Outline for presentation to the MS SharePoint and CMS development teams

Outline for presentation to the MS SharePoint and CMS development teams
Here's my draft outline for the presentation that I plan on giving to the MS SharePoint and CMS development teams on Monday. Questions, comments or suggestions? I'll post a recap of the presentation next week.

Business Case

Consistent message

"Coolness" factor

Localized administration

Implemented locally

Why SPS?

Project was initially attempted in CMS

Events, News, Image Libraries, etc

Site Provisioning

Light work flow

WSS Object Model

Custom Templates

Development of custom lists

Ghosted pages that are locked down

Difficult without a CAML Editor

Schema validation for ONET/Schema files

Better use of base types for lists (ie IMGLIB)

Theme Management

Dramatic page changes

Color changes specific to a theme

Content remains the same

Power of ghosted pages

Extending Site Definitions for existing sites (adding pages)

Sharing common resources (pages and list files)

Externalize Control HTML

Views vs Server Controls

Provide multiple views for a specific control

DEMO

WSS Search

Redirect from DispForm.aspx

Redirect from AllItems.aspx

Syndicated Content

Make SearchResults.aspx themed

Unable to ghost SearchResults.aspx

Administration

Prevent access to certain pages / features

User that is responsible for a site isn’t the SiteOwner

List level access

Suspend Impersonation saves the day

CustomJSUrl is a great

Permissions vs. Feature access

Site property management

Don’t show options that aren’t permitted

DEMO

In Line Edit – ala CMS

Edit changes within the display page

Preview content changes

Access consistent toolbar with CSS styles

Friendly Data Input Fields

Created Url Selector

Created Picture Selector

Text box for Url entry difficult for some users

Syndicated Content

Centrally managed content

Available to all sites

Cannot be edited locally

Needs to be dynamic

Allow for multiple options

DEMO

Site Creation

Sites have to be complete

Pre populate lists (Events, News, etc)

Custom NAnt tasks for post create process

Public facing ("friendly") Url

ExecuteUrl didn’t work from SelfServiceCreate

DEMO

Data Access Layer

Didn’t work directly with SPLists

Created container objects for OO approach to list and list access

Create SPListUtility class

Test Harness for Lists

Why not implement DataSet approach?

Better error messages

Collection classes don’t seem to follow best practices

DEMO

Development Environment

VPC – Slower but absolutely essential

NAnt scripts for developer efficiency

Giving developers Admin rights was problematic

Continuous Integration

CruiseControl.NET

SPS environment on build server

Smoke Test Site Templates

Great for ONET/module changes

Promotion

NAnt scripts for promoting templates and code

NAnt tasks for automating site creation for testing

DEMO

Opportunities

Events on lists (Delegates)

Lack of content management

Image upload

Picture size and quality

Lack of object model for recurring events

Can’t evaluate recurrence patterns

Case sensitive url’s when used as keys

Project Quotes

"This is great. Can you make it work like CMS?"

"I think I hosed the ONET."

"You haven’t done anything that breaks our warranty have you?"

"This is completely upgradeable, right?"

"Why does it tease me with options I can’t complete?"

"Is this SharePoint or CMS?"

This.EOF

posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 4:26 PM

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