The Design Manager is a simple 32-bit application that allows administrators to make changes to the look and feel, navigation, and web parts located on sites in the SharePoint environment. It is much like the Format Painter icon in MS Office which you use to pick up a format and drop it on a set of text. With Design Manager, the administrator simply points to a site that has a great design and migrates that design, or selected aspects of it, to one or more sites that they would like to change.
The Design Manager also helps resolve some of the issues that can arise when upgrading from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint, and enables administrators to take advantage of new SharePoint features on upgraded sites.
SharePoint (WSS and MOSS) does not enable administrators to make global changes to sites that have been customized using FrontPage. The Design Manager combines the flexibility of SharePoint Designer with the power of SharePoint site definitions, letting administrators deploy designs, navigation, and web parts to all - or only some – of their sites and to all – or only some – of the pages on those sites. This saves time and money by reducing the need for IT resources. No XML or other coding is required to use any of the Design Manager’s features. The Design Manager supports continuous improvement by exposing SharePoint functionality while preserving the best features developed in the SharePoint 2003 environment.
Administrators can select site designs that include Master Pages, CSS files, and other resource files, and can deploy web parts to any number of sites or pages. The Design Manager offers a simple, feature-rich interface that lets administrators make changes ranging from a complete overhaul of site design to something as simple as adding a new corporate logo. It can also be used to deploy pre-configured web parts to one or several pages at once, reducing maintenance costs and making it easy to update your collaborative workplaces more often.
It depends on where you’re running the Design Manager from. Regardless of whether you’re running from a desktop or a server, the user needs to have at least Site Administrator access to the affected sites so the Design Manager can scan for and modify the sites to be migrated. If you’re running the Design Manager from a server, you need to have Server Administrator access, too.
No. The Design Manager works only the SharePoint platform.
The Design Manager does not migrate data, structure, or security features. These needs are easily addressed by the migration utility that Microsoft ships with every SharePoint purchase. Once an administrator has performed the upgrade to SharePoint, the Design Manager exposes powerful new SharePoint features and capabilities such as master pages, site actions, and the recycle bin, while preserving design, navigation, and web parts created in the SharePoint 2003 environment which would otherwise be lost.
Microsoft has developed three options for migrating from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint:
•In place migration
•Gradual migration
•Content migration
The Design Manager does nothing to modify or support these migration options; it does not touch any aspect of SharePoint 2003, including lists and libraries, or data migration. For information regarding Microsoft’s recommended migration options, please see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA100773421033.aspx .
Sites that have been touched by FrontPage 2003 are “unghosted.” These sites will still look like 2003 sites even after they have moved to the 2007 environment. Unghosted sites will not be able to take advantage of new SharePoint features. Microsoft gives administrators the ability to reset to the original site definitions, but this option loses many customizations, necessitating manual changes with SharePoint Designer to restore them. This requires someone to manually edit each site and, sometimes each page, in your site collections. The Design Manager exposes SharePoint functionality, and it preserves customizations created using FrontPage – all automatically.
The Design Manager needs a template site with web part zone IDs that are consistent with the zones in the sites to be migrated. CorasWorks has defined a standard for zone IDs to ensure that customers can apply CorasWorks templates as a source for designs, share designs with others in the community, and have consistent designs within their companies. Once zone IDs are brought in line with the standard, it is simple to apply any number of designs to your sites from that point on.
If you are not planning to use CorasWorks templates or if you are not interested in sharing templates with others in the community, then you do not need to use the CorasWorks standards. What matters is that the web part zone IDs are the same between the template site and the site to be migrated (the destination site); you can use any standard you like. Say you have 100 project sites all based on the same template. An administrator can open any of them, modify the design using SharePoint Designer, and then use that one modified project site as a template to deploy the changes to the other 99 sites.
Yes, the Design Manager can be used to migrate non-English sites without any issues. You can even use an English template site to migrate a non-English site, although you will probably want to modify the Workplace View Advanced (WVA) in the template site first.
The language utilized in the template site does not affect the language on the migrated site. However, the WVA on the template site is passed over to the new site, so you will want to make sure the WVA on the template is localized appropriately before performing the migration.
Assume you support 100 sites. You will modify a single site to use as a template. Then you will spend a few minutes running the Design Manager to deploy the modified design to the remaining 99 sites. Time saved: ninety-nine percent, minus the few minutes the Design Manager takes to automatically push out the new design.
If you plan to use SharePoint Designer in 2007, you need the Design Manager. If you have used FrontPage to make changes in 2003, you need the Design Manager. The CorasWorks Design Manager is the fastest, easiest, most maintainable and least error-prone approach to migrating site designs to and within the SharePoint platform.
To prevent any confusion or misunderstanding, some of the terms used in this Troubleshooting section are defined below.
•CSS – Cascading Style Sheet. Determines how each element (e.g., fonts, headers, links) is displayed in HTML and XML applications. It is not necessary to define a CSS to work with the Design Manager; it probably already exists on the template page. A CSS is simply one of the elements that can be applied to a migrated page, so the Design Manager gives the administrator the option to copy it from the template page.
•Ghosted – A page that has been created and maintained using site definitions. When a site is created using a site definition, it contains code that points to a centrally stored site definition. This process is called “ghosting.” Also known as “uncustomized.” See Unghosted below.
•Master Page – A single page that contains page design and layout elements that can be repeated on multiple pages in a site. This allows your site to have a consistent appearance, and lets you create and update these elements in one place, rather than changing them on each page in the site. You can use master pages to position items that are shared by all pages, such as navigational controls, company logos, and copyright notices. Every SharePoint site has one master page by default. Master pages can be edited using SharePoint Designer.
•SharePoint Designer – The Microsoft tool for creating, customizing, and editing web pages, SharePoint sites, and workflow-enabled applications. The successor to Microsoft FrontPage.
•Site Definition – A set of XML files and ASPX page templates that define the characteristics of SharePoint pages. Site definitions are stored in a centrally located directory.
•Unghosted – A page that has been modified from the original site definition file, usually using Microsoft FrontPage or SharePoint Designer. Its contents are read from the SharePoint WSS content database, rather than the site definition. Also known as “customized.” The CorasWorks solution set utilizes unghosted pages, so existing CorasWorks customers who have upgraded to SharePoint can utilize the Design Manager to migrate their existing sites to take advantage of the powerful new SharePoint features.
•Zone ID – A web part zone is a place on a SharePoint page where a web part can be placed via the web browser. The Zone ID is the unique identifier for the web part zone on the page (e.g., Top, Right, Left, Bottom). When the Design Manager runs, it compares the web part zone IDs on each page to be migrated against the zone IDs on the template page. This is done on a page-by-page basis to determine where each web part should be placed.