1. Microsoft ® Office SharePoint ® 2007 Training Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Jim Taliaferro Community Mental Health Center

3. Overview: Bring an outsider in Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Does your organization use workflows on a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site? Did you know that you can include people in a workflow even if they are outside your company? Take this course to find out how.

5. Lesson Include someone outside your company

6. Include someone outside your company Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company A SharePoint site is most often used inside a company, and only people at that company have access to it. But what if you want to start a workflow on a file, and one of your reviewers doesn’t work at your company? You can do this, even though the reviewer doesn’t have access to the SharePoint site. This course will show you how.

7. Configuration required Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Before we explain this feature at length, it’s important to know that involving an outside person into a workflow requires some special configuration first. The configuration should be done by the administrator of the server. Specifically, your administrator needs to configure the Web Application so that it sends copies of documents to external users. This can be done using the Central Administration pages.

8. Our example Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Let’s draw a specific picture of how you might involve an outside participant in a document review. Ellen Adams is a marketing manager at Contoso. She has written a marketing strategy document. Before she implements the strategy, she would like to get it approved by two people at her company: Amy and Brian.

9. Our example Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Let’s draw a specific picture of how you might involve an outside participant in a document review. However, she would also like to get it approved by Cassie, who works at Fabrikam, Inc. So, how can Ellen involve Cassie in this workflow? The next few pages will explain.

10. Add someone outside your company Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company To include Cassie in the workflow, Ellen simply adds Cassie’s e-mail address to the list of reviewers, and starts the workflow. Then what happens? Let’s find out.

11. About the messages sent Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company When the workflow starts, it will send e-mail messages to Amy, Brian, and Cassie. Amy and Brian’s messages will contain a link to the file in the document library. But Cassie’s e-mail message will contain an attachment of the file that needs to be reviewed.

12. An outside participant’s message Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Let’s take a closer look at the message that the outside person, Cassie, receives. Here’s the attachment of the file she needs to review. She can open it from here. Notice that the From line lists the person who initiated the workflow: Ellen. This message was automatically sent from the SharePoint site – Ellen did not send it, even though her name is listed on the From line.

13. An outside participant’s message Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Let’s take a closer look at the message that the outside person, Cassie, receives. So, when Cassie has finished reviewing the file, she can click the Reply button in her e-mail program, and tell Ellen if she approves or not. Then Ellen can complete the task on behalf of Cassie.

14. Ellen receives a message, too. Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Ellen, the initiator of the workflow, also receives an e-mail message from the site. The message reminds her that she will need to complete the task on behalf of the outside person, Cassie. This establishes Ellen as Cassie’s liaison during the workflow.

15. How it all works Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Let’s take a look at how this all works. Ellen will start the Approval workflow for the Marketing Strategy document shown in the animation. After Cassie approves the file, Ellen will complete the task on her behalf. Animation: Right-click, and click Play .

16. How it all works Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Here’s the process in a nutshell. Ellen starts the Approval workflow for the Marketing Strategy document, entering e-mail addresses for Amy, Brian, and Cassie, as shown here. After Amy and Brian have received consecutive messages and approved the file, Cassie receives an e-mail message with the document attached.

17. How it all works Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Here’s the process in a nutshell. Ellen receives a different e-mail message that explains she is the liaison for Cassie. When Cassie approves the document, Ellen receives Cassie’s reply and approves on her behalf.

18. Workflow Status page Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Remember the Workflow Status page? It’s also important to know if (and when) an outside participant has been included in your workflow. If later on, for example, there is a concern about whether or not Cassie approved the file, people can refer to this page to get an answer. They’ll see in the history section that a task was created for Ellen on behalf of Cassie. They can follow up with Ellen at that point if they need to.

19. What about the other workflows? Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Of the three workflows, the Approval workflow is the best one to use when involving someone outside your company. Why? Because it’s easy to approve or reject on their behalf. But what about involving an outside person in the Collect Feedback or Collect Signatures workflow?

20. What about the other workflows? Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company For instance, the outside person will send you a separate copy of the file, and that copy may contain changes or may contain a digital signature. How do you get that copy of the file into the library without overwriting the version that’s already there? The next few slides will explain.

21. The Collect Feedback workflow Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Using a Word document in the Collect Feedback workflow? The best way to get an outside participant’s changes integrated into the library is to merge the two files. The animation shows exactly how. Animation: Right-click, and click Play .

22. The Collect Feedback workflow Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Using a Word document in the Collect Feedback workflow? The best way to get an outside participant’s changes integrated into the library is to merge the two files. In the example, Ellen has sent Cassie a copy of the document in e-mail.

23. The Collect Feedback workflow Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company Using a Word document in the Collect Feedback workflow? When Ellen receives Cassie’s revised document in e-mail, she can merge those changes into the original document by clicking the Review tab in Word, clicking Compare , and then clicking Combine , as shown here .

24. Collect Feedback, cont’d Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company If you’re using a Microsoft Office ® Excel ® or Microsoft Office ® PowerPoint ® file in the Collect Feedback workflow, the story is a little different. There isn’t an easy way to merge the outside participant’s file with the file in the library. So, when you start the workflow and type the message for instructions, ask your outside participant to provide feedback in an e-mail message to you.

25. Collect Feedback, cont’d Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company If you’re using a Microsoft Office ® Excel ® or Microsoft Office ® PowerPoint ® file in the Collect Feedback workflow, the story is a little different. That way you, as the liaison, can read their feedback and then integrate their changes into the file in the library manually. It’s not the most ideal situation, but it’s the best one available.

26. Collect signatures Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company What about the Collect Signatures workflow? If you need to have someone outside the company sign the file, you can include them on the Collect Signatures workflow. They will then simply send a copy of the file back with their signature.

27. Collect signatures Workflows IV: Include someone outside your company What about the Collect Signatures workflow? However, you can’t merge that signature with the other signatures in the document library; doing so might invalidate the other signatures that are already there. In this case, the best thing to do is to upload their separate version into a separate folder called External files .