ASPHostCentral.com Sharepoint 2010 Hosting BLOG

BLOG about the newest Sharepoint 2010 Hosting Product

SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: How to Search Content from External Locations in SharePoint 2010

clock November 9, 2011 06:54 by author darwin

Problem

With evolution of search, different kinds of requirements arise for searching content. One of the requirements we came across was that they wanted to search for content from external locations (i.e. like Google, YouTube and other public facing internet applications).


Solution

SharePoint 2010 has a web part called "Federated Results". This searches content from the configured federated locations (like Google) that search content on provided parameters and generates output.

In this article, we will be concentrating on how to search content from such external applications. For this article, we will take "YouTube" as an external location. To define a federated (external) location, go to Central Administration > Application Management > Service Applications > Manage Service Applications > Search Service Applications. Click on "Federated Locations" under "Queries and Results" category.



Add a new location. We will first fill the general information: Location name (Youtube), display name (Youtube) and description (any suitable description) which makes a location unique.



Moving ahead to the Location Information category, we need to select the protocol which we will search content (i.e either Search index on the server, Fast index or opentext 1.0/1.1). For our requirement to define the YouTube location, we will select the Opentext protocol.

We also need to provide one mandatory detail which is the Query Template - which mentions from which location we will search and what will be the search parameter.

For our requirement we need to mention, "http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/{searchTerms}.rss" where "searchTerms" will be the content searched in search box. Optionally, we can also provide a link for "More Results" that will appear at the bottom of search (as shown in the image below).

Leave the rest of the options to defaults.

Click on OK and add location.



Perform a full incremental crawl after the location is created.

Now go to the web application > search center results page and add a web part named "Federated Results" from "Search" Categories.



Edit the Web Part properties and browse to the Location section under Location Properties. If everything above is performed accurately, an option named "Youtube" will appear. Select it and apply changes.



Now we will search some content like "Microsoft" and we could see that with the search core results, a column of search results appears on right side of the screen which provides search results related to "microsoft" from youtube.



By implementing a process this way, it can reduce overburden of configuration and management of searching from federated locations.



SharePoint Foundation 2010 Hosting :: How To Configure Exchange 2010 to route mail to SharePoint

clock November 3, 2011 11:39 by author Administrator

We will now look at the setup required on our Exchange server to complete the task; this is the same in Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010.

The first step is to create a new send connector so in Exchange Management Console navigate to Organization Configuration|Hub Transport and click the send connectors tab. In the actions pane on the right click “New send connector”


Enter a descriptive name and select internal from the dropdown list then click next on the next screen you will have to enter the FQDN’s of your SharePoint server.


Click next; on the next screen enter the IP address of your SharePoint server and make sure that Route mail through the following smart host radio button is selected.


Click next; the next page asks about your authentication settings leave this at the default “None” selection.


Click next; At Twynham we have all the Exchange roles on one Exchange box so the next screen asks for the address of the hub transport server which should be picked up automatically during the setup of the send connector but you can add one manually


Click next and then new and finish your send connector for SharePoint is now setup and we can continue to the next step.

 



SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Steps-by-Steps to Setup Mail Enabled Document Libraries in SharePoint 2010

clock November 2, 2011 07:54 by author Administrator

We are working on a continuing SharePoint 2010 support project for a group of school one of the features they require is the ability for students to be able to have a drop box to submit their work to teachers, this is a perfect example of the use of mail enabled document libraries in SharePoint so I thought while I am writing this up I may as well share how to setup this function. This post will be divided into five parts:-

1)      Configuring SMTP on the SharePoint Servers
2)      Configuring Exchange 2010 to route mail to SharePoint
3)      Configuring Active Directory
4)      Configuring SharePoint 2010 Central Admin
5)      Document Library Configuration

Configuring the SMTP service on SharePoint 2010

The first step we need to do in the setup is to add and configure the SMTP service on one of our SharePoint web front end servers. I will be setting this up on a farm configuration with 2 web front end servers and 1 application server.

The SMTP service is vital for mail flowing into SharePoint so your first port of call is to log onto your chosen SharePoint server and open server manager and navigate to features here we can add the SMTP service



As you can see from the illustration below after the service is installed the server MAY require a restart in my case this was not needed but it may be needed on your server so please be aware that you may have to have some down time in your setup so plan accordingly.





