This section presents a list of the variables that affect Web discussions, including settings for SharePoint Portal Server, choice of client for using Web discussions, and choice of Web discussions server.
When you deploy SharePoint Portal Server, you must choose a setting for the following items (note that the default settings are in parentheses):
If you include Web discussions in your index, SharePoint Portal Server may return them in a search results list. The discussion items are visible to users with Read access to any folder in the workspace, even if the users do not have access to the document to which the discussion items pertain. This may compromise the security of the content in a document. To prevent this, SharePoint Portal Server disables the option to include Web discussions in search scopes and the index by default.
SharePoint Portal Server does not include Web discussions in the index when crawling other SharePoint Portal Server computers or other workspaces on the same server. Therefore, although SharePoint Portal Server returns documents from those servers or workspaces in search results, and these documents may contain Web discussion items, the discussion items are not included in the search results.
A matrix of SharePoint Portal Server Web discussions settings follows. This matrix identifies typical configurations and the effects of the possible settings.
Possible Web Discussions Configurations for SharePoint Portal Server
Web discussions server | SharePoint Portal Server | SharePoint Portal Server | Other Office Web discussions server | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Documents stored inside the current workspace | Documents stored outside any workspace on the server | n/a | |||
Web Enabled discussions | Disabled3 | Enabled2 |
| Disabled
| Enabled2
| |
Searching and indexing of discussion items3 | Disabled | Disabled 2 | Enable d | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Configuration A |
| Yes |
|
| Yes | No |
Storage location(s) | n/a | n/a | Worksp ace4 | n/a | External4 | n/a |
Notifications for Web discussions: on the dash- board site and optional e-mail | n/a | None | n/a | n/a | None | None |
Search discussions | n/a | None | n/a | n/a | None | None |
Configuration B |
|
| Yes |
| Yes | No |
Storage location(s) | n/a | n/a | Workspace | n/a | External | n/a |
Notifications for Web discussions: on the dash- board site and optional e-mail | n/a | n/a | Yes | n/a | None | None |
Search discussions | n/a | n/a | Yes | n/a | None | None |
Configuration C | Yes |
|
| Yes |
| Yes |
Storage location(s) | None | n/a | n/a | None | n/a | Other server |
Notifications of Web discussions: on the dash- board site and optional e-mail | n/a | None | n/a | None | n/a | E-mail only from other server |
Search discussions | n/a | None | n/a | None | n/a | None |
If Office 2000 is installed on your computer and you use Microsoft Internet Explorer as your Web browser, you can add Web discussions items from Office by using the Online Collaboration toolbar, or from Internet Explorer by using the Online Collaboration toolbar or the Web Discussions toolbar, depending on how you start discussions. If you use Netscape as your Web browser, you can use the Web Discussions toolbar, which is available from a Discuss link that is displayed below the document title in the dashboard site.
If Office XP is installed on your computer and you use Internet Explorer as your Web browser, you can add Web discussion items from Office or Internet Explorer by using the Online Collaboration toolbar. If you use Netscape as your Web browser, you can use the Web Discussions toolbar, which is available from a Discuss link that is displayed below the document title in the dashboard site.
If Office is not installed on your computer and you use Internet Explorer or Netscape as a Web browser, you can only insert Web discussions about the document on the dashboard site that has a Discuss link displayed below the document title.
When you click the Discuss link, the Web Discussions toolbar (a custom SharePoint Portal Server Active Server Pages (ASP) toolbar) is displayed with the SharePoint Portal Server computer assigned as the discussion server.
To use Web discussions from a computer that does not have Office installed, you must choose to enable Web discussions in this workspace. By default, SharePoint Portal Server enables Web discussions. For more information, see Variables Affecting Web Discussions earlier in this chapter.
Office allows two types of discussion items:
In Word, you can insert inline discussion items for Word documents and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files. In Internet Explorer, you can insert inline discussion items only for HTML files.
To use Web discussions, you must specify a Web discussions server the first time you choose to discuss a document.
After you specify a Web discussions server, type comments inline (in a document), or about the document (in your browser window), depending on the document type. You can also subscribe to be notified of changes to the document or folder. In addition, you can add additional Web discussions servers from the Online Collaboration toolbar.
You can select any of the available Web discussions servers. If the discussion server you choose differs from the one in use by other users, your discussions are stored on a different server. Consequently, other users cannot view your discussion items.
The first time you open the Online Collaboration toolbar, you must enter a Web discussions server. Type the name of the Web discussions server in the text box, and then click OK.
The first time you use Web discussions, the active document's server is automatically selected as the Web discussions server.
This behavior only occurs if the server of the active document is a valid Office Web discussions server, such as a computer running SharePoint Portal Server with Web discussions enabled.
By default, the Online Collaboration toolbar uses the last manually specified Web discussions server, regardless of where a document is stored. For more information, see Using Web Discussions with Office XP Installed later in this chapter.
Depending on the combination of settings for the SharePoint Portal Server computer and the location of the document that is open, you may not be able to designate the SharePoint Portal Server computer as a Web discussions server. For more information about possible incompatibilities, see the Issues and Incompatibilities section of this chapter.
You can use the Online Collaboration toolbar to add additional Web discussions servers and to specify which Web discussions server to use.
If you specify a SharePoint Portal Server computer as the Web discussions server, do not include any workspace name in the URL.
If you use the Web Discussions toolbar, you cannot specify a Web discussions server. When you use the Web Discussions toolbar, the active server is automatically chosen as the Web discussions server.
You must consider several factors when you decide how to implement Web discussions, including the following:
When a user accesses the dashboard site to discuss a document that is stored in a workspace, the Online Collaboration toolbar is started to access the Web discussions feature. If the Online Collaboration toolbar remains open when the user later navigates to other Web sites, SharePoint Portal Server logs the URL of any Web site the user visits, in addition to the user name, in the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) logs that are stored on the system disk. Depending on the log settings on the server, this could potentially affect the Event Viewer system log size.
SharePoint Portal Server does not include Web discussions in the index when crawling other SharePoint Portal Server computers or other workspaces on the same server. Thus, although SharePoint Portal Server returns documents from those servers or workspaces in search results, and these documents may contain discussion items, the discussion items are not included in the search results.
http://Server_Name/Public/Workspaces/System/Discussions
The process of retrieving Web discussions that contain European (high-ASCII) and Japanese/Chinese (DBCS) characters in the related document's URL is unpredictable because of the URL encoding schemes of Web browsers. The encoding schemes generally expect to have URLs provided in low-ASCII character sets. Depending on the combination of methods that are used for accessing the Web discussions from their Office client version or for accessing a document from the workspace, SharePoint Portal Server may not recognize the document's URL as residing in the document store.
Because SharePoint Portal Server does not recognize these discussions correctly, they are not searchable, and you cannot subscribe to these discussions. To enable users to search for and subscribe to discussions, use the Web Discussions toolbar for high-ASCII or DBCS URLs.