2. About Me
April Dunnam is a senior consultant at ThriveFast
and Vice President of the Tulsa SharePoint User
Group. April started her career as an IT Intern at
Cherokee Casino. She was on rotation in the
casinoâs many IT departments when she was
assigned to the Development Team. It was there
she found her niche and a passion for
development and began to focus her efforts on
asp.net, c# and SharePoint. She went on to
complete dual degrees in MIS and Marketing
from NSU and worked her way up to SharePoint
Developer at a telecom firm. April is an active
blogger and routinely participates in professional
conferences including School of Dev, Tulsa Tech
Fest and SharePoint Saturdays.
@aprildunnam
www.sharepointsiren.co
m
www.thrivefast.com
4. Draw Users In
S Typical User: âWhatâs in it for me?â
S Draw them in with a few simple bells & whistles to make
an inviting Home Page
S Keep them coming by making it easy to access the
information they need to do their day to day job
S Create tools/functionality that increase productivity
5. Simplicity
S KISS (Keep It Simple
Stupid)
S Develop understanding of
your users and what they
need to do
S Start with business process
7. Tip #1 â Visual Navigation
S âBuild it and they will comeââŠ.make it easy to navigate
and youâll keep âem coming
S Promoted Links List
8. Tip #2 - Welcome Message
S Great way to customize the SharePoint User Experience
S Pulls Logged in Userâs Name and Time of Day for
Custom Welcome Message
S Free Web Part. Download here:
http://www.amrein.com/apps/page.asp?Q=5834
9. Tip #3 - Weather
S CELGO Weather C â Free App in SharePoint 2013 App
Store
S Can use to show weather at multiple company locations
S Or insert jQuery script from any of the major weather
websites (Yahoo Weather, Weather Channel, etc)
10. Tip #4 -
Birthdays/Anniversaries
S Showing Employee
Birthdays/Anniversaries
draws users in and
encourages camaraderie.
S $125 WebPart from
Amrein:
http://www.amrein.com/app
s/page.asp?Q=5787
S Or
S Free Apps in App Store
11. Tip #5 - Announcements
Rotator
S BrightBanner â Free Content Rotator App in App Store
S Or create your own with jQuery/SPServices/Bootstrap
12. Tip #6 - Filtered Views
S [Me] Filter
S [Today] Filter
13. Tip #7 - Filtered Lookup
Column
S Consider this scenario:
S You have a Jobs Lists with a Job Name field
and Job Status that marks .
S You have a Task List that you want to create
a Lookup field that pulls all Active Jobs from
the Jobs List
S Create a new Calculated Column
in the Jobs List called âActiveTitleâ.
Insert the following formula and
reference this calculated column in
your lookup field
14. Tip #8 - Audience Targeting
S Target
WebParts/Content
to specific groups of
people
S Ex: Show different
announcements
depending on
current userâs
department
15. Tip #9 - OneNote
S Integrated in SharePoint 2013. Similar to Evernote
S Capture operational/procedural/how-to information
S Use instead of list or word document
S Easy to organize and structure information
S Embed images, others documents(pdfs, word, etc)
16. Tip #10 - OneDrive
S Integrated in
SharePoint 2013
S Sync folders on
SharePoint to upload
from your desktop
S Ability to edit files
offline; sync back to
SharePoint when
internet connection is
established
17. Tip #11 - Hide âRecentâ
Heading
S Insert following script inside the <!--
ME:</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>--><sharepoint:scriptblock
runat="server"></sharepoint:scriptblock> block of your master
page:
S $(document).ready(function() { var recentLi= $("#ctl00_PlaceHo
lderLeftNavBar_QuickLaunchNavigationManager
div ul li").filter(function(index) { return $("span span", this)[0].inn
erText == "Recent"; }); if (recentLi != undefined) { recentLi.hide(
); } });
18. Tip #12 - Disable Mobile View
S Site Settings ï Site Features
S De-Activate âMobile Browser Viewâ
S Reasons to do this:
S 1. Responsive design eliminates need for SP default mobile
view
S 2. Mobile View can be confusing to navigate
19. Tip #13 â Follow Content
S New in SharePoint 2013 you
can Follow:
S Sites
S People
S Hashtags
S Documents
S View list of items you are
following in your MySite
S SharePoint 2013 Newsfeed
App
20. Tip #14 â Default Calendar
Events to All Day
S Download jQuery.min and upload to SharePoint.
S Insert Script Editor Webpart in New Form of Calendar.
