If you don’t want to change show the quick launch section on few pages or sites (i.e Team Site), you need to do a trick with content editor web part, so let’s start.
1. Add a content editor web part, doesn’t matter where you add it. (Located under “Media and Content” web part categories).
2. Select the web part and click “Edit HTML source” from ribbon under the format text tool.
3. In the HTML source add the following code and click “OK”
<style>
#s4-leftpanel{
display:none
}
.s4-ca{
margin-left:0px
}
</style>
4. Save the page. The “quick launch” section should not be visible now as you can see the below pictures.
5. Now to hide the content editor web part, from the web part properties check the hidden property checkbox.
6. This trick works on any SharePoint 2010 or Foundation site or pages.
The Site Actions menu is available on every page inside of SharePoint Foundation. You can add an additional item to this menu using the following custom action. Let’s start J
1. Create an empty SharePoint project in visual studio 2010
2. Now Double-click Feature1 under feature section of project and update the properties, make sure you change the scope to “Web Application“
3. Now you need to create an element to attach to your feature, to do that right-click on the project and add a new item, then choose “Empty Element“. Give it a proper name.
Now edit your element file to reflect what you needed (The additional menu item on the site action drop down menu), here is a sample code to create a “Custom Settings” link which goes to a page in SharePoint called “/SitePages/CustomSettings.aspx”
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction Id="SiteActionsToolbar"
GroupId="SiteActions"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
Sequence="1000"
Title="Custom Settings"
Description="Custom site settings"
ImageUrl="_layouts/ebloginImages/logo.png">
<UrlAction Url="/SitePages/CustomSettings.aspx"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>
4. Once you edit the element file, all you need to do now is to package it. Right click on the Project or on the Menu bar Choose Build->Package.
5. Copy your packaged file (.wsp) to SharePoint server and install it using stsadm or PowerShell.
Your site action menu will have a new option as shown in below picture.
The rating allows users to rate items in lists and libraries in SharePoint. This is another highly usable and awesome feature tied to the Managed Metadata Service Application (MMS).
To turn on ratings on a list you normally go to Library/List Settings > Rating Settings.
When you enable this on a list or a library SharePoint adds two columns to your list called:
Rating (0-5)
Number of Ratings
But if you want to provision the rating with your Content Types and solution packages - you have to add the two rating columns to your content type.
Solution is here
Create an empty SharePoint project in Visual Studio 2010 and add a new Content Type project item. Select a content type to derive your new content type from. Once the item is added then you will see the content type XML manifest. Add the following rating site columns as a FeildRef.
<FieldRefs>
<FieldRef ID="{5a14d1ab-1513-48c7-97b3-657a5ba6c742}" Name="AverageRating" />
<FieldRef ID="{b1996002-9167-45e5-a4df-b2c41c6723c7}" Name="RatingCount" />
</FieldRefs>
Add a new item to the project of the type “List Definition from Content Type” and use your newly created content type. Also check the checkbox to create a list instance. Then deploy your solution to SharePoint and navigate to the new list that should have been created. If you create a new list item or upload a document you will see that the Rating has been enabled.
You can also check the Rating Settings for the list or the library and verify that Ratings has been enabled.
If you want to extend the welcome menu on SharePoint (the one that states your name on the top right corner and drops down options like “My Settings”, and “Sign Out”). I will show you step by step on how to do that in SharePoint Foundation 2010, this also works in older versions of SharePoint. So let’s start.
1. Create an Empty SharePoint Project
Create an empty SharePoint project in visual studio 2010
2. Updating the Solution Feature
Now Double-click Feature1 under feature section of project and update the properties, make sure you change the scope to “Web Application“.
3. Create an Element
Now you need to create an element to attach to your feature, to do that right-click on the project and add a new item, then choose “Empty Element“. Give it a proper name.
Now edit your element file to reflect what you needed (The additional menu item on the drop down menu), here is a sample code to create a “More Information” link which goes to a page in SharePoint called “/SitePages/MoreInformation.aspx”
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction
Id ="CustomMenu_MoreInformation"
GroupId="PersonalActions"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
Sequence="1000"
Title="More Information"
Description="View more information"
ImageUrl="_layouts/ebloginImages/logo.png">
<UrlAction Url="/SitePages/MoreInformation.aspx"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>
4. Package your SharePoint Solution
Once you edit the element file, all you need to do now is to package it. Right click on the Project or on the Menu bar Choose Build->Package.
