blog.frederique.harmsze.nl my world of work and user experiences

March 31, 2013

Cloudy upgrade

Filed under: Office365,SharePoint — Tags: , — frederique @ 17:58

We are working in the cloud, in SharePoint Online. And our cloud is about to be upgraded to wave 15, i.e. ‘SharePoint 2013 Online’. We have not heard an exact date yet, but rumour has it that we’ll be upgraded in June.

This system of cloud upgrades is new to me. In other cases, we had to get into the server and do everything ourselves. Now Microsoft does all the upgrade work. And we need to find out what we should do to move along with it:

  • Test if all our configurations keep working or if anything breaks
  • List the changes in the interface and functionality that we’ll need to explain to the site owners or other users
  • Check which spiffy and useful new features we want to promote to our users
  • Prepare our communication and update our help content.

This week, we have already seen the first stages of that upgrade: below decks, the installation is already version 15. At least, when I check https://ourcompanyname.sharepoint.com/_vti_pvt/service.cnf
I see vti_extenderversion:SR|15.0.0.4454

Unfortunately, this change did cause some problems on the front end:

  • The Note Board does not work anymore
    My old comments are still visible in My Profile, but they are not displayed with the News article or Team Site home page where I had entered the comment in the Note Board
  • Metadata have dropped out of some places
    Some Content Query Web Parts have lost the metadata in the Presentation section.  And our own page layouts have lost the metadata in the property fields.
  • I cannot edit SharePoint Designer workflows anymore.
    My SharePoint Designer still works for things like conditional formatting, but I can an error message when I try to edit a workflow. I should move to SharePoint Designer 2013 for that, even months before the official upgrade.
  • MyQuickLinks.aspx has disappeared
    We use the old MyQuickLinks to manage our team site favourites, but now we get a ‘page cannot be found’ error.

Over the coming days, we’ll see if Microsoft will tweak the system or if we can do something to fix these problems.

In any cases, if you are managing a SharePoint Online environment, I recommend you keep an eye on it. We will definitely do that.

December 31, 2012

Happy 2013

Filed under: SharePoint — Tags: — frederique @ 14:35

I wish you all a very happy 2013!

First of all I mean the new year 2013 that is about to start with a bang – actually a lot of bangs, of fireworks and popping champagne corks. I wish you lots of fun, good health and generally all the best.

Secondly, I also wish you lots of fun and all the best with the new SharePoint 2013. We’ve already seen quite a bit of it, but this will be its official year and I hope I will see it in production in my client’s workplace.

Of course I do not expect the new SharePoint to be all fireworks and champagne. But I do think it will make us happy, by making our lives easier. And maybe even healthier, if we can stop pulling our hair out over limitations in the SharePoint 2010 cloud that we are working with now. I think the following will make me happy:

  • Manageable managed metadata with a quick edit option to edit the managed metadata of multiple list or library items in a bulk operation.
    Now we can only edit fields like choice fields in the datasheet. The centrally defined managed metadata have to be set one by one, with some possibilities to set smart defaults so that you have a head start when you upload multiple files for instance. Third party tools like Colligo’s Contributor  can handle bulk editing, but the bulk of our users does not have that tool at their disposal. Really annoying, so we look forward to the new ‘quick edit’.
  • Follow functionality that gives users quick access to the team sites they use a lot and keep an eye on people and places of interest. Now we use alerts to keep track of content and have a non-standard implementation of the old My Links for my favorite team sites. That is a bit clunky, so bring on the follow options.
  • Sharing with external users seems smoother, more integrated with “normal” sharing.
    Right now, we are struggling with external users. They are supposed to participate in some serious business solutions. But the interface for inviting them confuses the site owners. And once they are on the site, it is not easy to assign tasks to them. Can you make that better? Yes please!
  • Records management functionality that will allow us to keep our environment clean, by setting policies that help owners to clean up old content.
    Now we have prepared for this by including an expiry data field in all content, but we’ll wait for 2013 to take action in content life cycle management.
  • Configurable search results that include custom properties, so that we can roll up information across site collections and present the result nicely.
    At the moment we are stuck with search results with standard properties, as the Content Query Web part does not look across the boundaries of site collections and the search result cannot include the custom properties that enrich our libraries.
  • Advanced workflows that work, using Nintex Workflow Online. I have seen in my playground that I can add the Nintex preview “app” from the store. Definitely a new toy that I want to play with, as soon as I have a moment.
    The last month or so, this has been one of the key issue that made me pull my hair out. We only have SharePoint Designer at our disposal to build the custom workflows we need to support several of our business processes. And that is  not only slow and unfriendly, but it is also limited to about five steps. Any more steps, and you simply cannot publish your workflow anymory – it is caused by some time-out that you are supposed to circumvent by changing your webconfig, which of course is not available to us in the cloud. By stripping out everything that was not crucial I managed to squeeze in almost all required steps. And I’ve told the users that we will try again as soon as SharePoint 2013 has arrived in our workplace.

