vivi's SharePoint Space

When you try to edit a Microsoft Office document that is stored in a document library of a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Web site, you may receive one of the following error messages, depending on the version of Office that you are running.

 

2007 Microsoft Office suites

 

Microsoft Office 2003 and earlier versions of Office

For example, you experience these symptoms if you click a Microsoft Word document in the document library, and then click Edit in Microsoft Office Word.

Additionally, when you click New Document in the document library, you may receive the following error message:

 

This issue may occur if one or more of the following conditions are true:

•	Microsoft Office XP or later is not installed on the computer.
•	Office XP or a later version of Office is installed on the computer. However, the SharePoint support component that is included in Office Tools is not installed on the computer. That is, either Microsoft SharePoint Support or Windows SharePoint Services Support (as appropriate to your version of Office) is not installed on the computer.
•	The Owssupp.dll file is not registered correctly in Microsoft Windows.

 

To resolve this issue, use one of the following methods, as appropriate for your situation.

 

Method 1: Install Office XP or a later version of Office

Install Office XP or a later version of Office on your computer. When you install Office, make sure that you also install the SharePoint support component that is included in Office Tools in the Setup program. In Office XP, this component is named Microsoft SharePoint Support. In Office 2003 and in later versions of Office, this component is named Windows SharePoint Services Support.

For more information about how to install the SharePoint support component that is included in Office Tools, see the "Method 2: Install SharePoint support" section.

 

Method 2: Install SharePoint support

To install SharePoint support, do one of the following, as appropriate to the version of Office that is installed on your computer.

Note Because there are several versions of Microsoft Windows, the following steps may be different on your computer. If they are, see your product documentation to complete these steps.

If Office XP is installed on the computer, follow these steps:

1.	Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2.	Click Add or Remove Programs.
3.	In the list of currently installed programs, click Microsoft Office XP, and then click Change.
4.	Click Add or Remove Features - Change which features are installed or remove specific features, and then click Next.
5.	In the Features to install box, expand Office Tools, click the down arrow next to Microsoft SharePoint Support, and then click Run from My Computer.
6.	Click Update.

If Office 2003 is installed on the computer, follow these steps:

1.	Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2.	Click Add or Remove Programs.
3.	In the list of currently installed programs, click Microsoft Office 2003, and then click Change.
4.	Click Add or Remove Features, and then click Next.
5.	Click to select the Choose advanced customization of application check box, and then click Next.
6.	In the Choose update options for applications and tools box, expand Office Tools, click the down arrow next to Windows SharePoint Services Support, and then click Run from My Computer.
7.	Click Update.

If a 2007 Office suite is installed on the computer, follow these steps:

1.	Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2.	Click Add or Remove Programs.
3.	In the list of currently installed programs, click Microsoft Office suite 2007, and then click Change.
4.	Click Add or Remove Features, and then click Continue.
5.	Expand Office Tools.
6.	Click the down arrow next to Windows SharePoint Services Support, and then click Run from My Computer.
7.	Click Continue.

 

Method 3: Register the Owssupp.dll file

To register the Owssupp.dll file, follow these steps:

1.	Click Start, and then click Run.
2.	In the Open box, type cmd, and then click OK.
3.	At the command prompt, switch to the folder that contains the Owssupp.dll file. By default, the Owssupp.dll file is located in one the following folders, as appropriate for your version of Office: • If Office XP is installed on the computer: Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10 • If Office 2003 is installed on the computer: Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11 • If a 2007 Office suite is installed on the computer: Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12
4.	Type the following line, and then press ENTER: regsvr32 -u owssupp.dll
5.	Click OK when you receive the message that states that the operation was successful.
6.	Type the following line, and then press ENTER: regsvr32 owssupp.dll
7.	Click OK when you receive the message that states that the operation was successful.
8.	Type exit to exit Command Prompt.

 

 

From Kathy Hughes, MVP

 

I discovered this browser workaround several years back and thought I’d post here for reference. Here is the original source:- http://www.cauldwell.net/patrick/blog/PermaLink,guid,c7f1e799-c4ae-4758-9de7-5c3e7a16f3da.aspx.

 When using Firefox, avoid being prompted for logon when browsing to SharePoint sites by making the following configuration changes to your Firefox browser:

1. In the Firefox address bar, type about:config then press <return>
2. On the subsequent about:config page, scroll down until you locate the key named network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris.
3. Right-click the network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris key and click Modify. Enter the name of the SharePoint site (see below) and then click OK. For multiple sites, separate each name by a comma.