As you can see from the illustration above the setup of the service is now complete and no restart was required. The next step is to configure the service through IIS manager on the server, for this you will need to use IIS manager 6 here at Twynham we install this role during the setup of our servers but you may not, if not installed open Server manager|Roles|Add Roles|IIS 6 Management Compatibility through this interface which you can see below we can manage SMTP



Right click on SMTP Virtual Server and choose properties once open click on the access tab and then click the Authentication button “Anonymous Access” should be ticked.



Next step click OK and then click the Connection button and ensure that “All except the list below” radio button is selected and click ok



The final button to click is the relay button and make sure that “Only the list below” radio button is selected and also make sure that you see a tick in “Allow all computers which successfully authenticate to relay regardless of the list above”



You can also fine tune the permissible message size by going into the messages tab this could be crucial for students sending in attachments via email so please make sure this is set to a reasonable limit.



You will find that all the settings are pre-set out of the box the only setting that you will really need to check is the Start-up type on the SMTP service by default this is set to manual so obviously change this to automatic

   

"A quick Note from the field is that I have found that if you restart your exchange server you will need to restart the SMTP service on your SharePoint servers, we route our internal mail from an ISA server to Exchange 2010 and this needs to be done after each restart of the Exchange box.” 

 



SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Working with Sharepoint Document Management

clock October 21, 2011 08:05 by author Administrator

Sharepoint Document Management is among the most well-respected and reputed of all document management systems. The proper and organized management of documents is essential to the success of any business. Sharepoint is one of the better systems designed to help companies expertly manage their documents.

Sharepoint gives organizations the tools to handle day-to-day operations with programs that they are already familiar with, for instance, Microsoft Office applications such as Word and Outlook. Sharepoint also supports every stage of the document life cycle.

ASPHostCentral.com, as one of the SharePoint 2010 Hosting Providers, proudly confirms that we do support both SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Server Hosting.

During the document management planning process, companies tend to follow certain steps. They often times first determine document management roles. This will generally involve determining who in the organization will be involved in the document management process and in what role. Sharepoint can help individuals identify who these employees will be. This can be especially helpful for companies or executives who don’t have much experience in this regard.

Next, it will be necessary for organizations to figure out what documents will be needed. These will include forms used daily and those that will only be used sparingly. Again, companies will find that Sharepoint will walk them through this process.

The proper organization of documents is important to every company. When it is done correctly and in a way that is intuitive to those who will be using the documents, life becomes much easier for everyone involved. Using Sharepoint, companies will find that they are able to organize documents in a variety of ways including document libraries and records repositories, amongst others.

In addition to the aforementioned, companies will also find that they are able to organize documents based on content type (policies, metadata, workflow processes, etc.). This helps create much needed consistency when it comes to the management of a company’s documents, which is extremely important. Having a document management system in place which that makes accessing and working with documents easy, will help companies save both time and money. Workflow planning, content control and the development of information management policies are also made possible using Sharepoint.

Overall, Sharepoint is a very good document management system. The proper management of documents is crucial to the smooth running of an office or organization. Document sharing, collaborative authoring, archiving and keeping confidential documents protected are just a few of the document management capabilities Sharepoint offers users. Companies in need of a quality system to manage their documents should consider it. It will require that a company own certain hardware and software programs, which is something that will need to be taken into consideration before a company opts to use it as their document management system



SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Performance of SharePoint Hosting 2010 EXPLAINED!

clock October 20, 2011 11:08 by author Administrator

If you are looking for a web hosting plan that works as hard as you do then SharePoint hosting 2010 is exactly what you need to get the job done.  As a matter of fact, SharePoint hosting services provides you with an easy way to build a top performing team.  As you begin comparing different plans you will have a whole new perspective on the best methods for communicating with your team.

SharePoint hosting 2010 gives you the competitive edge necessary for collaborating and connecting with your employees on a daily basis.  Thanks in part to the latest technology, SharePoint hosting services puts you in absolute control of all your data and places all your documents at your fingertips with a few clicks of the mouse.  Stay in contact with an unlimited number of employees in confidence, knowing that your information is being transmitted over a secure network.

To get remarkable results, you have to choose the SharePoint hosting 2010 plan that compliments your business.  Think carefully about the amount of disk space you will need to accommodate your staff because the cost of SharePoint hosting services will vary based on that factor.  You can get as little as 500MB of disk space or as much as 50GB of disk space.