And in the mean time: happy new year!!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

November 30, 2012

What happened to the Title?

Filed under: SharePoint,Usability — Tags: , — frederique @ 22:24

SharePoint document libraries have separate fields for the file name (Name) and for a Title. That makes perfect sense to me, because they have different requirements:

  • The Name needs to be a unique file name, so that you do not overwrite a previous document.
    So for libraries with many documents and especially libraries with many contributors, we recommend a naming convention such as including your initials and the date. This is the ‘system field’
  • The Title need to be clear for people who try to find the file and to determine if this is the file they want to open.
    So you should enter a clear and clean title that does not contain codes and additions that make it less readable. This is the ‘people field’.

In “old” SharePoint, the Title field was clickable
We used the Title field in all views. The reader could click on the Title to read the file, the contributor could open the item menu from the Title to edit it in MS Office. The unique but unwieldly Name was invisible to normal users.

In “new” SharePoint, it is the Name field that is clickable
You have no option but using the .Name field in all your view, because otherwise nobody can read or use the file in any way… The only use I see for the Title field, is for the search engine.
This is the case in SharePoint 2010 but also in SharePoint 2013. I do hope that it is a temporary mistake in the trial cloud that I am looking at.

The file Name and Title

The Title is visible, but it is the Name that is clickable

In the SharePoint 2010 Online version that we are working in now, the Title field often is mandatory, because it is important for the search. But users are getting rather annoyed, having to fill in a field that has no immediate use in the site itself.

I know that there are scripts and workarounds to get a clickable Title field. But I would rather stick with out-of-the-box functionality than risk inconsistency and unstability from some band-aid.
What I don’t know why it is now the Name rather than the Title that is the active field.

What happened to the title? Why did it lose its clickability and – basically – its usefulness?

October 31, 2012

Multiple options for multiple lines of text

Filed under: SharePoint — Tags: , — frederique @ 22:32

Working with the business to facilitate their processes using SharePoint Online, we see that they have different needs for capturing and presenting information. For example, some teams need to efficiently edit the information in different items in one go, in a supplier list for instance. Other teams really need to track who said what,  in comment fields in an incident log for instance.

Fortunately we have different solutions, even with something as basic as a multiple lines of text field in a list.

Options in a multiple lines of text field

When I create a multiple lines of text field in a list, I have different options:

  • Formatting options: plain text, rich text (with fonts, lists and links) or enhanced rich text (which can include pictures and tables)
  • Versioning: append text yes or no.  
    If you switch on versioning in your list, you can use versioning on your multiple lines of text field: append text to the old text instead of risking you overwrite it.

Field with these different options look like this in the individual list item:

The list overview the looks as follows:

Editing the list in the datasheet view does not work for the enhanced fields where you enter images. But you can edit the rich text fields in the datasheet, if you know shortcut keys for it, as the ribbon does not apply to the cell in the datasheet.

