Sharing a notebook using Sharepoint Services

[Kevin Ross]

I have a small group who wish to share a notebook using a hosted Sharepoint
Services group, such as epidirect.com or sharepointsite.com. I have created
free trial accounts on both hosting sites.

I have accounts at both sites, and have yet to be able to create a shared
site. I am using Windows Vista, OneNote 2007 (part of Office 2007). I have
installed all available updates to the Office suite. I also have tried this
from an XP machine.

Going through the steps, I select Share->Create Shared Notebook... This
opens the New Notebook Wizard.

I enter the name of by notebook (FRC). I select the shared notebook - Group
project template. Click next.

The 'Who will use this notebook' question is answered 'Multiple people will
share the notebook' and 'On a server (Sharepoint document library, etc).
Click next.

The Confirm notebook location dialog box appears. In the path, I type my
sharepoint site name ( http://xxxxxx.wss.epidirect.com ). At this point, if I
click Browse as suggested by the dialog box, it will ask for my password,
then it hangs for a little while. It then opens up a select folder dialog of
my local machine. Not what I expected.

If, instead of clicking browse, I just click Create, I get the message 'The
location for this notebook: http://xxxxx.wss.epidirect.com/frc/ does not
exist. Do you want to create it?' I click yes. After a substantial delay, an
error message is generated:

'OneNote cannot create a new notebook at
http://xxxxx.wss.epidirect.com/frc/

Possible reasons include:
- The specified location is not available
- You do not have permissions to modify the specified location
- The path or notebook name contains invalid characters
- The combined path and notebook name exceeds the maximum path length.

Adjust the path and notebook name, and then try again.'

I have tried this on XP and on Windows Vista. Both epidirect.com and
sharepointsite.com are running SharePoint 3.0.

From reading through this help site, it appears that this rather major
feature of OneNote is just broken and does not work. Is that a fair summary?
Has anyone managed to share a notebook over the internet without having to
jump through a bunch of impossible hoops?

Its a shame, since it is the sole reason I upgraded to Office 2007.

Thanks
Kevin

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP]

Can you successfully create a folder at that SharePoint site without using
OneNote?

I have to caution you that OneNote shared folders on a SharePoint site are
likely to be...ummm...sub-optimal in terms of performance. Any chance you
could just use a regular file sharing site instead of a SharePoint service?
(probably be cheaper too)


--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/onenote.htm

 

[Kevin Ross]

Thanks, Ben.

Yes, if I log in to the sharepoint site using the a web browser, I have full
functionality for making folders, etc.

I can't think of a decent way to use regular file sharing in this instance.
We are spread across 3 states and 12 cities. Most of the team are not very
technically endowed. That was the whole reason that Sharepoint was created in
the first place, right?

I am sure some collection of setting up VPN's, satellite dishes, backup
servers, generators, and fiber optic switches can be assembled to make it go.
However, we are interested in working on our project, not doing a bunch of IT
debugging for something that should work as advertised. (disappointment flame
not aimed at you of course! thanks for your reply)

On my internal network, OneNote works great. On my local machine, best thing
since sliced bread. On the internet, kaput.

Sounds like a feature that is just flat broken to me. Hopefully someone
knows otherwise?

Kevin

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

You don't necessarily need all of that. A simple Internet file-sharing
service, similar to the SharePoint services you've looked at, that lets you
map to a URL location to read/write files would do just fine. It should be
as accessible as the SharePoint services just won't have all of the pretty
UI and SharePoint overhead.

Something like this, perhaps:
http://www.box.net/g/?gclid=CNyS-ve8h44CFRKyYAod5GP52Q

--
--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/onenote.htm

 

[Kevin Ross]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I have looked into these website storage systems before. The nice thing
about OneNote is it was supposed to take care of all the file syncing/copying
automatically. The scenario for something like Box is exactly what I was
trying to avoid by using OneNote/Sharepoint. If OneNote/Sharepoint worked as
advertised, then the confusion I need to introduce on the rest of my team
goes away. The files just appear. Them having to manually reconcile changes
is just bad. Trying to explain to 15 people how to reconcile changes in files
and how to keep them up to date just doesn't work. We are better off sticking
with Google or yahoogroups instead. Non technical folks understand email for
the most part. The Google stuff just works correctly, though it is cumbersome.