Each SharePoint hosting plan has the added benefit of project collaboration, document sharing and mobile access for every single customer.  No doubt about it, SharePoint Hosting 2010 gives you the clear advantage by helping you bring your company together in a social networking environment.  You won’t be disappointed because you will also receive free SharePoint templates to enhance every area of your business.  Use them to manage your help desk or track a sales campaign.

Everything you need to create the ultimate virtual work environment can be found in SharePoint hosting services.  Everyone on your team will be able to work immediately on documents being stored on the hosted SharePoint WSS in a central location.  What’s more, Microsoft Office applications flow in a natural and seamless way with SharePoint 2010 hosting.

Give every staff member a blog to share company information and ideas on specific documents when you host with SharePoint.  You’ll absolutely love being able to set up and share calendars among team members.  Mobile access is also a dynamic feature that you will come to appreciate when you choose SharePoint hosting.

An exciting new way to share contact information with the members of your team is to use SharePoint to synchronize your contact list with Microsoft Outlook and your mobile phone.  Task management is a SharePoint hosting feature that nearly all managers appreciate because specific tasks can be created, listed and assigned quickly.  Plus, every member will have the opportunity to monitor how a project is unfolding on an ongoing basis.

SharePoint hosting 2010 is definitely the best fit for tomorrow’s business needs.  It comes through in a clutch and more importantly, it really works.  Bear in mind that SharePoint offers both shared and dedicated hosting plans and you can choose based on what is appropriate for your employees.  If you want a automated hosting solution that practically runs itself, and saves you money, then SharePoint hosting will definitely keep you ahead of the game and help your entire team work smarter.



SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: How to Fix the error message "“Your search cannot be completed because this site is not assigned to an indexer”

clock September 9, 2011 10:23 by author Administrator

SharePoint 2010 Foundation problems encountered when doing a quick spin-up of a test instance.   

- Search service wouldn’t start
- Performing a search returned the error “Your search cannot be completed because this site is not assigned to an indexer”

To allow the search service to start the credentials assigned to the service were changed from Local Service to Local System.

To fix the “not assigned to indexer” error use Central Administration.

Navigate to “Manage content databases.”


Make sure you have the correct web application selected and click on the content database


Scroll down and find the Search Server section and select the search server from the drop-down



Sharepoint Foundation 2010 Hosting List of Web Parts

clock September 1, 2010 06:24 by author Administrator

The following is a comprehensive list of all SharePoint 2010 out-of-box web parts, with a couple of screen shots thrown in there!  The groups are just the built-in groupings in the UI

Lists & Libraries


- These are list view web parts for the lists & libraries on the site

Authoring
- Content Editor – Foundation
- Image Viewer – Foundation
- Media Web Part
- Page Viewer – Foundation
- Silverlight Web Part – Foundation

Business Data
- Business Data Actions
- Business Data Catalog Filter
- Business Data Item
- Business Data Item Builder
- Business Data List
- Business Data Related List
- Key Performance Indicators
- KPI Details
- Visio Graphics Service

Content Rollup
- Chart Viewer
- Content Query
- HTML Form Web Part – Foundation
- iView
- Picture Library Slideshow Web Part – Foundation



- RSS Viewer
- What’s Popular – pick from content, search queries, or search results



- XML Viewer – Foundation

Documents
- Document ID Lookup
- Document Set Contents
- Document Set Properties
- Relevant Documents – Foundation

Filters
- Choice Filter
- Current User Filter
- Date Filter
- Filter Actions
- Page Field Filter
- Query String (URL) Filter
- SharePoint List Filter
- SQL Server Analysis Services Filter
- Text Filter


My Information
- My Calendar
- My Contacts
- My Inbox
- My Mail Folder
- My Tasks

Navigation
- Categories
- Site Aggregator
- Sites in Category
- Summary Links
- Table of Contents
- Tag Cloud



Office Client Applications
- Excel Web Access
- InfoPath Form Web Part


- WSRP Viewer

People
- Contact Details
- Profile Browser
- Site Users – Foundation
- User Tasks – Foundation

PerformancePoint
- PerformancePoint Filter
- PerformancePoint Report
- PerformancePoint Scorecard
- PerformancePoint Stack Selector

