Office 365 and SharePoint

If you've been using SharePoint recently, you or your company is probably aware of it and is trying to see whether or not integration into your website is worth the cost. Though I can't tell you all of the things that come packaged in Office 365 and it's capabilities, but I'll give my first impressions.

First off, Office 365 and SharePoint 2013 have a similar look and feel. Compared to SharePoint 2010, this is much cleaner and is much more friendly in trying to develop. Though at first it took some getting used to in terms of where everything was and the different names, but generally it won't take too long to figure it out if you have some previous familiarity. Also, for people who were frustrated at the appearance options for SharePoint 2010, the look and feel settings more than make up for the problems in 2010.

Microsoft has opened up experimental and free resources for exploring the functionality of these programs using an Office 365 developer site. Using this tool has been very enlightening, especially the Napa design tools which allow you to custom build Application Solutions within SharePoint and test them. In using the Technet tutorial which provides an introduction on how to configure the apps, I have been able to identify future projects and goals. 

Overall, I would suggest Office 365 as this allows for flexibility in deciding whether to have an in-browser view of documents or to download documents. Previously, this has been a burden area for what I've been trying to do in 2010, but I'm thoroughly enjoying the functionality provided. 

What is RSS? Is there a difference with ATOM?

If you are familiar with blogs, such as this one, you should be familiar with the ability to follow trends or updates using feeds. If you're not too familiar with this, perhaps you are more familiar with facebook when you comment on any item, any change in status or if another person comments on the same post, you will receive notification. This is basically what will happen when you follow an RSS feed.

With SharePoint 2013 and the use of MySites, this ability is expanded upon to allow you, as a user, to follow certain items as they become available throughout the workspace. This permits the tracking of certain documents and editting which may occur throughout the day. If you are using a publishing site, it would be easy to watch as certain documents are brought to your review, but if you are using a regular, non-publishing site then this may not happen the same way. In another case, you may not want to have to review items but would like to monitor them in general. In both cases, the use of the RSS feed would become beneficial.

RSS vs ATOM

These two options perform basically the same task with the goal of allowing users to keep up with the development of ideas and forums. RSS was the first to appear on a broad scale and took advantage of the early entry receiving popularity. It should be noted that ATOM is the more up-to-date and advanced system which is available, but I have not looked into the most recent changes to the programs. For general users, there won't be much of a difference, but professionals should be aware of the differences between the two and recognize that ATOM has been proposed as the IETF standard.

Important components of ATOM as opposed to RSS are as follows:

RSS 2.0 may contain either plain text or escaped HTML as a payload, with no way to indicate which of the two is provided. Atom, on the other hand, provides a mechanism to explicitly and unambiguously label the type of content being provided by the entry, and allows for a broad variety of payload types including plain text, escaped HTML, XHTML, XML, Base64-encoded binary, and references to external content such as documents, video, audio streams, and so forth.

The RSS 2.0 specification relies on the use of RFC 822 formatted timestamps to communicate information about when items in the feed were created and last updated. The Atom working group chose instead to use timestamps formatted according to the rules specified by RFC 3339

While the RSS vocabulary has a mechanism to indicate a human language for the feed, there is no way to specify a language for individual items or text elements. Atom, on the other hand, uses the standard xml:lang attribute to make it possible to specify a language context for every piece of human-readable content in the feed.
Atom also differs from RSS in that it supports the use of Internationalized Resource Identifiers, which allow links to resources and unique identifiers to contain characters outside the US ASCII character set.

The elements of the RSS vocabulary are not generally reusable in other XML vocabularies. The Atom syntax was specifically designed to allow elements to be reused outside the context of an Atom feed document. For instance, it is not uncommon to find atom:link elements being used within RSS 2.0 feeds.

What is SharePoint?

In my position I spend most of the day, even while I am off-work, studying new implementations and abilities which are contained within SharePoint. Since I assume that the need for support on SharePoint will expand significantly as the transition to SharePoint 2013 takes place in the coming months, I tried to think of the most common question which I get in regards to SharePoint and the response has been a little distressing in conversing to people who we are preparing to bring into the system.

The question: What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is a product that has been added to the Microsoft package that allows for the extensive collaboration of an enterprise and brings individuals together. Most recently, Microsoft has come out with SharePoint 2013, which has improved abilities than previous versions which Microsoft has released, such as SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint 2007.

In simple, I've referred to this as the combination of the social networks to date as a whole. This means the soup of Facebook, MySpace, Google, and LinkedIn all in one. I thought about this a little bit more, and I think that what SharePoint is goes far beyond this explanation.