5. Add and Install your Solution to SharePoint
Copy your packaged file (.wsp) to SharePoint server and install it using stsadm or PowerShell.
The “More information” element is added to the welcome page as you can see in the picture.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtualization provides a great deal of design flexibility for SharePoint architects. Each server role operates in a different way, and each has different memory and disk requirements, so it is important to understand in which scenarios the most benefits can be obtained from virtualizing SharePoint servers and in which scenarios it may not be ideal.
Virtualization of SharePoint Roles:
1).Virtualization of the SharePoint Web Role
The SharePoint Web role, responsible for the rendering of content, is the most ideal virtualization candidate in a SharePoint farm. Each front-end has comparatively lower memory requirements and there is generally a lower amount of disk activity that occurs on Web front-ends than on some of the other roles. Subsequently, many organizations are finding it highly useful to virtualize Web role servers in farms of many sizes and configurations.
2). Virtualization of the SharePoint Query Role
The query role, responsible for searches performed by users, is another possible candidate for virtualization, as long as SharePoint architects consider a few key factors. First and foremost, each query server in a farm must have a propagated copy of the index stored on a local drive. Depending on the amount of data that is being indexed, both within and outside SharePoint, the index size can be quite large.
3). Virtualization of the SharePoint Index Role
The index server role in a SharePoint farm is often the most memory-intensive role, making it a less ideal candidate for virtualization. This by no means rules it out as a candidate to be virtualized. It simply reduces the advantages that can be gained by virtualizing the server, as more of the host’s resources will need to be dedicated to the task.
As with the query role, the index role requires enough drive space to store the index corpus. Depending on the size of documents being indexed, this could be a volume of significant size. If large enough and for performance reasons, it is often best to attach directly to a physical volume connected to the host server, rather than to a VHD virtual disk file.
4). Virtualization of Application Roles
The application roles of Excel® Services and InfoPath® Forms Services are sometimes installed on dedicated servers, depending on their usage. These roles are similar to the Web server role in that they also can be easily virtualized in many environments. As the resource requirements of the individual application increase, additional servers to assist with the application can simply be added to the farm. Indeed, the flexibility of the virtualization model makes it easier for SharePoint architects to simply break out the application roles onto their own dedicated servers without having to invest in additional hardware.
5).Virtualization of the SharePoint Database Role
The least common role that is virtualized in production scenarios is the SharePoint database role, mainly because this role has the highest amount of disk I/O activity and can often have very high memory and processor requirements. This rule of thumb generally only applies to production SQL databases, however, and it is very common to see the SQL Server virtualized in test farms, quality assurance (QA) farms, demilitarized zone (DMZ) farms, or smaller SharePoint environments. The litmus test for whether to virtualize SQL Servers is whether a high level of usage is expected from the server itself. Gathering performance metrics using a tool such as System Center Operations Manager 2007 can be a useful way to determine the disk I/O requirements of an existing farm if determining whether or not to virtualize that environment.
Figure 1: Sample Multi-Farm Physical and Virtual SharePoint Architecture
In Figure 1, the organization chose to virtualize three front-ends as part of their production farm, but to maintain a dedicated physical index server. They then chose to virtualize the rest of the farms, including QA and two Development farms, and to host all of the databases from each of the farms on a physical set of SQL Servers.
Virtualization of the SQL database role, whether using SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008, is fully supported for a SharePoint farm. With this in mind, a SharePoint architect can examine whether it makes sense to virtualize a SQL environment for SharePoint or whether it is more logical to choose the more traditional physical server model for the SQL farm that a production SharePoint environment will use.
Virtualization provides for the ability to consolidate multiple virtual guests within a single physical server, sharing the physical resources across the virtual machines. For SharePoint administrators, virtualization also allows for the flexibility to quickly provision new farm members to handle specific functions or to provide for redundancy of a specific server role—a key design advantage over physical server models.Microsoft provides an end-to-end suite of virtualization products and technologies — all tied together by a centralized management system.
Server Virtualization
Hardware Virtualization uses software to create a Virtual Machine (VM) that emulates a physical computer. This creates a separate OS environment that is logically isolated from the host server. By providing multiple VMs at once, this approach allows several operating systems to run simultaneously on a single physical machine. Rather than paying for many under-utilized server machines, each dedicated to a specific workload; server virtualization allows those workloads to be consolidated onto a smaller number of more fully-used machines.
