SPS Questions...

[Waiman]

Hi,

I'm new to SPS and I've been told to look into some customisation. Can people help point me out where to look to see if these requests are possible, i.e. objects, methods, events, etc.

My background is VB Desktop and ASP programming.

- Can we customise workflow? SPS has serial or parallel, is it possible to build a more dynamic workflow process?

- Build a security model? SPS has only User, Author and Coordinator. Can we expand that model?

- Customise the check in and out, is it possible to capture a Check-in event or Check-out event to do some custom form field filling in?

- Re-skin it with new graphics. Is it possible to add graphics to the dashboards? SPS only seems to allow you to change colours and add a logo in the top left.

I'm looking at the SDK now, but it's takes time to get an idea of what can and cannot be done, and my boss wants an answer now. :-(

Any advice on the above would be very appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[bsimser]

1. There is a workflow designer that you can utilize (similar to the Exchange one) but it's really not a good solution for building real workflow applications. MS has stated to either a) use a 3rd party tool like Teamplate and b) not to invest too heavily in the workflow aspect as it may or may not survive the next version in it's current state.

2. No, only the 3 roles listed are available. There is a 4th role, that of approver as you don't have to be a reader/etc to approve things.

3. You can capture the events you mentioned through the event sink, however again MS recommends no building on this technology as it's changing.

4. You can add graphics to dashboards as in changing the logo and customize the stylesheets (which can include graphics, e.g. a background image or images in tables). You can also add graphics as HTML web parts to a page. Just create an HTML web part with an <IMG> tag and point it to your image. Remove the borders and it looks embedded into teh page. Beyond that you have to start messing with the XSL files and again you get into unsupported land and a migration problem when moving to SPS 2.0

One thing to note, SPS 2.0 is out in beta now and frankly, most of the requirements you listed here are better served by that version (custom designed roles, views, etc.). If you haven't made the investment in SPS yet and can wait until it reaches production level (later this year) then perhaps you should download it and try it out.

If you have any specific questions feel free to ask.

 

[franxdj]

Hi,
I'm interested to capture the SPS events.

I have seen that it's possible to capture the events &quot;add new doc&quot; and &quot;delete&quot; using the Exchange sdk. But, how I can capture the SPS events &quot;check-in&quot; or &quot;publish&quot;?

Thanks for any help!

Bye.
Francesco, franx_dj@inwind.it

 

[bsimser]

Francesco,

There is a facility for programming against the SPS events. This is known as the event sink and you can have web parts respond to and react to events. Microsoft (and others) however generally recommend not writing against this because a) it's not there for SPS v2 b) it's not really a supported/well documented API.

You can find information about it in the SPS SDK (very little) and there's an example on sharepointcode.com.

 

[franxdj]

Hi bsimser, thanks,
I don't have found nothing about event on SPS in sharepointcode.com... Can you give me the address?

Thanks.

Francesco.