The aspects which surround SharePoint is the ease of communication and access to relevant documents and information which may arise throughout the normal business day. As many documents change hands throughout the day, it is often hard to monitor progress and determine where individuals are at. SharePoint also allows inter-communication and quick response through the mutual use of Lync and other Microsoft applications such as PowerPoint, Word, or Outlook.

As a place of collaboration, SharePoint allows the quick creation of sites which may designed to organize and display information which the users are responsible for while maintaining a level of security. In SharePoint 2010, users became increasingly familiar with the dynamic user-interface and web parts which allows the control of information and navigation. Though, some abilities from 2010 have been removed in 2013, newer applications and improvements have been made that supplement the decrease.

When learning to use SharePoint, I would recommend that users take a "Hands-on" approach instead of reading, as I feel that becoming more comfortable with SharePoint will teach more in the beginning than books will, though there is no substitute for the literature to access the full capabilities of SharePoint as a whole.

Query Rules and Suggestions: Ranking and Spell Check

New to SharePoint 2013, query rules enable you to understand the intent of the user, providing control and configuration to aid users as a whole. Query Rules are understood by three top level components.

• Query Conditions: Rule sets which are meant to determine the intent of the query, such as containing specific words, words in a specific dictionary, words that match a specific phrase or term set, common in a different source, or even a different type. 

Depending on whether the query conditions are met, query actions are implemented.

• Query Actions: A series of actions which take place after specified query conditions are met. Actions include:
• Assign a promoted result, such as a best bet. 
• Create and Assign a result block.
• Change the ranked results by changing the query. This applies a feature known as XRANK that allows you to override the default relevancy score for particular results. 
• Publishing Options: Determine when a rule is active.
• Query Suggestions: Enables users to ask better better questions, such as the "Did you mean:" feature which is on Google. Query suggestions were supplemented by the addition of an Analytics Processing Component and the Analytics Reporting Database. Features include:
• My Queries: Personal Query Log
• My Sites: Tracks sites which you have visited. 
• Our Terms: Matches information related to the most frequent queries across all users that match the search terms. 

Pre-Query Suggestions is a new feature that is designed to include a list of queries which other users have asked and also queries which you have clicked on before. As the name implies, these are suggested before the query has been initiated. 

Post-Query Suggestions is the complement to Pre-Query Suggestions and provides, as the name implies, suggestions after the query has been imposed. These are queries which you have clicked on at least twice. This is useful when you are looking for another method of quickly navigating to frequently used document.

When creating an effective search service, it is important to remember the people who are most likely going to be using the resource as a whole. One of the most common, universal problems is that of incorrection spelling. To supplement this loss, we make significant use of the Query-Spell Correction application. This process differs significantly from the use of 2010 Query-Spell Correction which was managed by metadata and transitions to the use of Query Rules as was stated before. This stresses the importance of understanding how these processes actually work. 

Queries and Results in SharePoint Search Server

The appeal of having a query engine on your SharePoint server is not limited to those with programming experience as the functionality is supplemented with point-and-click capabilities for administrators on the site collection level and the site level, relieving the obligation of farm-level privileges and allowing you to control your own site.

Transitioning from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013, query processing can be thought of as the growth of search scopes, federated locations, and best bets. As search indexes expand, the set of "relevant" information which may show up in search results will grow. To compensate for this, users are now required to improve search queries to find specific information. Some of the important concepts to leverage can be:

• Where the query originated from to find information specific for the site in general.
• Who launched the query in regard to parameters governing the individual.
• What concepts or entities can be recognized in the query. 

As the search process initiates, we can compare this with the search engines which we are pretty familiar with. If you were to perform a search on your computer, most likely a search for the current weather conditions would return information specific to your area. A search for the local McDonald's would return the locations of the McDonald's in the area on a map. Understanding the concepts, location, and entities allow search engines to produce results which correlate to the users information. This can be referred to as Search Optimization to understand the user. 

In SharePoint 2013, the use of search scopes, federated locations, and best bets have been deprecated in favor of result sources, query rules, and result blocks. This alteration shouldn't make a significant difference in creating an efficient search service. 

Result sources focuses your search and refines the total information which is being returned to the subset of information which has been applied to your search. The resources in 2013 include a resource builder to apply these conditions based on the user, search page URL, site, or even the date in which you are searching. This enables you to collect information from remote content. 

Query rules consist of the custom logic which you apply to your query. This allows you to program your search service to recognize certain requests and return information which may be specific to the task at hand, including document types so that the file content matches the operation which you are performing. 