Search
- Advanced Search Box
- Dual Chinese Search
- Featured Content
- Federated Results
- People Refinement Panel
- People Search Box
- People Search Core Results
- Refinement Panel
- Related Queries
- Search Action Links
- Search Best Bets
- Search Box
- Search Core Results
- Search Paging
- Search Statistics
- Search Summary
- Top Federated Results

Miscellaneous
 - Chart Web Part



Sharepoint (SP) 2010 Hosting :: Sharepoint 2010 French Language Pack Hosting with ASPHostCentral.com

clock August 23, 2010 08:26 by author Administrator

As a leading small to mid-sized business web hosting provider, ASPHostCentral.com strives to offer the most technologically advanced hosting solutions available to our customers across the world. We proudly announce the availability of Windows Sharepoint 2010 French Language Pack version and you can preview the demo here.

Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com

What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:

- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install
more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!

Happy hosting!



Sharepoint (SP) 2010 Hosting :: Sharepoint 2010 Spanish Language Pack Hosting with ASPHostCentral.com

clock August 20, 2010 11:13 by author Administrator

As a leading small to mid-sized business web hosting provider, ASPHostCentral.com strives to offer the most technologically advanced hosting solutions available to our customers across the world. We proudly announce the availability of Windows Sharepoint 2010 Spanish Language Pack version and you can preview the demo here.

Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com


What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:

- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!

Happy hosting!



Sharepoint (SP) 2010 Hosting :: New Features of Sharepoint Designer 2010 (Part 3 - Final)

clock August 20, 2010 06:43 by author Administrator

With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can build complete, rich, reusable, process-centric applications on the SharePoint platform that integrate external data. SharePoint Designer 2010 makes it possible to build composite applications by configuring or designing components such as data sources, lists, content types, views, forms, workflows, and external content types — all without writing any code. Further, SharePoint Designer 2010 now provides tools for all of the important components in a SharePoint solution: “You don’t have to leave SharePoint Designer to build your solution.”

Views & forms


This release of SharePoint introduces significant new view and form capabilities for lists: the XSLT List View Web Part and InfoPath forms. You have more flexibility than ever before in choosing how people will interact with data by using the views and forms in your solution


XSLT List View Web Part

Every standard list view in SharePoint 2010 products is now a Data View — specifically, an XSLT List View Web Part (XLV). This means that you can easily customize any standard list view in SharePoint Designer 2010 — for example, you can now add conditional formatting to any list view. And after you customize a list view in SharePoint Designer 2010, you can still modify that view using all of the options in the browser, such as adding or removing columns or filtering and sorting. An XLV is fully customizable both in SharePoint Designer and in the browser.


Shared XSLT templates mean cleaner code & better performance

The XSLT List View Web Part (XLV) uses shared XSLT style sheets that reside in the _layouts directory on the server. Every standard list view on the entire server uses the same set of shared XSLT templates. An XLV uses one template to format each field (or column), one template to format the row, and one template to format the table. When you customize the appearance of an XLV, you generate overriding XSL templates only for the specific templates that you modify — for example, if you highlight a field, you generate XSLT that overrides just the shared template for that specific field. This means the XLV is easier to work with in Code view, and also has better performance when this page is rendered in the browser

Easily undo customizations by reverting the XSLT

If you customize an XSLT List View Web Part and later decide that you want to undo those changes, or if you encounter errors in the XSL that you’re unable to fix, you can always revert an XLV to how it first appeared before you made any changes. When you revert the XSLT for an XLV, that XLV goes back to using the shared XSLT templates on the server. You can choose to revert the entire view or just specific XSLT templates, such as the item template.

Create Data Views from the Ribbon

The Data View is a powerful feature for viewing and editing data from a wide range of data sources — including both data in SharePoint lists and data external to SharePoint. The Ribbon makes to easy to insert a Data View with just a couple of clicks. Then you can further customize your Data View by using all of the options under List View Tools (for XLVs) or Data View Tools (for the Data Form Web Part) on the Ribbon

Apply conditional formatting from the Ribbon

Conditional formatting can give your Data Views more impact by highlighting the information that’s critical to your team. Now you can apply conditional formatting rules to your Data Views directly from the Ribbon

