Office 2007 Server whitepapers - Arabic edition

	related links
	http://www.microsoft.com/office/ sharepointserver/

• Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007 - Arabic edition
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 - Arabic edition
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Arabic edition
• Microsoft Office Servers 2007 Arabic Edition Word-Breaker

Table of contents

1. Introduction



2. What is the Arabic language support?
   
   
3. Adding Arabic support to the Environment
   
   3.1  Adding Arabic language support to Windows XP/2003 server
   
   3.2  Adding Arabic language support to Internet Explorer
   
   3.3  Adding Arabic support in SQL Server
   
   3.4  Office SharePoint Arabic language pack
   
   
4. Arabic support Level in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
   
   4.1  Central Administration page "الادارة المركزية"
   
   4.2  Shared Services Administration page "ادارة الخدمات المشتركة"
   
   4.3  Create page "أنشاء"
   
   4.4  Create New Site page "أنشاء موقع جديد"
   
   4.5  The Site Settings page "اعدادات الموقع"
   
   4.6  Regional settings available for Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites
   
   
5. Adding more items to the site
   
   5.1  Discussions "المناقشات"
   
   5.2  Calendar "التقويم"
   
   5.3  Documents "المستندات"
   
   5.4  Tasks "المهام"
   
   
6. Search Feature in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
   


7. What are the system requirements for SharePoint Server?
   


8. Q & A
   

Introduction

What is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides an integrated suite of easy-to-use server applications that boost organizational effectiveness and optimize how people, content, processes, and business applications interact.

Here are the top 10 ways Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help your organization:

• Provide a simple, familiar, and consistent user experience.
• Boost employee productivity by simplifying everyday business activities.
• Help meet regulatory requirements through comprehensive control over content.
• Effectively manage and repurpose content to gain increased business value.
• Simplify organization-wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems.
• Connect people with information and expertise.
• Accelerate shared business processes across organizational boundaries.
• Share business data without divulging sensitive information.
• Enable better-informed decisions by presenting business-critical information in one central location.
• Provide a single, integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.

What is the Arabic language support?

We mean by Arabic language support, the support added to the product to enable handling of Arabic data, and to ensure that Arabic data can be saved and retrieved successfully in Arabic SharePoint Server 2007 environment. In this document we will try to cover how to work with Arabic environment, and the level of Arabic support in SharePoint Server 2007.

Adding Arabic support to the Environment

Arabic Support for operating system either for server and client must be installed and configured correctly on windows, the following points should be followed:

Adding Arabic language support to Windows XP/2003 server:

If Arabic language support is not added during installation wizard, this can be done after the installation is complete, follow these steps to add the Arabic language support:

• Double click the Regional and Language Options from the Control Panel folder.
• From the Languages tab select the check box "Install files for complex script and right-to-left language".
• From the Regional Options tab select the required Arabic language local and location required then Press OK.

Adding Arabic language support to Internet Explorer

Arabic language must be set as default language in the IE language setting to enable search engine from indexing the data inside the plain text ".txt" files:

• Open Internet Explorer options.
• Click on Language Button.
• Be sure Arabic is on top in the languages box, if it’s not on top move it to the top.

Adding Arabic support in SQL Server

In addition to the standard SQL server installation instructions, the following points should be noted:

• Do not use an Arabic name for the SQL server, as SQL does not operate correctly with an Arabic machine name.
• The SQL server collation should be set to Arabic support.

Office SharePoint Arabic language pack

What's a language pack? Language pack enables the creation of SharePoint sites and site collections in multiple languages without requiring separate installations of another language of SharePoint Server 2007. Multiple language packs can be installed on the same server. Application of a Language Pack will not change the language of the installed Office server product SKU, or the language of the administrative features.

Notes

• You do not need to download a language pack for the language you installed, these language packs are to support creation of additional languages.
• SharePoint Server 2007 Language packs are available on the Download Center for trial purposes. If you use the language packs with a fully licensed copy of SharePoint Server 2007, please ensure that you do so within the terms of your Volume Licensing Agreement, as restrictions may apply
• The Arabic language pack can be installed over the installation of Office SharePoint Server of any other language available.

Arabic support Level in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

The Arabic version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is fully Arabic localized including the interface, Menus, portals, and help. And in the following pages we will see a quick overview of this Arabic support in the SharePoint Server.

Central Administration page "الادارة المركزية"

The Arabic version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is fully localized. The main page displayed after installing the product (in Farm Mode) is called the “الادارة المركزية”. This page displays information about the tasks assigned to the administrator, to complete the setup process, the servers in the farm, and each server running services. (Figure 1)

Figure 1: Central Administration Site of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Shared Services Administration page "ادارة الخدمات المشتركة"

After configuring the SharePoint server components such as Mail accounts, Servers Farm, Shared Services, Excel Services …, we come to "ادارة الخدمات المشتركة" page. This page is used for administrating the shared services of the server. (Figure 2)

Figure 2: Shared Services Administration Page of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

In the next section we will start a small scenario that displays how we can use Arabic data in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Create page "أنشاء"

For creating a new site follow these steps:

• Click on "عرض كافة محتويات الموقع"
• Click on "إنشاء"
• Click on "مواقع ومساحات عمل" (figure 3)

List of all items that can be created in any site can be found in the page "إنشاء" (figure 3).

