MOSS Sites

To take advantage of the many interesting and cool features of the sites in a MOSS environment, you need to know more about its functionality and how to use it in an optimal way. The following sections will give you this knowledge. Just remember that this section is about MOSS sites, not WSS sites. If you are running MOSS, you should read all of this information. On the other hand, if you just implement WSS, you should still read this section about MOSS so that you will understand what you are missing!

Comparing MOSS with SPS 2003

In the predecessor of MOSS, you built an intranet portal with a home page and several other pages, such as News, Topics, and Sites. All these pages were referred to as areas, but the truth is that these areas were a special type of WSS site. So, the Home area was the top site, and the other areas were subsites. In other words, the portal site was a site collection, completely separated from any other site collection based on WSS. Any time you created a new WSS site using the Sites area in the portal, you actually created a new WSS site collection. It surely looked like these WSS site collections were organized under the portal site collection, since their URL address indicated that, but they were not. For example, if you had http://portal as the URL to the portal site, all its WSS sites got a URL that started with http://portal/site. A WSS site collection named Sales would then get the URL http://portal/sites/sales, as Figure 6-5 shows.

Figure 6-5

So, it was natural to believe that WSS sites should be able to inherit things like permission settings and templates from the portal site collection, but it was not possible. The truth is that both the portal site collection and all WSS site collections were located on the same level. They were all directly organized under the IIS virtual web server (for example, the default web site), and on the same level (see Figure 6-6).

Figure 6-6

The real reason why it was not possible to inherit settings from the portal site is that site collections were, and still are, separate islands of content and settings. In other words, even in MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0, you still have the exact same structure and therefore the exact same behavior in this respect. For example, you cannot add a user to one site collection and then inherit that user in another site collection. The fact that site collections are isolated from each other is not a bad thing. In fact, this is one of the easiest ways to create a separate SharePoint environment for a group of people that must have its own security settings. For example, say that an organization has two departments: Sales and Research. If these two departments must have their own SharePoint environments while still sharing the same physical SharePoint server, you can create a site collection for each of them. This was also true in the SPS 2003 environment, by the way.

A problem in SPS 2003 was that its areas (or subsites, really) were customized versions of WSS 2.0 sites, so they had a different look and feel than the ordinary WSS 2.0 sites. This is no longer the case in SharePoint 2007. All site collections are based on WSS 3.0! A MOSS site is simply a specific type of site template applied to a WSS site. So, all sites now behave the same way. For example, all sites in SharePoint 2007 are now security trimmed; if a user is not allowed to view a document, a list, or a site, that user will not see it, regardless of whether it is a WSS site or a MOSS site. But the cosmetics are not affected by this new architecture. Each site can, and often has, its own design and menu structure.

If you compare this functionality to SPS 2003 and WSS 2.0, it is a great step forward, since these previous versions not only had different behavior, they also had their own structure, and therefore were customized differently, as the programmer often painfully discovered. As you will see later in Chapter 12, a new feature in SharePoint 2007, called Master Pages, will make it very easy to customize the look and feel of any site, regardless of whether it is a MOSS site or a WSS site. If you later decide that you want to apply a new look to a site, you just redesign its Master Page and the changes will take effect immediately.

To summarize this: The special features of SPS 2003 are now gone. Modified site collection for SPS portal sites, areas, and special customization procedures, compared to WSS 2.0, are no more. In SharePoint 2007, every site is equal in its basic structure, and the main differences between MOSS and WSS 3.0 are the site template applied to them and that MOSS provides a lot more Web Parts than WSS.

MOSS Site Templates

Remember that MOSS is an extension of WSS 3.0, so the site templates that MOSS provides are more advanced than WSS site templates. A default installation of MOSS will offer these site templates, besides all the templates that come with WSS:

• q Collaboration Portal (on the Publishing tab): A site template typically used for creating intranet sites. It also creates a number of subsites, such as a Document Center, a News site, a Reports site, a Search Center, and a Site Directory. This site template is only available when creating a top site (a new site collection).

• q Publishing Portal (on the Publishing tab): A site for Internet-facing web, or an intranet for a large company. This site only contains one subsite: the Press Releases site. This site is also only available when creating a top site.

But there are more site templates that come with MOSS; most of these are the same as the subsites that are automatically created when selecting the Collaboration Portal site template. They can be used when you need to create more News sites, or Document Centers. These site templates include the following:

• q Document Center (on the Enterprise tab): A site template typically used for creating a site containing documents available to all users in the organization.

• q Records Center (on the Enterprise tab): A site template used for creating a site where users can store records. A given Records Manager can use a routing table to control where incoming records are stored. This site contains some special features. For example, once a record is stored, it cannot be changed by the user again.

• q Site Directory (on the Enterprise tab): A site that lists and categorizes links to other SharePoint sites. You can also use it to create links that will be listed by the Tasks and Tools Web Part.

• q Report Center (on the Enterprise tab): A site template used for creating sites that contain reports, presentations, key performance indicators (KPI), and dashboards. Typically, it is used for presenting Business Intelligence information.

