This method helps you achieve your branding look through the creation of a new style sheet in the Assets Directory and telling your SharePoint site to use this sheet as an alternate CSS sheet. After that is set up, snippets of CSS code in operation are copied to your style sheet using Code Inspector as your investigative tool. These snippets are then modified to your exact branding specifications.

Step 1:  Create a new alternate CSS style sheet:

1. Open your site using SP Designer.
2. Click on Site Assets (A) on the left hand side menu.
3. Use the Asset (B) button located on the Ribbon to choose CSS (C) file.
4. Give this new CSS file a meaningful name.

Step 2:  Attach this new style sheet to your site:

1. From the gear menu of your SharePoint site, select Site Settings.
2. Under the “Look and Feel” category on the right, choose Master Page.
3. Scroll to the bottom section for setting an Alternate CSS URL.  Select Specify a CSS file to  be used for this site and all sites that inherit it.  Then Browse to the style sheet file you created in Step 1.

Step 3:  Add styles to the style sheet:

1. On your site in the browser, hover over the element of which you would like to modify properties.
2. Right click and choose Inspect Element.
3. The lower half of your screen opens up the Code Inspector.  The CSS is on the lower right hand side. When you find the style you wish to modify, go to the small expand/collapse arrow on the left of that style group, right click on it and choose Copy Rule.
4. Go to SharePoint Designer and paste this code into your CSS file. Then modify specific CSS attributes as needed.

Example 1: Change font

To change the font, copy the group of CSS that contains the font-family attribute that comes first in the code inspector. Paste that line of code into the CSS file. Modify it by adding your desired font as the first font listed in the font-family list.

For example, if you want Garamond font, modify the CSS copied from font-family line (as shown in Figure 3) to look like this:

font-family: Garamond, “Sego UILight”, “Segoe UI”, “Segoe”, Tahoma , Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

Example 2: Add a Background Image

To add a background image to your page, first add the image to your Site Assets either through the regular browser interface or through SharePoint Designer.

Then type in your style sheet this line of CSS in a new line. Substitute Tulips.jpg with the exact name of your image file you added to your site assets.

.ms-backgroundImage                  {

                                background-image: url(‘Tulips.jpg’);

                                }             

The post Branding your SharePoint site with an alternate style sheet appeared first on Donna's Technology Resources.

Often I get asked for a work around to the fact that you should never upload the same document to multiple SharePoint libraries.  Trying to maintain two copies of a document is ugly and never recommended!  So then how do we meet the need, that can sometimes be crucial, to have a document that is located in a particular home library “show up” in another library.  When I say “show up”, I mean be visually shown with the other documents in that library but in reality be a shortcut to the real document stored in an outside library.  A way to accomplish this easily is to use the “Link to a Document” feature that can be turned on for any library.

Part 1:  Enable the library to contain this type of content

Note: This first part only needs to be done once per library.  Full or Administrator privileges are needed.  But after this setting is turned on, even someone with only Contribute privileges can setup the link in Parts 2 and 3.

1. Go to the Library that you need to create a link in. Click on the Library tab and select the Library Settings
2. Click on Advanced Settings (A).       
3. Set Allow management of content types to Yes (B). Click OK.
4. In the Content Types section, click on Add from existing site content types (C).
5. In the box called Available Site Content Types, find the one called Link to a Document (D) and Add it to the other side.  Click OK.

Part 2:  Get the document URL

1. Go to the library containing the file you are creating a link to.
2. Click once on the desired file’s more ellipses (E)
3. Click once in the URL box (F). Then rt. click and choose Copy.
   

   

    

Part 3:  Setup the link to the document in the other library

1. Make sure you are in the library that will contain the link.
2. Go to the File tab
3. Click on the words of the first icon New Document to make a drop down list appear. A list of the content types that have been enabled for this Library will be shown.
4. Select Link to a Document (G).
5. In the next window, enter a name for the linked document. Paste in the URL you copied in Part 2 into the Document URL box (H).
6. Click OK. The linked document will appear in the library and its icon will have a curved arrow to indicate it is a link (I).