A Result Type displays information gathered by design which may also communicate with result blocks, allowing you to collect two or three of the most relevant documents or items for the query. The SearchExecutor class, which is a new appearance in SharePoint 2013, allows you to execute multiple, related queries simultaneously.

The results are composed of three parts: The Rules Engine, Property List, and the Rendering Template. 

Search Center Concepts

When you are setting up your site, one of the questions that you have are the concepts which surround the search server and how to set up the application. The set-up is pretty straightforward and can be easily run on either the premise or in the cloud. 

When you're setting up your search center, it is important to remember that the search center itself is a site template. This template inherits the design elements from a master page which allows you to integrate the search center into your site with relative ease. A universal search center has the capacity to serve many site collections, and the site template will respond to the site template which is selected. 

In general, there are three important aspects which surround effective search center designs. This requires the initiative of designers in implementing a uniform style to the site overall.

• Query Configuration: Query rules are used to control ranking, query intent classifications, synonyms, and query rewriting. 
• Presentation Configuration: Query rules and display templates determine how the information is shown to the user for which query is imposed, such as the type of document and the category of user. 
• Faceted Navigation: Metadata for top-down navigation and metadata exposed as search results for bottom-up refinement are now both managed through the term store. 

Search in SharePoint 2013 Improvements

The developments for the search implemented in SharePoint 2013 provide a platform for the end users which is flatter, cleaner and a more responsive interface. When we are referring to the flatness, we are talking about the transition from one view to another (SharePoint Views, Search Views, and Detail Views) that exists is becoming invisible. To accredit the responsiveness, we reference the new architecture and the extensive use of HTML, JavaScript, and AJAX style interactions.

As we have become acquainted with in Google search, SharePoint search in 2013 allows document previews that are able to rendered on the page which alleviates the transition between documents.

 New developments of the SharePoint search eliminates the difference which existed between context and site searches and provides a fluid framework unique to 2013.

One of the perks of using SharePoint search is the ability to contribute to the productivity of the users in the system. When we consider how much we rely on search engines such as Google or Yahoo, it would seem pretty obvious that this would be the case.

New features which are new to 2013 also improve the abilities to SharePoint search. In an ideal system with the use of "My Sites" and forums, there may be information relevant to the task which you are working on. Included in this is the ability of SharePoint to make suggestions based on your previous searches.

An interesting addition has been that of the "Take a look inside" features which captures information from documents and even PowerPoint presentations according to titles and labels which they have used in their creation. This includes excel documents.

Though SharePoint search has some great features, some features are still excluded, such as the effect which highlights key searched terms, copy and pasting from the preview, and the ability to jump to the most relevant page of the document.

One of the significant failures of SharePoint search server has been that of the breadth of content types as the search is limited to only a limited set of file formats, which does not include PDF's. Regardless of this shortfall, the hover panel works well to ease the use of the search service by providing a menu of actions which can be taken on the document, such as Edit, Send, as well as Follow.

Using people search is another feature that is specific to the 2013 search center. The cross-capabilities of Microsoft have made use of SharePoint search center with Lync easy to use and handle. The phonetic search is available by default and shows profiles and content with the hover panel while highlighting enables quick viewability as well.

If there are additional features to SharePoint Search Center which are not being met, the customization of this service is simple.

SharePoint search center works well both in the Cloud and on the premise, and there is no conflict with the use of  multiple browsers and mobile devices.

When you are searching for data in your SharePoint server, SharePoint search will crawl through the data and interpret the metadata that is attached to a document as well as the contents of the item. This also requires that you have decent metadata, which requires planning and overhead to set up.

Federated Search allows you to supplement your SharePoint search with other search indices which have been produced by other search engines. This allows you to view additional content which was not crawled by SharePoint search server. What this means is that you are able to index the information which you have collected, send this to an external search engine and this is formatted back to your SharePoint server. Why is Federated Search good for you? It improves your search and enables you to make use of other abilities of the external search engine which are not embedded in your SharePoint search server.

Refiners:
For refiners in SharePoint Search 2013, it will be noted that all refiners are now deep refiners.  There are two different modes for the refiner web part: standard search results and faceted navigation. For people unfamiliar with SharePoint 2010, this may mean little, but is significant for users that wish to optimize 2013. This allows you to display different templates for viewing data. This is contained with standard search results.

Faceted navigation is a more dynamic environment that is used in conjunction with your term store which you have set up containing relevant metadata for document libraries and other items. This limits the kind of data which will be displayed. This may relate to items which an individual may want to purchase such as a car with various designs, brands, colors and such which make the search improve.

