Chapter 17

Integrating Office Clients with SharePoint

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER

• What Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 share in common
• Integrating the various Office clients
• Managing Office 2013 through Group Policy

Although technologies like SkyDrive and other cloud-sharing systems are being used by an increasing number of organizations, some workers are still sending documents over e-mail. Even though it is better than using “sneakernet,” this practice still creates confusion. With multiple versions of a document floating around, who has the latest version? Who is working on the document? Who made changes? Sending documents this way also causes wasted space on e-mail servers. Consider the cumulative effect of a few people sending a document back and forth four or five times. That is a significant amount of wasted space and efficiency. Compare all that effort to having one, version-controlled copy of the file that anyone can edit and easily track, in one place, and the answer is clear. SharePoint integration with Office can save you time and money.

One of the biggest advantages that SharePoint has over any other collaboration platform is its integration with Microsoft Office; and as long as Office reigns supreme over the information worker’s desktop, SharePoint will be king of the collaboration platforms. Interestingly, although most users know that this integration exists, very few can identify exact integration points or take the time to explore the depths of this integration. This chapter provides a close look at the fun and helpful things you can do when you combine Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013.

WHAT OFFICE 2013 AND SHAREPOINT 2013 SHARE IN COMMON

With the exception of the Backstage view, the look of Office has largely remained the same since 2007. The Ribbon interface provides a common set of menus that apply to all applications in the Office suite. Once you are familiar with it, you can use any of the products with ease. Simply put: learn it once, use it everywhere. To that end, many of the SharePoint collaboration features reside in the same place across the Office applications. There are also a multitude of points where Office and SharePoint interact with each other. If a user would like to upload a document, edit a document, or tag an existing document, these tasks can easily be done without ever leaving the client application.

Office 2013 also includes the Office Upload Center. As its name suggests, Upload Center acts as the intermediary between Office and SharePoint. When you save a file destined for SharePoint, Upload Center handles the transfer and alerts you to any errors.

SkyDrive Pro users have the capability to click the Sync button in SharePoint libraries, making the documents available offline in Windows Explorer. Office 2013’s Backstage view is also integrated with SkyDrive Pro, enabling users to save documents to their SharePoint MySite, for example.

This section describes how you can get the most out of Office 2013 collaboration and integration. The first part covers connecting to SharePoint from within Office, and the second covers connecting to Office from within SharePoint 2013.

Connecting to SharePoint from within Microsoft Office 2013 Applications

For many employees, working with Office documents is a fundamental part of doing their job — they are living inside of Word and Excel documents. When those documents reside inside of a SharePoint document library, the burden of managing and storing them is eliminated. Better yet, with Office 2013 (and to a lesser extent Office 2010), users can enjoy the added advantage of live co-authoring. No more worrying about who currently has “the document” — everyone can do their part at the same time.

Live Co-Authoring

Introduced in Office 2010, live co-authoring enables multiple users to work on the same document in near real time without having to check it in or out. Checking out a document can be a work stopper because it locks the document exclusively for the user who checked it out, preventing anyone else from editing it. Because live co-authoring bypasses checkouts, it can greatly increase productivity. It also offers a number of collaboration features. For example, a handy Send a Message feature enables a user to send an e-mail or instant message to everyone working on the document, making it easy to share ideas or corrections. When a collaborator saves the document it is saved back to SharePoint, and shortly after that all the other collaborators will see an updated icon, letting them know the document has been updated. Each user’s changes are saved back to SharePoint and reflected in the open version of the other users.

To understand how this looks in the real world, suppose your department is responsible for writing a section of a Microsoft Word document that describes the process of adding new employees to the company’s IT systems. Your section of the document deals with adding the new hire’s personal information into the company’s Active Directory, while your co-worker’s section covers granting the proper permissions in the company’s SharePoint site collections. When either of you starts typing, a dotted outline bracket appears on the left side of the paragraph you have started. This indicates that the paragraph is locked, and other users will see the locked paragraph on their documents. Your locked paragraph will appear as a solid bracket, with your username next to it for the other editors. See Figure 17-1 for an example of what the editor sees and Figure 17-2 for what the other author(s) sees. When the document is saved and refreshed, all changes from other users will be highlighted, so you can easily identify what changed. Changes can also be reviewed with Word’s comparison feature, which is covered in detail later in the chapter.

FIGURE 17-1

FIGURE 17-2

Determining When a Document Is Being Actively Co-Authored

When a document is being edited from a SharePoint document library, the Save button changes. The icon will include a pair of green “refresh” arrows, as shown in Figure 17-3. This means the document is being co-authored.

FIGURE 17-3

An icon also appears in the status bar at the bottom of the screen, indicating the number of users currently editing the document, as shown in Figure 17-4. Clicking the people icon will display a list of the users’ names. Each name is clickable and can be expanded to display more information about the person, with various ways to contact them. Figure 17-5 shows Grant Young expanded.

FIGURE 17-4

FIGURE 17-5

When a user clicks Save, all other collaborators are notified in the lower-right corner that updates are available. Clicking the notification shown in Figure 17-6 refreshes the document to the newest version.

FIGURE 17-6

As users have the updates added to their document, they are highlighted in green so the changes are easily located. (Hopefully you are a fan of green.)

Live Co-Authoring Compatibility with Other Office Versions

The release of Office 2013 means that there could now be users accessing documents with Office 2007, Office 2010, and Office 2013. Users with Office 2007 should definitely upgrade if possible; otherwise, they will be missing out on a key feature of SharePoint. In fact, lacking this capability can actually hinder users of Office versions prior to Office 2010. When a user opens a document from SharePoint with Office 2007, SharePoint creates a lock on the document that prevents other users from using co-authoring or editing that document. Additionally, documents saved in an Office 2007 format and uploaded to SharePoint cannot be co-authored either.

