Hi everyone,

I’d like to answer a common question about how to modify the behavior the Variations feature in SharePoint 2010 uses when propagating pages. That is, how pages in the source variation site are copied and appear on target variation sites as minor draft versions.

Page propagation is triggered by publishing a page on the source variation site by default. Each time you publish a source page, the Variations Event Receiver adds a work item to the Variations Propagate Pages timer job queue. When the timer job runs, it will begin executing the first 100 page propagation work items. For each work item, Variations will copy the source page to all target sites, creating the page if it does not yet exist, or appending a draft minor version if the target page does already exist.

In some cases, users might not want changes to a page on the source to necessarily propagate to all targets. That is, users might want to make source-local changes and have the option to make changes globally applicable when they want. This often takes the form of a question like “How can I stop variations from overwriting my target pages every time I publish a source page?” Variations in SharePoint 2010 helps you do this.

In SharePoint 2010, we’ve worked to improve the Variations feature’s server citizenship by moving all Variations operations to the timer service. This way, server administrators can control the frequency with which operations run and better manage server load. The “Update Variations” button now adds a work item to the same Variations Propagate Page timer job queue as does publishing a page when “Automatic Creation” is enabled. What differentiates “Update Variations” is that you can also use this button to propagate source draft versions without publishing them on the source variation site.

When you run this PowerShell script to enable “On-Demand Page Propagation,” all Variations Propagate Pages timer job work items are filtered and discarded except those added to the queue by the Update Variations button:

Enable On-Demand Page Propagation:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(“Microsoft.SharePoint”)
$site = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite(“http://yourserver/sites/abc”)
$folder = $site.RootWeb.Lists["Relationships List"].RootFolder
$folder.Properties.Add(“DisableAutomaticPropagation”, “True”)
$folder.Update();

Disable On-Demand Page Propagation:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(“Microsoft.SharePoint”)
$site = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite(“http://yourserver/sites/abc”)
$folder = $site.RootWeb.Lists["Relationships List"].RootFolder
$folder.Properties.Remove(“DisableAutomaticPropagation”)
$folder.Update();

“Update Variations” in SharePoint 2010 can be used to propagate the current version of a page on-demand provided that the Variations Propagate Page Timer Job is enabled

In MOSS 2007, some users disabled the “Variations Propagate Pages” timer job in Central Admin as a workaround. With the timer job disabled, publishing a source page would not cause SharePoint to copy the source page to any target page. Authors on the source variation site could then use the “Update Variations” button to propagate the current version of the source page on-demand.

Clicking “Update Variations” in MOSS 2007 immediately propagated the current version of the source page to all target pages, “skipping the line” and bypassing the Variations Propagate Pages timer job. So when the timer job was disabled, “Update Variations” could still be used to propagate pages.

However, when the timer job is disabled, publishing pages on the source continues to add work items to the timer job queue if the “Automatic Creation” option is enabled, as it is by default. Over time, the queue can grow and contain hundreds or thousands of work items, all of which would begin to execute if the Variations timer job were re-enabled in the future. If you upgrade to SharePoint 2010 with a backlog of work items, SharePoint will discard these.

With the new “On-Demand Page Propagation” functionality, you can achieve this content distribution model out of the box.

“Update Variations” in MOSS 2007 works differently under the hood from its counterpart in SharePoint 2010

Things to keep in mind:

• “On-Demand Page Propagation” affects the entire site collection; that is, if you enable this setting, no source page will be copied to any target page when the source page is published. Only the “Update Variations” button will cause pages to propagate when the timer job is enabled.
• Source pages will be copied as draft minor versions to all target variation sites when you use the “Update Variations” button.

Thanks for reading. Happy propagating!

Josh Stickler
Program Manager

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My colleagues in the Exchange team have introduced a wealth of new capabilities in Exchange 2010 to support email archiving, retention and discovery but I’m often asked how an organization should think about managing emails in SharePoint as part of an overall collaboration and content management strategy.  While there are no hard and fast rules, it pays to think about four distinct scenarios:

1. Personal email management
2. Project and case management
3. Email archiving
4. Records management

Each of these scenarios has a set of desired outcomes and set of capabilities that best meet those outcomes so let’s take each one in turn.

Personal email management

Personal email management is all about empowering end users to take control of their inbox, making it easier to organize, find and take action on email.  Users want a mail client that makes it easy to manage email on a day to day basis and expect their IT department to take care of backup and restore.

