Personalization in MOSS 2007 and Configuring Personalization

Personalization means providing a user centered experience of the Portal. Keeping user settings and preferences same every time the user logs in.

There are three main features in MOSS 2007 (SharePoint) personalization
1. User profiles
User profiles allow you to search and connect with people within your organization based on information published about them. MOSS 2007 provides a new search scope for searching people. Index Server crawls the user profile store to get the user’s information.

2. Audiences
MOSS 2007 allows you to target content to people according to their membership in a particular audience. It supports targeting to rules-based audiences, distribution lists, and Windows SharePoint Services groups. Except for Windows SharePoint Services groups, these audiences can span one or more portal sites in a deployment.
Using targeting, you can target content in the portal site for viewing by one or more specific audiences. By default, you can display targeted content on the home page and on personalization sites.

3. My Site
My Site is a collection of Profile pages, personal sites, and personalization sites created in the Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. The Profile page of the My Site displays your user profile information. Your personal site provides personalized and customized information. Office SharePoint Server 2007 also supports personalization sites. Personalization sites display targeted content to users based on their membership in a particular audience or by slicing data.

How to Create Personalized views in MOSS 2007
SSP(Shared Service provider) is necessary for creating personalized views in SharePoint

i. Audience Targeting

Importing user profiles in SharePoint from Active directory Through master connection

• Open SSP
• Under User Profiles and My Sites click on the link labeled “User profiles and properties”
• On the User Profiles and Properties page click on “Configure profile import”
• Provide a default access account, specify an account that has read access to your directory. Note: This account needs to also have Manage User Profiles rights, verify click on “Personalization services permissions” under User Profiles and My Sites on the SSP Admin page. To keep things simple until you have a grasp of the service you should use the SharePoint Admin account.


• Click OK On the User Profiles and Properties page click on “Start full import”
• Verify that import started and wait until import has completed before moving on to other personalization admin tasks (this may take a few hours)
• After import is complete to view the results click on “View user profiles” on the User Profiles and Properties page
  

User Profiles can also be imported from SQL server or other sources using Business Data Catalog (BDC). TO learn more about configuring user profiles, Click here

Creating Audiences from User profiles
Once profile import is complete we can go back to setting up personalization services in the SSP

• Go to the Shared Services Administration page for your SSP.
• Click on “Audiences” under the section Audiences
• On the Manage Audiences page click on “Create audience” Note: Audiences should not be created until after you’ve completed a profile import.
• create a new audiences rules based on user profile data such as department, role etc.
• once done creating audiences click on “Start compilation” from the Manage Audiences page.
• After compilation is complete to view the results click on “View audiences” from the Manage Audiences page.

To display targeted content on SharePoint sites using web parts

• Go to the site home page and add the Content Query Web Part. Content by query web part supports audience filtering by default.
• Modify the Content Query Web Part Under Query
• change List Type to Document Library
• Under Query -> Audience Targeting check “Apply audience filtering”
• Click OK Verify the items you targeted in the document library only show for people in those audiences.

ii. My Sites

To create a My Site

• Click on My Site in the global actions bar which is in the top right corner of every SharePoint page.Wait while your My Site is created
• After creation is complete check to make sure the name of the site created is titled with your name
• If not then open a new browser window with your credentials and click the My Site link again or copy the URL behind the My Site link into the browser window.Note: My Site is highly personalized so it works best when its created using your credentials and not those of an admin account or alternate account
• Follow the links in the Getting Started with My Site web part

iii. People Search

To configure People search in MOSS

• Go to Shared Services Administration for your SSP Under Search section click on “Search settings”
• On Configure Search Settings page find the default content access account
• If this is not set then provide a default content access account Verify default content access account has Use personal features rights.
• On Configure Search Settings page click on “Content sources and crawl schedules”
• On the Manage Content Sources page hover over “Local Office SharePoint Server sites” and click the arrow to drop the ECB menu
• In the drop menu click Start Full Crawl Verify that crawl started and wait until crawl has completed before moving on to search for people.
• Once crawl is complete to main portal site and click on Search in the top navigation area to go to the Search Center
• In Search Center click on tab labeled “People”
• Type in a term you added to your profile while exploring your My Site such as a project, skill or responsibility Hit Enter or click the
• Go button Verify that you and others who match that search term was returned as search results

Reusable Content in SharePoint

Items in this list contain HTML or text content which can be inserted into web pages.

