Site Collection Rollups for WSS or MOSS

Over at Lightning Tools, Nick Swan and co have come up with a new SharePoint web part called Lightning Conductor.  This allows you to do cross-site aggregation of list items and includes some features not included in the standard Content Query Web Part that comes with MOSS – for example Lightning Conductor allows you to roll up content from more than one site collection.

Also, the new web part works with both MOSS and WSS which is good news because WSS doesn’t include the Content Query Web Part.  For many smaller organisations, the combination of WSS 3 with Search Server Express and a web part like Lightning Tools will be all they need, providing they’re not interested in Excel Services, Publishing, Forms Services etc.

Technorati tags: SharePoint 2007, wss, web part, content query

A Good SharePoint Book for End Users

This weekend I got a chance to look properly at a new book from Robert Bogue called The SharePoint Shepherd’s Guide for End Users.  Robert has done a good job putting together a set of scenario-based “how-tos” for end users, covering the SharePoint tasks they might want to accomplish during the working day. 

Note this is definitely not a book for advanced users or administrators, or those wanting to use SharePoint as a development platform.  A very good resource for day to day users though.  Robert has put together a SharePoint based web site for the book which you can see here and I notice that the book is available in various forms for corporate licensing – it would make a really good handout for those delivering end-user training.

You can by the book from Lulu.com at the moment, although Robert expects it to be available on Amazon soon.  Lulu are a “print on demand” organisation so if you order the book, chances are it won’t be despatched the same day.

Technorati tags: sharepoint 2007, books, training

SharePoint Branding Tool from SharePointSix

Douglas Leung has come up with a little tool to let you change the theme, site logo or master page on multiple SharePoint sites.  If you have ever had to run through a large set of existing sites to make these changes you will know it’s quite tedious.  The tool that Douglas has developed looks like it will make this job a lot easier.  What’s quite nice is that you can filter the sites you want to re-brand by filtering by the theme they are already using, and he says it works with MySites as well.

More information here and the download is here. #

Update 24 March – Douglas has posted a newer version, screenshots and download link here.

Technorati tags: SharePoint, theme, branding, masterpage