Backstage View

Retained from Office 2010, all Microsoft Office 2013 applications offer what is called the Backstage view. This feature replaced the old “File” menu from Office 2007. It includes a ton of extra information about the file as well as a few buttons for interacting with SharePoint.

Of the many tabs it offers, the most useful for SharePoint users is the Info tab. The Info tab stores vital information about the file, including the file’s name and location. Most of the information on this tab either interacts with or consumes data from SharePoint. Figure 17-7 shows the Info tab while not connected to SharePoint, whereas Figure 17-8 shows the Info tab while connected. Notice that while connected to SharePoint you get much more information, including the list of current editors if co-authoring, and additional metadata properties. The Department and Status properties pull their data directly from the SharePoint document library columns. To get all of the properties to show, click the text Show All properties at the bottom of the screen. The following list describes the sections of the Info tab:

FIGURE 17-7

FIGURE 17-8

• People Currently Editing — This section is displayed only if the document is being actively co-authored. The names of any users working on the document are displayed here.
• Send a Message — This section is displayed only if the document is being actively co-authored. Selecting the drop-down provides two options: one to send an e-mail message to the other editors, and another to start an instant messaging session with everyone editing the document.
• Protect Document — This section contains a number of features. Mark as Final lets readers know the document is done with the editing process. The status for the document is set to final, and all typing, editing commands, and proofing marks are turned off. The document is also set to read-only. When a user opens the document, a notification in the upper-left-hand corner indicates that the document has been marked final. Restrict Editing allows document authors to limit what types of edits can be made to a file. Restrict Access is an option related to SharePoint’s support of digital rights management (DRM) through Active Directory Services. DRM is outside the scope of this book; but if you have set it up, SharePoint will honor the settings specified here.
• Versions and Check Out — This provides a quick date- and time-stamped list of the last 10 local versions of the document. An expanded list can be accessed by clicking the link Show All Versions at the bottom. Clicking Manage Versions will retrieve the latest version information from SharePoint and compare the open document with the last version on the SharePoint server, or the most recent major version. Note that document library versioning must be turned on in order to look at previous versions of the document.

The Share tab offers various methods to publish the document without necessarily using SharePoint. This is useful for collaborating with individuals who might not have access to the SharePoint farm:

• Invite People — With this option you can save your document out to your SkyDrive. Once saved, you will be prompted to provide the information for people with whom you would like to share the document. The sharing functionality that is native to SkyDrive Office is just taking advantage of it.
• E-mail — When this option is selected, a number of additional options are displayed, explaining the difference between sending the file as an e-mail attachment versus sending a link to the SharePoint document. As stated at the beginning of the chapter, when users understand the benefit of keeping files inside SharePoint, collaboration becomes much more efficient.
• Present Online — This feature allows you to share Word and PowerPoint documents across the internet using the Office Presentation Service. The great thing is, assuming you have a Microsoft account, it just works. Once you begin presenting you just need to share the provided link.
• Publish as Blog Post — This option provides the capability to publish the document to a SharePoint blog. It is covered in more detail later in the chapter in the “Blogging with Microsoft Word” section.

Taking a Look at the Document Panel

In Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the document panel enables you to view the metadata associated with the file, from within the application. Metadata refers to the properties associated with each file in a document library. Columns in document libraries are considered metadata, and contain information about each file, such as Created, Created By, and Modified (just three of several standard metadata columns associated with a default document library). You can add custom metadata to libraries simply by creating new columns.

For an example of the use of metadata, consider a document library that contains company policies. This document library has a metadata column called “Department.” When a file is added to the library, it can be associated with a department by picking the appropriate department name in the column. This information can also be added in the document panel in Microsoft Word.

Figure 17-9 shows the Document Properties panel for a document titled, A neat document title. The metadata fields associated with the document library “Title”, “Department”, and “Status” are shown, and are editable from within Word.

FIGURE 17-9

If the current user does not have at least Contributor permissions on the target document within SharePoint, the document information panel will be displayed in read-only mode.

By default, the document information panel is not displayed when documents are opened. To view it, follow these steps:

When the Document Panel window is shown on the main screen, you can click the Document Properties drop-down in the upper-left corner to switch between different views of the properties. Each view contains different data about the document.

To enable the document panel to display automatically when a document is opened, you can modify the settings for the SharePoint document library. This can be done either through SharePoint Designer 2013 or from a browser by editing the document library’s settings. Both methods are discussed next.

Displaying the Document Panel Using the Browser

The following steps illustrate how to use the browser to configure the document panel to appear. You will need the appropriate SharePoint permissions (most likely designer level or greater) to do the following tasks. If you are using the default SharePoint groups you would need to be in the Owners group:

Displaying the Document Panel Using SharePoint Designer 2013

These steps require that SharePoint Designer 2013 has been downloaded and installed on a client machine that can access the SharePoint farm via the Internet. For more information on SharePoint Designer, see Chapter 18. The price still hasn’t changed (free), so you might as well embrace it. As with the previous section you need the appropriate permissions to perform the following steps:

Connecting to Office 2013 from SharePoint 2013

Each library and list in SharePoint 2013 can be connected to the logged-in user’s Office client software. From a library, there is a Connect & Export section of the contextual Ribbon inside the Library tab, as shown in Figure 17-10.

