Some links to get you started on various things

SharePoint installation and configuration

• 
  http://www.datasprings.com/default.aspx?tabid=774
  
• 
  http://geekswithblogs.net/emanish/archive/2006/09/12/90979.aspx
  

Workflow

• Basics
• Create a Custom Workflow using InfoPath and WF
• Create a Custom Workflow using SharePoint Designer part 2

SharePoint Products comparison

• WSS 3.0 vs MOSS 2007
• SharePoint Designer vs. Visual Studio esinger
• SharePoint designer limitations

Misc.

• Configure SharePoint to receive Email
• Software Update for Web Folders
• Some screencast from Microsoft
• hot fix for workflow junk mail (may be in SP1 already)
  
• Browser support of SharePoint
• About default site templates

IRM (Information Rights Management) in SharePoint

This is just a very brief review from my reading of a MS white paper coming with the ECM starter kit.

IRM allows you to have control over a document after it’s downloaded from SharePoint.

This is how is works:

• You need to install/configure IRM at server farm first
• You can configure the Doc Lib to use certain IRM policy (such as No Print, or downloaded copy expires after x days). This policy applies to whole doc lib and you can’t customized at folder level.
• Nothing important happens when you upload a file
• When a support file (you have to install the “protector” for this file type. MOSS 2007 has word, excel, and powerpoint covered) is being downloaded, WSS will encrypt it and send you back the encrypted version.
• You need a IRM-ready viewer to view these files (Office 2003 is fine), or you need to install necessary components for your viewer.
• Your local viewer need to connect to a “Windows Rights management Services” server to decrypt the file.

For Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, meta data are not encrypted.

Automatically login with domain account

I believe the majority of the SharePoint sites are set up to use Windows Active Directory login. However if the site is set up using a domain name, IE will treat it as a “Internet” zone, and you will be prompted with login window. That’s because the default security setting of Internet zone is not to automatically login with your user name and password.

The best practice to get around this issue is to add your site to the “Trusted Sites” list, and configure it to automatically login (which is the default setting already). Sometimes the Trusted Sites list is locked by a corporate group policy and network admins have to make that change. You have to run

Gpupdate /force

to refresh the group policy on your desktop.

If you want to add multiple sites to the Trusted Sites, this syntax will do it:

*.sharepoint.mydomain.com

Select a view for Document Library web part

With MOSS 2007, after inserting a document library web part, you can select a specific view to use for this web part (same for other list web parts).

However I found that once the web part is created, the changes made to that view will not be automatically reflected in the web part. You have to go back to the edit properties window of the web part and re-select the view. It looks like the web part creates a local “instance” of the view definition.

Got javascript error after enabled Content Type

I created a few customized Content Types in the site and enabled “Manage Content Types” in document library. Now when user creates new files from the template and save it, a javascript error will pop up in DIP window: “‘length is null or not an object”.

Microsoft confirmed it’s a SharePoint bug and now finally have a hot fix:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;950292

However this hotfix requires SP1 and another post-SP hotfix. Not only that, it’s not an officially released hotfix (that’s why you have to request it in another web page), which means it not 100% tested.

There are many people frustrating about it and have some workaround. Unfortunately none of them work for me because Content Types is in our business request.

Another thing is once the Content Type is enabled, this problem will be permanent even Content Type is turned off later. Seems turning on Content Types has permanent change on the document library, even no document is created from the new content type.

Free up Database space after deleting documents

In a Document Library of SharePoint 2007, deleted documents will be put on Recycle Bin first (this is the default setting). SharePoint Recycle Bin works similarly to Windows one – user has their own recycle bin and one can not see others. Items in recycle bins will be permanently deleted after 30 days.

You may want to free up some database space by emptying your recycle bin, but it won’t work. If you check database tables, you will find that the records are still in [AllDocStreams] table and the database size is even bigger (because of transaction log). What if you want to get rid of the junk (i.e. you want to back up the current site)?

Log in as site administrator and click on “Recycle bin” under “Site Collection Administration” section. Click on “Deleted from end user Recycle Bin” view on the left, and delete the items there. This time the database records will be really deleted.

This “double” recycle bin might come to handy when someone mistakenly delete items from his/her recycle bin.  Do not like it? You can turn this feature off in Central Admin site. In Application Management->Web Application General Settings page, turn off the “Second stage Recycle Bin”. You can also turn off the whole recycle bin or change settings here.

IE crashes when opening office document from SharePoint

Suddenly, my IE crashes when I open any Office document from SharePoint document library. It turned out to be a component in Office 2007 causing this, even I only have SharePoint Designer installed. Microsoft has a fix:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938888
. It worked.

Send To->Email a Link doesn’t work

In SharePoint 2007′s Document library, the Send To->Email a Link context menu will open your local email client and put the link of that document in the email body. However, it seems URL encode the whole URL, instead of just the relative path.  So the URL will end up like this:

 
http://subdomain%2Ecompany%2Ecom/Documents/folder/subfolder/My%20File.doc

Basically, the dot (.) in the domain name is also URL encoded (%2E). If you copy and paste it to IE it will still load, but clicking it from Outlook doesn’t work.

To fix it, open CORE.js from  \12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033, fine this line:

 fileUrl=escapeProperly(httpRootWithSlash.substr(0, slashLoc))+currentItemUrl;

and replace it with this:

fileUrl=httpRootWithSlash.substr(0, slashLoc)+currentItemUrl;

I found OWS.js (in same folder) also have this. But changing CORE.js alone will fix it. I don’t know what’s the difference between these 2 files.

Menu not found? Here are direct links…

Depends on what site template you use to create your site, some menus appear in one site but not on another. Here are some links that you can type in directly after the site/sub-site root to get that function:

• Save site as template: _layouts/savetmpl.aspx (this feature allows you to take a copy of the sit – option to include the content as well – and to create a new site from it.) However, there is a limit of the size of the content – 10 MB. Content will be excluded if the content is more than that. Same for list template.
• Welcome page: _layouts/AreaWelcomePage.aspx

Enable Usage report (website visit report)

Link here:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/5233cf43-6a8f-40cb-9014-0724600e7e381033.mspx?mfr=true

In summary:

• Enable “Windows SharePoint Services Usage logging” in Central Admin->Operations->Logging and Reporting, enable(check) appropriate checkboxes.
• Enable “Office SharePoint Usage Processing” in SPS-> Usage reporting, enable them.