Business Process Modelling

Robert Everatt / / SharePoint 2010 Migration

A few weeks ago, Michael, David and I, along with some other Business Solutions staff, took part in a BCS training course for Business Process Modelling. A trainer hired by BCS came to the university to deliver a 3 day course to teach us how to develop different kinds of Business Process Models.

The trainer taught us a couple of different ways to model business processes, these included Swim lane diagrams and process maps. The diagrams we have created prior to the training session did not differ too much from the swim lanes diagram that we were taught. We havce decided that we will not alter any of the diagrams that we have already made but any future visio diagram that we create will follow the guidelines taught.

The course ended with an exam that would provide us with some certification from BCS stating that we have passed the course. Michael and I both passed the the exam.

RKE

SharePoint 2010 Course

Michael Bratley / / Mobile, Project Updates

Apologies for the lack of recent blog posts. We have recently been working on a multitude of tasks as the project has been starting up. One of the biggest tasks we have been working on is to map the current Student Withdrawal process that is carried out when a student withdraws from the University. We have been working with other departments within the university including one of the Faculties to carry this out. This will help us work with departments to adapt and refine processes when we re-create them in SharePoint 2010. So far this has been a success, so we will be using this method to map out other workflows that need transferring into SharePoint 2010.

Dave, Robert and I have attended a SharePoint course that was tailored for us. We specifically looked at the new features within SharePoint 2010, Workflows and InfoPath.

Day 1: What’s New.

Here we looked at changes in SharePoint 2010. This mainly involved looking at content types which act as templates that can be used for lists. The benefit of this means that if a change is made to a content type that the changes are pushed to all lists where the content type s being used. Site columns, content types, lists.

Day 2: Workflows & InfoPath.

On day 2 we looked at workflows and InfoPath forms. It was recommended to keep workflows short (to keep them manageable and easier to maintain) and to link them together. We looked at getting the workflow to assign tasks amongst other things. We also took some time to look at InfoPath form, where we concentrated on views and rules to hide controls and create custom submit buttons.

Day 3: Tying things together.

The 3rd day consisted of tying things together. We also looked at list lookups, whereby rather than coding variable items into workflows create lists for these and get the workflows to look up to them. This way will enable fewer amendments to be made to workflows in the future as and when staff change or other potential changes could be made.

My Sites are not for everyone

Robert Everatt / / SharePoint 2010 Migration, SharePoint 2010 Research

My Sites is a feature that was introduced in SharePoint 2007, this feature has also been carried in to SharePoint 2010. My Sites is SharePoint’s answer to social networking, the ‘Facebook’ for SharePoint. They proved a user with their own personal profile which can be viewed by other users on the SharePoint network. this profile can store public and private documents and information, users can friend other users and view status updates from them. It will even show what documents the user has ‘liked’ on the portal.

My Sites could be a useful feature for the university, but we might not want everyone to use it, like students as they have no need for it. So today I set out to see if we could choose who gets a My Site and who doesn’t. Turns out it’s pretty easy.

From Central Administration you go to ‘Manage service applications’ then in the ribbon bar click ‘Manage’ then ‘User Profile Service Application’, finally in the ‘People’ menu, click ‘Manage User Permissions’. A window will then pop up where you will be able to select groups and un-check the ‘Create Personal Site’ box. Once you have done this, this user will no longer be able to use My Sites.

To get to the same option in SharePoint Online, simply go to the administration area, click ‘Manage SharePoint’, ‘Manage User Profiles’ and then ‘Manage User Permissions’. Simple.

RE

SharePoint, HTML5, Mobile Web & More

Robert Everatt / / Mobile

At this stage in the project, the appearance of SharePoint 2010 is not a high priority, however, I seem to have stumbled upon a great couple of blog posts buy a SharePoint blogger called Kyle Schaeffer (http://kyleschaeffer.com). He has created a SharePoint 2010 HTML 5 masterpage to replace the default masterpage, with the aim to dramatically improve SharePoint responsive web design. Kyle provided all the files to give this a go ourselves, so we thought we’d give it a crack in SharePoint Online, here was the result:

This is a massive change from our default SharePoint 2010 masterpage which can be seen here:

Aside from the fact that it looks like something straight out of  wordpress, it does improve the sites visual appeal (you don’t have agree with me), it even creates a great mobile view of the website (something that currently looks painfully boring). The site has been created to be extremely responsive, the content on the site is programmed to rearrange itself depending on the size of the screen, this allows it to be easily viewable on a mobile phone screen without sacrificing any content or style.

Of course, what you see in the first screen shot isn’t what we have to have our portal like, this merely proves that we can use Common Web Design within SharePoint 2010 in the future. This find will help us greatly in the future when we start to look at themeing SharePoint 2010, but for now we return to the PID.

If you would like to read the blog post for yourselves you can find it right here: http://kyleschaeffer.com/sharepoint/v5-responsive-html5-master-page/

There are a couple of other useful reads on his site dealing with mobile SharePoint and responsive design here http://kyleschaeffer.com/best-practices/responsive-layouts-using-css-media-queries/ and here http://kyleschaeffer.com/events/html5-css3-mobile-strategy/

An article for creating custom CSS and masterpages in SharePoint 2010 just appeared on Nothing But SharePoint: https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/eusp/Pages/Create-Custom-CSS-and-Master-Page-in-SharePoint-2010.aspx

RE

Out of the Box SharePoint Server 2010 Workflows

Michael Bratley / / SharePoint 2010 Research

SharePoint 2010 offers the following workflows out of the box, ready to be used.

Workflow Description
Approval Routes a document for approval. Approvers can approve or reject the document, reassign the approval task, or request changes to the document.
Three State Track the status of a list item through three states (phases). It can be used to manage business processes that require organisations to track a high volume of issues or items, such as customer support issues, sales leads, or project tasks. For example, the three states for a project task could be, Not Started, In Progress, and Finished.
Collect Feedback Routes a document for review. Reviewers can provide feedback, which is compiled and sent to the document owner when the workflow has completed.
Collect Signatures Gathers signatures needed to complete an Office document. This workflow can be started only from within an Office client.
Disposition Approval Manages document expiration and retention by allowing participants to decide whether to retain or delete expired documents.
Group Approval Similar to the Approval workflow, but uses a designated document library and offers a personalised view of the approval process(es) in which a user is participating. This workflow provides a hierarchical organisation chart from which to select the approvers and allows the approvers to use a stamp control instead of a signature. This solution was designed specifically for East Asian Markets.
Transition Management Manages document translation by creating copies of the document to be translated and assigning translation tasks to translators.
Issue Tracking Manages the issue tracking process by creating tasks for Active issues assigned to users who own to a given issue. When the task related to an issue is complete hence resolving the issue, the creator of the issue is assigned a review task so that the issue can be closed.

* Information currently varies over which workflows are available out of the box in SharePoint Server 2010. As development progresses this table will be updated.