Site Management Overview


As you create a new SharePoint environment, you should consider how to organize its sites so that users can easily access what they need. Important questions that you should consider include:

  • What primary sites should be part of this environment?

  • What users should have access to each site and what are the user’s needs and requirements?

  • What site templates will be used for each site?

  • Should site permissions be inherited or should they be unique for each site?

  • Will any sites share any components, such as content types or site columns?

  • Should the users see a different navigation interface at each site level, or should this be consistent throughout the hierarchy?

  • Should all sites in the hierarchy have the same look and feel, or will sites have their own color schemes and branding?

The answers for these questions may vary depending on the situation, so there’s not really a set of rules on how to create a SharePoint site hierarchy. However, by taking the answers to the questions under consideration, you can determine the best approach to build around whatever situation you encounter.

When designing a SharePoint environment, draw out the site hierarchy’s primary structure. You can use drawing tools, such as Microsoft Visio or something as simple as a sketch, to help you through the planning stage. From there, you can add information such as what templates to use, where you should define permissions, or where you should create content elements such as content types. You can also determine the environment’s trends and requirements. An example is shown in Figure 8-6. Although SharePoint is very flexible when you want to change something, identifying the core structure of a SharePoint environment early in the game has a positive effect on the environment’s growth and prevents costly reworks and downtime later on.

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Figure 8-6

This section shows you how to create a site that a user can easily navigate to find the information that they need and which is relevant to them. First, you learn how to add the navigation that best suits your site. You then set the regional features so that your site reflects the region for which you created it. These features include such things as the calendar the site uses, the workweek, and time zone. Finally, you learn how to enable features on your site.

Creating Navigation

Navigation is one of the most important parts of any site. As a user, you need a clear and easy path to the information you require, and as a site designer it is equally important to supply your users with a single consistent navigation experience so that they can become familiar with it. As a general rule, you need to answer a few key questions concerning your site’s navigation menu:

  • Where am I?

  • Where can I go?

  • Where have I been?

SharePoint offers several built-in navigation menus and items, and allows you to tailor things to your environment so that users are never lost when they look for information.

As mentioned in the section the “Understanding Sites and Site Collections,” a site collection has a top-level site and several subsites below it. To give users a single consistent navigation experience, the site can inherit the current (side) or global (top) navigation of the site directly above it. You can do this during or after you create a site (see the next Try it Out to find out how). You have several navigation options:

  • The tree view:   Most users are comfortable navigating in their Windows operating system (Windows 98, Windows XP, and now Windows Vista). Therefore, the most widely adopted web navigation form is the tree view. By default, all sites come with a Quick Launch bar (see Figure 8-9), which displays your lists, libraries, and subsites in a logical way. Should you have a large number of items in this menu, you may not want to display this flat listing and instead enable the tree view.

  • The breadcrumb trail:   The breadcrumb trail is basically links that show each level you have traveled in the site hierarchy to get to your current location (see Figure 8-7 for an example of this). You can select links to step back a level in the hierarchy. In the figure, by selecting the Team Site link, which is the parent site of a weblog site, you can navigate directly (back) to the team site without going through menus to do so.

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    Figure 8-7

To get you started creating your navigation system, the next Try It Out shows you how to create a site that inherits its parent’s navigation. When navigation is inherited, the same links display on the subsite that are displayed on the parent site. For example if the top link bar of the parent site has links for Home, Document Center, Search, and Sites, these links are mirrored on the subsite. In the Try It Out that follows this one, you learn how to create a tree view navigation.

Try It Out-Inherit Navigation of Parent Site

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To give users a single consistent navigation experience, SharePoint allows you to inherit the current (side) or global (top) navigation of the site directly above it, known as the parent site, so that it will display the same items. Follow these simple steps to inherit the navigation from the parent site. The example assumes you have already created a subsite as was done in the earlier Try it Out called “Create a New Site Using the Team Site Template.”

  1. From your team site, select Site Actions image from book Site Settings.

  2. Click the Navigation link from the Look and Feel section. You are presented with a page allowing you to customize navigation. See Figure 8-8.

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    Figure 8-8

  3. The Subsites and Pages section has options for having subsites, or in the case of a publishing site, created pages, show up in the navigation menu. For this exercise, leave it with the default of nothing selected.

  4. The Sorting section has options for sorting navigation items manually or automatically. You can leave the default setting of Sort Manually.

  5. From the Global Navigation section, you can decide whether your site will inherit the global navigation from the parent site. The Global Navigation is the top navigation menu displaying any subsites you create or, in the case of a publishing site, pages or sites you create. Leave it as the default, which is to inherit from the parent site.

  6. From the Current Navigation section, you can decide whether your site will inherit the current navigation menu from the parent site. The current navigation is the Quick Launch bar (mentioned earlier), which has a left-side navigation menu that displays any lists or libraries you create and can also display subsites. Change this option to display the same navigation options as the parent site.

