Identity and Access Strategies for SharePoint

Microsoft is publishing series of articles on the Identity and Access Strategies for SharePoint.  Watch this space for new updates as the new articles are published on this topic. These articles are must read, if you are dealing with different membership providers.

Articles

Identity and Access Strategies for SharePoint Products and Technologies, Part 1: Membership and Provider Architecture

Explore the membership and role provider architecture and how it operates in SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Identity and Access Strategies for SharePoint Products and Technologies, Part 2: Membership and Role Provider Assignment

Explore how to configure the LDAP Providers in SharePoint Server 2007, how to automate provider assignment and provider registration, and how to configure Web Single Sign-On with Active Directory Federation Services.

Code Sample:

Sample: Identity and Access Strategies for SharePoint Server 2007

Learn how Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 use membership and role providers, and how to automatically configure providers into SharePoint Server so it can manage the configuration settings.

Thanks for shedding light on this!

TIP: Hide Site Actions Menu using SharePoint Designer.

Use the SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl WebControl to wrap the Site Actions menu in your master page.  The control allows you to hide the contents if the currently logged user doesn’t have the required permissions.

Names for your SharePoint Intranet (or any Intranet)

It is very important to name your Intranet properly or else your employees find it less interesting and might result in low user acceptance. FAIL

Sometimes it is hard for the Intranet Owners to come up with a suitable name. The purpose of this post is to help you come up with a right name for your Intranet. It is important for an intranet name to have following attributes.

1. Relevance
2. Interesting and Unique
3. Clarity

Relevance
The Intranet name should be directly connected to the content/purpose of the Intranet. It should be relevant to the mission and vision of the company. Remember in most cases the name of the Intranet will be used as its URL.

Interesting/Unique
Boring Intranet names (like Intranet, InternalNet, InnerNet, Knowledge Base etc) won’t go well with users. Please stay away from abbreviations like IMS (Information Management System) etc. They are not unique and users feel less connected to abbreviations than words. Remember all your employees are not geeks like me to love abbreviations!!

Clarity
For the sake of being interesting and unique don’t come up with names that sound weird and have no clarity whatsoever.  The Intranet name should have clarity and a concise meaning to it.

Stephan Schillerwein of http://Intranet-matters.de has put together a nice list of Intranet names. Out of the list, I recommend the following names for Stephan’s list;

The People Link
Horizon
Connect
The Hub
One Place
Gateway
The Wave
Inside

Guys, we you can think of someother important guidelines to help in naming your Intranets, please feel free to SharePoint in comments sections.

Upadate: This post has been in my drafts for so long and I did not realise till date!

How to upgarde to SharePoint 2007 SP2?

Chris Givens has put together a great post on how to upgarde your SharePoint 2007 farm with the latest service pack SP2. Thanks Chris, for putting this great post and helping us big time! 

Checkout his blog for a complete step by step article.

SharePoint 2007 Browser Support – A refresher

With the release of SharePoint SP2 this week. There is much talk about the SharePoint 2007 browser support. So I like to refresh on what browsers SharePoint support and the level of support.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides rendering support for browsers that are commonly used. The support is distributed across two levels.

Level 1 Web Browsers:

1. IE 6
2. IE 7
3. IE 8 (SP2)

Levle 2 Web Browsers: 

1. Firefox 1.5 
2. Firefox 2.0 /3.0 (SP2)
3. Mozilla 1.7
4. Netscape 8.1
5. Unix/Linus with Firefox 1.5 or Netscape 7.2
6. Mac OS-X with Firefox 1.5 or Safari 2.0/3.0 

What is Level 1 and 2?

Good you asked!

Level 1 Web browsers take advantage of advanced features provided by ActiveX controls and provide the most complete user experience. Level 1 browsers offer full functionality on all SharePoint sites, including the Central Administration Web site.

 Level 2 Web browsers provide basic functionality, so that users can both read and write in SharePoint sites and perform site administration. However, because ActiveX controls are not supported level 2 browsers and due to the functionality differences within different browsers, a different user experience might be provided and there could be some variances from the user experience from the level 1 browsers.

New Visio Stencils for SharePoint Architecture Design

If you remember, I blogged about Visio Stencils for SharePoint some time back. This time Microsoft has released new set of the Visio 2007 stencils for SharePoint designing. Please download them @ http://blogs.technet.com/tothesharepoint/archive/2009/03/12/3212193.aspx

Complete SharePoint Security Guidance

Came across this great resource little late! The timing is not bad at all because I am about to do a review of SharePoint Security of an existing SharePoint based Intranet portal for a non-profit organisation. It is not a fun ride reviewing security guidelines.

I recommend this ebook ‘SharePoint Security Guide‘ for anyone involved in putting together a great SharePoint Solution. Folks this is a good weekend reading!

Download SharePoint Security Guide @ http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=94375