This topic and the other business scenarios available present examples of how the Data Publisher can be used effectively.
At NewCo, prospective customers are captured by a variety of marketing means and managed in a single contact list called “suspects” within the Marketing Department’s SharePoint site. Since many of these individuals come in over the web and other unscreened sources, John goes through the leads every day to verify contact information and complete any missing contact details. Marketing uses this list for its newsletter and other promotional purposes, but John also needs to pass along the leads to the appropriate salespeople for direct sales follow-up.
Sales doesn’t want to be going to multiple sites, like Marketing, to get the information they need because:
• It's inconvenient
• They already have a contact list with prospects from their direct efforts and don’t want to work with two separate lists
• They have customized their contact list to include other key profile data to help manage the sales process
Therefore, because the contacts are in separate lists, John needs to copy the appropriate contacts from Marketing to Sales. This is a manual entry process for John as he re-keys each contact, requiring hours of work every week, and he often makes data entry errors.
John finds a better way to copy the contact information, the CorasWorks Data Publisher. John simply drags and drops the Data Publisher web part from his gallery onto his Marketing SharePoint site. He then goes through a simple five-step process one time to tell the Data Publisher what he wants to do.
1. He selects the URL(s) that contain the sites he wants to use. This includes the Marketing site that contains the “Suspect Contact” list (source) and the Sales site with the “Sales Contact” list (destination).
2. Next, he selects lists and maps the fields for the records that will be copied to the destination list. John chooses the standard contact information:
• Last Name
• First Name
• E-mail Address
• Company
• Job Title
• Business Phone
• Fax Number
• Address
• City
• State
• Postal Code
• Web Page
However, John wants to include a special field called “Transfer Message” to note the date and time and any other pertinent communications he wants to attach to the record for Sales. He also wants to add a field that doesn’t exist in the Sales list, called “Marketing Code,” so they can track deals that close and identify the lead source on those deals. When John goes to map these two fields, he selects the option to "Create New Transfer Message Field" and "Create New Marketing Code Field." This will add the fields to the destination list when the records are copied.
3. John then goes to the Define Filters step, which is optional. He wants to limit the records he copies to only those that have been assigned to an account executive. So he selects "Account Executive" as the field to filter on and in the When field he selects "Is Not Equal To," and leaves the Value field blank. Alternatively, John could leave the When field set to "Select" and type "is not null" in the Value field.
4. Then John defines the data transfer to specify that he wants to copy records rather than move them as the contacts are used by both Marketing and Sales. John can also scan the list of contacts and, if for some reason he doesn’t want to send a particular contact, simply clicks a box to “deselect” it from the copy.
5. Finally, John goes to the Execute screen to perform a test, checking that his configuration settings satisfy all his requirements (that the lists and fields exist and have an “OK” next to them in both the source and destination sites). Once this is done, John clicks a button to transfer the data.
The process took John less than 15 minutes to complete. After his initial setup, John’s configuration is saved so he can simply click one button to execute the copy on a daily basis.
Mark, the Sales manager, saw this capability and realized that he could implement a similar process using the Data Publisher. He selects prospects that the Sales team identifies through direct sales efforts and copies those prospects to the Marketing list so they get the newsletter and other communications from NewCo. Mark easily filters out the records he doesn't want included.
Mark also determines that he can filter on closed business each day and have an administrative resource copy contacts from Sales to his Services team for implementation and Customer Support follow-up. This enables Customer Support to see notes from the sales people regarding any particular commitments or requirements for implementation.
NewCo continually strives to achieve better communications by sharing information with its customers as a means to gain a competitive advantage, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and increase its operational efficiency. To address this from a technology perspective, NewCo implemented an extranet using SharePoint and CorasWorks to provide each customer with a secure area to access key documents such as price lists, product specifications, and order forms.
NewCo regularly makes changes to customer documents such as pricing, standard specifications, and order forms that need to be published to its hundreds of customers on the extranet. However, the publishing process is manual, cumbersome, and time-consuming because each document and form library has to be accessed and updated individually. NewCo has an employee whose sole job responsibility is data entry on the extranet.
With the Data Publisher from CorasWorks, NewCo can routinely move updated documents maintained and revised on their intranet to targeted customers on the extranet with a click of a button.
NewCo has a diverse customer base and organizes their customers into three main categories: small business, medium business, and enterprise clients. The documents and forms that require updating are only unique to these respective groups, not to each individual customer, and the Data Publisher is ideal for updating documents across multiple sites.