• q Search Center with Tabs (on the Enterprise tab): A site used for searching information. This site allows you to create extra tabs beyond the default All Sites and People. You can also customize the search Web Parts and the search result Web Parts on this site.

• q My Site Host (on the Enterprise tab): This site will typically be used to host personal sites for users, also known as My Sites. Note that this site can only be created once per Shared Service Provider.

• q Search Center (on the Enterprise tab): This site template is similar to the Search Center with Tabs, except that it does not have tabs.

Important 

MOSS sites do not show the link "Save site as template", in the Site Settings page, as described earlier for WSS sites. In order to save a MOSS site as a template add "/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx" at the end of the URL for the site; for example, to save a template from the http://srv1/ portal site, enter "http://srv1/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx"

The Collaboration Portal Site Template

This is probably the most common site template an organization will choose when creating an intranet. It is similar in structure to the old SPS 2003 portal site but with a lot more advanced features. This intranet is built on what SharePoint refers to as "Publishing Pages," which to the user look like a number of tabs. However, in reality, each tab is a subsite under the start page, which is usually named after the company. (See Figure 6-7.)

Figure 6-7

All of these sites, such as News, Document Center, and so on, belong to the same site collection, and therefore they can inherit user permissions, list templates, and site templates. You can edit all these sites, just like any site, by using Site Actions Edit Page. This will open the current page in edit mode. You can then edit the content, pictures, and links, and add, remove, or modify Web Parts on the page. Look at the top of the page on Figure 6-8. You will see that the page was automatically checked out. You need to check in the page and wait for someone with the proper permission to approve it (unless you have the necessary permission to approve and publish the modifications yourself). The page is also under version control. You can revert to a previous version, if the modifications were not good enough. You can also start a workflow (for example, to invite other users to send their comments about the modifications before you make them public).

Figure 6-8

The actual page layout is built upon a Publishing Page template, called DefaultLayout.aspx, which is stored in a library named Master Page Gallery. You can view and edit this layout by using the SharePoint Designer tool, using this method: Select Site Actions Site Settings Modify All Site Settings, and click Master pages and page layouts. There you will see a file named DefaultLayouts.aspx. Use its quick menu, and select Edit in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (SPD), agree that you want to check out this item (see Figure 6-9). Be sure to save your work and then check in this page to see any modifications.

Figure 6-9

Important 

Note that MS Office SharePoint Designer is not included in WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007. It must be purchased and installed separately.

All these features will make it possible to allow updates of a publicly available intranet page, in a controlled manner, using the Check Out/In, approval, and workflow features. And if anything goes wrong, you can easily revert to the previous version of the page. Most of these features were once only found in a separate product called MS Content Management Server (MS CMS). This product was converted into the Publishing Page features of MOSS 2007 and then extended by all the other cool SharePoint 2007 features, such as workflows.

The Publishing Portal Site Template

This template is typically used when creating a public Internet web site, or as an intranet for a large organization with several subsidiaries. It is designed to make it easy to enable anonymous access, while still enabling internal users to log on to the web site with more permissions than the anonymous users have. It also has one subsite named Press Releases (see Figure 6-10), which is used to publish news and press releases (what a surprise!).

Figure 6-10

This start page is built upon a Publishing Page. All the features mentioned for the Collaboration Portal Site Template are also valid for the pages in this site template (such as the start page and the Press Releases page). If you need to edit the layout of the start page, click on Site Actions Site Settings Modify All Site Settings and click Master pages and page layouts, and then open the file named WelcomeSplash.aspx, as described in the previous section. Note that there is also a direct link to the Master Page Gallery on the start page for this site template.

In order to enable anonymous access to this site, you must perform a number of steps, as described in the Try It Out below. This example assumes that you have created a new site collection using the Publishing Portal site template. (See Chapter 4 for more about site collections.)

Try It Out Enable Anonymous Access to Internet Site

1. Log on to the MOSS server as a SharePoint administrator.

2. Start SharePoint's Central Administration tool. Open the Application Management page. Click Authentication providers in the Application Security section.

3. Make sure that the web application listed on the right shows the web application used by this Publishing Portal site. If not, click on its menu and switch to the right web application.

4. Click on the zone Default.

5. Check Enable anonymous access, and click Save. Two things will now happen: The virtual IIS server used by this web application will have anonymous access enabled, and the configuration settings for the web application will allow anonymous settings.

6. Open the start page for the Publishing Portal site; click the link Enable anonymous access.

7. Select the type of access that an anonymous user will have: Entire Web site, Lists and libraries, or Nothing (the default setting). (See Figure 6-11.) If you want to open this web site to anyone, select Entire Web Site. Click OK to save your setting.

   
   Figure 6-11

8. If you chose Lists and Libraries in the previous step, there are some final steps. You must now configure the list or library to be open for anonymous access. The page you see now is the general page for configuring user permission values:

   1. Click Site Action View All Site Content, and select the list or library you want to open for anonymous access (you can also create a new list here), for example the Documents library.

   2. Click Settings Document Library Settings.

   3. Click Permissions for the document library. This displays the current permissions for that list.

   4. Click Actions Edit Permissions, and click OK to accept to break the inheritance.

   5. Finally, click Settings Anonymous Access, and check View Items, then click OK. The content in this library is now open for anyone to read and copy. However, in order for the anonymous user to find this library, you should publish a link to it on a web page that all users can see, such as a public web site.