For additional information, see Technet
Reference: SharePoint Search Service Guide

PowerPoint automation services in SharePoint 2013

A useful tool which has been provided in SharePoint 2013 is the PowerPoint automation services. This is a new resource that is introduced in 2013. Its based on the word automation services model. The use of this model is pretty straightforward when you begin using the service and leverage the knowledge which you have gained and approach the project depending on which one you might need.

Supports sync, async and streaming of documents into the service. This becomes very useful when you have many documents which are being uploaded throughout your enterprise and you document various tasks.

Supported Formats and Sources: PPT and PPTX

The different destinations allow you to convert those files to PPTX, PDF, XPS, JPEG, and PNG.

When you are making a request as a developer, the request is the base class that has the method to begin and end the conversing. To create the document, you are going to be using various classes.

From resources open to public via Microsoft, you are able to convert PowerPoint binary files and the PowerPoint Open XML format to other formats.

An example which you may find that your company is in, and perhaps this is why you are reading this post, can be as follows.

Suppose that you have many hundred presentations which you have accumulated throughout your site. At this point, you may deploy a solution which will iterate through each of the presentations which you have in your repository and checks whether each file is in proper format and then convert each of the files which are into the proper PPTX format.

When you are implementing the service, you are sending a request to the server. At this point you need to specify the files which you are searching for and the conversion type which you want to be created. Because the pattern is asynchronous, you are able to continue writing code which will continue after a request has been sent.

In order to make a notice after the completion of the conversion, it is possible to specify a delegate which references a callback to execute the notice when this is complete.

Search in Sharepoint

Search in SharePoint is a fairly effective tools when searching through the your site collection. For optimized use, it will be recommended that you improvise the use of metadata or other "best bets" to make estimates of what people are searching for on your site.

Normally when people are typing in the URL, it is common for them to be typing so fast that letters are forgotten or misplaced. If you were to type in gogle.com, you'll find that you are redirected to google.com. This is one of the most useful aspects of utilizing "best bets". If you're working on a SharePoint site, you're not going to be working with the URL or domain names, but rather the items which are listed in your search. It would be nice if there were a repository for everything which you needed, but many items, like the word "google" are unique. Therefore, when you're going through the resources which you have, think of the most common misspellings of the word you are working on. You'll be surprised at how much people misspell words, or perhaps not; however, it is not necessary uncommon for the most common spelling of a word to be an incorrect spelling.

The metadata which you can tag on different items will also optimize your search results. This allows for an effective search to locate items which may not have keywords embedded within the site. This might be familiar to many people who are trying to recall an event, but don't recall the event title itself. When you peruse through news headlines, frequently the title is full of keywords that roughly approximate the article itself. Some useful kinds of metadata are dates, terms, or keywords which relatively apply. Even something like the department or region where something was printed or deposited may help you in designing an efficient search engine.

Another common question might be how pages or items are ranked. This is a complicated question which isn't easily answered. The algorithm which Google uses has many different variables which change throughout the day based on the user. Things you should ask yourself when designing your search is whether or not the key words or metadata are given higher rank than actual data which is embedded in the document. Is this sufficient for identifying need? Can this be improved? How can I might this more specific?

The search engine in SharePoint can be difficult to understand, but the overhead is well worth the utility.

Crawling

If you're not familiar with crawling, I wouldn't worry about it unless you are trying to become more acquainted with a technical career. As can be derived from the term itself, the search engine has components which carry out different tasks, one of which searches the document for searched parameters. This may traverse an entire document, assuming that the document is written in readable protocol. The gatherer component saves the properties to an index store and this is what is output to you. This is a simple definition and leaves out a lot of the specifics. If you want to leave about the technical details, I would refer you to technet.

Permissions and Roles

When assigning permissions to a SharePoint site, it is important to remember the ease of transition for SharePoint users when task assignments change. In a large SharePoint network with hundreds of users, transferring users from role to role, it will be useful to apply active directory on the Farm level.

Using active directory allows you to assign roles to people within your SharePoint site, with some other perks throughout your system which I won't discuss here. When users are assigned roles, they are given permissions that are specific to that position. This is useful when certain positions need certain access to perform different tasks. With pre-designed roles, the user will inherit all of the permissions needed across the entire site collection.

One of the main things to protect is the privacy of your site, this means that you are aware of what people are and are not allowed to do on your site. Generally, there will be groups of people that are assigned different tasks to perform on the site. There are pre-designed groups which are automatically prepared for your SharePoint site. These are pretty easy to interpret, but for ease we'll go through them.

