Month: May 2008

Creating MOSS 2007 Theme

Creating Themes in MOSS 2007

  1. On the SharePoint server go to the Themes folder e.g. c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\Themes
  2. Make a copy one of the existing theme folders and its contents rename it e.g. MyTheme.
  3. Rename the .INF file within the MyTheme folder to MyTheme.INF
  4. Edit MyTheme.INF.
    1. At the info section, Change the title, to MyTheme. Change codepage, e.g 22200, replacing the code page will fixing error “A theme with the name “MyTheme 1011″ and version already exists on the server.”
    2. In the titles section, rename the names to your new name. this section is to present the name in the different language.
  5. Provide an image to give a preview of your theme. This image should be placed in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES. E.g. tmbMyTheme.gif
  6. Modify the c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\Layouts\1033\SPTHEMES.xml to include a reference to the new MyTheme theme

    <Templates>
    <TemplateID>MyTheme</TemplateID>
    <DisplayName> MyTheme </DisplayName>
    <Description> MyTheme has a white background with blue control areas and orange highlights.</Description>
    <Thumbnail>images/tmbMyTheme.gif</Thumbnail>
    <Preview>images/ tmbMyTheme.gif</Preview>
    </Templates>

  7. Modify the CSS within MyTheme folder to personalize your theme.
  8. Run iisreset from the command prompt
  9. Apply the new theme to a “test site”,.

Talking about Develop on SharePoint webcast series

 

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Develop on SharePoint webcast series

In this 10-part series, you will receive practical technical information from Robert Bogue and Andrew Connell, Microsoft SharePoint Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), covering 10 fundamental developer topics on SharePoint Products and Technologies via Live Meeting Webcast.

20-May-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Web Parts. Register
21-May-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Data Lists. Register
27-May-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Silverlight and SharePoint. Register
28-May-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Using Event Handlers. Register
03-Jun-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Page Branding. Register
04-Jun-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Workflows. Register
10-Jun-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Web Services. Register
11-Jun-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Page Navigation. Register
17-Jun-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: User Management. Register
18-Jun-08 … Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Custom Content Types. Register

MOSS 2007 and Commerce Server 2007 in action

I was working for the last 1 year on E-Commerce Solution. The main purpose of this project is to provide a plateform where we can have B2B transactions. The project can be divided into following areas:
 
  • Web Portal for delivering Ads and products to the Internet users
  • Internal portal where internal users can manage Ads, transactions, ECM contents for the web portal, customers, reporting and parameter management.
  • Accounts management for all the transactions.

This project was initiated by Microsoft for one of their clients in UAE and my part in this project was to work on the Internet facing portal and Services. We adopted Software as Services approach and develop the entire plateform based on WCF services that can be exposed to any presentaion interface. So it became quite easy for us to develop 2 different portals over the same BL.

Now I am sure, most of people out there agree with me that MOSS is getting popularity as an ECM and getting matured quite rapidly so our natural choice was to use MOSS for our Internet facing portal. We modified every bit of MOSS to satisfy client requirements and I was quite surprised to see the flexibility. Check out what can be achieved using MOSS at Logta. I have read on many places that there are issues with MOSS page size for Internet facing sites and for ECM but believe me there are ways to reduce it. Check page size at Logta and you will start believing me. Out-of-Box MOSS is not upto the standard but you can find a lot of documentation on MSDN of how to optimize MOSS for Internet facing sites. With all the images and Ad stuff, we were able to reduce page size of Home page to around 400K. Also if you will check download time of MOSS pages, you will find it there with all other cool E-Commerce Sites. 

The second cool thing about this solution was that we integrated Commerce Server 2007 with MOSS to provide E-Commerce Services and I am sure it will be the first implementation of MOSS and Comemrce Server 2007 together for an Internet facing site.

For internal portal, we used a mixture of custom ASP.Net 2.0 web site and CRM 3.0 as CRM has all the features required for customer management and campaign management.

This site is getting quite popularity in MEA region and I am sure, it will become one of the most famous web sites in this region by the end of this year. Logta will be soon be launched in Saudi region after its successful launch in UAE.

SharePoint 2007 ECM Taxonomy Starter Kit available

In Enterprise Content Management (ECM), taxonomies ensure that content is accurately catalogued and easily accessible. Having consistent and reliable access to unstructured content is arguably the foundation to realizing the business benefits of ECM, and all subsequent content-centric enterprise applications will realize their ROI by leveraging this essential capability. As large enterprises standardize on ECM platforms, maintaining the integrity of the catalog is essential to managing access to the volume and heterogeneity of business information.
 
For the same purpose, now MS has released taxonomy started kit for MOSS-new generation ECM.  The kit allows authors to attach tags to content and readers to specify tags in which they are interested. Using this information for a specified content source, a customized Content Query Web Part shows only the items that match a reader’s respective tags.
 
For more information or download the kit, click here.

External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint

Organizations need tools to simplify the process of collaborating with people outside their firewall. Currently, many such organizations collaborate using methods that are not efficient or secure, such as unencrypted e-mail and instant messaging. The External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint includes software and guidance to quickly and easily deploy a collaboration environment based on SharePoint Products and Technologies that you can use to collaborate with partners across the Internet.
This solution accelerator, which is primarily targeted at mid-sized and smaller organizations, lets project teams manage their own collaboration sites and invite external users to share documents that are centrally located on a SharePoint site inside the firewall. Internal users access the collaboration site through an internal URL and are authenticated against the organization’s Active Directory® domain, whereas external user access the site through the Internet, log on using a form, and are authenticated against a separate Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) directory that contains only external users.

Solution features include a setup wizard to automate the setup process, Web Parts to automate the process of provisioning new site collections and new users, form-based logon for external users, and automated password reset functionality.

You can download the following components:

    Choosing an External Collaboration Solution. This document examines various external collaboration scenarios and provides recommendations for addressing them using Microsoft technologies.
    External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint. This software and documentation helps administrators quickly deploy a SharePoint-based solution for collaborating across the Internet. The documentation includes Planning for External Collaboration with SharePoint, which describes the planning process for deploying the solution in a small or mid-sized environment, and the Deployment and Operations Guide, which explains how to install and configure the solution, provides guidance for users, and describes how to deploy the solution in larger environments.
    Informational Materials. These include supplementary materials that explain how the guidance and tools in this Solution Accelerator can benefit your organization.

For more information or to download this toolkit, click here.