SharePoint Products and Technologies
Microsoft Office SharePoint Products and Technologies are a set of tools that provide for robust collaboration, document management, Web content management, and enterprise search. SharePoint tools allow organizations to easily share knowledge and valuable content on an extensible, scalable enterprise platform. The latest release of SharePoint Products and Technologies includes WSS 3.0, freely available with a license of Windows Server, and MOSS 2007, a full function Enterprise Content Management and Collaboration tool.
Benefits of Virtualization in a SharePoint:
Reduced hardware costs:
Virtualization allows organizations to reduce overall physical SharePoint server count. Virtual machine isolation and resource management enable more workloads to coexist on fewer servers, which results in more efficient use of hardware resources and reduces demand overall.
Increased server utilization:
An optimized infrastructure is becoming imperative as servers sprawl and data centers reach their capacity for power and space. The problem is aggravated for companies whose servers run at very low utilization. Server utilization rates for many customers fall into the 10 to 15 percent range.
Reduced facility costs and lessened environmental impact:
By reducing server count, virtualization solutions also provide the associated benefits of lowering fixed costs including reduced power consumption, reduced cooling costs, and reduced space requirements. In turn, this reduces the overall environmental impact the server farm creates.
Improved service levels from IT organizations:
Virtualization solutions enable organizations to rapidly deploy new servers and operating environments.
Extend useful life of legacy systems:
Virtualization technology can be used to consolidate multiple physical servers onto a single server. Virtualization can also be used to re-host legacy SharePoint physical farms, especially as older generation hardware becomes more difficult and costly to maintain.
List Forms: SharePoint list contains a set of list forms that you use to view, edit, or add items to a list. Each list form displays the columns from that list as fields on a page where users can view add, or edit information. Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 can customize these forms so that they’re easier to use and more targeted toward your business solution. Microsoft InfoPath 2010 in SharePoint Designer is used to create and customize these forms.
Microsoft InfoPath 2010
InfoPath 2010 is a powerful form creation and information gathering program included in the Microsoft Office 2010 release. Using InfoPath 2010, you can create highly customized, sophisticated forms without writing any code. You can drag and drop fields onto the form, add instant form validation using a set of rules, and apply different themes or branding to the form.
Customizing a list form in InfoPath Designer 2010 is similar to the experience of customizing a list form in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010. Typically, you add and remove fields, add text, graphics, and server controls, and change the layout and look and feel of the form.
Working:
When you open a list in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 and look at the available forms for that list, you see three forms: DispForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx, and NewForm.aspx
DispForm.aspx is used to display the properties of an item in the list.
EditForm.aspx is used to edit the item in the list.
NewForm.aspx is used to create new items in the list.
To customize these forms in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, you open them individually and make changes to them or create new forms to replace them. The next time you open your site in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, you’ll notice the addition of the new forms on the summary page for the list.
Default List Form
The default edit form (EditForm.aspx) appears as follows in the browser.
When you customize the form in InfoPath 2010, the new edit form (editifs.aspx with associated InfoPath template) appears as follows in the browser.
How to customize a list form using InfoPath 2010:
Open your site in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.
In the Navigation pane, click Lists and Libraries.
Open the list you want to customize.
On the List Settings tab, in the Actions group, click Design Forms in InfoPath, and then choose the content type that you want to use for the list forms. InfoPath 2010 opens with a new InfoPath Form Template.
Use the form editing tools in InfoPath 2010 to customize the look and feel of your form and add the necessary rules based logic to the form.
When finished with your customization, publish the template to your SharePoint list. There are two ways you can do this:
If you’re finished working on your form, simply close the form and when prompted, choose Save and Publish.
To publish the form and continue working in InfoPath, click the File tab, choose Info, and click Quick Publish.
Click OK to the publish confirmation message.
Close InfoPath 2010 and return to Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 if necessary.
Rating:
In SharePoint 2010 there is a new feature called Ratings. Ratings are very generic things that have a lot of flexibility they allow:
1).Users to rate content (of any type, Lists, Documents, Pages on a site, and even Content Types).
2).Store that ratings data in the database just like the new social tags that are part of 2010.
