Anyhow, here’s a quick tip that, as far as I can tell, hasn’t been posted in a findable blog post anywhere.

The scenario: You’ve spend months and months building out a few MOSS farms. In hindsight, you maybe didn’t always keep track of every single database that was created, and all those failed installs didn’t help either leaving behind all those oddly named config databases. Now your DBA is asking you a simple question: “Which databases belong to which farm?”.

Seems like a simple question. There must be a simple answer, right? Oh yea, this is SharePoint we’re talking about.

First, the hard way to find your databases:

• Content DBs: These are actually listed quite nicely in central admin. At least they gave us that: APP MANAGEMENT >> CONTENT DATABASES >> select each WEB APP you want to see a list of content DBs for.
• Config DBs: This one was tricky and took me a while. Turns out this info is in the registry. Sigh. REGEDIT >> HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Secure\ConfigDb
• SSP Config and Search DB: This one was obvious in hindsight: Central Admin >> SHARED SERVICES ADMINISTRATION >> click the EDIT PROPERTIES drop down on the SSP you want to look at.

BUT…that’s still not all of the DBs. Specifically, the MOSS Help Search DB. Fortunately, after many Google searches and a few forum posts, Phread Langford gave me this great solution (and I slightly tweaked it):

Central Admin >> OPERATIONS >> PERFORM A BACKUP (which takes you to “/_admin/Backup.aspx”)

This page provides you a list of all items that are (or should be) backed up by MOSS. Lo and behold, there are ALL the databases listed! Alas, it also lists other things than the DBs, but it’s nice enough to tell you what each item is. Brilliant tip. Thanks, Phread!

MOSS is full of these omitted ‘but…’ statements, so I thought I’d try and start collecting some here. I’ll try and update this list as I find them. This list isn’t meant to be a list of gripes (though I guess it is) but rather just a bunch of things to consider before you put too much effort into  a particular SharePoint feature offering.

• There are now two-levels of ‘Recycle Bins’ in MOSS, but…
  • …it only saves content deleted from a site *not* a site as a whole. So if a user deletes a site, it’s gone and you need to go to your backup tapes or look into this option from codeplex.
• SharePoint now has WIKIs, but…
  • …they are not true WIKIs in that there is no support for WIKI syntax nor semantic markup in general. In addition, it’s quite laborious to add images inline with your content.
• Excel Web Services allows you to build KPIs with visual indicators in MOSS, but…
  • …note that this is pretty much limited to ‘flat’ data. Once you need to start working with relational data and want to make dashboards, you’ll likely want to dive into the MOSS Business Data Catalog and/or consider alternatives such as Microsoft Reporting Services
• MOSS includes Web Content Management features (CMS), but…
  • …note that these features kind of suck. They’re great if they’re all you got, but if your primary focus is Web Content Management on a large scale, I’d strongly consider a dedicated CMS product. Many, such as SiteCore, are now even offering ‘sharepoint connectors’ that will still allow you to leverage SharePOint, but not be burdened with the CMS interface that is has.
• MOSS/WSS3 is more browser agnostic, but…
  • …it still has a ways to go. WSS2 really needed IE for most things, but now Firefox and the like are viable browsers for use with MOSS/WSS3. Some gotchas: You won’t have any activex based features such as drag and drop folder views and excel web services; the built-in Rich Text Editor will not load (install Telerik’s RadEditor instead); and mamy of the UI menus won’t work as menus and instead will act as buttons that open the menu in separate panes (which will just require some alternate training for non IE users).
• Using web enabled Infopath forms is a great way to get highly customized data inputed via a friendly UI into MOSS, but…
  • …Infopath forms are still not very scalable. If you want to modify your form after you have data entered, you may loose the connection with your existing data. Plan carefully!

The problem is when you want to use SharePoint as a content management system. If you are doing that, you are likely using it to publish a web site that has a custom template (likely a custom MasterPage). This is a chore in and of itself, but, as a SharePoint developer, trying to figure out what SharePoint does AFTER you go into edit mode is next to impossible. When you click EDIT THIS PAGE SharePoint will add a page publishing bar across the top of your page, take your page template, replace that with a larger table, put your page template back inside that table, then add yet another TD to the right of that to place the web part tool pane.

What happens is that your nicely laid out page that was, say, 900 pixels wide is now 1300 pixels wide when in edit mode. This now requires the end-user to scroll horizontally and vertically across the page to actually edit the area they want to, and then go find the OK/SAVE options way up in the web part ToolPane.

While you COULD just buy everyone new 30″ wide-screen monitors, I figured there MUST be a better way, so I began digging through the rendered HTML and CSS and came up with a workable solution that takes this ToolPane and anchors it to the top of the viewport, and then sets it so you could roll-it-up out of the way if needed.