Posted Monday, August 22, 2005 1:27 PM by wkriebel 

 

Because you can't copy the hyperlink on the "Export to spreadsheet" link on SharePoint lists, here is how you can create your own hyperlink.

http://[Server]/[Site]/([Subsite]/)_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?CS=109&Using=_layouts/query.iqy&List=[ListGUID]&View=[ViewGUID]&CacheControl=1

Replace the [Placeholders] with your environment's information.  A handy way to get the list and view GUIDs is to go into "Modify Columns and Settings" then scoll down to the views section and click on the view that you want to use.  You will notice the escaped list and view GUIDs in the resultant URL.

Here is an example:http://MyWSS/sites/samplesite/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?CS=109&Using=_layouts/query.iqy&List=%7BD109453A%2D1A6E%2D4F83%2DAFF9%2DCCA04A75D76D%7D&View=%7B8FB21A2F%2DB62C%2D41D8%2DBA0C%2D7BD9C31FAA51%7D&CacheControl=1

See also, MSDN's article: URL Protocol and my article: How To Add a Hyperlink To a SharePoint Event Outlook ExportWestin's Technical Log

 

 

 

In MOSS 2007, there is a KPI Web Part and KPI list.   It is very useful for management to see the current status of the key performance indicator of the company.  However, this feature is not available in either WSS v3.0 or v2.0. 

With the current WSS v2.0 on hand, I have developed a similar KPI list and Web Part to mimic the features in MOSS 2007.

Here are the steps:

1. Create a list called "KPI List" with columns:

- Indicator (changed from Title)

- Value

- Goal

- Warning

- Status (Calculated Value)

 

2. What I want to show is:

Red: Value < Warning

Yellow: Warning <= Value <= Goal

Green: Value > Goal

 

3. Based on the condition above, create a function for the Status column:

Status =(IF(AND(Value>=Warning,Value<=Goal),"Yellow",IF(Value>Goal,"Green",IF(Value<Warning,"Red"))))

 

By Chad's request, I'm gonna explain more details on steps 4-6: 

4. On the homepage, add KPI list by status=red, status=yellow and status=green, so you will have three modules of data.

- To do this, you add the KPI list web part to the page, and then Modify Shared Web to apply filter Status = Red, Status = Yellow and Status = Yellow.  It means you have to add KPI list WP three times with different filters.

 

5. Open FrontPage 2003, convert to XSLT list, change the style to the one you prefer.

- Open the page in FrontPage 2003, right click on the WP, and then Convert to XSLT Data View.  This gives you more option to change to the styles you like.

- Then enable the WP menu, select Style.

 

 

- I chose "Repeating Form", and here is how it looks.

- Then you can change the font color/size.

6. Insert the icons in front of the list item.

- Add a column in the Red WP to have a space for Red icon.

- Then insert the icon.  The icon is displayed according to the line items, which means if Pipeline now changes to Yellow status, it will be shown in the Yellow WP with the yellow icon.  Of course you need to add the yellow and green icons first to the Yellow WP and the Green WP respectively.

 

Finish Product.

From Penny Conventry:

 

Goto Control Panel -> Add and Remove Programs
Select the product and then click: Click here for support. The versions will
be displayed as follows:

	Windows SharePoint Services v2	SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Unserviced pack	11.0.5608.0	11.0.5704.0
With Service Pack 1	11.0.6361.0	11.0.6715.0
SP1+KB887981	11.0.6411.0
R2 WSS SP2 beta	11.0.6551.0
SP2	11.0.7969.0	11.0.8126.0

	Windows SharePoint Services v3	Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Beta 2	12.0.4017.1006	12.0.4017.1006
Beta 2 TR	12.0.4407.1005	12.0.4407.1005
RTM	12.0.4518.1016	12.0.4518.1016

Using IIS Manager, on the web sites properties HTTP Headers tab or through the SharePoint HTML admin pages, virtual servers once extended will show the following version numbers:
    Unservice packed:               6.0.2.5530
    WSS SP1:                          6.0.2.6361
    WSS SP1 + KB887981        6.0.2.6411
    WSS SP2 Beta = R2:          6.0.2.6551
    WSS SP2                           6.0.2.6568
    Office 12 (PDC image - pre-beta): 12.0.0.3111 (This version of Office does not have a support link in the Add/Remove programs dialog box).
    MOSS 2007 or WSSv3 Beta 2:     12.0.0.4017
    MOSS 2007 or WSSv3 Beta 2 TR:12.0.0.4407
    MOSS 2007 or WSSv3 RTM         12.0.0.4518 

Thanks to Matthew McDermott and Kenneth Searles for the update on the version related to the hotfix KB887981

Note: If you have a version number starting with 10, then it is either SharePoint Team Services (SPTS) or SharePoint Portal 2001 (SPS 2001).

