<style>
/*—| By @Cstahl 2010, modifications by @Wayne Hammons |—*/
.s4-toplinks{
background-color:#2d9cc7; /*Fallback*/
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#2d9cc7), to(#157db2));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #2d9cc7, #157db2);
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#2d9cc7, endColorstr=#157db2);
-ms-filter: “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#2d9cc7, endColorstr=#157db2)”;
margin-left:0px;
border-top:0px;
border-bottom:0px;
margin-left:0px;
}
#s4-topheader2{
background-color:#2d9cc7; /*Fallback*/
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#2d9cc7), to(#157db2));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #2d9cc7, #157db2);
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#2d9cc7, endColorstr=#157db2);
-ms-filter: “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#2d9cc7, endColorstr=#157db2)”;
}

.menu-horizontal{
margin-left:10px;
border-right: 1px #167FB3 solid;
background-image:none;
}
.menu-horizontal ul li{
color:#fff!important;
min-height:31px;
line-height:30px;
border:0px;
padding:0px;
margin:0px;
border-left:1px #167FB3 solid;
}
.menu-horizontal ul li a{
color:#fff!important;
font-weight:bold;
border:0px!important;
padding:0px!important;
margin:0px;
height:31px!important;
background-color:#2d9cc7; /*Fallback*/
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#2d9cc7), to(#157db2));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #2d9cc7, #157db2);
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#2d9cc7, endColorstr=#157db2);
-ms-filter: “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#2d9cc7, endColorstr=#157db2)”;
padding-right:20px!important;
padding-left:20px!important;
}
.s4-toplinks .s4-tn > .menu-horizontal ul li a:hover {
text-decoration:none!important;
/*if use 333 the DD color will not work*/
color:#333!important;
background-color:#036ba8; /*Fallback*/
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#036ba8), to(#4fb3d3));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #036ba8, #4fb3d3);
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#036ba8, endColorstr=#4fb3d3);
-ms-filter: “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#036ba8, endColorstr=#4fb3d3)”;
height:31px!important;
border:0px;
padding:0px;
margin:0px;
}
.s4-toplinks .s4-tn > .menu-horizontal a.selected {
color: #fff!important;
background-color:#4fb3d3; /*Fallback*/
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#4fb3d3), to(#036ba8));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #4fb3d3, #036ba8);
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#4fb3d3, endColorstr=#036ba8);
-ms-filter: “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#4fb3d3, endColorstr=#036caa)”;
line-height:30px;
height:31px;
border:0px;
padding:0px;
margin:0px;
}
.menu-horizontal A.dynamic-children SPAN.additional-background {
background-image:none!important;
}
.s4-tn ul.dynamic {
background-image:none!important;
border:1px solid #f7f7f7;
border-top:0px;
border-bottom:1px solid #ccc;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.s4-tn li.dynamic {
background-image:none!important;
border-top:1px solid #ccc;
border-right:1px solid #ccc;
border-bottom:0px solid #ccc;
border-left:1px solid #ccc;
}
.s4-tn li.dynamic > .menu-item {
display:block;
padding-left:19px!important;
white-space:nowrap;
font-weight:normal;
background-color:#ffffff!important;
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#ffffff), to(#f7f7f7))!important;
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff, #f7f7f7)!important;
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#ffffff, endColorstr=#f7f7f7)!important;
-ms-filter: “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#ffffff, endColorstr=#f7f7f7)”!important;
color:#333!important;
}
.s4-tn li.dynamic > a:hover {
background-color:#ffffff;
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#ffffff), to(#ffffff))!important;
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff, #ffffff)!important;
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#ffffff, endColorstr=#ffffff)!important;
-ms-filter: “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#ffffff, endColorstr=#ffffff)”!important;
color: green!important;
}
/*—– Some other stuff ——-*/
.col-fluid-1, .right-wp-zone-col {
 margin-top:20px
}
#s4-leftpanel-content {
padding-top:20px!important;
border-right:0px!important;
border-bottom:0px!important;
margin-right:0px;
margin-left:0px;
background-color:#f7f7f7!important
}
.s4-title {
 background: url(/sites/adminapps/SiteAssets/HCFlogo.jpg) repeat-y scroll right;
 min-height: 123px;
}

.s4-titlelogo{
padding-left:10px;
display:none
}
.s4-titletext{
padding-right:10px;
margin-right:20px;
margin-left:20px
}
TD.ms-sbscopes {
padding-right:0px
}
.s4-search, .s4-rp{
padding-top:3px!important;
margin-right:0px;
}
.s4-search TABLE {
margin-right:0px
}
.s4-title-inner{
background:transparent;
padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;
margin-left:0px;
min-height:123px;
}
.s4-socialdata-notif { display:none; }
.ms-cui-ribbonTopBars{background: olive url() repeat-x;
padding-top:0px;
}
<style> 
DIV #s4-topheader2  { 
BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #323232;
PADDING-TOP: 4px;
PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; 
}
.ms-rteElement-H1B {
 color:#CC0000
}
</style>

It must seem that all I do these days is the Tampa Bay SharePoint Users Group. That really isn’t the case. I have a family life and I coordinate another large group that meets weekly.  In addition to those personal activities I have a job.