FIGURE 17-10

Depending on the current type of list or library, different options will appear in this area:

• Sync Library to Computer — This option enables users to create a synchronized copy of the library on their local workstation using SkyDrive Pro 2013, which is a desktop application included with Office 2013. The library will appear under Favorites in Windows Explorer on the user’s local workstation. This option should be used with caution; document libraries can become very large, so syncing large document libraries could potently fill user hard drives. Another consideration is bandwidth; a user attempting to sync over a VPN, for example, could bog down the network for other users.
• Connect to Office — This option creates shortcuts inside Office applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, enabling users to quickly save files into connected document libraries. This is very similar to bookmarking a page in a browser. The shortcuts appear in the Backstage view inside the Office application. This option is grayed out unless the User Profile Sync Service and My Sites have been configured in the farm, both of which are covered in Chapter 14, “Configuring User Profiles and Social Computing.”
• Connect to Outlook — In SharePoint, certain types of lists and libraries can be added to Outlook. This means that the item will be added as a linked location inside the Outlook client. Once connected, items appear under the heading “SharePoint Lists” at the bottom of Outlook’s folder view. Document libraries, task lists, contacts, calendars, and discussion boards are a few examples of what can be connected. You can access and edit connected list items without ever leaving Outlook. If you need to get to the SharePoint document library, you can do so by right-clicking the list and selecting Open in Web Browser.

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  NOTE This feature doesn’t always work smoothly. For instance, in order to avoid having to log in each time Outlook attempts to sync you may have to add the SharePoint site to your trusted sites. If you are using single sign-on you might have to create a custom security level to force the “Automatic Logon with current user name and password” authentication option. In general, adjustments on the browser side may be needed to smooth out the process and allow you to get the most out of the feature.

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• Export to Excel — This option enables you to export the current list to an Excel spreadsheet. It takes both the data in the list and the column values as well. This is useful when you want to perform a deeper analysis of the data, or when a static list needs to be sent outside the organization.
• Open in Project — This option is available in task lists. It enables you to schedule tasks and create reports in Microsoft Project. Changes made inside of project will be synced to the list.
• Open with Access — This handy integration functionality enables you to connect a SharePoint list to Microsoft Access. When this is done, the live SharePoint list data is available as a table in an Access database.

Now that some of the more common integration features have been covered, the rest of this chapter details each of the Microsoft Office 2013 applications as they relate to SharePoint.

INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2013 WITH WORD 2013

Microsoft Word 2013 is used for document creation and editing, and it has its own set of unique integration points with SharePoint. This section covers the following Word capabilities:

• Comparing document versions
• Document barcodes
• Quick Parts
• Blogging

Comparing Document Versions

From the Review tab in Word, you can compare various versions of a document to one another. In order to make use of this feature, versioning must be enabled on the document library. By default, versioning is not enabled. Follow these steps to enable versioning:

To view the file’s version information from within SharePoint, click the ellipsis next to a document. In the fly-out menu, click the ellipsis and choose Version History. The version history shows file version numbers with the dates and names of the users who modified them. Previous versions can be opened, but sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly what was changed in the document, especially if it’s a large document or only minor changes were made. In situations like this, Word’s compare feature can be used to view both versions side by side, which makes finding the changes easy.

In Word, open a document from a SharePoint document library. Click the Review tab, and select Compare. Figure 17-11 shows the options to compare specific versions to each other, or even combine versions.

FIGURE 17-11

When versions are compared side by side, the differences are indicated in red, making it readily apparent what the differences between the two versions are. You would have to look at who saved a given version to find the culprit for those changes you don’t like.

Working with Document Barcodes

The Information Management Policy settings in SharePoint have several capabilities, but the main one related to Office integration is the capability to insert barcodes into documents. Barcodes are often part of a records management strategy, and are used when your document management solution requires that unique barcodes must be associated with, and inserted into, each document.

Barcodes are one aspect of records management. Many companies still need to have hard copies of documents, such as a law office. In this case, documents are created using Word and uploaded to SharePoint for storage. Assuming both the court and the client need copies for their records, how can the law office link the physical document, which can be moved from one file cabinet to another, while at the same time keep track of its electronic counterpart? Barcodes can be a good solution, by assigning a unique barcode to any document uploaded to SharePoint. The assigned barcode can be configured to display on the document when it’s printed out.

Barcodes policies can be set up at the site collection level, or on an individual document library. Follow these steps to enable the barcode functionality for a library:

Now that you have barcodes enabled you can view them from Word using the Info tab. There is a section called Information Management Policy where you will find relevant information.

Using Quick Parts

Quick Parts in Word are fields that you can insert into your document that will display document metadata from SharePoint within your document. This is really useful when data needs to stay with the document, especially when printed. To put it another way, Quick Parts add context to documents. Let’s say you are in charge of training new hires. Typically, such employees receive some sort of handbook with a printed list of policies or other information. Policies can change quickly, so how can you tell if a policy in the handbook is outdated and needs to be reprinted? Quick Parts can help solve this problem.

Using Quick Parts, you can add a field to the document that will display the last date and time the document was modified. This can be done anywhere in the document. For this example, the footer section in a Word document is used:

The date will be refreshed automatically from SharePoint the next time the document is opened. If you wanted to take this a step further, you could also include the full name or username of the last person to update the document. Follow the same procedure just outlined and select LastSavedBy as the field name. Figure 17-12 shows an example of a useful footer you can easily construct using this technique.

FIGURE 17-12

The Quick Parts feature opens the door to a nearly unlimited number of automation options and the creation of custom solutions. Unfortunately, a deep dive into their use is outside the scope of this book.

Blogging in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word can be used to easily create and post blog entries right into SharePoint and other types of blogging software. This section covers the Word 2013 blog integration with SharePoint 2013. Here is a list of some blogging terminology to be aware of:

• Blog post — A post is your content, which can be about anything. Some posts are personal, some are educational, and sometimes they are just a simple rant. Typically, posts are displayed chronologically, with the most recent entry displayed first.
• Blog site – This is the location on the web where the blog resides and the posts can be viewed. A uniform resource locator (URL) is associated with the blog; for example, http://portal.contoso.com/sites/IT-Blog. SharePoint provides a template that enables you to quickly and easily get your own blog up and running.
• Blog account – The account is the URL and user account information associated with the blog site. Out of the box, Word supports the following blog provider options: Blogger, SharePoint blog, Telligent Community, TypePad, WordPress, and Other. If you choose Other, you need to provide the connection information and then cross your fingers that Word can handle it.

To quickly create a new blog site in SharePoint, follow these steps:

Once the blog is set up, you’re ready to add your first blog post. Open Word and create a new document. When the post is ready, go to Backstage view and click the Share tab. Select Publish as a Blog Post. If this is your first blog post from Word, you’ll be prompted to register your blog account.

To set up your account, follow these steps:

A confirmation date and time stamp will be displayed on the document to let you know publishing was successful. Congratulations on your first blog post! Go to the SharePoint site and check it out.

There is yet another way to create a new SharePoint blog post in Word. On the blog site in SharePoint, there is a set of links called Blog tools on the right side of the page, which is visible only to content owners and editors. Click Launch blogging app and Word will open in Web Layout view with a blank blog post.

If you have an existing Word document that was not created as a blog post, it can still be published to a blog. Follow these steps:

Now that you see how easy it is to blog, thanks to the power of SharePoint and Word, you have no excuses. Start blogging. No matter how trivial you might think the information you are sharing is, chances are someone else out there doesn’t know it and would like to. Even just blogging all the error messages you encounter in a day and the fix you used makes for great information and could save someone trouble.

INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2013 WITH EXCEL

This section describes the ways in which Excel 2013 is integrated with SharePoint 2013. You will learn about importing from and exporting to SharePoint 2013, displaying charts, and a little bit about Excel Services. You can find additional details about Excel Services in Chapter 8, “Configuring SharePoint for Business Intelligence.”

Importing Spreadsheets into SharePoint

The capability to import spreadsheet data into SharePoint is very powerful, enabling workers to be more efficient in their daily tasks. Any properly formatted Excel spreadsheet can be imported into SharePoint as a new custom list. If you can simply upload a spreadsheet into a document library and take turns with other users checking it out and working on it, why would you want to import the spreadsheet? What is the difference?

The difference is quite significant. Consider a scenario in which managers are tasked with entering their sales figures in a shared spreadsheet every day. If that spreadsheet is in a document library, the managers must take turns checking it out, adding their sales numbers, and remembering to check it back in. Conversely, when the spreadsheet is imported as a custom list in SharePoint instead, users are simply creating new items in the same list. Besides the obvious efficiency gain, a benefit of working in a SharePoint list is the capability to use SharePoint alerts. Once the data has been collected, it can still be exported back out to spreadsheet format if needed.

Because column headings will become SharePoint list column names, it’s a good idea to keep these short. Keep in mind that if a more descriptive column heading is needed, there is a Description field associated with each SharePoint column that can be used for further clarification to end users. Column A in the spreadsheet will become the Title column in the SharePoint list, so it is a good idea to use a Text field as this first column before importing.

Another way to move data from Excel to SharePoint is from within Excel. Select the spreadsheet’s data region, click the Format as Table button, and pick a style. From this new table, click the Design tab in the Ribbon. The Export button provides the option to Export Table to SharePoint List.

Exporting to Excel

As mentioned earlier in the section, “Connecting to Office 2013 from SharePoint 2013,” lists and libraries contain an Export to Excel button that you can use to export the current view to Excel. To access this feature, click the List or Library tab in SharePoint’s Ribbon. Export to Excel is located in the Connect & Export section of the Ribbon. This feature provides a convenient way to do a deeper analysis of items contained in the list or library. The way this works is a new spreadsheet is created with a link back to the SharePoint list. This way the data in the spreadsheet can be refreshed with the latest SharePoint data at any time.

Displaying Charts

The Chart Web Part from SharePoint 2010 is no longer available. If you used the Chart Web Part in SharePoint Server 2010, you will need to use an other SharePoint functionality, such as Excel Services (see next section) or the new PowerView, to display a chart in a SharePoint site.

Using the Excel Web Access Web Part

Users of SharePoint Enterprise Edition have access to the Excel Web Access Web Part as part of Excel Services. This Web Part can be used to display data from within a spreadsheet that has been uploaded to a SharePoint document library, as shown in Figure 17-13.

FIGURE 17-13

You can display the entire spreadsheet or just specific portions of it such as ranges and charts. When interactivity is enabled in the Web Part properties, users can work with the spreadsheet directly in the browser. Some interactivity functions include sorting and filtering.

INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2013 WITH POWERPOINT

PowerPoint. No other Microsoft application has ever evoked more feelings of fear and dread, in everyone from college students to CEOs. Nearly all of us are familiar with the annoying experience of watching someone bring up a PowerPoint slide with three paragraphs worth of text and then proceed to read every word verbatim.

However, a well-done presentation in PowerPoint links individual slides together into a cohesive flow of information that complements what is being discussed. This section covers the ways in which PowerPoint 2013 and SharePoint 2013 are integrated. Live co-authoring, which is covered earlier in the chapter, is also available in PowerPoint presentations, enabling multiple users to work on the same presentation. Each user’s currently edited slide is locked from editing by the other users, which helps prevent three unwanted paragraphs of text from turning up on the slide you’re working on, at least until the next user gets hold of it.

Working with Slide Libraries

Slide libraries were introduced in SharePoint 2007 and continued to be awesome in 2010 but like those parachute pants from your youth they went out of style. Thankfully, unlike parachute pants, Microsoft pulled them off the shelf. This feature has been removed from SharePoint 2013 with no ready replacement to suggest. Sorry.

Broadcasting Slides

This feature has been discontinued in SharePoint 2013. The reasoning from Microsoft is that hosting and broadcasting PowerPoint presentations can be done more effectively outside of SharePoint 2013. They recommend using other applications, such as Lync 2013. PowerPoint is still capable of broadcasting presentations over the public web using the Office Presentation Service, which is free but requires a Live ID. If you look under the Share tab of Backstage view, you will see the Present Online option.

INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2013 WITH OUTLOOK

As nearly all readers will know, Outlook is Microsoft’s e-mail management program, integrating e-mail with personal lists such as contacts, calendars, and tasks. With Outlook 2013, you can find and view information, customize your user interface, and connect to SharePoint and other social media networks. This section focuses specifically on the ways in which Outlook 2013 is used with SharePoint 2013.

In particular, it describes how to manage SharePoint alerts from Outlook, the types of SharePoint lists and libraries that can be connected to Outlook, and how you can integrate Exchange calendars with SharePoint calendars in the browser.

Managing SharePoint Alerts

In SharePoint, alerts are e-mail notifications that are set up by end users, in document libraries and lists. When alerts are set up, automatic e-mails arrive when list items are added or changed, and at the frequency that the user specifies. Users can manage all of their own alerts on various SharePoint sites from a single location in Microsoft Outlook.

To view and/or create an alert, execute the following steps:

Connecting SharePoint Lists and Libraries to Outlook

Many types of SharePoint lists and libraries can be connected to Outlook for interactivity from within the Outlook client software. Using Outlook for e-mail is a standard part of life for many people, so the convenient accessibility of SharePoint data in Outlook is yet another way that Office and SharePoint integration drives efficiency. The following types of lists and libraries can be connected to Outlook:

• Calendars
• Tasks
• Project tasks
• Contacts
• Discussion boards
• Document libraries
• Individual document sets
• Picture libraries

In the Library or List tab in the Ribbon (depending on whether it’s a library or a list), each of these types of lists has a Connect to Outlook button. Users can click this button to link their own Outlook client to SharePoint. When this is done, a new PST file is automatically created on the client hard drive, called SharePoint Lists.pst. Take a look at Outlook’s Folder view, which usually has this file as the last PST at the bottom. Items in these SharePoint lists are synchronized and editable from either SharePoint or Outlook 2013.

All lists and libraries connected to Outlook are actually full, offline copies of the libraries in their entirety. From a client support perspective, this could be a nightmare. Imagine end users clicking the Connect to Outlook button for document libraries with hundreds of files in them. Those hundreds of files are then copied to the PST on that client hard drive. SharePoint 2013 enables site administrators to avoid this scenario by setting Offline Client Availability. Follow these steps to disable the offline availability of a library:

When offline availability is turned off, the Connect to Outlook button in the library is grayed out and disabled. If clients have already created offline copies of the library, they will still exist as disconnected but they will not receive any further updates from the library.

Other than completely blocking users from downloading offline copies of the libraries to Outlook, two other options are available, although they entail giving a bit of guidance to library owners and contributors:

• Teach users the practice of setting up multiple document libraries on each site, as opposed to one large one. A good way to carry this out would be when the site is provisioned. Create new sites with no default document libraries, and instruct the new site owner to create new, separate libraries for different topics.
• Use document sets, which enable you to group similar documents together. Multiple document sets can be created in each document library. One of the great things about document sets is that the set itself can be connected to Outlook.

Connecting Calendars and Meetings to Outlook

As discussed previously in this chapter, SharePoint calendars can be connected to Outlook clients. Using an Overlay view, you can add and combine Outlook calendars to SharePoint calendars in the browser, enabling a quick visual comparison of the team’s personal calendar with the appointments in a SharePoint calendar:

INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2013 WITH INFOPATH

InfoPath is used for the creation and filling out of forms. This powerful program enables business users to easily create and customize their own forms. A lot of time and money can be saved by using InfoPath forms, as no programming knowledge is required, and the interface and form publishing process are simple and familiar.

Consistent with the changes in Office 2010, InfoPath remains divided into Microsoft InfoPath Designer 2013 and Microsoft InfoPath Filler 2013. Because designing a form and filling out a form are two distinct tasks, typically performed by different types of users, it is logical to provide two different entry points to the program.

When forms are created, one of the first choices to make is whether the form will be browser-based — that is, whether it can be opened and filled out in the browser. If a form has not been set up as browser-based, it must rely on client software. The latter option requires that all client computers have InfoPath software installed as part of the Microsoft Office suite. However, at the same time, in order to browser-enable a form, you must have SharePoint 2013 Enterprise. Different types of controls and capabilities within InfoPath forms are compatible with different versions of the InfoPath client, so compatibility with clients is a consideration that is best tackled at the beginning of the form creation process.

