Using Web Discussions with Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001
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Introduction
Overview of Web Discussions
Options for Web Discussions
Deployment Issues for Web Discussions
Conclusion
Introduction
This paper presents information about using Web discussions with Microsoft® SharePoint™ Portal Server 2001. It reviews the various deployment options and describes the known issues and solutions for implementing Web discussions with SharePoint Portal Server.
Overview of Web Discussions
By default, SharePoint Portal Server enables Web discussions for a workspace. If you disable Web discussions, users cannot use this feature to discuss documents. Users do not need to have the client components of SharePoint Portal Server installed to participate in discussions.
You can open Web discussions in multiple ways with SharePoint Portal Server. One way is to access the Microsoft Office Online Collaboration toolbar from the Discussion button in Microsoft Internet Explorer or in an Office application.
Tip To activate the Office Online Collaboration toolbar in Internet Explorer, on the View menu, point to Explorer Bar, and then click Discuss. To activate the Office Online Collaboration toolbar in an Office Application, on the Tools menu, point to Online Collaboration, and then click Web Discussions.
If you are not using Microsoft Office XP and Internet Explorer, the Discuss link under a document title on the dashboard site activates a different Web Discussion toolbar than the Office Online Collaboration toolbar. If you are using Office XP, the Discuss link activates the Office Online Collaboration toolbar.
The Office Online Collaboration toolbar and the Web Discussion toolbar may use different discussion servers, resulting in multiple discussions.
Which discussion server do I use?
It is important that you determine a strategy for choosing a discussion server before implementing Web discussions. Computers running SharePoint Portal Server are valid Web discussion servers. Consider the following conditions when choosing a discussion server:
All computers are running Office XP. You can choose to centralize your Web discussions on any valid Web discussion server. In this case, have your users specify the same Web discussion server from the Office Online Collaboration toolbar. In this scenario, all discussions are consolidated on a single Web discussion server.
Some computers are running earlier versions of Office. You can choose to centralize your Web discussions on any valid Web discussion server. However, instruct any user accessing discussions from a computer running an earlier version of Office to avoid using the Discuss link to discuss documents.
Important: Users must specify the same Web discussion server from the Office Online Collaboration toolbar. In this scenario, all discussions are consolidated on a single Web discussion server.
Some computers are not running Office and Internet Explorer. Instruct Office users to specify the name of the server where the document is stored or accessed from as the Web discussion server each time they choose to participate or view a Web discussion. In this scenario, discussions are potentially distributed across multiple Web discussion servers.
By implementing a specific strategy, you can ensure that all users can view and participate in Web discussions.
The first time you use Web discussions, the Office Online Collaboration toolbar prompts you to enter a discussion server. You also have the option of specifying multiple discussion servers. By default, the Office Online Collaboration toolbar uses the last discussion server specified, regardless of where the document is stored.
If you use the Web Discussion toolbar, you cannot specify a discussion server. The Web Discussion toolbar automatically chooses the active server as the discussion server.
Consequently, it is possible to create two separate discussions for the same document if users specify an alternate discussion server with the Office Online Collaboration toolbar. When you specify an alternate discussion server, SharePoint Portal Server stores the Web discussion in the external discussion location on the alternate discussion server rather than in the internal discussion location on the server where the document is stored.
Example
In this example, on a computer running Microsoft Office 2000 and Internet Explorer, Lisa opens Internet Explorer and browses the corporate portal. She locates the Boston financial report on the Finance workspace of the Boston SharePoint Portal Server computer. She starts a Web discussion from the Office Online Collaboration toolbar. Office prompts her for a discussion server. She looks at the URL for the document and she enters the name of the server where the document is stored:
The URL of the document:
https://AdventureWorksBoston/Workspace/Documents/BostonReport.doc
The Discussion Server name:
https://AdventureWorksBoston
Lisa also needs to comment on the New York financial report. She searches for this document and finds it on the Finance workspace of the New York SharePoint Portal Server computer. She starts a new Web discussion from her Office Online Collaboration toolbar, so Office does not prompt her for a discussion server.
