Welcome to the Minnesota SharePoint

User Group

Quick Intro

Announcements

Designing and Branding SharePoint Technologies

• What is branding?

• Designing / Branding SharePoint Basic

10 minute break Intermediate Advanced

• Tips / Tricks

What have others learned?

1 year Anniversary Celebration

Agenda

• Inetium (www.inetium.com)

• Twin Cites based Microsoft consulting company

• Microsoft Gold Certified Partner

• Practice Area focused on Information Worker Technologies

• New Horizons – Minnesota (www.newhorizonsmn.com)

• Microsoft Gold Certified Partner

• Training on many technologies

• Microsoft (www.microsoft.com)

• I’m guessing you’ve heard of them

Introductions – MNSPUG Sponsors

Build a local community focused on Microsoft SharePoint Technologies

• Educate user group members about SharePoint Technologies

• Transfer knowledge within the community

• Communicate best practices

• Introduce new products / solutions

User Group Goal / Objectives

• Website for user group

• SharePoint resource documents

• SharePoint resource websites links

• RSS Feeds

• Meeting Schedule

• Past User Group Presentations

www.sharepointmn.com

www.sharepointmn.com

• Next Meeting

• June 8th 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM

• Microsoft’s Bloomington Office

• Topic: Personalization in SharePoint

• Ongoing Schedule

• 2nd Wednesday of every month

• 9:00 to 11:00 am

• Microsoft’s Bloomington Office

Upcoming Schedule

• New Magazine focusing on SharePoint

• “The Advisor Guide to using Microsoft SharePoint technology, Windows SharePoint Services, SharePoint Portal Server, and more, including Microsoft Office System and SharePoint, enterprise integration and administration, and innovative SharePoint-based solutions, with how-to, tips, code, downloads, training, step-by-step, and more...”

• Have contacted editor -- hope to get some free first issues for the Minnesota SharePoint User Group

SharePoint Advisor Magazine (coming soon)

www.sharepointadvisor.com

• Technical conference focusing on SharePoint

• Tips

• Tricks

• Code

• How To’s

• $1295 Main Event Registration by May 2 2005

• $1495 Main Event Registration after May 2 2005

• http://advisorevents.com/cmt0506p.nsf/w/main-cms

SharePoint Advisor Live Conference

June 12 - 16, 2005Las Vegas, Nevada

JW Marriott Las Vegas Resort

MNSPUG is 1 year old!

Designing & Branding SharePoint TechnologiesExploring SharePoint Curb Appeal

• Branding and the Creative Process

• The SharePoint Brand Impact

• Branding Portal Server

• Branding Windows SharePoint Services

• How Did We Do That?

• Resources

• Best Practices

Overview

Branding is an emotional connection; it’s the total experience your customers, partners and employees have at every encounter with your organization.

• It’s how you differentiate.

• It’s critical that the brand be focused and incorporated into everything the organization does.

The Brand

A SharePoint Portal Server site connects users, teams, and knowledge throughout an organization. The SharePoint site should reflect and reinforce:

•The corporate identity and ownership

• Enterprise standards

• The ease-of-use

• Create a sense of place

Why Brand SharePoint

Brand Traits are the distinct characteristics of your Brand. For example, the Brand Traits for a professional organization might be:

• Approachable

• Accomplished

• Professional

• Customer-service Oriented

All internal and external communications (brochures, direct mail, web sites etc…) should reflect these characteristics.

Brand Traits

• Corporate Logo

• Identities or Assets

• Content “Unlocking the Power of Information Sharing”

• Brand Manual & Visual Guidelines

• Web site

Brand Artifacts

Brand Artifact Resources

The Creative Process

• Project Sponsor Meeting

• Understand business objectives

• Gain Knowledge (Schedule interviews)

• Product/Service

• Point-of-Difference (Unique Selling Point)

• Audience/Market (Employees, Customers and Partners)

• Identify Creative Goals

• Look & Feel

• Usability

• Message

The Creative Process

• Create Storyboards (2-3 Concepts and/or Iterations)

The Creative Process Deliverables

• Better, well-thought design concepts

• A blueprint, or guide for design

• End-user acceptance, early adoption and higher utilization

• Better and relevant user experience

The Value of Creative Process

Design Tools:• Adobe Photoshop• Adobe Illustrator• Macromedia Flash

Development Tools:• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003• Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003• NotePad

Branding and Creative Tools

The SharePoint Brand Impact

• Portal Site:• End-user Pages• Admin Pages

• My Site Pages:• Public View• Private View

• Team Sites (WSS)• Home page• Admin pages

The Brand Scope

Note:Multiple Portal Implementation may require a larger Brand Scope.