When a new form is created for use in a SharePoint form library, you have three different options for publishing the form to SharePoint:

• Form Library — This method is for publishing the form to a single library on a SharePoint site. Use this option when you know that the form will not be needed in other sites or libraries. Browser-based forms are optional here. Note that at the SharePoint library level, there is a setting that enables administrators to force the manner in which the client machine opens forms.
• Site Content Type — The form is published to a SharePoint site as a content type. This type of form can then be used in multiple libraries and subsites, and the content type is managed from one location.
• Administrator-approved Form Template — These types of forms are to be uploaded to InfoPath Forms Services in Central Administration, and they can be globally available in the organization. This option requires selecting the browser-based option. This does not mean that the form can be only browser-based, but that it at least must be available in that format. The next section describes how to manage these administrator-approved forms.

By default, all libraries will be set to use the server default to open documents in the browser, but since that could be changed globally by an administrator to something other than opening documents in the browser, it is possible to set the setting for a specific library. To force an individual library to open documents in the browser:

The following sections describe the administrator-approved templates in relation to InfoPath Forms Services, which entails some Central Administration settings, and step-by-step instructions on how to carry out the form deployment process. A few other concepts covered are the InfoPath Form Web Part, customizing the document information panel using InfoPath, and customizing SharePoint list forms.

Deploying InfoPath Forms Services in Central Administration

In Central Administration, click General Application Settings on the left side of the screen. Figure 17-14 shows the InfoPath Forms Services section.

FIGURE 17-14

The following list is a breakdown of the options available for managing InfoPath Forms Services:

• Manage form templates — This is the master list of all templates that exist in InfoPath Forms Services. Several are provided by default, which are associated with some out-of-the-box workflows in SharePoint 2013.
• Configure InfoPath Forms Services — This page contains general settings such as time-outs, authentication, and postback thresholds.
• Upload form template — After an administrator-approved template has been created as described in the previous section, it can be uploaded to InfoPath Forms Services from this screen.
• Manage data connection files — Upload existing data connection files here so that they can be globally accessed from multiple InfoPath forms.
• Configure InfoPath Forms Services Web Service Proxy — Use this page to enable the web service proxy for forms.

Deploying a form template to InfoPath Forms Services is done by a SharePoint Farm administrator. This section covers the steps required to take a form from inception to “going live” on a SharePoint site.

What you will need:

• The template file — The person who has created the InfoPath form sends the form template to the administrator as an XSN file.
• Site Collection URL — To which site collection(s) will this form need to be deployed? The form creator should also supply this information.

Once the form template and site collection URL have been obtained, take the following steps:

After the template has been deployed to the site collection, it is available as a content type that can be added to libraries in the site collection.

InfoPath Form Web Part

The InfoPath Form Web Part enables the insertion of any browser-based InfoPath form right onto a Web Part page. A good use of this would be to add a survey to the homepage of a departmental site collection.

Follow these steps to add the Web Part:

The tool pane is where you configure your options for the InfoPath Form Web Part. The options include the location of the form to be displayed, as well as what to do once the form has been submitted. After setting your preferences, click OK at the bottom of the tool pane.

Customizing the Document Information Panel

An earlier section of this chapter, “Connecting to SharePoint from within Microsoft Office 2013 Applications,” introduced the document panel. To change the appearance of the document information panel, such as inserting a company logo or other graphics, you can use InfoPath to perform these customizations.

Inherently, a document information panel is associated with a content type in SharePoint. When a custom document information panel is created, the process involves InfoPath communicating with a specific document library in order to obtain information about the content types and meta data (columns) associated with the library. Therefore, before the form is created, obtain the URL of the target document library. Once you have the URL, use the following steps to customize the look and feel of the document information panel using InfoPath 2013:

1. In the Backstage view in InfoPath Designer 2013, click the New tab. Figure 17-15 shows some of the available Form Template Options when you are creating new forms.

FIGURE 17-15

2. In the Advanced Form Templates section, choose Document Information Panel, and click Design Form on the right.

3. On the first dialog of the Data Source Wizard, enter the URL to the target document library, and then click Next. The URL would be similar to http://portal.contoso.com/shared documents.

4. Choose the Document content type and click Next.

5. Click Finish. At this point, a new form will be displayed in Design view in InfoPath, with all the library fields already inserted. You can customize this form by adding a company logo or rearranging the form fields.

6. It is recommended that you save your own local copy of the form template as a backup, so click the Save button at the top of the screen.

7. Click the File menu to display the Backstage view. On the Info tab, click the Quick Publish button, which publishes the custom document information panel back to the document library specified in step 3.

From this point on, files in the target document library will display the new custom document information panel, rather than the default.

Customizing SharePoint List Forms

By default, lists in SharePoint have a standard look and feel. With SharePoint 2013 and InfoPath, you can make advanced customizations to list forms. This is especially useful when you want to highlight information. For example, say you have a Monthly Sales Totals list that has two columns: Month and Units Sold. When entering a new month’s information to the list, both titles are a very small font and gray. You can make the fields stand out more by using Customize Form to increase the font size, make the font bold, change the font entirely, or update the background color.

A typical SharePoint list has three associated forms:

• NewForm.aspx — This is used when a new item is created in a list.
• DispForm.aspx — After a list item has been created and it is opened to view, this form is used.
• EditForm.aspx — When the Edit Item button is used on a list item, this is the form that is filled out.

The form customization process starts with first navigating to the desired list. On the List tab in the Ribbon, look in the Customize List section for the button called Customize Form. If the Customize Form button is missing, then the current form cannot be customized.

Follow these steps to customize a SharePoint list form:

Now to see the fruits of your labor, navigate to the list using your browser and click New. Look at that beautiful form you created; aren’t you proud?

INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2013 WITH VISIO

Microsoft Visio is an application for the creation of advanced visuals such as charts, diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and even floor plans. This section covers several ways that you can use Visio with SharePoint.

