Vanessa Larsen's Blog

Vanessa Larsen's Blog

8/8/2011

Employee Provisioning

Last month I had the privilege of speaking at the Brisbane SharePoint User Group. As I had a number of requests for an example of the slides and process maps that I used in the demo, I have uploaded them here on my blog. Feel free to check them out on the Resources link in the top menu bar.

Posted at 9:59 AM by Vanessa Larsen | Category: SharePoint - General | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

9/8/2010

Customising the Ribbon in Office 2010

After using Microsoft Office 2007, and then 2010, for a while now, I have found that there are some things in the ribbon I'd like to change. I really do like the ribbon (and this goes back to Natural User Interface rather than the old Graphic User Interface in 2003), but there are some things I'd like to have my way.

With Office 2010, this is now possible! I'm going to use InfoPath Designer as an example, just because I've found a few things like switching views to be more annoying than others.

When you open InfoPath Designer, choose File > Options

Then navigate to Customise Ribbon. Here you can add the different menu actions to the different tabs (or create your own tab). I really like having the preview button added to all the tabs to save clicking back to 'Home', so I'll show you how to do that.

Firstly, add a new group to your preferred tab. Custom commands can only be added to custom groups, so the default groups/actions need to either stay as they are or be removed.

Then find your preferred action to add to your custom group, in this case, the preview command. Note that the default in the dropdown is the popular commands – if you'd like to view all the commands, you'll need to select 'All Commands' or 'All Tabs' from the choose commands from dropdown.

Posted at 5:37 PM by Vanessa Larsen | Category: SharePoint - General | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

7/15/2010

Customising the I need to dropdown in SharePoint

I recently needed to update the I Need To dropdown with a link to a new form I developed. Now, you may or may not have noticed, but most of the blogs/sites out there explaining how to do this usually say to create a custom list and link your web part to this list.

However, if you look closer at the web part, you will notice it's already referencing a list:

You can also set this web part to reference Division, Region, Tasks and Tools, Link Status. Now, you can customise the links in this dropdown however you want, but for this example I will show how to add an option to the Tasks and Tools.

To get to this list, you merely need to click Site Actions >Manage Content and Structure.

Then navigate to Sites, and click on the Sites library

Here you can add your link, and make sure you check the [Top Tasks] checkbox – this is what makes the link appear in the 'I Need To' web part for Tasks and Tools. You will notice that there are also options for the Division and Region.

As this list has content approval enabled by default, you will also need to approve it.

And that's it! You'll now notice that your link appears in the I Need To web part.

Posted at 7:16 PM by Vanessa Larsen | Category: SharePoint - General | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/18/2010

Using InfoPath to update information in a separate list – Single point of truth

I've been seeing a lot of questions and queries come by about people wanting to use an InfoPath form to capture information from a separate list and to then update the items in this list

Example:

Say you had an InfoPath form for employees to submit a leave request, and the form pulls their existing details from a list in SharePoint. The user enters the details for their leave, but can also update their personal details.

On submission, the form (either using workflow or code) updates the list item with the employee's personal details.

Problem:

This is duplicating data! You have now created two points of truth for your information. Your users will be thinking "which one is the most current?"

Solution:

The best way to avoid an issue like this would be to think about what the true purpose of the data you are trying to capture within the InfoPath form is. In this instance, the leave form would only collect leave requests, and the employee details would only display within the form (for ease of use). But the single point of truth for updating the employee details will be in the list.

Posted at 5:41 PM by Vanessa Larsen | Category: SharePoint - General | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)