Differences between SPS vs. WSS

SharePoint Portal Server site Windows SharePoint Services site

Small number of portal sites with a large number of users for each

Large number of sites with a small number of users for each

Organization-wide audience Team-based audience

Primarily for organizing, publishing, and summarizing

Primarily for collaborating with other users on documents and creating lists

Created and owned by named portal administrators

User-created and owned

Planned and designed based on specific business requirements

Unstructured, created as a requirement is identified

Centralized administration, with area delegation Decentralized administration

Why Did We Just Discuss That?

• Your Brand should be applied consistently throughout your entire SharePoint solution; however, the enforcement of the branding guidelines within the Portal component is highly critical and should be more rigid.

• Windows SharePoint Services or Team sites are more limited in scope and audience; therefore, it’s acceptable to take a little more license.

Portal Branding Limitations

SPS is designed to only allow a subset of its pages to be freely branded. Portal site pages can be described in one of the two following ways:

• User-facing (Site or Area templates)• Defines the features & functionality of a team site or portal area

• These pages are designed with some limitations

• Administrator-facing (Layout pages)• Stored in a single location within the file system of the Web server

•They are virtualized. Accessible from any portal area or team site.

• These pages provide access to shared functionality (i.e. permissions, document library and list management, area settings etc...)

SharePoint Administrator-facing Limitations

Although it is common to customize User-facing pages, you should NOT customize administrator-facing pages for the following reasons:

•Tuned & tested to ensure reliability and performance

• Microsoft Support Services can debug issues

• Service packs & new versions may remove customizations

• Impossible to determine the impact of the change

• May result in a new, significant testing requirement

• Many pages are shared across SPS & WSS

• Consider this limitation in the earliest discussions

Approaches to SharePoint Design

Design Tactics in Branding SharePoint

There are several different approaches to branding a SharePoint site. To help you decide which approach is right for you, let’s discuss these tactics in terms of complexity:

• Exterior (Easy)• Interior (Moderate)• Decorating (Advanced)

Within each design tactic, we’ll discuss the:

• Impact of customization on the standard portal site• Complexity and required skill-level of the developer • Supportability in the event of fixes, service packs, and new releases

Branding Tactics: Exterior (Easy)

The Standard SharePoint Portal Server Logo:

• Ability to display your company logo on every page

• Make sure the logo is sized appropriately for the page

• Background Color should be consistent with the standard Blue color

• Microsoft recommended approach

• Customizations apply to all pages on the site (admin pages too)

• The image should be located in the same directory as other SPS images

Configuration Details Impact of customization: Low Complexity: Low Supportability: High

Branding Tactics: Interior (Moderate)

Style Sheet Customizations: The look and feel is determined by a set of cascading Stylesheets (CSS) and images. You can customize the look by:

• Complementing the existing standard style sheets

• Modifying the standard style sheets for WSS

• Replacing standard images by referencing new images

• Instant Source Utility (available for download/purchase)

Configuration DetailsImpact of customization: Low-to-mediumComplexity: mediumSupportability: Medium-to-high

<style>.ms-bannerframe { background-color: #800000; border:0px; Border-Bottom: 2px solid #FFCC00;}

</style>

Note:The application of service packs, fixes, and future releases of the product will have an impact on the modification of the standard style sheets and images. However, as long as the changes are backed up and documented it should not be too difficult to reapply them.

Branding Tactics: Interior (Moderate)

Style Sheets and what they affect:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\Template\Layouts\1033\Styles

<style>.ms-bannerframe { background-color: #800000; border:0px; Border-Bottom: 2px solid #FFCC00;}

</style>

Style Sheet Name DescriptionSPS.CSS SharePoint Portal Server styles

OWS.CSS Windows SharePoint Services styles

MENU.CSS Styles used to create drop-down menu

OWSMAC.CSS Styles used when rendering on the MAC

OWSPERS.CSS My Site styles

TIP:Create your own copy of the SPS.css to complement and override the default.

For example: <company>sps.css

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

Style Sheet Directory Information

Branding Tactics: Interior (Moderate)

Logo & Style Sheet Customizations

• Great combination!• Relatively easy to do• Potential for significant visual impact• Very supportable approach

Important:• The custom portal image should reside on the file system in the images directory.

• Create a copy of the SPS.css file and rename it rather than editing the original file.