The Visio Graphics Service is a service application in Central Administration. When a Visio diagram has been created on a client machine and published to the server, it eliminates the need for the client software. Once the diagram has been published to the Visio Graphics Service, the server itself knows how to refresh the diagram and maintain the data connections inside of it. It is important to keep in mind that the Visio Graphics Service service application is part of SharePoint 2013 Enterprise. It is also covered in Chapter 8, “Configuring SharePoint for Business Intelligence,” in more detail as part of its BI capabilities.

Setting Up the Visio Graphics Service

Getting the Visio Graphics Service set up is easy:

Adding a Visio Web Access Web Part

When added to a page in SharePoint, the Visio Web Access Web Part is used to display Visio files that have been saved to SharePoint as a Visio Drawing (VSDX) file. Follow these steps to insert a Visio Web Access Web Part on a page and configure it:

Figure 17-16 shows an example of a Visio Drawing being displayed in a Visio Web Access Web Part. You can make further customizations in the Web Part tool pane. In addition to the settings displayed in Figure 17-17, there are sections to configure the toolbar and user interface, and web drawing interactivity.

FIGURE 17-16

FIGURE 17-17

INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2013 WITH ONENOTE

OneNote is an Office application that is used to quickly take notes and organize them. If you have never used OneNote, then you are truly missing out. It is a gem in the Microsoft Office toolbox that doesn’t get enough praise. Not only are there note-typing and writing capabilities, you can insert many different types of objects into OneNote files, such as images, links, and even video or voice clips. Putting notes in OneNote gives you a visually clear and easily searchable solution.

OneNote’s capability to be shared and integrated with SharePoint and the other Office applications makes it a very useful and easily accessible tool. The live co-authoring feature discussed at the beginning of this chapter also applies to Office OneNote.

To create a new shared notebook for collaboration from a document library in SharePoint, follow these steps:

From this point on, users who have at least Contribute permissions on the document library will be able to open the file and make notes. To sync OneNote back to SharePoint after changes are made, follow these steps:

If there are multiple notebooks, clicking the View Sync Status button will show all notebooks and their most recent sync information. There is also a button in this window that enables you to sync all your notebooks at once.

INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT WITH ACCESS 2013 AND ACCESS SERVICES

Microsoft Access is a small-scale relational database management system (RDBMS) that has a somewhat checkered past. Although the earliest versions suffered from some limitations that hindered its widespread adoption, subsequent versions addressed these early issues and the product evolved into a respectable RDBMS; and with SharePoint 2013 a corner has clearly been turned. Microsoft’s investment in Access Services makes it clear that Access 2013 has a major role to play.

Access has historically been used to create relatively simple solutions; and in most cases, database creators need not have any programming knowledge. Access provides the capability to connect to any external data sources, such as SQL Server or other databases. Before delving into how this application relates to SharePoint, you should know about some basic Access objects:

• Tables — Tables are the location where the data itself is stored. Everything that you do in Access is based upon information in your tables.
• Queries — Queries provide ways to look at or interact with the data in one or more tables. For example, using a query you can filter and refine information, reference information from various tables, sort data, group data, and define the way that common fields relate to each other.
• Forms — Forms are the means by which end users interact with data in the tables. These generally consist of text boxes, drop-down menus, and other types of controls, such as buttons. Forms are the user interface for adding or modifying table data.
• Reports — Reports are used to display or print the Access data. Business users generally view reports in order to quickly assess numbers, using tables or graphs.

Access is not generally multi-user friendly, so in scenarios where multiple users are attempting to access and modify the data within Access database tables, SharePoint integration provides a solution. If you think of lists and libraries in SharePoint as tables in a database, it is easy to understand its natural integration with Microsoft Access.

This section describes how to use SharePoint lists as tables in Access databases, how to create Access views in SharePoint lists, and the new concept of Access Services in SharePoint 2013.

SharePoint Data as a Table

The data in SharePoint can easily be connected to serve as live table data in an Access database, which can be queried and reported on. There are a couple of ways to accomplish this. In this section, you’ll learn the methods that you can use to establish communications between SharePoint and Access.

Connecting to Access from SharePoint

From a SharePoint 2013 list, select the List tab in the Ribbon. Click the Open with Access button in the Connect & Export section. Figure 17-18 shows the Open in Microsoft Access dialog that appears.

FIGURE 17-18

If the desired database already exists, navigate to it; otherwise, customize the name of the new database to be created. The option to link to the dynamic data is the default, but the data can optionally be exported statically from SharePoint.

Connecting to SharePoint from Access 2013

You can create a dynamic connection to SharePoint from within the Access 2013 application. This section describes the various ways to go about this.

As shown in Figure 17-19, in the External Data tab of Access 2013, both the Import & Link section and the Export section have a drop-down menu called More, which contains an option for SharePoint lists.

FIGURE 17-19

Data can be imported from SharePoint into Access, and it can even be exported from Access, to become a table in SharePoint.

Using the Create tab in Access, you can create several different types of SharePoint lists from within Access. The Database Tools tab contains a button called SharePoint, which you can use to move the tables to a SharePoint list and create linked tables in the database.

Note that changes to the database design itself (not the data) require that the database file be downloaded, changed, and then uploaded to the document library again. When multiple users change the database design simultaneously, a user’s version of the file can be overwritten.

Creating Microsoft Access Views in SharePoint

The default SharePoint lists are not very visually exciting. SharePoint site users appreciate both the ease with which data can be displayed and the capability to create custom views of list, but they often ask how they can make it look nicer. One way to visually enhance a SharePoint list is to create an Access view of it. However, the prerequisite is that the view creator and anyone else who will be looking at the view must have Microsoft Access installed on their client computers, and in many cases this prerequisite is prohibitive. This makes Access views a little-known gem.

