Sharepoint idea for work

knownhero

Hi guys,

Just need your input on this one. Here at work we have a number of air con units and as you might know in the datacenter air cons go wrong. Well now we have been asked to make a spreadsheet on the failures and on what unit etc.

Now I suggested we use the newly installed SharePoint. Now here is were I need some input from you guys.

I know you can bring a database into SharePoint using a feature that name escapes me right now. But what I'm asking is querying it and adding information into it. Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

Regards

RobertKaucher

Sounds like you are talking about the BDC or Business Data Catalog. This is not a part of WSS, only MOSS. There are other ways that this can be done, though. They just require coding. How do you want info to be displayed?

knownhero

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Sounds like you are talking about the BDC or Business Data Catalog. This is not a part of WSS, only MOSS. There are other ways that this can be done, though. They just require coding. How do you want info to be displayed?

BDC that's the one. Yeah we have MOSS here so I want to use this to its full potential. Id ideally like it to be drop downs with the units number and it fetch all the data for example last serviced etc.

Also would like a top 5 units that have been worked on a lot to be shown. If that makes sense. I mean the coding I’m not too clued up on though I have a friend here that's used it before but not in depth.

RobertKaucher

The BDC is a pretty large topic and not really knowing about your setup I cannot really give you any specific advice. Here are some books that I suggest for you.

Amazon.com: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices (9780735625389): Ben Curry, Bill English: Books
Amazon.com: Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Unleashed (9780672329470): Michael Noel, Colin Spence: Books
Amazon.com: Real World SharePoint 2007: Indispensable Experiences From 16 MOSS and WSS MVPs (Programmer to Programmer) (9780470168356): Robert Bogue, Adam Buenz, Andrew Connell, Stacy Draper, Luis Du Solier Grinda, Todd Klindt, Jason Medero, Dustin M

I would suggest setting up a test environment with a backup of your database and trying out your ideas. If you really want to start breaking into being a serious MOSS admin I would suggest you start looking into the following:

* Windows PowerShell
* C# and ASP.NET
* SharePoint Designer

You can really get up to speed pretty easily on basic developmental stuff that will help you a lot as an admin. The only suggestion I have as far as that goes is that you make sure you have the basics of configuring and administration really mastered.

knownhero

RobertKaucher wrote: »

The BDC is a pretty large topic and not really knowing about your setup I cannot really give you any specific advice. Here are some books that I suggest for you.

Amazon.com: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices (9780735625389): Ben Curry, Bill English: Books
Amazon.com: Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Unleashed (9780672329470): Michael Noel, Colin Spence: Books
Amazon.com: Real World SharePoint 2007: Indispensable Experiences From 16 MOSS and WSS MVPs (Programmer to Programmer) (9780470168356): Robert Bogue, Adam Buenz, Andrew Connell, Stacy Draper, Luis Du Solier Grinda, Todd Klindt, Jason Medero, Dustin M

I would suggest setting up a test environment with a backup of your database and trying out your ideas. If you really want to start breaking into being a serious MOSS admin I would suggest you start looking into the following:

* Windows PowerShell
* C# and ASP.NET
* SharePoint Designer

You can really get up to speed pretty easily on basic developmental stuff that will help you a lot as an admin. The only suggestion I have as far as that goes is that you make sure you have the basics of configuring and administration really mastered.

Thanks the help dude

knownhero

Just as a mini update. I finally have got my workplace to let me have a copy of their database on my own server! So I can mess around with this idea. As we have a testing MOSS setup they wont let me mess with