Branding Tactics: Interior (Moderate)

Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003:Customize both Windows SharePoint Services andSharePoint Portal Server areas, but…

• Greater impact on portal site supportability• Customizations cannot be replicated across a

portal site or enable a single maintenance point • Customizations “UnGhost” Portal Site pages • Relatively simple. Great tool for Team Sites.

Configuration DetailsImpact of customization: Medium-to-highComplexity: Medium Supportability: Medium

Note:The application of service packs or fixes will not have an impact on modifications made by FrontPage. Future versions of the product may introduce changes or additions that may require some rework.

SharePoint Template DesignExploring SharePoint Curb Appeal

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

SharePoint Templates:Portal sites and Areas are based upon a set of templates. Bybranding a portal site using the templates, you ensuremaximum page performance and simplified page maintenance.

Template customization provides you with the greatest flexibility and performs branding using a Microsoft recommended method.

Impact of customization: Low-to-highComplexity: Medium-to-highSupportability: Low-to-Medium

Note:Difficult to provide a specific assessment of impact or cost. The application of service packs, fixes, and future releases of the product will have an impact on the changes. Arguably most flexible type of modification.

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

SharePoint Portal Server Areas:Each portal area is made up of two elements: Area Pages and Sites. While both can be customized, you typically achieve branding by modifying areapages only.

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

Sites in SharePoint Portal Server:Behind every portal area is a backend WSS site. Thisbackend WSS site provides most of the WSS list anddocument library based capabilities to the SPS area.

It defines items such as the following:

• Lists available for creation

• Lists created by default

• Fields that make up a particular list

• Available views

Note:We will not be exploring modifications to the area definition (he combination of HTML files and XML-based configuration files that make up these pages/content.

Site Definitions

What is a Site Definition• Defines a unique type of SharePoint site• Examples include Team Sites, Meeting Workspaces, Topics, News• It’s a set of files in the file system located on the Web server

• XML files• ASPX pages• Document Templates (.dot, .htm) and Content files (.gif, .doc)

• Site definitions specify portal area list types, Web pages, navigation and site

Why work with Site Definitions• Customize the look and feel of SharePoint sites• Add new functionality (Create new lists and web page modules)

Site Definition Files. Where Are They?

Everything is Under:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions/60/template

File Scopes:Server Language: \1033 (English Language)

Site Definition: \1033\STS (SPS, SPSNEWS etc…)

List Definition: \1033\STS\Lists\Announce (display, edit, new)

Resource Files: Template\layouts\1033\Styles (Images & Styles directories)

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

SharePoint Template Descriptions:Each area template is contained within its own folder structure.

Folder Area

SPS Home

SPSCOMMU Community

SPSMSITE My Site Homepage

SPSPERS My Site Team Site

SPSNEWS News

SPSNHOME News Home

SPSSITES Site Registry

SPSTOC      Topics Home

SPSTOPIC Topics

STS WSS Team Site

MPS WSS Multi-Page Team Site

Site Definition Files

Create New Site Definitions(Create & Customize a new Template)

1. Copy an existing Definition2. Rename it3. Update WEBTEMPSPS.XML

Note:.May not be fully supported or updated by services packs and future software revisions.

Site Definition Files

Why did we just discuss this?

• It’s important to understand what constitutes the Site Definition

• It’s great to know how to create new Templates and make them available to users

• But…ONLY modify these files if you absolutely have to

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

Customizing SharePoint Area Pages:Every area in your portal is created with a default.aspx page; this is the pagedisplayed when an end-user accesses an instance of a portal area.

Template Location\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\Template\1033

IMPORTANT:Do not edit SharePoint templates or pages by opening them directly from the file system in FrontPage as the HTML can become corrupted.

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

Working with & Modifying Templates: How should we implement a new Banner?\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\webserverextensions\60\Template\<Loc ID>\SPS

1. Standard HTML Create code and paste it into each default.aspx page replacing the standard one. Simple to implement. Requires changes in additional default.aspx pages.

2. Web PartUse Standard HTML. Include in a server control or Web Part. Upside: Maintained in a single location. Downside: Development required.

3. Server ControlDevelop a text-based server control. Combine SPS controls and HTML. Referenced control in each template page. Upside: Maintained in single location. Limited development. Control does not need to be compiled. Downside: None

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

Modifying Templates: Server-Side Controls SharePoint Portal Server includes a number of server-side controls, whichprovide functionality like top navigation, left navigation, actions, and a logo. Anumber of these controls have parameters that you can specify to changetheir behavior. <SPSWC:NameWebPart>

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

Modifying Templates: Navigation (Home Area Only)This control manages the left-hand and top navigation elements. Left-handnavigation, as displayed on the Home area, is shown here.