• Administrator: These rights are provided to individuals with permissions to edit every detail of the site and implement different attributes which may be applied to the site. When a user belongs to a role in this group, their site settings selection will expand to include site collection features and so forth. 
• Owner: These individuals have similar rights as the administrator except cannot access site collection features throughout the site collection.
• Developer: Predominately have the permission to create and edit site content, but not as extensive as the Owner. Though this might be vague, the developer is able to contribute to the expansion of those things which the owner has made. 
• Visitor: These are people which might have contribute rights. This means that they may add things to document libraries or lists, but are not able to remove things. When you have a review process for things which are trying to be added to a site, visitors may not have a bad effect on your site

These are only a few of the pre-designed groups which are available, but this is not to say that you cannot create your own. A word of advice would suggest not assigning individuals to a group, but rather assigning roles to an individual to keep track of universal permissions.

Having different roles in your permission groups does not mean that I disagree with you, in fact, this is what I do. I have different titles in the permission groups so that when someone new gets hired, when don't need to go through each site and add them, but use active directory to automatically take care of that. 

When you are creating your sites, it is important to remember that they inherit the same permissions as the parent sites by default. If you are trying to make sites specific for individuals, there might come an occasion when you need to stop inheritance and ensure that permissions are changed. To do this you can simply go to the permissions tab on the ribbon when you decide to edit your site and change these permissions. It is important that you stop inheritance before you try to update your site, otherwise there is a strong chance that your site will update and the permissions from the parent will go down to the child. 

One of the things that you want to avoid is Orphan sites. These are sites which are not connected to a parent site which a user may access. This means that they would either have a direct link to the site to access it, or have a link somewhere else throughout your site. In the end, neither of these situations are ideal. As a rule of thumb which I have, when securing your site, have the most secure sites deep within your collection and the least secure as the home page. This will add to the ease of users with little or no troubleshooting.

SharePoint Designer 2010/2013

For those users who are still unsure what SharePoint Designer, consider this and this will be a short post. Most of the information which we see in our SharePoint sites are lines of codes which are automatically created when we do things to our site like create lists or libraries. This isn't something that just happens, but there is a lot of code behind it. In fact, generally in the SharePoint sites, you can't just go into the code and edit the information there. That is where SharePoint Designer comes in. This allows you to see the code and add in your own little twists which are confident in for your site and allows you to add your own little bit of flare. Go a little bit further and you can start to design your own Web Parts to add to your site. SharePoint designer is a great tool that you can use to create workflows and design your sites from a architecture point of view rather than attempting to navigate throughout your site and do the same things. Since SharePoint designer is a free resource available for SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013, take the time and download this on your computer to work more effectively.

Also, for those who have not yet explored the expanse of SharePoint 2013, it may be useful to know that the components are exactly the same, except for the icons which they use. The icons, as important as they are, follow the pattern that you'll see throughout 2013; however, those are the only changes which I have been able to find in the actual design portion of SharePoint designer. If you find any differences, please let me know and I'll take note of them as well.

For a quick link to download: SharePoint Designer 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2010

Some of the uses of SharePoint Designer is the ability for developers to react quickly to needs and issues which arise throughout the process of work. Though many of the solutions which can be implemented within SharePoint designer are used for coding, the flexibility and structure of SharePoint designer allows for quick integration of business strategy and updating quick problem solving techniques.

Workflow Introduction through SharePoint Designer and Conditions

In my opinion, workflows are one of the best things in SharePoint, but also one of the most difficult in understanding. Therefore, I am going to go through all of the basics through common tongue and try my best to make things as clear as possible for anyone trying to use workflows.

Generally, a workflow is a pattern that you set to perform tasks on documents systematically. Workflows are essential for automating your site and simplifying the menial tasks which a young intern might be doing. Though many of the users of SharePoint have a technical background, many may not. This may seem remedial, but that is because it was meant to be.

First, when working on a SharePoint site, you may open your site in SharePoint Designer. If you currently do not have SharePoint designer installed on your computer, it is a free resource that can be downloaded.

When you open SharePoint designer, you will have the options listed below. Hopefully you already have a site if you are trying to make a workflow to simplify your work. If not, feel free to start a new one anyway to experiment.

For this example, I will be using SharePoint 2010.

When you come to the workflow setting on the left, you will have these options listed below. Though it is described when you hover over the workflow, I will give a general description of each of the workflows and what they mean in a very generic sense.

