To my knowledge, web parts have the ability to display portions of other Web pages.
Is it possible to integrate SharePoint 07 with Project Server 07 and display portions of a Web page from the Project Server via a web part that's on a SharePoint site. If it's possible, how difficult is it to do?
I found these pages (Integration with Office SharePoint Server 2007, and SharePoint Integration) explaining a bit about the integration but I'm no SharePoint expert, I'm actually new to SharePoint, so much of what is mentioned there doesn't help me much.
You may already be aware that Project Server actually is SharePoint, with additional components. A Project Web Access (PWA) portal is a SharePoint site collection that is aware of both the SharePoint content database and the four Project Server databases, and contains a boatload of web parts and pages that present Project data and manage processes within the SharePoint site collection
The simplest out-of-the-box web part for showing pages within a SharePoint page is the Page Viewer Web Part. Under the hood, it drops an IFrame on the page to give the effect of looking at a page within a page.
I'm not familiar with Project Server but I am familiar with SharePoint. Web Parts in SharePoint can contain any arbitrary code and are more or less identical to regular ASP.NET web parts - in fact SharePoint web parts inherit from ASP.NET web parts.
From the second article you mentioned, it looks like Project Server contains its own set of SharePoint web parts, so you are likely to get better integration with SharePoint using these than simply by displaying a web page inside another one (sounds to me more like an IFRAME).
As a quick SharePoint overview, there are 3 versions of SPT 2007 - Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, which ships alongside Windows Server 2003; Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Standard, which adds portal, content management and enterprise search features; and MOSS 2007 Enterprise, which adds other tools for line-of-business app integration, including the Business Data Catalog (BDC). The BDC is meant to be an easy way of getting line-of-business data into SharePoint. It uses an XML definition file but don't try cutting one by hand!
However, SharePoint 2010 has now been released (I'm not an expert). SharePoint 2010 Foundation is roughly equivalent to WSS 3.0. SharePoint 2010 is 64 bit only. It looks like quite a nice step up from WSS 3 / MOSS 2007. Don't forget though that SPT 2007 is already 3 years old, so it's already well advanced down its support lifecycle.
Related
If I have a requirement of displaying the a content on all the pages inside a header, Whats the best way to do that in an SharePoint 2013?
I am working on a master page that will be using the design manager and there is possibility of using the same master page in the SharePoint online too. The reason why I want to know what is the best way, when I use this same master page in SharePoint online I would like avoid redoing that entire coding for getting a dynamic data from the web service.
Several ways that I have been planning is below
- User control method
- Web part method, but requires server side coding which I doubt can used in online version
This is a complete dynamic data that will be retrieved by a web service and no internal SharePoint data be used.
Thanks for reading
Deepak
If its possible to consume web-service using jQuery/Ajax call you can go with that
Or else if you want to use c#, might need to go with provider hosted app feature (sharepoint 2013)
You can create a Visual Web Part for SharePoint 2013 Online.
Your web part will be contained in a Sandbox Solution which you will develop locally. Once development is complete you will upload the Solution Package created by Visual Studio to SharePoint Online.
https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/80164/create-visual-webpart-for-sharepoint-online
http://sharepoint-community.net/profiles/blogs/sharepoint-online-2013-web-part-deployment
Will we be able to add .NET code blocks to a page in SharePoint 365 - the cloud version of SharePoint? If so, how do we allow code blocks in the web.config?
Will we be able to use SharePoint designer to customize forms and create dataviews with external datasources?
Can we have asp.net codebehind files and class references? (I suspect not)
.NET code blocks (server-side scripts) are not supported in Office 365. You should build your ASPX page purely from controls and web parts, which would contain the code. Solutions for the SharePoint Online share their restrictions with sandboxed solutions for SharePoint 2010. The solution scope is a site collection; not a web application and thus you cannot access the web.config. However, you may not need to; you're bound only to a single site collection and the most usual task - adding SafeControls - is supported, although the SharePoint engine does not use web.config to maintain them. You can see an example of deploying a web part.
You can use the Designer to customize pages, forms and views. External data sources (entity types) - BCS - were added to SharePoint Online by the end of the last year. I haven't checked what connector types are supported; I presume SQL and WS sources, at least.
You cannot have the code-behind in ASPX pages. There is no ASP.NET compilation of pages and user controls available; that's why you have to compose your pages of coded controls and web parts only. However, there is a trick to circumvent this - the Visual Web Part. The original visual web part could not be used in a sandboxed solution because it relied on the ASP.NET compilation. There is a template available in Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools that packages pre-compiled code to the solution and is friendly to the sandbox.
You can develop and test your sandboxed solutions on your local SharePoint 2010 prior deploying them to the SharePoint Online. Although I was surprised that deployng a solution to the SharePoint Online was kind of faster than to my local farm :-) MSVS makes the development really comfortable.
--- Ferda
Not being a .NET developer, here is my limited knowledge. Office 365 is a multi-tenant implementation of SharePoint and you you should have the following capabilities:
upload code blocks as sandboxed solutions
ability to customize forms and data views with SharePoint Designer
Note that Office 365 offers 30 day trials that would allow you to test drive it. Let me know if you need more details as there are a couple caveats to be aware of when you start a trial.
