I'm very excited to announce that we have just released the an updated version of the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint that supports Silverlight 2 Beta 2! These blueprints were designed to provide developers with a better understanding of how to integrate Silverlight with SharePoint. Silverlight is an incredibly powerful technology, and with the increase in SharePoint adoption, we’re seeing greater customer and partner demand for integrating the two in order to provide a richer user experience.

The URL for the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint is http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint or http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP.

In this release, there are five blueprint samples:

1. Hello World
2. Media Player
3. Slider Control
4. Custom Navigation
5. Colleague Viewer

Also included in the release is documentation for each of the samples along with full source code (just click on the Releases tab in the CodePlex site). Within the next week or two, we’ll publish additional screencasts and other supporting documentation.

Steve Fox, Technical Evangelist

Microsoft Developer Platform Evangelism Group

Today we’re excited to announce support and licensing updates for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 running in virtual machines. This is part of a larger announcement affecting multiple Microsoft products, including Exchange Server, SQL Server and SharePoint Server.

As of today, we formally support SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 running under Hyper-V through our normal support channels.  In addition, we now offer support for SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 running in 3^rd party virtualization software that is certified through our Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). The SVVP is an opt-in program that non-Microsoft virtualization providers can choose to participate in. A list of participating vendors is here.

We’re working on performance and deployment guidance for SharePoint Server 2007 running under Hyper-V that will be published in the next few days on Microsoft TechNet.  This blog post will be updated with a link as soon as it’s published.

We have also updated our license terms to allow you to take full advantage of virtualization mobility by waiving the limitation on short-term reassignment (the 90-day license reassignment rule) for SharePoint Server 2007.  Effective September 1, 2008, the new rule allows you to move your server licenses and software running instances from one physical server to another as often as you like in the following circumstance – both servers must be located within one or two datacenters within 4 time zones of each other.

We’ve compiled a short FAQ that should help with some common questions.

Q: Do you have any SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 deployment and configuration guidance for Hyper-V environments?
A: We’re working on it now and it will be published on Microsoft TechNet very soon (next couple of days) – this blog post will be updated as soon as the content goes live.

Q: Since SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 require SQL server, is there anything I should know about running SQL Server through Hyper-V in the context of a SharePoint deployment?
A: Follow the Hyper-V guidance provided by the SQL server Product Group, this can be found here.

Q: Do I need to install the recently released Infrastructure Updates for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to be supported in a Hyper-V environment?
A: No, but you need to deploy Service Pack 1. We strongly recommend installing the Infrastructure updates in addition to Service Pack 1 but they are not a prerequisite for Hyper-V support.

Q: Will SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 continue to be supported on Virtual Server 2005 R2?
A: Yes, we are not changing any existing support policies beyond this announcement.

Q: Does this announcement include support for previous versions of SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services in Hyper-V environment?
A: No. The support announcement only covers SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 and later, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 and later.

Q: Does this announcement also cover SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites SP1, Forms Server 2007 SP1 and Search Server 2008?
A: Yes.

Q: Does the new licensing rule allow me to concurrently run as many instances of SharePoint Server 2007 as I can on one physical server with only one license?
A: No! You still need to purchase a license for every running instance of SharePoint Server 2007 (or SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites, Forms Server 2007 and Search Server 2008).

You may already be aware of the recent RTM announcement of SQL Server 2008. We are happy to announce that Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 & Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 now support SQL Server 2008. Our documentation has been updated to include support for SQL Server 2008. Please refer to:

• Windows SharePoint Service 3.0
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288751.aspx
• Office SharePoint Server 2007
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485.aspx

In the next few weeks, we will publish a TechNet article that describes the benefits of running SQL Server 2008 with SharePoint Products and Technologies. Here, we’ve highlighted a few of the benefits that SharePoint customers inherit when choosing to use SQL Server 2008:

1. Improved Manageability

Manageability and governance is important for SharePoint as well as the SQL Server database engine. Now administrators can also benefit from the new management features introduced in SQL Server 2008 – from Policy-based administration to back-up compression. For details, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645579(SQL.100).aspx.