• List Workflow: A workflow that will apply to one and ONLY one list. If you expect that your workflow will have to be recreated or that you will want to use it somewhere else, this may not be the choice that you will want to use. 
• Reusable Workflow: This workflow is one that could be applied to many different lists or content types and this will be the one that you will most likely use. This eases the assumptions which you make when you are designing your site. It might seem common sense, but I've seen many people make a list workflow and then not be able to move it. 
• Site Workflow: This is a workflow that does not need an item to work. This is a workflow that applies to the site as a whole and can be used from the site page itself. When you consider using these workflows, be mindful of what you are doing. Depending on your workflow, you could end up with duplicates of all your data or end up deleting everything if you are not careful.

Generally, I always make Reusable Workflows because it is simpler to identify the task that I am trying to do, but later it may seem like second nature for you to use a site workflow, but that is at your discretion. 

Above is the given options in SharePoint Designer 2010 for workflows. As a general introduction to logic, we'll run through this very quickly.

IF Statements: Look to see if a certain condition is met.
Example: If it is raining, then grab an umbrella.
               It is raining; therefore, we take an umbrella.

Else Statements: Alternative to the if statement that was not met.
Example: If it is raining, then grab an umbrella.
               Else, don't grab an umbrella.
               It isn't raining, therefore we don't grab an umbrella.

Else If Statements: This is an alternative if statement if the first was not met.
Example: If it is raining, then grab an umbrella.
               Else if it looks warm, then take off coat.
               Else, don't grab an umbrella.
               It isn't raining, don't grab an umbrella.
               It looks warm; therefore, take off coat.

Sometimes this is the most annoying sense as people become frustrated in understanding why their logic isn't working. Many people don't understand the difference between else if and else statements. It should also be mentioned that the else statement is the general rejection of every if that was met. In other words, if no specifiers are met, then do the generic. I know that sounds repetitive, but I've corrected so much code where users didn't understand how the difference operated effectively.

Generally, you need to consider the fact that we are trying to meet conditions for our workflow to meet and will trigger the workflow process. The workflow will only act if the conditions are met, so generally it is not necessary to put the else statements in, although else-if statements are still important.

Conditions:
Conditions are what we just defined. These are things which we are specifying that are triggering our workflow or the next step. Just like in the examples above, we might say that this workflow is activated when we are leaving the house. Though that is a simple example, our mind works through these processes all the time and we are basically trying to teach the site how to react to certain things.

Therefore, we start with the first on the list.

If any value equals value:

This is what appears when you use this category. This is using your if statement which we defined before. The first value will be the item which you are specifying, such as the title of a document. The "equals" can be changed to various categories such as: not equals, contains, contains(ignoring case) and a few different things which can be interpreted by common sense. The last value is what you are trying to determine is met or not. If the condition is met, then we will continue with the course set thereafter.


If created by specific person:

This will cause the workflow to operate on a specific item which was created by a specific person which is authorized to work on your SharePoint site. An example may be something like getting an email from a specific person will be sent to a special folder. This would be a useful operation that is commonly found in the "rules" option of Microsoft Outlook.

Created in a specific date span:

As may be expected from this one, you may specify that items which were created during a specific time may be operated on. This may include items which need to be updated periodically and may need to be moved to an update folder.


Modified by a specific person:

This one is also common sense. This means that if you are monitoring documents which are created by a specific person for some reason then you may perform certain operations on these documents. This may be useful for people making checks on individuals for content.


Modified in a specific date span:

This one is similar to the created in a certain date span but specifies that things are modified. This might include the same option which we needed before with the created in a specific date span because after that date they are no longer created, but are modified, unless completely recreated. 

Person is a valid SharePoint user:

You might not think this is a common workflow, but it will be in your future. This is what you want to use if you want to hide certain documents or show documents specific to a user. This might also have implications for individuals who try to find there way into your site when they shouldn't be. 

If title contains keyword:

This is similar to the one which has value instead of title field. This is one that has been generically created for a specific task. This may include affecting documents which have certain components in their title. This may only work if your documents have a template for the Title Field which must be used or when trying to manipulate data.

Calendar Views and Calendar Overlays

In my last post, I mentioned that there were other views which were available when creating views for a site. One of the other option available is the calendar view. The calendar view would be used by individuals who are seeking to incorporate a dynamic calendar which would be able to list items for different groups or individuals based on tasks which were assigned. This raises the issue of task lists and calendars. First, we will discuss calendars and in the next post I will discuss the use of Task lists.

Calendars are an app within SharePoint. Using the calendar is much simpler than in 2010 in terms of overlays which will allow for a more descriptive use of views.