To add new press releases: Switch to the Press Releases page (or site, really), click Site Actions Create Page, enter a name for the page file, and a description, then select any of the article templates listed, and click Create. Next, enter the values for the news page template, and then click Submit for Approval. Note that anytime you create a new page, a workflow will start that prompts for some info about the news article, and then sends an e-mail to each person in the preconfigured SharePoint group Approvers. If you are one of these or a site owner, you can then directly click on the Approve button above your new press release page, then click Approve again, and it will be made public.

The My Sites Template

This is another site template that is exclusive to MOSS; there is no similar functionality in the WSS team site environment. It is an important feature of SharePoint, since its purpose is to help the individual user to work more effectively. You should learn how to make the most out of My Site, in order to understand what you, as an administrator, can do with it, and to educate your users on how to use it. My Site is under the control of the Shared Service Provider in MOSS, and usually has its own web application. Thus, its address may be similar to ">http://srv1:5002/personal/<user_name>, that is, it contains an HTTP port number. Like a coin it has two sides: One is a public view with information about the user, such as an e-mail address, a picture, and skills. This information is either retrieved from the User Profile database, hosted by the Shared Service Provider, or the user himself may be allowed to enter some properties, such as his home phone number. The other side of this coin is a personal view that only the user has access to. Its purpose is to offer the user a private web site, where all the information that is relevant to the user is collected on one place, such as:

• q RSS Viewer: This allows the user to list updates from any RSS source, such as a SharePoint list or an external web site.

• q Private Document library: By default, this can only be accessed by the owner.

• q Public Document library and a Shared Picture library: Its content can be accessed by any portal user; this may be changed.

• q My Calendar: A Web Part that displays an Outlook Web Access view of the user's Outlook calendar.

• q My Inbox: A Web Part that displays the user's Outlook Inbox.

• q SharePoint Sites: A list of the sites that the user works with, and some of their content. Typically, these will be project sites and team sites where the user is a member.

• q Colleague Tracker: This is a Web Part that automatically learns what other users a person is collaborating with. These colleagues will be listed in this Web Part, and the user can directly see if they are online or not (assuming that the user is running MSN instant messaging or has the MS Live Communication Server installed in his network, with the Communicator client).

When a user looks at his My Site, he will see these two sides as two tabs named My Home, which is the personal view, and My Profile, which is the public view. In other words, My Site will make sure the user has access to most of his everyday information, plus access to important information about other users. Your users will love this page, as soon as they understand its meaning and the power they have over it. This site is actually a slightly customized WSS top site, that is, the start of a site collection that the user administrates. All the things you have learned about SharePoint sites will also apply here, except for some small differences. For example, to create a new list you must click the View All Site Content link in the Quick Launch bar, and then Create. The same link can also be used to create subsites under this personal site, for things like small projects, meetings, and personal purposes. Each of these subsites may have its own security setting, exactly like any other site.

The public page of this site is always listed for other users besides the owner. You can look at your public page as well, by clicking the My Profile tab near the left top of the page. It will then show you what details other people will see about you, such as your name, e-mail address, organizational hierarchy, and skills, but also the documents stored in your Shared Documents, what colleagues you have, and any things you and the users who watch your personal site have in common, such as a boss, a membership in a group, or colleagues.

Note that My Site is usually configured to have its own site collection, hosted by its own web application. In other words, these personal sites will not inherit user permissions from the portal or any other site. Any user with a personal site can modify the user permission to its own site collection, for example to allow a colleague to collaborate on documents stored in one of the user's document libraries. Note that MOSS will automatically create a SharePoint group called All People that all users listed in SharePoint will be a member of. This group is used to allow these users access to the public page of your personal site.

Activating My Site

By default all authenticated users, including members of the Visitor site group, will have access to their own My Site, also known as the personal site. This can easily be changed; in Chapter 5 you learned how to manage SharePoint groups. The permissions that control the setting to create and use My Site are Create personal site and Use personal features. These settings are configured in the Shared Service Provider that hosts the My Site feature. If a user is not allowed to view his personal site, he will not see the link My Site on the portal site.

The first time a user clicks the link My Site (in the top-right corner of any standard SharePoint page) a process starts that creates the personal site. During this time a progress bar will be displayed, and when the process is finished the site will open (see Figure 6-12).

Figure 6-12

This page contains the information mentioned in the bullet list above, including a Web Part that is not configured yet. Among the first things that will happen is that the user is prompted about creating links from MS Office to this personal site (see Figure 6-13).

Figure 6-13

You have two options - at least in theory: Yes or No. But if you answer No, you will be prompted again the next time you open My Site. So, give up and answer Yes now. You will actually like what it will do for you! The result will be that all MS Office programs now will display a quick link to the document and image libraries on your personal site, thus making it very easy to save and open documents. See Figure 6-14, where the user Joe Doe's Save As dialog box in MS Office 2007 is displayed:

Figure 6-14

Configuring My Site

If you look at a newly created My Site, you will see a My Calendar Web Part that needs to be configured, in case the user wants it. If not, just click the arrow icon on the Web Part menu and select Close. This works with any visible Web Part on this page. But for now, let's configure it to display your Outlook calendar.