• SPTS, 10.0.2627.01 is the version with no service packs. In Administrative Tools menu, you will see a link to Microsoft SharePoint Administrator. This will display a web page, where you can see the version number of the virtual server(s), e.g., 5.0.2.2623. The ISAPI filter is fpexedll.dll.
• For SPS 2001, 10.145.4629 is the version number with no service packs. There will be no ISAPI filter, and from the Administrative Tools menu you will see a link to SharePoint Portal Server Administrator which launches a mmc snap-in.

I have been implenmenting Office PivotChart Web Part to lots of SharePoint sites to create dynamic charts.  Often the time, I'll get some errors that don't tell me what exactly I did wrong.  With some testing, I find out some ways to avoid the errors, and starting today, I'll post some tips to do so:

 

I. Error "The query could not be processed: Data provider or other service returned an E_FAIL status".

 

The error message doesn't really tell you what went wrong.  One of the scenarios that causes this error is

 

- You add a field to an existing list and make it REQUIRED.

- The filed doesn't have all the data, some of them is empty because it is later added.

- You drop the field to the data area on a PivotChart Web Part. 

 

Then the result is PivotChart not able to create a chart and you got the above error. 

 

The walkaround is make the field not REQUIRED first, in order to make the charts show correctly; after you have all the data filled into that field, then make it REQUIRED.

 

Finally it's arrived!  Office 2007 Beta 2 is ready for download! 

 

 

Via MSd2d Mauro Cardarelli:

 

I recently had a client pose an interesting Windows SharePoint Services question that required quick action and no custom coding. This is my (what I believe to be) clever solution.
We’re using WSS as an extranet. Some users will be accessing a specific site and will have visibility into a custom list of open issues. We want the users to see all the list items but only have update privileges on a subset. This is what we did:

 

(1)   Start with a SharePoint Custom List with a collection of items

(2)   After entering a new item, click on the Edit icon for that row.  This should bring up the EditForm.aspx page.

(3)   Open that page in Microsoft FrontPage 2003 and save a copy, using File-Save As, under a different name (i.e. EditAdminForm.aspx).  This version allows full access to list items.

(4)   Return to EditForm.aspx and open it again in FrontPage.

(5)   Click on you custom list and right click; select ‘Customize SharePoint List Form’.

(6)   For each item that you wish to hide, click on the label cell for the appropriate row.  On the FrontPage nav bar, you should see a selected HTML tag (it is on the far right).  Click on the <TR> closest to it.  The entire row should be selected.

(7)   Click the dropdown and select ‘Edit Tag…’

(8)   In the pop-up, alter the <TR> tag to read <TR style=”display:none”> and save.  This makes that row invisible.

(9)   Repeat for each row you wish to hide.

(10)                       Somewhere on the EditForm.aspx page, place a hidden object.  I used a borderless, transparent textbox on the lower left.  Give it the following URL: "javascript:location.href='EditAdminForm.aspx'%20+%20location.search"

 

The JavaScript will pass along the proper row ID.  Admins will be trained to know where to look for the hidden URL and will have access to a full collection of list items.  Unaware users will only see the visible list items.  The SharePoint Save link works without alteration.

 

YASR: Navigation in SharePoint 2007, Part One

[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] One of the pain points of SharePoint 2003 (especially Windows SharePoint Services), is the lack of navigation possibilities. It’s quite hard to find out which sub sites are created under a WSS site. Also when you’re on a WSS site, you don’t have any clue or way to navigate to the parent site hierarchy. With a small amount of customization however, it’s possible to solve these issues. In my SharePoint classes I always show how to create a breadcrumbs web part and drop-down navigation web part. For a pre-fabricated solution, check out Tom’s tree navigation web part. In SharePoint 2007 these web parts become obsolete, navigation is available everywhere. First of all, breadcrumbs are everywhere! Take a look at the screenshot below; it’s displaying a Contact list on a site. Notice the breadcrumbs to navigate back to the site.

When we drill down to the list item itself and edit the list item, the breadcrumbs will allow the user to navigate back the list item, the list and the site! I’m not going to display all the places where you can find those breadcrumbs, but they are really everywhere!

