Eric Legault, a well known Outlook MVP, was the guest speaker at a very successful Colligo webinar on the topic of “How to Drive User Adoption When Migrating Exchange Public Folders to SharePoint”. During the webinar we received several questions from attendees, some of which Eric was able to answer live. However, a number of questions were answered by Eric via email after the webinar and you can read those questions and answers below.
If you are interested in learning more about this important topic, you can view the on-demand webinar and download a copy of the associated white paper here.
As you talk about Outlook are you referring to Outlook 2007 or 2003?
In general, both versions. The Contributor, Attachment Manager and Send + File addins all work on both versions. In the context of the webinar, when talking about existing Outlook integration with SharePoint, the only key difference is that Outlook 2003 did not support two-way synch to SharePoint with non-mail types (Contact, Task and Appointment folders and their equivalent SharePoint Lists).
Can you prompt the user for many metadata fields before loading into SharePoint? These metadata items will be different for each library/folder.
Yes, each library/folder pair has its own unique setting for metadata prompts. You can also have a global setting to prompt for metadata that will apply to all folders.
If you are actually referring to the fields that you can set default values on, or controlling which fields appear on the metadata prompt form, let me know and I can answer more in depth.
Can you have many metadata fields?
Absolutely. Keep in mind that metadata is created and managed entirely within SharePoint, but all metadata fields defined within the List or Document Library (or within Content Types that are associated with the List or Document Library) are available for offline use once you have selected a List or Document Library for synchronization with Contributor.
Hi, is it also possible to come very short to the user permission function, because we have very often the problem that the users want to send an attachment to a group of colleagues which have no permission in standard?
If users receive an e-mail with a pointer to an attachment that the sender uploaded to a specific Document Library, then the receiver must have access to open that file within that Document Library. If they do not have the appropriate permissions, they can click the “request access” link on the landing page they will see in SharePoint when they try to access the file.
Otherwise, you can build your own plug-in for the Attachment Handler add-in that can do custom security validation such as the scenario you describe. In fact, there’s a sample project that you can download that details how to achieve what you are requiring.
How would we move 400 GB of Public folders to SharePoint
For this scenario I would recommend that this migration project be carefully managed. First of all, determine whether all of the content within all of the Public Folders are actually being used within your organization. By trimming the context you can dramatically reduce the scope of the project and the effort and time required of your users or administrators to migrate the content.
Secondly, undertake a mapping exercise to determine where the content in SharePoint should go, with a focus on migrating to as few SharePoint Sites and Document Libraries as required. This of course depends on your corporate taxonomy and existing policies for Document Management. Elements such as Content Types, hosting documents in user-related Sites that they have existing memberships with, and ensuring that the right people have the right permissions are all factors that should be taken into consideration.
Once the above requirements are sufficiently analysed, then it’s a matter of training your implementers to follow best practices within the Contributor environment when you being your migration. This includes keeping the number of mapped folders to a manageable minimum and enforcing shorter site/library names so that the user experience for accessing SharePoint content when offline is maintained at a level that doesn’t impact user adoption.
It looks like this requires MOSS not WSS?
Actually, all versions of SharePoint are supported – WSS 2.0 and 3.0, MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010 (but not SPS 2001).
Is all functionality (move, add metadata, etc.) available when you’re offline? Are changed synced when you log back on?
If the SharePoint Document Library or List is connected using cached mode, then yes – you can drag and drop e-mails into those mapped folders when offline and fill in the metadata fields. All content and metadata values will be submitted to SharePoint when you are next connected during the next synchronization interval (or when synchronized manually).
Sorry if I missed this, but if folder is set to NO CACHE can user still select individual file when viewing the Sharepoint view?
Yes – as long as they have a valid network connection to access SharePoint (and display the SharePoint Site within the Outlook folder).
We are using SP 2003 in our university and we are now migrating to 2007, can you recommend a business process which would benefit from the development of an overall automated workflow?
Workflows are specific to SharePoint and are actually outside of the domain of the Contributor product suite. However, in my experience expense forms are prime candidates for workflows since they involve a submitter and one or more approvers. Take a look at designing these expense forms within InfoPath and hosting them inside SharePoint Forms Libraries, and using the Workflow capabilities within SharePoint to manage the flow of the form amongst the users. Then you can use Contributor to provide offline access to these Forms Libraries by mapping them to Outlook folders.
We have a number of public folders that are email enabled for information to be funneled to a generic address for multiple people to read – eg purchasing@acme.net – can we still do this using SharePoint library and then the Colligo connection to outlook?
Are you referring to e-mail enabled Document Libraries, or e-mail enabled Public Folders? I’m assuming the latter, in which case the content isn’t in SharePoint yet. If you want to get the contents of these Public Folders into SharePoint, then I recommend selecting or creating an applicable Document Library, mapping that into Outlook using Contributor, and then drag and drop e-mails from within the Public Folder to the Colligo folder that’s mapped to the Document Library.
Can the ProjectID field that you were using be a “picklist” from a list in sharepoint – A list of projects for instances?
Yes. All SharePoint List Fields are supported within the Contributor Metadata Editor.
Can the contributor rule for Attachment size be controled via Group Policy to prevent users from changing that threshold?
The Default Rules plug-in that ships with the Attachment Handler add-in reads the attachment size limits for prompting and blocking from the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ColligoNetworks\DefaultCAMFilterPlugin registry key. If you want to extend this to use Group Policy, you can override this value by building your own Attachment Handler plug-in. See this example for how to implement your own business rules.
I have a question about migrating distribution lists from Public FOlder contacts to a Contact list in Sharepoint – I haven’t been able to create and replicate the same feature – is there a Sharepoint Distribution List object?
You have two options – create Distribution Groups within Active Directory (that can be used as Exchange Distribution Lists within the Global Address List), or create Groups within SharePoint. For the latter, you can add either SharePoint Users/Groups or Active Directory Users/Groups as members of the SharePoint Group.
Note that SharePoint Groups are more focused towards permissions and Site membership management, not for messaging scenarios. So you can’t add a SharePoint Group as an item within a SharePoint Contacts List.
With the offline synchronization, does it skew the built in Sharepoint Usage reporting?
Best question of the day! The short answer is yes. I don’t have a real log file handy, but it’s possible that you can differentiate between user and Contributor requests for files if the values in the cs-method or cs(User-Agent) fields (these are likely ones) differ based on the access type. Note that these fields are in the raw W3C Extended Log Files from IIS, in the \system32\logfiles\sts folder. These fields or similar ones may also be exposed when viewing usage reports from within SharePoint Designer:
Use reports to measure site performance and usage – SharePoint Designer – Microsoft Office Online:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101741361033.aspx#3
You mentioned in your penultimate slide that “folders should be changed to metadata fileds”. What exactly do you mean. Can you elaborate?
Take this sample folder hierarchy in a Product Documentation library:
- Current Products
- User Guides
- Administrator Guides
- Marketing Materials
- Specification Documents
- Products Under Development
- User Guides
- Administrator Guides
- Marketing Materials
- Specification Documents
- Legacy Products
- User Guides
- Administrator Guides
- Marketing Materials
- Specification Documents
It would make much more sense to create two metadata fields instead:
- Product Type (Choice Field: Current, Under Development, Legacy)
- Document Type (Choice Field: User Guide, Administrator Guide, Marketing Material, Specification Document)
This way users don’t have to first navigate the folder hierarchy to determine where they want to upload a new document. Users looking for documents also don’t have to browse through every folder to see what’s available. All relevant groupings can be created as Views within the Document Library, such as a filtered view for each of the three Product Types and the four Document Types.
Not sure what my threshold would be.
