SharePoint 3.0: Site Users Web Part

The Site Users Web Part can be used to enhance the appearance of a SharePoint site by displaying a list of users who belong to the site. This web part works well on collaborative sites such as project sites or team sites, when the site permissions have been configured with either SharePoint groups or where users are added directly to site permissions access control list of the site.

Environments that also have Live Communication Server have an opportunity to promote IM to their users since the users' precense information is displayed and the context menu allows users to easily spawn IM sessions.

The Site Users Web Part is less useful on sites that have lots of users or when Active Directory groups are being used to provision access to the site. Since the Site Users Web Part does not enumerate user names who are members of Active Directory groups, these display only as group names.

Site Users Web Part Configuration Options:

Show people and groups with direct permissions on this site.
This displays a list of users who have been added directly to site permissions for the site. The person's full name with presence information is shown.

Show people in this site's members groupThis lets you display the names of people who belong to the Site Members, default SharePoint group.
The person's full name with presence information is shown.

Show people in the group:
This lets you select a SharePoint group to display the names of people who belong to that group. The person's full name with presence information is shown.

SharePoint 3.0: Manage Access Requests

Access Requests are a feature of SharePoint that allow users to submit an email, to a SharePoint administrator, requesting access to a resource (site or list) that they are denied access to.

The email to the administrator provides the username, the URL of the resource, and comments directly from the user. The email looks like this:



Resources that inherit security from their parent will automatically inherit the parent's Access Request setting. If you break inheritance at a list, then the list permissions, settings menu will appear and an Access Request menu item will be available. This allows you to set an Access Request email address, different from the parent site. This behavior is not true for list items. If you break security inheritance at a list item, an Access Request menu option does not appear on the list item security settings menu.


Here are some best practices for configuring Access Requests:

* Use a dedicated distribution group for this purpose
* Since each unique site collection can have its own Access Request email address, give the distribution group a generic name so that it can be used accross many site collections
* Definitely don't use a service account's email address because no real person is on the other end to receive the request
* Don't use an individual user's email address, doing so would result in a single point of failure
* If you are maintaining instruction documentation that describes the steps to configure a new site collection in your environment, then add "configure access requests email address" as a step..doing so will be a good reminder to do it.


How to configure Manage Access Requests email address:

* Site Collection > Site Actions > Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings > Advanced Permissions
* Settings > Access Requests



* Set email address, click OK

SharePoint 3.0: Error: Calculated Site Column, Formula Contains a Syntax Error

Description:

When attempting to create a new calculated site column...



...inside the formula, you reference a column name in brackets, such as Year[created]...




...and you are unable to save the new site column, instead you receive an error.

Error:
The formula contains a syntax error or is not supported.
Troubleshoot issues with Windows SharePoint Services.

Solution:

Use parentheses around the brackets. E.g. Year([Created])

SharePoint 3.0: Error: The specified name is already in use

Description:

Site Collection > Site Settings > Site Collection Features

When attempting to activate the following:
Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure
Provides centralized libraries, content types, master pages and page layouts and enables page scheduling and other publishing functionality for a site collection.

Error:
The specified name is already in use. Please try again with a new name. Troubleshoot issues with Windows SharePoint Services.



Solution:

When publishing features are enabled, SharePoint automatically creates a bunch of objects on the site. It is possible that before you attempted to activate publishing on your site, you had already created an object, such as a library, list, site column, or content type using a name that SharePoint uses. With publishing deactivated, SharePoint does not enforce naming contstraints on these names so it is possible for you to create, for example, a library called Pages (creating a future conflict) not knowing that SharePoint will automatically create a Pages library when you activate publishing.

If you can, audit the SharePoint site comparing it with another site that already has publishing enabled to see if you can find a conflict.

If you are unable to locate the conflict, and you need to activate publishing features, you can force the activation by running the following command:

stsadm.exe -o activatefeature -filename publishing\feature.xml -url http://%URL% -force
stsadm.exe -o activatefeature -filename publishingresources\feature.xml -url http://%URL% -force
stsadm.exe -o activatefeature -filename publishingsite\feature.xml -url http://%URL% -force
stsadm.exe -o activatefeature -filename publishingweb\feature.xml -url http://%URL% -force
stsadm.exe -o activatefeature -filename publishinglayouts\feature.xml -url http://%URL% -force
stsadm.exe -o activatefeature -filename navigation\feature.xml -url http://%URL% -force

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