This
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What’s New?
There are a lot
of new features in Windows SharePoint Services v3. The first thing that most
Mac users will notice is an updated user interface that renders much better on
the Mac in both Firefox and Safari. The new templates render well and you'll
notice better performance when you are customizing your sites and pages from
the Mac.
Windows SharePoint Services v3 ships with 6 standard site templates. These
templates include some of the site types your familiar with from v2, plus a
could of new ones:
- Document Workspace
- Team Site
- Blog
- Wiki
- Meeting Workspace
- Blank Site
The two most commonly used templates are probably the Document Workspace and
the Team Site.
A Document Workspace
essentially acts as a very smart folder, which supports collaboration on one or
more shared documents and supporting files. The Document Library folder
supports check in/checkout and versioning and the site features a Task list and
a Links list that a group can use to track assignments and progress on the
document.
A Team Site is very similar
to a Document Workspace, but the scope is usually wider, serving the needs of a
larger group of individuals. Team Sites feature a Document Library, an
Announcements List, a Calendar, Contacts and a Quick Links list by default.
The Blog site is a new feature
in Windows SharePoint Services v3. A blog is simply a list of stories posted
with the latest item at the top of the list. This makes it easer for readers to
scan a list they've seen for the latest news from the blog. The Blog site in
SharePoint v3 also features an RSS feed and the ability for others to comment
on blog posts. This ability to comment on posted items allows for the exchange
of ideas between the author of the blog and the readers and even between the
readers themselves.
Another new site template
in SharePoint v3 is the Wiki site. A wiki is a site that allows any authorized
user to edit a page quickly and easily. One of the features of the wiki that
make it a powerful tool for collaboration is the ability to instantly create a
new page based on a term in the current page. Adding double brackets around a
word in a paragraph creates a hotlink to a new page in the wiki. Wikis work
well as sites where group knowledge is stored and retrieved. For example, you
can use a wiki to store information about configuring machines on the network.
As the information around that topic changes, admins and users can update the
data on the pages of the wiki so that the information is always up-to-date.
Wikis can also be used for brainstorming, research, and for planning.
Individuals and groups can use a wiki to store meeting notes and other textual
information that needs to be updated on a regular basis. SharePoint v3 wiki
pages work well on both the PC and the Mac, but only the PC version running in
Internet Explorer features a WYSIWYG editor. Users writing to a SharePoint wiki
on the Mac will need to use simple HTML markup for formatting and linking.
A Meeting Workspace is a
site used to track meeting notes and schedules. At launch SharePoint v3 is
scheduled to provide 5 different workspace types.
Finally, the Blank Space
is just that, it's blank. This means that you can start a site with just the
content you want.
New Content
The version 3 SharePoint sites features an updated Create Page where you
can add many of the features I've mentioned already to an existing site. This
means you can add additional Document Libraries, Wiki pages, tracking
calendars, and even sub-sites to an existing SharePoint site.
The content page types
that can be added to a SharePoint v3 site are broken into 5 categories;
Libraries, Communications, Tracking, Customer Lists, and Web Pages.
Library types include the
Document Library, the Form Library, the Wiki Page Library and the Picture
Library. The only library type that might prove difficult for Mac users to use
is the Form Library. Form Libraries depend on features found in Microsoft
InfoPath, which isn't available on the Mac. The other library types should work
fine, except in cases where functionality is dependent on an ActiveX control,
for example, when you want to export a list to a spreadsheet.
Communications page types
include Announcements, Contacts, and Discussion Boards. Of these, the
Discussion Boards feature is interesting in that the boards created in
SharePoint v3 have the look and feel of modern web discussion boards and the
interface is easy to use from the Mac.
The
Tracking page types include Links, Calendars, Tasks, Issue Tracking and Survey
pages. One of the most exciting new features of SharePoint version 3 is the
Project Tasks tracking page type. This new page type provides a Gantt Chart
view that allows you to instantly see the status of items in a project list.
This is a great feature for users managing small projects and it works well on
the Mac
A Typical Workflow
The workflow is very similar in SharePoint v3, but the user interface is
different so it's probably worth walking through a typical document sharing
workflow from the Mac. The document workflow for SharePoint v3 is fairly
straightforward and consists of the following steps. In our example, we'll add
a new Microsoft Word file to a document library from the Mac.
1. Create your new document in Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac and save it
somewhere on your local machine.
2. In your SharePoint v3 document library, click upload and use the Upload
Document page to add the file you created in Word to the SharePoint document
library.
3. The document is now available in the SharePoint document library.
To modify this file, a Mac user should follow these steps to ensure that the
file is locked while they work on it and is then updated properly on the
SharePoint site.
1. Check out the file by mousing over the file name in SharePoint and click
Check Out in the dropdown menu.
2. Click on the file name to download the file to the Mac.
3. Work on the file in Word and save your work.
4. Click Upload in the SharePoint document library to open the Upload Document
page.
5. Use the browse button to add the document to the Name text box and make sure
that the Add as a new version to exiting files checkbox is checked.
6. Click OK.
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