The URL of the document:
https://AdventureWorksNewYork/Documents/NewYorkReport.doc
The discussion server name:
https://AdventureWorksBoston
Robert logs on to the kiosk in the lobby of a satellite office to check on the status of his financial reports. He asked Lisa to comment on both reports before a meeting he is attending. The kiosk computer does not have Office installed. Robert starts Internet Explorer and browses to the corporate portal. He searches for the Boston financial report and clicks the Discuss link below the document title to activate the Web Discussion toolbar.
The URL of the document:
https://AdventureWorksBoston/Workspace/Documents/BostonReport.doc
The discussion server name:
https://AdventureWorksBoston
He views Lisa's Web discussion comments and then searches for the New York financial report. He clicks the Discuss link below the document title to activate the Web Discussion toolbar but cannot find Lisa's comments.
The URL of the document:
https://AdventureWorksNewYork/Workspace/Documents/NewYorkReport.doc
The Discussion Server name:
https://AdventureWorksNewYork
Robert can see Lisa's comments on the Boston computer but does not see her comments on the New York computer. To ensure that Robert and Lisa view and participate in the same discussion, they must specify the same discussion server.
Which toolbar do I use?
The Office Online Collaboration toolbar and the Web Discussion toolbar offer different features. The Office Online Collaboration toolbar offers slightly more flexibility and customizability but is not available to users who are not using Office and Internet Explorer. The Web Discussion toolbar provides a way for users that do not have Internet Explorer 5 and Office 2000 installed on their systems to participate in Web discussions.
Office Online Collaboration Discussions. For users who have Internet Explorer 5 or Office 2000 installed on their systems, the Office Online Collaboration toolbar provides access to discussions from these applications.
Note: Users who have Office XP installed on their system can also access the Office Online Collaboration toolbar by clicking the Discuss link below the document title on the dashboard site.
Browser-Based Discussions. Browser-based discussions are available from the Discuss link below a document title on the dashboard site. They allow users who do not have Internet Explorer 5 and Office 2000 installed on their systems to read and add discussion remarks.
It is recommended that Internet Explorer and Office users choose the Office Online Collaboration toolbar for maximum flexibility. From the Office Online Collaboration toolbar, you can subscribe to a Web discussion, specify your discussion server, and insert inline discussion items within a Word or HTML document.
Options for Web Discussions
It is recommended that you decide on a strategy for implementing Web discussions to ensure that all participants are viewing the same set of discussions. The following section outlines the possible scenarios and available features for Web discussions.
Using Web discussions from Internet Explorer and Office 2000
If you use the Web discussion button from Internet Explorer or any Office application to activate the Office Online Collaboration toolbar, you must first specify a Discussion server. After you have specified a Discussion server, you can enter comments inline (within a document), or about the document (in your browser window), depending on the document type. This method provides the greatest number of options for Web discussions. You can subscribe to a Web discussion and specify your discussion server from this toolbar.
Important: If you enable the Office Online Collaboration toolbar, some links on the dashboard site, including the Publish and Delete links, may not function properly. To avoid this problem, you must close the Office Online Collaboration toolbar before you use links in the dashboard site.
To close the Office Online Collaboration toolbar
Confirm that the Office Online Collaboration toolbar is open. If it is not, open Internet Explorer 5, and then go to the dashboard site.
On the View menu, point to Explorer Bar, and then click Discuss.
Press F5 to refresh your screen.
Close the discussion window at the bottom of the browser.
If you have Office 2000 installed on your computer, when you click the Discuss link under a document title on the dashboard, you activate the Web Discussion toolbar. Using this toolbar, you can insert comments about a document, but not inline. In Internet Explorer, you can insert Web discussion items for HTML and Word documents directly in the window. For other document formats, the browser prompts you to open or save the document. If you choose to open the document, it opens in a separate window by using the associated application. You can then view the document in a new window and insert comments about the document in your browser window.
