Collaborate with SharePoint Lists
Use Microsoft ® Windows ® SharePoint ^TM Services's hooks to Microsoft Office System programs and Web services to enhance the team collaboration process.
by Roger Jennings

Windows SharePoint Services—the successor to SharePoint Team Services (STS)—is a versatile Web-based portal design and presentation tool. Microsoft targets SharePoint Services, which runs under all Windows Server 2003 versions, at an organization's teams or workgroups that share business objectives or specific goals, and rely on common documents, data, or both. One of SharePoint Services' major selling points is the ability of virtual team/workgroup members to create and manage their own portal site or subsite. Adding existing content to a Windows SharePoint Services site is a point-and-click process. The marketing buzzword for this important feature is "individual empowerment," which translates to "doesn't involve IT management and big-time Web development budgets."

"Collaboration" is a watchword of Microsoft Office System marketing, so it's no surprise that Office 2003 programs include hooks to Windows SharePoint Services for sharing collaborative content. A common SharePoint Services scenario is joint document development, which involves collective input of authors, copy editors, and technical reviewers. Word 2003's Tools | Shared Workspace menu choice opens a task pane to let you automatically create a Windows SharePoint Services shared workspace for a document or set of documents. The task pane enables adding new site group members in default Reader, Contributor, or Administrator categories, and sending e-mail announcing availability to the new members. You can create shared workspaces for Excel worksheets with the same menu choices.

Lists are the common denominator for Windows SharePoint Services interaction with Office 2003 programs and custom Web Parts that generate and manipulate SharePoint content (see Resources). In this article, I'll show you how to share and synchronize Windows SharePoint Services list data with Microsoft Office Outlook, Excel, and Access 2003. Windows SharePoint Services also sports an all-encompassing set of XML Web services, one of which provides Web methods for accessing, reading, and updating lists. I'll briefly describe the Lists Web service in SharePoint Services, and the Visual Basic .NET Web service client that I wrote to test the Lists service. (Download the Visual Studio .NET 2002 source code for the ListsWSClient.sln solution here).

Windows SharePoint Services setup automatically adds an SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE) SERVERNAME\SHAREPOINT named instance, which contains Windows SharePoint Services configuration (STS_Config) and site-specific (STS_WSSServerName) databases. The site-specific database contains a Lists table for list metadata, which includes list field definitions, and a UserData table to store list item data. Three of the database's 359 stored procedures add, update, and drop list items in response to events triggered by users of SharePoint Services' list-related ASP.NET Web forms.

The default Windows SharePoint Services site at http://servername—or the virtual directory you assigned during setup—opens with pre-defined Announcements, Events, Links, Contacts, Tasks, and other empty lists on the site's home page. Clicking the Add New ListName link opens a related Web form in which you and others with Contributor privileges add, edit, or delete list items. Actions available depend on the Web form for the list type; for example, clicking the Link to Outlook button of the Events form adds the site's shared calendar to Outlook 2003's Other Calendars shortcut.

Generate Lists from Office Data Sources
Team or workgroup members are likely to have existing data to contribute to Windows SharePoint Services Lists. For example, when you create a new Windows SharePoint Services Contacts list, click the Import Contacts button to add all or selected items from an Outlook 2003 contacts lists to the default view (AllItems.aspx) of a shared Windows SharePoint Services list (see Figure 1). You can alter the columns that appear in the default view by clicking the Modify Settings and Columns link, navigating to the Views heading, and clicking the All Contacts link to open the ViewEdit.aspx page.

After modifying the default view to add appropriate contact columns, click Link to Outlook to add a shared contact list. The Contact dialog is read-only (see Figure 2), but clicking the link in the notes box opens SharePoint Services' EditForm.aspx page, which lets you edit the item (see Figure 3). Windows SharePoint Services assigns a unique ID integer value—similar to an Access AutoNumber or SQL Sever identity column—to each list item. The link's ID=8 parameter specifies the item to edit.

All lists have an Export to Spreadsheet shortcut in the Action list (refer to Figure 1). The Export action uses the owssvr.iqy Web query, which contains the metadata required by the SharePoint.SpreadsheetLauncher.1 ActiveX Control (owssvr.dll). After acknowledging two security warning messages, the list appears in a new Excel worksheet that's linked to Windows SharePoint Services list (see Figure 4). After editing list data in the worksheet, choose Data | List | Synchronize List and acknowledge the warning message to send your changes to the shared list and display others' alterations made since you opened the worksheet. Saved workbooks retain the link metadata.