Managing the SharePoint Sites

If you created an intranet based on the MOSS site template Collaboration Portal, you now have one top site and five subsites. Each of these subsites inherits the same look and feel as the top site, since they all use the same Master Page file. The Collaboration Portal was introduced in Chapter 6, but the following is a quick summary to remind you about the structure of this portal to prepare you for the examples that follow. Note that in several cases the URL of these subsites is different from the sites' display name:

• q Home: http://srv1 - the start page and top-level site for the portal.

• q Document Center: http://srv1/docs - this is a subsite of the top site.

• q News: http://srv1/news - a subsite that is used to list news and information.

• q Reports: http://srv1/reports - a subsite for reports and KPI lists.

• q Search: http://srv1/SearchCenter - this is a subsite used when searching for content and people.

• q Sites: http://srv1/SiteDirectory - a subarea that can list all subsites in the site collection.

Few organizations implementing MOSS are completely satisfied with the default portal site. But the good news is that all of these sites and pages can be changed in almost any way you want. And most changes do not require anything other than the web client browser (and the permission to do it, of course). Now look more closely at these area pages and what you can do with them.

The Home Page

The home site of the intranet is a kind of welcome page for the intranet. It should contain important content, such as the latest news about the company and its associates, plus frequently requested information such as links to popular sites and to frequently used actions, such as adding a news item. You can adjust the Home page in many ways, for example, to display news lists from several local intranet sites. Since the Home page is also the top site of its site collection, it affects the navigation in subsites, as you will see later in this section.

News Listings

Let's start with the Web Part "News" displayed at the bottom of this Home page. It shows three sample links, but none of them is related to a news item, so you probably want to change that immediately. This News Web Part is in fact a Summary Link Web Part, and it is used to display links to other locations, such as subsites, document libraries, or even external web sites on the Internet. First, you will change the name of this Web Part to something more appropriate, such as Important Links, and then you will add a Content Query Web Part to display the news items in the News site.

Try It Out Modify the News List on the Home page

1. Log on as a SharePoint administrator.

2. Open the Home page using a web browser.

3. Click Site Actions Edit Page. Since this Home page is a publishing page (named Default.aspx), SharePoint will now check out this page.

4. Click edit Modify Shared Web Part on the News Web Part.

5. Expand the Appearance section, then enter a better name for this Web Part in the Title field, for example Important Links.

6. Click OK. The modification of this Web Part is now completed. Next step is to adjust the links in this Web Part to show something of interest to your users.

7. Click the edit button to the left of the link named Sample Link 2 (see Figure 12-7), and select Edit. Change the link so that it points to the subsite http://srv1/SiteDirectory/it (see Figure 12-8):

   
   Figure 12-7

   
   Figure 12-8

   1. Select the option Create a link to an item.

   2. Title: IT Department.

   3. Description: "This is the local intranet site for IT."

   4. Link URL: /SiteDirectory/it. This is a relative link, (i.e., you do not need to enter the full URL address, including http://srv1).

   5. Style: Bulleted Title. This will only show the title, not the description of the link. If you also want to show the description, change this style to Title and Description.

   6. Click OK to save and close the page.

8. Change the second link to point to an MS Word file, for example using the URL /SiteDirectory/it/shared documents/Policy_statements.doc.

9. Change the third link to point to a user, such as the Administrator, using these settings:

   1. Select the option Create a link to a person. The form is now modified.

   2. Enter the person's name, (i.e., Filobit\Administrator), and click the check button to the right or click the Browse button.

   3. Change the Title to Administrator.

   4. Description: "Your friend in the IT world."

   5. Link URL: Note that this URL is automatically filled in and points to the person's My Site.

   6. Select the option "Open link in new window."

   7. Style: Bulleted Title.

   8. Click OK to save and close the page.

10. In the Middle Left Zone, you will now add a Content Query Web Part and display the latest news from the News site. Click Add a Web Part, check the Content Query Web Part, and select Add. Then do this to display the news items:

    1. On the new Content Query Web Part, click edit Modify Shared Web Part.

    2. Expand the Query section. This is where you define the content source to be displayed in the Web Part. Select Show items from the following list, click Browse, and select Pages Library in the News site. Then click OK.