This question relates to how to implement what Mr Prantl suggested.
Where to write C# code for office365 sharepoint site
Hope this helps.
I am an experienced ASP.NET C# developer who is investigating using Sharepoint for document management for one of my clients. They want an intranet site with blogs and other stuff in addition but this will need to adhere to their brand guidelines.
Apart from the faff of setting up a working development environment to what extent do you get document management 'out of the box' with just using Windows Sharepoint Services? (the client understandably would rather not line Microsoft pockets further if possible)
Or put another way, how long would it take to add document management to an ASP.NET site?
Thanks
Oliver
WSS will give you all the document management capabilities that you need. If you pair it up with Search Server Express (which is also free), youget a complete solution for zero investment. We've even based a company portal of a major corporation on that. Doing it yourself in ASP.NET is a waste of time to say the least. The SharePoint platform gives you an enourmous value and the learning curve is actually not that tough
You definitely don't want to go and implement something like this yourself when a freely available (and powerful) solution like Windows SharePoint Services already exists. For most requirements I'd say the features in WSS are enough, but it really depends on what your client is looking for. For example you get:
Support for versions of documents
Exclusive check-out
Management of content types
Integration with Office applications
Meta-data
If you need to support records management scenarios, then you'd need features found in the SharePoint Server product. I'd start with WSS and see how far that gets you.
I would highly recommend looking at SharePoint Foundation 2010 over Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It's the latest version of the basic SharePoint infrastructure (with the obligatory name change!).
SharePoint Foundation 2010 is a lot easier to work than WSS in terms of deployment, management and, especially, development. Plus there are new features in Foundation that you can start using.
Don't forget that SharePoint Designer 2010 is also free and is a great tool for customizing SharePoint.
Some links to get you going:
Download SharePoint Foundation 2010
Get Started Developing on SharePoint 2010
Pardon the vague question, but I've just inherited a project to build a couple dozen forms pulling data from a SQL 2005 database. The forms are mostly standard database lookups with just a couple updates so the data layer is very simple -- I'm the DBA -- but we just recently started using SharePoint WSS 3.0 for a departmental web site and I would prefer to integrate these forms into WSS rather than build a separate standalone ASP.NET app.
I'm hoping there is some RAD framework out there that integrates with WSS for data bound forms. I've been searching online, but haven't found anything very promising and the data viewer web part in SharePoint Designer looks complicated to integrate with an external SQL database.
TIA,
Rusty
Given that there isn't any real integration with SharePoint happening, the easiest option is probably to build the forms as standard .net user controls then add them to SharePoint using SmartPart.
There's Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and then there is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). MOSS considerably more expensive than WSS (which ships as part of Microsoft Server licensing).
My question is: what does MOSS do that makes it worth the extra cost?
..and does Microsoft Search Server not compete with the Business Data Cache (BDC)?
Edit: The feature comparision page is helpful in illustrating the numerous features that MOSS has and WSS does not. By the looks of it, most of MOSS's feature set is Enterprise oriented.
How would you describe the differences (or additional benefits) of MOSS over WSS in a couple of sentences? In essence, what are the "big ticket" items in MOSS (and not in WSS)?
Don't assume that WSS is free in all deployment scenarios. We got a nice wake up call when we deployed WSS in a client-facing extranet configuration. One "main site" w/ a bunch of segregated, client sub-sites. Turns out we needed to buy an "intranet license" (can't remember the exact name) for the OS. This is different from the SharePoint internet connector - it actually lets you use Win 2003 w/ an unlimited number of internet users. Not hugely expensive, but it was a couple thousand dollars we weren't expecting on paying...
About WSS vs MOSS:
WSS in not a portal, it's only a collaborative plateform (there are no publishing features in WSS)
MOSS allows you to use user profils, not WSS
Search functionalities are cheap in WSS compare to MOSS (but you can extend them using Search Server Express)
Many others: Infopath, BDC, Additional WebParts, Additional site and list templates
About Search Server and BDC: They do not compete.
Search Server is the MOSS search engine striped out. So you have only search functionalities (you can index SharePoint, WebSite, FileSystem).
The BDC (Business Data Catalog) allows you to view an external business data source, such as a SQL database (not necessarily SQL Server, it can be Oracle, MySQL....) or webservices. You'll be able to view data in your portal, and integrate this data to any of your list.
The BDC also allows you to index this content source if you have SharePoint Enterprise Edition.
Whether it's worth the extra cost really depends on how many of the added features MOSS brings to the table that you're actually going to use.
The following comparison page by Microsoft will definitely help to answer your question.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Edition Comparison
There is a lot built in to WSS but MOSS has a ton of extra stuff as referenced in the other answer.
On the second part of your question.. Search server and Business Data Connector are quite different.. Search server is about finding things... BDC is about merging datasources to be able to use them easily in sharepoint or in connected excel sheets etc.. The focus is on what is being delivered-- search results or data.
I would say if you just need a few collaboration sites for a few internal groups, then wss is just fine. It is when you start using SharePoint for enterprise level applications and as a primary platform for development that you should consider MOSS.