SharePoint Folders and Document Set Best Practices

The general consensus is to move away from folders and instead convert the taxonomy to metadata fields or convert to sites and libraries.  This is typically hardest to do when migrating from a file system into SharePoint.  If you do decide to do this, make sure to disable folder creation at the library level.  This won't stop explorer view from creating folders, but does remove it in-browser.

Users typically want to use folders for navigation.  This is usually due to a lack of proper site structure, navigation, views, search, and metadata.  Grouping within a view can be used to simulate folder based navigation and help with user adoption.

There are plenty of articles on how folders are bad, so I'll just list the main justifications for using them and possible workarounds.  If you must use folders, consider using document sets instead (see document set features below)

If you do want to use folders it should be for one of the following concrete reasons:

• Different security but the files should appear in the same views
• If they don't need to be viewed together, move them to new libraries
• Even if they do, consider a third party library rollup / library collection web part instead
• This would allow you to view multiple libraries in one view
• Explorer view usage (if explorer view is the primary mechanism for working with files)
• This is not recommended except in bulk document management scenarios
• Note that explorer view works with doc sets and separate libraries as well and these should be preferred over folders
• Document Set feature usage 
• Doc sets are library root level folders with advanced features
• They cannot be nested - This is a good thing
• Features:
• Custom page for viewing/managing the grouped documents
• Versioning multiple files in a group
• Configure metadata for a group of documents simultaneously
• Running a workflow against a group of documents
• Preload several documents as a single group
• Email enabled libraries
• This is your only option for grouping the email and attachments into a single unit
• I recommend converting the email folders to document sets as they come in
• Refer to my SharePoint 2010 folder to document set conversion fix
• Too many groupings to manage
• Consider a keyword taxonomy field, lookup, choice with add item enabled, or single line of text metadata field instead

Windows 8 - Android Bluetooth Tether

Scenario

• You are tethering an Android phone using the free FoxFi or PDANet Bluetooth dial up modem
• You have already installed the software on your computer and on your phone.

Issue

• The simple Bluetooth connect button is not available from the Bluetooth device screen as it was in Windows 7

Resolution

• You must connect as a Dial up connection and specify "*99#" as the phone number
• First start the FoxFi or PDANet Bluetooth app from your phone
• Go to your Networks settings (Mouse: Bottom right corner+up/settings/internet access/dial-up-connection)
• Enter in *99# in the phone number, ensure your phone is selected as the device, and select connect

(Idea From: http://unlock4modem.blogspot.com/2012/08/access-internet-via-mobile-bluetooth-on_19.html)

MS SharePoint Conference 2012

Entry Sponsored by:

Everest Solutions Group
Business Strategy, Application Development, Mobile, and Portal/Web Design!


I'll be attending the SharePoint Conference 2012.  Sunday the 11th through Thursday the 15th.  If you plan to be there and would like to meet up, please reply here, on Facebook, or on LinkedIn.  I'll be staying at the Vdara (City Center) Sunday night and the rest at the Aria (City Center). 
Note: I used Priceline Express deal for Strip Vicinity: South.  Buy Sunday separately since the other nights are much cheaper.

Itinerary (Updated with session notes)

