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  • How To SharePoint


  • A list of SharePoint Developer, Design and Testing Tools

    by Mark Jones | Apr 16, 2013
    If you need to put together a SharePoint Developer machine and want some inspiration into what tools, services and programs need to go on it, then look no further. If I have missed any, please add them. As always, feel free to embed the list in your own blogs.
    Full story
  • How to add a web part to every users MySite in 5 minutes

    by Mark Jones | Apr 14, 2013
    This post will outline how to add a web part to every users MySite. The web part we are going to add is the standard DocRead Reading Tasks web part, but this process can be applied to any web part in SharePoint.
    Full story
  • New eBook for the SharePoint Community: A (p)review of SharePoint Server 2013

    by Mark Jones | Apr 12, 2013
    Over at the SharePoint-Community.net, we are really please to announce that we have just made a new free eBook available about SharePoint 2013. The book is called: A (p)review of SharePoint Server 2013 and written by SharePoint-Community.Net founder Gokan Ozcifci together with Valentin Lecerf.
    Full story
  • Do you need one document library or many ?

    by Mark Jones | Apr 04, 2013
    A list of all the things that you need to consider when deciding whether to maintain 1 SharePoint document library or to use many ? As you would imagine there is no correct answer, but hopefully this list allows you to make an informed decision.
    Full story
  • How to use a 'Link to a document' in place of a real document in SharePoint.

    by Mark Jones | Apr 03, 2013
    From time to time you may need to give the effect of storing documents in SharePoint, without them actually being stored in SharePoint document libraries. Maybe you have a raft of documents in external systems that you want to make available by SharePoint. This post shows how to make documents available in SharePoint using the “Link To a Document” content type.
    Full story
  • An in-depth look at DocRead Reading Tasks

    by Mark Jones | Mar 28, 2013
    This post provides an overview of what a DocRead Reading Task is and how they get created and managed by DocRead Timer jobs.
    Full story
  • How to set default column values on a document in SharePoint

    by Mark Jones | Feb 27, 2013
    If you haven’t heard about “Location-based metadata defaults” or “Column default value settings” then I hope to explain it simply. Try to think of it as a rather cool way to apply default values for your documents metadata (columns) based on which document library folder you are saving them to.
    Full story
  • Win a free pass to the SharePoint Conference for Business Users

    by Mark Jones | Feb 27, 2013
    To celebrate the launch of SharePoint-Community.net the team are running a fun competition to find out which member can write the best piece of 'Top Content' by a specific date and time. So, whoever manages to be ranked number #1 in the 'Top Content' list on Wednesday 6th March at 11pm GMT will be given a free pass* worth 1,390 Euro to the SharePoint Conference for Business Users, taking place in Amsterdam on 20-22 March!
    Full story
  • SharePoint Conference for Business Users - we are going!

    by Mark Jones | Feb 19, 2013
    Just a quick post to say that we are all booked up to go to the SharePoint Conference for Business Users 2013 (20-22 March) in Amsterdam. This is the first time we will be attending a conference that is targeted more towards business users, than technical. We are currently deciding what we are going to do from a marketing perspective in the 2nd half of 2013 and conferences are something we are considering sponsoring.
    Full story
  • The IE10 nosniff issue in SharePoint 2013

    by Mark Jones | Feb 18, 2013
    Last week was fun (and no this isn't a post about not sneezing when using IE10)! We had two major issues still to overcome in DocRead for SharePoint 2013 before we could release it. So I decided to help out and take a look. BTW, if you are using JSON in SharePoint 2013 you may just get caught by this, so it's worth 5 minutes.
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  • A list of the best SharePoint discussion forums and groups

    by Mark Jones | Feb 07, 2013
    Both new and experienced SharePoint developers, architects and end-users need to discuss problems and chew over ideas about SharePoint. There's quite a few major forums and groups out there,  such as the SharePoint Community Group on Linked, but there's plenty more! So, to help you find them, here's a list of the 'Top SharePoint Discussion forums and groups'. Please vote for your favourites
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  • An awesome list of SharePoint Training and Education resources

    by Mark Jones | Feb 05, 2013
    If you want to learn SharePoint, then this list shows some of the best SharePoint training and education resources there are. Vote, embed and have your say!
    Full story
  • What are your favourite SharePoint 2013 Features ?

