Before delving into how this application relates to SharePoint, you should know about some basic Access objects: Tables ➤ ➤ — Tables are the location where the data itself is stored.. I
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All three of the list default forms are automatically changed to be displayed with the new colors and title This example shows an EditForm.aspx fi le of an existing list item Think of the possibilities!
No client software is required to work in SharePoint lists that have been customized in this manner,
as the forms are browser-based by default
INtEgRAtINg ShAREPOINt 2010 WIth mIcROSOFt vISIO
The Microsoft Visio application enables the creation of advanced visuals such as charts, diagrams,
fl owcharts, and even fl oor plans and network diagrams This section covers several ways that you can use Visio and SharePoint in conjunction Chapter 25 explains how SharePoint workfl ows integrate with Visio Services
The Visio Graphics Service is a service application in Central Administration SharePoint users can create Visio diagrams on their client machines and publish them to the server, after which point the client software is no longer needed After the diagram has been published to the Visio Graphics Service, the server can take care of refreshing that diagram and maintaining the data connections inside of it
visio graphics Service confi guration
In Central Administration, click Manage Service Application, and see that the Visio Graphics Service
is listed Click the Visio Graphics Service link to get to the Visio Graphics Services Management page There are two different pages here, where service customization options are located:
Global Settings
➤
➤ — This page contains settings such as the maximum diagram size, maximum and minimum cache sizes, and the maximum data refresh duration Also, if external data connections are to be used in Visio graphics, there is a section here for an unattended service account’s Application ID
Trusted Data Providers
➤
➤ — This page contains a list of default data providers, with databases such as SQL and Oracle You can add new, custom trusted data providers here
You can save Visio fi les as web drawings You can view these fi les in the
browser They have a fi le extension of .vdw.
visio Web Access Web Part
When added to a page in SharePoint, the Visio Web Access Web Part is used to display Visio fi les that have been saved to SharePoint as a Web Drawing (VDW) fi le Follow these steps to insert a Visio Web Access Web Part on a page and confi gure it:
1 At the top left, click Site Actions and choose Edit Page
2 On the Ribbon at the top, click Insert➤➪ Web Part
3 In the Business Data category, select Visio Web Access, and click the Add button
Trang 24 Click the link that says Click here to open the tool pane, and the Web Part tool pane will appear on the right side of the screen Figure 18-25 shows some tool pane settings
5 Click the ellipses button next to the Diagram URL box, navigate to the document library in which the VDW file exists, select the target file, and click OK
6 Click OK at the bottom of the Web Part tool pane
Figure 18-25 shows an example of a Visio diagram being displayed in a Visio Web Access Web Part You can make further customizations in the Web Part tool pane In addition to the settings displayed
in Figure 18-26, there are sections to configure the Toolbar and User Interface, and the Diagram Interactivity
INtEgRAtINg ShAREPOINt 2010 WIth ONENOtE
OneNote is an Office application that is used to quickly take notes and organize them Not only are there note typing and writing capabilities, you can insert many different types of objects into OneNote files, such as images, links, and even video or voice clips Putting notes in OneNote gives you a visually clear and easily searchable solution
The capability for OneNote to be shared and integrated with SharePoint and the other Office appli-cations makes it a very useful and easily accessible tool The live co-authoring feature discussed at the beginning of this chapter also applies to Office OneNote
To create a new shared notebook for collaboration from a document library in SharePoint, follow these steps:
1 Click the File tab to open the Backstage view
2 Click the New tab on the left side of the screen
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3 Choose Network, type a name for the new file, and choose the URL of the target document library
4 Click the Create Notebook button
5 Once the new file is created, OneNote offers you the option to send the link in an e-mail to someone
From this point on, users who have at least Contribute permissions on that document library will be able to open the file and make their notes The left side of the screen contains a vertical button with the name of the current file Right-click on this button to view several options, such as the capability
to Sync this notebook now
INtEgRAtION WIth AccESS 2010 ANd AccESS SERvIcES
Microsoft Access is a small-scale relational database management system It has historically been used to create relatively simple solutions; and in most cases, database creators need not have any programming knowledge Access provides the ability to connect to any external data sources, such
as SQL or other databases Before delving into how this application relates to SharePoint, you should know about some basic Access objects:
Tables
➤
➤ — Tables are the location where the data itself is stored Everything that you do in Access is going to be based upon the information in your tables
Queries
➤
➤ — Queries provide a way to look at the data in one or more tables For example, using a query you can filter and refine information, reference information from various tables, and define the way that common fields relate to each other
Forms
➤
➤ — Forms are the means by which end users interact with data in the tables These gen-erally consist of text boxes, drop-down menus, and other types of controls, such as buttons Forms are the user interface when adding or modifying table data