Important 

This Web Part will only work with an MS Exchange 2003 or 2007 Server mailbox!

Try It Out Configure the My Calendar Web Part

1. Open My Site as an ordinary portal user.

2. Locate the My Calendar Web Part. Click its link Open the tool pane.

3. The following configuration pane contains two very important settings:

   1. Mail Server Address: This must be configured to use the same address that the Outlook Web Access (OWA) client uses for accessing the MS Exchange server. Typically, it looks something like this: http://mailserver.filobit.com/Exchange assuming that the fully qualified domain name for that server is mailserver.filobit.com. If it does not work, talk with your mail administrator and ask about the OWA address.

      Important 

      When using Exchange 2007 mailboxes, this Web Part will enter the mailbox server name automatically.

   2. Mailbox: This is the first part of your e-mail address - up to, but not including the @ sign and the mail domain. For example, if your mail address is [e-mail], you will add Joe. SharePoint will automatically suggest your primary e-mail address, so you can just remove the part starting with the @ sign.

   3. View: Select the default view for this calendar: Daily or Weekly.

   4. Click OK to save. The calendar Web Part will now display the user's current calendar.

4. As a test, add an appointment for today using MS Outlook, then refresh your personal site page and make sure that you see this appointment in this Web Part, too.

Cool, right? So, why not add a Web Part to display the Outlook box, too? There are in fact a number of Web Parts related to Outlook folders, such as these. Note that most of them require that the user's mailbox is hosted by an Exchange 2003 server:

• q My Calendar: This shows a daily or weekly view of the current user's calendar (Exchange 2003 or later).

• q My Inbox: This shows the Inbox and allows the user to open and reply to messages, but not to create a new message (Exchange 2003 or later).

• q My Contacts: This displays the user's Outlook Contact folder (Exchange 2003 or later).

• q My Tasks: This displays the user's Outlook Tasks folder (Exchange 2003 or later).

• q My Mail Folder: This displays any Outlook folder (Exchange 2000 or later).

This is nice, but it has some drawbacks. For example, the user cannot create new e-mail messages, and it may be cumbersome to add a number of My Mail Folder Web Parts in case the user needs to see several Outlook folders. A better way was introduced in SharePoint 2007. My Page now has a link called OWA Address that will open the full Outlook Web Access client and also will automatically discover the current user's mail server and user account (see Figure 6-15). This allows the user a much richer mail functionality than using the mailbox Web Parts listed above.

Figure 6-15

Note that when the user opens his OWA Address link, he will be redirected to the mail server by a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), for example: http://dc1.filobit.com/exchange. This also will automatically classify that link as an Internet zone in most browsers, and the result is that the user must log on every time this OWA Address page is opened for the first time. To resolve this, follow the steps in the Try It Out below.

Try It Out Configure Auto-Logon to OWA Address

1. Log on as the user, then open the web browser; for example, Internet Explorer 7.

2. Click Tools Internet Options/Security, then select the Internet zone, and click Custom Level.

3. Scroll down to the bottom of the Settings list and the Logon section. Select the option Automatic logon with current username and password.

4. Click OK, then Yes, and then OK again to save and close this setting. Note that this must be done for each user, but you can also configure a Group Policy Object setting in Active Directory that sets this for all users.

The My Mail Folder Web Part can also displays Public Folders in Outlook, using a little trick. Although Exchange 2007 is the last version that supports public folders, many organizations still have a lot of information stored there. If you need to display a public folder in SharePoint, you can use this little trick. Configure the My Mail Folder Web Part as described in the Try It Out below. Note that the user must have at least Read access to the public folder for it to be displayed; otherwise, the user will get an error message every time he opens his personal site, because of that Web Part!

For example, say that you have a top-level Public Folder named Projects that all users have access to. To display this public folder in My Site follow the steps in the Try It Out below.

Try It Out Display a Public Folder with My Mail Folder

1. Log on as the user; open My Site.

2. Click Site Actions Edit Page.

3. Select the Web Part zone that you want to add the Web Part to; for example, Middle Right Zone, and click Add a Web Part at the top frame of this zone.

4. Scroll down, and check the My Mail Folder Web Part, then click Add. This Web Part is now added to this zone, but you need to configure it to display the public folder.

5. Click Edit to the left of the My Mail Folder Web Parts menu, and select Modify Shared Web Part to open its configuration pane. Change these settings (assuming that the mail server address is http://www.dc1.filobit.com and the public folder to be displayed is Projects):

   1. Mail server address: http://dc1.filobit.com/public/projects/?cmd=con-tents&part=1. This is the trick! This line says that you want to view the Public folder Projects, and that it should be formatted as Content. The part of the line that follows the public folder name must exist (for example, /?cmd=contents&part=1); otherwise this Web Part will only display an error!

