SharePoint 2010

Breadcrumbs

Michael Bratley / May 1, 2013 / SharePoint 2010 Research

The current University portal uses a common method of navigation, the breadcrumb trail. In SharePoint 2010, the OOB breadcrumb only shows links within its own site, and does not show higher level sites. With some slight modification to the root master page this can be changed to display links right from the root site.

To start you should open Microsoft SharePoint designer, and check out the Master Page that your site is using. You should then add the code below to show a full breadcrumb trail.

If you do not want to have the trail to show all links right up to the root, you can change “-1” (default to show all), to what ever you wish.

<asp:SiteMapPath runat=”server” PathSeparatorStyle-CssClass=”breadcrumbdivider” PathSeparator=”” ParentLevelsDisplayed=”-1″ RenderCurrentNodeAsLink=”true”/>

You will need to either remove or comment out (if you like to play things safe) a line of code to avoid repetition in your breadcrumb trail.

<SharePoint:SPLinkButton runat=”server” NavigateUrl=”~site/” id=”onetidProjectPropertyTitle”><SharePoint:ProjectProperty Property=”Title” runat=”server”/></SharePoint:SPLinkButton>

You will finally need to add some custom CSS to style your breadcrumb separators. You should create a CSS class to provide space for the background image to be displayed.

.breadcrumbdivider {

backgound-image:url(”www.example.com/image.png’);

background-repeat:no-repeat;

background-position:1px 8px;

margin-left:4px;

margin-right:4px;

padding:5px;

}

You will need to host your chosen image on the server, and then specify the url in the CSS. Once you have done this, you will have something similar to this.

Modified SharePoint 2010 Breadcrumb Trail

Staff Training Bookings

Michael Bratley / September 27, 2012November 8, 2013 / Project Updates, SharePoint 2010 Migration

One of our current processes being developed for the new SharePoint is the Staff Training bookings process. Here we have enhanced the current version on SharePoint 2003, by automating the common actions within the process.

We started by creating a list that would act as a database for all the current courses on offer. These are categorised, so that the list can be filtered by users. The list will be maintained by the Staff Learning & Development team, as it currently is. The next part we enhanced using the new functionality in SharePoint 2010. We created an additional list that will hold users bookings. Users will only be able to see their own bookings, while admins will have access to all bookings for easy management. A user will select the conveniently located “Book Course” button, here a simple form will launch where the user will select their desired course, and in addition to the old system the form will also capture the users objectives to help understand their requirements. This will also help Staff Learning & Development when planning courses for the future. The form will also request that the user agrees to terms and conditions regarding cancelations.

The automated processes will then begin, by sending the user confirmation of the request and notify Staff Learning & Development. The team will them make checks to ensure that the course is suitable for the delegate and then either approve the request or deny it. The automatic process will also handle the number of places left on a course, this will stop a course from over booking, and should the minimum number of delegates not be reached a notification will be sent to the team, to enable them to further advertise the course with the aim to fill the remaining places.

Users also have the ability to manage their bookings. If they need to, they can cancel their place on a course. This process will collect the reason of cancellation from the user and this will be sent to the Staff Learning & Development team. Again the number of places left will automatically be recalculated so that someone else can book a place.

Should a course be fully booked, the user can request to go on the reserve list should someone cancel. These are added to the same booking list, but the status is set to reserve. Should a user cancel, Staff Learning & Development will check the reserve list, should there be any people reserved for a course, they will change the status from reserve to offer place and the system will notify that user and offer them the place.

The new Staff Training Development page in early development.

Student Withdrawal – Session 2

Michael Bratley / September 10, 2012September 11, 2012 / Project Updates

On our second session working on the withdrawal workflow we first reviewed what we had developed in the first session. This fresh look enabled us to spot any obvious mistakes that we had made, of which there were a couple. We updated these, and then continued with the development.

We had initially used the “assign task” function to assign work to people, but Rob had remembered that the function “collect data from user” may be more appropriate. We replaced one of the assign task functions within the process to test this. Using this function allows the user to complete a task directly in Outlook, they do not have to enter SharePoint at all. If they need a refresher to the work, there is a link supplied within the email. The task form can be customised so that only the fields the user needs to complete are shown. This will make completing tasks much quicker.

