Efficient Admin with SharePoint 2010 – Workbook

Efficient

Admin

with SharePoint 2010

Workbook


You work for the newly incorporated Cardiff Met School of Law and have been tasked with developing the School’s team sites. The basic team site structure has been created, but the sites need to be improved. The permissions structure needs an overhaul, document libraries need organising, communication features need developing and business processes need to be made more efficient.

Task 1 – Document Library Views and Columns

Part A: Creating a View

The Minutes library on the School of Law team site contains minutes for School of Law meetings and discussions. The library contains a mixture of Word documents and PDFs.

Create a view of the library that does the following:

  • Is available publicly and is the default view for the library
  • Allows users to see who documents are checked out to and when the document was created
  • Sorts the library by name of the document
  • Lists all documents on one page

/ Extension Idea

Create a second view, based on the first, that:

  • Is personal to you
  • Filters for Word documents – TIP: the file name for word documents contains “.doc”.

Part B: Adding Columns to a Library

Add existing site columns to the Policies and Procedures library to provide your team with more information about the documents in the library.

  1. Add the Owner and Statuscolumns.
  2. Change the settings of the Owner column to require that the column contains information.
  3. Change the Status column – add a status “Awaiting Approval”. Change the default value to “Draft”.
  4. Edit the Properties of a document to add an Owner and a Status.
  5. Create a new document and save it to the library. What happens when you try to save? Why?

Part C: Creating Custom Columns

Create some custom columns in the Minutes library to help sort the documents within the library.

  1. Create a Meeting Type column that allows users to choose between a Forum or Meeting.
  2. Create a Date of Meeting column that stores the date of the meeting.
  3. Create an Agenda column that hyperlinks to the agenda for the meeting.

Use Datasheet View to add properties for some of the documents already stored in the library.

Create a view of the library that displays the Date of Meeting and Agenda columns, sorts the library by the Date of Meeting field and groups the library by Meeting Type.

/ Extension Idea

Create a fourth column for the Minutes library: Chair –

  • A Person or Group column that stores the chairperson of each meeting
  • Restrict the choices to members of SharePoint Staff Efficient Admin Training Members group

Add some data to the Chair column using Datasheet View.

Create a new, public, view for the Minutes library: My Meetings should filter for meetings where the user viewing the site was the chair of the meeting.

HINT: Use the column value [Me] to filter for the current user of the site.

Task 2: Using and Customising SharePoint Lists

The International Law team have decided to use a Project Tasks list to manage the setup of their offices:

  1. Navigate to the International Law site then choose the International Law Office – Setup Project.
  2. Complete the list by adding a task – “Project evaluation meeting.” Details:
  3. This task is reliant on completion of the “Move In” task.
  4. It is assigned to the project manager: Joe Train
  5. It is planned to start shortly after the “Move In” task and will be completed within 3 days of beginning.
  6. The default view for a Project Tasks list sorts the library by the ID of the task (i.e. by when the task was created). Create a new view that sorts the list by Due Date. Make the new view a public, default view.

TIP: Base your new view on the Project Tasks view – this will include all relevant columns and a Gantt chart.

  1. To get a better overview of the structure of the project, it has been decided to classify each task as either part of the planning process, the execution or evaluation. Create a new Choice column, Task Stage, which allows users to choose oneof those values for each task.
  2. Add a Task Stage value for each task of the project.
  3. Create another view that still sorts by Due Date, but also groups the tasks by Task Stage.

/ Extension Idea

Extend your list to include a simple resource planning mechanism:

  1. Create a new Custom List that will hold a list of all resources available to the project.
  2. The only column required in this list is “Resource”, which will hold the name of the resource. Rename the Title column in your new list to Resource.
  3. Use Datasheet View to add some resources to the list. E.g. Furniture catalogue, Office Furniture Movers, Overtime pay.
  4. Return to the International Law Office – Setup Projectlist and add a new column Resources Required. This column should be a Lookup column that allows user to choose a resource from the Resources list.
  5. Once your column has been created, return to the list and add some data to the Resources Required column.