 This last week I have had the pleasure of sitting in on the RackSpace Tuesday afternoon wing ding SharePoint thing.  Randy Driscall and John Ross were oozing SharePoint wisdom.  Randy discussed branding with css and demonstrated adding a background image to the title area.  He also showed the firebug and IE developers’ tools. 

I have a current task to re-brand a SharePoint site collection to resemble our Internet site. 

External website

Fortunately, the Internet site navigation mimics SharePoint or visa verse. I have been able to create an alternate css file using SharePoint Designer. Using some css example code I cut from End User SharePoint, I changed the top navigation to look very much like our web site, with blue buttons and white lettering (the original code was generated by Christian Ståhl, blue.css, I made necessary modifications).

Next, Using the IE developer tools I was able to identify the css element for the dark blue bar at the top of the screen.  I added the .ms-cui-ribbonTopBars{background: olive url() repeat-x; padding-top:0px;  to the css file and that made the top of the screen olive.

Finally, I addressed the title area. I added a background image to the s-4.title and played around with anchoring.  Next I hid the social elements. To complete the assignment I hid the logo.

SharePoint internal site

The result was a low cost high impact branding make over.  It was easy to demo because I can add the file to a CEWP on the test server and tweak it until the communication director is happy. Then add the file as alternate css in a publishing environment.

Tampa Bay sharePoint Users Group Website

The Tampa Bay SPUG has a website at www.TampaBaySharePoint.org.  This will provide a location for news, announcements, a community calendar, links, and discussions.  Come by and check it out. 

This is an exciting development in the life of our new group.

As part of the overall Information Management strategy, I was focusing on how to manage collaboration or team sites.

I discovered a pattern that helped with segregating sites that required differant quote and usage monitoring configurations.   We are not implementing any third party technologies for assisting with site management.  We are going to have to maintain our site collections internally.  Here is the proposed approach for collaboration sites.

A two separate web applications. The first for persistant collaboration sites. the second is for temporary sites.  This way we can adjust the site use confirmation and deletions based on the differing requirements.

Non Persistent collaboration sites

 Persistent Collaboration Sites

Planning

There has been a lot written on business analysis and requirements gathering. The following is not designed to be an authoritative process. The point is that the development of a solution is predicated on their being a problem. Start by identifying a problem and understanding the nature of the problem. SharePoint Composite solutions will be be most effective at automating well established processes. It is more difficult to take a poorly defined process with a lot of exceptional cases and automate it in effort to glean some level of control. Unfortunately, it is easier for an organization to identify poor processes as a problem and seek out automation as a solution rather than focusing on management.

Here is a general approach to the planning process:

1. Meet with key stakeholders and discuss the problem. Try to avoid discussing any approach to solving the problem at the initial meeting.
1. Ask general questions about the process and develop a basic process flow diagram.
2. Ask about the number of transactions to determine the growth rate of data that might end up stored in SharePont list and libraries.
3. Identify as many of the people as possible that are involved in the process so that you can meet with them to get as broad an understanding of the problem as possible.
4. Identify the various customer roles, common ones are System Admin, Approvers, Contributors, and Visitors.
5. If there is an existing process, schedule a demonstration.
6. Identify any reports or outputs from the process and get copies if possible.
2. Develop a general process flow diagram:
1. Visio diagram with each step with the following information.
2. What are the inputs and what are the outputs for each step?
3. Who is responsible for each step?
4. What is the timing of each step?
5. Any exceptions that effect the normal processing.
6. 
3. Create an Entity Relation Diagram.
1. If this were a database, what tables would you create?
2. If this were a database, what fields would link the tables?
3. 
4. Process verification:
1. Meet with various key personnel and ensure that they verify that you understand the process.
2. Take process flow diagram.
3. Verify steps and identify any variances.
4. Attempt to witness process in real time as much as possible. Job shadowing the key people involved in the process is an excellent way to identify exception cases that were not covered initially.
5. Follow the dataflow to discover subsequent operations and stakeholders.
6. Attempt to get key personnel to participate in the user story creation.
5. User stories
1. Identify the various user groups (inputs, consumers, admins).
2. Create a series of stories for each group.
3. The format is simple: As an “x”, I need “y”, so “z” will happen.
4. Write the stories on 3×5 cards.
5. For each user story create technical solution and write that on the back of the card.
6. For each technical solution create an estimation of effort in tokens.
1.  A token represents a unit of time that it takes to perform a simple action. Use a task that takes about 15 minutes.
2. For all of the single token items go through and put a 1 in the top right corner.
3. For each item that is about twice as time consuming put a 2 in the right hand corner.
4. Keep incrementing until you have all the task that are to large to estimate.
5. Rank them by level of effort and look at each of them to see if they can be broken into a series of smaller task that can be estimated.
6. For remaining task determine what task is about half as hard and double the estimation for that task and write in in the upper right corner.
7. For each user story write a test. A user account logged on with “x” permission level and do “y” and “z” happens but if they do something else “z” doesn’t happen.
6. Verification
1. Verify all the stories, process diagram and schema with the Customer.
2. Discuss the initial approach for the project.
3. Provide estimations for effort and timing.
4. Be open to changes