2. High Availability

Availability in SQL Server 2008 has been improved through enhancements in data mirroring. For details, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645581(SQL.100).aspx.

3. Enhanced Data Security

The SQL Server 2008 database engine introduced new encryption functions that enhance security. SharePoint administrators can take advantage of these new encryption features by simply turning on transparent data encryption (TDE). No additional changes need to be made on the SharePoint side. For details, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645578(SQL.100).aspx.

Last but not least, don’t forget to apply SP1 on SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Keep in mind, SP1 is also a requirement for installing on Windows Server 2008.

Stay tuned for the TechNet article!

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

Cross posted from the Enterprise Search Blog

Starting Faceted Search 2.5, the solution relies on Microsoft Enterprise Library to address common software requirements in caching, logging, exception handling, policy injection etc., etc. More importantly, the 2.5 is a ground breaking release that is setting new targets for the Faceted Search. So, what’s new?

New Features

1. Caching – dramatically improves performance and decreases the load on the search engine

The solution uses 2 mechanisms for manageable cache: quick and long. I built the caching logic on assumption that user knows what he/she is looking for. The Search Facets web part will cache original result set and use it for the search refinement, paging and other postbacks. If the initial result set doesn’t provide full coverage of the search, the smart 2^nd thread will run against real-time data providing adjustment to the cached match.

2. Synchronization with Core Search Results web part

The MOSS search is adjusted by several parameters that designer can set for the Core Search Results web part itself. These include remove duplicates, enable trimming, permit noise words. When you drop the Search Facets web part to the search results page, it will find the Core Search Results, read its parameters and sync the search query parameters to exactly match ones used by the Core.

3. Support for advanced search

It was the most wanted feature since Faceted Search 1.0. With 2.5, the Facets are rendered for advanced search although do not extend yet to ranges. The functionality is accomplished by extending SearchQuery structure to accommodate POST requests and sync back to GET query.

4. Match of search counters

This release introduced an updated search syntax that is design to provide matching counters to the core search. In fact, the new search query is using both KeywordQuery and FullTextQuery through the use of generics.

public class GenericQuery<T> : IDisposable where T : Query
{
    private EventHandler _customLogic;

    public ResultTableCollection Execute(EventArgs args)
    {
        _customLogic(_query, args);
        return _query.Execute();
    }

    ...
}

Additionally, the WHERE clause of the search query was modified to provide closer match to the Core counter.

5. Introducing Parent-Child relationships

By design, the facets can support only 2 levels. This release extended the Facets schema to allow management of the nested layers. That eases the pain of displaying complex hierarchies such as geography, or org chart etc. Parent-Child relationship can be set by facet name and facet value, or just by facet name.

<Column Name="BDCCity" DisplayName="City" ParentName="BDCState" />
<Column Name="BDCState" DisplayName="State" >
  <Mappings>
    <Mapping Match="Alberta"  ParentName="BDCCountry" ParentValue="Canada"/>    
    <Mapping Match="Manitoba" ParentName="BDCCountry" ParentValue="Canada" />
    <Mapping Match="Ontario"  ParentName="BDCCountry" ParentValue="Canada"/>
    <Mapping Match="Quebec"   ParentName="BDCCountry" ParentValue="Canada"/>
  </Mappings>
</Column>

In the configuration above, the City facets will display only after the user chose the State. The State itself will match the country of origin.

6. Extending search to logical “OR” queries

Original facets always represent “AND” queries. That implies ability to narrow the search results by adding extra criteria. In this release I prototyped the way to expand the search by adding additional matches to the criteris. This in fact resulted in rewamped the Bread Crumbs UI. Proviuded now out-of-the-box support for languages is a good example of how “OR” queries empower the search.

7. Simplified web part properties

The 2.5 release is friendly to modifications of the web part properties. I have all properties classified and broken down to groups for each of the web parts.

8. Other

There are lots and lots of numerous fixes and enhancements, including improved security validation, code refactoring, extending facet sorting, support of quoted search and duplicates etc., etc.

