US Olympic web site launched on SharePoint 2010 beta

The United States Olympic Committee have launched a new Press Portal ready for the Winter Olympics being held in Vancouver shortly. The portal is a public web site running on SharePoint Server 2010 Beta with Silverlight serving up embedded media:

I would criticise some elements of the user interface design. Embedding external links in the top navigation bar is not a great idea (first 5 links are for within the web site, from TEAMUSA.ORG onwards are links to external web sites - different font and background colour but not obvious). The Latest News would be easier on the eye to scan if there were a thumbnail for each (instead of author which is not necessary on the home page) and a bit more space between each news item. And there are three different search boxes on the page. Would be great to see an update post-Olympics to identify which one was used the most... But I'm being picky. It's a brave move to publish such a visible web site on beta software and the site demonstrates how much easier it is to make SharePoint 2010 not look like SharePoint. Congratulations to all involved.

For more information: Visit the USOC web site | Microsoft press release

SharePoint 2007 - Managing Site Permissions

This is the first post in a series based on a training course I have delivered over the past three years. The course is a half-day workshop covering the basics of what is SharePoint through to managing a site. Designed for business users rather than IT, the course is very hands-on with a few slides followed by practical exercises. For the past two years, I've been meaning to convert it into a book for reference. Here goes for starters, a little later than planned...

The series will be organised under a dedicated page on the site - The Site Owners Handbook (SharePoint 2007).

Managing Site Permissions

The presentation below walks through how to manage permissions and control access to a SharePoint site. It assumes you are the owner of your own site, i.e. you have permission to change permissions:

Some additional notes and reminders:

• Always check with your IT department regarding the policy for managing SharePoint permissions. They may prefer to create directory groups for you that can then be added to SharePoint groups. This approach lets you decide what permissions each group is given without having to manage the users. It's also great if you use a distribution list to send out email to everyone, as the same membership is used for both activities. IT can't prevent you from applying your own permissions (short of not letting you be a site owner), but a good identity management system makes life easier for everyone.
• Do keep permissions as simple as possible. In most projects, I find people treat a lot of information as more sensitive than it really is. SharePoint is at its best when used for collaborative working. You can't collaborate when documents are kept secret. Be sure there is a good reason for locking down access.
• To quote a good book, Don't Panic! It's easy to reset permissions by simply re-inheriting from the parent site. If you lock yourself out of your own site, after laughing for a while, IT can sort it all out using the SharePoint system account. Not ideal and they won't thank you for the extra workload but all is not lost.

If you have any feedback or questions, please leave a comment here. Would a video be helpful to show setting permissions in practice?

Download the presentation (PDF)