When you click “New Item” in any SharePoint list or “Upload” in any document library, SharePoint sends you to a standard form for creating the new item.  Behind the scenes, SharePoint also passes in two parameters to let the form know where to post the item and where to go after the item is posted.  By leveraging these two parameters in the URL, you can make a link anywhere that posts data to any list and sends you someplace else when finished.  This has come in handy for us when creating intranet home pages, as we can create a list of links to post data to custom lists, which sends the person back to the home page afterwards.  Otherwise, the person would end up in the root of the list or library they submitted the item to.  So we were able to easily meet a requirement that the person be directed back to the home page after submitting the item.

A SharePoint new item link is structured as follows:

https://intranet.doman.com/site/Lists/listname/NewForm.aspx?RootFolder=/site/Lists/listname&Source=https://intranet.domain.com

The two parameters of interest are RootFolder and Source.  RootFolder tells SharePoint where to post the document.  If it is removed from the URL then SharePoint will post data to the root of the list where newform.aspx is located.  You could also specify the path to a subfolder there, and SharePoint would post to that subfolder.  Source tells SharePoint where to go when the posting is complete.  The source needs to be a place in the site collection.  In the example link above it is back to the home page.  If source is left out of the URL then SharePoint will just return you back to the root of the list afterwards.

By using these two parameters, you can create lists of links on a page rather than having to drop in web parts, and you will gain more flexibility in how the user experience and navigation work.

In a previous post, I discussed some useful free web parts for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.  In this article I’ll discuss two more very helpful solutions for building extranets in SharePoint and for building more advanced workflows in SharePoint Designer.

• CKS Forms Based Authentication Solution

http://www.codeplex.com/CKS/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=17901

This is a free open-source solution which handles much of the complexity of building extranets in SharePoint.  It has web parts for creating new SQL user accounts, for extranet users to manage their password, and for access requests and approvals.  You used to have to use third-party software or a Visual Studio project for even just creating users in a SQL database.  With this solution installed, all forms-based user management is done right through the SharePoint settings interface.  The only thing you still have to do by hand is provision the database, and modify the web application web.config files to add a SQL authentication provider.  This solution has been extremely helpful for us in building a few client extranets.

•  Useful Sharepoint Designer Custom Workflow Activities

http://spdactivities.codeplex.com/

This solution adds a bunch of activities to SharePoint Designer’s Workflow Designer.  The activities are listed below.  This has allowed us to easily create several workflows in SharePoint Designer without writing any code.  In particular, we’ve been able to get around the problem where SharePoint form libraries show all submitted items to contributors by default.  This is an issue when users are submitting forms with sensitive data, which should only be viewable by administrators.  Rather than resorting to a code solution, you can create a workflow that simply “Grants Permission on Item” to the creator, and “Deletes List Item Permission Assignment” for the contributor group.  Presumably the admin group would already have full access.

• Send Email with HTTP File attachment – Allows sending emails with attachments retrieved using a web request
• Send Email with List Item attachments – Allows sending list item attachments as files attached to an email
• Start Another Workflow- Starts another workflow associated with a list item
• Grant Permission on Item- Allows granting of specified permission level on a specified item
• Delete List Item Permission Assigment- Allows deleting of specified permission level assignment for a given user
• Reset List Permissions Inheritance – removes any unique permissions assigned to an item by inheriting list permissions
• Is User a member of a SharePoint group- Checks if a given user is part of given SharePoint group
• Is Role assigned to User – Checks if a user role is already assigned on the current list item
• Lookup user info- allows to lookup properties in site’s user information list for a given login
• Copy List Item Extended Activity – Allows copying/moving list items and files cross site.
• Send Email Extended- Enhaced version of the OOTB activity. Allows you to specify the sender. Also does not break links in body.
• Get InfoPath field inner text
• Get InfoPath field inner xml
• Set InfoPath field inner text
• Set InfoPath field inner xml

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) doesn’t come with a whole lot of web parts out of the box, but here’s a few handy ones we’ve found to spice up some of the home pages we’ve built.  These are all free and work with WSS.

• Tim Heuer’s RSS Feed Reader
  http://feedreader.codeplex.com/

Only MOSS comes with an RSS reader, and even that one can display only one feed.  This web part is invaluable if you’re using WSS.  This is the best free RSS feed web part that I’ve found, and it allows you to neatly pull multiple feeds next to each other.

• Bamboo World Clock and Weather
  http://store.bamboosolutions.com/pc-55-1-world-clock-and-weather-web-part.aspx

This web part neatly displays the weather in 3 cities side-by-side and can optionally display the time if they are in different time zones.  This is a nice looking web part and tends to fit nicely on the right-hand side of a home page for a firm with multiple offices.

• Amrein MSN Money Stock Quote
  http://www.amrein.com/apps/page.asp?Q=5731

This web part displays stock quotes, company names, changes, and percent changes pulled from MSN Money.  It’s the best free web part I’ve seen to do this, and will save a lot of time over trying to follow one of the examples online for doing this with a data view.