What’s next

It’s my privilege to say that we have a team now that helps to shape new releases and brainstorm the future of the Faceted Search. Presently, we are looking at AJAX and SilverLight and hopefully you’ll start seeing more and more power of Facets in the near future.

Leonid Lyublinski
Senior Consultant
Microsoft Consulting Services

 
Hosted by MindSharp (one of the premier SharePoint training partners), sponsored by Microsoft Press (which recently published the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices book), and keynoted by Tom Rizzo (who needs no further introduction), the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in Washington D.C. on September 15-17, 2008 is the key conference for those of you, who want to learn the best ways to design, deploy, organize, and administer SharePoint-based business solutions. Presenters include Microsoft SharePoint MVPs and SharePoint experts from Microsoft and Microsoft partners. Register by August 1st and get a free copy of the MOSS 2007 Best Practices book!

 
If you missed the Microsoft TechEd conferences in Orlando, FL this past June, then the Microsoft TechEd conferences in Barcelona, Spain, on November 3-7 and 10-14, 2008 are your next opportunities to get in-depth technical information about the breadth of Microsoft products and services as well as those from our many partners. Several SharePoint team members (including me!) will be there as speakers, to man our exhibit booth, and to participate in the Ask-the-Experts session. Register by July 31st for a €300 discount!

The SharePoint Connections Conference in Las Vegas, NV on November 10-13, 2008 (yes, it overlaps with the MS TechEd Developers conference in Barcelona) is one of the few non-Microsoft hosted conferences that the SharePoint product group supports in a significant way. Aside from the sessions presented by SharePoint experts from Microsoft and the industry, a key benefit of this conference is that it's an integral part of a larger conference that includes technical deep-dive SQL Server, Visual Studio, and Exchange sessions, so you can easily hop into one of the other conference sessions and/or network with people doing interesting work with those other Microsoft products. Register by August 27th for a $100 discount!

Last, but not least, while the SharePoint team will have just a few sessions at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, CA on October 27-30, this is indeed the premier conference for developers interested in the latest and best technical information about products, services, and tools for building business solutions on Microsoft's web and application platforms. Register by August 15th for a $200 discount!

<Lawrence />

[IMPORTANT UPDATE 07/17: Please read the highlighted instructions below before starting your installation.]

This morning we released to web three new important updates that affect SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Project Server 2007, Search Server 2008, Search Server 2008 Express and Project Professional 2007.

The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) applies to:

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
• Microsoft Search Server 2008
• Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express

The Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) applies to:

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) applies to:

• Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007

The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers contains the new Enterprise Search features that were shipped in Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express that were are not already in SharePoint Server 2007; this includes Federated Search capability, a unified administration dashboard and several Search core platform performance updates.  Read more about the new Search features here.

There are several Content Deployment updates included in both the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. These updates address many of the top customer reported issues with Content Deployment.  Read more about the Content Deployment updates here.

The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) include several usability and performance updates for Project Server 2007 and Project Professional 2007 in addition to addressing the top customer reported issues.  Read more about the Project Server and Project Professional updates here and in this White Paper.

All three updates contain fixes and product performance updates driven by customer feedback which have resulted in significant platform performance improvements in several areas.  There has also been a focus on several core platform components, including improvements to upgrade, future patching and servicing, several targeted updates for workflow, the Business Data Catalog and inter-farm server authentication with Kerberos.  For more detailed information please read the KB articles listed further on in this post.

We strongly recommend that you install the updates that apply to you as soon as your patching and maintenance schedules permit.

The updates can be downloaded from the links below:

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) - x86

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) - x64

Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) - x86

Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) - x64

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) - x86

* The updates are applicable to all shipping languages.

Installation Instructions are available from the links below:

Deploy Software Updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Deploy Software Updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007 - This article also applies to Project Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.

Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Search Server 2008)

Related Knowledge Base Articles are available from the links below:

Description of the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695)

Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB953749)

Description of the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)

Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB953750)

Description of the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547)

Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB953751)

Please read and familiarize yourself with the installation instructions before you start.