Share view styles and apply them from the Ribbon

You can easily share custom styles for your list views (XLVs) with others in the site collection by uploading the styles (.XSL files) to the Style library in the top-level site in the site collection. Anyone with proper permissions can then use SharePoint Designer 2010 to apply these custom styles to their own list views with just one click

Data Views support AJAX

Data Views provide many features that make data easier to work with, such as paging, filtering and sorting on column headers, and inline editing. Now you can turn on asynchronous updates for each view, so that all of these features no longer require full-page refreshes in the browser — only the Data View is refreshed. You can also specify a time interval when the data in the view is automatically refreshed, or you can add a button to a Data View that people can click to manually refresh the view

Related item views

SharePoint Designer 2010 makes it easier to create dashboard-type pages that show all data related to a specific item. First, you use lookup columns to create a parent-child relationship between data in two different lists — and now, in SharePoint 2010 products, you can use the options for a lookup column to enforce referential integrity between those lists, so that there are no child items orphaned without parent items. Then, from the Ribbon in SharePoint Designer 2010, you can easily create related item views that show all of the children items in one list related to a specific parent item in a different list

Custom actions

With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can make it easier for people to discover the important actions that they might need to take on an item. For example, you can add a custom action to the list item menu of any list so that people can start a workflow directly from the menu on the list item. You can also add custom actions as buttons on the Ribbon for the form and view pages of a list. Custom actions make solutions easier for people to use by providing the right actions in the right context

InfoPath forms

In SharePoint Server 2010, lists can now use InfoPath forms for their New Item, View Item, and Edit Item forms. InfoPath makes it easy to change completely the layout and appearance of forms. Plus, InfoPath forms provide very useful features such as formatting rules and validation rules. And you have flexibility because every content type associated to a list can have its own set of forms. When you need to design forms in InfoPath, you can launch InfoPath 2010 directly from the Ribbon in SharePoint Designer 2010


External content types & Business Connectivity Services

SharePoint 2010 products and Office 2010 include new capabilities for deeply integrating external business data and processes into the user experience in Office and SharePoint. These capabilities include new features, services, and tools in the SharePoint platform. With Business Connectivity Services (BCS), you can connect to external data from Microsoft SQL Server, Web services, or .NET assemblies. And you can connect to this external data from the client or the server, whether online or offline, and you can create, read, update, and delete data in those external data sources


External content types

In the previous version of SharePoint, there was the concept of a Business Data Entity, which was a type of external business data available in the Business Data Catalog. For example, an entity could be a Customer or Order. Now an entity is called an external content type (ECT). Content types in SharePoint can have behaviors such as workflows or policies associated with them. Similarly, external content types can also have behaviors called operations associated with them. An operation is not a workflow or a policy; it determines whether people can create, read, update, delete, or search for instances of that external content type. So content types and external content types have this in common: They define not only the schema of the data (the fields and field types), but also the behaviors or operations associated with the data

Create external content types in SharePoint Designer 2010

In the previous version, SharePoint did not support authoring an application definition in the Business Data Catalog. Now, SharePoint Designer 2010 provides the tools to connect to external data, to create external content types, to publish those external content types to the Business Data Catalog on the server, and to auto-generate both an external list and all of the forms required by that external list. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can surface external data from line-of-business systems such as SAP or Siebel in SharePoint without writing a single line of code

External lists

An external list is the key building block for BCS solutions. An external list looks and behaves virtually the same as any SharePoint list but contains data from an external source. An external list makes it easy for people to read and write external data within the familiar experience of working with a SharePoint list. You can create an external list and its forms right from SharePoint Designer 2010. Creating an external list also creates views (using the XSLT List View Web Part) and forms (using the XSLT List Form Web Part) for the browser, and a customizable Outlook 2010 form and an InfoPath 2010 form. The InfoPath form can be used instead of the default XSLT views and forms to view and edit data in the external list in the browser, and the Outlook form is used to display external data in Outlook 2010

External Lists in SharePoint Workspace

After you create an external list, you can just click the Connect to SharePoint Workspace button on the server Ribbon to make that external list available in SharePoint Workspace 2010. In SharePoint Workspace, you can view and edit the external data directly from the client, whether you’re connected or offline. BCS provides a cache and synchronization mechanism that is installed on the client computer and that keeps the data fresh and synchronized with the back-end system. SharePoint Workspace also provides error and conflict resolution. When you connect an external list to SharePoint Workspace, InfoPath 2010 forms for viewing and editing the data in SharePoint Workspace are auto-generated

