Technical Class:

1. Empowering Business
with
Hybrid Code/No-Code
Solutions
Bob German
SharePoint Practice Director
BlueMetal Architects

2. Business Users Power Users / Analysts Developers
Business Technical Business Technical Business Technical
SharePoint People

3. How can we develop SharePoint solutions which
Design for Empowerment
empower business users to:
Maintain and update the solution
Change the solution to accommodate new business needs
Innovate
Empowering the Power Users

4. Robots Past and Present
Degrees of Freedom

5. How can we add degrees of freedom
to these solutions?
Agenda

6.  Web Parts empower business users to build their own pages and
mash-ups but…
 Sometimes there isn’t a web part to do something
 For more degrees of freedom:
Find ways to make the web part general
 Allow for flexible editing
 Build a connectable web part that can be configured in a flexible way
Approach 2007 2010 2013 Beyond
Configurable Yes Yes Yes Almost
Web Part Certainly
Connected Web Yes Yes Yes Probably
Part
Web Part

7.  Client wanted a web part that shows users the weather
forecast for their location based on user profile
 Client liked Accuweather widget but it isn’t integrated
with SharePoint
 SOLUTION: Content Editor with Profile Web Part
 Rather than a weather-specific web part – injects user profile fields into any HTML
 Download the Accuweather widget and inject the user’s zip code into it
 Reusable for any scenario involving HTML and user profile fields
Scenario 1 – Weather Web Part

8.  Client wanted a user directory web part to put on a
departmental web page
 SOLUTION: Search View Web Part
 Rather than a user directory web part, build a general purpose search viewer web part
 Can be configurable for many uses including cross-site document views, interactive
searching,
or person directories
Scenario 2 – User Directory Web Part

9.  Client wanted a collaborative “dashboard” showing
all aspects of a property under
management
 SOLUTION: Connectable Web Parts
 Rather than a custom page, built a suite of connectable web parts
 Business users can reconfigure, rearrange, and reuse them for other situations
Scenario 3 – Mash-up

10. Web Parts
Configurable and
Connected Web Parts

11.  InfoPath forms empower business users to create and manage the
forms but…
 Sometimes you hit a brick wall when InfoPath can’t do something
 For more degrees of freedom:
 Create a sandboxed InfoPath solution – users can still edit and update the form
 Create a web service that InfoPath can call
Approach 2007 2010 2013 Beyond
Sandboxed No Yes Yes Maybe
InfoPath Solution
Admin Approved Yes Yes Yes Maybe
InfoPath Solution
Custom Web Yes Yes Yes Probably
Service
InfoPath Form

12.  Complex approval process
 Approvers are selected from
Active Directory groups in the form
 InfoPath does not have a way
to enumerate an AD group
 SOLUTION: Custom Web Service
 Set up as a secondary data source in InfoPath
 Configure using InfoPath Rules
 Form can still be edited by power users; web service is reusable in other forms
Scenario 1 – Look up Group Members

13.  Repeating field in InfoPath – need to use it in a workflow
 OOB options are – first, last, comma-separated
 We needed maximum function
 SOLUTION: Sandboxed Form Code
 Could have used a custom workflow action to extract, but wanted to adapt the form as well
 Users can still edit other form detail; no need for admin to install in Central Admin
Scenario 2 – Repeating Field

14.  Form for use in a marketing request
 Needed to allow users to select documents based on a
wildcard, such as M*.pptx
 No support from IT – deploying a web service not possible
 SOLUTION: Sandboxed Form Code
 Uses SharePoint object model to query the document library
 Business users can edit and install the solution
Scenario 3 – Wildcard Lookup

15. Forms
Sandboxed InfoPath Form

16.  Business users can edit workflows as needs change over
time, but…
 Sometimes you hit a brick wall when the built-in or SharePoint
Designer workflows don’t do something
 For more degrees of freedom:
 Create a custom action for SharePoint Designer
 Create an event receiver that acts on an “Approval”
Approach 2007 2010 2013 Beyond
Custom Workflow No Yes Yes Maybe
Action (Sandboxed)
Custom Workflow Yes Yes Yes Maybe
Action (Farm)
Approval Event Yes Yes Yes Probably
Handler
Workflows

17.  Workflow needs to strip attachments out of a form
 SOLUTION: Custom Workflow Action – Sandboxed Solution
 Reusable anywhere
 All other logic can be handled in SharePoint Designer
Scenario 1 – Custom Form Processing

18.  Workflow needs to update a line of business system following an
approval
 Authorized users should be able to reconfigure the approval
process
 Unauthorized users should not be able to bypass the approval
 SOLUTION: Event Handler as a Farm Solution
 Use OOB Approval form – site collection admins can reconfigure easily
 Event handler checks to ensure it’s running on the correct form and library
Scenario 2 – Update LOB System

19.  Users fill in a form and to get a SharePoint site
 Uses specific site templates based on user input
 Custom approval logic for deciding if the site should be created
 SOLUTION: Custom Workflow Action – Sandboxed Solution
 Whole workflow, approval, template selection set up in SharePoint Designer
 Flexible action creates the site
Scenario 3 – Site Provisioning

20. Workflows
Sandboxed Workflow Steps

21.  Always consider degrees of freedom before
starting a development project
- What parts of the business process are likely to change?
- What skills to users have?
- What permissions do users have?
 Choose your technologies wisely
- To future-proof your solution, pretend you’re running in Office 365
- Sandboxed solutions will probably go away
- Farm solutions might or might not be restricted in the future
 Business Power Users are the SharePoint
Heroes!
Summary

22. Thank You!