Appendix B. MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies
In February 2004 Microsoft released a free suite to allow site developers to share content between Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 (MCMS) and SharePoint products and technologies. The MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies (hereafter referred to as the “Connector”) provides three core features:
Leveraging of SharePoint Portal Server Search within an MCMS site
Display of pages waiting for approval, pages in production, and page listings within SharePoint web parts
Publishing of documents from WSS or SPS document libraries on an MCMS site
The three integration methods above are accomplished with server controls (in the case of the search and document library publishing) and web parts (for publishing MCMS content to SharePoint web part pages). Microsoft also included a few command line utilities to assist in the management and configuration of SharePoint.
In this appendix, we will first look at the installation of the Connector and then examine the server controls and web parts included. We will discuss the additional tools that come with the Connector, which can help with integration tasks, and look at what is installed by the Connector and where it’s located on the system.
Installation
Installation of the Connector is very simple and straightforward. Simply download the installer that ships as a self-extracting ZIP file containing a single MSI installer. Launch the installer by double-clicking the file and accepting the license agreement:
The only question you are prompted to answer during installation (other than the license agreement and user information—the registration key is already provided) is whether to install the sample data, which includes a demo project and an SDO file. The SDO file will automatically be imported into your MCMS installation when the sample data is installed. The SDO file contains the necessary templates, channels, and postings used by the sample package to demonstrate the features of the Connector.