• Sunday Night
  • 3:20 - Arrive
  • 6:00 - Registration
• Monday
  • 8:00 - Breakfast
  • 8:30 – Keynote (SharePoint 2013 New Features)
    • Social Features
      • @ and # tagging
      • inline video
    • ECM Features
      • Drag/Drop in browser
      • Preview pane
      • Integrated social conversations
    • Yammer
      • Button integrated into list/library Ribbon
      • Enterprise graph (Open Graph)
        • Conversations about the item
      • Mobile Device
      • Included with Office 365
      • Free version and a discounted paid version available
      • Nationwide case study (Spot)
      • ??? Not sure how this deviates from the standard SharePoint 2013 social
    • Search, Web Publishing, Web Content Management - Richard Riley
      • Search
        • Fast Included
        • Previous results intellisense in search box
        • Results block
          • ??? – Is this different than Keywords/Synonyms???
      • Web Publishing
        • Dreamweaver (other editor) support
          • Snippit editor in browser
          • Copy the webpart code as a snippit directly into the HTML
        • Content search webpart (Amazon product like display using a SharePoint Query)
      • eDiscovery
        • In-Place holds
          • Includes query features
      • Outlook integration
        • SharePoint Inbox, Documents, People, and Events folders in Outlook
    • Infrastructure/Foundation
      • Cloud (MS geo-redundant Datacenters are the Best)
      • 40% more efficient bandwith
      • 4x image compression
      • 50% reduction in server-side latency
      • Version history only stores changes now (used to store copies)
      • Upgrade path
        • Backward compatible UI mode (Visual Upgrade for 2013)
        • Health check (Upgrade validation)
    • Development
      • oAuth security to Office 365
      • Deployment into the cloud
        • Seamless deployment to Azure and Office 365
      • Cloud app model – reseller opportunities
  • 11:00 – What’s new for developers in Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 (Keenan Newton, Cyrielle Simeone)
    • Office HTML and JavaScript apps utilizing web services can be embedded in Excel (and other Office apps)
      • 1 app for Word, Excel, Access, etc.
    • Mail apps
      • Outlook/Exchange
      • Deployed via exchange rules
      • ??? - Does this work with Office 365 Exchange
    • MS Access 2013 apps in SharePoint
      • Can now use SQL server back-end within SharePoint
    • Office and SharePoint Store
    • “Napa” Office 365 Development Tools
      • Javascript and Asp.Net  web based (Azure) coding interface
      • Option to open in Visual Studio
    • Visual Studio 2012
      • Remote SharePoint debugging and coding on Windows 7/8
  • 12:15 – Lunch
  • 2:00 – What’s new with Enterprise Content Management in SharePoint 2013 (Tejas Mehta, Jim Masson)
    • Hash tags – integrated with managed metadata
    • Profile – docs I’m following, suggested docs
    • Missing notes here
  • 3:45 – Enterprise Social 101 (Jared Spataro, Adam Pisoni, Pavan Tapadia, James Patterson, Jessica Halper, Lauren Antonoff)
    • Yammer is going away.  There will be 1 product (SharePoint).  This explains why they demoed the 2013 social features, but only pieces of the Yammer offering during the keynote.
    • Use Yammer for 2010 now and there will be an upgrade path to 2013
    • My take: MS basically bought Yammer for the staff and customer base
  • 6:00 – LoungeSPC  - House of Blues
  • 7:00 - Dinner
• Tuesday
  • 8:30 – Breakfast
  • 9:00 – Overview of ECM for teams with Site Mailboxes (Adam Harmetz, Alfons Staerk)
    • Can drop personal emails into this mailbox for team
    • Site Mailbox Document Library folders
      • Can forward a link of the document from the team mailbox
        • Doesn’t use Document ID feature.  Uses a static link
      • Inbound email only.
      • Doesn’t display columns within Outlook
      • Same functionality as WebDav, browser drag/drop
      • Uses the default content type
      • OWA interface will not include (you must go to the SharePoint site)
      • SharePoint search will not include the emails, Outlook search will not include the documents
      • Exchange stores site mailbox content – no duplicate data storage
      • SharePoint manages lifecycle policy for the site mailbox
    • eDiscovery support
    • Site Closure and Deletion
      • Policies to close and delete sites automatically based on site created date
    • Add the mailbox via a SharePoint App
    • Exchange 2013 must be configured to support SharePoint 2013
      • If upgrading, you will need to migrate user mailboxes to Exchange 2013
      • Users would need Outlook 2013 to view the site mailboxes in the client
      • No hybrid Exchange support
  • 10:30 – Developing apps for SharePoint 2013 with Visual Studio 2012 (Mike Morton, Sean Laberee)
    • New Options
      • Full Page
      • App Parts (hosted web parts)
      • UI command extensions (UI custom actions)
    • Remote Development
    • Build a dev site using the dev site template or else use http://dev.office.com
    • Office enabled app for SharePoint
      • Office app embedded in a SharePoint document library default template
    • “Appetize” an existing web app
      • Demoed taking a standard MVC 4 web application,
    • oAuth via ACS (STS)
    • High-Trust apps (In-house hosted apps)
      • Use OAuth via Certificates
      • Each web app has to have a certificate
      • Internal use apps (no app store integration)
      • Open SOAP endpoints for app event and remote event receiver via your firewall
        • Utilize service bus (white-paper coming)