My method is a hack, for sure. The components are a .js file (plus one other .js to fix CSS issues in IE6), a .css file, and a few lines of code you’ll need to add to your masterpage(s). BEFORE you dive into this solution, you may want to first try out the ‘Floating ToolPane for SharePoint’ solution provided by Vincent @ thekid.me.uk. Vincent’s solution is slightly different, but tries to solve the same exact problem. Vincent’s fix is deployed as a SharePoint solution, so it’s very easy to install if you have access and rights to central administration and the server itself. His technique is produces a slightly different UI in that he floats the ToolPane so you can move it, and allows you to minimize it at the bottom of the viewport if need be.

I discovered his solution halfway through tackling mine and decided to plow on through anyways. If you don’t have access to the server itself, but can access your site through SP Designer, this solution will probably work for you. If you have some Javascript skills, you can likely modify what I have to make the ToolPane do whatever you want it to do.

Let’s use a visual:

If the above doesn’t make sense, here’s an image that will hopefully explain things better. Click on the image to see a full-size version.

How to use this:

1. Download the ‘sharepoint_fixed_toolpane.zip’ file from this site which contains the .js file and .css file, along with a .png file that we use for a fancy drop shadow.
2. Download fixed.js from DOXdesk. This is a .js file that fixes IE6′s inability to comprehend position: fixed
3. Read through the CSS file and JS files if you so desire and make modifications as necessary. I’ve tried to comment them fully to make it fairly easy to figure out what is going on.
4. Upload these files to your SharePoint site/collection. You could put them in any document library that you’ve given all visitors read access to. You could also put them on a separate server, if you desire. In my case, and for the rest of the example, we’ll use two document libraries created at the top level site ‘admin_css’ (put float-fixed-toggled-tool-pane.css in there) and ‘admin_js’ (put float-fixed-toggled-tool-pane.js and fixed.js in there). The shadow_20.png file was added to an image library named ‘admin_images_portalwide’.
5. Open up the masterpage(s) you are using in sharepoint Designer
6. Add the following lines to your masterpage just before the </header> tag:
   
<!– floating toolpane –>
<script src=”/admin_js/float-fixed-toggled-tool-pane.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
<link href=”/admin_css/float-fixed-toggled-tool-pane.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />
<!–[if lt IE 7]>
<script src=”/admin_js/fixed.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
<![endif]–>
<!– /floating toolpane –>
7. Change the BODY tag from this:
   
<body scroll="yes" onload="javascript: if (typeof(_spBodyOnLoadWrapper) != 'undefined') _spBodyOnLoadWrapper();">to this:

   <body scroll="yes" onload="javascript:wrapToolPane(); if (typeof(_spBodyOnLoadWrapper) != 'undefined') _spBodyOnLoadWrapper();">

   (We’re adding the ‘wrapToolPane()’ function call.)

8. Save/check in/approve the master page and take it for a test run.

What this does:

After the page loads, our javascript function is called. This function locates the HTML that sharepoint produced from earlier javascript and ‘plucks’ it out of the document. It then creates some custom html wrappers, puts the ToolPane HTML back inside that, and renderes it back to the page. Our CSS file (along with the fixed.js file for IE6) then floats the ToolPane above the page content and fixes it to the upper right of the page.

An additional Javascript function allows the end-user to roll-up/expand the ToolPane as needed via the link across the top of the ToolBar.

After I finally realized that part of my problem wast that Microsoft forgot to apply any doctypes to their HTML, I finally made some progress. Yet, I was still baffled by some crazy layout issues that I was sure was due to some crazy built in HTML and CSS that was being spit out.

I turned on all the table borders and came across this gem of an example on the default publishing site page template:

Wow. THAT brings back memories of creating endless navigation menus with custom bullets and specific styling.

Of course, that was way  back in 1997. You’d think a decade later Microsoft would have discovered the UL tag and CSS.

Maybe that’s expecting too much.

Seems as if most documentation out there is still focused more on DB/Server admin issues than general ‘how to design a usable portal using MOSS and the various templates and web parts that makes sense to content owners and site users’.

Anyone have any suggestions for documentation (online or off) that talk about implementing SharePoint from a more IA focused standpoint?

Anyone interested in getting together to form a SharePoint designer support group/sympathy gathering?

Type:

St. Paul…er…New Hope…er…UK based Process Type Foundry (Eric Olson) has a new typeface out called Seravek.

Portugal Based DSType Foundry (Dino dos Santos) is having a half-off summer sale. Dino has some great faces that are already affordably priced. Half off is going to make it hard not to resist purchasing a few of these…

Architecture:

Building Minnesota is a MN-centric architecture blog written by Todd Melby that I came across via the AIA MN’s Blog.

Shopping:

Have you been through Target all summer eying that nice looking modern plywood toddler two-wheeler for $50 for your 3 year old? It went on sale last week for $25. Go grab one. Link? For some inexplicable reason, Target isn’t selling their own Target branded outdoor toys online.

