Keith O Hudson

You can use Sharepoint Designer to build a workflow that is fired manually, or automatically for new list items, or automatically for all changed items.

When I first started developing in Sharepoint, I read a lot about workflows, but had a very hard time finding anyone who knew how to build workflows in Sharepoint Designer (one developer told me you can’t do math calculations in an SPD workflow. Wrong!) and an even harder time finding out how to do the most basic tasks in SPD, so here are the basics for getting started:

1. Download and install Sharepoint Designer (SPD) (it is available free for either Sharepoint 2007 or Sharepoint 2010).

2.  Launch SPD.

3.  Connect to your site.  (File/Open Site –> then put your site name into the Site Name: text box in the format http://www.mysharepointsite.com/). You will need to provide your credentials. Its a good idea to ask Windows to remember your credentials, as they may be requested several times during a session.

4. Start a new workflow.  File/New/Workflow.  NOTE that if you hover over the NEW menu item, you can select Workflow from the shortcut menu that comes up.  If you click on NEW, you will need to navigate to the Sharepoint Content tab and select Workflow/Blank Workflow. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who, like me, are always looking for ways to “streamline” your budget (that is, reduce it), here are a couple of hints for cutting down the cost of doing laundry.

I’ve been told that the principal source of cleaning in an automatic washing machine is the agitation of the clothes, not the laundry detergent. Apparently, detergent manufacturers are very “generous” when they recommend how much laundry detergent you should add per load, and you can cut it down to 1/2 or even 1/4 of the recommended amount and still have your clothes come out fresh and clean.

For the past several months, I’ve been using 1/4 the amount of laundry detergent I used to, and have not noticed any difference in cleanliness or scent of my clothes.  My wife uses 1/2 her prior amount — she’s not as stingy as I am — and is pleased with the results.

When I began cutting down on laundry detergent, I also started cutting the dryer sheets I use in half.  It only takes a minute to cut the entire stack of dryer sheets in half when I buy a new box, and each box lasts twice as long, again without any noticeable difference in my clothes.

Laundry may not be a big expense, but every little bit of savings adds up.

To my great dismay, I am finding that almost no one, even sharepoint consultants and sharepoint hosting providers, understand the difference between a subsite and a site collection, and why it should matter.

In Sharepoint 2007 and 2010, a Site Collection is a collection of sites sharing a common set of permissions, content types, and site columns. It was also the case in Sharepoint 2003, but according to this blog, Sharepoint 2003 hid that fact from users so they were actually using Site Collections without knowing it.

A Site Owner can break inheritance and thus manage site permissions individually on subsites, and there are sometimes good reasons to do so.  However, in a test or development environment , I would argue that it is NEVER advisable to break inheritance and have mixed permissions within a Site Collection, unless it is absolutely unavoidable for the solution you are developing.

Here’s why.  Content Type, Site Columns and Permissions are all handled by Sharepoint at the Site Collection level.  If someone working on Subsite A makes a mistake and makes unwanted changes to a Content Type or Site Column within Subsite A, those changes affect all the other subsites within that collection as well.  To return Subsite A to its default state and start over, it would be necessary to delete ALL the subsites, and recreate the entire Site Collection.

If each project is housed within its own Site Collection, such mistakes (very easy to make for someone learning Sharepoint’s out of the box features) are relatively easy to correct.

Of course, a developer who doesn’t know how to use Site Columns and custom Content Types from the Sharepoint GUI may not have this problem, but then, he or she is probably building a solution that will require you to bring a developer back in to fix the solution next time you apply a patch or upgrade to a new version of Sharepoint.

Just my opinion.  What do you think?

A week or so ago, I referred to a blog post by Shaun Young (http://tinyurl.com/GoodConsultant – opens in new window) in which he pointed out that many Sharepoint consultants don’t know what Sharepoint can really do, and end up reinventing the wheel.  I’ve decided I will start a collection of these instances when I run across them, and report them as Sharepoint Blunders — trying to do something in code that can be done through the Sharepoint GUI, for instance.

Here’s the first blunder for my collection.  While hunting for some hints on customizing Calendar lists, I came across a blog article (opens in new window) in which the author tells how to modify the Event content type in a Calendar list, to allow for different kinds of events (Event, Playgroup and Program, in his case). Read the rest of this entry »

From 1999 to 2010, I worked at America West Airlines (now US Airways), mostly as a contracts manager for IT contracts. For two years after the merger I did process reengineering to bring some of the pre-merger processes together. During my time at AWA/USA, I have been passionate about trying to streamline and automate business processes to the greatest extent possible, mostly using Microsoft Access. I operated on the principle that computers are powerful tools, and if a business task is capable of being performed by a computer, we shouldn’t have a human doing it. Read the rest of this entry »

In May 2008, Shane Young wrote a blog on The Sharepoint Farmer’s Almanac asking this very question.  (You can read it at http://tinyurl.com/GoodConsultant)  He points out the importance of the “soft side” of Sharepoint – things like usability, design, taxonomy, business analysis, user adoption, and discovery. Then comes his rant:

“<RANT> Now here comes the part that annoys me the most. If you don’t know most everything SharePoint can do out of box then don’t speak to another customer until you do! Read the rest of this entry »

From January 1999 to June 2010, I worked at America West Airlines (now US Airways), mostly as a contracts manager for the IT contracts. For two years right after the merger (2006, 2007) I did process re-engineering to bring some of the pre-merger processes together. During my entire time at AWA/USA, I have been passionate about trying to streamline and automate business processes to the greatest extent possible given the tools available, which included primarily mail merge, macros and Microsoft Access. I love computers, and I reasoned that if a business task is capable of being performed by a computer, we shouldn’t have a human doing it. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know you can edit incoming email messages in Outlook 2003? This can be very handy for keeping your inbox organized, or for making notes when reviewing an incoming email.

If you want to edit the subject line, you simply put your cursor anywhere in the existing subject line, then make whatever additions or deletions you wish to make. Click on File/Save on the top line menu to save your changes. To edit the body of the email, you must first select Edit/Edit Message from the top line menu. After you are done editing, make sure you save your changes.

I’m currently working on a project to download and organize pictures sent to me by email. When I’ve downloaded the pictures from an email, I add the word “DONE” to the subject line so I know I’ve finished saving the pictures from that email to my hard drive. After I have sent a message back to the sender, I add the word “Replied” to the subject line, so I know I have already answered the sender to thank them for their pictures.

I have often edited the body of an email to add a note to myself about action I need to take, or information I’ll need when replying to the sender, etc.

HINT: Make sure if you have edited the subject line or body before replying to the email, that you remove the edits when you reply if you don’t want the sender seeing them.

Do you hate the numbering feature in Microsoft Word like I used to?  I’ve had a longstanding love-hate relationship with it.  I love the idea that once I’ve set up numbering, when a document is changed, new sections added or existing sections deleted, the numbering will automatically adjust. I find it much easier to discuss a long document with others by phone when every paragaph is numbered. 

However, it seems that just when I’ve got things numbered the way I want, I make a change to something in the document (like removing bolding on a word) and the entire numbering system changes. I call it Word Numbering Hell.

After struggling for a couple of hours with numbering a document yesterday, I found an article by Shauna Kelly that showed me how to escape Word Numbering Hell, by using numbered headings.  It takes a little work to set up the first time, but it simplifies numbering immensely and makes it reliable, as well as giving you complete control over your document. Thank you Shauna!