    by Mark Jones | Feb 03, 2013
    SharePoint 2013 has shipped and it's now main stream. We'd love to hear what your favourite 2013 features are, so get adding them. Also vote up the killer ones and embed the list to see if we can make it one awesome resource!
    Full story
  • The best SharePoint blogs in the world

    by Mark Jones | Jan 29, 2013
    This list illustrates the Top SharePoint Blogs on the net. I think there's a great mix of technical and business content. I intend to keep this list up to date and monitor each blog for frequency and quality of content. Please feel free to use the 'Add to List' button if you think there are some missing, however, I won't accept all blogs as I really want to keep it to a 'best of SharePoint breed' list.
    Full story
  • 25+ Tools and Services to use in a SharePoint software company

    by Mark Jones | Jan 27, 2013
    After publishing 'Running a SharePoint software company' I got a lot of thank you's for mentioning Trello. (Apparently, not many had heard of it). Anyway, this got me thinking. Wouldn't it be great to put together a list showing some of the tools and services that we use (or are recommended) to use in your company ?
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  • How to learn SharePoint and where to get the training

    by Mark Jones | Jan 23, 2013
    I have moderated the 'SharePoint Community Group' on LinkedIn daily for four years now and the question that keeps rearing it's head is : "I am new to SharePoint, where can I learn it?", or "Are there any exams I can take ?".
    Full story
  • Running a SharePoint software company

    by Mark Jones | Jan 17, 2013
    When setting out on the road to develop and sell a product in SharePoint - as we were four years ago - you will more than likely have the idea that writing the code and perfecting your product is the key to success. You will probably have thoughts like "My app is so cool, once people hear about this, it will sell itself". In this post I want to share a little of our history and hopefully pass on some of learnings, tips and stumbling blocks... Anyway, let's get started ...
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  • Manage employee acknowledgement forms with DocRead and SharePoint

    by Mark Jones | Jan 15, 2013
    If you are an organization that needs to distribute and track policies, documents, procedures, manuals to your employees, then you will know that this can be an onerous and time consuming task.
    Full story
  • How to get employees to read and agree to your employee handbook with SharePoint

    by Mark Jones | Jan 10, 2013
    One of the biggest challenges facing organizations today is not the creation and maintenance of the employee handbook, but how to ensure employees read and acknowledge / agree to it. Traditionally this has been achieved by creating a glossy brochure and requesting employees return a separate advice slip confirming they have read the document which is then stored for future reference. However more and more organizations are turning to electronic solutions to provide a more efficient and cost effective approach.
    Full story
  • Issues with using SharePoint 2010 for Records Management

    by Mark Jones | Jan 08, 2013
    Although SharePoint 2010 has improved as a record management solution it still introduces challenges to organizations that are heavily regulated by governments and governing bodies. For example, in the UK the Freedom of Information Act 2000 resulted in a working ‘Code or Practice’ governing how records need to managed. If SharePoint is to be able to meet these requirements customization or third party Records Management solutions are needed.
    Full story
  • Upgrading a custom application to SharePoint 2013

    by Mark Jones | Jan 07, 2013
    Just before Christmas I was tasked with the wonderful job of getting DocRead (our Policy Management Software for SharePoint) working on SharePoint 2013. I had actually tackled this a couple of weeks before when I reported this here : ‘DocRead’s first day on 2013’. At this point, although things appeared to be working we encountered a few issues during testing. We also needed to make DocRead look and feel like a SharePoint 2013 application.
    Full story
  • How to support multiple versions of SharePoint in a single Visual Studio solution

    by Mark Jones | Jan 06, 2013
    If you are ever tasked with having to support more than one version of SharePoint in a Visual Studio Solution (e.g SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013), then this post will hopefully be of some help!
    Full story
  • SharePoint Community Newsletter - Happy 2013

    by Mark Jones | Jan 03, 2013
    Just a quick post to say that we have just published the very first SharePoint Community Newsletter for 2013 and have gathered some great content together.
    Full story
  • How to configure a yearly reminder on a SharePoint document

    by Mark Jones | Dec 17, 2012
    SharePoint Information Management Policies are very useful for automatically performing actions on a document at some point in the future. For example, your organization may conform to ISO 9001 standards which require that documentation should be regularly reviewed and refreshed. It's also extremely good practice to clean, prune, and removed documents that are no longer needed. This makes an end-users life easier (better search results) and also lowers the storage costs.
    Full story
  • Lifecycle of Policy or Procedure in SharePoint