How It Works

You now have an interface available allowing you to edit and sort the navigation options. See Figure 8-9.

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Figure 8-9

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Try It Out-Enable a Tree View Navigation in Quick Launch

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A tree view allows you to quickly access files by expanding or collapsing layers of the file structure, creating a way to quickly drill down to the files you require. With SharePoint 2007, you can create a tree view navigation of the site hierarchy by following a few easy steps. Please note that for the following exercise to work correctly, the site should not inherit the parent site’s current navigation. If, for this exercise, you use the team site where you modified the navigation in the previous Try it Out, you need to change the navigation using the steps in the previous Try It Out to either the your site’s siblings or the items below your site.

  1. Select Site Actions image from book Site Settings.

  2. Click the Tree View link from the Look and Feel section. The Tree View window appears, as shown in Figure 8-10.

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    Figure 8-10

  3. Select the Enable Tree View check box.

  4. Click the OK button.

How It Works

When you enable the tree view navigation, you turn on an expandable and collapsible menu that shows you the physical site hierarchy in a more compact form, allowing even easier navigation of all lists, libraries, and subsites. You can see an example of a tree view navigation in Figure 8-11.

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Figure 8-11

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Using Regional Settings

In some cases, the regional settings on your site may need to be different than those specified on the server by default. For example, you might want to open up your site to a division located in a different region and time zone, or perhaps a division that has a different workweek than you. In these situations, you can modify the regional settings of a site to better suit the users.

Try It Out-Change the Regional Settings of a Site

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Regional settings include such things as locale, time zone, and calendar type. Changing the regional settings of a site can be done in a few simple steps.

  1. Select Site Actions image from book Site Settings.

  1. From the Site Administration section, select Regional Settings. From the Regional Settings page, you can configure a number of items to make your users feel more familiar with the interface and display of content. See Figure 8-12.

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    Figure 8-12

  2. In the Locale section, you can select a region on which to base numbers, calendars, and sort order. This example uses English (United States).

  3. You can set the Sort Order based on common settings for a particular region or language by selecting it from the drop-down menu. For this example, use General.

  4. You can set the Time Zone so that time stamps are displayed to use in a time zone that is familiar and relevant to them. This example assumes the people using the site are from Newfoundland, Canada. From the drop-down menu, select (GMT -3:30) Newfoundland.

  5. Some cultures use a different calendar. This example uses Gregorian. Ensure that the Show Week Numbers in Date Navigator is unselected.

  6. You can choose to specify an alternate calendar, but for this example you can leave the default selection of None.

  7. Sometimes people work slightly different days, and as such you can select the workweek to suit. For this example, use Monday to Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.

  1. For Time Format, you can choose a 12-hour or 24-hour format. This example uses 12 Hour.

  2. Select the OK button.

How It Works

Your site now reflects the regional settings for which you created it. Users can also personalize regional settings to reflect their preferences by selecting My Settings from the Welcome drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 8-13.

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Figure 8-13

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Enabling Features

SharePoint 2007 introduces the concept of features, which you can think of as bundles of functionality that you can switch on or off with a single click. For example, you can turn a regular collaborative team site into a publishing site to take advantage of Web Content Management (WCM) functionality. You can enable features on a per site basis or on a site collection. With the help of a developer, you can create your own features, combining different types of functionality to meet even the most diverse site demands and extending a site’s functional abilities.

Tip 

In Chapter 13, you learn in detail about WCM and all it can do. In the following Try It Out, you simply enable the Publishing feature on a collaborative site, in this case a team site.

Try It Out-Enable Publishing Features

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SharePoint 2007 is the new home of the platform formerly known as Content Management Server. The collective functionality, WCM, gives users a rich web content publishing experience. Certain site templates under the Publishing tab have this functionality when you create them. Other sites, such as the team site or sites underneath the Collaborative tab, do not. Through the magic of features, you can turn a standard team site into a content publishing site by following these simple steps:

  1. Select Site Actions image from book Site Settings.

  2. Click the Site Features link from the Site Administration section.. The Site Features window appears, as shown in Figure 8-14.

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    Figure 8-14

  1. From the list of available features, locate and activate Office SharePoint Server Publishing.

How It Works

When you go back to your site, you now notice a new set of functionality on the Site Actions tab, such as Create Page option, shown in Figure 8-15, which SharePoint added when you enabled the Publishing feature on the site.

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Figure 8-15

Enabling the Publishing feature also creates a Pages library, along with several other supporting libraries, which means you can do more with your site, such as set rules for publishing pages via workflow - something discussed in Chapter 5. Also, when you select Site Actions image from book Create Page, the Create Page window shown in Figure 8-16 allows you to select or create new pages based on page layouts.

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Figure 8-16

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Beginning SharePoint 2007. Building Team Solutions with MOSS 2007
Beginning SharePoint 2007: Building Team Solutions with MOSS 2007 (Programmer to Programmer)
ISBN: 0470124490
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 131

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