I was working this morning, getting ready to go to the conference next week in Seattle. Around 11:00am, I decided it was time to take a break, so I packed up the wife and three year old daughter and headed over to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York City). What a great afternoon!

I don’t think I worried about work for a second as we went through the different galleries. There is an entire digital wing that had some of the coolest stuff I’ve seen in a long time. My wife bought me membership to the museum for my birthday, so we were able to take in a veritable color fest exhibit that wasn’t open to the public yet. Last on the list was to hit the Calder room for a little mobile action.

My daughter thoroughly enjoyed it, my wife had a great time, and I didn’t miss working for one second.

I’m looking forward to meeting many of you next week, but for right now, I’m outta here… really nice day.

The question of the day comes from Yongwei Xing in Shanghai:

I searched on the Internet and only found a web part that can be used to show a document in a SilverLight. But if I write a SilverLight by myself, I want to show my SilverLight in MOSS. What should I do? Do you have such experiment?

I have zero (0) experience with SilverLight. Mike Gannotti might have something for you. I know he has been using SilverLight: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/mikeg/default.aspx.

Maybe someone reading this might have some input, also.

I had a little email correspondance with Suzanne to solve a permission issue that I thought might be of interest. Here’s the entire exchange, in sequence.

Suzanne wrote: I understand the workflow process, but I need assistance on the best way to manage permissions associated with workfows. Do you need to set up special permission levels for a workflows process?

Mark responded: Not sure what you mean by "manage permissions". Describe the process and outcome you are trying to accomplish.

Suzanne wrote: Is a different permission level required for someone to approve a document? Example: If  I have contribute rights to a document library, would this be enough for me to approve a document? 

Mark responded: Nope… there is a permission level right above "Contribute" called "Approve". You’d want to at least give them that level.  Here’s the description: "Approve - Can edit and approve pages, list items, and documents."

Suzanne wrote: Thanks, Mark. We didn’t have a “Approve” permission level, so I created one.

The question of the day comes from Toby in the UK:

Does anyone know how to get it so I can have a Lookup field that uses a calculated field in another table? My requirements is to create a concatenated name from first name and last name in Contacts (not the Full name that it comes with) and use that as a lookup in another table.

The problem manifests itself like this: lets say you have a table, like Contacts. If you add your own field to the table, say ‘newfield’ and make that a calculated value, in this example I use “=CONCATENATE([first name], “ “, [last name])”. Having done all of that I then go to a new table and want to include “newfield” and have it be a LOOKUP on “newfield” from my Contacts table. Trouble is, whenever I try to do this, although ‘newfield’ definitely exists it refuses to show as something that can be used in the LOOKUP.

Toby - after looking at your calculation value, I think that might be the problem. My value for the calculation is =[FirstName]&" "&[LastName] and that seems to work fine. Let me know how it works out for you.  I have provided a short demo screencast.

The question of the day comes from Chris:

Do you know of a way users can save searches as links?

Chris - The basic search is a ‘get’ in the URL, so setup the search, click the search button and then copy the URL to use as the href in the link. You can also have them sign up for an Alert when the search criteria exposes another item. Have them do the search and then an Alert button will be available in the search window… this assumes this capability has been activated in your environment.

While we’re on the topic of search, one of the prime uses of metadata columns is to expose documents, items and pages to search. When you set up a library or list, consider how people will be searching for that information and then create columns accordingly.

Not only will this be better for your search criteria, it will also be useful for the Content Query Web Part when trying to expose data in multiple locations.

Regards,
Mark

I was looking through some of the questions on the SharePointU forums and came across a question about multiple Gantt views against a single set of data. It seemed like a quick solution to demo, so I’ve inserted a screencast below. The Project Task list is used to setup the basic Widget creation process. Here’s the basic criteria as described by Dave:

The scenario is a widget factory. A customer orders 100 custom built widgets. For each widget several tasks must be completed before it can be manufactured - quote, submittal drawing, construction drawing, machine programming, etc. It would be nice to have a single gantt chart for all widgets and all tasks to get an overall view of the project status. I’d like to just switch views to see each task groups progress. — Dave

The question of the day comes from Torbjorn:

We want to able to track a printed document back to Sharepoint with help of the SharePoint generated id#.

1. A document in Sharepoint gets some kind of id# when it is created (it is the same even after new versions are added).
2. Everytime the document is printed out the id# is printed in the footer region of the word document.
3. The id# should be part of the metadata of a document so I could find it with free text search.

I have seen the barcode policy but there are referenses on the web saying it’s not unique and also the users has to add it manually.

This looks to me as if it should be a programming solution. If anyone has a quick solution, I’m interested in seeing it. — Mark
 

One of the interesting features in the major MS Word Applications is the ability to define where the "Save" or "Save As…" button points upon initially saving a file. By default, it usually points to "My Documents". If you are using SharePoint a lot, it will probably be useful to reset that default to a top level location within your SharePoint site.

Step-by-Step

• Open SharePoint to the location you’d like to have as your "Save" default
• Copy the URL of that location
• Open Word (as an example)
• Click the Office Button in the top left corner
• Click the Word Options button in the bottom right corner
• Click the Save link in the left menu
• In the Default file location text box, paste the URL, removing any extraneous items like Forms/AllItems.aspx
• Click OK in the bottom right corner

The next time you click the Save button, you’ll be pointed directly into that location, be it a library or a top level view that exposes all the libraries you can choose from on that site. Not bad for a thirty second fix, if I do say so myself.

Regards,
Mark

The question of the day comes from Zeynep in California:

I’m currently setting up a sub-site and loading in files.  I created a Document Library and now I would like to revise the name of the Document Library.  How do I do that? I poked around a bit and could not figure this out.

One odd thing about SharePoint is that to change or delete something (a site, list or library) you first need to be on that item. So, changing a Library Name is performed by:

• From the Library, use Settings menu, then Document Library Settings
• From the General Settings section select Title, description and navigation.
• From this screen you can change the title of the library.
• Click the OK button at the bottom of the screen.

Doug Taylor

The question of the day comes from Frank in Michigan:

I’m seeing something that’s a bit off on a global team calendar.  I created a view named “Condensed” to be displayed [through a web part] on the front page.  Everything looks exactly like I want it to except the items aren’t sorted in date order as they are in the view.  Is there something I’m missing to make this happen on the front page?

Frank - When you go to modify the shared web part, under the Select a View dropdown, there is a link to Edit this View. Clicking that link will allow you to refine the display of that view within the web part. Sort by Start Time and I think you will get what you are looking for. As an aside, this will not affect your original view in the calendar list, just the view on the entrance page.

Regards,
Mark