Put the following code in the script editor:
21. Tip #15 â Search-Driven
Company Directory
S Utilize Search Display
Templates to create a
Company Directory that
pulls from SharePoint
User Profiles
S Reference:
http://www.sharepointco
nfig.com/2013/05/how-
to-create-a-simple-
sharepoint-2013-
people-directory/
In our for your SharePoint Implementation to be effective, you have to deal with the issue of User Adoption. How do you create a SharePoint Environment that your users will respond to and actually use?
If you can draw end users in with a well-thought out Home Page and easy to find content then chances are you will have a successful SharePoint implementation.
Iâm a big believer in the KISS method. Many times we over-think things when the beauty is in the simplicity. The first step to gaining end user support and having a successful SharePoint implementation is to develop a good understanding of your users and what they want and need to do for their day to day job. Start with outlining the business process then work your way to a solution on SharePoint.
In our for your SharePoint Implementation to be effective, you have to deal with the issue of User Adoption. How do you create a SharePoint Environment that your users will respond to and actually use?
You can utilize the Top Nav and Quick Launch to organize your sites and content within them. A lesser known way to navigate is the Promoted Links List. This is a new list in SharePoint 2013 that allows you to build a more eloquent links list. You can have an image that clearly identifies what the link is, a title and a description of the link when you hover over it. This is a good tool to use on department pages to provide a visual way to navigate to important areas of your site.
Having a Welcome Message on your SharePoint Home Page provides a good âwarm and fuzzyâ vibe for your users. This is a great way to customize the user experience. This particular webpart is very customizable. You can choose to show or hide the current logged in users picture. You can either display Good and the time of the day (morning, afternoon, evening) or just have a generic âwelcome userâ message. You can edit the css to edit the font of webpart, insert a background image, etc.
Adding Weather to your SharePoint intranets home page is a good way to draw users in. You can use this to showcase weather across all of your companyâs locations. There are some pre-built apps in the app store for this. One that I like is the CELGO Weather C App which is free. Itâs easy to add and customize. If you need something a little more custom, you can insert a Script Editor Webpart on your page and inject some javascript that consumes weather from any of the major weather websites such as Yahoo Weather, Weather Channel, etc.
Adding an Announcements Rotator to your Home Page gives your Page a âpopâ and keeps it fresh. You can consistently update the content to show the latest news/events. Itâs a great way to engage your end users.
Filtered Views are useful for creating custom dashboards for your users. For example, you can use the [Me] filter to show the current userâs tasks. And you can use the [Today] filter to show tasks which are due today or overdue. Additionally, filters and Managed Metadata can be used to overcome the List View Threshold limitations that occur in SharePoint Online sites.
Lookup Columns are very useful. They allow you to pull information from a SharePoint List and use it as metadata. You can utilized a Calculated Column in your source list to create a custom filtered lookup column.
Audience Targeting is an often under-utilized and over-looked feature in SharePoint. A good use-case for this is targeting company announcements. In this example, there is a Foremen Group in the company who have announcements that are only applicable to them. Using Audience Targeting, you can add the Foremen Announcements webpart to your home page and set it to display only to those in the Foremen Group.
OneNote is a hidden gem in SharePoint. It is fully integrated in SharePoint 2013. In fact, when you create a SharePoint 2013 Team site it automatically comes with a OneNote Notebook.
OneDrive is integrated in SharePoint 2013. It allows you to sync a local copy of any SharePoint Document Library to your desktop. This enables you to easily upload documents and to manage those documents offline and automatically sync them back up when you are online again.
SharePoint 2013 Introduce a âRecentâ Heading in the Quick Launch. This was intended to dynamically show the most recently created/edit lists or libraries, however, it tends to be more of a nuisance than a benefit. Fortunately there is a relatively easy way to hide it.
SharePoint 2013 automatically re-directs mobile devices to a specialized Mobile view. This view is intended to simplify the user experience in mobile, however, many users still prefer the full desktop experience in mobile.
SharePoint 2013 introduced the ability to Follow Content. Very similar to Twitter, where you can follow people and trending hashtags. In addition to following people and hashtags, you can also follow entire sites and documents. These items you are following show up in your SharePoint MySite so you can keep track of any changes/additions with items you are following. There is also a SharePoint Newsfeed App that you can download for Android, iOS and Windows phones which aggregates all of the items you are following.
In SharePoint Calendars there is a checkbox to mark an item as an âAll Day Eventâ. This essentially hides the Start and End Dates times and marks it as an all day event. This checkbox is set to No by default. Good news is you can change that with a simply script inserted via a Script Editor Webpart on the New Form of your Calendar.
A common requirement on SharePoint is a company directory. All of the information needed for a directory (employee name, phone number, email, etc) is already being stored in the SharePoint User Profile Service for easy access. You can use SharePoint Search and Custom Display Templates to create a Company Directory Table. The reference provided guides you through the steps to complete and includes a download of the Display Template files to produce these results.