Blending publishing/collaboration functionality in SharePoint

Most often when creating SharePoint solutions, the requirements often map fairly well to one of the out-of-the-box site definitions which can be used to create new sites. If we're creating heavily-branded internet/intranet sites (WCM sites), we'll probably start with the 'publishing site' template. If we are deploying SharePoint in a document management/collaboration scenario, we'll probably start with the 'team site' template, and so on. Where it gets interesting it when the project requirements effectively have a mix of this functionality. Characteristics of such a site might include:

• site has completely bespoke look and feel/navigation
• users will work with files stored in document libraries
• site templates or definitions are used to create several sites with the same content/functionality
• custom workflow is used to support a business process (other than standard content publishing), perhaps with InfoPath forms

Such requirements present a few challenges, and a current project of mine fits into this category. At a high level, one consideration is that site users will also use 'system' pages provided by SharePoint in many scenarios (e.g. working with document libraries/lists, workflow etc.) and this doesn't happen in most WCM sites. This can lead to situations where there is a disparity between the look and feel of the 'published view' of the website and the 'system' areas. I don't intend to provide answers to all the issues here, but I do want to discuss a few as some food for thought. I'll probably revisit this post at the end of the project and provide a better insight into the issues and solutions, but for now let's cover some high-level decisions:

 

Approach for master page development

Options for starting development here include:

• Using a 'minimal master page' from MSDN or Heather Solomon
• Modifying a copy of default.master (good starting point for customized team sites)
• Modifying a copy of blueband.master (good starting point for WCM sites)

Partly this decision depends on where you are heading. Since the aim in my project is for formatting to be controlled by CSS rather than layout tables, starting with a minimal master page makes more sense (the shipped page layouts use tables). This is an interesting area since there's a lot of rework to be done to eliminate tables in a mixed publishing/collab site (and in fact it often won't be possible to eliminate them completely), and for me the benefit is debatable. Certainly all the 'system' pages which site users will be exposed to use layout tables, so I'm not sure how much is gained by only having some pages using CSS for layout.

Other things to consider here are the usual questions of how to factor responsibility of content items between the master page and page layouts, how to define content types etc., but these are standard decisions in WCM site development so I won't cover them here.

 

Use of Content Editor web parts vs publishing RichHtmlField controls

Most folks in WCM development know there is an overlap in functionality provided by the Content Editor web part and the RichHtmlField control in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls namespace, i.e. they can both be used to enter page content such as text/images. However it's important to consider the differences - the RichHtmlField control stores it's content in a column of the list item for the page, whereas the CEWP is a web part and thus stores content in the web part storage architecture. This is important, since if deployment to a different environment is in your project plan or ongoing architecture, things will likely be simpler if you use the field control, since this content will then travel with the page properly.

Additionally, there are some URL fix-up issues with using the CEWP across different environments, as documented in the HawaiianAir.com write up.

In summary, I'd recommend considering the CEWP as a means of entering content in non-publishing SharePoint sites only. 

 

Use of collaboration web parts - in layouts or in WebPartZones?

In a similar vein, since we are mixing the collaboration features into our site we are likely to need to use certain web parts which we wouldn't in a straight WCM site. In our situation the ListViewWebPart is fairly key to some areas, and is used as a means of allowing users to work with different lists from one page. The first decision here is whether the page layouts should include web parts directly (by adding them in SharePoint Designer), or just web part zones to which the individual parts would be added later through the browser. In most WCM scenarios I prefer to add web parts directly to page layouts since they will not be customized/personalized by end users (the main usage scenario for web part zones), and when web part zones are used, again the web part config is not stored in the page which can make deployment more complex. Using the other approach of adding directly from SPD, config is stored in the actual HTML markup of the page and so travels with the page layout itself.

However! The ListViewWebPart has some quirks which means it isn't always possible to use directly from the page layout. Specifically, it is only possible to configure the part to consume a list from the current web, and in the case of a publishing page layout, this means the root web since this is where the master page gallery is stored. Since our lists are stored in a child web, this is problematic - the other solution of using a DataView also had issues. Additionally, the ListViewWebPart configuration stores values specific to it's location, meaning the config XML is not very portable (i.e. export web part definition, modify, use). I'd like to think it would be possible with time to work out exactly which IDs do need to be changed, but alas we don't have time on this project.

As a result, using the ListViewWebPart in a web part zone is actually the best solution in these circumstances as far as I can see. We'll have an extra few steps at deployment, but this will take less time than the alternatives it appears.

 

Look and feel of system pages

As mentioned earlier, for a mixed WCM/collaboration site there can be a disparity of the look and feel of the main pages of the site and the 'system' pages users will see, i.e. pages from the '_layouts' directory. Note this happens even if both the site and system master page is set to point at your custom master page, since these pages are set to use 'application.master' (also on the filesystem in '_layouts') which neither of these properties affect. Sure it would be possible to simply replace 'application.master' with your own version, but that's not an elegant solution and would probably be unsupported. Unfortunately it seems that the architecture doesn't provide an easy way to change the master page used by '_layouts' pages - you have to go a level deeper to explore ways of doing this. Many .Net 2.0 developers will know it's possible to switch a master page dynamically in .Net, and to be fair this is what SharePoint does with the maser pages stored in the master page gallery anyway. I'm not aware of a truly elegant solution to this problem, but this discussion on Serge van den Oever's blog presents a viable approach using this technique. 

 

So those are some of the issues to consider. There are certainly others, including navigation, CSS customization of standard styles (to ensure collaboration web parts integrate well with your look and feel), and possibly the choice of authentication mechanism. I'll cover these and any others which arise in an upcoming post.