Chapter 25: Collaborating Using the Internet


Chapter 24, "Collaborating on a Network or by E-Mail," surveyed some of the features that Microsoft Office Excel 2007 provides to facilitate file sharing and communication amongst co-workers. This chapter explores additional collaborative features-those that involve the Internet. This chapter will show you how to set up a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services site, how to transfer your work in Office Excel 2007 to and from the SharePoint site, and how to take advantage of the program's newest collaboration tool, Excel Services.

Using a Windows SharePoint Services Site

Excel 2007, like the other 2007 Microsoft Office system applications, builds on the Office 2003 collaboration features based on Windows SharePoint Services. Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers even tighter integration with Office, and the new Excel Services provide server-side performance for your large Excel workbooks.

If you have access to a SharePoint site, you can use the site as a workgroup document repository. While you and other team members are working on a collaborative project, all the artifacts related to that project-documents, task lists, team-member contact information, deadlines, and links to related materials-can be available for all the team members in a single, centralized location. While you are connected to the site-whether directly by means of your Web browser or by opening a team document in Excel-you can see at a glance which other team members are also online, and you can easily initiate instant messaging conversations with collaborators or send them e-mail.

Downloading and Uploading Documents

Figure 25-1 shows a document library at a SharePoint site, as viewed in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Figure 25-2 shows the same library as viewed in the Open dialog box in Excel. To get to the document library in the Open dialog box, type the site's Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in the Address bar. In the Document Libraries list, double-click the appropriate library to display its files. Double-click the document you want to open.

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Figure 25-1: You can download a SharePoint document by clicking it in Internet Explorer.

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Figure 25-2: You can also access SharePoint documents by opening them directly in Excel.

You can access the shared documents with equal facility from Internet Explorer and from Excel. The one item of information provided on the SharePoint site but not in the Excel Open dialog box is the Windows Messenger icon that appears beside the names of contacts who happen to be online at the moment. You can click that icon to open a menu of actions related to the contact in question-for example, to send the contact an instant message in Windows Live Messenger, to schedule a meeting with the contact, to send e-mail, to place a phone call, or to open the contact's record in Microsoft Office Outlook. As you'll see, this functionality is also available in Excel via the Shared Workspace task pane.

To download a document from SharePoint to Excel, point to the file and then click the small arrow that appears to the right of the file name, and click Edit In Excel. Alternatively, simply open it from the Open dialog box or the Recent Documents list in Excel.

When you download a SharePoint document from the browser, the document is read-only. However, if another user has not checked out the document, and provided you have Contributor or Administrator privileges for the SharePoint site, you can write changes back to the site without renaming the document. Simply click the Microsoft Office Button, click Save, supply the same file name (and location) as you used to download the document, and click Save. The SharePoint site will accept the modified file without giving you a confirmation prompt, and the read-only designation will disappear.

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Note 

In Windows SharePoint Services version 3, you can set versioning to require document checkout before editing. If a library is set with required checkout, you will not be able to save a document using the original file name unless you check it out first. See "Checking Documents In and Out" on page 810.

To upload a file to the SharePoint site, you can use the Save command in Excel. Alternatively, from within the document library at the SharePoint site (see Figure 25-1), click Upload, then click Upload Document or Upload Multiple Documents, and finally browse to the file's location on your local storage system. You have must have Contributor or Administrator privileges to upload files.

SharePoint is also a document management server, so you can save an Excel workbook to SharePoint in one more way. Click the Microsoft Office Button, click Publish, and then click Document Management Server to open the Save As dialog box. In the Address bar, type the URL for your SharePoint site. Double-click the document library in which you want to store the document, type a file name, and then click Save.

For information about uploading Excel tables to SharePoint, see "Exporting Excel Tables to SharePoint" on page 818.

Checking Documents In and Out

The SharePoint check-in, check-out mechanism lets users reserve read-write privileges for themselves temporarily while they are editing documents. If you check out a document, only you have read-write privileges. Others can download the document from the site but cannot save changes to it. (They can still save their changes to the document using another name.)

To check a document out, right-click it in SharePoint (in your browser), and click Check Out. To check it back in, save any changes you have made (and want to keep). Then right-click the file name in the browser, and click Check In. SharePoint will present the form shown in Figure 25-3, where you can add comments about the changes you have made.

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Figure 25-3: When you check a document back in, SharePoint presents this form, letting you append comments to the document.

