Restricting Site Templates

I had a group come to me recently that wanted to set up a subsite to their site and allow a group of users create sites under that subsite.  Standard issue for SharePoint.  In this case they wanted those sites to all start out the same.  They had specific things such as two document libraries and a few other specific lists as the default when those sites get created.   Also standard issue for SharePoint…by simply creating a site template the users to select they would get what they wanted.

This request didn’t specifically ask for the restriction of site templates, however since we have had numerous other similar requests we now have a lot of site templates available.  So…

To make everyone’s life a little easier I decided to restrict the subsites so the users could only use the template created for them.  The group manager was very happy-this made it very simple for them to find and thus the creation of their sites was a snap.

The trick to it all is getting to the Page Layout and Site Template Settings page.  This isn’t available to you at the Site level, it is only on the Site Settings menu at the Site Collection level (top-level site).  That doesn’t mean you can’t use it to accomplish this task.

After creating the desired site template, go to the site above (parent to) the site where you want the users restricted to specific templates.  Replace the aspx page portion of the url with

_layouts/areatemplatesettings.aspx

Make your adjustments to the site templates available to subsites in the Page Layout and Site Template Settings screen, then click OK.

Summary of SANSPUG meeting on 8/3

The new SANSPUG (San Diego SharePoint Users Group) is growing fast, and it was apparent at the August meeting held this week.  There were only a couple of empty seats and those in attendance engaged in many discussions and gained valuable tips on SharePoint.

The first session presented by Galen Keene on “Being a SharePoint Site Collection Administrator” was well received.  Galen did a great job of running down all of the menu items available to a 2010 SCA by keeping it informative, interactive and NOT a boring lecture just listing the menu items.  Kudos to Galen, especially considering this was his first user group presentation!

Chris Givens followed with an interesting session on “Using SharePoint Content Types Properly“.  His session included some live demo’s hosted on the SANSPUG.org SharePoint site.  Having a SharePoint 2010 site available to the user group proved its value tonight.   This informative session sparked discussions that intrigued everyone.  Chris adjusted on the fly and displayed live on the SP 2010 site several things  people were asking about and seamlessly went right back on track with his presentation.  Excellent job Chris!

I think everyone learned something at this meeting, and seemed to enjoy both sessions.    We wrapped up with announcements about upcoming events that are in the planning stages, such as a SharePoint Exam Cram, a SharePoint Sprint, and a SharePoint Saturday in San Diego!

The San Diego SharePoint Users Group holds monthly meetings that are FREE to anyone interested in SharePoint.  The group has two levels of membership, a basic member just like any other user group and the other a paid member who desires access to additional (“Premium”) content and activities.  To learn more about upcoming meetings and events check out the www.SANSPUG.org site.  Registration on the site is free, which provides access to meeting presentations and more. 

Resetting Colleagues in MySites

I have 4 posts in draft and continue to run out of time to complete them, so to combat that situation I am going to do a very quick post today.

We have My Sites enabled in our SharePoint 2007 intranet.  We also have a number of remote employees who rarely login to the network and have never gone to their My Site.  Internally, the My Sites are often used to find reporting relationships, colleagues and contact information.  In our environment “colleagues” are primarily co-workers in the same department…with exceptions for cross-department teams.  Employees can easily  add or remove colleagues in their My Site Profile page.

HR came to me today because one  person changed roles and the profile page shows colleagues for this person that are no longer considered colleagues.  The person is remote, has not gone to My Sites and will likely not do so, possibly ever.  HR wants to know if I can update the colleagues displayed for this person.

As a SharePoint Administrator, I cannot manage a My Site that the user has not ‘created’ .  That is, when anyone clicks on the name of a valid user they are taken to a My Site page…however if the user hasn’t created their My Site yet, this page is a profile page that SharePoint generates and it is NOT a site.  So I can’t edit the site.

After some digging around I found the answer.  There is no UI or SSP menu that will allow you to do this in 2007…it requires coding a tiny application that uses the UserProfileService web service.  The forum article that really answered this question can be found on TechNet, and sample code doing this is available on MSDN.  I hope this helps shorten someone’s research effort that may have a similar situation arise.

10 SharePoint 2007 Admin shortcuts

Shortcuts that can help you get to pages you need when working on your SharePoint 2007 sites.

Add these to end of url for site or page to get to the page you need:

1. Save Site as Template: _layouts/savetmpl.aspx
2. Jump to Settings page: _layouts/settings.aspx
3. Site Template Gallery : _catalogs/wt/Forms/Common.aspx
4. List Template Gallery: _catalogs/lt/Forms/AllItems.aspx
5. Web Part Gallery: _catalogs/wp/Forms/AllItems.aspx
6. Master Page Gallery: _catalogs/masterpage/Forms/AllItems.aspx
7. Add web parts to any page: ?PageView=Shared&ToolPaneView=2
8. Manage your Alerts (2003 & 2007): _layouts/1033/MySubs.aspx (2003) and _layouts/SubEdit.aspx (2007)
9. Web Part Page Maintenance: ?contents=1
10. IISReset can get annoying, every time you deploy new functionality you hit IISReset, and you wait.

A much quicker way is to recycle only the application pool instead of issuing an IISReset. In order to recycle just the application pool, you can use the following command:

cscript c:\windows\system32\iisapp.vbs /a “[App_Pool_Name]” /r

Added bonus:

Application Pool Recycle Utility

This makes the pages load quickly after recycling the pool or doing an IISReset.

http://www.harbar.net/articles/APM.aspx

Ideas for SharePoint Admin documentation/notes

I have been trying to determine what method “I LIKE” best for capturing documentation and administration notes.  If anyone out there actually reads this and has ideas, please comment on this topic – I would really like to hear what you do.

My requirements are simple enough: use SharePoint, make it quick and easy for me to document things, make it easy to FIND what I documented or those notes about that widget from 6 months ago, and not cost more than my own effort in setting it up.  The last requirement could change, but this is the list I started with.

So far I have tried setting up a Knowledge Base, a Wiki and a Blog.

Of those I thought I would like the KB because I could easily find Related Articles.  But I found that I didn’t like the way Keywords are used and I couldn’t create a view to sort or group by keyword.  The Wiki became my next effort.  It addresses all of my requirements except ‘easy to find’ due to the lack of keywords, categories, or something to group similar or related content.  My last move was to the blog.  The Categories function better than Keywords found in the KB, but the lack of a “Related Articles ” capability detracts from my mission.  I suppose I can create a specific crawl that may help find things for any one of these options.   Before I put in the effort I thought I would see if anyone else is doing something I like, because that is what best practices is all about.