SharePoint Questions

[minority2000uk]

Hi I work for a University who are currently looking at sharepoint for a number of applications.

Some of the users have asked the following questions and was wondering if you could help me out with some information?

batch printing - Is it possible to batch print documents where the user would select x documents and then click a button (ie a sharepoint feature) to print the documents. I saw a screenshot that showed batch printing but have not found whether it is a feature or even possible.

offline access/batch downloads of documents - I have found that you can sync the files to your outlook. So I believe this is the answer to this one. Unless I am wrong?

making personal notes against documents that are secure to the individual - This one I think is not possible where the user can make comments to a document but only allow them to permit users to view the comments.

We are also considering using this as a Portal as obviously we have large demographic and need to be able to personalize for staff and student and then per department which we believe the portal with web parts will allow us to achieve with the minimum of support (Instead of x different systems for each group.)

Any help would be gratefully received.

 

[furuknap]

Hello,

All of what you are asking is indeed possible, and not even that difficult. SharePoint is a great platform, with platform being the operative word. Where most people go wrong is seeing the team sites, collaboration portals, publishing portals and whatnot as SharePoint, while these sites should instead be seen as technology demonstrations from Microsoft.

I am certain most of your requests are already available as third-party addons, but if you are looking to learn SharePoint, why not develop these solutions yourself, or even have your students do it, if you have any aspiring developers in your fold?

.b

Blog for my upcoming SharePoint book
"Building the SharePoint User Experience":

http://www.understandingsharepoint.com/userexperience

 

[minority2000uk]

Cheers for the reply.

Do you have any suggestions on the last question to do with making notes secure to the individual unless they choose to share.

Are current work around we have thought of is to disperse the document to there mysite library via a workflow and then allow them to choose whether they want to submit this back the collaborative library area.

 

[furuknap]

Hello again,

Sadly item level permissions is a sad chapter in the SharePoint book.

You can use what SharePoint refers to as Item level permissions which basically allows you to say that a user can only view or edit their own items. They cannot share, however, unless they move the item or document somewhere else, which is a bit awkward.

Your other option is to implement normal SharePoint security and allow users to share items using permissions. However, this implies that
1) you need to develop a custom coding solution
2) your need to set individual item permissions which does not scale well.

Regarding scaling, anything above a few thousand users and a few thousand documents in your entire site and your sql server will start sweating.

Blog for my upcoming SharePoint book
"Building the SharePoint User Experience":

http://www.understandingsharepoint.com/userexperience