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Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Developer's Compendium: The Best of Packt for Extending SharePoint
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Developer's Compendium: The Best of Packt for Extending SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Developer's Compendium: The Best of Packt for Extending SharePoint: Build an engaging SharePoint site with Visual Studio, Silverlight, PowerShell and Windows 7 Phone with this book and e-book

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Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Developer's Compendium: The Best of Packt for Extending SharePoint

Chapter 2. Building an Engaging Community Site

Note

This chapter is taken from SharePoint 2010 Business Application Development Blueprints (Chapter 4) by Mike Oryszak. At the time of publication, this chapter is taken from an exciting new Packt title which is yet to be published.

Organizations today are looking for ways to increase collaboration and to provide more self-help resources through the use of tools like SharePoint. While it can be fairly easy to build a department level collaboration site, it can be significantly harder to build a cross-functional community site not tied to one specific department. This chapter will attempt to highlight those challenges so that you can build a community site that can keep people engaged and bring the collaboration levels that everyone is looking for.

Community sites can be used to drive collaboration and self-help around a specific topic or system. Examples could include business topics like Lean, Six Sigma, or other Process Improvement methodologies...

Creating the community site


To get started we will need to provision a new site collection using the Team Site Template, activate the supporting features, and create a landing page to support our community.

In this case I have selected a Team Site Template because it is a good generic building block for sites like this, and it can also be used to create Web Templates that can be used to provision additional sites.

Activating supporting features

After choosing a site template and provisioning the site collection, the next step is to activate the initial features needed to support the Intranet site. The robust feature deployment and activation system supported in SharePoint makes it very easy to fine-tune the functionality available within a site. In many cases these features may already be activated by default depending on your settings for the Web application and overall farm.

Following is a list of the features that should be activated on the site being configured:

Site collection features...

Site permissions


Permissions management is one of the things that is typically different when working with community sites. Where a traditional department site is tied to a specific department and likely has an Active Directory security group, the community site is meant to be cross-functional including people from throughout the organization. Making that collaboration easy, especially for new members, often means taking a completely different approach.

The approach that I typically take is to identify the top most Active Directory groups that apply and then grant them Contributor permission level. That could be something like<my domain>\domain users which is a standard security group that will include all domain users. Letting everyone contribute by default will make the site easier to maintain and also better support collaboration and innovation.

Community members


One way to profile community advocates and members from throughout the organization is to find a way to profile them. A great way to do this is to define a user profile property that can track the communities that the person is associated with. This one field can be used to support all of the communities throughout the organization so it should only be created once. The great thing about this property is that it can be used to help find people within the user profiles, but also it can be used to display the members within the community site itself. In this section, we will define the custom user profile property and then create a custom page that lists people associated with the community.

Create Communities User Profile Property

To create a new Property, simply click the New Property menu item. Creating a new property requires a little more thought and planning since there are a number of different options and behaviors available. Following are the settings for each...

Configuring social Web Parts


The social features included with SharePoint Server 2010 are intended to support collaboration and increase user engagement. Both the Note Board and Tag Cloud web parts are included to help support those social interactions.

Note Board

The Note Board allows users to pose a simple note such as a question they need help with, or some other note that may benefit the community. Any notes saved will be tied to the URL of the page it is on so it is important to understand that unlike a discussion board, there should be some thought put into which pages the note board is prominently placed.

To add a note board to the front page of the site perform the following steps:

  1. 1. Browse to the home page of the community site.

  2. 2. Click the Site Actions menu and select the Edit Page option.

  3. 3. Select the Insert ribbon tab.

  4. 4. Select the Social Collaboration category.

  5. 5. Select the Note Board web part as displayed in the following screenshot:

  6. 6. For the Add Web Part...

Configuring Rollup Web Parts


It is important that we continue to try and find effective ways to surface content so that it is as easy as possible for users to find and use the content. To do that we are going to leverage two additional web parts available in SharePoint server that can assist here. The Web Analytics Web Part and the Content Query Web Part.

Web Analytics Web Part - frequently accessed content

The Web Analytics Web Part leverages the Usage and Web Analytics system to provide content reporting to your authors and end users. In the past it has been difficult to provide an accurate list of frequently accessed content, but this web part provides the much needed information.

It is important to understand that this is pre-processed information that is generated based on the schedule configured for the Web Analytics reporting. This allows it to execute very fast, but the content may be up to 24 hours up to date so new content may not be displayed.

To configure the Web Analytics...

Creating an Enterprise Wiki


Using Wikis is a great way to collaborate on content within SharePoint. While most people still think in terms of documents, there are a number of advantages to using Wikis over individual documents. These advantages include the ability to link from one document to another easily, the ability to provide better change markup without the need to use Track Changes, and the ability to integrate other web parts or SharePoint content within the Wiki content.

The Enterprise Wikis introduced with SharePoint Server 2010 provides some much needed advances over the standard Wiki features. While the page editing and markup are the exact same, there are Page Layout changes that provided much better support especially for larger sets of content. The features include Page Ratings, Wiki Categories making it easier to tag and relate pages, and also Metadata Navigation.

This section will detail the recommended steps for configuring the Enterprise Wiki on our community site...