3).A rating represents the average score from all users submitting a rating for that item.
4).SharePoint Server provides the rating store, a control to rate items, and a web service to collect and consume the ratings. This service can be used from anywhere inside or outside of the system, including Office 2010 clients.
5).Ratings feature activated, you can enable support for it in individual document libraries. When it’s turned on, users will see an interface like this:
Getting Started: To start with ratings, we take a simple list with some movie titles in it that we’ll enable ratings on.
To enable ratings, we go into the settings for this list. Under General Settings for the list you’ll see a new option called Ratings settings.
Select this and you’ll see the option to turn ratings on or off for this list. It works the same for a Document Library.
Now two new columns have been added (from the site columns the service created above). A Rating column (this is a new Content Type) and a Number column to hold the number or ratings. Each time a user clicks on a rating for each item, the number goes up. This is used to average out the rating score to produce the overall rating value for the item.
Now when we look at our list we see the new Rating and Counter columns added (they’re added by default to your list but you can change this in the view just like any other column).
As you hover your mouse over the stars the color changes to yellow to reflect the rating you’re about to assign via a mouse click.
Once you click on a rating a confirmation tooltip is shown. This is the second star in the ratings control and displays the current user’s personalized rating. This is all done asynchronously so there are no icky postbacks.
Purpose to build it:
SharePoint 2007 doesn’t provide any rating capabilities. As for SharePoint 2010 – it does provide new rating capabilities, but still has some limitations such as:
No support for voting (thumb-up/thumb-down) and “Kicking” rating methods
No support for adding comments to ratings
No support for locking an item from being rated after a defined date
How to add rating to SharePoint 2010?
Created a custom content type and page layout inherited from the OOTB article page layout. Within this page layout, users are able to rate the content on the page from a scale of 1 to 5.Enable ratings within my list settings by going to the /Pages/Forms/AllItems.aspx view and clicking on the Library Settings link on the Library tab of the ribbon:
Enable rating functionality on the list by going Rating Settings and checking the “Allow items in this list to be rated?” –> yes radio button:
Two new site columns/meta-data columns to my list called Number of Ratings and Rating (0-5):
Now, on my pages list, on the allitems.aspx view, it added a new rating field type web control associated with those columns:
Now Ajax functionality allows you to rate the item without checking out the list item.
Now from the timer job called “User Profile Service Application – Social Rating Synchronization Job” (Central Admin –> Monitoring –> Review Job Definitions) and pressed the Run Now button. After a minute or so, the average rating showed up.
Now a rating control on content page layout which users can now use to rate:
You can configure settings for My Sites in the My Site host location for each User Profile Service application. Most of these settings are configured during initial deployment and only changed infrequently during normal operations thereafter. The following My Site settings can be configured on the My Site Settings page:
Preferred Search Centre: Used to configure the Search Centre site used when searching for people from the profile page on My Site.
My Site Host: Used to change the link to a My Site host location for the User Profile Service application. It is assumed that the My Site Host location has already been provisioned.
Personal Site Location: Used to set the location where personal sites are created. This should be a wildcard inclusion managed path defined on the Web application hosting My Sites.
Site Naming Format: Used to set the format to use when naming new personal sites.
Language Options: Used in multilingual deployments. The available languages correspond to the language packs installed on the server.
Read Permission Level: Used to enable certain users to view personal sites. By default, this includes all authenticated users, but you can select a more focused group of users depending upon the needs of your deployment.
My Site E-mail Notifications: Used to configure the sender's name for all My Site e-mail notifications.
Task requirements
Before you perform this procedure, confirm that:
Your system is running either the Standard or Enterprise version of SharePoint Server 2010.
An instance of the User Profile Service exists.
You have created a My Site Host location.
Use Central Administration to set up My Sites
Perform the following procedure to set up My Sites.
To use Central Administration to set up My Sites, you must be a member of the Farm Administrators group or a Service Application Administrator for the User Profile Service application.
To set up My Sites by using Central Administration
On the Central Administration page, under Application Management, click Manage service applications.
On the Manage Service Applications page, click the name of the User Profile Service that you want to manage.
On the Manage Profile Service page, under My Site Settings, click Setup My Sites.
On the My Site Settings page, in the Preferred Search Settings section, in the Preferred Search Center box, enter the URL of the Search Center users will be taken to when they execute a search from the My Site profile page, for example, http://sitename/SearchCenter/Pages/.