What option for what purpose

Looking at the standard options for a multiple lines of text field in a list, we see the following pros & cons and uses:

  No append text Append text
Plain text + Simple, so best chance of success in other browsers
+ Edit in datasheet		 + Name and date & time stamp shown for version
+ No version added if nothing is changed to the field
+ Edit in datasheet works (but behaves differently: previous comment not cleared from the field)
  – Only capital letters and starting a new line to structure text in the field
– If you need see when you said what, add your initials and the date manually		 – Only capital letters and starting a new line to structure text in the field
– Not visible in list view (only :”View Entries”)
 Use for: Efficient adding and editing (in datasheet) of basic information: simple descriptions or one-off comments that do not require versioning Short comments in e.g. an incident log where different roles have different fields and where it is important to record who said what when.
     
Rich text + Structure your information easily via a field ribbon (e.g. bulleted lists, bold)
+ Edit in datasheet (but without ribbon, so hit ctrl b to make a word bold for example)		  + Name and date & time stamp shown for version
+ Edit in datasheet works (but without ribbon and behaves differently: previous comment not cleared from the field)
  – If you need see when you said what, add your initials and the date manually – Version added and name and date displayed even when that person did not add anything to this field
– Not visible in list view (only :”View Entries”)
Use for: Structuring your information via layout (e.g. bulleted lists, bold font) Capturing what participants do or don’t say in e.g. a shared comments field when managing an issue.
     
Enhanced rich text + Opportunity to structure and enrich at will + No version added if nothing is changed to the field
  – No edit in datasheet
– A bit less clear how to edit: No ribbon directly with the field, so use the full ribbon at the top of the item.		 – No edit in datasheet
– Not visible in list view (only :”View Entries”)
– History may take up a lot of space in the display form
Use for: Free text description of an item that may contain pictures etc. (If the description gets very big and the other fields get less important, use a page for it) Rich updates in e.g. an incident log where different people as descriptions and pictures of what they have seen at different stages.

How to configure it

So how do you configure this? Create a multiple lines of text field and select the type of text to allow and if you want to append changes (i.e. have versioning in the field) yes or no:

September 30, 2012

SharePoint 2013: Working on it…

Filed under: SharePoint — Tags: — frederique @ 21:20

Hey, that’s my line! But the 2013 version of SharePoint also tells me that it is working on it, when it is loading a page or processing a change.

Working on it...

Working on it...

It is good to know that my team site is working on it. And it is even better that the team site allows me to be working on the content that I come here for.

One of my gripes with the team sites we now have in SharePoint 2010 (Online) is that my working area is too small.The Quick Launch menu is very useful, but it is in the way when I have list and libary views with many columns.
In the new SharePoint 2013, you can click on the icon Focus on content. That moves the menu out of the way, so can use the full width of the screen as a working area:

Team Site with context

Team Site with context

Focus on content

Focus on content

The interface for working on your documents has changed a bit as well. Instead of that menu that you can pull from the arrow that appears when you hover over the title or filename, we now have these dots… that indicate that you can do something… working on it…

July 31, 2012

SharePoint 2013: looking forward to it

Filed under: Office365,SharePoint — Tags: — frederique @ 22:54

I do not get excited by new tools just because of their gleaming newness. But I have to say that I am definitely interested by the new SharePoint 2013. I was able to get my own playground via Microsoft’s Office 365 Enterprise Preview and Jasper showed us around in a O365UG session last week. And within just a few clicks I saw functionality that we had just been discussing that very day and that required serious work on our current SharePoint Online based on SharePoint 2010:

  • Sites you’re following gives me shortcuts to the site that I actually use a lot. The sites that I created were automatically listed here, I can indicate for a site that I want to follow it, and apparently I get suggestions for sites that I may want to follow. I haven’t seen on what basis these suggestions are made. We were just looking for a way to flag sites as favorites that I want to access easily and from which I want to roll up content.