• If an item has automatic update selected, the content will be inserted into web pages as a read-only reference, and the content will update if the item is changed.


• If the item does not have automatic update selected, the content will be inserted as a copy in the web page, and the content will not update if the item is changed.

The Reusable Content is created using Reusable content list available in the List all site contents under site Actions Menu. This Reusable content list has all the reusable contents for the site collection.

The first thing to understand is that Reusable Content is unique to the Publishing feature in MOSS. It can only be leveraged in Publishing sites and pages because it is available in only in the Page Content Field, one of the out-of-the-box columns available in Article Page and Welcome Page page layout content types.

The reusable content is inserted into the sharepoint site pages by Rich text editor or publishing HTML content control for a Page Content Field which has icon to insert the Reusable content.

The step by step configuration for reusable content in MOSS is available here

Configuring incoming/outgoing email for SharePoint/MOSS 2007

SharePoint 2007 allows for emails to be accepted into discussions, document libraries and lists. To enable this functionality, a few steps will need to be followed. One thing to note: integrating SharePoint with Exchange is NOT needed for this functionality, but if you do choose Exchange, you will get some added benefits.

-SMTP Service
You will need to install the SMTP Server Service on the SharePoint server. This is done via add/remove programs, and within the IIS component listing.

-Enable Incoming Email
Now, enable Incoming Email from the Central Administration website. It is found by following: Central Administration > Operations > Incoming Email Settings

-SMTP Connector
You will finally need to configure an SMTP connector within your email server so it knows where to send emails you designate for SharePoint.

Pre Requisites
· SMTP service to be installed

Enabling incoming/outgoing email for SharePoint/MOSS 2007 is done thru SharePoint Central Administration under Operations Section.

How-to configure incoming or outgoing e-mail in sharepoint video is available here

Pre-requisites are available here

Introduction to Excel Services in SharePoint and Components

Components of Excel Services in MOSS
Excel Services is a Microsoft Office SharePoint technology that makes it simple to use, share, secure, and manage Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbooks as interactive reports in a consistent way throughout the enterprise.

We can also create custom connectable web parts to Excel OOB web parts for having custom functionality.

1. Excel Web Access
This allows the to display excel sheets on the web page. The Excel can be shown in sharePoint page as a web part.

2. Excel Web Services
Use SharePoint Excel API to manipulate excel sheet data. But these APIs are not used create an excel sheet dynamically.

3. Excel Calculation Services
Allows you to load excel sheets on the web page (as HTML) and render calculated data fro the User defined functions.

Limitations of Excel Services

• Will not load excel files with VBA Low fidelity.
• Charts in excel will have low fidelity.
• Users cannot add or rearrange fields in pivot reports using web access.
• No authoring support

To learn more about configuring excel services in Sharepoint Click here

A splash page in MOSS

A splash page can be a useful method of providing users with information on the first visit to a web site. When the main page of the SharePoint site is navigated to by a user for the first time a different page is presented. This could provide a welcome note or current information – anything that should be seen once by a user, and then not again.

the creation and configuring splash page is available here

Configuring User Profiles in Sharepoint from Active directory

User profile is configured through SharePoint Shared Service provider (SSP).

The below steps describes the configuration of user profiles from Active directory

1. Create a SSP using Central Administration of sharepoint, if not available already.

2. Access SSP for sharepoint server from Central Administration

3. Access user profiles and properties from the Next screen

4. Click ‘View Import Connections’ from below screen

5. Choose ‘Create Connection’ to create a master connection to Active Directory

6. Enter type as Active Directoty and Enter Domain name and click ‘Auto Fill Root Search Base button’ from next screen

7. Make sure that the ‘Authentication Information’ has ‘Default Account’ selected

8. If the application requires incrmental import, then make sure that the ‘Enable server Side Incremental’ is checked to support incremental imports.

9. Then create the connection.

10. Once the connection is created from active directory, start full import using the below screen

Showing the page fields/Controls only in edit mode of the page

To show the fields only in the Edit mode of the page, add the controls in the following node by editing the page layout using SharePoint designer
layoutPublishingWebControls:EditModePanel

Steps to Configure Multiple Languages in MOSS

Step 1: Install the language files on all WFE Operating Systems
This step is necessary to install the language specific files for the operating system like the Keyboard files and fonts etc. For this, go to the Regional and Language Options in the Control Panel , in the Languages tab, add the necessary supplemental language support which installs the necessary files needed

Step 2: Install Office SharePoint Server 2007
Install MOSS in the desired language and run the SharePoint Products and Technologies configuration wizard.