Reports
➤
➤ — Reports are used to display or print the Access data Business users generally view reports in order to quickly assess numbers, using tables or graphs
In scenarios where multiple users are attempting to access and modify the data within Access data-base tables, which can be difficult to accomplish, SharePoint integration provides a solution If you think of lists and libraries in SharePoint as tables in a database, it is easy to understand the natural integration with Microsoft Access
This section describes how to use SharePoint lists as tables in Access databases and the new concept
of Access Services in SharePoint 2010
SharePoint data As a table
The data in SharePoint can easily be connected to serve as live table data in an Access database, which can be queried and reported on There are a couple of ways to accomplish this In this section, you’ll learn the methods that you can use to establish communications between SharePoint and Access
Trang 4Connecting to access from sharePoint
From a SharePoint 2010 list, on the List tab in the
Ribbon, click the Open with Access button in the
Connect & Export section Figure 18-27 shows
the screen that appears
If the desired database already exists, navigate
to it or otherwise customize the name of the new
database to be created The option to link to the
dynamic data is the default, but the data can
optionally be exported from SharePoint as static
SharePoint libraries do not have the Open with Access button that exists in lists,
but they can be connected to Access Refer to the “Exporting to Excel” section
and Figure 18-16 earlier in this chapter, which demonstrates how to access the
hidden task pane.
Connecting to sharePoint from access 2010
When armed with the URL of the target SharePoint site, you can create a dynamic connection to SharePoint from within the Access 2010 software This section describes the various ways to go about this
Figure 18-28 displays the External Data tab in Access 2010 Both the Import & Link section and the Export section contain drop-down boxes called More, each of which contains an option for SharePoint List
FIguRE 18-28
Data can be imported from SharePoint into Access, and it can even be exported from Access, to become a table in SharePoint
Using the Create tab in Access 2010, you can also create several different types of SharePoint lists right from Access! The Database Tools tab contains a button called SharePoint, which you can use to move the tables to a SharePoint list and create linked tables in the database In previous versions of Access, this was a manual operation, per table The last step, which is new in Offi ce 2010, is to upload the database fi le to a SharePoint document library, where it can be opened and interacted with
FIguRE 18-27
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A REAL-WORLd ExAmPLE
A project management department at a small company has an Access database on a
fi le share, which they have always used to enter new projects Some fairly complex
Access reports are run on the project data These reports are based on multiple
tables and queries, are full of advanced calculations, and need to be shown to the
company president every month
The problem with this archaic solution is that it is not easy for multiple people
to enter data at the same time This is a good scenario in which the tables can be
added to SharePoint as lists, and connected to Access The Access database itself
can then be uploaded to a document library, and the original copy on the fi le share
can be deleted Multiple users can access the Project Management SharePoint site
and enter and edit project data, and those monthly reports can still be run from
within the Access database in the document library
Note that changes to the database design itself (not the data) will require that the database fi le
be downloaded, changed, and then uploaded to the document library again When multiple users change the database design simultaneously, one user’s version of the fi le can be overwritten
Access Services
There seems to be something missing when it comes to the way Access and SharePoint work
together How can legacy Access databases be fully translated into purely SharePoint applications? It shouldn’t be necessary to have to keep queries and reports in Access, and only tables in SharePoint SharePoint 2010’s answer to this need is called Access Services
Table 18-1 shows the additional functionality that Access Services brings to SharePoint
tAbLE 18-1 Additional Functionality with Access Services
Trang 6Existing Access databases can be published to Access Services, which will convert them to
SharePoint web objects The SharePoint user and permissions model is leveraged, and the databases then become more collaborative For design and structure changes, the database is only locked per object, as opposed to per the whole database One user can redesign a report while another user modifi es a form or creates a new one Once a database has been published in Access Services, the database objects are all run completely within the web browser, and no client software is needed, except for those users who will be redesigning the database
access services Web service application
In Central Administration, Access Services is listed as one of the Service Applications by default, and is considered a middle-tier service that handles the query processor and the data access layer Access Services also manages communication between the Access application and the SharePoint content database, which enables the use of large lists In addition, SharePoint 2010 adds some
advanced database concepts to SharePoint lists, which were fairly basic in the past These new capa-bilities are relationships between lists, unique column constraints, and data-level validation
Access Services are confi gured like other service applications, which are
dis-cussed in Chapter 7.