Follow these steps to create an Access view of a list:

Access Services Overview

Access Services has undergone significant changes since SharePoint 2010. Access Services 2013 for SharePoint 2013 now requires SQL Server 2012. SharePoint itself can still run on an earlier version of SQL, but Access 2013 has some special requirements. Previously, in SharePoint 2010, if you published an Access database to a SharePoint site, the data inside the Access database was stored as part of the site’s content database. Now, however, any Access 2013 application created for SharePoint 2013 will generate a dedicated SQL server database. Data input into the new Access app will be pushed into the generated database, keeping the data separate from the site’s content database. The databases generated by an Access 2013 application can only reside on SQL Server 2012. It’s recommended that these databases be created on a separate dedicated SQL server that does not contain any other SharePoint databases. The database server can be specified in the Access Services Service Application, discussed in the next section.

It’s also worth mentioning that Access can create its app as an individual SharePoint site. To extrapolate, this means that an Access database created specifically for publishing to SharePoint is technically considered an app. The Access 2013 client application in this case acts as an abstraction layer for the end user; therefore, even with these changes, no actual coding is necessary, as you can use Access in Designer view.

Access Services is now divided into two different service applications, as explained in the next section. For a much deeper dive into Access Services, including how to configure the service applications, please check out Chapter 8.

Access Services Web Service Application

The Access Services Web Service Application acts as a middle-tier service that handles communication between the Access application, end users, and SharePoint’s back end. As mentioned previously, there are now two service applications: Access Services and Access Services 2010.

Access Services

This service application is specifically for settings related to Access 2013. One thing you will notice immediately is that you have fewer configuration options relative to SharePoint 2010. This is because the heavy lifting is done in the background on the SharePoint server Access host. Specifically, this is where you can define the application database server, which must be a SQL Server 2012 server. You will also find a number of options related to session control, such as maximum sessions per user, maximum request duration, cache timeout, and query timeout.

In order to use Access Services you must go through a very difficult battle to get everything configured behind the scenes. That battle is detailed in Chapter 8. You will need to follow the steps for creating an Access Services service application before performing the steps. Use the following steps to create your Access 2013 application:

Access Services 2010

This service application now exists for backward compatibility with Access 2010 databases. Here you will find settings to optimize the performance of Access Services, including several query settings such as maximum columns per query, maximum sources (lists) per query, and maximum calculated columns per query. The setting called Maximum rows per query enables you to control how many rows can be viewed at once. For instance, if there are 2 million rows, a default of 50,000 rows per query is an appropriate setting.

PUBLISHING LINKS TO OFFICE CLIENT APPLICATIONS

Training users to save documents to SharePoint can be a difficult task. Saving to a web location can be daunting for users who are trained to save to conveniently mapped drives on file shares. You can make it easier for your users by publishing links to common SharePoint locations; that way, when users use Save As in Office, they don’t have to manually type a URL. Instead, they just click the link, and Office redirects to a SharePoint site, list, or document library. Publishing links can also utilize the SharePoint audience feature, which enables specific links to be targeted to different user groups. This is a great feature, especially if you have site collections set up for departments. For example, using Audience Targeting, a link to the Human Resources site collection can be pushed out only to members of the Human Resources site, whereas engineers would only see the Engineering site collection link, and so on.

Figure 17-20 shows published links as they would appear to users.

FIGURE 17-20

To configure personal site links:

1. In Central Administration, in the Application Management section, click Manage Service Applications.

2. Scroll down and click User Profile Service Application.

3. Under My Site Settings, click Publish Links to Office Client Applications.

4. Click New Link. Figure 17-21 shows the Properties page for the new link page, which will become available to all clients in their Office applications.

FIGURE 17-21

5. Fill out the required fields and click OK.

MANAGING OFFICE 2013 AND SHAREPOINT THROUGH GROUP POLICY

Active Directory and Group Policy administrators will be excited to learn that they can easily customize a plethora of SharePoint and Office 2013 settings across a large organization by utilizing Group Policy administrative template (.adm) files. Registry-based policy settings (located under the Administrative Templates category in the Group Policy Object Editor) are defined using an XML file format known as ADMX. These files enable you to configure client registry settings in a central location and deploy them in Active Directory containers. To learn more about managing Group Policy, step by step, refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748955(v=ws.10).aspx. The following tables show a sampling of group policy settings you may want to explore further. Table 17-1 is focused on Office as a whole, while Table 17-2 is specific to Outlook. Table 17-3 helps with InfoPath and 17-4 is all about Word. Remember: These are just a small subset — there are plenty more where those came from. TechNet has lots more fun reading at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179176(v=office.15).aspx.

TABLE 17-1: Office 2013 Configuration Settings

TABLE 17-2: Outlook 2013 Configuration Settings

TABLE 17-3: InfoPath 2013 Configuration Settings

TABLE 17-4: Word 2013 Configuration Settings

This is just a small sampling of the options that can be deployed. Consider using some of these settings to encourage users to save Office documents to SharePoint, or to automatically view a list of data from SharePoint in Outlook. Integration should be as seamless as possible; you don’t want users to have to “find” SharePoint when it is time to upload a document for collaboration.

SUMMARY

Microsoft Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 are highly integrated. The commonalities of the Ribbon interface and the detailed information stored in both applications enables users to communicate and collaborate with more efficiency. As demonstrated in this chapter, while SharePoint is impressive on its own, it truly shines when you add Office 2013 to the mix.