| Before we drill down into managing the workspace, a quick dashboard review is in order. While the workspace may be viewed as the data repository, the digital dashboard, or Dashboard, serves as perhaps the simplest and most effective way of accessing this data. That is, users with appropriate roles can access the workspace via a couple different ways ”Microsoft Windows Explorer or Microsoft Office 2000, for example. However, using the dashboard site from a Web browser is oftentimes the simplest, as no client components , nor a minimum version of Microsoft Office, are required for basic functionality. The dashboard site is a specialized Web site automatically created by SharePoint Portal Server after the associated workspace is created. There is a one-to-one relationship between workspaces and dashboards, where up to 15 workspaces and associated dashboards may reside on a single server. The dashboard provides a Web view of the workspace, and enables users with the appropriate security roles to perform the following: -
Search for, view, and manage workspace documents -
Search for and view content from other sources The dashboard site also allows users to perform document management tasks and search functions. In these cases, though, users must be running Office XP applications, or install the client components on a computer running Office 2000 to provide complete workspace management functions. Dashboard Components The dashboard site consists of the following: -
A customizable site title. -
A search bar with a drop-down menu and text box, facilitating search scopes and search terms. -
A customizable logo for the dashboard site. -
A collection of site navigation buttons that link to other dashboards, such as Home, Documents, Categories, Subscriptions, Management, Help, and Feedback. One or more Web Parts can appear on the dashboards that make up the site. To review, a Web Part is a customizable section of the dashboard site that contains a specific type of content or aids in accessing content. The default home page contains four default Web Parts: -
News -
Quick Links -
Announcements -
Subscriptions Summary In many ways, managing the dashboard amounts to managing the various Web Parts. The first three of these default Web Parts corresponds to subfolders of the same name under the Portal Content folder in the workspace. These subfolders store the information that appears in the corresponding Web Parts. The fourth default Web Part, the Subscriptions Summary Web Part, contains information ”subscription data ”after end users have actually subscribed to something.  For an excellent overview of the SPS default Web Parts, see "Dashboard Overview," p. 42. Managing the Subscription and Other Web Parts Managing Web Parts is the job of the Administrator or Coordinator. The Coordinator at the workspace level, for example, can add, delete, and customize Web Parts. In addition, he can also add information to the News, Announcements, and Quick Links Web Parts. Fortunately, assembling and customizing Web Parts is an easy and flexible way to customize a SharePoint Portal Server Web site. And the Coordinator is further blessed by the fact that the dashboard site included with SharePoint Portal Server packages a lot of standard functionality into the various default and other Web Parts. In terms of management, the Coordinator at the workspace level configures the links to the content that resides on all of the default Web Parts (with the exception of the Subscriptions Web Part) by simply adding documents to the related subfolder in the workspace. End users manage their own subscriptions, however. Since SharePoint Portal Server notifies users automatically that content which has been subscribed to has been updated, no Coordinator involvement from this perspective is required. That is, Coordinators do not need to determine the content of the Subscriptions Web Part ”selection of the content is left to the discretion of the end users, and updates are performed automatically by SPS. Additional Subscription Web Part management details include -
A user can quickly view his two most current subscription notifications, along with links to any relevant documents. -
If the user has no active subscriptions, the associated folder in the workspace is empty. -
Both Coordinators and end users have the power to delete user subscriptions from the dashboard site. End users are of course restricted by default to their own subscriptions. Other Web Parts may be built and customized as well. The Coordinator at the workspace level can configure and customize these additional Web Parts for the dashboard site pages. Some of the more commonly created Web Parts involve those that display business information such as news headlines and stock tickers, or facilitate collaboration using tools like Microsoft NetMeeting. Other Web Parts might be configured to display information specific to an certain subsets of users, such as a customized "Search" Web Part for the site. Regardless, management of these Web Parts is performed by the Coordinator at the workspace level.  | If you subscribe to content, but do not receive a subscription notification, you might have a simple Windows 2000 authentication issue. See "Windows 2000 Authentication and Subscription Notification" in the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of the chapter . | |