<SPSWC:CategoryNavigationWebPart>

Vertical Mode:By default, it displays one-level beneath Topics

Horizontal Mode:Parameters that can be modified:• Display the children of any other area within your portal hierarchy. • Render in horizontal mode, as it is in the top navigation bar

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

Modifying Templates: Navigation (All Other Areas)The left-hand navigation on all other areas is made up of two controls:

<SPSWC:BreadCrumbTrail><SPSWC:CategoryNavigationWebPart>

• Display the breadcrumb in a horizontal mode

• Anchor the breadcrumb to a specific area

• Include a specific separator in the breadcrumb trail

• Use lead-in text, a type of left-hand label

Vertical Mode:

Horizontal Mode:

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

Modifying Templates: Page Header (Standard)Using parameters, you can modify this control in the following ways:

<SPSWC:PageHeader>

• Render only the links displayed on the right-hand side.

• Render only the image displayed on the left-hand side.

• Render both the links and the image.

Branding Tactics: Interior (Advanced)

Modifying Templates: Actions You can remove any of these actions or add your own with parameters:

<SPSWC:ToolBar><SPSWC:ToolBarButton><SPSWC:ToolBarSeparator>

• The URL where the link will navigate you to.

• Text to display.

• The ToolTip to display.

• Whether it is visible in Edit mode.

Branding Tactics: Decorating (Advanced)

Using Flash: Flash can bring an entirely new dynamic to your Portal or Team Site

Potential Uses for Flash:• Custom header for the homepage and others• Features or Presentations

SharePoint WSS Template DesignExploring the SharePoint Curb Appeal

Branding WSS Sites

• Themes (Standard & Custom)• FrontPage 2003 Customizations• Template Creation

Branding WSS Sites: Themes (Standard)

1. Site Settings2. Click Apply theme to Site3. Select a Preview4. Click Apply

Configuration DetailsImpact of customization: Low Complexity: Low Supportability: High

Branding WSS Sites: Themes (Standard/Custom)

FrontPage 2003• Choose existing Themes• Modify existing Themes• Create new Themes

Note:Customizations done in FrontPage are unique to the specific site. Creating a new Theme in FrontPage does not make it immediately available to your Site Administrator through Site Settings.

Configuration DetailsImpact of customization: LowComplexity: Low-medium Supportability: Low-High

Branding WSS Sites: Themes (Custom)

Creating Themes\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\THEMES\

Provides you with the greatest flexibility using a recommended branding method.

Configuration DetailsImpact of customization: Low-HighComplexity: Medium-High Supportability: Medium

Note:Customizations are immediately available to your Site Administrator through Site Settings

Branding WSS Sites: Themes (Custom)

Creating Themes (Update SPTHEMES.XML)\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\Layouts\1033

Requirements• Unique Template ID, Name• Create a custom thumbnail and

preview image for your users to identify.

Make your new theme available through Site Settings!

Branding WSS Sites: FrontPage 2003 Customization

What Can I Do?• Add a Custom Header• Change the HTML Structure of the

Homepage.• Customize Web Part Zones• Customize Web Part Views

Branding WSS Sites:

Creating & Saving WSS Templates:Planning to create a new template? You may want to consider whether the new Template should be available globallyto all top-level site collections.

1. Site Settings2. Go to Site Administration3. Save Site as Template4. Download <name>template.stp5. Install with sts.adm

“How Did We Do That?”

Branding Example: Decorating (Advanced)

SharePoint Branding Resources

Branding SharePoint (http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/odc_sp2003_ta/html/Office_SharePointApplyingCorporateBrand.asp

MSDN Webcast: Customizing and Branding SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services (Level 300)

SharePoint Customizationhttp://www.sharepointcustomization.com/default.aspx

SharePoint Branding Do’s and Don’t’s

DO’s

• The Portal or Team site should reflect and reinforce the company identity

• Branding your Portal or Team site is part of the Planning Process

• Design within the limitations of SharePoint. Keep it supportable

• Document your Branding customizations

• Understand where, when, why and how to use FrontPage 2003

• Make backups of the files you plan to customize

DON’T’s

• Edit your Portal area pages in FrontPage (via http:// or the file system)

• Edit the Administration (Layout) page

Questions