Project and case management

Project and case management is all about sharing information and managing a group of related artifacts in a single location with a common security model, metadata model and information management policy.  Users are looking for a solution that makes it easy to collaborate and find information while leveraging workflow to drive common business processes.

Email archiving

Email archiving is all about taking control of the proliferation of email within an organization, driving down the cost of provisioning ever increasing inbox requirements and applying broad brush time based disposition.  Email archiving is typically driven by IT who implement rules and retention policy that is typically transparent to end users.

Records management

Records management is all about identifying business critical content, driving appropriate classification and then applying relevant retention management policies.  Accurate classification of content and applying appropriate metadata ensures that information is easy to find and use throughout the enterprise.  At the same time, appropriate use of retention policies ensure that businesses can gracefully age content that is no longer of value while adhering to relevant government and industry regulations.  Email is a critical part of any modern records management strategy and so businesses need to make it easy for end users to identify and classify email that is considered to be business critical content.

Outlook 2010 and Exchange 2010 provide great capabilities to deal with personal email management and email archiving while SharePoint 2010 provides an ideal platform for storing email that is part of project and case management or an effective and encompassing records management strategy.

Of course there is a natural flow or continuum as email may start by being well managed in a user’s inbox, it may have an email archiving policy attached to it but a user may decide to manage it as part of a project and then finally declare the email as a record upon project completion.  As I said at the start, there are no hard and fast rules but hopefully I’ve given you a better frame of reference for working out what systems are required to support email from creation to disposition depending on the required business outcomes.

If you want to hear more about this topic, I’ll be presenting a webinar with Colligo, one of our partners who provide an add-in for Outlook that makes it easy for users to drag and drop email in to SharePoint, applying the appropriate Content Type and metadata attributes as part of the process.  The webinar is on June 17th so sign up now.

Ryan Duguid
Senior Product Manager – ECM and Compliance
Microsoft Corporation

My colleagues in the Exchange team have introduced a wealth of new capabilities in Exchange 2010 to support email archiving, retention and discovery but I’m often asked how an organization should think about managing emails in SharePoint as part of an overall collaboration and content management strategy.  While there are no hard and fast rules, it pays to think about four distinct scenarios:

1. Personal email management
2. Project and case management
3. Email archiving
4. Records management

Each of these scenarios has a set of desired outcomes and set of capabilities that best meet those outcomes so let’s take each one in turn.

Personal email management

Personal email management is all about empowering end users to take control of their inbox, making it easier to organize, find and take action on email.  Users want a mail client that makes it easy to manage email on a day to day basis and expect their IT department to take care of backup and restore.

Project and case management

Project and case management is all about sharing information and managing a group of related artifacts in a single location with a common security model, metadata model and information management policy.  Users are looking for a solution that makes it easy to collaborate and find information while leveraging workflow to drive common business processes.

Email archiving

Email archiving is all about taking control of the proliferation of email within an organization, driving down the cost of provisioning ever increasing inbox requirements and applying broad brush time based disposition.  Email archiving is typically driven by IT who implement rules and retention policy that is typically transparent to end users.

Records management

Records management is all about identifying business critical content, driving appropriate classification and then applying relevant retention management policies.  Accurate classification of content and applying appropriate metadata ensures that information is easy to find and use throughout the enterprise.  At the same time, appropriate use of retention policies ensure that businesses can gracefully age content that is no longer of value while adhering to relevant government and industry regulations.  Email is a critical part of any modern records management strategy and so businesses need to make it easy for end users to identify and classify email that is considered to be business critical content.

Outlook 2010 and Exchange 2010 provide great capabilities to deal with personal email management and email archiving while SharePoint 2010 provides an ideal platform for storing email that is part of project and case management or an effective and encompassing records management strategy.

Of course there is a natural flow or continuum as email may start by being well managed in a user’s inbox, it may have an email archiving policy attached to it but a user may decide to manage it as part of a project and then finally declare the email as a record upon project completion.  As I said at the start, there are no hard and fast rules but hopefully I’ve given you a better frame of reference for working out what systems are required to support email from creation to disposition depending on the required business outcomes.

If you want to hear more about this topic, I’ll be presenting a webinar with Colligo, one of our partners who provide an add-in for Outlook that makes it easy for users to drag and drop email in to SharePoint, applying the appropriate Content Type and metadata attributes as part of the process.  The webinar is on June 17th so sign up now.

Ryan Duguid
Senior Product Manager – ECM and Compliance
Microsoft Corporation