SharePoint 2010 : Working with the Other Standard Tools in a Document Library (part 1)

Figure 1 shows a SharePoint Foundation 2010 document library with several items in it. For one of these documents, the user has accessed the drop-down menu, which results in a checkmark being added to the left of the document signifying that the document is selected. Note that the Documents tab under Library tools on the Ribbon interface becomes active when the document is selected. The user could also check the box to access the Documents tab and the tools in it rather than accessing the drop-down menu.

Figure 1. The Documents tab and drop-down menu for a document in a document library.

The Documents tab is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 that brings the Ribbon interface introduced in Office 2007 products to the SharePoint environment. Note in Figure 19.8 that there is not a direct mirror of tools provided in the Documents tab to what is available in the drop-down menu. The order of the tools in the drop-down menu has stayed similar to the drop-down menu from SharePoint 2007, so users familiar with SharePoint 2007 drop-down menus will immediately be at home with the SharePoint 2010 drop-down menus, even though they might need some time to get familiar with the layout of the tools on the Ribbon.

The tools in the Documents tab are covered in the following sections, from left to right, and will include both the tools from SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 with comments made on when tools are specific to SharePoint Server 2010.

Working with the New Document and Upload Document Tools

Located to the far left of the Documents tab on the Ribbon, the New Document and Upload Documents tools are frequently used tools that allow a user with sufficient permissions to create a new document using the template assigned to the document library or upload documents.

Follow these steps to use the New Document tool:

1.	From within a document library, using an account with contributor or greater permissions, click the New Document icon.
2.	A warning message may appear when the template.dotx or other template file (if defined by the administrator) loads; click OK.
3.	Word 2010 loads and displays the template. Customize the template in whatever fashion desired, and click the Save icon. SharePoint remembers that the template was stored in the document library, so will prompt for a document name to save to the library. Provide a document name and click Save.
4.	Click Exit from the File Menu in Word 2010 and Word will close, and the new document will appear in the document library. It will be tagged with a NEW label.
5.	Hover over the document in the document library and select View Properties for the new document, and a window will open that shows the properties of the document, including several tools, the Created date and time and user as well as the Last Modified date, time, and user, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. View Properties for a new document.

The document library administrator can edit the template from the Document Library Settings page, Advanced Settings link. Also, if the document library has been configured to allow management of content types by the library administrator (also available from the Document Library Settings page, Advanced Settings link), the content types available in the document library will appear in this menu.

Pros and Cons of the New Folder Tool

An icon for the New Folder tool will be available for use to the right of the Upload Document icon, if the library administrator allows the creation of new folders in the document library (accessible from the Document Library Settings page, Advanced Settings link). If the New Folder icon is clicked, the folder can then be named and used to store documents or other folders. Folders can have unique permissions assigned to them, users can create alerts based on the contents of folders, and they can be connected to Outlook, but they are not as manageable as standard items in a document library. For example, metadata columns added to a document library will not be editable for a folder in that document library.

There are various stances about the usefulness of folders in SharePoint that have been argued for years. One point of view is that folders should not be used in SharePoint because they can be seen as keeping alive old and possibly bad habits from file shares. Extending this train of thought, folders in SharePoint are familiar to users, and comforting to less-sophisticated users, and so can have value in their familiarity. Savvy SharePoint document library administrators know that views can be created in document libraries that completely ignore folders and display all contents in a flat hierarchy. Savvy administrators also know that folders can have unique permissions applied to them but also have lived through the difficulties involved in managing document libraries with folder-based and item-based permissions.

Another “minus” of using folders in SharePoint document libraries in SharePoint 2007 was that they made navigation difficult, and it was difficult to see “where you are” in the folder hierarchy. However, SharePoint 2010 now provides an elegant navigation tool, as shown in Figure 3, available from the Navigate Up tab to the left of the Browse tab, which clearly shows the folder structure and makes it easy to navigate up the chain to a higher-level folder.

Figure 3. The Navigate Up tool in a SharePoint document library.

A plus of using folders in SharePoint 2010 becomes apparent if a user accesses the drop-down menu of a folder and then clicks the Connect to Outlook icon. By following the prompts that then appear, assuming the user has a current version of Outlook client installed, he can link the folder or subfolder to Outlook and have the contents of this folder available when offline. This is a handy way to synchronize a portion of the contents of a document library with the Outlook client, rather than synchronizing the entire document library, which could be many megabytes or gigabytes in size.

Finally, the use of folders in SharePoint document libraries that contain many thousands of documents can speed up the performance of the library. For example, a document library with 20,000 documents that doesn’t use folders may perform more slowly when a user is using filters to try and find the document she wants, whereas if these documents were split up among 20 folders of roughly 1,000 documents each, the performance within each folder should be faster.

Using the Edit Document Tool, Check Out, Check In, and Discard Check Out Tools

The Edit Document, Check Out, Check In, and Discard Check Out tools are typically the most often-used tools in a collaborative document library, and so time and effort should be dedicated to providing training to end users and administrator on these tools, even if they seem intuitive and “everyone” should know how to use them instinctively.

Clicking the Edit Document icon when a document is selected will open the Microsoft Office application and allow the user to edit the document, assuming she has permissions to modify the document in that library. The user may be shown the Open Document window with a warning that “some files can harm your computer” but then can open the file in the appropriate application

This is widely considered one of the more important features of a document management system and differentiates SharePoint from a file share and puts it on par with other ECM (enterprise content management) products or document management products.

The recommended best practice is for every user to check out a document before he or she is going to work on it. The user will then be asked whether to use the local drafts folder. After the user clicks OK, the document will be checked out, and the Type icon for the document changes to include a small green arrow, as shown in Figure 4. If the user elected to use her local drafts folder, a copy of the document will be placed in the SharePoint Drafts folder in the user’s Documents folder (which will be created if it doesn’t already exist). The options in the drop-down menu now include the tools Check In and Discard Check Out, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. A checked-out document in a document library.

Now that the user has the document checked out, she can elect to then edit the document or wait until later. Other users will see that the document is checked out by the changed icon, and if the library administrator has elected to include the Checked Out To column in the view of the documents, it will be even more clear not only that the document is checked out, but to whom.