    Following sites

    Following sites in SharePoint 2013

  • Quick Edit for bulk editing managed metadata: We just had to manually change the properties of over three hundred items one by one, accompanied by a constant stream of “you’ve got to be kidding me…”, because you cannot edit managed metadata in the datasheet. But lo and behold, the new sharepoint has ‘Quick Edit’ (Thanks for pointing this out Jeroen!)
  • Embed code, like youtube videos and other snippets. Our current SharePoint Online strips out embedded code. In the new one, there is a button in the ribbon for it. Now we just need to figure out how to include non-secure content into our secure page…

    Embed code

    Embedding code in SharePoint 2013

I am looking forward to getting these and other extra tools in our toolbox. Hmmm, when will we get it? We’re on SharePoint Online, where we hope we get upgrades without too much of a hassle…

May 31, 2012

Just asking our users with a SharePoint Online survey

Filed under: SharePoint,Usability — Tags: , , — frederique @ 22:55

From time to time, we just need to ask the users what they think of our intranet. A survey is a nice tool to get some answers. We don’t aim for scientific accuracy, but for a sense of the intranet’s usability, what works for the users . In a previous post, I discussed a survey we set up when we started developing a new intranet. That survey was implemented in a standard survey list template of WSS2, the SharePoint version 2003.

Standard survey in SharePoint Online

Now we wanted to ask some follow-up questions. And by this time, we have entered the cloud. So we created a survey using a standard list template in SharePoint Online. And that is definitely better:

  • The survey questions open in a dialog box, so that the user concentrates on answering them, instead of getting distracted by the context and risking to lose their answers when they leave the form.
  • Branching depending on the answers the user gives, so that you get different follow-up questions when you answer that yes, you do us some section of the intranet
  • Better exports to spreadsheet of the results
Respond to survey

Respond to the survey, in a dialog box

Linking to the survey

Once we had set up the survey, we wanted to invite our users to respond to the survey and explain to them what it is about and why their feedback is important, in an invitation e-mail and an article on the intranet. With a link to start the survey right away. However, that was not as easy:

  • The direct link leading to the questionnaire form (/ResourceSurvey/NewForm.aspx) opens it in the context of the list

    O365-Survey in list context

    NewForm opens in the list context

  • Adding ?IsDlg=1to the url (/ResourceSurvey/NewForm.aspx?IsDlg=1) removes the background, but now the survey form looks lost and when the users has finished the survey he actually is lost: he ends up on a blank screen.

    O365-Survey no context

    NewForm.aspx?IsDlg=1

  • It does work if you put it in a script: 
    <a href="javascript:var options=SP.UI.$create_DialogOptions();
options.url='https://companynet.sharepoint.com/survey/Lists/ERC/NewForm.aspx?IsDlg=1';
options.height = 400;void(SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options))">
<strong>Start the survey</strong></a>

    However, if we put this on a news article page, SharePoint automatically strips out the code.

So we put the code inside a Content Editor Web Part on the news article page, so that the script remained intact and worked!

By the way, this method implies that we had to use a news article rather than a blog post, because we could not insert a web part in a standard SharePoint blog post.

September 30, 2011

SharePoint Online: looking good

Filed under: Office365,SharePoint — Tags: , — frederique @ 22:51

I’m heading for an interesting Office 365 project, where we’ll start with SharePoint Online and Lync Online. In our preliminaire work, we’re looking at the Fabrikam demo for SharePoint Online and it is definitely looking good….

Screenshots
The homepage does not look like SharePoint at all (except for the Site Actions that I get as the administrator). And that goes down very well with people who are fed up with the standard SharePoint look & feel.

Fabrikam demo - Home page

Fabrikam demo - Home page

The overview pages also look nice and ‘website-like’.

Fabrikam demo - Overview page

Fabrikam demo - Overview page

One of the examples is a request form created in InfoPath for a visually interesting and user-friendly experience.

Fabrikam demo - Request form

Fabrikam demo - Request form

Once we get down to the lists and libraries, we recognize SharePoint 2010.

Fabrikam demo - Document Library

Fabrikam demo - Document Library

Sources

July 31, 2011

[SharePoint] Check permissions the easy way

Filed under: SharePoint — Tags: — frederique @ 20:45

Sometimes simple features can make your life a lot easier. What makes me happy just now, is the option to check easily if a particular person has access to the documents I want her to read.

