Collaborating Within an Exchange Environment Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 : Customizing and Developing MOSS Sites

MOSS has many out-of-the-box new features that make it easier to customize using the browser interface. This provides nonprogrammers with a mechanism to create and customize sites to meet their needs.

For developers, the following provides an overview of the SharePoint technical structure. MOSS is built on the .NET platform. Use of the .NET platform enables SharePoint to assimilate information from multiple systems into an integrated solution. ASP.NET contains many new features, and it is more responsible, secure, and scalable than ASP. Using ASP.NET reduces the amount of code that needs to be written over similar ASP solutions.

SharePoint’s SQL back end provides access to internal database components using industry-standard tools. From an application standpoint, integration with BizTalk provides access to over 300 application connectors using Web Services calls.

In MOSS, sites and lists can be saved as templates, stored in a Site or List Template library, and then made available to all sites in the collection. There is also a library for Web Parts that can be shared across all sites in the collection.

Features such as these provide an environment for developing fully customized MOSS solutions. Additional customization and development features are highlighted in the following sections.

Using the Browser to Customize SharePoint

Through the browser, you can add a logo to the team site, apply a theme, modify a list, or create a new Web Part page.

In SharePoint Team Services, there was a template that contained three “zones” for placing Web Parts, producing a three-column view. In MOSS, there are additional zone layouts to choose from, making customization much more user friendly.

The new Web Part tool pane is a feature that enables users to easily customize sites. It provides the ability to do the following:

• Drag/drop Web Parts onto a page

• Customize Web Parts

• Change the home page site logo

The site administrator can control what goes into the Web Part libraries and who has access to the libraries for adding Web Parts to a site. Figure 1 illustrates the Web Part tool pane with its various Web Part libraries and the capability to display the contents of the library.

Figure 1. Displaying the Web Part tool pane for access to Web Part libraries.

Development Enhancements for Site Templates

MOSS includes multiple templates that can be used when you create a new site. Each template includes a set of features from MOSS to satisfy a specific collaboration need. Templates are included for the following:

• Document collaboration

• Team collaboration

• Wiki sites

• Blogs

• Records repositories

• Publishing sites

• Basic meetings

• Decision meeting workspaces

• Social meeting workspaces

• Multipage meeting workspaces

• Document centers

• Personalization sites

• Report center sites

If these don’t satisfy the organization’s requirements, customized templates can easily be put together using the browser-based customization features, using SharePoint Designer 2007 or some other web design tool, or using programming. For example, if an organization always put its company logo on the home page and used specific Web Parts that were unique to their organization, it could save the site as a template and then just duplicate the template when necessary to maintain consistency and security.

Editing MOSS 2007 with SharePoint Designer 2007

With SharePoint Team Services, it was difficult to modify SharePoint sites. SharePoint 2003 made it easier with the use of FrontPage 2003, but performance was affected by editing sites directly. With MOSS 2007, a new product, SharePoint Designer 2007, shown in Figure 2, is more tightly integrated with Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and fully supports Web Parts, Web Part pages, and Web Part zones. This means that Web Parts can be added and customized using SharePoint Designer 2007 to provide the look, feel, and content to meet organizational requirements.

Figure 2. Working with SharePoint Designer 2007.

Web Parts can be previewed in SharePoint Designer before being published to the SharePoint site, thus providing an “audit” to ensure that the changes have the desired effect. The SharePoint Designer client can be used to back up and restore MOSS sites, providing a much-needed feature that was lacking in older versions of the product.

Other features provided in SharePoint Designer 2007 include the ability to do the following:

• Deploy a site throughout the organization using solution packages. This provides a means for implementing changes and modifications to organizations that have multiple sites and servers.

• Search Web Part libraries directly. This enables the product to be a complete editing source for web pages, as opposed to a two-step process in which the Web Parts would be added using the MOSS interface, and then further modifications made in SharePoint Designer.

• Create list templates and create, edit, and delete SharePoint list views. For experienced SharePoint Designer users, the SharePoint interface might be cumbersome for performing functions such as these. Therefore, SharePoint Designer can be more efficient for these users when creating templates and managing list views.

• Connect Web Parts across pages or on the same page to create a new user interface. Because SharePoint Designer is a web development tool, it has more capabilities and is more flexible than SharePoint; thus, features such as these are available for more complete customization.

• Use an Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) data view Web Part that can bring data from external sources into SharePoint sites. This is a great new integration feature that shows Microsoft’s commitment toward a truly integrated Office solution.