• Matt Jimison’s Twitter Search Web Part
  http://www.mattjimison.com/blog/2009/03/04/twitter-search-webpart/

This uses the twitter search API to search twitter based on the parameters you specify in the web part, and you can download the wsp or the source code from the web page.

• Kraft & Kennedy Google Search Box
  (Code below)

We’ve had a few instances where we were asked to put a Google search box on a SharePoint page.  This can easily be accomplished by just inserting a content editor web part on the page and editing the HTML directly.  You can paste in the following code, which includes JavaScript, to open a Google results page after the person enters a search term and presses enter or clicks a button.  This is of course a simple approach–you could also federate search results in your search center to include Google–but this simple html code works well in many cases.

<P align=left>Search Google: <INPUT id=Google name=Google onkeydown="javascript:if (event.which || event.keyCode){if ((event.which == 13) || (event.keyCode == 13)) {
window.open('http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;q=' + this.value + '&amp;btnG=Google+Search','_blank','');
return false;}};"> <IMG alt="Go" id="btnGo" name="btnGo" src="/images1/icongo.gif" onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;q=' + document.all.Google.value + '&amp;btnG=Google+Search','_blank','')"  onmouseover="this.style.cursor='hand'">
</P>

Whether or not SharePoint can be a viable DMS at a law firm has been a big point of contention in the legal community.  A lot of this comes down to the mentality and size of the firm, and the specific requirements that the firm has for document management.  With proper planning and one or two simple addins, SharePoint may be a viable DMS for certain firms that are flexible and willing to invest in a development effort.

The advantages of using SharePoint as a DMS are many:

• Being able to wrap an intranet or extranet around all of your content.
• Having basic matter management features available in every workspace, such as a shared calendar, task lists, and discussion threads.
• Having access to document workflows.
• Being able to search all of your repositories with Enterprise Search (available free with Microsoft Search Server Express.)
• Being able to integrate business intelligence dashboards.
• Providing access to web 2.0 features such as wikis, blogs, and personal sites.
• Leveraging native Word features, and not having to rely on vendors to update their software to support the latest version of Office.

The main way to ensure a successful SharePoint deployment as a DMS is with proper planning.  SharePoint can all too easily be deployed out of the box, with no oversight in place.  While this may work out ok for an intranet, it spells disaster for a DMS.  Thought should go initially into defining what content types are needed for the firm.  Content types are similar to document types in a DMS, and allow for the classification of documents by defining metadata, retention rules, associated workflows, and starter templates.  After defining content types, you would need to create a taxonomy, or hierarchy for all of your clients and matters.  One structure that works in WSS is to create a team site for each client, and then a document library for each matter.  We’ve successfully written scripts to create client and matter workspaces based on this approach, and to import documents from the file system into SharePoint.  When a user saves their own document into SharePoint, they would drill down the client site to the matter library, and then simply have to choose a content type associated with the document.

The thing that seems to scare people the most is something architectural rather than functional—the fact that SharePoint stores files in SQL blobs, rather than in the file system.  This causes fears that corrupt files will not be able to be recovered, or that disk costs will get expensive or lead to unmanageable databases.  However, we should remember that there are plenty of excellent third-party solutions for doing backups and restores of SharePoint at the individual file level, as well as native backups and restores in SharePoint.  Microsoft Exchange stores all of its messages in a database format, and no one has ever raised an eyebrow.  The backup and restore process in SharePoint ends up being quite similar to Exchange.  In fact, Exchange stores its data in the JET database engine, which is even less robust that SQL.  Microsoft has also certified their enterprise search engine to be able to index 50 million documents in a single SharePoint repository, and SharePoint can manipulate files in SQL faster than a traditional DMS can manipulate the files on a file system.  All in all, it is our belief that this architectural design of SharePoint should not be a contributing factor in determining whether or not SharePoint is viable.

There are also some additional differences to keep in mind if you’re used to a traditional DMS:

• Re-filing is more difficult in SharePoint.  Metadata will not automatically update if you move documents between different matter libraries, and you’ll need some additional user training or third-party software.
• Document permissions may be harder to keep track of.  It’s important for the administrator to correctly assign permissions at the site or library level, and for users to individually secure their documents if need be.
• Some features are only available in MOSS, the licensed version of SharePoint, such as document trail auditing.
• The user interface is completely different.  The firm will need to be open to working differently and retraining users.
• SharePoint does not natively number documents—it only creates a unique URL for each document.  We recommend an inexpensive tool from MacroView Wisdom for doing unique document numbering.  Also worth noting is that SharePoint 2010 is supposed to natively support unique document numbering.
• While SharePoint libraries can be viewed in Outlook, messages cannot be dragged into a SharePoint folder in Outlook.  We recommend another tool from MacroView Wisdom for email management in Outlook.  In addition, SharePoint Workspace 2010, which is a full desktop client for SharePoint, may alleviate some of this need in 2010.

As firms look for creative ways to cut costs, while maintaining functionality, it will be interesting to see if SharePoint gains momentum as a DMS in the legal community.