Hi,A client has given us a SharePoint project which at first seemed fairly simple but (as is usually the case) has thrown up a few scenarios which are proving a bit tricky to overcome. Perhaps someone out there cleverer than me can shed some light…
The requirements: This is a large public sector organisation. The HR department is looking for a way to publish their Policies and Procedures ‘handbook’ to all internal employees as well as some external authorised users. The ‘Handbook’ actually comprises approximately 100 separate Word 2007 documents grouped into categories. There are also a large number of forms (not InfoPath) that will be linked to from the Handbook for user download. It has been requested that the handbook be published to end-users in HTML. Each policy could contain links to other policies and forms. The client would also like a downloadable “rolled-up” version of the handbook where all individual documents are compiled in to one document (perhaps in PDF). All policies will need to be printable in a consistent and clean format (e.g. no SharePoint branding).
My solution (so far): A site that sits within the HR intranet site. One secure document library where members of the HR Admin team edit and approve Word 2007 documents. These documents will be subject to an approval workflow. On approval we then need to run a document conversion process to turn these into HTML and publish the documents to an accessible destination, within the same site. We may also need to publish the documents (simultaneously) to an externally accessible location (possibly on the internet or extranet site).
The problems:
- The Document Converter process seems very hard to configure. Does anyone have any links to decent articles on this process? I’ve created a Content Type and am configuring the Conversion process through the browser. Eventually I will need to build this in CAML so any tips there? The document loses all formatting when it gets converted to HTML. I’ve managed to get round this by hard-coding some styles in the Page Layout (through SPD) but I’m sure there must be a more elegant approach??
- Links to other policies are hard-coded in the Word documents. If the documents get published to one internal site and one external site is there any way of controlling this within the publishing/conversion process? Using relative links is not even enough here as the external site will have an entirely different URL, not just the domain. All policies are in the same folder so perhaps we can use direct links (same folder). All forms should be in a sibling folder so perhaps we can use ‘../’ type links. The trouble is it will be end-users creating these links so they won’t be able to do that type of thing. All I can imagine doing is intercepting the Word document on approval and removing all internal link paths. Is this feasible?
- How might you guys tackle the task of amalgamating the documents in to one? This would need to run every time a policy gets updated.
- The client wants a Treeview in the sidebar including all policies and forms. The Treeview out of the box seems to only display libraries (not the docs inside). Any ideas?
There’s a bit more to this that I haven’t detailed here but hopefully I’ve got those bits covered. This is one of those situations where SharePoint gives you 80% of the solution but the final 20% is a right PITA. Any pointers and suggestions will be much appreciated.