   2. Exchange folder name: You can type anything here, as long as it is not empty. A dot character will do fine.

   3. Mailbox: As long as the user have access to that public folder, you do not need any mailbox name here, but again it must not be an empty field, since this will force the Web Part to ask the user for it. You can enter anything here; for example, a dot.

   4. Title: Projects PF. This setting is in Appearance section.

   5. Click OK to save and close the tool pane for the Web Part.

   Important 

   For more information about formatting the folder content in step 5a, check this blog by KC, a member of the Microsoft Exchange team: http://blogs.technet.com/kclemson/archive/2003/11/04/53886.aspx. She describes, for example, how to format a calendar folder in a weekly view.

6. The content of this public folder will be displayed immediately. Log on as a user and make sure that it works as expected.

A common request is to have some of these mail-related Web Parts on other pages than My Site. Yes, you can add them to any site page. For example, the My Mail Folder Web Part described above will also work in a WSS site, as long as all users have at least Read access to that public folder. However, the rest of these mail-related Web Parts require a mailbox name to work, and this will give you a problem. For example, say that you want to list the user's Inbox on the Home area page on the portal. You can add the My Inbox Web Part, but what mailbox name should it be configured to display? Every user looking at this Web Part has his or her own mailbox name, and the Web Part will not automatically configure its settings dynamically. Do you see the problem? If there were a way to adjust the mailbox name based on the current user, it would work. Since there isn't, do not try to add these types of Web Parts to public site.

In previous versions of SharePoint, you had to add the Web Part My Workspace Sites in order to see any subsites under the current user's personal site. This Web Part still exists, but has been renamed My Workspaces. This Web Part is not really necessary anymore, however, since My Site in SharePoint 2007, by default, will list all sites directly under My Site on its Quick Launch bar, that is, the left pane of this page. If you have several levels of subsites, you may want to use the tree view to be able to see them all. Use the Site Actions Site Settings and click Tree view in the Look and Feel section. Check Enable Tree View, and click OK. Your Quick Launch bar will now also have a full tree view of all the subsites, including lists and libraries, under this personal site.

A final Web Part you may want to use for the My Site page is My Workspace Sites. This Web Part will list all sites created directly under the user's personal site. A common default location for sites created using Office and Outlook is My Site. With this Web Part in place, it will be easy for the users to see a list of these team sites and workspaces.

Adding Information to My Site

A SharePoint user will probably use their personal site for storing links to sites, lists, and documents they often work with, making it easier for them to find this information. In SharePoint 2007, there are a lot of options in My Site to assist users with this, such as these (see Figure 6-16):

Figure 6-16

• q My Links: At the top right of every page in SharePoint 2007 is a list named My Links. Whenever you are at a page you want to easily return to (for example, a site, a list or a library), you can click on My Links and select Add to My Links. This will open a dialog box where the you can define the title and the URL. Just click on My Links again, and point to any of the group names to see a sliding menu displaying all the links for that group.

• q SharePoint Sites: This very powerful Web Part is added by default to My Site as SharePoint Sites. It will display all documents created by you, and all tasks assigned to you, anywhere in the SharePoint environment. By default, it will only display My Site, plus the sites where you are a member of the sites' Member SharePoint group.

• q RSS Viewer: This Web Part will display any Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feed; for example, a publicly available RSS feed, such as http://www.nasa.gov/rss/breaking_news.rss or any list in SharePoint, since they all support RSS. This is a very good way of keeping track of any updates, without needing to open the source regularly. For more information about RSS, see Chapter 7.

• q Colleague Tracker: This Web Part will automatically discover and list other SharePoint users that you have something in common with. For each of these users, you can take actions, such as scheduling a meeting, sending mail or opening the public view of their My Site.

My Links, SharePoint Sites, and Colleague Tracker are described in more detail below. RSS is discussed in Chapter 7. Note that there are a lot of other Web Parts that you can add to My Site, in order to make it more interesting.

The ability to add links anywhere in SharePoint is very powerful and users should be educated on how to use this tool, since it will help them find favorite locations very fast.

Try It Out Manage My Links

1. Open the portal site; the name of any user with permission to use My Site will do.

2. To add a link to a site, follow these steps:

   1. Open the site you want to store as a link; for example, a project site you often visit.

   2. Click My Links in the top-right corner of the web page, then select Add to My Links.

   3. A dialog box now opens where you can define how to store this link (see Figure 6-17). The link itself is automatically entered in the Address field, and you can now set the title for this link. The Show these links to pull-down menu allows you to choose who can see this link. It can be a private link (i.e., choose Only Me), or you can make it visible to every SharePoint user, or just some; for example, your colleagues. This dialog box also allows you to group links. Select an existing group, such as General, or create a new group. When you have more than one group, these groups will then be displayed as headings when you open the My Links next time. Click OK to save and close the dialog box.

      
      Figure 6-17

   4. Test the new link. Click My Links and then hover the mouse over the group name you chose in step 2c. All links for this group are now displayed. Select a link and verify that it works.

3. You can also add a link directly to a list or library, or any SharePoint page, including configuration pages:

   1. Start by opening the list, library or page.

   2. Click My Links, then select Add to My Links.

   3. Fill in the values for the link in the dialog box, as described in step 2c.

4. If you want to change or delete an existing link, do this:

   1. Click My Links, then select Manage Links. This opens a page where all existing links are listed, including what group they belong to.