Advantages:

This “Link to Document’ feature gives so much flexibility to be able to open and modify documents outside the library without having to actually navigate there.   It also allows you to mix content type. The URL box can be used to add a link to a particular website or a link to a file in another system.

For those of you using SharePoint Online, the steps are a little quicker, as Part 1 typically does not have to be done.  See this article for the particular steps for linking to a document in SharePoint Online.

The post How to Create a Link so a Document appears in another SharePoint Library appeared first on Donna's Technology Resources.

A common issue with large SharePoint sites is wasting time navigating to the documents you need to work with.  Often they are spread across many different libraries and lists.  If you add the Relevant Document Web Part to your site, then automatically you will have a place where you will ONLY see documents relevant to you.  This web part will truly be a navigation time saver not just for you but for anyone using your site.  It automatically adjusts to the logged in user!

The definition of relevant can be based on any combination of these 3 criteria:

1. Documents last modified by me
2. Documents created by me
3. Documents checked out to me

The default setting of this web part is to only use the first criteria above–“last modified by me”.  But you can easily add the other 2 settings, if desired, by editing the web part.

To add this web part, do the following:

1. Get in edit page mode by clicking on  Edit in the top right corner.
2. Click in one of the web part frames to indicate where you want to place the Relevant Document web part.
3. Go to the Insert tab (A) and click on Web Part (B).
4. Scroll down in the first column called Categories until you find Content Rollup (C).
5. Select under the second column the Part called Relevant Documents (D).
6. Then click on the Add (E) button.
7. Immediately you will see it pulling in documents (F).

To configure this web part to desired settings, do the following:

1. In upper right hand corner of the Relevant Document web part, choose in the drop down menu, Edit Web Part
2. Use the Relevant Document’s Web Parts Panel that is now located on the right hand side of the SharePoint window.

• At the top in the Appearance category, use the Title box to change its name to something other than “Relevant Documents”. In the screenshot below, I chose to name it “Documents Last Modified by Me” (G).
• At the bottom in the Data section, there are other important settings:
  • Check boxes to add the “created by me” and “checked out to me”  filter settings (H).
  • Box to enter the maximum number of items to show.  Enter a specific number desired like 15 (I).

3. Click on OK and then click on Save in the upper right corner of the page.

Key features of the Relevant Document Web Part

A wonderful aspect of this web part is that you don’t even need to know in which library to search for a document that you need to locate.  This web part looks in all libraries in the current site.  However, keep in mind that it will only pull from the current site and not the entire site collection.

Just like any web part, it need to be hosted on a page you have already created.  Most site owners like to place on their site launch page because it is so highly useful.

The post How to Use the SharePoint Relevant Document Web Part to show “My Stuff” appeared first on Donna's Technology Resources.

The display order of SharePoint views is determined quite simply.  The default view is always listed first followed by the rest to the views listed in alphabetical order. To control the order of the list of views, a common trick is to have the views names, except the default one, start with a numerical prefix.  For example, 01ViewName, 02ViewName, 03ViewName, etc.

In this example, I have the left alone the name of the original default view called “All Documents”.   I created 3 new views named 01Recently Edited, 02North Division and 03South Division.  They were named with those particular numerical prefixes to set the desired order.

To set a particular view as a new default, use the “Modify this View” choice.  At the top of the view settings windows, select the checkbox, Make this the default view.

Another much more sophisticated approach to set the view order, is to use javascript to modify the properties of the page as discussed in SharePoint development forums.  This approach is not for the feint-hearted.

The post How to Control the Display Order of Views in a SharePoint List or Library appeared first on Donna's Technology Resources.

Some examples of ways to use the [Today] parameter are:

• Displaying items created over the past week
  • with a filter for showing “Created is greater than or equal to  [Today]-7”
  • This view could be called “Recent Stuff”
• Displaying items or documents that have expired:
  • with a filter for showing “Expiration Date is less than [Today]”
• Displaying deadlines values that are less than 7 days from now:
  • with a filter for showing “Deadline is greater than [Today]+7”
• Showing all tasks that are due in the next 7 days or overdue:
  • with a filter for showing “Due Date is less than [Today]+7 OR Status is not equal to Completed”

Steps to Create a [Today] filtered view:

1. Go to your Library or List Settings.
2. Click on Create a View.
3. In the view creation screen, scroll down to the Filter section.
   • Filter for the desired situation.  Use the examples above as a guide to set the parameters as needed.
   • In this screenshot, I am filtering for all documents that have been created OR modified in the last 3 days.  These settings result in creating a “Recent Stuff” view.
   • When typing the expression using the  [Today] parameter, make sure to type the entire expression without any spaces.

