Customizing My Sites for Improved User Experience

1. OSP337 Branding and Customizing My Sites with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 John Ross & Randy Drisgill MVPs Rackspace Hosting

2. What are we going to talk about? • Overview of social in the enterprise • My Site basics • Branding My Sites • Deploying Your Branding to My Sites • Controlling Deployment of Web Parts to My Sites Tweet about the session with the #spmysites hash tag

3. John Ross • Custom Solutions Lead at Rackspace Hosting • Author • Professional SharePoint 2010 Branding • http://bit.ly/sp2010-brandingbook • Real World SharePoint 2010 • Blog: • http://johnrossjr.wordpress.com • Twitter: • http://twitter.com/johnrossjr • Orlando, FL

4. Randy Drisgill • Branding and Design Lead – Rackspace Hosting • Author • Professional SharePoint 2010 Branding • http://bit.ly/sp2010-brandingbook • Real World SharePoint 2010 • Professional SharePoint 2007 Design • Blog: • http://blog.drisgill.com • Twitter: • http://twitter.com/Drisgill • Orlando, FL

5. Social in the Enterprise • Social refers to how we interact and share information • As companies look to the future, social technologies are increasingly becoming a primary way to meet corporate goals • Find and reuse knowledge • Facilitate collaboration • Increasing social capabilities in existing systems and processes

6. Value of social Employees who are connected to a wide range of colleagues generate $83,000 more in revenue per year than employees with an average number of colleague connections. Joint study conducted by MIT’s Sloan School of Management & Center for E-Business and NYU’s Stern School of Business

7. Social in SharePoint Server 2010 • Facilitates the bridge of information between users and their content • Flexible Collaboration • Wikis, blogs, newsfeeds, team sites, personal profiles, etc. • Help users work better together • Find colleagues and expertise • Locate important information My Sites are the central hub of the social experience in SharePoint 2010

8. My Site Components My Content My Custom Page My Newsfeed My Profile Pages My Site Host My Site Site Collections My Site Web Application Web App Service Application Proxies Custom Search EMM UPA

11. Why customize My Sites? • Without any modifications My Sites are like an off the rack suit • They work well for some • Many will prefer custom tailoring • Primary benefits • Help users identify with the company through branding • Improve usability • Enforce consistency and deliver functionality to users

14. Our scenario • Syrp/Bacn is a world renowned breakfast consultancy • Employees globally dispersed • Goals for My Sites • Help employees to feel connected with the company despite distance • Improve usability • Provide different experience for different user bases within the company

16. Branding My Sites • Branding for My Sites is similar to traditional SharePoint Branding • Master Pages are used for the primary shell of the design • CSS is used to style the elements • Typically reuse large portions of the main site branding for the My Sites

17. What’s our approach? • We want to let the MySite content to drive the look of the pages • Carry forward the existing branding from our public website • Header • Background • Colors • Footer • Style the Global Navigation in a similar color scheme • You can decide how far you want to take your MySite Branding… maybe you only need a little bit

18. Branding the My Site Host • You can start from either a copy of the OOTB mysite.master • Or use one of my Starter Master Pages • StarterMasterPages.CodePlex.com • Includes only the required controls for the My Site host • The Global Navigation at the top should match the branding

19. Branding the Personal Sites • Because they are based on V4.master you can leverage a lot of your existing SP branding • Be sure to style the Global Navigation at the top to match

20. My Sites Branding Tips • Style the global navigation at the top, the outer shell, & colors but leave the inner content arranged normally • Be careful with fixed width displays – make sure you leave enough room for the content • Moving the Global Navigation from the top can be challenging • The Organization chart is Silverlight so it’s not easily styled

21. demo Branding My Sites Randy Drisgill MVP Rackspace Hosting

22. Customizing the My Sites navigation • Modifying the top Global Navigation links • Site Actions > Look and Feel > Top link bar • Modifying the Sub-Navigation Bar links • Site Actions > Look and Feel > Quick Launch

23. Changing the Global Navigation Layout • One common complaint about My Sites is the lack of easy control over the Global Navigation look • You can change it by overriding the GlobalNavigation delegate control • Involves creating a Feature that points to a new navigation control • Copy the existing navigation control and add your new content • For example: Add a logo with a link back to the home page

24. demo Adding a Logo to the Global Navigation Randy Drisgill MVP Rackspace Hosting

25. You’ve got your branding…now what? • The branding assets have been created but now they need to be deployed to the My Site • Automatically apply the masterpage • Have all of this automagically happen when the My Site is created…. • How?

26. Steps to deploy branding to a My Site Step 1 Create a feature to move the files where they need to go Step 2 Create a feature receiver to switch the master page Step 3 Use a feature stapler to ensure that when the personal site is created, the branding is automatically applied Step 4 Deploy this as a SharePoint Solution (.WSP) to your SharePoint farm

27. Moving parts • Branding Feature • Scoped at the Web • Modules deploy files to folders • Feature Receiver switches master page • Feature Staple • Scoped at the web application • Associates branding feature with template for personal site (SPSPERS#0) • Branding feature runs when personal site is provisioned

28. Anatomy of a Feature Staple Create a new Feature and add an Element <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"> <FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="542D5EF4-5053-4CA0-A4B9-D6E10786262B" TemplateName="SPSPERS#0"/> </Elements> • Get the Id from Properties of Feature

29. demo Deploying branding to My Sites John Ross MVP Rackspace Hosting

30. Deployment Resources • Deploying Branding Solutions for SharePoint 2010 Sites Using Sandboxed Solutions - MSDN • http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg447066.aspx • Creating a Custom Feature Staple – MSDN • http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263911%28office.12%29.aspx • Check out CKS:Dev • Extensions for Visual Studio 2010 • http://cksdev.codeplex.com/

31. What’s next? After branding the next most common request for customizing My Sites is….. • Controlling the web parts that are deployed to the My Site • Adding • Deleting • Moving

32. Controlling Web Part Deployment • This can be tricky – we want to ensure our code doesn’t run before default.aspx is created • Embedding a server control into the custom master page solves the problem • Doesn’t run into the page is first rendered so page is guaranteed to exist • Performs a check to ensure that it hasn’t run previously Steve Peschka’s Blog Post for SP2007 http://tinyurl.com/MySiteDeploy

33. How does this work?

34. demo Controlling which web parts are deployed to your My Sites John Ross MVP Rackspace Hosting

35. Where can you go from there? Where? • Different users in your organization work in different ways. • Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easy way to control which web parts were deployed to different users? • Good news….

36. What’s different?

37. demo Deploying Web Parts To My Sites Based On User Profile Value John Ross MVP Rackspace Hosting

38. Download the sample code • What do you get? • All the deployment goodness • http://sp2010mysite.codeplex.com/

39. Summary • Social networking isn’t just for personal use anymore • Tons of real and measurable value! • My Sites are the backbone of the social experience in SharePoint 2010 • Customizing My Sites helps to unleash all of that value • Branding helps users feel at home and improves usability • Controlling web part deployment adds functionality

40. Contact Info • Blog: • http://blog.drisgill.com • http://johnrossjr.wordpress.com • Twitter: • http://twitter.com/drisgill • http://twitter.com/johnrossjr • Email • randy.drisgill@rackspace.com • john.ross@rackspace.com

41. The Business Collaboration Platform for the Enterprise and the Internet The Business Collaboration Platform for the Enterprise & the Internet • Deliver the Best Productivity Experience • Cut Costs with a Unified Infrastructure • Rapidly Respond to Business Needs The capabilities of SharePoint 2010 provide a powerful business collaboration platform

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