External Lists in Outlook

You can also connect an external list to Outlook 2010. When you create an external content type in SharePoint Designer 2010, you can map it to a native Office item type such as a contact or task so that the external data looks and behaves just like a contact or task item in Outlook. For example, suppose that your external data is a list of customers and you want to display that external data in Outlook. Because the data for customers closely resembles contacts in Outlook, you can map that external content type to the contact item in Outlook. After you connect the external list to Outlook, you can create, update, and delete the external data directly from Outlook just as you would create and update native Outlook contacts

Business Data columns, workflow, & Word

After you create an external content type, you can add a Business Data column to a list or library. A Business Data column is associated with an external content type and represents a field from that ECT. If a document library uses a Word document for its template, you can edit the template in Word by adding Quick Parts, which are content controls that are bound to Business Data columns. When people create a new document based on that Word template, external data is displayed inside the document in content controls. The content controls automatically enable picking and resolving functionality for the external data. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can also create a workflow that is associated to this document library and that reads and writes data to the external list. In SharePoint Designer, the standard workflow list actions have been enhanced to work with external data


Control where & how people can use SharePoint Designer 2010

If you are an IT professional who administers SharePoint for your organization, know that you can broadly deploy SharePoint Designer 2010 and have complete confidence that you can easily control where and how people in your organization can use SharePoint Designer. Moreover, the new page-editing experience in SharePoint Designer 2010 means that — by default — customizing pages (also known as “unghosting”) is neither possible nor necessary in order to compose powerful pages and dashboards.

Administration pages for the Web application and site collection

If you are a server administrator, you have a new page in Central Administration dedicated specifically to settings for SharePoint Designer 2010. If you are a site collection administrator, you have a similar page in the Site Settings of the top-level site in the site collection. For each Web application or site collection, you now have options to allow people to use SharePoint Designer, to customize pages, to customize master pages and page layouts, and to use the All Files view

Customizing pages requires higher permissions by default

Customizing pages (also known as “unghosting”) now requires higher permissions than in the previous release: By default, only Site Collection Administrators can customize pages, master pages, and page layouts, or use the All Files view. This means that, in the Navigation pane, most people will not see the nodes for Master Pages, Page Layouts, and All Files. Instead, people will build solutions by creating and storing Web Part pages in the Site Pages library. So it’s easy for you to preserve a consistent branding and layout across your Web application or site collection

New page-editing experience: default mode vs. Advanced mode

In SharePoint Designer 2010, the emphasis is on creating and configuring components like Data Views, forms, and workflows — and less on editing HTML and other Web designer-type tasks. Thus, the default mode for editing Web Part pages is simpler and more intuitive — in fact, the default mode is much like adding content to a wiki page. People can insert Data Views and forms, type text, and add other content inside the main content placeholder (PlaceHolderMain), but the rest of the page is locked for editing. In this mode, all custom content resides inside a hidden Web Part, so in the default mode a page cannot be customized (“unghosted”). By contrast, in Advanced mode, you can fully customize the page by editing anything on the page. Again, by default only Site Collection Administrators can edit pages in Advanced mode

Site Pages

In the previous version, you might have been concerned about people saving files to the root of the site or changing the folder structure of the site. In SharePoint Designer 2010, by default most people will not have access to the All Files view in a site; instead, all new pages created in a site reside in the Site Pages document library. The Site Pages library provides a simple, streamlined way for people to create and store the files necessary for their solution

Easily revert site pages to a previous version

The Sites Pages library uses versioning, so if you inadvertently break a page, you can easily roll back to a previous version. In SharePoint Designer 2010, every SharePoint page has a summary page that displays the version history for that page. On the summary page, you can restore a previous version right from the Ribbon

Easier upgrades moving forward

Customized pages can complicate the upgrade process. For example, when upgrading to Office SharePoint Server 2007, customized pages did not automatically take on the new look and feel, and you often had to manually reproduce the customizations on a new version of the page. With SharePoint Designer 2010, people can take advantage of all its application-building and customization capabilities without customizing (“unghosting”) any pages. So you can broadly deploy SharePoint Designer 2010 and know that any future SharePoint upgrades will not be complicated by large numbers of customized pages


Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com

What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:

- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!

Happy hosting!