In the words of the immortal Bob Ryan from "Entourage", take a look at this picture:

Is that something you might be interested in?

This little application installs in about 30 seconds and lets you get to the Site Settings of your current site through a keyboard shortcut...without leaving the current page.

While I have not fully tested it yet, I have installed it on 3 separate environments and it works just fine on all 3.  Here is a direct link to the project on CodePlex.

http://www.codeplex.com/inlinesitesettings

Enjoy...

The purpose of this document is to provide a basic overview of the Six Pillars of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007.

Collaboration

MOSS 2007 helps your organization get more done by providing a platform for sharing information and working together in teams, communities and people-driven processes. Office SharePoint Server is an important part of the overall Microsoft collaboration vision and integrates with other collaborative products to offer a comprehensive infrastructure for working with others.

• Improve Team Productivity. High performing teams are a key to better business results.
  • Give users the ability to create and control their own collaborative workspaces. Make it easy for teams to adapt workspaces to the needs of the project.
  • Manage projects more efficiently with the project task list template. Visualize task relationships and project status with automated Gantt charts.
  • Coordinate teamwork with shared calendars, alerts and notifications. Connect team calendars to the desktop with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.
  • Communicate with team members in context using presence and instant messaging.
  • Make it easy to include and work with team members from outside the organization.
• Author, Review and Publish Documents. Improvement in key document-management processes produce better content in less time.
  • Use document workspaces to streamline the document creation process.
  • Enable disconnected participation with offline support.
  • Manage the document lifecycle with integrated Enterprise Content Management (ECM) capabilities.
• Streamline People-Driven Business Processes. Improved communication and coordination in people-driven processes means more rigorous execution in traditionally hard-to-reach parts of the business.
  • Deploy standard site templates to improve common people-driven processes like issue tracking.
  • Drive out process variation with workflow.
  • Create collaborative applications using integrated application development capabilities.
• Create, Capture and Share Community Knowledge. Sharing best practices in expert communities drives awareness and adoption of business process innovation.
  • Broadcast information with blogs and Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
  • Capture community knowledge with wikis.
  • Encourage dialogue with surveys and discussions.

Portal

Portal sites connect your people to business critical information, expertise and applications. MOSS is a world-class Enterprise Portal platform that makes it easy to build and maintain portal sites for every aspect of your business.

• Connect Your People to Information and Expertise. Quick, easy access to critical information means better decisions and more rigorous execution.
  • A comprehensive portal framework makes it easy to build portal sites that meet the specific requirements of your audience. A flexible, highly scalable architecture supports personal, divisional, intranet, extranet and Internet sites.
  • Integrated web content management makes customizing site look-and-feel easy. Powerful authoring features simplify content contribution. Centrally managed site design, publishing and deployment capabilities seamlessly integrate cutting-edge web content management into the overall portal platform.
  • Cutting-edge social networking technology makes finding and managing expertise easier than ever before.
• Connect Your People to Key Business Applications. Consolidated access to existing business applications drives consistent performance of common business tasks. Streamlined development of new composite applications can lead to order of magnitude improvement in important business processes.
  • A sophisticated application development environment shortens development time for highly customized business applications.
  • A comprehensive application integration framework allows you to quickly assemble composite applications from existing systems.
  • State-of-the-art application governance features provide fine-grained control of the application execution environment.
• Connect Your People to Role-Specific Resources. Personalized information delivery increases the relevance and value of information.
  • Audience targeting features allow information owners to decide how, when and where specific audiences consume their information.
  • The “My Site” personal site pulls together summary views of personal information, providing full control over information “for me, by me and about me.”
  • Personalized information rollup allows users to create customized summaries of important information in the portal.

Enterprise Search

MOSS 2007 is the Microsoft enterprise search solution for organizations that want to increase productivity and reduce information overload by providing their employees, partners and customers the ability to find relevant content in a wide range of repositories and formats. With actionable search results that respect security permissions, MOSS 2007 lets users go beyond documents and across repositories to unlock information, find people and locate expertise in the enterprise.

• Built for the Enterprise. In Office SharePoint Server 2007, search results are delivered quickly and relevance is tuned for enterprise and line-of-business data.
  • Relevance is tuned for enterprise content with the best results across structured and unstructured data sources determined by a rich and broad range of factors.
  • Robust security, granular administrative controls and comprehensive monitoring, analytics and reporting help ensure compliance and protect intellectual property (IP).
  • Enterprise-grade scalability, extensibility and manageability meet the need of even the largest organizations.
• Unlock Data and Expertise. MOSS 2007 provides out-of-the-box search for common enterprise repositories and file types as well as for people and experts. With Office Server 2007, you can:
  • Search file shares, Web sites, SharePoint sites, Exchange Public Folders and Lotus Notes Databases out-of-the-box and easily extend search to third-party sources and file types.
  • Index, search and intelligently display information from line-of-business applications, relational databases and other structured content using the Business Data Catalog.
  • Leverage “people search” capabilities to find people not only by department or job title but also by expertise, social distance and common interests.
• Integrating User Experience. Enterprise search functionality is integrated with the collaboration, portal, content management, process/forms and business intelligence features of MOSS 2007 and can be integrated with the other 2007 Office system products to help users easily find, use and share information, increasing effectiveness and productivity.
  • Find, use and share information in the context of where you are working with the familiar tools you use every day.
  • Results are displayed more clearly, hits are highlighted, duplicate entries are collapsed and synonyms are suggested.
  • Results are actionable and further enhanced through optional integration with tools such as real-time communications.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Over the last several years, organizations have created a huge volume of unstructured content that includes documents, e-mail messages, videos, instant messages, Web pages and more. This content often exists in a state of unmanaged chaos that prevents an organization from properly using these valuable assets for better knowledge sharing, improved customer communications and increased process efficiency. ECM from Microsoft is a key component of an organization’s infrastructure that can help companies overcome these challenges.