On site level there are also a couple of new options. First of all you can specify if you want to show the quick launch on the left hand side of the site’s home page. Additionally you can enable a tree view.

When you enable this tree view, it will show all document libraries and lists of the current site. The screen shot below is taken from a sub folder in a document library; notice that the sub folder item is bold in the tree view.

This is the first part of the navigation features in SharePoint 2007, in the next part I will focus on navigation between sites. So for now, navigation in SharePoint 2007 yet another SharePoint relief!

 

Y.A.S.R.: Forcing Check Out in SharePoint Document Libraries

[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] Document Libraries in SharePoint are great for doing document management. Once of they key concepts in document management is the ability to check out documents while editing the document. This will prevent other users from making changes at the same time. Check out functionality is available out-of-the-box in SharePoint 2003 Document Libraries. The only problem is that users are not forced to check out a document when making changes. There is however a workaround, but it involves editing the ows.js JavaScript file. (for more information see the MSD2D tip).

In SharePoint 2007 by default a Document Library doesn’t force checking out the document either. When you click on a document, you’ll get a pop-up asking if you want to open the document in read-only mode, or if you want to make changes.

But the good news is that you can make the check-out required before being able to edit a document. It’s very easy to do so, just navigate to the versioning settings page of the document library and set Require Check Out property to Yes.

When a user now clicks on a document, another pop-up will show where can be specified to open the document in read-only mode or to check out and edit. When the user chooses to edit the document, optionally he can specify to make the document available offline.

From the dropdown attached to a document, the user can also choose to edit in Word …

… which will bring the following pop up. So; forced check out: yet another SharePoint relief!

 

Y.A.S.R.: SharePoint 2007 Versioning

[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] In SharePoint 2003 you can enable versioning for a Document Library, so SharePoint will store for each document in that library previous versions when the document gets edited. That’s nice, but that’s about it what you get out-of-the-box. Since each version of the document is in fact a complete document (it’s not the delta that’s stored for a version) big documents can take up more space than desired. Just imagine that you have a 1MB Word document for which you have 15 versions, the total size that the document item will use, is 15 MB (15 times 1 MB). So a very common request is to limit the number of versions that is stored in a document library. In SharePoint 2003 there is no out-of-the-box functionality to do that, although it’s quite easy to write a Document Library Event Handler to accomplish this, but you do need to write some code and deploy the solution.

In SharePoint 2007 however, you specify the number of versions that should be kept quite easily. In the Document Library Settings page, you can navigate to the Versioning Settings, where you can enter any number of versions to keep.

Another thing on this page that may get your attention is the fact that you can either choose to only create major versions, or you can choose to create major and minor (draft) versions. A little bit further on the page you can specify who can read the draft versions of the document.

So when you enable major and minor version a possible scenario could go like this: you create a new Word document in the document library. This document will become version 0.1. When you edit the document again, you will create version 0.2. When you decide it’s time for other people to see your hard work you can decide to publish the document as a major version.

This action will promote version 0.2 to version 1.0, so the version number 0.2 will change into version 1.0. The version history also reflects this:

Another common complaint for SharePoint 2003 is the fact that versioning is only available in document libraries. In SharePoint 2007 versioning is also available for lists (although only major versions). For example editing a list item will result in the following version history:

Document and list item versions in SharePoint 2007: yet another SharePoint relief!

 

Y.A.S.R.: SharePoint 2007 Site Columns

[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] If you know a little bit about SharePoint 2003 you probably are aware of the fact that you can add custom columns to a SharePoint List or a Document Library. For example you can add an Importance column to a Document Library so each document in that library can have an Importance value. Probably if you want to do this nicely, you create Choice column so users can select the value for the Importance field from a couple of predefined values (e.g. Important, Very Important …). So far so good, this works fine in SharePoint 2003. But suppose you would like to have this Importance column also in another Document Library or in another List. The only option that you have in SharePoint 2003 is to repeat the creation of the field for the other Lists or Libraries (including defining all the different Importance values). In SharePoint 2007 you can avoid this repetitive work by using a new feature called Site columns. When you navigate to the Site Settings of a site, you’ll see a link called Site columns.

Clicking this link will bring you to the Site Column Gallery. This gallery contains all the defined Site columns, as you can see there are a bunch of columns that you get out of the box. Because this list can get quite long, you can divide the Site columns into groups.

From this gallery you can also create a new Site column, by clicking the Create link. Creating a Site column works exactly the same as creating a column for a Document Library or List. In this example I’ve created the Importance column and I’ve put it into the YASR group. The Source of the column is identified as YASR1 which is the name of the site.

When you want to add the newly created site column either to a Document Library or List, you need to navigate to the Settings of the Library or List. In the Columns section you’ll find links to create a new column, or to add a column from existing site columns.

Selecting a site column is quite easy: the groups are listed in a drop down and it’s possible to add more than one column at the same time.

When you’ve added the column to a Document Library or List, the library or list will have the Imortance column right away, including all the settings that have been chosen for this column (e.g. different values). Of course it’s possible to add the same site column to multiple Document Libraries or Lists. That’s already quite nice functionality, don’t you think? It gets even better: just imagine that you’ve added the Importance field to a bunch of SharePoint 2003 lists and libraries (which involves doing some repetitive manual actions) and you realize that you forgot to add a Importance value (e.g. Critical). There was no other option for you to go to each SharePoint Library or List and to manually update the Importance field, so the new value was added. However in SharePoint 2007 Site columns, update a site column that you have added to libraries or lists already. When you make the update you can specify if you would like to update all the lists and libraries that make use of this site column, or not. Yet another Sharepoint relief!

Via http://blog.funknstyle.com/sharepoint2007/

1. Add colon in between a 6-digit number to represent time:

 

Change 002750 to 00:27:50

 

 

 

2. Calculate the time difference in hour format:

 

Time difference between 00:27:50 and 00:36:30

 

 

 

3. Convert hour format to seconds:

 

 

 

 

Via Microsoft:

 

SUMMARY

MORE INFORMATION

FrontPage Themes

 

 

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Themes\artsy

 

3. Double-click the Unpack_elm.vbs script to run it.

 

4. When the script is finished, the graphics and text files that make up the theme will be unpacked in the folder.

 

The following sample WSH script sample repacks the individual files used in the theme into a .elm file.

 

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Themes\artsy

 

Via Brad Covelle:

 

This is actually more complicated than I had originally thought, so I spent some time doing it myself and verifying the steps below. These are the exact steps I went through and was successful in creating a theme for my WSS site.

1. Open FrontPage 2003, Click on Format -> Theme -> then on the task pane that opens you can either modify an existing theme and save it, save it with a different name, or click “Create a new theme…” at the bottom of the task pane.
2. Then on the screen that opens you can modify the colors, text, fonts… and then click “Save As” and just save it in the default location and give it a one word name.
3. The theme will be saved in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Themes\<theme name>
4. Then go to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;295409&Product=fp2000 create the Unpack_elm.vbs script, place it in the folder from #3 and run it. Then delete the vbs file out of that folder once the files have been unpacked.
5. Copy the entire folder to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\template\themes
6. Open C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\template\layouts\1033\spthemes.xml with NotePad.
7. Add a template by adding the lines below:

<Templates>

<TemplateID>halloween</TemplateID>  (this value should match the name of the folder you copied)

<DisplayName>Halloween</DisplayName> (this value can be anything, it will be displayed to the user)

<Description>Description</Description>    (again any value is fine, this value is unused by SharePoint)

<Thumbnail>../images/thice.png</Thumbnail> (this image won’t be used and so you can use this value or leave it blank)

<Preview>../images/thice.gif</Preview>  (This value is a .gif file of a screen shot of your theme applied to a site, it should be 300 x 179 and located here: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\IMAGES)

</Templates>
8. Perform an iisreset on the SharePoint server and now when you choose to Apply a Theme to a site your custom theme will be listed and you can apply it.

via SharePoint Team Blog

 

Today we announced the naming and packaging for the next release of the Office system products including Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Please check out the press release materials.

Most of the stuff in the materials is self-explanatory, but I thought I'd talk about the evolution from "Office SharePoint Portal Server" to "Office SharePoint Server" as people might wonder about it. First, we thought simpler was better - it is one less word! Second, the features above WSS are expanding so much - the new CMS \ SPS integration and other portal, content mangmenet, collaboration, search, business process and intelligence features - that we thought "portal" was a little narrow to be the umbrella name. We also made the investments I talked about the Light-Up Not Just Roll-Up post to make sure these features applied to all the sites in your organization not just top-level portals.

I do want to make sure thought the support for portals does not get lost in the change. In particular, I would particularly highlight the new CMS features (err Office SharePoint Server Web Publishing features - gotta get used to that), personal and MySite capabilities, LOB integration and enhanced internet and extranet support (things like pluggable authentication) that expand SharePoint's position is the leading enterprise portal solution.