What are the advantages of using a Lookup data type instead of a Choice data type?

Task 3 – Permission Structures

You have been briefed with the following information relating to permissions for the School of Law team site:

The top-level site (School of Law) will host information relevant to all members of the school. All School of Law staff should be able to create, edit and delete documents and list items (such as announcements). The site will be administered by a team of three people: Andrew Paterson, Chris Evans and Anthony J. Davies.

Each of the next level sites (Criminal Law, Contract Law etc.) will inherit permissions from the top-level site, this will make the permissions structure more transparent and easier to administer.

Some of the third tier sites are more specialised and need unique permissions applied:

  • The content on the Criminal Teaching site should be editable by all members of the Criminal Law team - Paul Kinsey, Richard O. Ward, Alex Tam, Jonathan Cooper, Mike Allaway and Neil Gardner. The administrators for the site are Jonathan Cooper andPaul Kinsey. All staff in the School of Law should be able to read the material on this site.
  • The Gang Violence Research Team contains sensitive and confidential research data. As such only members of the team (Mike Allaway, Paul Kinsey, Alex Tam and Richard O. Ward) should be able to access and contribute to the site. The site will be administered by the project leads - Paul Kinsey and Richard O. Ward.
  • The Mephedrone Sales Research Projectis similarly sensitive, except they have agreed to share their research with the Gang Violence Research Team, but they should only be able to read the data, not change it. Staff assigned to the Mephedrone project are: Mike Allaway, Jonathan Cooper and Neil Gardner. The project lead is Jonathan Cooper.
  • The Private Int Law and Public Int Laware sub-sites of the International Law site and do not require additional security restrictions.

Part A: Planning

Use the information in the brief to plan the structure and permissions setup of the School of Law team site:

Step 1:

Plan your team site structure and decide where unique permissions are required.

Annotate the tree diagram (on the A3 paper) with green lines where inheritance should be enabled and red lines where unique permissions are required. Three examples are provided.

Step 2:

Plan your group setup

Sites that have unique permission applied will require two groups to manage permissions, one for Owners of the site and one for Members.

List the groups required by your site in the table below. Some examples have been completed for you

Owners Groups / Members Groups
School of Law Owners / School of Law Members
Criminal Teaching Owners / Criminal Teaching Members
Step 3

Assign users to each group.

Use the information in the brief to assign users to each group.

Some group membership has already been planned; complete the table with the remaining groups and users.

Group / Users
School of Law Owners / Andrew Paterson, Chris Evans and Anthony J. Davies
School of Law Members / All staff within the School of Law:
Anthony J. Davies, Chris Evans, Paul Kinsey, Richard O. Ward, Alex Tam, Jonathan Cooper, Mike Allaway, Andrew Paterson, Arwyn Jones and Neil Gardner
Criminal Teaching Owners / Paul Kinsey, Jonathan Cooper
Criminal Teaching Members / Paul Kinsey, Richard O. Ward, Alex Tam, Jonathan Cooper, Mike Allaway and Neil Gardner
Step 4:

Assign permissions for each group.

Complete the tree diagram with the level of access required by each group, for each site. The School of Law and Criminal Teaching sites have been completed for you.

Part B: Implementation

Implement the above plan on the School of Law team site that you have been assigned. Choose one of the sites that you have planned the permissions for, then:

Step 1:

Create one of the groups you have identified in the planning stage.

Step 2:

Add the required users to the group.

Step 3:

Visit the associated team site and apply the appropriate level of permission for that group

TIP: Do not remove permissions for SharePoint Staff Efficient Admin Training Members – you are part of that group

Step 4:

Repeat steps 1-3 for the other group you have identified.

/ Extension Idea

Repeat the above procedure for the other team sites that you have planned permissions for.

© 2014 Cardiff Metropolitan University 1

Efficient Admin with SharePoint 2010 – Workbook

School of Law Team Site Structure

© 2014 Cardiff Metropolitan University 1