I'm looking for some guidance as to how this can be achieved, or whether there are any existing solutions out there that can be used.
This is what we have now: Our existing website is static HTML for the most part. We periodically post documents for the public, and that's done by manually uploading the files through FTP and generating a static HTML page that lists those files.
We also have a SharePoint 2003 intranet site, and we give out log-ins to select public users to give them access to more files. The issue is we also upload the same above mentioned documents to SharePoint, so that's double the work and double the space consumption.
What would I like to implement: We're moving the site to ASP.NET. I want to avoid multiple uploads and redundancy. Someone in the office uploads documents to SharePoint only, marks them or tags them as private or public (not 100% about this part yet), and then Umbraco has a page that dynamically lists the public documents and allows visitors to download them. There is no need to upload or edit anything through the internet website, just list documents as mentioned.
Any thoughts on accomplishing this, or where to begin? Other than SharePoint 2003, WSS 3.0 is also available to aid in this task.
I'm not aware of any SharePoint connector for Umbraco. I've contemplated writing one but it would take a lot of work to achieve.
Why not just upload the documents to Umbraco, and have it manage everything? Sounds like SharePoint isn't really providing you with much functionality.
The client does want to keep SharePoint, they use it on the intranet. Also, all credentials are in the Active Directory so using Umbraco to manage the documents means just more duplication unfortunately.
Do I really need a SharePoint "connector" here? I'm guessing since that is not built-in functionality (unless someone sells such modules), one could in theory write an ASP.NET page that talks to SharePoint and integrate that into Umbraco?
You can easily write a .NET user control which would query back to SharePoint either via the SharePoint API or via the web services.
That's the easiest way to achieve what you need. Unless you actually need the documents to appear in the Umbraco admin there's no need to "integrate it with Umbraco", you can just have it as a stand alone piece of functionality on the front of the site.
I had a similar thought, I've worked with Opentext DMS and Sharepoint and was going to write a pluggable DMS connector. I never did it for the simple fact that both products already have a web UI.
The user control idea is a nice one, pull in the AD loggedin user, pass that through to the WSS api to retain security on documents and render a list.
Not sure how you would then handle launching the document though as you are handing off to the Office integration or webdav (maybe?)
Feel free to bounce some ideas around, I may well resurrect my original idea :-)
I believe there are some different Umbraco<->SharePoint projects in the making. I have seen at least a couple of tweets from people working on something, but not sure whether it was a SharePoint connector or some similar.
But I do know that I will be developing a SharePoint connector for a client starting next month. I don't have the exact time frame as its currently up to the customer when we can get started. This connector might very well be made into a commercial product, but I guess that doesn't help you here and now.
I would be happy to check back to this post when I have more details if you are interested?
I had the same thoughts while reading the original post. Getting lists and presenting them in your website is no problem, but the documents need to be passed to umbraco since you cannot redirect anonymous users to Sharepoint sites, so mirroring might be unavoidable.
About the basic question, integration of SP and Umbraco.
If I understood you well, you got some sort of documents in a SP document library, which based on the properties you defined in the library should or should not be shared over the internet. As you mentioned also, the actual solution is a file list generated from an FTP folders content. Your goal is just the same, if you start up from the SP library: you need a simple page or user control, which will enlist the library's contents. SP has a web service layer, which is capable for this function, you can write queries against, and you can display the results, which is basically XML in any layout.
I don't see the goal for the Umbraco integration, but sure, it's possible, moreover, it's easy to do.
Another solution could be some kind of synchronization, which is a bit more complex, but not that difficult at all. This one would be good for combining activities of SP users and internet users: someone from the internet could comment on a video, or whatever.
@Arpicheck, Umbraco and other CMS:s are great at handling »information» and publish it but that's not really all roles »information» got. You must also consider how people work and whats best for the editorial staff. Integrating Umbraco (and other CMS systems) with a business system (like SharePoint) is usually a must since these CMS:s isn't really built to perform as Business Support Systems.
Connecting Umbraco to Sharepoint
Hello everyone,
I'm looking for some guidance as to how this can be achieved, or whether there are any existing solutions out there that can be used.
This is what we have now: Our existing website is static HTML for the most part. We periodically post documents for the public, and that's done by manually uploading the files through FTP and generating a static HTML page that lists those files.