For reference the following products require the following updates to be applied.

If you are running SharePoint Server 2007 you should:

1. Install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) if you haven’t already
2. Install 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1 (SP1) if you haven’t already.
3. Install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695).
4. Cancel out of the "SharePoint 3.0 Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard". (You CAN run the wizard if you want. It will just save you time if you run it once at the end.)
5. Install Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)
6. Run the "SharePoint 3.0 Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard".

If you are running Project Server 2007 you should:

1. Install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) if you haven’t already
2. Install 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1 (SP1) if you haven’t already.
3. Install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695).
4. Cancel out of the "SharePoint 3.0 Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard". (You CAN run the wizard if you want. It will just save you time if you run it once at the end.)
5. Install Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)
6. Run the "SharePoint 3.0 Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard".
7. You should also then install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) on all Project Professional 2007 client PC’s.

If you are running Search Server 2008 or Search Server 2008 Express you should:

1. Install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695).
2. Cancel out of the "SharePoint 3.0 Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard". (You CAN run the wizard if you want. It will just save you time if you run it once at the end.)
3. Install Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)
4. Run the "SharePoint 3.0 Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard".

If you are running Project Professional 2007 you should Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547).

The installation process will incur server and farm downtime that you will need to plan for – updates should be installed on all servers in a farm.

Related blog posts:

The SharePoint ITPro documentation team blog – Infrastructure Updates

Office Sustained Engineering blog – Announcing Availability of Infrastructure Updates

Get the Point, Microsoft Office SharePoint Blog - What’s new in the MOSS 2007 Infrastructure Update?

The following RSS feeds have been available for a few months now, but we still get questions on a weekly basis from people wondering how they can keep track of SharePoint oriented content that is published on TechNet and MSDN.

• Feed for new SharePoint content on MSDN: http://www.microsoft.com/feeds/msdn/en-us/sharepoint/rss.xml
• Feed for new SharePoint Services 3.0 content on TechNet: http://services.community.microsoft.com/feeds/feed/WindowsSharePointServicesNewContent
• Feed for new SharePoint Server 2007 content on TechNet: http://services.community.microsoft.com/feeds/feed/SharePointServerNewContent

All 3 feeds have been added to the Aggregated Feed: SharePoint MS team blogs, so if you're already subscribed to this feed, you'll automatically start seeing new feed items for SharePoint content published on MSDN and TechNet.

Separately, if you'd like to also keep track of SharePoint oriented Knowledgebase articles published by Microsoft Help and Support, I'd recommend the following RSS feeds from KBAlertz.com.

• Feed for new SharePoint Services 3.0 KB articles: http://kbalertz.com/rss/WindowsSharePointServices30.xml
• Feed for new SharePoint Server 2007 KB articles: http://kbalertz.com/rss/SharePointServer2007.xml

<Lawrence />

[Cross posted from the Enterprise Search Blog]

It’s been around 45 days since the acquisition of FAST Search and Transfer closed and we’re moving quickly to provide interoperability for Microsoft customers between FAST ESP and Microsoft SharePoint Server.

The first deliverables from this work are a set of FAST ESP Search Web Parts for quickly integrating results from FAST ESP into SharePoint Server 2007 and a FAST ESP Search site template. 

Using these Web Parts and Site Template SharePoint administrators will be able to quickly and easily build FAST ESP-based search sites inside SharePoint 2007 by simply dropping in and configuring the appropriate components.

The Web Parts and Site Template are available as a free download (both compiled code and source code) from CodePlex at www.codeplex.com/espwebparts and are part of the Search Community Toolkit.

Some of the FAST ESP search capabilities that can be exposed within SharePoint Server 2007 using these Web Parts include:

• Search Box Web Part -- Search box for query term submission and includes “did you mean” functionality for query correction

• Result List Web Part -- Displays search results and supports sorting, pagination, and navigator-based filtering

• Navigator Web Part -- Displays dynamic navigators that profile search results across a set of pre-defined dimensions and allow users to refine the search through navigation clicks

• Breadcrumb Web Part -- Displays the search term(s) and list of navigators used to obtain the current result set

The FAST ESP Web parts are designed to be open and extensible, and we’re actively encouraging customers and partners to download them, customize them to align with their branding and extend them to fit their search and user experience requirements.