Summary


This section heavily leverages the out of the box web parts and features to assemble a rich and interactive community site.

The customizations are grouped as follows:

Browser based configuration
  • Provision a Site Collection

  • Configure Content Query Web Part (CQWP)

  • Configure Web Analytics Web Part

  • Configure People Core Results Web Part

  • Configure Enterprise Wikis

  • Configure Advanced Navigation

  • Configure Note Board Web Part

  • Configure Tag Cloud Web Part

There are a number of additional types of content that may be beneficial to a community that were not covered in detail within this chapter. Items configured but not covered include threaded discussions, community events, and community links. The key is to find content that is relevant and make it as easy as possible for participants to contribute.

An effective community site can greatly enhance collaboration, innovation, and provide a foundation for user self-service. Providing an engaging site requires a mix of good content, features, and the ability...

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Key benefits

  • Get to grips with extending SharePoint with a range of different tools in this comprehensive guide which draws on the value of five separate Packt SharePoint titles!
  • Learn about developing and extending SharePoint through both step by step tutorial and cookbook chapters in this book and e-book.
  • A mash-up book from a range of expert SharePoint professionals, and a total of five Packt titles ñ professional expertise distilled in a true sense.

Description

The SharePoint platform is ideal for developers looking to build exciting solutions, and SharePoint 2010 is more equipped than ever for the task. While plenty of SharePoint titles will help you understand general SharePoint development techniques or spend time focusing on one method or tool, "Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Developer's Compendium: The Best of Packt for Extending SharePoint" offers you the option of using four different tools and platforms to achieve exceptional end user experience. This book fills the gap for a comprehensive SharePoint title which describes the end goal of a SharePoint developer. So often books focus on development techniques for one tool; this will get you on your way to developing a good business website with a great user experience, however, you choose to get there, be it using PowerShell, Visual Studio, Silverlight, Windows 7 Phone, or a combination of all four. "Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Developer's Compendium: The Best of Packt for Extending SharePoint" draws from five separate titles from Packt's existing collection of excellent SharePoint titles: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Windows PowerShell 2.0: Expert Cookbook Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Development with Visual Studio 2010 Expert Cookbook Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Applications on Windows Phone 7 Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Business Application Development Blueprints "Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Developer's Compendium: The Best of Packt for Extending SharePoint" is an exciting mash-up of five existing Packt SharePoint titles for extending development techniques. It begins with two never before seen Packt chapters from an exciting new title, giving you a quick overview of the options available for extending SharePoint. It then moves on quickly to building a community site and discusses PowerShell scripting, as well as integrating Silverlight animations and helping you get to grips with SharePoint development on Windows Phone. With this book in hand you won't just find techniques for one development tool, you'll learn how to reach your end goal of developing a site with great user experience using a number of options at your fingertips.

Who is this book for?

If you are a developer who would like to enhance your knowledge of SharePoint development to create sites with great user experience, don't miss "Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Developer's Compendium: The Best of Packt for Extending SharePoint". You should already be comfortable with general SharePoint development practices, though prior experience with PowerShell, Visual Studio, Silverlight and Windows 7 Phone is not a necessity.

What you will learn

  • Utilize PowerShell to access advanced SharePoint 2010 functionality with external libraries
  • Learn how to create custom PowerShell commands and Snap-Ins
  • Discover the benefits of integrating Silverlight with SharePoint such as the Silverlight Toolkit
  • Breathe life into business applications and complex workflows by creating a Silverlight RIA rendered in a SharePoint Visual Web Part
  • Create a List Event Receiver with Visual Studio
  • Gain a comprehensive introduction to programming in Windows Phone 7 and SharePoint including working with e-mail, contacts and calendars
  • Get to grips with building SharePoint Pages for Windows Phone 7

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Feb 22, 2012
Length: 392 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849686808
Vendor :
Microsoft
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Product Details

Publication date : Feb 22, 2012
Length: 392 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849686808
Vendor :
Microsoft
Category :

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Table of Contents

10 Chapters
Understanding SharePoint Development Choices Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building an Engaging Community Site Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
PowerShell Scripting Methods and Creating Custom Commands Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Integrating Silverlight 4 with SharePoint 2010 Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Interacting with Rich Media and Animations Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
List Definitions and Content Types Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Workflows Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Introduction to Programming Windows Phone 7 with the SharePoint Client Services Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building SharePoint Pages for Windows Phone 7 Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building a Windows Phone 7 Dashboard Application with SharePoint Data Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Robert D. Crane Apr 23, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
Full disclosure - I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for reviewing it.I think it is always hard to position a book that is a compendium of other books and it is so with this one. Firstly, you'll need to be a SharePoint developer who uses Visual Studio to get the most from this book. You'll also need to be looking to extend the functionality of SharePoint onto the Windows Phone platform. Given the combination of these audiences it is clear that this book is not for everyone.The book certainly does allow you to get a feel of the works of the authors from whom the individual chapters have been taken. It will also provide you benefit in the specific subjects that it covers, however you should check these area carefully before investing in the the book as each chapter is somewhat separate from the next.The chapters certainly contain a wealth of information on their topics and would provide good value for those looking to learn about them, however as I said you will need to be a developer who is comfortable with using Visual Studio and SharePoint to get the most from this work.
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