   2. To modify a link, check the check box for that link, then select Edit Links. This opens the same type of dialog box that you saw when you first created the link. Make whatever modifications are needed, then click OK to save and close the dialog box.

5. To delete an existing link, do this:

   1. Click My Links, then select Manage Links.

   2. Check the check box next to the link you want to delete.

   3. Click Delete, then OK to accept the deletion.

Another very powerful tool displayed on My Site is the SharePoint Sites Web Part. As mentioned before, it will list documents that you created or edited, and tasks assigned to you, in selected sites. By default, it will automatically add the user's My Site, plus up to five other sites where you are a member of that sites <site name> Members group. You can change the number of sites listed from five to any number by opening the configuring pane for this Web Part (Click Site Actions Edit Page). On the Web Part, click Edit Modify Shared Web Part. The Number of tabs to show before More dropdown setting is located in the View section. If there are more sites than the maximum number listed, the first button, Sites, will have a green exclamation mark, indicating that there are more sites available than are displayed on the Web Part. Pull down the Sites menu, and select the new option Membership, which will list the remaining sites. The Web Part may also show a More button if there are more sites that can be displayed.

Try It Out Manage Sites on the SharePoint Site Web Part

1. Open My Site.

2. To manually add a site to this Web Part, you click Sites New Site Tab, then enter these values in the Create a new site tab form:

   1. Select the Type SharePoint site URL and name option.

   2. Site URL: Enter the full URL to the SharePoint site to be listed.

   3. Site Name: If this site is recognized by SharePoint, its name will now automatically be listed. If not, enter the name to be displayed on the menu bar of the Web Part.

   4. Click Create.

3. To hide a site listed on this Web Part:

   1. Click on the arrow to the right of the site button to display its menu, then select Hide.

   2. The site is removed from the Web Part menu. To view the hidden site, click the Sites button and select the site.

4. To delete a site listed on this Web Part:

   1. Click on the arrow to the right of this site button; select Delete from the menu. The button for the site is removed. Note that if this was an automatically listed site, its name will now be moved to the Sites menu.

   2. To restore this site, you must create it once again, using the New Site Tab described in step 2. Note that if this is an auto-discovered site, you will find its name in the Select site from Membership list in New Site Tab.

The fourth Web Part that, by default, is displayed the on user's My Site is the Colleague Tracker. It will list SharePoint users who have something in common with you, such as users who share a group membership with you or users that you sent mail to. The idea behind this Web Part is to make it easy for you to find other users whom you now and then need to contact. This is an alternative to a global employee list, which many organizations display on their intranet. If the global list contains a lot of people, you will have to search for the user you are interested in. In most cases, you will look for people who belong to the same team as you, or whom you have contacted by e-mail or instant messaging. And this list is probably much smaller than the global address list; this is exactly what the Colleague Tracker is used for. It is similar in concept to the personal address list in MS Outlook.

The relationships that this Web Part looks for when trying to auto-discover users to be listed are described below. Note that only a few of these users will show up directly in this Colleague Tracker list; the rest will be suggestions that you must manually accept:

• q Organizational hierarchy: All users who are defined as someone you report to and all users who report to you . This is the default list of people who will show up in this list.

• q Instant Messages Contacts: All SharePoint users who have contacted you, using either MSN or the MS Communicator client.

• q e-mail Contacts: All SharePoint users you have received mail from.

• q Document Editing: All users who have edited the same document as you.

• q Membership: All users who are members of the same SharePoint groups as you.

If the Web Part has discovered a new user whom you may want to add to this colleague list, a link that says See new colleague suggestions will be displayed. Click the link to see the suggested users. The page that will open up is Add Colleagues. Another way that this can be opened is by clicking on the Colleagues Tracker headline, then clicking Add Colleagues. (See Figure 6-18.)

Figure 6-18

On this page, you can also tell SharePoint to stop suggesting a user, or to add users not suggested automatically. Some of these names may be interesting for other users to see, so the public view of the My Site will show all names defined to be shown to everyone. If there are a lot of names, you will want to group them. By default, there is one group named General; on this page you can create new groups when needed.

You may also edit existing names in the Colleagues Tracking list. Simply click the headline Colleague Tracking and all current users are listed. In this form, you can edit these user names; for example, changing who can see them and what group they should be listed under. You can also delete a user from this list by checking the user's check box and clicking Delete. There is also a quick menu for each name with options for editing or deleting the user. Click directly to the right of the name to open this quick menu.

For each user name listed in the Colleague Tracker Web Part in My Site, you may take some action. To see what you can do, click on the presence bullet to the left of the name, to open a menu with these options:

• q Schedule a Meeting: This creates a meeting request form in your MS Outlook client, with this name automatically added to the To field.

• q Office Location: This displays the defined office location for this user.

• q View My Site: This opens the public view of that person's My Site.

• q Send Mail: This creates an e-mail with this user as the recipient.

• q Additional Actions: This lists other actions, if any.