Important: If you use the Web Discussion toolbar to discuss a document, confirm that you have specified the same discussion server as the one in the Office Online Collaboration toolbar to ensure that you participate in the same discussion as other Office users. It is recommended that you use the Office Online Collaboration toolbar for maximum options.
Using Web discussions from Internet Explorer with Office XP
With Office XP, you can use the Web discussion button from Internet Explorer or any Office application to activate the Office Online Collaboration toolbar. Selecting the Discuss link under the document title in the dashboard site also activates the Office Online Collaboration toolbar. Regardless of how you choose to access the Web discussion, SharePoint Portal Server automatically specifies the associated computer running SharePoint Portal Server as the discussion server for you, but you can change it to a different discussion server. You can enter comments inline or about the document in your browser window, depending on the document type.
Important: If you enable the Office Online Collaboration toolbar, certain links on the dashboard site, including the Publish and Delete links, may not function properly. To avoid this problem, you must close the Office Online Collaboration toolbar before you use links in the dashboard site.
To close the Office Online Collaboration toolbar
Confirm that the Office Online Collaboration toolbar is open. If it is not, open Internet Explorer 5 and then go to the dashboard site.
On the View menu, point to Explorer Bar, and then click Discuss.
Press F5 to refresh your screen.
Close the discussion window at the bottom of the browser.
Note: If you install Office XP on a computer running SharePoint Portal Server, Web discussions may not function correctly. In this case, you must discuss the document from Office XP directly instead of from Internet Explorer. See "SharePoint Portal Server and Office XP Coexistence" under Deployment Issues for Web Discussions for more information.
Using Web discussions from other Web browsers
If you click the Discuss link, under a document on the dashboard, you activate the Web Discussion toolbar. Using this toolbar, you can insert comments about a document, but not inline. In Internet Explorer, you can insert Web discussion items for HTML and Word documents directly in the window. For other file types (such as .bmp), the browser prompts you to open or save the file. If you choose to open the file, it opens in a separate window using the associated application. You can then discuss the file in your browser using the appropriate discussion toolbar while viewing the file in the separate window.
Important: The Web Discussion toolbar allows users who are not using Internet Explorer or Office XP to participate in Web discussions.
Deployment Issues for Web Discussions
The following section summarizes important workarounds and issues related to Web discussions.
Storage Location for Web Discussions
SharePoint Portal Server stores Web discussions in URLs. SharePoint Portal Server directs you to a specific URL for a Web discussion, based on the location of the document.
Discussions for documents stored inside the workspace are located at:
https://Server_Name/Public/Workspaces/Workspace_Name/System/Discussions.
Discussions for documents stored outside the workspace are located at:
https://Server_Name/Public/Workspaces/System/Discussions.
By default, discussions stored in this location are not searchable.
Note: You must display hidden folders to view these folders.
Example
The URL for a Web discussion of a document located within the workspace:
http:/Adventureworks/Public/Workspaces/Adventure/System/Discussions.
The URL for a Web discussion of a document stored outside the workspace:
http:/Adventureworks/Public/Workspaces/System/Discussions.
Deleting Discussions
Although Web discussions are typically managed from the Management dashboard of the dashboard site, you may have difficulty deleting discussions for documents stored outside the workspace, those created by using the Office Online Collaboration toolbar accessed from Internet Explorer, and those created from Office applications for documents with high ASCII or double-byte character set (DBCS) URLs.
To delete these discussions, the administrator must use the installable file system to access the Web Storage System drive. For instructions to mount the Web Storage System drive, see "IFS Drive and the Microsoft Web Storage System" in the Readme file, located on the installation disc. You can also delete discussions by using Microsoft ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO). For more information, see Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server Software Development Kit.
Viewing Web discussions
If you are having difficulties viewing all the associated Web discussions for a document, confirm that your users are all using the same discussion server. If Office users have specified a different discussion server than the one specified for the Web collaboration toolbar, more than one Web discussion can occur about the same document.
For the Web Discussion toolbar, available from the Discuss link, the discussion server is the active server. For the Office Online Collaboration toolbar, available from Office applications and Internet Explorer, users can choose a discussion server and should confirm that they have chosen to use the same server as the one used for the Web Discussion toolbar.