Calendars in SharePoint 2013 are a useful asset to making a site a service. Items can be given descriptive properties like the importance of the event. Calendars, like normal lists, allow for the distinction between items using views based on properties of the item. This requires planning by the creator to discover the requirements of the calendar before it is used.

After you have created your calendar, you are able to add events to the calendar with many different categories, or you can create your own. 

The calendar has the option to be viewed in daily, weekly, or monthly views. This also includes the ability to expand all of the items within a current date for view-ability with the reciprocal option of collapsing the data. 

Calendar Overlays

Calendar overlays are used when you want to make distinct and different colored items. This includes the use of views, filters and calendar overlays.

In order create calendar overlays, you need to first create a view. On the ribbon, select calendar and select the item in the ribbon called “Create View”.  When you are creating a view, you are filtering information which applies certain categories. When applying filters to get only the values which are unique to this view modify the view to equal some certain parameter, this includes creating another view to see the items that don’t apply to that view. Each calendar is limited to 10 overlays.

For overlays, you need to identify the calendar overlay button on the top ribbon of the page which you are working on.

This will bring you to a page which lists all of the current calendar overlays which are being applied to your current calendar.

NOTE: The calendar overlays are also unique calendars.

When you create your new calendar, click on the new calendar button within the calendar overlay application.

In this calendar you select a name, description and location where the calendar is coming from which you put in the web URL box. The resolve button tells SharePoint to find the calendar which you are searching for and apply the views related to that calendar. If you have any task applications within your site, you may also find that the task list comes up in the list drop-down menu.

This area allows users to select a color for this overlay depending on desired changes to the color or simply have different calendars linked to the calendar distinctly.

Views

Views are one of the most important things to understand when you are constructing your SharePoint site if you have a significant number of individuals who are attempting to access different libraries for different information. Generally, if you have confidential information, you may consider having that information stored within folders to which people have limited access. Now, imagine that you didn't have to create those folders because people couldn't see that information in general. That is the idea of a view. 

To put it more conceptually, a view is a filter that is applied to applications which shows different items based on the view applied. Though this might be a scant definition, that is how I see it. Instead of hundreds of different folders, have the views be the pseudo-folders which change the information being seen. Not only does this limit the amount of time you spend navigating from folder to folder, you no longer have the task of moving items from folder to folder. All you would have to do is change the view and it is done for you. 

You may have already seen this while working through some of the other tasks which you have been working on and have been curious about how to use it, but here is a general outline on what to do. 

First, we start with a list that we have previously created. The one that I will be using is a simple list that I made in a couple seconds, but in general, you may have your columns be different. 

As you can see, there is a column which I have simply labeled "food type". This allows me to identify the item more specifically then before. When we apply our view, we want to create a view that will only see items which have the "food type" of fruit.

To do this, we click of the three dots next to all items. This will bring up the menu to create or modify the current view. Since we want to make a new view, we are going to create view.

This brings up a list similar to that of SharePoint 2010 where you get to choose which type of view you want to make from a selection given. These include:

• Standard View
• Calendar View
• Access View
• Datasheet View
• Gantt View

And a custom view which you could design yourself in SharePoint designer. Simply, just select Standard view for now and leave the other ones for later. 

For space reasons, I will not make a snap shot of everything which is shown, but I will describe what I am doing. First, I will title my view "Fruit" because I want a view that will show only fruit and it is easy to interpret. Besides that simple task, we scroll down to "Filter" and add the parameters of our view. Because there is only one thing for which we are searching, we only add the one parameter using computer logic and click okay. This is a simple but straightforward view.

After you have done this, your view list will update and it will show this as your current view. 

You can change the current and default view by using this drop down menu and following the same process except by using modify view instead of create view. The output for the view follows as below.

This can be done in any number of web applications in SharePoint and becomes easier as you get used to the process and identifying useful views which you may want to make. This has been a simple example, but I found that simple examples explain clearly and effectively.

Document Library

A document library is a compilation of documents which have been uploaded to that specific library. One of the most important thing about document libraries when you are first starting is that documents may be moved by using the explorer option in SharePoint, but other than that information becomes more complex to move. When you are creating a document library, it is important to remember that simplicity is the name of the game. It becomes less useful to have many embedded document libraries within document libraries. This requires many clicks to reach the end of the road for which someone may be searching. In other words, avoid creating a document library within a document library. A way around this is the use of views or document sets. A new view will allow you the same security by disallowing individuals access to view certain documents with the ease of navigation. If you need a group of documents together, just use a document set within the document library.