    by Mark Jones | Dec 14, 2012
    Over the last few weeks I have been working on a white paper called 'Life-cycle of a policy or procedure in SharePoint'. One of the main staples of this whitepaper is going to be diagram depicting what the life-cycle looks like.
    Full story
  • How to Create a SharePoint User Group

    by Helen Jones | Dec 14, 2012
    This blog post explains in very simple terms how to create a SharePoint group! Treat it as a quick-reference guide.
    Full story
  • How to Distribute a Training Video with DocRead for SharePoint

    by Helen Jones | Dec 13, 2012
    OK, so here's the thing - you've created a fabulous training video informing staff how to avoid injuring themselves when lifting heavy objects and you now need to ensure that all relevant staff watch it and follow your guidance. DocRead for SharePoint can ensure that all relevant employees are made aware of the required training and provides management reports allowing you to find out who has (and has not) completed the training.
    Full story
  • Available Options for ensuring staff receive relevant training

    by Mark Jones | Dec 13, 2012
    This post explains some of the challenges that organizations face today when trying to get the content into the hands of those individuals that need to see it and acknowledge it.
    Full story
  • How to add video to a SharePoint page in 5 steps

    by Mark Jones | Dec 13, 2012
    This post will show you how easy it is to add a Youtube video to a SharePoint page, customise it and save it ready for viewing by staff.
    Full story
  • How to embed a video into a SharePoint page and where to host it

    by Mark Jones | Dec 13, 2012
    A very common requirement by content editors in SharePoint is to embed and play a video directly into SharePoint pages. The options available can vary depending on what version of SharePoint you are using and also what kind of browsers your users have (including whether they support Flash, Silverlight or HTML 5). This post offers a few solutions that can suit all shapes and sizes.
    Full story
  • How to use Search (KeywordQuery) to query user profiles in SharePoint

    by Mark Jones | Dec 12, 2012
    Have you ever need to write C# code that returns a list of people (user profiles) and for it also to be lightning quick? Obviously, you could use the UserProfileManager to do this, but be warned it's NOT quick as you more often that not have to bring back all of the User Profiles and then iterate through them to find the ones matching your criteria. Its way too slow!
    Full story
  • What is the difference between a SharePoint Group and a SharePoint Audience

    by Helen Jones | Dec 11, 2012
    This post gives a brief introduction into what a SharePoint audience and a SharePoint group is and then ends with a summary of the main differences.
    Full story
  • Policies and Procedures : SharePoint document management features

    by Mark Jones | Dec 10, 2012
    As part of an on-going series of posts illustrating how SharePoint can help manage the life-cycle of a policy, this post explains how SharePoint's document management features can be used to help manage the creation and revision of a policy or procedure.
    Full story
  • Why Policy Management Software in SharePoint?

    by Mark Jones | Nov 30, 2012
    In this post I wanted to go over some of the main reasons why organizations need Policy Management Software in SharePoint and why using SharePoint and DocRead to manage your policy compliance is the obvious choice.
    Full story
  • DocRead's first day on SharePoint 2013

    by Mark Jones | Nov 15, 2012
    We've already been asked by a couple of customers whether DocRead will run (and be supported) on SharePoint 2013. Obviously, our answer is a resounding yes! However, until now we haven't sized up how much effort it was going to be.
    Full story
  • Code Sample : How to programmatically send an email in SharePoint

    by Mark Jones | Nov 06, 2012
    If your SharePoint farm has been configured to use an SMTP server, then it is possible to send an email in code using the SPUtility class. The c# code below illustrates how to send a mail and return an XML string outlining what was sent for logging purposes :
    Full story
  • How to send an email when a SharePoint site or web is deleted

    by Mark Jones | Nov 03, 2012
    For various governance reasons you may want to email the site owner when a SharePoint site is deleted. This blog post outlines an approach to easily notify site admins and owners once their site has been deleted.
    Full story
  • How to create a SharePoint Survey in under 5 minutes

    by Mark Jones | Nov 03, 2012
    This post will discuss how to create a Survey in SharePoint using out of the box functionality and nothing else! The example we will use is to create a survey that asks employees to answer questions about their previous training in the organisation.
    Full story
  • How to programmatically detect the version of Sharepoint 2007 and 2010

    by Mark Jones | Apr 06, 2012
    Quite often when developing code for DocRead we need to be able to discover what versions of SharePoint are on installed in the target platform. So being the kind souls we are - we have decided to share this helper library. The class is a singleton, so only once instance can be used and is cached after the first hit - so there no perf hits. We have added LOTS of boolean's to make it really easy to find out if a product SKU is installed.
    Full story
  • How to update multiple documents in a SharePoint document library with PowerShell