To add a discussion server for the Office Online Collaboration toolbar.
In Internet Explorer, on the View menu, point to Explorer Bar, and then click Discuss.
Click Discussions.
Click Discussion Options.
Click Add.
Type the name of the SharePoint Portal Server computer where the document is accessed. (For example: https://Adventure-Works)
Click OK.
SharePoint Portal Server and SharePoint Team Services Coexistence
If Microsoft SharePoint Team Services is installed on the computer on which you want to install SharePoint Portal Server, you must uninstall SharePoint Team Services before installing SharePoint Portal Server. In addition, you must delete the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software \Microsoft \Office \9.0\Web Server.
If you install SharePoint Team Services after installing SharePoint Portal Server, you lose the following functionality:
Discussion items are not included in the index and are not available for search.
You do not receive notifications for subscriptions to documents or folders in the workspace when you subscribe by using the Office Online Collaboration toolbar. The Office Online Collaboration toolbar is available from both Office and Internet Explorer.
Subscriptions made by using the Office Online Collaboration toolbar and all discussions are stored in SharePoint Team Services. These subscriptions and discussions are not backed up during the SharePoint Portal Server backup process.
SharePoint Portal Server and Office XP Coexistence
If you install Office XP on a computer running SharePoint Portal Server, the Office Online Collaboration toolbar does not allow you to choose a computer running SharePoint Portal Server as its Discussions server from Internet Explorer. This prevents you from using the Office Online Collaboration toolbar in Internet Explorer to add discussion items, and also prevents you from creating subscriptions from a computer running Office XP.
To discuss a document from a computer running SharePoint Portal Server and Office XP, open the document with Office XP instead of Internet Explorer. You have the option of using the active document's server or choosing a different discussion server as appropriate for your deployment.
Additional Planning Issues
You must consider several factors when deciding how to implement Web discussions.
Enabling Web discussions on external content may log user activity. If you do not restrict Web discussions to items stored in workspaces on this server, leaving the Office Online Collaboration toolbar open in Internet Explorer causes SharePoint Portal Server to log the Internet browsing activity of the each user's computer.
When a user accesses the dashboard site to discuss a document stored in a workspace, she launches the Office Online Collaboration toolbar to access the Web Discussions feature. If the Office Online Collaboration toolbar remains open when the user later navigates to other Web sites, SharePoint Portal Server logs the URL of any Web site she visits, along with her user name, in the Internet Information Services (IIS) logs stored on the system disk.
Including Web discussions in an index can allow users to view discussions on content to which they do not have access. If you include Web discussions in your index, they may be returned in a search results list. The discussion items are visible to users on the dashboard site even if the users do not have access to the document to which the discussion items pertain. This may compromise the security of the content in a document. To prevent this, the option to include Web discussions in search scopes and in the index is disabled by default.
SharePoint Portal Server does not include Web discussions in the index when crawling other SharePoint Portal Servers or other workspaces on the same server. Thus, although SharePoint Portal Server returns documents from those servers or workspaces in search results, and these documents may contain Web discussion items, the discussion items are not included in the search results.
Users may not search for discussions on high ASCII or DBCS URLs that were created using the Office Online Collaboration toolbar in Internet Explorer. For Office users that discuss documents on high ASCII or DBCS URLs, discussions created from the Office Online Collaboration toolbar in Internet Explorer are saved in: https://Server_Name/Public/Workspaces/System/Discussions regardless of whether the document is stored in the workspace.
Because these discussions are not stored in the correct location, they are not searchable, and you cannot subscribe to these discussions. To enable users to search for and subscribe to discussions, it is recommended that you use the Web collaboration toolbar for high ASCII or DBCS URLs.
The locale of the client and server has to match while discussing high ASCII\DBCS URLs. This issue applies using either the Web Discussion toolbar or the Office Online Collaboration toolbar.
Conclusion
This paper provided information about using Web discussions with SharePoint Portal Server. It described deployment options and provided information about known issues in using Web discussions with SharePoint Portal Server.