CSS grid-based layout frameworks:

At work here, we recently had a consulting firm deliver us a prototype for a new intranet. They built the site using pure CSS-P which is great, and then I noticed that they decided to use the Yahoo CSS framework. We have the daunting task of somehow getting this inside of SharePoint, which may or may not work as-is, but I am going to be interested in how easy it is to work with Yahoo’s prebuilt CSS framework. Seems that the biggest complaint about them is a lack of semantic labeling, which is to be expected if the framework is to work as a generic platform. Blueprint is another grid-based CSS framework that has been making the rounds this week which is also being compared to the aptly named Yet Another Multicolumn Layout CSS framework. I hope to take a closer look at these options soon. If you’ve used them, please share your thoughts.

Unfortunately, there is very little documentation on MOSS features out there. I’ve been hunting everywhere for a guide to all the Wiki tags that MOSS’s wiki supports. After a lot of extensive research and questioning and trial and error, I now present you with the complete and concise master cheat-sheet to MOSS’s wiki syntax:

Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2007 Wiki tag syntax

• Link to another wiki page: [[Name of page]]

Microsoft SharePoint seems to be penetrating all areas of the web as of late. It’s been around for quite a while, but the latest version seems to have built a good amount of momentum and anyone in moderately sized organization has likely at least heard of it, if not faced it in person.

My new role is now SharePoint admin. I have mixed feelings about it, to say the least. On the plus side, I am learning something new that appears to be a highly marketable skill set. It’s just that I’m not sure if I want that particular skill set on my resume. It’s like having your boss at the ad agency find out that you know Powerpoint. Soon enough, you end up just doing Powerpoint presentations all day long for clients. ;0)

I thought I’d give a quick SharePoint primer and then point out a few links that have recently sprung up specifically about SharePoint and web standards and accessibility, since that’s typically the first question we web developer have about a given CMS.

What is SharePoint?

The biggest drawback is a lack of real documentation and whitepaper/case studies. Even talking with MS themselves gave me the impression that even they aren’t fully aware of what SharePoint really is. Not that that surprises me, as it is a rather large, versatile application and, well, this is MS we’re talking about anyways.

In my words, SharePoint is Duct Tape. It’s rarely the BEST solution for a particular need, but it’s certainly usable and you’ll find all sorts of uses for it if you have it laying around, even if it’s slightly ugly. That’s the good.

At its core, SharePoint is an excellent tool for making lists. Task lists. Lists of links. Document lists. Lists of people. Etc. This makes it a great utility for centrally organizing, sharing, and collaborating on information within your organization. It’s (of course) highly integrated with MS Office. You save documents directly to SharePoint. People can email information to SharePoint. You can subscribe to information updated on SharePoint via email or RSS. For us, out of the box, SharePoint will ultimately be a replacement for cluttered email in boxes full of attachments, shared network drives, and multiple copies of outdated documents scattered across individidual hard drives. For that alone, SharePoint seems to be a worthy purchase.

Beyond that, SharePoint can do quite a bit more. Microsoft Content Management Server is now integrated (and updated) into SharePoint. There are extensive workflow options with SharePoint to route data automatically through your organization. The Search server is quite powerful, letting you index SharePoint content, content in documents, content on your network, content in other business applications, and even content on other web sites.

At this point, I should make a quick aside and quickly explain the product line. It is confusing, to say the least:

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) – this is the free framework that allows you to easily set up SharePoint team sites. You will need a Windows server with IIS, and then you can install this. You can use the free MS SQL ‘lite’ DB as your back-end database as well. This is a good product and if you are running Windows Servers, you might as well give this a shot.
• Microsoft Offfice Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS) – this is the expensive add-on (likely 6-figures for most orgs) that provides you with the enterprise level features, namely: site-wide navigation tools, site-wide searching tools, CMS features and advanced business intelligence tools. Prior to this version, these features were found in two separate applications: SharePoint Portal 2003 and Microsoft CMS (now discontinued).
• MOSS comes in a variety of licensed flavours. The key thing to understand is that there is only one MOSS application. The differences as far as what you can/can’t do with your particular install are all based on whatever licensing agreement you come up with with Microsoft.
• If you want to run MOSS for any mission-critical purposes, realize that it is best to run it on a farm of at least 4 servers (2 redundant front-end servers, a search indexing server, and a back end DB cluster).

The Bad? Well, it’s expensive if you want the full set of features in Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007. Your 10 person non-profit is not going to want to purchase MOSS. It’s also highly tied into Microsoft Office, Microsoft Active Directory, and Microsoft SQL Server. Not a big deal if you are already a MS shop, but something to consider if you are not.