The site administrator can require document checkout before editing for the entire site or for a specific library. If checkout is required, when you click Edit In Office Excel 2007, you'll see a dialog box, as shown in Figure 25-4, advising you that the file is being checked out and stored in your local drafts folder.

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Figure 25-4: With document checkout required, SharePoint automatically checks out the document when you open it for editing in Excel 2007.

The default view in a SharePoint library (see Figure 25-1) includes the Checked Out To column so you can see when a file is locked for editing by another user. In every view, the file icon includes an arrow; if you rest the pointer on the icon, a ScreenTip appears with the name of the user who has checked out the file. Pay attention to whether a file is checked out if you're opening a document for editing. SharePoint will let you open and edit the document, but you will not be able to save your changes with the original file name.

Using the Document Management Task Pane

When you open a SharePoint document in Excel, Excel usually displays the Document Management task pane (shown in Figure 25-5). The Document Management task pane provides, among other things, information about the status of your document and the online availability of your collaborators. (If no task pane or a different task pane is displayed, click the Microsoft Office Button, click Server, and then click Document Management Information.)

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Figure 25-5: Document status information, including the status of other team members, appears in the Document Management task pane.

Contacting Team Members

You can see in Figure 25-5 that the current document is accessible to a number of team members. Gini Courter's name appears at the top of the list, above a horizontal rule, because this illustration was captured in her copy of Excel. Craig Stinson (user name craigstinson) is logged on to one of the Microsoft Messenger programs-Windows Live Messenger, Windows Messenger, or MSN Messenger-so he is listed under Online with a green circle in front of his name. The other team members appear under Not Online with gray circles because they are not logged on to any Microsoft Messenger program. To initiate an instant-messaging conversation with any online Messenger contact (such as Craig Stinson in Figure 25-5), click that person's name. To send e-mail to an offline contact or to a team member who is not a contact, click that person's name. To send mail to all team members, click the Send E-Mail To All Members link near the bottom of the task pane. To perform any other action in relation to a team member, right-click the team member's name, and click the appropriate command.

Getting Document Status Information

Figure 25-5 shows the Members panel of the Document Management task pane. The icons across the top of the pane provide access to other panels. Clicking the Status icon at the left of this array, for example:

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opens the Status panel, where you might see something like this:

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Note that people named in the Status panel provide access to contact functionality, just as they do in the Members panel. In the previous illustration, for example, you could click Gini Courier's name to launch a Messenger session and ask Gini when she's planning to check in the document.

Assigning and Monitoring Tasks

The Tasks panel lists each task assigned to the current document, along with the name of the person to whom the task has been assigned and the task's deadline. The check box beside each task provides information about the status of that task. A clear check box denotes a task that has not been started. A check mark indicates a completed task. A square dot within the check box means the task has some other status: in progress, deferred, or "waiting on someone else." In the Tasks panel shown here, for example, Curtis Philips has completed the review, and John Pierce has not started adding scenarios to the workbook:

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To add a new task, click Add New Task, at the bottom of the Tasks panel, and then fill out the following form:

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To delete or edit a task (for example, to change its status from Not Started to Completed), click the small arrow to the right of the task, and then click Delete Task or Edit Task as shown on the next page.

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To receive an "alert" when the status of a task has changed, click the small arrow to the right of the task, and then click Alert Me About This Task. This action opens a New Alert form in Internet Explorer. (To set an alert for all tasks associated with the current document, click Alert Me About Tasks at the bottom of the Tasks panel.)

Opening Related Documents

The Documents panel, as shown in Figure 25-6, lists all files stored in the current document library-that is, the SharePoint path from which you downloaded the current document. You can open related documents by clicking them in this panel. You can also request change alerts for any or all related documents. To be alerted of changes to a particular document, click the small arrow to the right of the task, and then click Alert Me About This Document. To be notified of changes to any documents or additions or deletions to the current document library, click Alert Me About Documents at the bottom of the Documents panel. You can use the other links at the bottom of the panel to add new documents to the library or to create organizational folders.

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Figure 25-6: You can use the Documents panel to open other documents from the same SharePoint library.

