SharePoint 2013 cheat sheet

Integrating SharePoint content with Outlook

If you're like many SharePoint-using organizations, your IT department has also deployed Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, so you are using a mail client that integrates very well with SharePoint. In particular, Outlook has a variety of features that help you combine information within SharePoint with information that you already store in Outlook. Here are some examples.

Putting SharePoint calendars into Outlook

If you have a team with deadlines, deliverable due dates, and events you need to keep track of, a SharePoint calendar is a convenient way for all members to add, update, and maintain a single record of dates. But sometimes it can be inconvenient to have to track multiple calendars, especially when your personal calendar lives within the Outlook client and the team calendars live on the SharePoint site.

Conveniently, however, you can bring SharePoint 2013 calendar information into Outlook and either look at the contents of that calendar next to your own, or even use the very nice overlay feature to see a single calendar at once with all of your pertinent information. Here's how:

• Open the SharePoint calendar in your web browser. (Frankly, despite Microsoft saying SharePoint 2013 works well in other browsers, this feature works well in Microsoft's own browsers, and poorly in other browsers like Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox.)
• In the Calendar Tools ribbon group, click the Calendar tab, and then click Connect to Outlook from within the Actions subgroup.

• You’ll get an Internet Explorer security warning. Click Allow here to let the process work.
• Outlook will then open, if it's not, and present a dialog box asking you if you are sure that you want to open that SharePoint calendar within Outlook. You can either click Yes here to accept the default configuration, or click the Advanced button to customize the name the calendar will take in Outlook as well as its description.
• Outlook will display the SharePoint calendar in the left pane under the "Other Calendars" heading. Click the check box to make sure it is displayed in the right-hand pane.

Of particular interest here is the fact that these calendars are linked between Outlook and SharePoint -- if another member of your team updates the web version of the SharePoint calendar, those changes will migrate directly down to the Outlook display of that calendar. And if you adjust a date or otherwise make a change to the linked SharePoint calendar from within Outlook, that change will migrate back up to SharePoint automatically -- and likewise back down into any other users' Outlook clients if they have chosen to link the calendar as well. It is all seamlessly synchronized.

Synchronizing task lists from SharePoint into Outlook

Your project team might also store lists of tasks within a SharePoint site. This is particularly interesting in a scenario where other users of SharePoint directly assign tasks to you within the user interface. If you do not have SharePoint alerts set up to notify you of new activities on your site, and you fail to check the website often enough to keep updated and fresh on new developments, then you might miss a deadline or not complete a task the right way.

By synchronizing task content between SharePoint and Outlook, you can use Outlook as a single place to collect all of the information on what tasks you have on your plate. Here's how:

• Open the SharePoint task list in your web browser. Again, Microsoft's own browsers work best in these scenarios.
• Click the List tab in the ribbon, and then click Connect to Outlook from within the Connect & Export subgroup.

• You'll get an Internet Explorer security warning. Click Allow to let the process work.
• Outlook will then open, if it's not, and present a dialog box asking you if you are sure that you want to open that SharePoint task list within Outlook. Click Yes.
• Outlook will display the SharePoint task list in the left pane under the "Other Tasks" heading if you have selected the Tasks view. Click the check box next to the listing to make sure it is displayed in the right-hand pane.

The two-way synchronization for tasks works exactly the same way as it does with integrated calendars -- changes in one place automatically make their way to other linked places with no muss and no fuss.

Sharing contact details with SharePoint

Your team might also store important contact details and information in a SharePoint site. You can synchronize this to Outlook very similarly as you do with calendars and task lists.

• Open the SharePoint contact list in your web browser. You probably know by now that Microsoft's own wares work best for these synchronization activities.
• Click the List tab, and then click Connect to Outlook from within the Connect & Export subgroup.
• You'll get an Internet Explorer security warning. Click Allow here to continue.
• Outlook will then open, if it's not, and present a dialog box asking you if you are sure that you want to open that SharePoint contact list within Outlook. Click Yes.
• Outlook will display the SharePoint contact list in the left pane under the "Other Contacts" heading if you have selected the Contacts view. Click the check box beside the listing to make sure it is displayed in the right-hand pane.

Now for a technicality: SharePoint stores contacts in its database a little bit differently from Outlook. Some of the fields are named differently. This could affect how your mail merges perform, for example, if you’re trying to blast out a piece of e-mail or snail mail to a group of contacts that is represented within Outlook but linked from SharePoint. Luckily, the differences are minor, but they still exist nonetheless.

[[And on the next page -- some advanced SharePoint 2013 tips!]]

Here is a quick reference of what field in Outlook maps to which field in SharePoint: