Do you need to design a website for your business? Then you need to consider getting and using Office SharePoint Designer. Microsoft SharePoint is a WYSIWYG or HTML editor. For those of you who used Microsoft Office FrontPage, Microsoft SharePoint replaced it, and it's quite an improvement. Keep reading to see what's new.
Contributed by Joe Eitel Rating: / 3 September 23, 2008
Although this application is part of the Microsoft Office 2007 family, it’s not included in any of the Microsoft Office 2007 suites. Office SharePoint Designer is designed to develop and implement interactive solutions on its platform, and you don’t need to write any code. Office SharePoint Designer is an application that is widely used by both IT and business professionals.
Companies prefer this application, because colleagues can collaborate on documents. Office SharePoint Designer is an ideal tool to have for companies that have employees scattered around the world. For example, it’s not unusual for managers to use Office SharePoint Designer when conducting teleconferences.
If you don’t own a copy of Office SharePoint Designer, but you would like the ability to be able to play around with its features, you can download a copy from Microsoft’s website. Microsoft will allow you to test it for 60 days. This evaluated copy comes in two languages: Spanish and English.
If you’re interested in purchasing Office SharePoint Designer, you can purchase it directly from Microsoft’s website or get it from other online stores. Office SharePoint Designer retails for $299.95 for the full version, while the upgrade retails for $159.95. Regardless, if you buy or try Office SharePoint Designer, this application has many features that you will not only find useful, but help make your work easier. You’ll definitely want to take a look at this robust software.
One of the features you’ll find in Office SharePoint Designer is Workflow Designer. You can use this feature to automate your business processes, such as developing a document approval system. Another function that Office SharePoint Designer contains is the ability to send out customized alerts to your colleagues. For example, if one of your fellow workers has updated or uploaded a document, you can have Office SharePoint Designer alert you of these changes.
If you have a knack for programming, Office SharePoint Designer supports Microsoft ASP.NET. You can use Office SharePoint Designer to develop applications based on the Microsoft SharePoint platform. If you used Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, you probably remember the insert and edit controls functions. Well, Office SharePoint Designer contains these same functions. Insert and edit functions still contain the powerful control property grid and activity menus.
Office SharePoint Designer not only comes equipped with design tools, it supports various browsers, including XHTML. If you’re concerned about the disabled being able to access your website, Office SharePoint Designer does comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Section 508. Another feature you can use in Office SharePoint Designer is CSS (cascading style sheets). If you need to change the format or layout, you can use the ASP.NET master pages to perform this function.
Office SharePoint Designer also comes with role-based templates. Developers created role-based templates as a way to customize your needs and requirements within your company. The idea behind them is to help give you a better business perspective and make your company more productive, using an interface with which you and your colleagues can identify. As a result, you and your colleagues will be able to retrieve important information that revolves around processes and job functions. You can also incorporate role-based templates into existing systems. Visit Microsoft’s website for more information on this subject.
If you are an IT manager or site administrator you can set up access rights for your employees. Make use of the "Set up Contributor Settings" feature to set up control access for all of your employees. For example, you can enable certain colleagues to have editing rights while others just have viewing rights.
Office SharePoint Designer enables you to incorporate your business data. This application enables you to integrate your data, using external technologies, including web services, Microsoft SQL server databases, XML files, and enterprise systems. You can also use data from SharePoint lists and document libraries.
You can use forms and data views to create reporting and tracking applications. Use these functions to simply gather and collect data either from Office SharePoint’s document libraries or lists on the website. You can also gather and collect information from outside your website.
Take advantage of Office SharePoint Designer’s reports feature to manage your website. These reports will reveal crucial information, such as identifying broken links, both cascade style sheets and master page use, and unused pages. You can take advantage of Office SharePoint Designer’s site backup and restore features to do the following: transfer a website to another server that runs Windows SharePoint Services technology, or save your website to a single file so that you can protect your data.
Office SharePoint Designer comes equipped with pre-built Microsoft SharePoint Services Application templates. If you want to change some information on these templates, Microsoft enables you to do this function. Microsoft split the Application Templates into two groups ―site admin and server admin. The developers did this so as to make it easy for you to seamlessly incorporate the platform within your company. The site admin templates are tailored templates that are designed for SharePoint administrators to easily install into the template gallery. You don’t need to have any server administration rights.
Server admin templates include site definitions. Site definitions allow you to have stronger incorporation and improved functions within the Windows SharePoint services platform. Unlike site admin templates, you will need to have server administrator rights in order to install server admin templates. Server admin templates are available in several languages, including Dutch, Spanish, French, Italian, and others.
There are 40 application templates packages that are available in English you can download. But if you’re looking for individual site admin templates, Microsoft gives you a lot of selections from which to choose. Some of the packaged site admin templates that you can download include Board of Directors, Competitive Analysis Site, Integrated Marketing Campaign, and many others. You can also download individual server admin templates including: Call Center, Project Tracking Workspace, Knowledge Base, and several others.
Probably the most crucial feature you’ll be using quite often is Master Pages. Using the Master Pages feature enables you to produce a single template as the foundation for creating numerous pages. This will save you time, instead of having to create pages from scratch. Office SharePoint Designer contains four sample master page sets. These were developed by using Master Page editing tools and new CSS functions. The sample master pages enable you to employ a pre-built layout, along with styles, to SharePoint websites. These master pages also support the 40 new Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
You can use these Master Pages to establish a foundation for customizing and giving your website that unique look and feel. If you want to access these master pages, just go to Microsoft’s website and download them. The master pages are: Reverse, Horizon, Clarity, and Block. They also come in different colors, including red, purple, blue, orange, and green.
Microsoft has a detailed and very useful section on how to use these master templates. There are two ways you can manually employ the master page after creating your site―using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server's installations web interface or via an editor that is compatible with SharePoint. You can use the SharePoint site administration to either look at existing master pages or upload new ones.
If you use either the Office SharePoint Server installations or the Office SharePoint Designer method to apply to the master page, you can do several functions, such as developing a content page, changing your site’s definitions to use the master page, and inserting files into your website. Then you can make the master page the default for your website.
If you’re looking for more training, save your money and don’t go to your local bookstore yet. Instead, go right to the source itself. Are you sick and tired of reading information? Well sit back and watch a video. You can download the video from Microsoft’s website.
You can learn more about Office SharePoint Designer’s features, including cascading style sheets, data sources, data views, page layouts and publishing sites, and many others. You will find this section very helpful. Microsoft offers three levels of training: beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
If you want to get more tips on how to use Office SharePoint Designer, take advantage of Microsoft’s demos. You can find many of these on Microsoft’s website. Topics that you will find useful include how to design a workflow solution or a six part series that will help you to get the most out of Office SharePoint Designer.
Are you looking for additional resources on Office SharePoint Designer? How about taking part in discussion groups? Microsoft offers that as well. You can read other users’ thoughts and share your thoughts as well. Being part of discussion groups can give you more tips on how to use Office SharePoint Designer.
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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