Dave, the administrator who used to spend 100% of his time updating records, now spends less than 15 minutes each day completing the same work, minus the errors, by using the Data Publisher. Dave configures Data Publisher only once, then simply uses filters, site selections, and list options to update the right lists with the right documents on a routine basis (e.g. updated pricing, updated product specifications, and updated order forms). For the initial setup he selects the CorasWorks Data Publisher web part from his virtual gallery and adds it to his intranet site, he then goes through a short five step process to tell the Data Publisher the details of his specific needs.
1. He selects the URLs that contain the sites he wants to use. This includes the intranet site containing the document list where his updated records reside (the source site) and then selects the sites on the extranet that contain the libraries where the documents need to be copied (destination site).
2. Next, he selects the document library on his intranet site where the desired documents reside (source library). He then selects the destination document libraries that he needs to update on the extranet site (destination libraries). In this case, the fields are the same in both the source and destination libraries, so there's no need for any customized mapping and Dave simply confirms that the fields properly map to each other.
Dave wants to add one additional field called “Transfer Message” where he can note the date and time and any other pertinent communications associated with the data transfer. That way, the customer can see a message regarding the update that is attached to each record.
3. Dave then defines the filters, which are important because he needs to filter documents based on both the document type (e.g., pricing) and customer size (small, medium, or enterprise). He defines the necessary criteria for the filter to ensure that the Data Publisher returns only those documents he needs:
1. Set the Field to Type
2. Set When to Is Equal To
3. Type pricing in the Value field
4. Select Add Another Filter
5. Select And from the And/Or field
6. Set the Field to Customer Size
7. Set When to Is Equal To
8. Type small in the Value field (or whatever size is appropriate for the data transfer)
9. Select Store Settings
4. Then Dave defines the data transfer to specify that he wants to copy records rather than move them. Documents like pricing will be revised in the future, so he wants to maintain a copy in his library. Before performing the copy, Dave can scan the list of documents and, if for some reason he doesn’t want to publish a particular document, he simply clicks a box to “deselect” it from the list.
5. Finally, Dave goes to the Execute screen to perform a test to check that his configuration settings satisfy all his requirements (that the libraries and fields exist and have an “OK” next to them in both the source and destination sites). Then he transfers the data.
After his initial setup, Dave saves the configuration so he can simply execute document updates from the intranet to the extranet on a routine and as-needed basis.
Each employee at NewCo has a My Site that is their personal starting point for viewing and contributing to the organization's intranet through the SharePoint Portal site. Often times, employees want to move or copy data from their My Site to a collaborative team site. One example is an individual who drafts a set of product requirements in their My Site and wants to move those requirements to a project site for collaboration with other team members.
By definition, “My Site” is not accessible to other employees. Therefore, when data needs to be copied or moved to a list or library within a team site, individuals find themselves saving lists as templates, exporting data to Excel, and then importing it into the new site. Alternatively, they may manually cut and paste or re-key information. All of these options present limitations as well as opportunities for errors and user frustration.
The Data Publisher supports both SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). Therefore, lists and libraries can be moved or copied from a My Site on SharePoint Portal to the desired lists and libraries within SPS areas, sub-areas, or WSS site collections.
Victoria is a member of the product team at NewCo and created a list within her My Site to capture requirements for a new product idea she had. After discussions with her manager, it was decided that the team would develop a project around the new idea, and a team site was created.
Using the CorasWorks Data Publisher, Victoria is easily able to move the data from her requirements list to a new requirements list on the team's project site in Windows SharePoint Services. First, she selected the CorasWorks Data Publisher web part from the virtual gallery and added it to her My Site, then she went through a short five step process to tell the Data Publisher the necessary details to move the data from her requirements list to the list on the project site.
1. Victoria selects the URLs for the project site (the destination site) and her My Site (the source site).
2. Next, she selects the lists she wants to work with which include the requirements list on her My Site where the desired data resides (source list) and the list on her project site where she wants to move the data (destination list). In this case, the fields are the same for both the source and destination lists, as NewCo has a list template they use for requirements, so Victoria simply confirms that the fields properly map to each other.
3. Victoria wants to move all of the data, so she leaves the Define Filters screen blank.
4. Next, she defines the data transfer. She chooses to move the records rather than copy them because she will no longer need them in her My Site. Before performing the move, she confirms that the correct records are selected and marked with a check box.
5. Finally, Victoria goes to the Execute screen. She performs a test to check that her configuration settings satisfy all requirements (that the lists and fields exist and have an “OK” next to them in both the source and destination sites). Once that is done, she transfers the data.