    3. Make sure that the List Type is Pages Library.

    4. Expand the Presentation section, and change Item limit to 5. This will limit the number of news item in this list to 5.

    5. Expand the Appearance section, and enter the Title as Latest news.

    6. Click OK to save and close the page.

11. At the top toolbar of the page, click Publish to save and publish the modified home page. The page will look similar to Figure 12-9.

Figure 12-9

Using the Content Query Web Part, you can create any number of News lists in any site, including WSS sites, and still show all of these news items in the same Web Part. Typically, the Home page is used as a front page, much like a newspaper. You could also do it the other way around: Create a new site column named Dept on the Page list on the News site, then add all news items to the list, and enter the department for which the item is targeted. Then you would use the Content Query Web Part on each departmental site and configure the Web Part to filter the news list based on the Dept site column. This way, all news items are stored in one single list, and you can still display specific news items for each department.

Hiding Subsites and Site Links

Sometimes you may need to hide subsites, at least from some of the users. For example, if you install an intranet based on the Collaboration Portal site template mentioned above, you will have five subsites. Instead of deleting the ones you don't need now, you can hide them, then later when needed they can be displayed again. This can be done in two ways:

• q Permissions: Remove the Read permission to this subsite for all users. The drawback is that this will force you to break the permission inheritance. Not a big deal, since the inheritance can be reestablished later again.

• q Navigations: You can hide this subsite from the navigation (i.e., the top navigation tabs and the Quick Launch bar). The drawback is that anyone who knows the URL will be able to open the subsite anyhow. In some cases this is not a problem, then again in others it may be a real security problem.

You have already learned to break permission inheritance for a site (see Chapter 3) but to change the navigation settings follow the steps in the Try It Out below.

Try It Out Remove a Site Link from the Navigation Elements

1. Log on as the Site Administrator.

2. Open the top site. For example, http://srv1.

3. Click Site Actions Site Settings Modify Navigation. This will open the configuration page for the navigation part of the MOSS intranet.

4. Hide the Document Center site: In the Navigation Editing and Sorting section, select the Document Center in the Global Navigation and click the Hide button; the text now indicates that the link is hidden. Will this be enough? No! So far you have only removed the link on the top navigation bar, but the Quick Launch bar still shows the Document Center. So, you must also hide the link Document Center in the Current Navigation section (see Figure 12-10).

5. Click OK. Both references to the subsite are removed.

Figure 12-10

From this, you can see that the Global Navigation element controls the top navigation bar, while Current Navigation controls the Quick Launch bar, usually located to the left of the page. This can help you address another common request, which is to avoid using the Quick Launch bar to show links to all sites under the Site Directory while still showing these sites in the Sites dropdown menu. To illustrate this, say that you have 15 subsites created directly under the Sites subsite (i.e., http://srv1/SiteDirectory in the example environment). You may remember from Chapter 8 that these sites can be displayed in a dropdown menu by hovering the mouse over the "Sites" tab at the top bar navigation. But you may not want these sites to be listed in the Quick Launch bar, since this will make the Quick Launch long and clumsy (see Figure 12-11).

Figure 12-11

Solve this problem by hiding the Sites link in Current Navigation as shown in the following Try It Out.

Try It Out Hide Sites Link on the Quick Launch Bar

1. Log on as the Site Administrator.

2. Open the top site (for example, http://srv1).

3. Click Site Actions Site Settings Modify Navigation.

4. In the Navigation Editing and Sorting section, select the Sites link in Current Navigation, and click the Hide button; the text now indicates that the link is hidden.

5. Click OK. The list of site links is now gone from the Quick Launch bar. Hover the mouse over the top menu Sites, and it will still display the list of sites (see Figure 12-12).

Figure 12-12

Important 

If you don't see this dropdown list, click Site Actions Site Settings Modify Navigation, and make sure that you have checked the option Show subsites.

WSS Pages

WSS sites may be configured to show or hide links to other locations, such as sites, libraries, and external Internet sites. In the previous version of SharePoint, there was no tree view of subsites, so you either wrote your own tree view Web Part or bought it from a third-party vendor; for example, from http://sharepoint.advis.ch. This is no longer necessary, since WSS now comes with its built-in tree view Web Part. There is nothing to install, simply select to display it. Since it will show the same type of information as the Quick Launch bar, it is a good idea to hide that bar at the same time. The following Try It Out shows you how to do it.

