The DotNetNuke (DNN) 6.x SharePoint Connector is easy and flexible to configure and use. In my previous article, DNN 6 and the SharePoint Connector, I discussed the business uses, pros, and cons of the Conector. This blog provides a tutorial to utilize the SharePoint Connector effectively. Your environment must include SharePoint 2007 and DNN 6.x Enterprise Edition. The Connector provides a one-way communication to copy over documents from your SharePoint instance into your DNN instance. The tutorial delves into the following three aspects of the SharePoint Connector setup:
1. Timer Job Deployment in the SharePoint environment
2. Configuration of SharePoint with DotNetNuke Integration
3. Synchronization Setup
Deploying the Solution into SharePoint
The current version of the connector is created for SharePoint 2007, and thus, like any other SharePoint 2007 solution can be deployed via stsadm. The solution is available for download from
www.dotnetnuke.com, with your DNN 6.x Enterprise Edition install file. It will be downloaded as a .wsp file, and is deployed as a timer job into SharePoint. The following steps discuss the deployment:
- Ensure that you are the administrator on the SharePoint web servers and a farm administrator within SharePoint. You can determine if you are the farm administrator by navigating to your SharePoint central administration. If you have access to the “Operations” and “Application Management” tabs in the central administration, you are a farm administrator.
- Open up the command prompt in your SharePoint web server. This must be run as administrator.
- Navigate to stsadm within the command prompt, regularly found at the following location: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\bin
- Add the solution with the following command: stsadm –o addsolution –filename {WSPFILENAME}
- Deploy the solution with the command: stsadm –o deploysolution –name {WSPFILENAME} –url {SITEURL}
- Go to the central administration section of your SharePoint instance.
- Click on the “Operations” tab.
- Under “Global Configuration”, click on “Timer Job Definitions”.
- Ensure that the “DotNetNuke Integration Job” exists in the defintions
Configuring SharePoint - DotNetNuke Integration
Once the timer job is deployed into SharePoint, the Connector must be setup to be aware of your DNN environment. The steps below will guide you with this integration:
- In your DotNetNuke site, under the Host Page > Professional Features > SharePoint Connector, retrieve the SharePoint site and synchronization token settings.
- Click on the “Application Management” tab within your SharePoint Central Administration.
- Under “External Service Connections”, click on “DotNetNuke Connector”.
- In the DotNetNuke Connector section, follow the “Click here to configure your DotNetNuke connection” link.
- Enter the SharePoint Synchronization Site Address as the DotNetNuke Server Address and Synchronization Token settings copied from the DotNetNuke site.
- Additionally, enter a DotNetNuke SuperUser username and password, and click Save.
Setting up the Synchronization
Now that the Connection between SharePoint and DNN is setup, under Settings, the Synchronization Schedule can be set hourly, daily, or weekly. Additionally, email can be setup for errors encountered in the execution of the timer job. A synchronization item in the context of the connector is one mapping of a SharePoint folder or view to a DNN folder. The synchronization item can be setup as follows:
- SharePoint folders/views can be mapped to DotNetNuke folders by clicking on “New Synchronization Item”.
- Select a SharePoint site collection within your farm.
- All of the Document Libraries will load. Within the Document Libraries, select the appropriate View or Folder to copy over.
- Select a DotNetNuke portal.
- All of the folders within that portal root will load. Select the appropriate folder for the synchronization.
- If the “Propagate deletions” checkbox is checked, all the documents deleted in SharePoint will also be deleted within DNN.
The timer job runs as soon as it is enabled. Thus, to run it manually, the job can be disabled and re-enabled under Operations > Timer Job Definitions in the SharePoint environment. Once the job is run, the files from SharePoint will be available within the Admin > File Manager in the appropriate portal within your DNN instance. Events from the synchronization can be found under Host > SharePoint Connector in DNN, as well as within each synchronization item in SharePoint. Success and Failures along with the error messages are stored in both environments.
Conclusion
This tutorial has provided a basic setup of the synchronization between DNN and SharePoint. The flexibility of the Connector enables various advanced settings. For example, the views in SharePoint can be applied to restrict documents copied over to DNN. On the other hand, DNN settings, such as file extensions under Host Settings, can be used to limit the synchronization from DNN’s perspective. As the files are copied over into DNN, they can be placed on any page as a link or via the DNN’s new Document Library.
The SharePoint Connector is a first ever attempt at DNN and SharePoint integration. It provides a variety of features and has a number of limitations. My previous blog (link to blog) discusses the features, pros and cons of the SharePoint Connector in more detail.