      • Remote event receivers with real-time debugging within Visual Studio
      • Intelli-trace (step back during debugging)
  • 11:45 – Lunch
  • 1:45 – People Search and Extensibility in SharePoint 2013 (Mikael Svenson, Sana Khan)
    • User Profiles
      • Now can relate an external source (via BCS) to a user’s profile to import related propertie
      • External Content Types now configured in Visual Studio instead of SharePoint designer
    • User context for customizing enterprise search
      • Prioritized by
        • Organizational structure distance
        • Who y0u follow
        • Sites you follow
      • Search Content Enrichment
  • 3:15 - Claims Based Authentication – Migrating to the new SharePoint 2013 Identity Model (Israel Vega, Nathan Miller)
    • Pushing claims (Classic is depreciated but supported)
    • Flow
      • Migrate web applications
        • Update to use Claims
        • Update web application policy
    • Classic to Classic (Depreciated)
      • Use PowerShell
      • Warning in health rule
      • No Office Web Apps (preview) in classic mode
    • Classic to Windows Claims (OOTB Content and user migration)
      • Clean up: "Last Modified By” is not populated by default
      • Custom code utilizing “WindowsPrinciple” in code will no longer work when switching to claims.  Change to “UserPrinciple”
      • See slides for PowerShell code to migrate users
      • Create the Portal SuperUser and SuperReader accounts (PowerShell code provided in slide deck)
      • Impersonation and other information on IWF and C2WTS
    • Custom Claims migration
    • Windows Claims to SAML (Federated)
    • SAML to SAML (Federated)
      • Inventory the claims the encodings
      • Sync the claims encodings
      • Migrate the trusted provider
      • Migrate/update the provider realms if needed
      • Migrate content DB’s
      • Add web policies
      • Test, test, test
  • 7:00 - Attendee Party –(Bon Jovi)
• Wednesday
  • 8:30 – Breakfast
  • 9:00 – SharePoint 2013 Upgrade Deep Dive (Sean Livingston)
    • Upgrade site collections via PowerShell commands or individually per site collection (with or without an evaluation site)
      • Can queue up multiple site collections for synchronous processing
    • Self-service site collection upgrade option
    • Evaluation site collections
      • Size quota option
      • Expiration: Default is 30 days
        • No expiration extensions in the UI, requires PowerShell
      • Entered in the Site Map
      • Linked to from original site
        • Only 1 eval site per original
      • Eval site creation is scheduled as a timer job
    • Solutions
      • Install-SpSolution CompatibilityLevel
        • blank – Will install based on codebase tags (likely 14 only)
        • 14, 15 – Both as same codebase
        • 14 – 2010 only
        • 15 – 2013 only
      • Does not support partially trusted code solutions
        • Bin directory requires full trust install
    • Claims
      • Existing 2010 claims providers should work fine
        • Make sure provider names match
      • Claims Auth is now recommended
    • Farm Services
      • 2010 content farm can consume 2013 farm services
  • 10:30 - Advanded Dashboard Creation using Excel, Excel Services, PerformancPoint and Apps for Office (Kevin Donovan)
    • Stack
      • SQl Server – SSRS, SSAS
      • Excel – PowerView, PowerPivot, Excel Services
      • SharePoint – PerformancePoint
    • Office 365
      • No PerformancePoint services
      • No data refresh
      • MS is working on implementing
    • Excel
      • Pivot Table
      • Recommended Charts
        • Data slicing (timeline)
      • Apps for Office
    • Excel Services
      • Field List/ Field Well
      • EffectiveUsername
        • Allows delegated credentials via a username property Analysis Services queries using this user instead of process identity
        • Less need to use Unattended Service Account
      • Automatic Target App Creation
      • BI Server
        • Excel services must be configured to use SSAS server(s) for processing
      • NOV2
      • Named object view
    • SQL
      • Import to SSAS from PowerPivot using SSDT (SQL Server Data Tools / New BIDS)
    • PerformancePoint
      • Themes
      • BICenter (Dashboard Designer in the ribbon)
      • Filter Enhancements
      • Filter Search
      • EffectiveUsername
      • CustomTargetApplications
        • Share target applications between Excel Services and PerformancePoint
      • Server-side Migration
      • Dashboard Designer Authentication
  • 11:45 - Lunch
  • 1:45 - Client Side Rendering in SharePoint Server 2013 (Kirk Evans)
    • No notes
  • 3:15 – Security Trimming for Search in SharePoint 2013 (Morgan Larsson – Senior PM, Sveinar Rasmussen – Principal SDE)
    • No notes
  • 7:00 - Cirque: Ka at MGM Grand (Category D)
• Thursday
  • 8:30 – Breakfast
  • 10:30 – Deep Dive on Managing Enterprise Content Types At Scale (Chris Bortlik, Scott Jamison)
    • General Content Type overview
    • General Column overview
    • Column Usage Report (2010 and 2013)
      • Will distribute after the conference
    • Content Type Syndication Hub
      • Pros
        • OOB
        • End User management
        • Single source for content types
      • Cons
        • Lack of change mgmt
        • Coordination via dedicated site collection
        • Does not work for hybrids
    • Left at this point since nothing new was covered
  • 12:00 – Surfacing LOB Data in SharePoint 2013 using BCS and Search (Shannon Bray)
    • Same as 2010
  • 1:30 - Lunch
  • 3:25 – Flight Homehttp://www.esgnetwork.com