Built on a well-integrated platform, ECM from Microsoft easily extends content management to every information worker in an organization through integration with familiar tools like the Microsoft office system. A Microsoft ECM solution can help businesses:

• Manage Diverse Content. The document management capabilities in the Microsoft integrated ECM solution can help organizations consolidate diverse content from multiple file shares and personal drives into a centrally managed repository with consistent categorization. Integrated search capabilities can then help people find and share this information. IT organizations can also protect the content in the centrally managed repository form unauthorized access.

Integrated collaboration capabilities, such as automated workflow, help people work better together to create, review and approve documents in a more structured way. That way, they no longer have to rely solely on e-mail to share documents. Mobile workers can also use these document offline when they are not connected to the network.

• Satisfy Compliance and Legal Requirements. The Microsoft ECM solution also includes integrated records management capabilities that give organizations the ability to store and protect business records in a final state. Expiration policies applied to these records help ensure that the records are retained for the appropriate time period to comply with regulations or corporate business policies, thereby mitigating legal risk to the organization. Audit trails provide proof to internal and external auditors that records have been retained appropriately. Holds can be placed on specific records under legal discovery or review to prevent their destruction.
• Efficiently Manage Multiple Web Sites. Integrated Web content management capabilities enable people to publish Web content with an easy-to-use content authoring tool and a built-in approval process. This helps ensure that content is uploaded to Web sites in a timely manner without placing a large burden on IT staff. Templates in the form of Master Pages and Page Layouts enable consistent branding to be applied to all pages, thereby helping to ensure that brand assets are properly used. A single deployment and management infrastructure for intranet, extranet and Internet sites – as well as for multilingual sites – reduces the cost and complexity for IT departments.
• Streamline Business Process. The Microsoft ECM solution enables business to streamline content-driven collaborative business processes by providing the tools and platform for automating the tasks of these processes. Electronic forms solutions provide a mechanism for gathering and validating input for these business processes across Web sites, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office system programs. Forms can be created once and management tools allow IT to easily deploy and track the use of these forms across multiple channels.

These capabilities are provided by Microsoft in a single integrated business productivity infrastructure. This significantly reduces the management burden on the IT organization, since they now have a common set of tools and methodologies for managing the solution. Tight integration with familiar tools such as Microsoft Office system programs enables the Microsoft ECM solution to easily extend these capabilities to every information worker in the organization. This reduces the burden on users, who no longer need to learn new tools or change the way they work in order to participate in their organization’s content management strategy.

Business Process and Forms

MOSS 2007 provides built-in workflow templates to automate approval, review and archiving processes. With MOSS 2007, you can also create, maintain and analyze custom workflows, enabling you to streamline your collaborative processes. Electronic forms provided through InfoPath Forms Services are an integral part of such workflows. These InfoPath-designed electronic forms make it easy to collect and validate information that drives your business processes. And you can collect and validate this information right from the Microsoft Office client applications you use every day.

• Browser-Based Forms with InfoPath Forms Services. InfoPath Forms Services, which is part of MOSS 2007, extend your reach to organizations that do not use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 by allowing you to fill out forms in a common browser or even an HTML-enabled mobile device.
• Integrated Workflow and Document Information Panel with Microsoft Client Applications. With MOSS 2007, you can initiate and interact with workflows right from within your Microsoft Office applications. You can also collect and validate important document metadata via the document information panel. MOSS 2007 helps you:
  • Collect important metadata defined by the Windows SharePoint Services library via the document information panel. The metadata may include information such as workflow status, content deadline, routing information or other properties related to the document’s lifecycle.
  • Create a custom document information panel that contains the rich capability of an InfoPath form, including external data connections, data validation, conditional formatting, business logic and other controls.
  • Deploy document templates with advanced document management capability built directly into a document in a way that is easy and straightforward for document authors.
  • Initiate a workflow or set a workflow status right from your familiar Microsoft Office application, such as Microsoft Office Word 2007.
• Custom Workflow Design with Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 makes it easy to add business logic to sophisticated no-code composite applications with the rules-based Workflow Designer. With the Workflow Designer tool, you can use drop-down lists and checkboxes to identify the events that trigger a workflow. You can then specify the actions and responses that follow and even identify the conditions under which other workflow events will occur.