We decided that this method was much more efficient for this process and have deployed throughout the workflow, with the exception where there is a task to complete, but not something that needs to be completed on SharePoint.

To keep track of what the workflow is doing, and to help us debug problems, we use the workflow history log to record certain events. It’s with this that we discovered an issue with the transfer of the interviewer field from the task form to the record in the withdrawals list. The interviewer field was being transferred as a number related to the person selected rather than their account name, or other identifier. We looked for resolutions to this problem, but later discovered that the correct data was in fact being transferred to the withdrawals list , but was just not being recorded in the history log correctly.

Once we had the workflow as complete as we could at this stage, we started to look at customising the input form. This is where the user will initially fill in the details of the request. For the time being we have developed the from using InfoPath and made it more responsive, based on the value of other fields, this will make the form easier to read for the user.

Student Withdrawal Part 1

Robert Everatt / September 10, 2012September 10, 2012 / SharePoint 2010 Migration

Student Withdrawal is possibly one of the more complex business process that we will be attempting to recreate in SharePoint 2010. The process requires a large amount of information from various different areas and the process has to go through various people throughout the university, including Student Support, Student Administration and the Students Course Faculty.

We created the content type and all the columns required from work but after that, Michael and I decided that we should work from my house (quieter environment) in order to quickly get through the basics of the workflow in a day. We started with the core process first as that mainly just involves handing various people different tasks to remove the student from the university, tasks like removing them from QLS, calculating tuition fees and awarding them any certificates if required.

The path to the actual withdrawal is a little more complex. The workflow that we created takes two main paths. If the student is being withdrawn due to lack of attendance, emails will be sent out to the Student and a staff member will be asked to send a notification letter through the post. The student is given 30 days to reply to the letter in order to keep their place at the university, this part was difficult to replicate in a workflow as workflows in SharePoint Designer 2010 are incapable of performing loops. As a temparary measure the workflow checks to see if the “Student Replied” field equals true or false, if false it will pause for three days, check it again and pause for another three days, it does this until 30 days have passed or the “Student Replied” field is updated to equal true. When this system is actually used the workflow will check for a reply every day. Once this was finished the rest of the workflow assignes a series of tasks depending on the fields in the form like filling in the exit interview information. This was a slightly ineffective way of carrying it out but it worked. We would start the testing and improve the whatever areas we can in the next session

Progress Update

Robert Everatt / September 10, 2012September 10, 2012 / SharePoint 2010 Migration

With Michael off on holiday and the newest business process in its first testing stages I thought I’d write a quick update on our progress over the last few weeks.

Firstly, we have our staging area. Tim has finished setting up the first two servers for our SharePoint 2010 test area, this is where we will be building the majority of the business process workflows to ensure that they work how they’re suppose to and that the client is happy with it. Once a workflow or business process has been tested, they will be transferred the the live server for use by the university staff. Although Tim had set up the majority of the SharePoint 2010 server, it still needed to be configured with all the appropriate Application Services. Michael and I spent some time reading up on configuring the different Application Services, we then went on to configure them successfully. Service Apps give more functionality to SharePoint 2010, services such as search, Business Data Connectivity an more, these Service Apps will be required for various activities and business processes in SharePoint 2010.

Once our test server was set up and configured we went on to create our first business process, the Staff Training & Development booking process. This process allows the Staff Training & Development staff create new courses on the portal, university staff can then book onto any fo these courses using a booking form, the form will grab data from the courses, including the amount of spaces that are available, the time, the place and it’s current status. The form will not allow the user to submit if the the course is full or if they have not agreed to the terms and conditions. Once the form has been submitted a workflow is initiated, this workflow send emails to the member of staff that submitted the form and to the administrator of the process. The workflow will also recalculate the amount of spaces available on the course and update the field. Users are also able to cancel their position on the course if they need to.

This has been dubbed ‘Phase 1’ of the Staff Learning & Development business process. We took Phase 1 to Tracey & Heather to see what they thought of the process so far. They appeared to be really impressed, with only a few more requests for Phase 2 of the business process. But before we continue on the Staff Learning & Development process, Michael and I will be continuing our work on the Student Withdrawals workflow.