In older versions of SharePoint, I have to look manually, to see if the person is listed in the permissions overview. But that may require a lot of clicking and digging, if the permission structure of the site is complex: opening a dozen site groups to see if the person is in one of them.

In SharePoint 2010 there simply is a button Check Permissions that tells me exactly what permissions the person has in at the level where I am checking, because they are a member of which site groups.

As a site owner, click in the ribbon Page > Library Permissions

SharePoint 2010 Ribbon: Library Permissions

SharePoint 2010 Ribbon: Library Permissions

Click Check Permissions

SharePoint 2010 Ribbon: Check Permissions

SharePoint 2010 Ribbon: Check PermissionsSharePoint 2010 Pop-Up: Check Permissions

Enter the name of the person and click Check Now. Then you’ll get an overview of the person levels given to that person, and through which group they were given that permission.

SharePoint 2010 Pop-Up: Check Permissions

What dampens my spirits a bit, is that I still don’t see an overview at the site level of the separate permissions the user has on ‘disinherited’, specifically secured lists and libraries. The result of the Check Permission just mentions a Limited access, which implies that the group has specific access to a particular list or library. But it does not tell me which library and what permissions. Oh well…

October 31, 2010

Why that default Overwrite in SharePoint 2010 Document Libraries?

Filed under: Interaction,SharePoint — Tags: , , — frederique @ 23:05

There are some things that make me go “Hmmmmm…”

What happens

When you upload a document in a Document Library in SharePoint, the option Add as a new version to existing files is checked on by default. In 2003 this was called Overwrite existing file(s)? So it is very easy to accidentally overwrite an existing document. That happened in the old SharePoint. And still happens in SharePoint 2010. Hm…

Upload document with the default option to overwrite the current file

Upload document with the default option to overwrite the current file

Why is that a problem

That accidental overwriting happens a lot, especially in large libraries, where many people contribute. The users who upload similar documents do not pay attention and give their document the same filename as an existing document.

The stakeholders of the old documents call me, to ask what happened to the metadata of their documents. They see strange descriptions, the status field is incorrect, and so on. And when they open their document, panic really sets in. Then I do some archaeology in the library, only to find out that this is another document altogether. Fortunately the version history allows me to see what happened and to retrieve the old document.

Of course we try to mitigate this problem. First and foremost, we ask the users to respect a naming convention for their files. Also, in several sites we use InfoPath with automated name fields and Excel files with macros that automatically include the date and in some cases also the time in the filename, so that we can ensure its uniqueness.

Still, users have are hard time trying to understand why they have to be so careful with their filenames. Especially the users who know that usually the Title field is displayed, while the Name remains invisible as just a technical filename.

Any old Windows Explorer will warn you when you try to save your document with an existing filename, and ask you politely whether you actually want to overwrite or if you want to save it under a new name. So why is our smart SharePoint system so stupid about this?

What do I want

The interaction that would serve me best, is for the overwrite option to be governed by a setting in the Document Library. I can determine whether or not I want content approval, versioning and many other options on my library. I want an additional setting, determining whether the overwrite option is enabled or disabled by default.

In most cases I would select the setting to disable the default overwrite option. We have trained most users that want to edit a document to actually do that within the site, via the option Edit in Microsoft Word. So they don’t upload a new version and don’t need that overwrite option anyway. This implies that the documents that most users upload are actually new documents.
The required interaction there, is that the library warns them that a file with that name already exists, allowing them to change the filename. And the last thing we want the library to do, is seamlessly overwrite the existing document. Absolutely not.

I would still want to see the checkbox on the upload page, so that power users, who know what they are doing, can deviate from the default. Most users don’t even see the checkbox, but there is always the happy few who do want something non-standard.

Well, I’ll have to figure out what will be my best practice to deal with this issue in 2010….

Document Library settings in 2010

Document Library settings in 2010

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