SharePoint in
the cloud
Y
|
ou will kill two birds with a stone in this chapter. The
objective is to shed light on the very interesting topic of SharePoint branding. Since SharePoint is very popular
with the enterprise clients, they mostly like to add their own branding to the
product. There was a time when the only thing you could do “easily” was
changing the logo and the site’s title and description. Adding elements to the
page’s style was a cumbersome job. When Microsoft saw companies’ interest in
this area, they started adding some support in the product and made it easier
for the users to add branding. Still it was not where it should have been. With
SharePoint 2007, things became somewhat easier. With SharePoint 2010, branding
actually took off and we saw some great very well done sites. Now with
SharePoint 2013, we have full support in the product and branding sites has
become a lot easier now. With the increasing popularity of mobile platforms,
responsive designs have taken the top spot and are the #1 preference of the
companies these days. Moreover, SharePoint is now very well established in the
cloud. SharePoint until now has been popular as an
Intranet product. Companies usually used it for team
collaboration and document management but with SharePoint online, companies are
now deploying sites that offer the same excellent look and feel that was the
trademark of HTML sites back in the day and on top of that, users get the same
excellent features that were the hallmark of SharePoint Intranet or Extranet solutions, for example, document management,
users management, user roles, calendars, tasks management, etc. So, in this
chapter, first we are going to setup a SharePoint site in the cloud. Then we
will develop a branded site for the cloud.
So, here is a brief introduction before we dive into the
details. SharePoint Online is a cloud based service that helps organizations share
and collaborate with colleagues, partners, and customers. Users can now access
internal sites, documents, and other information from anywhere. It is a common
platform that can be accessed from the home, office or a mobile device.
SharePoint Online has new innovative features. It has a
fluid interface, file sharing capabilities, higher storage limits, cloud application development model and robust tools
for administrators to more easily control the environment. Everyone benefits
from the new SharePoint Online: users, managers, developers and IT
professionals.
SharePoint Online site consists of two sites: the Team
Site and the Website. Here is some more detail:
Team Site:
The Team Site is an internal site for your team. All members of your
organization can collaborate with each. They can share documents and other
files. Other basis elements of the Team site include announcements, meetings,
tasks list and issues list, custom lists, etc.
You can create subsites from the available site templates. For example,
you can create a team blog, or a social meeting workspace to organize team
events, meetings, and so on.
Website: The
Website is where you design your public site. This is the site that is visible
to the world. This website has
everything you need to get started with designing your site. It has libraries
to store content such as images, documents, etc. that you can display on the
pages of your site.
Site Components
A site is a group of pages where users can work on projects,
store and share information. Following are some important site objects that are
frequently used in a SharePoint site.
Lists
A list is a site component that is used to store information quickly. It has CRUD functions. There are different types of lists in SharePoint, for example, a tasks list is used to store and monitor tasks, an events list is used to store events, a custom list can comprise of any number of fields that are relevant to your business.
Libraries
A library is a special type of list that stores files as
well as information about files. The two most used libraries in SharePoint are: Document library and Forms library.
As the name suggests, document library is used to store
documents. You can create folders inside a library to define a hierarchy. Forms
library is used to store electronic forms. You can store forms directly in this
library. Each form library can be associated with different content types. You
can publish InfoPath form template in a library and bind it to the library.
Users can open this template and fill out data. Saving the template
automatically generates a new xml form that is stored in the same library.
Views
Views play an
important part in SharePoint. You can use views to see
items in a list or library. These views can be added to the home page of your
site so that all important information from different libraries and lists is
available on the home page of the site. Multiple views can be created for a
list or library. You can also use a web part to display a view of a list or
library on a separate page of the site.
Web Parts
A Web Part is a modular unit of content that forms a basic
building block of most pages on a site. If you have permission to edit pages,
you can use web parts to customize the site to display information from
different sources.
New interface has been reimagined. It is easy to navigate
and easy to accomplish tasks.
Site Usage
There are several other features that allow administrators
to control the site. Managing sites in SharePoint is easy because of the built-in functions that
let administrators control permissions, roles, storage, content management,
etc.
Permissions
There are different permission levels available out-of-the
box and you can create your own custom permission levels. You can assign
permissions directly to the users as well groups. Assigning permissions to the
groups make permission handling very easy. All you have to do is add or delete
users from the group. You don’t have to handle permissions individually if you
don’t want to. For granularity, you can assign permissions directly on the
files and folders and to the individual users.
Customization
Everything can be customized in SharePoint and that’s the beauty of it. You can customize
the interface, you can customize permissions, you can customize navigation.