Now, the ugly. Our first major project here is going to be migrating our intranet to MOSS 2007 using a UI and IA created by an outside vendor. Fortunately, SharePoint is based on ASP.net 2.0 features such as MasterPages which will make custom UI design a lot easier than it was before. The problem is that while MS has improved the HTML output in ASP.net 2.0, it’s still quite poor relying on lots and lots of tables and still containing more than a few parsing errors. Example: “A SharePoint Server 2007 home page out of the box, has 154 HTML validation errors” This makes me sad.

As such, I’ve been doing more and more research and this past week has seen several blog posts sprout up about accessibility and standards with SP. I thought I’d compile them here for some afternoon reading for any of you looking at wrangling SharePoint yourselves.

• http://www.sharepoint2007.com/Default.aspx?tabid=23 – an article on SP’s accessibility limitations (ironically on a site using SharePoint and, as such, has a site menu that is not accessible)
• http://alastairc.ac/2007/03/sharepoint-2007-accessibility/ – Alastair Cambell shares some frustrations with SP accessibility and offers some useful links including…
  • …a link to a SP accessibility presentation by the UK SP users group.
  • …and a link to Molly.com and her quest to spread accessibility information throughout Redmond
• http://cameronmoll.com/archives/2007/05/skinning_ms_sharepoint_with_st/ – Cameron Moll shares his experiences with applying a standards based template to SP and includes many useful links, some of which are…
  • How To Create a Minimal Master Page
  • How to Override default CSS
  • A great CSS chart by Heather Soloman that that explains what all of the crazy class names refer to in Sharepoint and where to locate the style declaration to modify them.

Are you using SharePoint? If so, what do you think?

But, I went, and feel obligated to report SOMETHING…

For starters, Vegas appears to the single best place on earth to open up a usability testing lab. I can’t think of a place more diversely homogenous (if that makes any sense…). It appears that you could walk out onto the strip, grab any 6 people, and right there have the full range of human beings found on the planet. Fat, skinny, smart, gullible, savvy, ugly, beautiful, tall, short, and in every shade of color out there.

And the best part? You really wouldn’t need to pay them anything. Just offer them half price tickets to Carrot Top and you’re good to go. Yes, you’d have to compete with the time share folks, but just cut your testing time by a half hour and you’ll have the upper hand.

Another benefit of having your testing lab in Vegas is people walking in will have a clean palet. I know that sounds odd, but in a way, Vegas will completely ‘sterilize’ them to any notions of how anything should be. Vegas is so over-the-top absurd that it pretty much wipes the mind clean of any preconceived idea of what good design is.

So, there’s my sales pitch for some prime usability testing real estate.

On to the conference…

I honestly don’t have much to report. Mainly for two reasons: There wasn’t a whole lot of broad-interest things to report about and, well, people really aren’t THAT interested in Sharepoint news.

That said, I’ll sum up the conference for those that are interested:

• Microsoft REALLY likes AJAX. Atlas is close to being finished up and MS is really pitching it. In fact, 90% of the ASP.net 2.0 sessions were focused on AJAX. To be fair, it appears that MS has done wonders with Atlas. For once, they are literal and honest when they say you can ‘ajaxify’ your site with merely a few drag and drops. Unfortunately, it seems that most people at MS believe that AJAX’s sole purpose is to ‘prevent that annoying flicker when the page reloads’
• Sharepoint ’07 is only half as evil as the current version. We’re moving to Sharepoint here at work. I’ve been dreading it. It looks like a nightmare. I must say, however, that ’07 doesn’t look that awful. At least not as bad as any other commercial CMS I’ve looked at. Yes, there’s still a lot of overhead, but they have done some nice things. The CMS portion of sharepoint is much improved. The templating/branding elements are much easier to maintain. They’re embracing community tools like WIKI integration and the like. And it’s all ASP.net 2.0, so you can work directly with ASP.net.
• Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Want to maintain Sharepoint? Well, get VS.net ’07. And pick up Sharepoint Designer. And you’ll probably want MS Expression as well. Using ASP.net? Upgrade to the Team suite. Oh, and of course you’ll want to be running the new SQL. And you might as well grab Vista while you’re at it, right? Well, nothing surprising there, I guess.

And, finally, one last item that I just found odd. During the keynote, they brought up a web designer from a team to present their site and how ‘cool’ it was. Just like they did in the days of the dot-com bubble conference era. Turns out, the person was from Burton. Huh. Burton…just like the snowboard company! Odd that Burton would let a ASP.net dev shop use the same name.

Well, surprise, surprise, it’s actually Burton…the ‘cool’ snowboarding company. That was the first oddity (what, a hip x-sports gen-x product company has decided to be a MS shop?) but the bigger oddity was this:

Yep. That’s a custom designed, AJAX-themed, ASP.net snowboard that they gave away at the conference. Hand signed by Jake Burton himself. As well as Bill Gates. Is that cool? Or dorky beyond belief? I can’t really tell.