SharePoint Monitor

Creating an alert in Sharepoint can be a very useful mechanism for notifying admins when charges are made in document libraries, lists or single items. When an alert is triggered, SharePoint will send an  email to the admin with details of the change. To create an alert, first click the dropdown menu on the file [...]

Silverlight is a fast evolving and powerful technology for building Rich Internet Applications (RIA).  Integrating Silverlight to SharePoint sites allows for the building of very responsive and interactive interfaces as well as support for out-of-browser applications and a deep support for video integration. Silverlight integration is already included in SharePoint 2010 – when you try to [...]

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is a new service introduced with SharePoint 2010 to allow SharePoint sites to connect to and manipulate external data.  SharePoint 2007 had a similar facility in the form of Business Data Catalog (BDC) which made external data available within its site. However, a major problem with BCS was the difficulty in [...]

Microsoft recently released the Beta version of SharePoint Server 2010. Microsoft claims that migrating from SharePoint 2007 to 2010 is a easy and straightforward, however, I remember when migrating from SharePoint 2003 to 2007 the process was painful and difficult and there were several  incompatible elements that had to be dealt with. So I approached [...]

Microsoft Excel is the most popular spreadsheet application used in every office. As such SharePoint Server provides special support for it. In the current article, we will review SharePoint Excel Services and  publish a sample spreadsheet using Excel services. Microsoft Office Excel is powerful but not perfect. For example if you want a colleague to [...]

SharePoint 2010 comes with several inbuilt workflow templates, such as one for document approval. Sometimes these templates are not suitable and new workflows need to be created.  You can do this in one of the following ways: Using the SharePoint Designer. Designing the workflow in Microsoft Office Visio and importing into the SharePoint Designer. Writing [...]

Workflows (sequences of connected steps) are an everyday occurrence in most offices and as such, SharePoint 2010 provides support for workflows. In this article we review how to add an approval workflow to a SharePoint Document Library. The approval workflow is one of the few built-in workflows that come with the SharePoint 2010. Basically it [...]

To create a site template in SharePoint is a very straightforward task. SharePoint ships with several templates inbuilt but at some stage you will want to expand the available options by creating new templates. Templates can be created from scratch but in practice most templates are created by modifying an existing template. Select Site Actions [...]

To create a new site in SharePoint: Select Site Actions > Create  on the right hand side of the default page. Click Sites and Workspaces under the Web Pages heading On the New Sharepoint site page. Enter the Title and Description of the site: Enter an appropriate URL which the site will become accessible from. [...]

Adding and editing SharePoint group permissions is a central admin task which SharePoint makes very easy through the configuration of permission levels. If you have created a group in Sharepoint you will likely want to create some custom permissions for the group. Select Site Settings > Advanced Permissions (alternatively click ‘Site Permissions’ in the far [...]