(Approval) workflow thingies

This has been on my mind for a couple of months and now I have the time to write a proper post about it. It's about the user-friendliness of using custom workflows (or the default out-of-the-box even) on documents or in my case particularly: InfoPath Forms. The problem I am facing is that the customer finds it weird (and it is believe me) that approving a document or form requires a lot of steps that are not linked to each other.

1. A task is created for the designated user.
2. An email is sent to the user regarding the task
3. The user clicks on the link in the email to open the task in the browser
4. If you use the out-of-the-box workflows you get a nice InfoPath form where you can approve/reject the document and if you turned the option on, you can also reassign the task. If you didn't use the out-of-the-box workflows and opted for the 'create task' option in Sharepoint Designer when you designed the workflow, you only get a simple 'Ok' and 'Cancel' dialog.
5. Up until here the user has no clue what the document is all about, so he needs to click on the document link to open the document . Then he needs to close the document, go back to the task and approve/reject/reassign the task.

So if you catch my drift, the user must two separate things :
- Open the task and complete it
- Open the document and review it

Now wouldn't be nice if the user gets an overview (and here is why my rant is about InfoPath forms) of all the information in the task itself. Therefore gaining a huge amount of efficiency because the user would not have open the document to review it and it's just 'one' step to accomplish the task. Also the user is presented with this information already in the email that is sent by the tasklist. In order to accomplish this, you should the following :

1. Promote the fields in your infopath form to list columns (remember you can't promote repeating tables (well at least you can promote the first row :)) 
2. Publish your InfoPath form as a content type and use this content type in the task list
3. In Sharepoint Designer for each new task you wan to create, don't (!!) choose the 'create new task' option but rather choose 'create new listitem' and choose the tasklist
4. Set the values of the columns from the tasklist the same as the 'current' columns from the form (basically you are copying the values from the form to the taskitem)
5. You're done.. now the user gets information about the document/form when he or she receives the email that a task is awaiting for them.

Now to make it even more prettier you can also extend the toolbar of the taskitem to include an 'approve/reject' button in which you redirect the user to a similar form like the one that comes out-of-the-box. I will post a code example of this later on .. I promise.. heck maybe I will do a screencast about this as well! ;)

Technorati tags: SharePoint, MOSS, WSS, Workflow, InfoPath

Book reviews

What's better than coming home from a (well-deserved) vacation and getting two additional free books to review eh? :)

The first book is called "Essential SharePoint 2007, Delivering High-Impact Collaboration" and is about the functional capabilities that SharePoint 2007 has to offer. So instead of going deep into the technical stuff, this book covers several scenarios in what are the best ways of getting the most out of SharePoint 2007. For example it covers the discussion, as seen on the SharePoint blog, about using SharePoint 2007 to replace fileshares. In addition (and this is why I love this book already) it gives you some examples on how to setup and write plans to cover the gaps to get from high business level right down to implementation.
This book is aimed at architects, (functional/business) consultants and in a smaller sense developers.

So coming right down from a 10.000ft view of the product, the next book is about programming in SharePoint.

This second book is called "Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed". In the first chapter you are taught using CAML and then from there the book is divided in the following main chapters:

• programming using the object model
• programming the enterprise content, this goes into creating Business Data Catalog
• programming using Web Parts
• programming using the webservices

I think the book is aimed too high when it says it's useful for the current generation of SharePoint developers because the difficulty level is way to low and most of the things you should have done in 2003 and/or you can find in the SDK. As I Googled on the book I came across another book review just posted 2 days ago by Edhild: Book Review- Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed and somehow he has the same feeling about is as I do.

Conclusion:

Get the book about the functional capabilities and leave the programming book on the shelf :)

 

Links:

	Essential SharePoint® 2007: Delivering High-Impact Collaboration by Scott Jamison, Mauro Cardarelli, Susan Hanley
	Microsoft® SharePoint® 2007 Development Unleashed by Kevin Hoffman, Robert Foster

 

Technorati tags: SharePoint Books

Upgrading/Migrating.. the story continues!

Together with a colleague of mine we are trying to upgrade a large Sharepoint 2003 environment to 2007. And ofcourse, as always, this is not a typical straightforward configuration. This environment uses the Shared Services feature (aka the SSP of 2003) and the thing why I'm blogging is the use of user profiles. Now we (or at least I) didn't knew the exact details until yesterday when we found a document about this subject. So if you see the image below you are seeing the difference between a MySite and a Public Profile site, I always thought that these two pages were linked to each other therefore implying that an user who has a public profile page always had a MySite as well. But this is not true, so when migrating you've to migrate the user profiles and the MySite.

 

Apparently in the huge migration document (Perform a gradual upgrade with shared services) that guides you through the upgrade process, it only states the following about upgrading/migrating the userprofiles :

- Configure profiles and audiences to be synchronized between SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Office SharePoint Server 2007

So piece of cake huh? We just configure the profiles and audiences to be synchronized.. easy! ;) Luckily there is another document (Upgrade large SharePoint Portal Server 2003 intranet portals to SharePoint Server 2007) that describes this process, although it's not referenced anywhere in the upgrade guide, it clearly explains how to upgrade/migrate the existing user profiles and personal sites. In short you've got to do the following :

1. Install Sharepoint 2007
2. Assign services to the server
3. Create two webapplications to host the SSP Admin site and the SSP MySites (so don't create a SSP first(!!))
4. Use STSADM with the restoressp command using the 'old' Sharepoint2003_PROF database
5. Migrate the parent portal that hosted the personal sites
6. Migrate the personal sites
7. You're done! (migrating the profiles and personal sites)

 

Technorati tags: SharePoint, MOSS, Upgrading, SPS

Popfly and Sharepoint integration already?

Yes! Check out Mike Gannotti's video where he tells you how to use Sharepoint as a datasource for PopFly:

http://wm.microsoft.com/ms/gsd/mikegannotti/Popfly_SharePoint_Integration.wmv 

If you wanna know what PopFly is read this little snippet from Channel9: "You probably haven't heard of it, but you're also probably going to start hearing a lot about it in the near future. Popfly is being announced today - as I'm posting this, actually. To keep it short and simple so you can get right to watching the video, Popfly makes it easy for non-devs to create web sites, mashups, and more. Drag, drag, click - you've got a Flikr + Virtual Earth mashup. You can even point and click your way to a Vista Gadget. "  If want to know more about PopFly check out these sites : Microsoft PopFly site Tweakers.NET newspost Pages tagged with popfly on del.icio.us Popfly Popfly- Blogs, Photos, Videos and more on Technorat

Technorati tags: SharePoint, PopFly, Blog

PIDY and something else you want to have ;)

Mate of mine has started something that I think a lot of people are dreaming (and perhaps not even knowing that they are dreaming of it) of to have! And on top of that the team created PIDY (not yet trademarked I reckon, so.. guys.. if you read this.. trademark it! :)) which is that really cool flash thing that you see on the toprightside of this page. To get you in the dreaming mood read this snippet:

This is all I want.

A little bit of the internet that truly belongs to me.
Something I can keep forever.
Somewhere people will always know they can find me.
Somewhere people can go to get my business card.
Somewhere I can publish my photos from Flickr, my links from Del.icio.us, my blog posts from Wordpress.
Somewhere I can keep track of my contacts and their contact details.

But it has to be mine, I don’t want to put all this in the hands of any more faceless corporations, and it has to be easy.

So go out and check the http://www.internetaddressbook.com and get your own PIDY!

 

Technorati tags: Blog, Social Networking, Internet Address Book