You can confi gure numerous settings to optimize the performance of Access Services as an applica-tion For example, there are several query settings, such as maximum columns per query, maximum sources (lists) per query, and maximum calculated columns per query The setting called Maximum rows per query enables you to control how many rows can be viewed at once For instance, if there are 2 million rows, a default of 50,000 rows per query is a good setting Another setting called Maximum records per table enables you to set a limit on the table’s size For example, the IT depart-ment may want to reassess the use of a database when it reaches a certain size At that point, it can
be further determined whether the data may be better suited to a different type of database, such as SQL There are several settings related to the maximum number of sessions, and even a maximum size for the log fi le To access the settings described, go to Central Administration and click Access Services
To get started publishing an existing Access 2010 database to Access Services, follow these steps:
1 In the database, click the File menu The Backstage view will be displayed
2 On the Save & Publish tab, click Publish to Access Services
3 Click to Run the Compatibility checker Some items may be fl agged as incompatible with the web, such as certain types of characters in fi eld names When there are incompatibility issues, a new table called Web Compatibility Issues is automatically created You will need
to resolve any issues before the database can be published to the web
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4 The database will be published as a subsite, so fill in the URL of the top-level SharePoint site
As shown in Figure 18-29, enter a site name, and then click the Publish to Access Services button
5 Once the Access database ACCDB file has been published to Access Services, it is not needed anymore and can be deleted or archived
FIguRE 18-29
Note that during the web compatibility troubleshooting process, you can right-click on any object
in Access, such as a table, and run the compatibility checker on just that object This enables you to gradually work through the issues, especially when there is a long list of them
One of the first things that is apparent on the New tab of the Backstage view in Access 2010 is an option to create a new “Blank Web Database.” Once SharePoint 2010 with Access Services has been deployed in the organization, users can be trained to get in the habit of always choosing Blank Web Database when creating new databases When creating these databases, the design interface is trimmed down to only allow for functionalities that are web friendly This will ensure SharePoint compatibility going forward, with no web compatibility issues to work through when it’s time to go live with the database
After databases have been published to Access Services, they can be saved as templates to be used later, which is a similar concept to saving a SharePoint site as a template Follow these steps to save the template and deploy it:
1 On the Settings page of the published database in SharePoint, click the Options drop-down and choose Open in Access
2 Click the File menu, and on the Save & Publish tab on the left, click Save Database As
Trang 83 For the format, choose Template (ACCDT).
4 The Create New Template from This Database
screen will display (see Figure 18-30) Type a name
for the template, and at the bottom optionally
choose to include the data in the template
5 The template file can then be uploaded to the
Solution gallery on a SharePoint site, and activated
6 From that point on, when users click to create a
new subsite, there will be a new option with the
same name as the template that was created The
nice thing about this method is that the person
creating the new site based off the Access template
need not have Microsoft Access installed on his or
her client machine
ShAREPOINt 2010 WORKSPAcE
Previously known as Microsoft Office Groove 2007, SharePoint Workspace is an application that enables you to take a SharePoint site’s data offline With this tool, SharePoint sites, along with all
of their content, become convenient and portable SharePoint content can be set up for automatic synchronization that is able to be customized at a granular level Although some list types are not compatible with offline synchronization, for the most part this is a wonderful tool for those of us who are frequently on-the-go
Earlier in this chapter, it was mentioned that some list types and document libraries can be con-nected to Microsoft Outlook for use from within the Outlook client and offline Compared to the offline capabilities of Outlook, SharePoint 2010 Workspace provides a much more granular syn-chronization interface, and the capability to select an entire SharePoint site for offline accessibility The Site Actions menu on a SharePoint 2010 site contains an option called Sync to SharePoint Workspace Also, from within each document library in the browser, the Library tab in the Ribbon contains a link to Sync to SharePoint Workspace The same goes for lists, and the button is on the List tab in the Ribbon
The first time the SharePoint Workspace software is elicited, the user is prompted to create a new account or restore an existing account This “account” will contain the user’s connection settings for the different SharePoint sites to which they need to have offline access, and which libraries and lists are set up to synchronize to this offline copy The user’s e-mail account is used to initially con-figure the account, or an Account Configuration Code can be used in conjunction with an Account Configuration Server
FIguRE 18-30