Expect the features, functionality and range of ESP Web Parts to grow through contributions from the search developer community as well as further contributions from the FAST & Microsoft Search Team!

FAST & Microsoft Search Teams.

My name is Paul Learning, a Senior Consultant in Microsoft Consulting Services specializing in SharePoint deployments, and it's with great excitement and pride that I announce the release of the SharePoint Server 2007 Scalability and Performance whitepaper. This 90+ page whitepaper is based on a lot of hard work, dedication, and collaboration from a team of exceptional individuals; it documents the architectural design considerations and performance characteristics of a real-world, large-scale SharePoint lab implementation containing around 50 million content items, and reflects both “scale-up” and “scale-out” scenarios.

The hardware rig was provided by Fujitsu and included blade servers, rack servers, and an Eternus 4000 SAN with 10 TB of storage space. Special thanks to Greg Reuter, Jeff DeCarlo, and Brett Pierce from Fujitsu!

 KnowledgeLake, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, was responsible for blasting 50 million content items into SharePoint; they also played a key role in defining the architecture, creating and executing the system tests, and gathering the massive results. KnowlegeLake was ultimately able to use their load tool to send 50 million documents into SharePoint at a peak rate of over 7 million documents per day! Very special thanks to Russ Houberg, Gregg Smith, Bob Bueltmann, Chuck Nash, and Ron Cameron from KnowledgeLake!

Of course, I simply can’t forget to mention all the incredible Microsoft people, who assisted in making this effort a success. First and foremost, our fearless leader, Andy Hopkins, who led the effort from start to finish and constantly amazed me with his enthusiasm and perseverance. I was equally impressed with Andy’s ability to wordsmith while editing our whitepaper. Next comes the long list of other exceptional individuals who stepped up to help out: Steve Peschka, Mike Taghizadeh, Thomas Rizzo, Ryan Duguid, Joel Oleson, Mitch Prince, Doron Bar-Caspi, Simon Skaria, Ambrose Treacy, Sid Shah, Grant Morisette, and Mitch Powers.

I could never have completed this project without the generous help of the people mentioned above. It was truly a collaborative team effort!

In addition to the project that resulted in the Scalability and Performance whitepaper, the KnowledgeLake folks and I were recently involved in another very challenging proof-of-concept for a large pharmaceutical company, which represented a large-scale SharePoint implementation containing 40 TB of content (about 75 million content items) spread across two SharePoint farms.

I am absolutely confident that after these two projects, we’ve finally answered the looming question, "Can SharePoint scale?" with a resounding, "Yes!"

I hope that you'll find this whitepaper beneficial in designing your SharePoint implementations whether small, medium, or large-scale. You can open or download the appropriate format of the whitepaper from the links below. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment on this blog entry.

• Word 2007 format: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=120881
• Word 2000-2003 format: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=120890
• PDF format: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=120891

Paul J. Learning
Senior Consultant, Microsoft Consulting Services

Overview

Ironworks Consulting, a management and web consulting firm and Microsoft Gold Partner, recently launched a new global extranet for the Christian Children’s Fund (CCF), which is one of the most respected child development organizations in the world that has been a non-sectarian global force for children, working in 31 countries, assisting more than 13.2 million children regardless of race, creed or gender since its inception in 1938. CCF has provided more than $2.7 billion in services to children, with most of the funding coming from individual contributors in the form of child sponsorships.

As a leader in child development and protection issues, CCF’s programs provide practical assistance to impoverished communities and plant the seeds of self-sufficiency to create an environment of hope and respect for children in which they have opportunities to achieve their full potential and effect positive change in their communities. These comprehensive and sustainable programs incorporate health, education, nutrition and livelihood interventions that serve to protect, nurture and develop children.  CCF employs a child-focused development approach that includes the voices of children, as well as their families and communities.