We also have a SharePoint 2003 intranet site, and we give out log-ins to select public users to give them access to more files. The issue is we also upload the same above mentioned documents to SharePoint, so that's double the work and double the space consumption.
What would I like to implement: We're moving the site to ASP.NET. I want to avoid multiple uploads and redundancy. Someone in the office uploads documents to SharePoint only, marks them or tags them as private or public (not 100% about this part yet), and then Umbraco has a page that dynamically lists the public documents and allows visitors to download them. There is no need to upload or edit anything through the internet website, just list documents as mentioned.
Any thoughts on accomplishing this, or where to begin? Other than SharePoint 2003, WSS 3.0 is also available to aid in this task.
Thanks a bunch!
I'm not aware of any SharePoint connector for Umbraco. I've contemplated writing one but it would take a lot of work to achieve.
Why not just upload the documents to Umbraco, and have it manage everything? Sounds like SharePoint isn't really providing you with much functionality.
The client does want to keep SharePoint, they use it on the intranet. Also, all credentials are in the Active Directory so using Umbraco to manage the documents means just more duplication unfortunately.
Do I really need a SharePoint "connector" here? I'm guessing since that is not built-in functionality (unless someone sells such modules), one could in theory write an ASP.NET page that talks to SharePoint and integrate that into Umbraco?
You can easily write a .NET user control which would query back to SharePoint either via the SharePoint API or via the web services.
That's the easiest way to achieve what you need.
Unless you actually need the documents to appear in the Umbraco admin there's no need to "integrate it with Umbraco", you can just have it as a stand alone piece of functionality on the front of the site.
I had a similar thought, I've worked with Opentext DMS and Sharepoint and was going to write a pluggable DMS connector. I never did it for the simple fact that both products already have a web UI.
The user control idea is a nice one, pull in the AD loggedin user, pass that through to the WSS api to retain security on documents and render a list.
Not sure how you would then handle launching the document though as you are handing off to the Office integration or webdav (maybe?)
Feel free to bounce some ideas around, I may well resurrect my original idea :-)
I believe there are some different Umbraco<->SharePoint projects in the making. I have seen at least a couple of tweets from people working on something, but not sure whether it was a SharePoint connector or some similar.
But I do know that I will be developing a SharePoint connector for a client starting next month. I don't have the exact time frame as its currently up to the customer when we can get started. This connector might very well be made into a commercial product, but I guess that doesn't help you here and now.
I would be happy to check back to this post when I have more details if you are interested?
- Morten
I had the same thoughts while reading the original post. Getting lists and presenting them in your website is no problem, but the documents need to be passed to umbraco since you cannot redirect anonymous users to Sharepoint sites, so mirroring might be unavoidable.
Thank you all for the comments and ideas! I have to continue researching the best approach to this, I'll post back anything helpful I find here.
@Morten: I would be very interested to get more details from you, I could provide my contact info if you'd like.
About the basic question, integration of SP and Umbraco.
If I understood you well, you got some sort of documents in a SP document library, which based on the properties you defined in the library should or should not be shared over the internet. As you mentioned also, the actual solution is a file list generated from an FTP folders content. Your goal is just the same, if you start up from the SP library: you need a simple page or user control, which will enlist the library's contents. SP has a web service layer, which is capable for this function, you can write queries against, and you can display the results, which is basically XML in any layout.
I don't see the goal for the Umbraco integration, but sure, it's possible, moreover, it's easy to do.
Another solution could be some kind of synchronization, which is a bit more complex, but not that difficult at all. This one would be good for combining activities of SP users and internet users: someone from the internet could comment on a video, or whatever.
Here you can find some info about SP WS:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms479390.aspx
About the query language of SP (CAML):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd588106(office.11).aspx
Here is a short example how to integrate SharePoint and Umbraco in less than five minutes.
http://blog.bendsoft.com/?p=37
@Arpicheck, Umbraco and other CMS:s are great at handling »information» and publish it but that's not really all roles »information» got. You must also consider how people work and whats best for the editorial staff. Integrating Umbraco (and other CMS systems) with a business system (like SharePoint) is usually a must since these CMS:s isn't really built to perform as Business Support Systems.
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