Step 3: Install Language Packs
Now you need to install the language pack of the desired language. Please note that language packs come in separate packages i.e. one language pack setup per installation, so if you need more than one language, multiple language packs need to be installed. Make sure the language pack is of the same language you need and you are installing the 'MOSS language pack' and not one of the 'WSS language packs'

Step 4: Rerun the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard
This should be done with the default options selected.
As soon as you successfully install a language pack in a particular language, a folder with the respective language ID is created in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\template\
For example: If you are currently running the English version of MOSS then you 1033 under this folder

Step 5: Create the site with the new language
You should notice that the site creation wizard now includes another option to select the language to create the site in.

Step 6: Enable Site Variations
Go to Site Settings->Site Collection Administration
Click 'Variations' .Select '/' to create variations for the top level site
Leave all other options to default settings and Click 'OK'

Step 7: Configure Variation Labels
Go to Site Settings->Site Collection Administration
Click 'Variation Labels'
On the' Variation Labels' screen, click 'New Label' and create an English label

Step 8: Create Hierarchies
On the' Variation Labels' screen, click 'Create Hierarchies'
The wizard automatically creates hierarchies for sites and sub sites and pairs them as well.

Step 9: View the Variation Log
Go to Site Settings->Site Collection Administration
Click 'Variation Logs'
Look at the Variation Log Entries and find the pairing of sites

Step 10: Change the Browser Language and view the site in different languages
Now as the variation hierarchy is created, you can view the site in different languages (English and Arabic) in our case. For this, use the URLs you saw in the Variation Log .
One more thing to note is that if you use the default URL of the site, you will be redirected to the variation that corresponds to the default language of the browser. Try changing the browser language to Arabic and check. This shows that you can redirect different users to the same site in different languages based on user preferences.

Step 11: Edit the Page in source language and observe the results
You are now ready to go with multilingual sites created in MOSS. Try to add some content to the content editor web part by using the Edit Page option. After the change, don't forget to Publish.

Configuring MOSS Enterprise Search step by step

MOSS Enterprise Search setting are done thru Shared Services Provider(SSP).

Enterprise Search Enables Search in
· Install and Configure iFilters, Content Sources, File Shares, Crawl Rules and Search Scopes
· People Search
· BDC Search
Step 1: We can have separate Index server and Search Server. This Security settings is done at Index server and Search Server.

Farm Search Service Account to from Admin group and WSS_ADMIN_WPG group

Step 2: Start Index Service in Index Server. Check the option "Use this Server for Indexing Content"

Step 3: Enable Office SharePoint Server Search. Check the Option "Use this Server for Serving Search queries"

Step 4: Start Windows SharePoint Services Search. This enables help to Enterprise search.

Step 5: Create an SSP (shared Services Provider).

Step 6: Navigate to newly created SSP and then click Search Settings.
· Configure content Sources. It may be Sites, SQL Server DB etc.
· Add Crawl Rules.
· Add file types if required. You can add pdf files here by installing iFilter pdf. Also u can set Image Icons.

Step 7: If any crawl rule is added,go to Content Sources and do "Start full Crawl". Optional Step.

Step 8: Metadata property Mappings to map crawl property and Data. This is also an optional step.

Step 9: You can define new search scopes and configure the Target Search Page and rules.

Step 10: At the site Collection level, we can add Search Keywords and Best bets

Step 11: We can add tabs for Search Page

Step12: To get the Search Related web parts, Office SharePoint Server Search Web Parts feature should be activated in MOSS site collection features.

Configuring user profiles in Sharepoint Central administration SSP

MOSS gets the user profiles information for the MOSS sites. Navigate to the Central Administration of the MOSS server and Open SSP(Shared Service Provider).

· User profile is configured through SharePoint Shared Service provider.
· Each SharePoint site can be mapped to an SSP in Central Admin
User profiles can be imported from
· Active directory through master connection. Configuring the user profiles from Activie directory http://mosstouch.blogspot.com/2009/03/configuring-user-profiles-in-sharepoint.html
· External Database through Business Data catalog (BDC).
Each user profile property has a data source that maps to AD or DB thru BDC. We need application definition file to map to External DB