With a workforce geographically dispersed across over 33 countries worldwide, CCF faced significant challenges with usage and adoption of its existing intranet site and sought a more reliable and extensible solution to disseminate and share information across these offices, as well as to provide a platform for improving social networking and organizational connectivity.

The purpose of this project was to develop and implement a new CCF extranet, known as "The Hub", that would be used by all CCF employees worldwide as the single source for information, content and document storage, as well as a means for collaboration internally and externally.

Figure 1: Home page of CCF extranet.

Delivery Methodology

The project began with Assessment and Design phases, during which requirements were documented, site architecture was determined via the development of a site map and wire frames, and navigation, page layout and graphical designs were developed and approved to give the site a new look. During these initial phases the development of a prototype site was completed to help users better understand the new technology, as well as to provide interactive context to the requirements and design discussions. The chosen architecture was one that significantly leveraged MOSS 2007 technology, which was identified by CCF as the technology platform of choice for future business growth and team collaboration needs worldwide.

Ironworks was responsible for the installation and configuration of MOSS 2007 and SQL Server 2005 in the CCF production environment as well as the development and deployment of custom web parts, site templates, master pages, page layouts and custom HTML styles in support of a MOSS 2007 site collection consisting of over 75 sites. Once development began, Ironworks used an iterative development and deployment approach, which allowed CCF to gain access to the developing site much earlier to review and provide feedback as well as to begin the content migration process as soon as possible.

Lastly, Ironworks worked with CCF’s Interactive Communications and IT groups to provide training and documentation to prepare "The Hub" end-users, super users, and administrators for production deployment.

Governance Framework

Due to the strategic importance of CCF’s extranet initiative and the truly global presence of their personnel, Ironworks followed an aggressive approach to establishing a governance framework for The Hub prior to actual site implementation. Indeed, the extranet implementation necessitated a level of governance that was new to CCF’s dispersed organization. Ironworks worked with CCF to establish management policies and standards related to extranet content, sites, and objects managed within their MOSS based platform.

The heart of the governance framework was the definition and implementation of more than 100 custom content types. Standardizing document formats and metadata collection paved the way for improved retrieval, reuse, and ongoing information management. SharePoint's out-of-the-box approval workflows were associated with the various content types.

In conjunction with the definition of customized permission levels and security groups, the well defined taxonomy provided CCF with the tools for making and enforcing decisions related to the creation and management of content while at the same time enabling content development to be efficiently distributed to CCF subject matter experts. SharePoint’s extensibility also helped to reduce the dependency on IT processes and resources, creating an opportunity to smooth change acceptance and accelerate the transition to the new solution.

User Management

The view towards empowering business stakeholders extended to the creation and ongoing maintenance of new user accounts both in SharePoint and in Active Directory.

The functional requirements for the CCF Hub extranet site called for the creation of custom web parts that could be used by a select group of users to provision new and edit existing Active Directory accounts and SharePoint profiles. To meet this requirement, Ironworks built upon the membership controls included in the Solution Sharing Network (SSN) project that is part of the open source Community Kit for SharePoint as well as overriding and extending SharePoint's profile editing page.

Figure 2: Create Account page.

The account request control created by Ironworks was a pared down version of the one that is included in the SSN Portal. It consisted of only 5 fields that had to be filled out to request an account. Upon submitting the request, an item is generated in a custom list, and a workflow is kicked off whereby ultimately the request is approved or rejected by the designated Approver for the Active Directory OU that the requestor is a part of.

When the request is approved, the information is then sent to Active Directory where an account is created, and the information is also sent to the SharePoint profile store, where a profile is created for the user. The user then receives an email stating that an account has been created for them.

For editing existing profiles, including fields mapped back to Active Directory properties (e.g. email address), Ironworks developed a second custom search and edit control. Using the control, authorized users can search by username, or first and last name. A simple query is done against Active Directory for matching users, and the results are returned in a grid. For each record, the username is a link that takes the user to the details page for that user.

Figure 3: Search and Edit page for user profiles.

