Integrating SharePoint 2010 with PowerPoint 525 Chart Web Part The new Chart Web Part is a fantastic addition to the already long list of SharePoint’s out-of-the-box Web Parts. Many SharePoint projects require a graphical display of data as a Web Part on a page. Figure 18-17 shows an example of the Chart Web Part. The data in this Web Part can come from a SharePoint list, an external content type (previously known as the BDC), Excel Services, or even another Web Part on the same page. The Data & Appearance button directs you to a screen with wizards to Customize Your Chart or Connect Chart to Data. The interface and configuration screens are very intuitive, and the chart itself is highly customizable, which makes this Web Part perfect for business users, thereby making the job of the SharePoint admin- istrator and developer easier! Publishing to Excel Services The Save & Send tab in Excel’s Backstage view has an option to Publish to Excel Services. Excel Services is a SharePoint technology that is used in facilitate sharing, securing, and ease of use when it comes to Excel spreadsheets as interactive entities in the enterprise. If a spreadsheet will be used in Excel Services, publishing the file to a library is the preferred method over simply saving the file. Click the Excel Services Options button in order to specify spreadsheet components to be published, such as individual sheets and charts. Excel Services are covered in more detail in Chapter 20. Excel Web Access Web Part The Excel Web Access Web Part can be used to display data from within a spreadsheet that has been published to Excel Services. You can display the entire spreadsheet or just specific portions of it such as ranges and charts. When typing interactivity is enabled in the Web Part properties and Office web applications are installed on the server, the spreadsheet is editable right in the Web Part. Charts in this Web Part are different from the Chart Web Part described earlier because the chart’s configuration is done within Excel. The Chart Web Part is set up within the Web Part settings. For more information on the fun you can have with Excel Web Access check out Chapter 20. INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2010 WITH POWERPOINT PowerPoint is an application that is used to create powerful and portable presentations, and PowerPoint 2010 has more multimedia capabilities than ever. This section covers the ways in which SharePoint and PowerPoint are integrated. Live co-authoring, covered earlier in the chapter, is also available in PowerPoint presentations. This allows multiple users to work on the same file, and each user’s currently edited slide is locked from editing by the other collaborators. Because PowerPoint presentations consist of slides, our first stop is a look at slide libraries. FIGURE 1817 526 CHAPTER 18 iNtegratiNg the office 2010 clieNts With sharePoiNt 2010 Slide Libraries First introduced in SharePoint 2007, slide libraries are used to provide a list of individual slides for collaboration purposes. Slide libraries not only enable you to view an inventory of slides, you can piece these slides together to create new presentations. In a slide library, each slide has a checkbox next to it. To create a new presentation based on slides in the library, simply check the boxes next to the slides needed, and click the Copy Slide to Presentation button. Broadcasting Slide Shows PowerPoint 2010 offers the capability to broadcast a PowerPoint presentation straight to the Web browser, which can be offered publicly on the Internet or locally on the intranet, via SharePoint Server. To broadcast a presentation means to make a live view available in a web browser. Individuals who are viewing the web page will see the slides as they are being clicked through. In other words, the presenter’s current slide is displayed as they are discussing it. Here are the steps involved in broad- casting a PowerPoint 2010 presentation: 1. In PowerPoint, go to the Backstage view by clicking the File menu at the top left. 2. Click the Save & Send tab on the left side. 3. In the Save & Send section, click the Broadcast Slide Show button, as shown in Figure 18-18. FIGURE 1818 4. On the right, click the larger Broadcast Slide Show button. 5. By default, there is a public service called the PowerPoint Broadcast Service that only requires a Windows Live ID. Click Start Broadcast to use this service, or click Change Broadcast Service to use a custom one, such as a SharePoint site. The creation of a PowerPoint broad- cast site in SharePoint is covered in the next section, “PowerPoint Service Application.” Integrating SharePoint 2010 with Outlook 527 6. A URL link will automatically be generated and displayed on the screen. Hand this out to anyone who will need to view this live presentation, i.e., the intended audience. 7. Click the Start Slide Show button to begin the presentation, which entails a live view of the current slide. Note that no audio is associated with this live broadcast. The intent is that a company conference line or direct phone call can be used, in order for the audience to hear the presenter’s voice. When the presentation is over, click to end the broadcast. PowerPoint Service Application When Office 2010 Web Applications have been installed and deployed from Central Administration in SharePoint as covered in Chapter 19, listed among the service applications is the PowerPoint Service Application. This service enables you to set up your own internal PowerPoint broadcast URL. Follow these steps to create a SharePoint broadcast site: 1. In Central Administration, click Create Site Collections in the Application Management section. 2. Create a new top-level site collection, in the web application of your choosing. A good name and URL for this site would be “Broadcast.” 3. In the Template Selection section, click the Enterprise tab and choose PowerPoint Broadcast Site. 4. Pick a site administrator and click OK. 5. On the Top-Level Site Successfully Created screen, click the link to the new site collection. 6. Click People and Groups on the left. 7. Configure the permissions on the site. Users who will be broadcasting slides are Broadcast Presenters, users who will view the slides are Broadcast Attendees, and obviously administra- tors of the permissions on this broadcast site are the Broadcast Administrators. From this point on, when users are broadcasting PowerPoint presentations and are prompted to pick a broadcast service, they will use the URL of this new Broadcast site. The “Managing Office 2010 and SharePoint through Group Policy” section in this chapter shows how Group Policy can be used to block the default PowerPoint Broadcast Service. Your own custom internal broadcast URLs can be set in Group Policy also. INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2010 WITH OUTLOOK Outlook is Microsoft’s e-mail management program, integrating e-mail with personal lists such as contacts, calendars, and tasks. With Outlook 2010, you can find and view information, custom- ize your user interface, and connect to SharePoint and other social media networks. This section focuses specifically on the ways in which Outlook 2010 is used with SharePoint 2010. 528 CHAPTER 18 iNtegratiNg the office 2010 clieNts With sharePoiNt 2010 In particular, you will learn 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, per document library and list. When alerts are set up, automatic e-mails arrive when items in a list 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. In Outlook, on the Home tab of the Ribbon, click the Rules button in the Move section. Click Manage Rules & Alerts, and then choose the Manage Alerts tab. This screen displays a list of all your existing alerts, which can each be viewed and modified. To create a new alert, click the New Alert button. SharePoint Lists and Libraries 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 con- nected 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 2010. All lists and libraries that are 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 flippantly clicking the Connect to Outlook button for document libraries with hundreds of files in Integrating SharePoint 2010 with Outlook 529 them. Those hundreds of fi les are then copied to the PST on that client hard drive. A new setting in SharePoint 2010 enables site administrators to avoid this scenario: Offl ine Client Availability. Follow these steps to disable the offl ine availability of a library: 1. In the Library tab in the library’s Ribbon, click the Library Settings button. 2. In the General Settings section, click Advanced Settings. 3. Scroll down to the section called Offl ine Client Availability. The default setting for the ques- tion Allow items from this document library to be downloaded to offl ine clients? is Yes. Change it to No and click OK. When offl ine availability is turned off, the Connect to Outlook button in the library is grayed out and disabled. If clients have already created offl ine copies of the library, they will still exist as dis- connected, and will not receive any further updates from the library. There are a couple of options other than completely blocking users from downloading offl ine copies of the libraries to Outlook, but these options 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 — New to SharePoint 2010, document sets 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. Sync to a SharePoint Workspace instead — There is an option to download only headers, which would take up less space than the full fi les. SharePoint Workspaces are discussed later in this chapter. Calendars and Meetings As discussed previously in this chapter, SharePoint calendars can be connected to Outlook cli- ents — but the integration doesn’t stop there! Now, when SharePoint 2010 and Outlook 2010 are used in conjunction for meeting planning, the experience is quite seamless. Using an overlay view, you can now add 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. On the left side of a SharePoint calendar in the browser, click Calendars in View. This allows for up to 10 additional calendars to be displayed in the view, which includes not only SharePoint calendars from multiple sites, but Exchange calendars also! Outlook 2010 also has a new feature called the Outlook Social Connector. This is covered in detail in Chapter 17. 530 CHAPTER 18 iNtegratiNg the office 2010 clieNts With sharePoiNt 2010 INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2010 WITH INFOPATH Since its inception in Microsoft Offi ce 2003, InfoPath has been highly integrated with SharePoint. SharePoint 2010 offers a plethora of new integration points with InfoPath 2010. A part of the Microsoft Offi ce suite of applications, InfoPath is used for the creation and fi lling 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 knowl- edge is required, and the interface and form publishing process are simple and familiar. InfoPath Forms Services was fi rst introduced in Microsoft Offi ce SharePoint Server 2007. It is a SharePoint technology that allows for centralized adminis- tration of forms in an organization, and also provides the ability for forms to be fi lled in using the browser instead of relying on client software. If you have used InfoPath, then you know that in the past it was a single application in Offi ce. In Offi ce 2010, the product has been divided into Microsoft InfoPath Designer 2010 and Microsoft InfoPath Filler 2010. Because designing a form and fi lling out a form are two distinct tasks, typi- cally 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 fi rst choices to make is whether the form will be browser-based, that is, it can be opened and fi lled 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 Offi ce suite. 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 entails publishing the form to a single library on a SharePoint site. When you know that the form will not be needed in other sites or libraries, use this option. Browser-based forms are optional here. Note that at the SharePoint library level, there is a setting that the administrator can use to force the way 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 can be globally available in the orga- nization. This option requires that the browser-based option is selected. 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. . office 2010 clieNts With sharePoiNt 2010 INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT 2010 WITH INFOPATH Since its inception in Microsoft Offi ce 2003, InfoPath has been highly integrated with SharePoint. SharePoint 2010. Integrating SharePoint 2010 with PowerPoint 525 Chart Web Part The new Chart Web Part is a fantastic addition to the already long list of SharePoint s out-of-the-box Web Parts. Many SharePoint. 18 iNtegratiNg the office 2010 clieNts With sharePoiNt 2010 In particular, you will learn how to manage SharePoint alerts from Outlook, the types of SharePoint lists and libraries that can be