Using Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 Connector for SharePoint Technologies
White Paper
Roland Gradl
Microsoft Corporation
Published: January 2004
Table of Contents
Introduction
Description of MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies
Overview
Publishing MCMS 2002 Content to SharePoint Sites or Portals
Page Listing Web Part
Pages Waiting for Approval Web Part
Pages in Production Web Part
Publishing Documents from SharePoint Products and Technologies to MCMS 2002 Sites
Creating a document
Customization
Synchronization
Using SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Search with MCMS 2002
Metadata Control
Search Control
Architecture
Simple Architecture
Network Load Balanced Architecture
Conclusion
Using Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 Connector for SharePoint Technologies
White Paper
Roland Gradl
Microsoft Corporation
Published: January 2004
Introduction
This article describes how to use Microsoft® Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 Connector for SharePoint™ Technologiesto implement an integrated solution for publishing documents, searching content, and managing tasks.
Description of MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies
MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies contains software and documentation that you can use to integrateMicrosoft Content Management Server 2002 with Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies is designed for organizations that use or plan to use MCMS 2002 with SharePoint Products and Technologies. Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 provide collaboration and intranet portal site features such as search, alerts and notification, and document versioning that you can use to organize, share, and find important information located throughout your organization. MCMS2002 offers Web content management features such as authoring and presentation templates, content scheduling and workflow,and dynamic page assembly.
With MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies, your organization can use these programs together to:
- Publish MCMS 2002 content on SharePoint sites and portal sites.
- Publish document library content from Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to MCMS 2002 sites, and schedule automatic updates so that the MCMS 2002 sites match the document library content.
- Use the search engine in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to search the contents of an MCMS 2002 Web site.
Overview
MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies includes software components that integrate the features of MCMS 2002 with the features of Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003. This section describes the technology and functions of MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies.
Publishing MCMS 2002Content toSharePointSites or Portals
A SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site is the main place to locate information anywhere in the organization, including MCMS 2002 content that is hosted by SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Additionally, you can use MCMS 2002 to provide HTML content to SharePoint portal sites.
To do this, MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies includes several new Web Parts, including the Page Listing Web Part, the Pages Waiting for Approval Web Part, and the Pages in Production Web Part. You can use these new Web Parts to access MCMS 2002 features from any SharePoint site or portal site.
Page Listing Web Part
The Page Listing Web Part lists all published pages in a mapped channel of MCMS 2002. Each Page Listing Web Part is mapped to one channel in MCMS 2002. Because you can use multiple instances of a Web Part in SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you can map multiple instances of the Page Listing Web Part to different channels. By default, thePage Listing Web Part includes three different views: the Basic view, the Summary view, and the Detailed view.
- The Basic view of the Page Listing Web Part displays the following properties for each page in the mapped channel: Short Title and Importance. The Short Title property also acts as a link to the listed page.
- The Summary view of the Page Listing Web Part displays the following properties for each published page in the mapped channel:Short Title (including a link to the page), Importance, Date, Page Description, and Summary Image (if available).
NoteTo display the Short Title and the Summary Imagefor each page in the channel, the Web Part template must contain a placeholder named "Short Title" and a placeholder named "Summary Image". If the template does not contain these placeholders, the Page Listing Web Part is rendered with default parameters. All other properties are directly mapped from the properties for each page.
- The Detailed view displays additional properties for each of the published pages in the mapped channel, such as Creator,Status, Last Modified, and Modified By.
The Page Listing Web Part uses additional properties to track the URL of the MCMS 2002 Web site, the mapped channel, the number of published pages in the list, and the number of published pages to display in the list.
In all three views of the Page Listing Web Part, the short title acts as a link to the published page in MCMS 2002. If you have appropriate rights in the mapped channel, when you click the Short Title for a page, the page is opened in the Web Author tool from MCMS 2002. You can use the Web Author tool to edit the page or create a new page. With the Page Listing Web Part, you can use the authoring functionality of MCMS 2002 directly from a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site.
If none of the three default views of the Page Listing Web Part meets your requirements, you can use software development tools to customize the list. You can change formatting, selectively display different MCMS 2002 page properties, access placeholder content, and change the order in which the properties appear in the Web Part. To do this, you must implement a server control in the Page Listing Web Part. The documentation for MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies includes an example that shows how to customize the Page Listing Web Part.
Pages Waiting for Approval Web Part
The Pages Waiting for Approval Web Part displays all pages that are waiting for approval in a mapped MCMS 2002 channel.
For each page waiting for approval, the Pages in Production Web Part displays the following properties: Display Name, Owner, Status, and Last Modified. If you have the appropriate rights in the mapped channel, you can use the Pages Waiting for Approval Web Part to browse, approve, or decline pages in that channel. If the system does not find any pages waiting for your approval, then the following text message in the SharePoint Portal Server Web Part appears: There are no pages waiting for your approval.
Web Parts support integrated authentication; therefore, if you have access to SharePoint and MCMS 2002, when you log on to SharePoint Portal Server you are automatically authenticated on MCMS 2002.
Pages in Production Web Part
The Pages in Production Web Part displays all unpublished pages you own that are in productionin a mapped MCMS 2002 channel.
For each unpublished page that is in production, the Pages in Production Web Part displays the following properties: Page (the name of the page), Status, Last Modified, and Page Description. The Page property also acts as a link to the associated page.