    by Mark Jones | Feb 14, 2012
    We recently received query for DocRead to see if it was possible to set the 'Required Audience' and 'Acknowledgement Days' to about 100 policies on mass (via a script). Hence, being one who is always up for a challenge, I cranked open PowerGUI and set to work.
    Full story
  • How to Create a New Document Library

    by Helen Jones | Feb 14, 2012
    This post explains how to create a new Document Library in SharePoint 2010. It also explains the creation of 2 columns that can (optionally) be configured for use with DocRead.
    Full story
  • How to Distribute a Document with DocRead

    by Helen Jones | Feb 03, 2012
    This blog post outlines how to distribute a document contained in a DocRead enabled Document Library. Documents can either be distributed to SharePoint Groups or Audiences.
    Full story
  • How to Add Documents to a SharePoint Document Library

    by Helen Jones | Jan 30, 2012
    SharePoint 2010 Top Tips : How to add documents to a SharePoint document library. This user friendly step-by-step guide shows you how to add a document to a SharePoint 2010 document library.
    Full story
  • How to Add Users to a SharePoint Group

    by Helen Jones | Jan 30, 2012
    This blog post explains in very simple terms how to add users to a SharePoint group! Treat it as a quick-reference guide.
    Full story
  • Code Sample : How to programmatically get an SPFile in SharePoint

    by Mark Jones | Dec 29, 2011
    This SharePoint code example illustrates how to develop a helper method to return an SPFile based on a Web, folder and file name.
    Full story
  • Code Sample : How to programmatically download all solutions (WSPs) in SharePoint

    by Mark Jones | Dec 27, 2011
    Once a solution has been added to SharePoint, then there's no apparent way to download it. Using the SharePoint object model we can easily download a wsp using the 'SaveAs' method. The C# code below illustrates how to download all of the solutions in the farm with just a few lines
    Full story
  • Code Sample : How to programmatically delete a web (and it's child webs)

    by Mark Jones | Dec 27, 2011
    If you have ever tried to delete a web either in code, or via the SharePoint GUI, then you will note that isn't possible if the web has one or more child webs. (or grandchildren). To delete a web, you must first delete it's subwebs.
    Full story
  • Code Sample : How to associate a SharePoint Workflow to a list programmatically

    by Mark Jones | Dec 09, 2011
    The following code sample illustrates how to associate a SharePoint Workflow to a list based on the workflow name. This is very useful if you need to do this as part of an automated build process.
    Full story
  • Why is DocRead different from competing software?

    by Helen Jones | Dec 03, 2011
    We are very often asked how DocRead differs from its competitors. Here's a recent response we gave (slightly tweaked to protect the identity of the requestor!):
    Full story
  • How to free your Data View/Form web part (DVWP/DFWP) from those nasty GUIDs

    by Hugo Esperanca | Jul 20, 2008
    Ever wanted to use the same page layout containing a DFWP, and bind it to a local site list in each site of your site collection ?
    Full story
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Policy Management with DocRead

DocRead - Policy management softwareDocRead for SharePoint is policy management software that allows you to :

  • Read & acknowledge policies
  • Notify staff as policies are published
  • Target the right policies to the right people
  • Audit who read a policy and when
  • Track and report on progress in real time
  • Visually see progress via charting web parts

Latest Blogs

  • How to maximise the impact of the My Reading List
  • A list of SharePoint Developer, Design and Testing Tools
  • How to add a web part to every users MySite in 5 minutes
  • New eBook for the SharePoint Community: A (p)review of SharePoint Server 2013
  • How to manage documents that require regular employee acceptance with DocRead

SharePoint Newsletters

  • SharePoint Newsletter - Rene Modery 
  • SharePoint Newsletter - Jasper Oosterveld
  • SharePoint Newsletter - Gokan Ozcifci
  • SharePoint Newsletter - Thuan Nguyen
  • SharePoint Newsletter - Veronique Palmer
  • SharePoint Newsletter 2013 Special Edition

Events

  • SharePoint Records Management Certificate (ARMA)
    New York | Dates: 10 – 11 Jun, 2013
  • SharePoint Records Management Certificate (ARMA)
    Kansas City | Dates: 17 – 18 Jun, 2013
  • SharePoint Records Management Certificate (ARMA)
    Philadephia | Dates: 24 – 25 Jun, 2013

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