The details editing page is a SharePoint page (ProfAdminEdit.aspx) that has been copied from the context of the SSP and hosted directly in the layouts directory with custom authentication and data storage. Upon saving the revised form, the information is sent to both Active Directory and to SharePoint, overriding the form’s original method of saving exclusively to SharePoint.

Content Migration Support

During the requirements gathering phase, Ironworks provided CCF content managers with planning worksheets to catalogue content sources for each of the various departments and business units. This provided CCF with an early understanding of the scope of their content migration effort and allowed them to plan accordingly.

Because the level of effort associated with content migration can be significant, Ironworks identified opportunities to engage CCF personnel responsible for content migration during the site development and configuration phase. CCF had a large image repository with extensive metadata that needed to be migrated to MOSS. Ironworks completed the styling and build out of custom photo library functionality in the first iteration of site development. With this done, the photo library was opened to CCF personnel during development in order for them to start populating content several weeks prior to the production launch.

Figure 4: Photo Library with captions and custom viewer and styling.

Information Architecture Challenge

The CCF extranet project presented a number of challenges and opportunities in terms of creating a more intuitive Information Architecture (IA) for the audience, starting with the high level structure and including sub-site and page layout considerations.

High Level Structure

Because of the collaborative nature and capabilities of SharePoint, Ironworks worked to understand not only how CCF was organized, but also how they were sharing information across the organization. To determine the organization’s needs, Ironworks held a number of requirements sessions with the different internal groups to help determine site columns, content types, and understand CCF’s internal taxonomies.

CCF’s previous intranet had been built around a 5 year plan, which became outdated and hampered "findability" especially for newer employees within the organization. For the new extranet, Ironworks built a more general structure that supports scalability over time. Using high level categories such as "Groups" and "Offices" enabled users to quickly identify relevant sub-sites and drill down to find the necessary information.

To further improve "findability", Ironworks created custom navigation controls to expand upon the number of visible site map nodes and enable fly out menus, giving users a glimpse of information within lower levels and allowing them to jump directly to it.

Pulling from alternate language titles specified for all of the site collection’s pages, the custom navigation controls also provided end users with navigation text targeted to them based upon a "Preferred Language" property specified in their profile settings (English, Spanish, French, or Portuguese). Given the user’s preferred language, a call is made to the appropriate PortalSiteMapProvider (there is an overridden version for each language). The called provider takes each site map node and converts the title for that node into the language-specific equivalent for the user’s selected language. The conversion is really a substitution process whereby the provider retrieves the ‘Spanish Title’, ‘French Title’, etc. within the page record applicable to the current site map node. For the left-hand navigation menu, there is a control adapter that is implemented that intercepts the rendering of the menu, and replaces the HTML with tags and class settings that allow the design team to manipulate the look and feel with cascading stylesheets (CSSs). The control adapter parses the nodes in the menu and writes the appropriate HTML, which can be customized as necessary. This gives the developer great flexibility and control of what is rendered.

Figure 5: The Groups page in the French language.

Consistent Section Templates

Ironworks wanted to maintain an intuitive structure at the lower levels of the site, specifically within the "Units", "Groups", and "Offices" areas where the majority of the content exists. To achieve this, Ironworks created site templates with a consistent structure for the sites within these sections. The templates are general enough to support the different areas of the organization and provide the users with a consistent structure so that they know where to look for information.

Even as the sub-sites were standardized to a common look and feel, a unique visual branding was achieved through a custom header image control that was included in the site collection’s master page. The control pulled a distinctive header image for each sub-site based upon "Header Image Url" column stored in the site collection’s Sites listing.

Creating site templates for the different sub-sites had the additional effects of speeding the initial build-out of the site collection and easing site future site maintenance by allowing administrators to easily and quickly create new sites.