In the Preferred Search Settings section, select a search scope for finding people and for finding documents.
In the My Site Host section, in the My Site Host location box, enter the URL of the dedicated site collection in which personal sites are hosted, for example, http://portal_site/.
In the Personal Site Location section, enter the URL of the location at which you want to create personal sites.
In the Site Naming Format section, select the format to use when naming new personal sites.
In the Language Options section, select Allow users to choose the language of their personal site to enable users to select the language in which information on their personal site will appear.
In the Read Permission Level section, enter the accounts for which you want to grant Read permission on the personal site.
In the My Site E-mail Notifications section, enter a sender’s e-mail address for all My Site e-mail notifications in the Sender’s Name box.
Click OK.
User Profile Service: The User Profile service stores information about users in a central location. Social computing features use this information to facilitate productive interactions which enable users to collaborate efficiently. In order to provision My Site Web sites, enable social computing features such as social tagging and newsfeeds, and create and distribute profiles across multiple sites and farms, you must enable the User Profile service. Here you will find out step by step procedure in setting up the User Profile Service application, focusing on its configuration and administration and how we can enable the creation of user profiles via an Active Directory import. SharePoint 2010 introduces the notion of "Service Applications" which builds upon the "Shared Services Provider (SSP)" which was introduced in SharePoint 2007. Service Application: Service Applications are individual services that can be configured independently and can be shared across other sites within your farm with some service applications that can also be configured across farms. The individual service applications provided with SharePoint 2010 are listed as follows;
Access Services
Business Data Connectivity
Document Conversion
Excel Services
Managed Metadata Service
Performance Point
Search Service
Secure Store
State Service
Visio Graphics Service
User Profile Service
User Profile Service Setup Before attempting setup up of our first User Profile Service Managed Metadata Service is setup and configured Managed Metadata Service The Managed Metadata service allows you to utilize managed metadata and provides you with the ability to share content types across sites. Setup: To setup our Managed Metadata Service, navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications. Click New and select "Managed Metadata Service"
Enter the follow details;
Name: Managed Metadata Service Database Server: <server_name> Database Name: Managed Metadata DB
Now utilize the sp_farm account for the Application Pool Identity. Application Pool Identity:
Click Create. Lastly, navigate to Central Administration / System Settings / Manage services on server and start the Managed Metadata Web Service.
Now that we have successfully configured our Managed Metadata service we can now focus our attention on the User Profile Service. The User Profile Service provides our SharePoint farm with all the social networking features that we have come to love in SharePoint 2007, plus more. It forms the basis of My Site support, User profile pages, Audiences and some of the newer features in SharePoint 2010 social computing such as social tagging. Before we begin, we need to ensure that our Farm account (DOMAIN\sp_farm) is listed as a member of the Local Administrator's group where the User Profile Synchronization service will be deployed. Let's now navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications. Click New and select "User Profile Service Application" The "Create New User Profile Service Application" window pops up in which you will enter the following details; (you will obviously enter in the details based on your environment setup) Name: User Profiles Create new application pool: SharePoint – User Profiles
Register Managed Account: Register a new managed account: e.g. DOMAIN\sp_userprofiles (nb: this account will need to be provisioned in Active Directory first)
Profile Database : Enter your Profile Database server details and database authentication. You will notice that SharePoint 2010 introduces the ability to configure Failover Server which allows you to associate your SharePoint databases with another SQL server for failover purposes utilising SQL Server database mirroring. We will not specify a Failover Database server for any of our databases at this present time.
Synchronization Database Specify your Synchronization Database which is used to store configuration and staging data for synchronization of profile data such as that from Active Directory.
Social Tagging Database Next, specify your Social Tagging Database which is used to store tags and notes that are created by users. Social Tagging is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 which is not only displayed against the items that user's are tagging, but are also displayed in the user's activity feed.
Next, select your Profile Synchronization Instance Server..Click Create.
We will now venture back into Central Administration / System Settings / Manage services on server.Scroll down to the User Profile Service and User Profile Synchronisation Service and start both. The User Profile Service should start without any further user interaction, however the User Profile Synchronization Service will ask for your SharePoint Farm credentials.You should now have the User Profiles service application listed and started.
Click Ok. Both services should now be listed as started.