• q Add to Outlook Contact: This adds a user to your personal Outlook contact list.

• q Outlook Properties: This displays the properties in Outlook for the user.

Or you can directly click on a user's name to open the public view of his or her My Site.

Do your users need their own blog site? Well, look no further. On My Site there is a personal blog site built in! At the upper right of My Site, you will see the link Create Blog. Click on it, and SharePoint will create the blog for you. It's a separate site, based on the WSS blog site template, discussed earlier in this chapter. You can start adding your blog postings right away by clicking on the Create a post link. The postings in this blog are listed on your personal My Site. On the My Home tab, you will see a list of all headlines of the most recent postings, plus a link to the blog site in the Quick Launch bar, and on My Profile (the public view), the complete content of the most recent blog posts will be displayed.

The Public View of My Site

So far, we have only discussed the personal view of My Site. But there is also a public view of My Site that shows information about the user, plus shared documents, links, blog posts, colleagues, and a list of users with whom the user has things in common. A lot of the information on this public page is retrieved from the User Profile database discussed in Chapter 5. Exactly what other users will see depends on the permissions, set by the owner of the site. In this section, you will learn how to control all these settings for My Site.

It is easy to assume that all users have their own public site, just like the personal view, since it contains personal information. But that is not true. There is only one single website for the public view, and this site is shared among all users. However, its content will depend on which person's public view you are looking at.

The best indication that this is so is that there is no way of configuring the Web Parts for this page, unless you are an administrator. For the typical user, the Site Actions link is hidden. But the administrator can modify this page, either by clicking Site Actions Edit Page or by using the SharePoint Designer tool. You will learn more about that in Chapter 13. This public page has several Web Parts and content lists displayed by default:

• q User Properties: This is a detailed card with information about this user, such as the name, picture, description, department, title, place in the organizational hierarchy, and contact information.

• q Memberships: This is a list of sites this user is a member of.

• q Documents: This is a list of documents this user has created or edited in sites where she is a member. This list will only show documents that the user who is currently looking at this site has at least Read permission to.

• q Colleagues: This is a list of colleagues that the owner of this site has defined to be visible for the user currently looking at this page.

• q Links: This contains any links added by the owner of this site where the option Show these links to is set to a group that the current user looking at this page belongs to.

• q In Common with: This Web Part will list all people that you have something in common with, if any.

• q Shared Documents: This is a link to the document library that every SharePoint user is granted Read access to, by default.

• q Private Documents: A link to the private document library. This library can only be accessed by user with explicit permission. By default, only the owner can view and use the content of this library.

• q Shared Pictures: A link to a picture library that every SharePoint user, by default, is granted access to.

You can create new lists and libraries for documents and pictures in your My Site. If these are configured to allow access to anyone except you, their name and content will be possible to read or even update, using the public view of My Site.

Most of the detailed information about the user is retrieved from the User Profile, but not all. For example, a picture of the user, her home phone number and the description. The administrator can also add information manually to the user's profile, or allow users to edit it themselves. If users are allowed to enter this information, the following Try It Out shows how to do it.

Try It Out Update Your User Properties on My Site

1. Open your My Site.

2. Open the My Home page, then click Details in the Quick Launch bar.

3. All fields that you can edit are now displayed. If you see a yellow warning sign next to a field, you should avoid editing that field, since it will be overwritten next time the User Profile is updated, usually every 24 hours. Note that for some fields you can set who sees that particular information. The default information fields you can edit, including the default visibility are:

   1. About me (visible to: Everyone): Enter a description, make sure to follow the policy, if any.

   2. Picture URL (visible to: Everyone): Click Choose Picture to browse for a picture of yourself on the file system. Note that you cannot browse for a picture stored in a SharePoint list, but you can manually enter the URL to the picture in that list. This picture will then be copied to the local Shared Pictures in your My Site.

   3. Responsibility (visible to: Everyone): This field should describe your responsibilities, in one or two words. To see a list of what other users have defined as responsibilities, click the edit icon to the right of this field. The information in this field is also listed as search options on the People search page.

   4. Skills (visible to: Everyone): Describe your skills in one or two words. This field also has an edit icon to the right; use it to see what skills other users have defined. This field is also listed as a search option on the People search page.

   5. Past projects (visible to: Everyone): Describe your previous or past projects. This will help others to understand what you are working on.

   6. Interests (visible to: Everyone): Enter your personal interests here.

   7. Schools (visible to: Everyone): Lists the schools you have attended.

   8. Birthday (visible to: Everyone): Enter the date for your birthday, for example September 12.

   9. Assistant (visible to: Everyone): Enter the name of your assistant, if any, or use the browse button to the right of this field to select a name.

   10. Mobile phone (visible to: My Colleagues): Enter your cell phone number.

   11. Fax (visible to: Everyone): Enter your fax number.

   12. Home phone (visible to: My Colleagues): Enter your home phone number.

   13. Any extra information attributes the administrator may have added to the user profile will be listed here.

4. Click Save and Close.

5. Click My Profile under Select a view, and the result should look something like Figure 6-19.

Figure 6-19

Note that every name listed on this page will lead to that person's My Site, which is very handy if you need to get in contact with any of these people. For example, in Figure 6-19 you can see that Anna's boss is Beatrice; to see her My Site just click on her name. Also note that there is a link at the top right of this page called Add to My Colleagues. Use that link if you want to add the person you are looking at right now to your list of colleagues.