As a means of better organizing the presentation of information within each site, Ironworks developed a custom "Tabstrip" web part to allow designers to create a tabbed web part zone interface. The web part reads configuration information out of an XML configuration file stored within a document library in the site collection. It uses this information to determine the number and order of tabs to display, what names to display on the tabs, and what method to use to render the contents of the tab (iframe or div). When used in div mode, the Tabstrip works in conjunction with specialized SharePoint page layouts that include multiple div elements all appropriately named. When used in iframe mode, the Tabstrip can be added to any page layout given that the iframe element is added via the code in the Tabstrip solution. The Tabstrip web part supports audience targeting of tabs as needed based upon the inclusion of an "audiences" property in the XML configuration file.

Social Networking and Communication

By nature, CCF’s business requires that it be spread out across many regions, countries, and time zones. In many cases, employees who have never met face to face are required to communicate and collaborate on a daily basis. Additionally, as needs arise in different regions, new CCF staff assume responsibilities and communicating those changes can sometimes be a challenge.

To help accommodate these needs, Ironworks implemented and expanded on the social networking capabilities built into SharePoint. In addition to providing each user with a profile and profile photo, configuring People search, implementing an employee message board, and creating a wiki site for documenting organization-specific terminology, Ironworks also implemented several custom components to help acquaint users with their colleagues around the globe. These included:

• AA OrgChart Web Part: An expandable/collapsible organization chart with employee photos and reporting structure at the company, region, country, group and unit levels.
  
• Meet Your Colleagues Web Part: A custom-styled Content Query web part that highlights a selected "Meet Your Colleagues" article page from the "Community" portion of the extranet.
  
• World Time Zones Web Part: A custom web part that uses UTC offset information and an image URL stored in a SharePoint list to display the current time and a map applicable to a particular locale. The web part can be configured to display information for a single region or it can be connected to a filter web part that allows users to select a country from a pick list.
• HotSites Web Part: Based upon the web part of the same name that is a part of the SSN.WebControls.General of the Solution Sharing Network project, this web part provides a ranked listing of the most popular sites in the site collection based on user hits. The Ironworks version of the control is optimized for performance, offloading the crawl of the site collection’s audit logs to a nightly process that caches the results for display.
• Outlook Inbox Control: Integrated into the site collection’s master page is control that displays a link to the user’s Outlook Inbox and indicates the current number of unread messages. The web control does a WebDav query that both checks if an inbox exists for a particular user and gets the number of unread messages. The output is then rendered as straight HTML with a Javascript call that opens a new window for Outlook Web Access.

The Importance of Search

As a final comment on the CCF case study, it should be noted that SharePoint’s Enterprise Search capabilities deserve a fair amount of credit for the successful adoption of The Hub. MOSS Search, augmented by the implementation of the Ontolica Search product, played a tremendous role in demonstrating the power of SharePoint to improve information sharing across a large and diverse organization.

Within the site collection’s search center, Advanced Search pages that were extended to include mapped metadata properties yielded tangible benefits to the business users that had invested so much time in defining custom content types. Likewise, the same metadata was put to good use through the implementation of Ontolica’s Search Summary Web Part, an easily configured tool for the display of faceted search results.

Figure 7: Advanced Search page.

Figure 8: Search Results page with configured facets provided by Ontolica Search.

Search Result web parts were used outside of the Search Center as well as a means of efficiently rolling up content across sub-sites based upon canned search queries. Ontolica's Search Results Web Part provided an easy to use interface for generating custom formatted lists of various content types including Announcements, Contacts, and News Stories.

Conclusion

For Ironworks, the implementation of the CCF extranet highlighted SharePoint’s role as a powerful platform and framework for robust application development. The Hub’s success came as the result of the union of SharePoint’s core strengths (Content Management, Search, Collaboration), key third party tools (AA OrgChart and Ontolica Search), and custom development by a Microsoft Certified Partner.

Blog Authors from the Project Team

• Mark Gallagher - Project Manager, Ironworks Consulting
• Sean Kesler - Business Analyst, Ironworks Consulting
• David Perkinson - Lead Architect, Ironworks Consulting
• Marissa Johnston - Information Architect, Ironworks Consulting
• Bill Cavender - Assistant Director, Interactive Communications, Christian Children’s Fund