Try It Out Change to a Tree View Navigation in WSS

1. Open any WSS site as a Site Owner; for example, http://srv1/sitedirectory/it.

2. Click Site Actions Site Settings.

3. Under the Look and Feel heading, click Tree view.

4. Check Enable Tree View, and uncheck Enable Quick Launch.

5. Click OK.

That's it. Open the site, and it will display a tree view of its lists and libraries, plus all subsites under the site. Compare Figure 12-13 showing the Quick Launch bar and Figure 12-14 with the tree view to see the difference.

Figure 12-13

Figure 12-14

But to be fair, the Quick Launch bar can also be configured to show subsites, as described in the Try It Out below; it is up to your users to decide which version looks best.

Try It Out Show Subsites in the Quick Launch Bar

1. Open the WSS site as a Site Owner.

2. Click Site Actions Site Settings.

3. Under the Look and Feel heading, click Tree view.

4. Uncheck Enable Tree View, and check Enable Quick Launch.

5. Click OK.

6. Under the Look and Feel heading, click Navigation.

7. In the Subsites and Pages section, check Show Subsites and click OK.

Now look at the site again (see Figure 12-15); the subsites are listed at the bottom of the Quick Launch bar.

Figure 12-15

Another solution is to change the top menu bar navigation elements. By default, the top menu bar shows the same navigation links as all sites, including the top site. You can change it to only show the current site and all its subsites. If you use the same site as depicted in Figure 12-15, you can make it look like Figure 12-16 by following the steps in the Try It Out below.

Figure 12-16

Try It Out Show Subsites in the Top Menu Bar

1. Open the WSS site as a Site Owner.

2. Click Site Actions Site Settings.

3. Click Navigation in the Look and Feel section.

4. In the Global Navigation section, select the option Display the navigation items below the current site.

5. Click OK.

This navigation setting will not be affected by whether you select the tree view or the Quick Launch view. Note that although the global navigation is replaced, there is still a breadcrumb link at the top left of the page so that users can easily go back to the top site. As you can see, there are a lot of interesting options regarding the navigation links; make sure to play with them all to see how they work. This will ensure that you can find the type of navigation elements your users ask for, without the need for custom development or third-party products.

Managing Links

In previous chapters, several times you have seen seen the list of links you can create in any site, and earlier in this chapter you saw how the Summary Link Web Part works. The simplest type of link list is the one that comes with WSS, but that one can be used for more than you may think. All the links in the previous examples have been to web pages and other lists or libraries in SharePoint, but you can link to other types of content as well. For example, you can create a link that will open a specific document or a file folder or even an e-mail with a preconfigured recipient and subject. In other words, links in SharePoint are more powerful than you may at first believe. The table below shows examples of the links you can create:.

Open table as spreadsheet

Type of link	Example
Files	\\Server1\share1\example.txt links to a specific file. \\server1\share\public links to a folder.
Mailto	mailto:[e-mail] creates an e-mail addressed to Diana. mailto:[e-mail]?subject=Book me for this training creates an e-mail addressed to Diana with a given subject.
HTTP	http://www.microsoft.com links to a web page. http://MOSSrv2/doc/quote.doc links to a Word file.
HTTP to Person	http://srv1:5002/person/carmela will open the public view of the user Carmela's My Site

For example, say that you have a list of links, named Links. Now you want to add more advanced links to this list, as described in the table above. The following Try It Out shows how you do it.

Try It Out Create Advanced Links

1. Open any site with a list of links.

2. Click on the list to open it.

3. Click New; in the following form enter these values to create a link to the file share \\FS1\Projects:

   1. URL: \\FS1\Projects.

   2. Type the Description: "Open Projects file share."

   3. Click OK.

4. If you want to create a link that will open an e-mail preconfigured with the recipient [e-mail] and with the subject "Order more cars," then click New and press Enter:

   1. URL: Mailto:[e-mail]?subject=Send more cars.

   2. Type the Description: "Order cars from Carmela."

   3. Click OK.

Important 

If you remove any of the sources, the link will be broken. However, you will not notice this until you try to open it. Some tools are available on the Internet that will help you check for broken links and sometimes even try to repair them.