Publishing Documents from SharePoint Products and Technologies to MCMS 2002 Sites
With MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies, you can use the rich document and collaboration capabilities of SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Creating documents with non-HTML content is done outside of MCMS 2002, but the result should be attached to an MCMS 2002 page as an attachment or inline. It can also be very useful to be able to render document metadata on the new page. If there is a structured document such as a Microsoft Office InfoPath™ form or a WordML document, the content of the document should also be part of the new page.
Additionally, you can use the update utility to update pages in MCMS 2002 to match the original documents in the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 document library. You can run the update utility manually or schedule it to periodically update pages in MCMS 2002.
Creating a document
If you create a new document that has a lot of metadata and store the document in a SharePoint library, you may want to publish the document and metadata to an MCMS 2002 page. To do this, browse to the MCMS 2002 site and create a new page.
You can use the placeholder control included in MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies to select your new document directly from the SharePoint library.
If you want to make sure that the page remains synchronized with the document in the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 document library, you can use the update utility to run once, or schedule it for automatic updates.
You can use the placeholder control (user interface) and the placeholder object (programming interface) to design and develop a template that you can use to view documents from a SharePoint library on an MCMS 2002 page.
The placeholder control retrieves a document and associated metadata from a SharePoint document library and stores the document and metadata in the placeholder. The placeholder control supports any type of document stored in a SharePoint document, form, or image library. You need to use a separate placeholder for each document that you want to display on the page.
Next, choose a rendering script (style sheet). MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies includes two different rendering scripts. One rendering script renders the metadata for the document, and the other rendering script renders the content of the document. You can render content from a document only if the document is an InfoPath form or a WordML document.
To make sure that the correct rendering scripts are selected, a preview with sample data is available.On the left side, the text is rendered by the rendering script for the content of the document, and the right side of the page, which displays the attachment and the document properties, is rendered by the rendering script for the document properties. Alternatively, scripting against the placeholder object is another option for achieving a fancier layout.
Customization
If you want to do more than assign the two rendering scripts (for example, if you want to predict the execution of the scripts or want to add additional information that does not exist in the document content or metadata), MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies includes a placeholder object that developers can use to access data stored in the MCMS 2002 placeholder, such as an XML structure that includes the metadata, the URLs for the layout scripts (style sheets), the URL for the document copied to MCMS 2002, the XML content of InfoPath forms or WordML documents, and the transformed version of the XML content and metadata. With the placeholder object, developers can customize the rendering of document content and metadata.
Synchronization
MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies also includes an update utility that you can use to update mapped MCMS 2002 pages to match the corresponding documents stored in SharePoint document libraries. You can use the update utility to update all changes or only the approved changes, and you can run updates manually or schedule updates to occur at regular intervals. Every time the update utility runs, it generates a log file.
Using SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Search with MCMS 2002
MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies uses the index technology of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to index MCMS 2002 content so you can use the search features of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to search MCMS 2002 content.
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 crawls the MCMS 2002 Web content, indexes metatags, and creates the full text index. You can use SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to schedule crawling MCMS 2002 so that search results return updated MCMS 2002 content. Out of the box, MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies does not create a schedule to crawl MCMS 2002 content.
To use the index, MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies includes an MCMS 2002 control that calls the search Web service from SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Additionally, the control uses the MCMS 2002 filter to display only the results that the user is permitted to view.
Metadata Control
MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies also includes a metadata server control that you can include in your templates to convert MCMS 2002 standard or custom page properties into metatags. With this control, users can search for page properties, page content and custom properties created by the web or template designer. In order to expose custom properties to search users, the MCMS 2002 administrator has to add them to the XML Search configuration file for search property definitions to specify that they are to be indexable and retrievable. MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies includes a tool that you can use to import these settings into the Share Point Portal Server 2003 indexer.
Search Control
The search control converts a user request into aSearch Web service call for SharePoint Portal Server 2003. The results are filtered based on user credentials, so users receive only the results that they are permitted to view.
Architecture
You can configure MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies to use either of two architectures: Simple or Network Load Balanced. In both architectures, you need to install SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and MCMS 2002 on the same computer.
Simple Architecture
In the Simple architecture, a single computer hosts both SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and MCMS 2002. All viewing and authoring requests are handled by this server. This architecture is designed for small organizations. If you want to view and author a large amount of content, you may want the increased capacity and reliability of the Network Load Balanced architecture.
Network Load Balanced Architecture
The Network Load Balanced architecture has greater capacity and reliability than the Simple architecture. It is also more complex, because it can include three or more Network Load Balanced clusters. One server cluster handles all search requests and indexes all content from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and MCMS 2002. The second cluster handles viewing requests and document creation and management. The third cluster handles all authoring requests for MCMS 2002.
The search and indexing cluster is optional. However, this cluster can significantly improve performance because indexing and search requests require a lot of processing time.
Conclusion
With MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies, you can integrate the content management features of MCMS 2002, the collaboration features of Windows SharePoint Services, and the portal site features of SharePoint Portal Server 2003. You can use Web Parts to access MCMS 2002 features from Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and you can use placeholders in MCMS 2002 to view non-Web content stored in SharePoint libraries. Additionally, you can use the search features from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to search MCMS 2002 Web pages.
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