Using Links

You can use the Links panel to store and activate links to related Web sites, intranet sites, or off-site documents. To create a link, click Add New Link at the bottom of the panel. For alerts about a particular link, click the small arrow to the right of the task, and then click Alert Me About This Link. For alerts about any link, click Alert Me About Links at the bottom of the panel:

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Getting Information About the Current Document

The Document Information panel tells who created the document, who has modified it, and when the last modification took place. Names listed here, as elsewhere, provide access to e-mail and messaging services. An Alert Me About This Document link, at the bottom of the panel, lets you set up or change alerts associated with the current document. If you have the current document checked out, a Check In link at the bottom of the panel gives you an easy way to check it in.

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Creating a New Document Workspace

A document workspace is a set of documents, along with related task, personnel, and status information, stored at a common SharePoint path. If your SharePoint site includes a library called Shared Documents, for example, that library constitutes a document workspace. You can create new document workspaces as subwebs within your SharePoint Web site that focus on particular projects and are accessible to particular team members. Your new workspace can become, in effect, a semiprivate corner within the overall SharePoint site, with fewer distractions (irrelevant documents and announcements) than the parent site. After your group has finished its work in the new document workspace, you can publish the group's documents to the parent site.

Excel 2007 and SharePoint give you three ways to create a new document workspace:

  • By using Excel (or another 2007 Office release application)

  • By e-mailing a "shared attachment" to other team members

  • By using SharePoint

Note 

To create a document workspace, you must have the Create Subsites permission for the SharePoint site in which you want to create your subsite (subweb).

Creating a Document Workspace from Within Excel

To create a new document workspace from within Excel, follow these steps:

  1. In Excel, open the first document you want to include in the document workspace.

  2. Be sure the document includes no unsaved changes. (When you create the document workspace, Excel will prompt you to save if you omit this step.)

  3. Be sure your SharePoint site is designated as a trusted site in Internet Explorer. To make it a trusted site, open Internet Explorer, and then click Tools, Internet Options to open the Internet Options dialog box. On the Security tab, click the Trusted Sites icon. Then click the Sites button. Type the URL for your site in the Add This Web Site To The Zone box, click Add, click Close, and then click OK.

    Note 

    By default, the Trusted Sites dialog box has the Require Server Verification (Https:) For All Sites In This Zone check box selected. If your site doesn't use secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS), clear this check box before adding the URL for the SharePoint site.

  4. In Excel, click the Microsoft Office Button, click Publish, and then click Create Document Workspace to open the Document Workspace panel:

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  5. Modify the document workspace name if you want, specify the URL for your SharePoint site in the Location For New Workspace box, and then click the Create button.

The URL for your new document workspace will be the URL of the SharePoint site followed by a slash, which is then followed by your document name. For example, if your site's URL is http://MySharePointSite and the document from which you created the document workspace is AnnualReport.xlsx, the address of your new document workspace will be http://MySharePointSite/AnnualReport.

Creating a Document Workspace via E-Mail

To create a document workspace using the e-mail services in Microsoft Office Outlook, simply attach an Office document to a message addressed to one or more workspace participants. In the Outlook message window, click the Dialog Box Launcher next to Include to display the Attachment Options task pane (if it isn't already displayed). Then select Shared Attachments, and specify the URL for your SharePoint site.

When you send your message, each recipient will receive an invitation to join the document workspace, along with a link to the site. You will receive e-mail confirmation that the site was created successfully.

For more information about sharing workbooks via e-mail, see "Sending an Entire Workbook as an E-Mail Attachment" on page 801.

Creating a Document Workspace from Within SharePoint

To move a SharePoint document into a new document workspace, click the Documents link on the left side of the SharePoint site, and then click Create. On the Create page, click the Sites And Workspaces link. Use the New SharePoint Site page to define a title, description, URL name, a template for your workspace, permissions and their inheritance, and navigation properties. Then click Create.

Managing a Document Workspace

After you have created a new document workspace, you can add participants or documents either from within SharePoint (using your browser) or from within Excel. To add a document from the browser, navigate to your document workspace subweb, click Documents on the main SharePoint menu, click Shared Documents under the Document Libraries heading, and then click Upload. Browse to select the file you want to upload to your workspace, and then click OK.

To add a new user from within Excel, display a document that's part of your document workspace. Then, on the Members panel in the Document Management task pane, click the Add New Members link.



Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Inside Out
MicrosoftВ® Office ExcelВ® 2007 Inside Out (Inside Out (Microsoft))
ISBN: 073562321X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 260

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