features.   
• Configure the Excel spreadsheet for the Excel Add-in on the Excel spreadsheet by completing the configuration steps.  Create a new table in Excel with your data and use the Publish and allow sync command to deploy your Import List for the first time.  Optionally add a new worksheet to each spreadsheet where the  user can copy in the specific data they need to import to SharePoint preserving the source worksheets.

Advantages

• Users can continue to use their Excel spreadsheets for advanced computations, offline access, and custom formatting while also being able to share the data via SharePoint. 
• Users can bulk-import pre-populated spreadsheets and reports provided by other systems into SharePoint. 
• Custom filtered views including progressive filtering can be created and shared via SharePoint not provided in Excel auto-filtering. 
• SharePoint Designer workflows provide a non-code mechanism to both import new items into the Public List and also detecting existing items for performing updates.   

Using the Excel Add-in:

Deploy Excel Add-in to selected users who will be importing data from Excel to SharePoint

Brief Description This add-in works with Excel 2007 to allow you to synchronize data in a table with a list on a SharePoint site.

Download from MSDN http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=25836E52-1892-4E17-AC08-5DF13CFC5295&displaylang=en

Configure Excel spreadsheets for Publishing and Synchronizing Excel 2007 Tables to SharePoint Lists

Summary: In Microsoft Office Excel 2007, the ability to synchronize the data between a table and a list in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services is deprecated. This article describes an add-in that enables you to update the information in a SharePoint list from Excel 2007.

Configuration Instructions
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb462636(office.11).aspx#Office2007SynchronizeSharePointListfromExcel_Synchronizing

Important considerations when using the Excel Add-in.

• Create your custom “Import List” directly from the Add-in using the Publish and allow sync command in the Table Tools-Design tab of your Excel spreadsheet provided by the Excel Add-in.  You can add your own fields to the Import List later and synchronize with Excel. 
  Think carefully about what fields you want as required fields and the desired order in your spreadsheet before provisioning the Import List since the field order is difficult to re-arrange once the Excel spreadsheet is connected to SharePoint. 
• Take advantage of the ability for the Excel spreadsheet to incorporate pick-lists from the columns in your SharePoint Import list. 
• There is a limit of 6 fields if I remember correctly and you are not able to provide for multiple selections but very usefull for maintaining data consistancy and case where selecting users from AD would be usefull.
• A common confusion I have seen on MSDN for users implementing the add-in is the Publish and allow Sync command in the Excel toolbar.  Some users attempt to select this command to sync the data with SharePoint.  This command is only used to provision the initial list in SharePoint bound to the Excel table and not used for updates.  For updates right-click anywhere on the Excel table and use the additional features added to the context-menu to sync data (see screenshot above)

Conclusion

There are circumstances when users need to continue to use existing Excel spreadsheets and adding each data item to SharePoint individually would be both redundant and time-consuming.  Using the Excel Add-in in combination with custom Import Lists and SharePoint Designer workflows provide one mechanism for bulk-uploading data from Excel to SharePoint.