Sunday, May 6, 2007

Adding the quick launch to team site pages

Hi All


Ever tried to add a new page in a WSS Team Site?

Well, after you create a new page, using the "Create web part page" wizard:





you probably noticed the following issues:

1. You have to create a document library to store them (unless you save them in "Shared Documents" library, but we wouldn't want to mix documents and site pages, would we?)

2. They look different from the team site's home page - where did the quick launch go??







OK, so the solution is quite simple, and there are 2 cases here:


1. If you have MOSS 2007 - All you have to do is to activate the "Office SharePoint Server Publishing" feature for your team site. Once you activate this feature, the team site will have some publising site features: a new "pages" library will be created, and all new created pages will be automatically stored in this library. In addition all pages will display the same "envelope" - including the missing quick launch on the left side of each page.

The only problem with this solution is that now every change you make requires publishing, and this is certainly NOT a natural part of team-site working flow.


2. If you only have WSS installed - in this case you don't have the "Office SharePoint Server Publishing" feature installed. however, you can change the team site page templates, and have them display the quick launch. This is quite easy to implement, so here it goes:
  • Browse the "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\1033\STS\DOCTEMP\SMARTPGS" folder on the SharePoint server.
    This folder contains all templates that you see in the "New Web Part Page" wizard:



  • Every page inherits the same team site's master page, and all of them override this master page's placeholder tags. This is why the quick launch is not displayed in new pages created in a team site (don't ask me why it was done like this, I don't have a clue..).


  • Simply delete the "PlaceHolderLeftNavBar" content tag in the required templates and save the file/s:


That's it!


Now, create a new web part page, based on the template you have just changed, and notice that the quick launch appears exactly as it is in the home page.

One last thing to remember:

Since the changes are done in the file system, these changes apply to all team sites on your SharePoint server.



Nimrod Geva
KWizCom - Knowledge Worker Components











5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post, thanks very much.... for a beginner sharepoint has some quirky functionality, you would think by turning on publishing for the topsite it would filter down to sub sites? thanks

Anonymous said...

Thank a lot! You're my savior!

Anonymous said...

Since I enabled "Office Server Publishing Feature" on this subsite, users with full-control on it can't create new pages (comes with access denied). what I did wrong?

Jaidev said...

Being a newbie to Sharepoint, I would like to know how do enable the quick launch bar in a 'Custom List' form web page? if the answer to this has been posted elsewhere please redirect me to the same? Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Great Tip, thanks very much. this worked perfectly for me first time