This is the biggest advantage of SharePoint. You are not restricted to the
out-of-the-box features. SharePoint is scalable. You can add your own custom
functionality.
Figure 11-1: SharePoint 365 (branded)
home page
The page you see above is customized and contains custom
content. One new feature is drag and drop. Another one is on-hover that allows
users to see a set of rich commands and contextual information in search
results.
SkyDrive Pro is cloud storage that users can use to store documents
directly from within SharePoint.
Most important interesting new feature is new and improved
public website. There are different out-of-the-box themes available that can
quickly change the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom
themes. Even if you don’t create custom theme, you can create a new design and
create a master page to incorporate the new design and apply it to your site.
Following are a couple of themes that come with the product.
Figure 11-2: Out-of-the-box
themes
Online Packages
As of Dec 2013, the packages are as following:
Small Business
Packages
Small Business
|
Small Business Premium
|
Midsize Business
|
$5.00
user/month
|
$12.50
user/month
|
$15.00
user/month
|
Business-class
email
§
Online conferencing
§
Public website
§
File sharing
§
Office Web Apps
|
§
Business-class email
§
Online conferencing
§
Public website
§
File sharing
§
Office Web Apps
§
Desktop versions of Office products
|
§
Business-class email
§
Online conferencing
§
Public website
§
File sharing
§
Office Web Apps
§
Active Directory Integration
|
Enterprise Packages
Business-class Email
|
Enterprise E1
|
Enterprise E3
|
$4.00
user/month
|
$8.00
user/month
|
$20.00
user/month
|
§
Active Directory Integration
|
§
Business-class email
§
Active Directory Integration
§
File Sharing
§
Online conferencing
§
Enterprise social
§
Office Web Apps
|
§
Business-class email
§
Active Directory Integration
§
File Sharing
§
Online conferencing
§
Enterprise social
§
Office Web Apps
§
Desktop versions of Office products
§
eDiscovery Center
|
Setting up SharePoint Online
In this section, we will start from scratch and setup an
online SharePoint site.
Sign-up for a trial version on this link:
Click Free trial
link under Enterprise E3 plan and sign up.
Here is the direct link:
Trial version expires after 30 days. If you choose to keep
the site, then you have to purchase the package.
After you have signed up, you get access to the site. You
get your own URL. You can also unique URL for your site should you wish to do
so. You can purchase a domain name and link it to your SharePoint Online site.
Site URL looks like this:
You are also granted a unique email address that you use to
login to your site. Your email address looks like this:
Plan the Public Website
So, now you have a subscription, you can setup a public
website and make it available on the Internet. By default, your site is set to
Offline mode. Once you have completed the site, you can take in Online. You can
customize the website to create a professional online presence for your
business or organization.
It’s always a good idea to do some planning before you start
the work. Discipline and planning really help to keep things moving smoothly.
The website includes several sample pages: Home, About Us,
Contact Us, Directions, and Blog. You can use these pages and just customize
the content and you are all set to go live. You can add your company name,
logo, contact information, and change color scheme. You can also create a
totally new branded site for your business. That’s our next topic in this
chapter. In this section, we will use out-of-the-box components to set up a
site.
Figure 11-3: Website menu
Once you login, you
will see a global menu. As mentioned before, there are two sites created by
default, a team site and a public website. To work on the team site, you have
to select team site from the global menu. To work on the public site, you have
to select public website from the menu. Global menu looks like this:
Figure 11-4: Global menu
In the global menu, click Sites to see the two sites. Please note that depending on your
package, the interface may look different. For example, if you are using an E3
package, you will not see the two sites. You will have to create the sites
first. By default, E3 package gives you a public site. You can create more
sites separately. Click Public site to go to the public
website. Click on the Home link to
go to the home page. Then select PAGE
tab from the top. Click Edit button
from the PAGE menu. Start typing and
adding elements to the page until you are done. If you have already designed a
page using other design programs, copy the page from there and paste it in the
content area and the save and publish the page.
Figure 11-5: Page tab
Repeat the process for all other links. Once you have added
content to the pages, it’s time to make a few more changes to the site. Go to
the SITE tab.
Figure 11-6: Site tab
Click Change the Look
button. This page lists all out-of-the-box themes. If you are ok with the
default theme, you don’t have to do anything but If you want to change your
theme then this is the place. Just select the theme you like and your site’s
look and feel will change.
Figure 11-7: Site Title
Click Change Logo
button to change logo on your site. You can upload logo image from your
computer or from a SharePoint site if you have already upload an image to
your site. Each public website has all the default features like Site Assets,
Document Library, Tasks List, etc. You can upload your site images etc. to the Site Assets library.