For more complex workflows, developers can also use the standard Microsoft development environment, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI) with MOSS 2007 makes it easy for decision-makers to access and analyze information anytime, anywhere. You can get up-to-date information whenever people work, collaborate and make decisions, whether it’s on the desktop or over the Web. Now, aligning employees’ objectives with your corporate goals is as easy as creating a spreadsheet or report.

• Microsoft Office Excel-Based Business Intelligence. Excel Services, part of MOSS 2007, extend the capabilities of Microsoft Office Excel 2007 by allowing broad sharing of spreadsheets, improved manageability and security, and the ability to re-use spreadsheet models using a scalable server-based calculation service and interactive Web-based user interface. With Excel Services, you can:
  • Broaden the access and availability of spreadsheets by incorporating interactive spreadsheets into business intelligence portals, dashboards and scorecards.
  • Secure and protect confidential information and maintain a “single version of the truth” by locking down access at the server.
  • Reduce development costs, and improve time to market by using Web services to access models and data contained in spreadsheets.
  • Use Data Connection Libraries to provide an easy way for your users to share, manage and discover connections to external data repositories without requiring knowledge of the technical details of the connection.
• Dashboards and Report Center. Create rich, interactive business intelligence dashboards that assemble and display business information from disparate sources by using built-in Web Parts. These Web Parts include dynamic key performance indicators (KPI's), Office Excel 2007 spreadsheets, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services reports and a collection of business data connectivity Web Parts that can visualize information residing in back-end line-of-business applications.  With the dashboard and reporting capabilities in MOSS 2007, you can:
  • Manage reports, spreadsheets, and data connections consistently using the new Report Center – an out-of-the-box template and document library optimized for report access and management including a report library, data connection library, and a business intelligence dashboard template.
  • Communicate goals and status to drive results using the new KPI Web Part without writing code. The KPI Web Part can display KPI's from Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, Office Excel 2007 spreadsheets, SharePoint lists or manually entered data.
  • Easily access the business information you need by creating dynamic, personalized dashboards using integrated Filter Web Parts. Filters allow dashboards to be personalized by communicating shared parameters amongst Web Parts on a dashboard. The Filter Web Part presents more relevant information to the current user.
• Business Data Integration and Discovery. Seamlessly integrate external data into your applications using the Business Data Catalog (BDC), part of MOSS 2007. The BDC simplifies the process of discovering and accessing data residing within backend line-of-business applications using SharePoint search and a set of Business Data Web Parts.  With the BDC, you can:
  • Search your business data as easily as you search other content repositories. MOSS 2007 provides an integrated, Enterprise Search experience across your enterprise data ranging from file shares, Web sites, Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Notes and line-of-business applications.
  • Share business data using the Business Data Web Parts that allow for viewing lists, entities and related information through the BDC.
  • Use convenient links that appear beside business objects returned from the BDC to easily create actions without custom coding that open Web pages, display the user interfaces of line-of-business applications, launch Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 forms, and perform other common actions.

At a client recently, I noticed that their Project Server implementation is having some issues with the edit user page throwing errors for certain users.  I will try to get a screenshot later and marry it up with this post.

After some research, we were able to determine that one of the Project Server databases had those users checked out to a fictitious user (00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000), instead of one of the two normal values, NULL or an actual GUID representing the user that had that record checked out.

While we are currently working on a long-term fix, the quickest way we found to fix the problem immediately was to run some simple SQL queries against the ProjectServer_Published database.

In order to see the users that are in this situation, execute the following SQL command:

SELECT RES_NAME, WRES_ACCOUNT, RESCHECKOUTBY FROM MSP_RESOURCES

WHERE RES_CHECKOUTBY IS NOT NULL

In order to fix the user accounts so you can access them through the update user screen, execute the following SQL command:

UPDATE MSP_RESOURCES

SET RES_CHECKOUTBY = NULL

WHERE RES_CHECKOUTBY LIKE '0000%'

NOTE:  Make sure you use the wildcard notation above, and not something like WHERE RES_CHECKOUTBY IS NOT NULL, as that will override the value for users that are actually checked out.

NOTE 2:  As always, take special care and concern when running SQL commands against production databases.

Once I have an update on how to fix this long-term, I will repost...

Tasked with configuring a MOSS 2007 implementation for external users to authenticate through Forms-Based Authentication (FBA), I hit the blogosphere recently. Based on some preliminary research, I was able to find the two sources referenced below. Rather than link out to the blog entries themselves, I have saved them off as PDFs.

Hopefully, assuming you are able to find my blog, having both of these documents in one location will save you a few seconds.

Configuring Multiple Authentication Providers for SharePoint 2007 by Steve Peschka

SharePoint 2007 Forms Authentication by Nick Swan

Anyone who has been trying to figure out how to customize the look and feel of SharePoint 2007 has found Liam Cleary's blog. If you would like to explore his blog directly (highly recommended), you may do so at: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/helloitsliam/. The first entry at that location talks about a move to a different URL, which is: http://www.helloitsliam.com/.

His series of articles on customization is excellent, and I have compiled them into one PDF for easy reference. Please be advised, it is 96 pages and a 3 MB download.

SharePoint/MOSS 2007 Customization Guide by Liam Cleary