One limitation of the [Today] field is that it cannot be used for formulas in Calculated Columns.

Related Posts:

How to Create a Dynamic [Me] Filtered View in SharePoint

SharePoint Resources

Please leave a comment if you found this post useful.

The post Creating a Dynamic [Today] Filtered View in SharePoint to show “Recent Stuff” appeared first on Donna's Technology Resources.

The coolest trick is to enter the default value using the [Today] dynamic parameter.  Then you have a built-in way to have items expire automagically after so many days past the initial creation date of the announcement.  How sweet is that!

To set a default expiration date: 

1. Go to the List Settings for the announcement list.
2. In the Columns section, click on the Expires column.
3. In the Default value area, select Calculated Value.  Enter “[Today]+X” where X is the number of days later you desire the expire to happen.  In this example, the default expire value is set to be 30 days later than today’s date.

Advantages of setting a default expiration date:

If you do not enter a default value for an announcement app list, then you will most likely find that the majority of the announcement list items will be created with no expiration dates because the expiration date is not a required field.   As a result, the announcement list can get pretty lengthy as the oldest ones do not fall off.  Of course to deal with this situation, you could tweak the view to show only “Current Announcements”.  But you may have announcement list where it is nice to have a default expiration date value work upfront for you.  An example scenario may be when an announcement app is being used as a bulletin board of items that employees are selling.

Related Posts:

How to Create a Dynamic [Today] Filtered View in SharePoint

How to Create a Dynamic [Me] Filtered View in SharePoint

SharePoint Resources

The post How to set a default expiration date using [Today] for a SharePoint Announcement List appeared first on Donna's Technology Resources.

One of the most powerful custom views  you can create in SharePoint is a [Me] view.  A view using this parameter  filters for items related to the currently logged-in user.  If you make a [Me} view your default view in a library, then whenever you visit the library, you will immediately see those particular documents that are connected to you.  Essentially use of the [Me} parameter allows you to create a “My Stuff” view.

A [Me] view could be created to show only those items:

• that you created by showing items when”Created By is equal to [Me]“
• that you modified by showing items when “Modified By is equal to [Me]“
• that have you tagged by using metadata:  for example showing items when column  “ Salesman is equal to [Me]“
• that have been assigned to you by showing items when “Assigned To is equal to [Me]“

Steps to Create a [Me] view:

1. Go to your Library or List Settings.
2. Click on Create a View.
3. In the view creation screen, scroll down to the Filter section.
   • Filter for the desired situation from the list above.
   • In this example, I am filtering for all documents created OR modified by me.

Remember how cool it is that a [Me] view filters for the current user who is logged in to the site.  Whether or not you make it the default view depends on the specific use of the library or list.

Related Posts:

How to Create a Dynamic [Today] Filtered View in SharePoint

SharePoint Resources

If you like this post, please leave a Comment.

The post Creating a Dynamic [Me] Filtered View in SharePoint to show only “My Stuff” appeared first on Donna's Technology Resources.

The Min​nesota SharePoint User ​Group (sharepointmn.com) meets the second Wednesday of every month at the Microsoft office in Edina, MN.  The purpose of thhttp://www.sharepointmn.come user group is to bring the local SharePoint community together to share tips, tricks, and ideas on the uses of the various SharePoint products and technologies.  The user group features SharePoint experts from Microsoft, Microsoft Partners, and the SharePoint user community.  The user group is targeted towards end users, administrators, implementers, and developers.

SharePoint Saturday Twin Cities

SharePoint Saturday (spstc.com) is an educational, informative and lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals and MVPs. A wide variety of SharePoint topics is covered with sessions for Information Workers, IT Pros and Developers. SharePoint Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint!

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