Sharepoint Overview Sharepoint is a complex enterprise-level collaboration tool that will require some effor to use effectively. If you choose to make it work for you, be prepared to spend some time learning to set it up and use it properly. Key features of SharePoint: A Shared Documents folder that can be acessed by all group members All member of a research team or graduate student group can access the folder from the internet. Also, faculty members can request that research team members from other universities be given access so that cross-university research teams can use this facility. Document versioning is supported by the shared document folder -- you can tell what changes were made in a document and who made them. The document owner can also undo the changes to revert to the original document. Shared Contacts and Tasks lists Event scheduling you can set meeting times or project mileposts Accessing SharePoint Internet Explorer is the only web browser that fully supports all of the features of SharePoint. The URL for the Faculty of Business SharePoint site is https://sharepoint.bus.brocku.ca. The user name and password for the site is the same as your windows user name and password (Campus ID), with one slight difference. You will need to add the preffix campus\ to your username. This signifies that you are logging on to our secure Active Directory (ad) system. Example:
A very important feature of our implementation of Sharepoint is that all faculty members and graduate students can create Sharepoint sites. This ability to create your own site will give you the flexibility to get the best use from this system, BUT, be careful. If you create a site that you do not use try to remember to delete it. All sites are controlled by the person who creates them. After creating a site you can add members. Creating a new group site Click the Create a new group site link from the links section of the main SharePoint site. After clicking the link you need to enter a title, site address, and set the permision inheritence to Use unique permissions. Make sure there are no blank spaces in your site address. For your site address try to use a unique name with your project title, or your own name. An example of a properly filled out form Click the Create button. Next you will need to choose a template. The default Team Site template should meet the needs of most people. Click OK to finish creating your site.
Adding users To add users to an existing SharePoint site [Only the creator / administrators can add users]: 1. Login to your SharePoint site and click the Site Settings link at the top of the page. 2. Click the Manage Users link (first link under the Administration section). 3. Click the Add Users link (in the toolbar just above "Select All"). 4. In the Users field, enter the Campus ID of the person you wish to add, separated by semicolons (;). If you want to add a non-fob user you must make this request to the normal technical support webpage on the portal. Example student usernames: jd97au;eb03xa;zy00kw Example faculty usernames: jdoe;eblair;zyan 5. Select a role for the users you are adding -- reader, contributor, web designer, or administrator. Readers have read-only access to the site. They can view documents, but can not edit them. Contributors can edit documents and add new ones. They cannot create new document libraries or lists. This is probably the permission that graduate student assistants should have Web designers can edit documents and add new ones and can also add new document libraries and lists. Most research team member should have this level of permission.
Administrators have full control over the SharePoint site. They can edit any documents in the site, add new documents, document libraries and lists, and can add or remove users. The site creator automatically has this permission. It is probably OK to give this permission to co-researchers, but not to assistants such as graduate students. 6. Click Next. 7. Confirm that the users you entered on the previous screen are listed in "Step 3." 8. By default, SharePoint will email the users you have added to let them know they have access to the SharePoint site, with a link to the site. If you do not want to send the email, uncheck the box for Send the following email to let these users know they've been added. 9. Click Finish. Copying files a SharePoint document library 1. Open the document library (i.e. Shared Documents) you want to copy files to. 2. Click Uplaod Document 3. Click browse to find the file you want to upload 4. Click Save & Close to upload the file.
Using document versioning Document versioning allows you to maintain previous versions of a document. This is useful in case the current version is corrupted, you accidentally delete data from the document, or you just want to see a previous version. By default, versioning is turned off in SharePoint. To use document versioning, you must enable it. Enabling document versioning 1. Login to your SharePoint site and click the Shared Documents link. 2. Click the Modify settings and column link in the left menu bar. 3. Click the Change general settings link. 4. Select Yes for Create a version each time you edit a file in this document library? 5. Click OK. If you have multiple document libraries, you'll need to repeat this process for each document library. [Shawn: we need some useage notes for this feature, such as is there a limit to the number of versions, how often to delete old versions, etc.
Accessing previous versions of a document To view a previous version of a document, click the arrow to the right of the file name, then select Version History. To open a previous version, click the date & time it was modified. Editing shared documents To edit a shared Microsoft Office Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document, go to the document library (i.e., Shared Documents). Click the arrow to the right of the file you want to edit, then select Edit in Microsoft Office Word (or Excel, or PowerPoint). The document will open in Microsoft Office. Saving changes to shared Microsoft Office documents works the same as with any document stored locally on your hard drive. Just click the File menu and select Save to save changes. Alternativly you can right click on the file name and select Save Target as... to save a copy of the file locally. You can then open the file as you would any other file that is on your computer. If you need to edit the file using an application other than Office 2003, or if you need to use a Citrix application this is the only way to edit the file. Once you have finished
working on the file be sure to copy it back to the Shared Library. Using Check In / Check Out If you edit a document, in the way mentioned above, it is possible that one of your colleagues will edit it at the same time and this will cause problems. To keep others from editing the document while you work on it, check the document out -- click the arrow to the right of the file you want to edit, then select Check Out. Once you've finished working on the document and have saved it, check it back in. Click the arrow to the right of the file you want to edit, then select Check In. If someone saves the document and forgets to check it back in you will need to contact the site administrator to check the document back in.