To create a document library, access the add an app button which was given before. This brings up the Noteworthy apps as was given before. Document library is listed there as before.

                      

A document library has custom columns which are already applied upon creation. These are generic columns just like those which were included in SharePoint 2010. One of the added perks of SharePoint 2013 is the "drag and drop" option which simplifies the process of uploading documents to the library. You may still add the documents as usual by accessing the ribbon or clicking the "add document" by the library name.

Either method does the same thing, but the document set option is only available when using the ribbon to add documents. The document set option is not enabled when you start your SharePoint site. In order to activate this tool, you need to access site collection features under site collection administration. If you do not have access, contact your site administrators and have one of them activate documents sets.

After you have done this, you need to access your document library settings and add from existing content type. Since document sets are a content type, it will be listed in the add box and after you add it will become available to you.

Since views are a interesting topic to cover, I will do this more completely in a different blog post. That will allow me to more fully the topic. In general, for now, views may be adjusted to individuals or groups to only allow certain documents to be seen based on some filter. This is a much simpler way to organize your SharePoint site.

Lists

Lists in SharePoint are generally exactly what they say they are. Think about a list which you would write on a piece of paper. Generally your list will have different columns full of information. Each of this columns are properties which describe the item. The item is the row of columns. If you were making a shopping list, you would have the name of item such as milk, eggs, or bread which may be the name of the item. For columns, you may have the price of the item, the area of the store they are in, or the brand name which you are looking for. In SharePoint 2013, the generic list, when created, will have no items listed and will allow you to start fresh.

If you are using SharePoint 2010, then this will most likely be a slightly different process than what you are used to. In SharePoint 2010, the process of creating a list requires you to go to site actions and access the "more options" feature to add a custom list. This will allow you to add columns or properties which you may want to include in your list. The SharePoint 2013 format differs only in semantics.

 In SharePoint 2013, many of the old properties are now called apps. This is only common semantics and won't make a difference in the end. Simple click on "add an app"

                        

Simply enough, this is done by going to the top right corner of the page and clicking on the gear symbol as shown above. When the new window appears, the custom list option is presented as a Noteworthy app.

When you are adding new items this list as is, you will need to design the list yourself. Hence the term custom. This includes adding columns and content.

SharePoint 2013 has made adding a column easier by allowing users to click on the plus button at the top of the list and select from a drop down menu what type of data will be stored in that column. This is different from 2010 which required use of the ribbon to add columns to the list which you were constructing. This allows time to be saved and is easy for end-users who have little SharePoint experience.

Generally, SharePoint lists are useful on a basis of simplicity. In the long run, lists are increasingly useful for collaborating information which has been gathered that can be updated. There are different lists which are already included in SharePoint 2013. These are:

• Promoted Links: This is used to identify links which map to other areas across the web or across your SharePoint Site.
• Custom List in Datasheet view: Identical to a SharePoint Custom List except all relevant information is set in a datasheet view. (The view setting for a list may also be changed to a datasheet view)

An alternative to adding custom columns each time for the lists which you are creating is to use content types which you have already created or are included by default. One common content type is the contact information. This may be applied to a new list which you create at any time. It is important to note that the information which you input into the different content types will not disappear if you change the default content type which is shown. In other words, all the relevant information will still be available if you click on the item and change the content which you are looking at. 

Intro to SharePoint

I started this blog to maintain good documentation of things which I have learned while investigating SharePoint and things which you can do to make sure that I am covering every subject available. I will start from the beginning to better alleviate the new users, and myself, from the task of introductory videos and lengthy technical papers. This will be a generic publication and you'll have to bear with the basics to get to where I really am with SharePoint.

I began using SharePoint a few months ago and spend most of my time every week outside of college classes learning new methods for implementing SharePoint and becoming a SharePoint Developer in the process. Though we are not going to investigate my codes yet and it might be slow starting for a while during the beginning as I incorporate a blog into my schedule, this will also be a good review for myself.

As an introduction to myself, I am an Applied Mathematics major at my university who had a job as an Assistant SharePoint Administrator and now work as a SharePoint Consultant. I will be starting my third and last year of my degree and have done good by my theory in working part time since I've started school. I have a minor in Economics. I am working on a senior project in Visual Similarity and Separation Preserving Maps and recently co-authored a paper on Nuclear Parameter Estimation using Bayesian Statistics where I was the primary researcher of Gibbs Sampling and coding.

If I make a mistake, feel free to correct me as I am primarily here for review and to assist in any way that I can. To people in the same boat as myself, good luck to you. For those ahead, I hope to be on the same level soon!