Figure 3: Create page of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

To get brief information about any item in the list, move the mouse to it and the information will appear above the list of objects (Figure 4)

Figure 4: choices details

Create New Site page "أنشاء موقع جديد"

While creating the new site, you can use Arabic names and details to fill the fields displayed in the form "انشاء موقع جديد" (site name, description, and URL). (Figure 5)

Figure 5: Create a site details

The Hijri calendar displayed by default as a result of the Arabic support embedded in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, in the new site. (Figure 6)

Figure 6: New Created site

The Site Settings page "اعدادات الموقع"

In the "اعدادات الموقع" page you will be able to change all the site settings, and to do this follow the next steps:

• Click on the site operations button in the top left corner.
• Choose from the drop box "اعدادات الموقع".

Figure 7: site choices

All the settings you can do to change or customized in the site are listed in this page, such as: Define Users, Tools, Change Site Title, Symbol, and Add Pages. (Figure 8)

Figure 8: site settings

Regional settings available for Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites

This is one of the most important and interesting features here is to change the regional settings of the site.

The Arabic regional settings for the top-level site of a site collection are automatically set based on the default Arabic language of the site collection. When a subsite is created, the Arabic regional settings that are set on the parent site are propagated to the subsite. Site collection administrators can choose to change the Arabic regional settings of the top-level site. As a site owner, you can choose to use the Arabic regional settings that are inherited from the parent site or specify different regional settings for any subsite.

Notes

• Country/Region settings that are changed from Arabic on a particular parent site are not propagated to existing subsites. This is because subsites receive the Arabic regional settings that are configured on the parent site only when the subsite is created.



• Regional settings for subsites that are created in a different user interface (UI) language than their parent site do not use the parent site's regional settings. Instead, the default regional settings for the UI language that was selected when the subsite was created are used.

Adding more items to the site

You can add many items to any site you create, such as: discussions, documents, calendar, tasks… (Figure 4)

Discussions "المناقشات"

Discussion is where you can create a subject to discus about with your team, create one by:

• From the main navigation bar choose "المناقشات" to access the discussions list, there is one discussion board created by default through the site creation process "مناقشة فريق العمل" (More than one discussion board can be created).
• click on "مناقشة فريق العمل" and choose "جديد"
• Fill the form using Arabic name for the subject, and Arabic contents for the details. In this rich text editor you can use, Arabic fonts with different sizes, colors, photos, links, and more over you can edit the source HTML. (Figure 9)

Figure 9: New Discussion

New Discussion created. (Figure 10)

Figure 10: Discussions List

Calendar"التقويم"

Using the Hijri calendar you can maintain the calendar of your sites, and set events. To create a new event click "التقويم", then click on the event date, and input the event details.

Figure 11: Hijri Calendar Page

Documents "المستندات"

You can add documents for your team to share the work in. You can have more than one library and folder for documents, there is one library created by default through the site creation process "المستندات المشتركة", click on "المستندات المشتركة", then "تحميل", and start upload your documents. (Figure 12)

Figure 12: Load documents page

The result after uploading documents (Figure 13)

Figure 13: uploaded Files to the shared library

Tasks "المهام"

You can use Arabic Names to add tasks for your team members to check and act upon.

• Click on "المهام" in the navigation bar.
• Choose "جديد".
• Use Arabic name for the task, details, and Hijri dates for the task duration, in the fields of the form. (Figure 14)

Figure 14: Add New Task

The new task Created (Figure 15)

Figure 15: Task list after create a new task

Search Feature in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

The search feature is one of the most important features in the product. In this section we will talk about this feature, and how to use it to gain more control and benefits from the Arabic search engine. The Arabic search engine in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports search for Arabic data in many file formats including Excel, Word, and plain text files.

The Arabic contents which been uploaded to the site, are been indexed by the SharePoint server every 5 mints (this is the default setting unless you changed this), to enable the search engine from locate your data.

When we discuss search and indexing in Arabic language, we must discuss Word-Breaker. The Arabic Word-Breaker is the component that determines where the Arabic word boundaries are in the stream of characters, in the search query, or in the document being indexed or searched. Using this, the word-breaker tries to locate the root for the word been searched for, and give you its alternatives, for example if you search for "سيارة", the word-breaker should locate for you 2 items from the documents searched "سيارة و سيارات", because both of them have same root.

For more information about the indexing service and word breaker please refer to the product guide.

To search for a word, type the Arabic query to search for in the top left search box of the page, and click on the search icon. (Figure 16)

Figure 16: Search Box

The search results. (Figure 17)

Figure 17: Search result

What are the system requirements for SharePoint Server?

Q & A

In this section we will provide questions and answers to help in gain better understanding for the Arabic support in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Q. What is the level of support for BIDI editing?
A. There is a complete support for BIDI in the rich text editor available in the Arabic Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Q. Is there Ability to change the reading order of custom lists?
A. Yes, the user is able to change the reading order of custom lists, and it exists only in the BiDi version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Q. Is Arabic supported in Search?
A. Yes, Arabic is supported in search, using the word-breaker which provides the ability to search by root terms.

Q. I’m facing lay out break when using zoom, what can be causing this?
A. This is a known issue in using Internet Explorer 7 and zoom. Zoom in Internet Explorer 7 can cause some functionality and layouts to break

Q. Why I can’t see search results in plain text files?
A. Internet Explorer default language should be set to Arabic, this will allow the Search to use Arabic word breaker within plain text files.

Q. Why I can’t login when I use Arabic user names?
A. Internet Explorer does not support Arabic user names in authentication.

Q. Why I have problems converting documents to web page?
A. In some cases in CMS, converting a document to a web page does not preserve the layout of the source document

Q. why when creating a site with Arabic name it get displayed with codes?
A. That’s a known issue. Any characters in the URL that require encoding are displayed in an encoded fashion just like what Internet Explorer is showing.

For more information about the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 please refer to the product guide.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, this document should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. The information represents the product at the time this document was printed and should be used for planning purposes only. Information is subject to change at any time without prior notice.

This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT.

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