The other thing that I get asked about a lot is the different between SPS and WSS. There is a good overview here but I think think this gets simpler in the next release with all the extra features and light-up support. We did think about not using "SharePoint" in both Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server but we felt that would caused confusion because Office SharePoint Server is so clearly built on WSS.

Lastly, since it is a common post, Beta 2 will be available in the first half of 2006 - please register for that at http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview - with final release by the end of 2006.

It has been a busy week - I was going to try to get another post up about the Office Live service for small business and its use of Windows SharePoint Services but that will have to wait a couple of days.

-- Jeff

Aging 30days

 

 

 

Via P.J. Hough

 

A very common use of WSS lists is to track important information. Lists are really useful as a tracking tool; they can easily be sorted, filtered, grouped. They can be easily edited and the Datasheet control can be used for bulk list operations. By subscribing to a list for alerts, individuals can easily identify when important changes happen to the list items they care about. 

In WSS V3, we have added some additional features to our list infrastructure that are both useful in their own right, and also make it easier to build more sophisticated tracking applications. The main tracking features that we have added include list item versioning, append-only field type and workflow. However, the features are not unique to a particular list type in WSS – we decided to build these features as core platform extensions. Each one of these capabilities has a myriad of uses in WSS – we have combined them to enhance WSS as a platform for tracking applications, but they also benefit our Document Management and Content Management capabilities, as well as opening up a wide array of scenarios to developers and partners building on WSS.

In addition to building the underlying features that enable tracking applications, we will also ship an Issue Tracking list template out of the box. This template will have all of the tracking features enabled by default and will be a great starting point for customers who want to experience all the enhanced tracking features in one place.

List item Versioning
Many tracking applications rely on being able to see the evolution of an item over time. This can be easily modeled using list item versioning. By enabling versioning, WSS will keep track of all edits to the list item and display a rich view that shows the changes that have occurred for each version. Here’s a small example of how it will appear.

 

You can see that for each version, we show the fields that have changed, when the changed happened, and who made the change. As an aside, we’ve used this view as the basis for improvements to our email notifications, but more about that in another post. One important change we've made for task lists is to allow the list owner to determine if all task owners should receive email notification when a task is assigned to them. This will help overcome the problem of task owners not knowing that a task (perhaps on a list that they don't visit regularly) had been assigned to them.

Append-only field type
The append-only field can be used to append comments to an item that's being tracked without the possibility of changing previous comments. We’ve made this ‘append-only’ capability a property of the multi-line text field, so that you can include such a field in any list.

The ‘description of change’ field in the form above is an example of such an append-only field. When the item is edited, new data can be appended in this field, but none of the earlier remarks can be edited or deleted. For issue tracking and helpdesk applications, this type of field is very useful. It preserves the history, yet it makes it easy to see the latest status.

Tracking and Gantt views
One of the common visualizations that we have seen to present data stored in WSS is a Gantt view. Often, this visualization is simply used to quickly communicate the status of the project and to provide a high-level view of the main tasks. Our Gantt view combines the Gantt chart of the project with the associated list data.

 

This Gantt view is simply that; it’s a view (one that can be enabled on any list that has start and end dates for the items in the list). We don’t model or calculate  dependencies or resources; customers requiring such capabilities should continue to use Microsoft Project and Microsoft Project Server. For more sophisticated tracking scenarios, it will be possible to associate approval workflows with each item that's being tracked in the list. I’ll write more about workflow in a later post.
Its also worth pointing out that it will be possible to synchronize WSS tasks into Outlook 12. The synchronization is 2-way – changes made to the task within Outlook will be sync’ed back to WSS, allowing users to consolidate tasks from Outlook and multiple WSS sites into a single view in Outlook to better manage their time and priorities. Our Outlook 12 integration is quite extensive, and I’ll save that also for another post. In the meantime, you can check out Melissa MacBeth's blog posts on Task and Time Management in Outlook 12 http://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/

Also, the Microsoft Access 12 team has built a tracking template that interacts directly with Issue Tracking template that will ship in WSS. The schemas for the two applications are identical, and the Access solution can be used as a rich front-end against WSS data. Here's a screenshot of how that application will look in Access 12.

All of the features I’ve described above can be applied to any list that you create in WSS V3, and even to lists that you upgrade from WSS v2. So, if you’re already using a list for tracking purposes, you can easily enable these features when you upgrade.