My company is trying to host all of our form and document templates (Word and
InfoPath 2007) on a SharePoint site. A simple document library doesn't work
as the files are opened as templates vs. documents. (.dotm vs. .docm for
example) and will overwrite the template when saved. With over 400 templates
at this time, content types doesn't seem to be the answer either. All I want
to end up with is a site with a sortable and searchable list of links that
will open user forms and documents from the associated templates. One would
think that this would be common requirement for SharePoint applications but I
think we're going to have to revert to a custom html web site vs. using
SharePoint. Given all of the great things that you can do in SharePoint,
this seems like a big step backward.

I'm far from a SharePoint expert so an suggestions would be greatly
appreciated.

Can you not just make the Document Library read-only for all users? This
way they cannot overwrite the template..


rgds

"G squared" wrote:
[..]

We thought about that but it defeats the purpose of using templates in the
first place. We'd like the filled in forms to be saved as documents without
the template overhead and all of the pop up windows that occur with read only
files. With a template, the save path also reverts to the SharePoint site
which is inconvenient where as when you open a template in fill in mode, the
save location is whatever the user has specified in Word or InfoPath. I
think we've exhausted the work around possibilities as none are very user
friendly. Switching the output format on save and navigating directories
might not seem like much effort, but when thousands of people are doing it
many times a day, it is.

As we're already doing an enterprise switch from WordPerfect to Office 2007,
we'd like to avoid any user headaches with navigating the template portal.

Thanks for the response Bart,

"Bart" wrote:
[..]

The real "correct way" to do this is to use the workgroup template libary
path in Word -- it's been around since Oh say Word 4.2 -- you can point
that path to a MOSS doc lib ( and make it read only ) and use version
control to maintain your templates. You should be able to use folders (the
only real use for them) to
categorize the templates - this will make them show up as tabs in the Word
Open file from template dialog..

The path to this library can be set with the Office GPO template so if
you're on AD you can push it out to all your users.

Recap:
Put the templates in MOSS for CM and approval worflow.
Do no use MOSS as the access mechanism for the templates : use the Workgroup
template files path.

I'd post some screen shots but I'm just now buildig out this box and I
haven't installed office yet.


Guy Cox

"G squared" <Gsquared> wrote in message
news:6345
[..]

That sounded promising so I ran it by our developer. Unfortunately she had
tried this in the past and ran into problems. We weren't able to reference
the web address of the document library and got the error message:

"You cannot use an Internet address here. Enter a path that points to a
location on your computer or on the network."

So we were unable to point the File Location path for the Workgroup
Templates to our SharePoint document library.

I hope that makes sense but if you've tried your solution and have had
success please let me know and provide screenies if you can.

Thanks for your response Guy,

"Guy Cox" wrote:
[..]

I'll admit I've not heard of the workgroup template library. I'll have to
give that a look. As to the earlier statement about content types. Why won't
they work?

Content types work just fine if your template list is short. I'd say less
than 20 or so. But with 400+ templates and growing, content types don't
provide the users with the searchable, sortable list that we are looking for.
Due to the way the list of content types are implemented in SharePoint, they
won't work for us.

Thanks for your response Daniel,

"Daniel A. Galant" wrote:
[..]

Why not create the content types at the root of the Site Collection and then
create different Libraries for groupings of the Templates you need and only
add sets of templates to the libraries. You wouldn't need folders then to
group them etc.