Click Edit Menu
button to change the navigation menu. Menu is shown on the left side. There is
a link called EDIT LINKS at the
bottom of the menu list. Click it to turn menu into editable mode. Click the
link you wish to edit. You can hide or unhide links from the menu. You can also
drag new links to the menu or use the new link
to add a link to the menu. After making the changes, click the Save button.
Next, click Search
Box button if you want to hide/unhide Search box
on your site.
If you want to make changes to the design of your site, you
can edit its style sheet by clicking the Edit
Style Sheet button. You can either type styles directly to the input box or
you can copy styles from the style sheet file you may have created for your
site. Click Save and Publish to save and publish the styles. If you clicked
Save button, then that will save the
styles but won’t publish it and thus changes will not appear on your site. To
enable the changes, make sure to publish the style sheet.
Now, one final thing, you can edit properties of each page
in your site and set its SEO properties as well. Go to the home page and
click PAGE tab. Edit Properties button has three options: Edit Properties, Edit SEO
Properties, View Properties. Select Edit
SEO Properties. This form has all the properties that are needed to setup
SEO for your page. If you want to rename your page, do it in the Name field. Add title of the page in
the Title field. This title is used
by the search engines to pair the page with results for similar keywords so
make sure you had all keywords in the title field that are relevant to your
business, for example, “Wali Systems – A SharePoint Company – SharePoint Staffing, Consulting and
Development Services”. Browser Title
is the title that appears in the title bar of your page. Meta Description contains the description of your page. This is
displayed under your URL shown in search results. Keywords field is the field where you enter the keywords for your
site. Keywords should be comma separated. You can enter maximum of 1024
characters in this field. In Exclude
from Internet Search Engines field, you can choose if you want to include
this page in the sitemap and expose to the search engines or you want to keep
it hidden. After entering values for each field, click OK to save the changes.
Repeat this process for all the pages.
Now your site is ready to be published but before doing that
let’s explore the admin section as well. Click Admin link from the top global navigation.
Figure 11-8: Admin area
Here you get all the options to make necessary changes to
your site. For example, by default your site’s email is set to username@sitename.onmicrosoft.com. You can
change it username@yourcompany.com. To change email
address, click the box labeled email
address. Changing email process takes 45 minutes. You must have a domain
name before you start this process. Click the Start button to start the process and enter you email with your
domain name and click Next. On the
next screen, confirm that you own the domain name. Provide name and password
for your domain registrar. This is where you bought your domain. Enter username
and password for your DNS hosting provider. This may be the same company as
your domain registrar. To confirm that you own the domain name, you have to
login to your domain account and add a DNS
entry. In the DNS records, add a TXT entry. Enter the code provided by
Office 365 site. This is the first step. In the next
step, you confirm that you want to keep your website where it’s hosted today
and just want the email address to be associated with your SharePoint site. In the third step, you change your email
address. Enter new email to link it to your current SharePoint email and click Update. In step four, you add other
users of your site that have a custom email address. Remember you have to setup
these users in SharePoint also using their custom email addresses. In the final
step five, you redirect all traffic from your site to Office 365 site. To make
this change, you have to change your name servers in the domain account. Name
servers will be provided by the Office 365 site, you just have to enter them in
your domain account. Once you have completed all the steps, you will start
getting emails at your custom email address associated with your SharePoint
website.
Click collaboration
button to see how to use tools for creating, sharing, and tracking documents.
You do not configure anything in this section. This section serves as a small
tutorial for the features that you can use in your site. Here is what you will learn in this section:
§ Check out SkyDrive Pro and team sites
§ Get to know SkyDrive Pro
§ Change the look and feel of your team site
§ Put your site to work for the team
Click public website
box/button to learn more about creating public website. Click software button
to setup latest software for your site. This section records the computer name
where you download and install the software.
It records the operating system and the installation date. Once
installed, you can deactivate the installed software using the deactivate link at a later time. You
can setup Lync in this section. You
can setup tools and add-ins,
for example, SharePoint Designer. Remember you can use these tools
from your desktop as well if you have them installed already. You just need to
connect to your online site from the desktop tool. More on this topic later!
You can setup desktop applications if you have Office 2007 or 2010 installed.
If you have Office 2013 installed, you don’t have to do anything. You can setup
Office 365 on your mobile devices as well. Remember you
can use your mobile’s browser to access your Office 365 site but for a better
browsing experience or if you want to access email on your mobile device, or
you want to setup OWA for your mobile device, you can set that up in
this section.
Figure 11-9: Supported mobile
devices
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