The disappointment is that this product claims to be exactly what my team
(and lots of other teams) wanted. It is so close to doing the right thing.

I guess I was expecting the Microsoft product to work correctly! Silly me.
As a former Microsoft design engineer (worked on Windows and OS/2), I find
the fact that this doesn't work completely unacceptable and rather
embarrassing. If you put something in a Wizard, in your advertising, and on
the front of the boxed product, you would think it would work correctly.
Somewhere in Redmond there is a program manager who needs to get fired for
incompetence. Somewhere in Redmond is a product support group who hasn't
fixed an advertised feature after being released 7 months ago. Very bad.

Again, Ben, thanks so much for your reply, I aim none of this at you!

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP]

I think you're still misunderstanding me, Kevin.

The notebook sharing, with automatic sync, works just fine (in fact better)
on a file share. Nobody has to manually reconcile anything. I have a 6
person team running shared OneNote notebooks to a plain 'ole file share and
everything syncs up beautifully.

You don't need SharePoint for that to work. I don't know why the Internet
SharePoint site isn't working for you, but honestly performance is a lot
better on a regular (non-SharePoint) file share anyhow so if you can go that
route it makes it not only a simpler solution but a faster one too.

We can try and troubleshoot the SharePoint connection and maybe we could get
it to work. It does work for a lot of folks. I'm just saying that if you
can avoid that and go with a regular Internet file sharing service it'll be
simpler and better and I think you'll be much happier.


--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/onenote.htm

 

[Kevin Ross]

How does one setup an internet file share to work like this? All of the
services I have seen involve having to manually upload a file to a server. Is
there one that allows us to treat it as a mapped drive instead? Box, for
example, appears to require a manual upload using a web browser.

Thanks
Kevin

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP]

You just need a file share that you can map to. You don't necessarily have
to map a drive letter if you can use a URL or IP address to save.
DigitalDaze and others offer file shares that you can map a letter to or
access via URL.

There is also a product called WebDrive (which I haven't tried personally)
which purports to let you map a drive letter a web address - so you could
map to any URL you have permissions for.

Here's an article that seems on-point:
http://www.futureofrealestatetechno...ating-a-mapped-network-drive-on-the-internet/


--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/onenote.htm

 

[walmslan]

Kevin,

I use a UK based ISP for SharePoint services and it works fine for
me...:wink:

I note you didn't create the location on the site first before saving
your notebooks?

Therefore, as a test please create a folder location on your site
before hand - this is your collaborative area.

Then try and save your notebooks to it directly. I think this should
do the trick!

Regards,
Andrew
'www.workshares.co.uk' (http://www.workshares.co.uk)

 

[Josh Einstein]

I use Hamachi. It's free, it's very easy to set up, and it literally acts as
a VPN between multiple physically distributed computers across the internet.
The upside to this is that not only OneNote Notebooks become easier to
share, but so does anything. You can browse file shares, share printers, use
Windows Media sharing, remote desktop and assistance, and basically do
anything else that requires two people to be on the same network.

http://www.hamachi.cc

 

[bphillips]

Kevin, I've been trying to do the same thing as you and received the same
problem.

Two things helped - first I finally figured out that Vista does not support
making the connection to SharePoint via Webdav unless it is using SSL (where
you have the https:// rather than just http://). I signed up for Sharepoint
hosting on the 1and1 service and they offer the ability to purchase and
install an SSL certificate which makes it use https://.

Secondly, I also installed the Webfolders fix for Vista which can be found
here
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...12-632E-4C04-9382-987622ED1D64&displaylang=en

It seems to work okay, but still new for me (still testing). In particular,
I'm trying to figure out now how to open the Notebook that was created in the
SharePoint Document Library while I am not connected (the offline copy)....

Overall I think OneNote 2007 is a fantastic tool - what I always wanted (I
was a user of ECCO, Agenda, MyBase, etc.). But the sharing/synch stuff
REALLY needs some more thorough documentation. I imagine there are not many
people using it via the Internet.

Best of luck,