Obviously, there is more to My Site than meets the eye. This will make the individual user more effective and reduce the time spent searching for important information, regardless of whether it is business oriented or more personal. If the users start using the document libraries on their My Sites, they may have access to these libraries over the Internet, and from any computer, without any need to configure virtual private networks (VPN). In fact, Microsoft recommends that organizations replace the traditional home directory with the document libraries in the personal site, because it is so easy to use, and you can store any type of information in My Site, not just files.

Important 

Use MS Outlook 2007 to download a copy of document libraries from the SharePoint server, if you need access to these documents while offline.

The other great use of My Site is that in all places where you see a name, such as the author of a document, news, or a link, just by clicking this name you can see that user's personal site. Thus, there is no more hunting down the person on a typical employee list on a traditional intranet, or searching Outlook's address list. Just click the name and you will have every piece of information available about this user in a second, such as the e-mail address, phone numbers, responsibilities, and a picture.

Site Permissions

You have already seen in Chapter 3 how to add users and groups to SharePoint groups, such as Visitors and Members to grant permissions to sites. There is an important difference in SharePoint 2007, compared to the previous version, regarding how site permissions work. In SharePoint 2003, there was a very granular set of permissions available in WSS, while the SPS only allowed you to set permission per area page, not on individual lists or libraries. All this is now gone, and WSS 3.0.sites have the exact same type of permissions as the MOSS sites. To view the complete list of rights available for SharePoint 2007 sites, follow the steps in the Try It Out below.

Try It Out List Available Site Permissions

1. Log on as the administrator, and open a top site, for example the start page on an intranet.

2. Click Site Actions Site Settings People and Groups

3. Click Site Permissions in the Quick Launch bar.

4. Click the Settings button, then select Permission Levels. This will open a page where all the permission roles are listed, such as Design, Contribute, and Read. These roles are referred to as site permissions. To see exactly what permission an existing site permission has, click its name. You can also create a new Site Permission role here. If you open an existing site permission, you will also find a button that will make an editable copy of that site permission.

5. Regardless of whether you create a new Site Permission or open an existing one, you will see a complete list of the 33 permissions available in SharePoint 2007, as listed in the following table (regardless of site type).

Open table as spreadsheet

List Permissions	Description
Manage Lists	Create and delete lists, add or remove columns in a list, and add or remove public views of a list.
Override Check Out	Discard or check in a document that is checked out to another user.
Add Items	Add items to lists, add documents to document libraries, and add Web discussion comments.
Edit Items	Edit items in lists, edit documents in document libraries, edit web discussion comments in documents, and customize Web Part pages in document libraries.
Delete Items	Delete items from a list, documents from a document library, and web discussion comments in documents.
View Items	View items in lists, view documents in document libraries, view web discussion comments, and set up e-mail alerts for lists.
Approve Items	Approve a minor version of a list item or document.
Open Items	View the source of documents with server-side file handlers.
View Versions	View past versions of a list item or document.
Delete Versions	Delete past versions of a list item or document.
Create Alerts	Create e-mail alerts.
View Application Pages	View forms, views, and application pages. Enumerate lists.
Site Permissions	Permission Description
Manage Permissions	Create and change permission levels on the web site and assign permissions to users and groups.
View Usage Data	View reports on web site usage.
Create Subsites	Create subsites such as team sites, Meeting Workspace sites, and Document Workspace sites.
Manage Web Site	Grant the ability to perform all administration tasks for the web site as well as manage content.
Add and Customize Pages	Add, change, or delete HTML pages or Web Part pages, and edit the web site using a Windows SharePoint Services- compatible editor.
Apply Themes and Borders	Apply a theme or borders to the entire web site.
Apply Style Sheets	Apply a style sheet (CSS file) to the web site.
Create Groups	Create a group of users that can be used anywhere within the site collection.
Browse Directories	Enumerate files and folders in a web site using SharePoint Designer and Web DAV interfaces.
Use Self-Service site Creation	Create a web site using Self-Service Site Creation.
View Pages	View pages in a web site.
Enumerate Permissions	Enumerate permissions on the web site, list, folder, document, or list item.
Browse User Information	View information about users of the web site.
Manage Alerts	Manage alerts for all users of the web site.
Use Remote Interfaces	Use SOAP, Web DAV, or SharePoint Designer interfaces to access the web site.
Use Client Integration Features	Use features that launch client applications. Without this permission, users will have to work on documents locally and upload their changes.
Open	Allows users to open a web site and a list of folders in order to access items inside that container.
Edit Personal User Information	Allows a user to change his or her own user information, such as adding a picture.
Personal Permissions	Permission Description
Manage Personal Views	Create, change, and delete personal views of lists.
Add/Remove Personal Web Parts	Add or remove personal Web Parts on a Web Part page.
Update Personal Web Parts	Update Web Parts to display personalized information.