Amending the Welcome Menu

Problem: Welcome Menu or Personal Actions Menu occasionaly refered to as the User Menu. SharePoint 2010 that displays the users name in the Welcome server control, this by default in the top right of the master page.  You can add new menu items or hide existing menu items.

Initial Hypothesis: 

• The Welcome user control is located in the 14 hive at 14\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES

• The user control is reference in master pages.

• Take a copy of the welcome.ascx file as you will be working on the original or need to reference your new copy in your master page.

Resolution: Hide the menu option in the Welcome Menu.

Use the PermissionString property to dispay the menu option depending on your permissions.

Edit the Welcome.ascx file for each menu option element add the visible attribute and set it to false to hide the menus.

List of valid properties for the PermissionsString property

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spbasepermissions.aspx

Alternatively set the MenuItemTemplate attrivute visibility to false, this will hide the menu option for everyone.

 

Resolution - Another option for changing the welcome control:

• Remove the server control wssuc:Welcome from the master page or set it's visibility to hidden.
• Then write a Replacement control and add it to the master page.

 Resolution:  Add a new menu item

• Add a new element to the project that will be deployed as a feature
  
  
• Add the following code to the element file

 

•  New menu item (Open BBC) is add to the welcome menu.

 

More Info:
http://glorix.blogspot.com/2007/08/custom-action-locations-and-groupid.html
http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2007/07/using-customaction-to-modify-system.html
http://blog.thekid.me.uk/archive/2007/06/23/sample-editcontrolblock-customaction-for-sharepoint.aspx

How to Hide Ribbon

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/zwsong/archive/2010/04/29/how-to-hide-ribbon-from-users-without-edit-page-privilege.aspx

Chris O'Briens Ribbon Customisation blog series
http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2010/01/customizing-ribbon-part-1-creating-tabs.html

Image dump - Ribbon actions are disabled

Problem: Adding a new domain account user to the "Farm administrators" group. The new account mydomain\mstest1 cannot use the "New", "Extend" or "Delete" buttons on the ribbon within "Web Application Management".

Rolling over the buttons on the ribbon display the following information: "This control is currently disabled." "You might not have the right permission level to use this, you might need ...".

Additionaly you will also notice the "Manage Service Applications" will not allow you to create or delete new Service Applications.

New user in the Farm administrators group

Hypothesis: The new farm administrator does not have the appropriate permissions on the configuration database.

Resolution: Give the new administrator db_owner rights and the ribbon action options are available.



Further Info:
By making a content database read-only as shown below all Site Collections become read-only, ribbon actions are disabled.  Not coentent can be added to the Site Collection.
Make the content db read-only

Resulting Site Collection (Can't use most ribon options)

NLB
NLB 2

SharePoint 2010 Ribbon for Developers

Overview: SP2010 implements the ribbon UI. Ribbon in the same as word 2007 ribbons in that it provides contextual actions that the user can use. This post looks at styling and controlling/extending the ribbons functionality.
Notes:

• Ribbon is styled using corev4.css, this changes depending on if you apply a theme. css styling starts with "ms-cui" in the css.
• SPD can add custom actions.
• Ribbon is controlled by SP file 14\Template\global\xml\CMDUI.xml, this is merged with our custom xml file at run-time to result in an extended ribbon displayed to users.
• Deploy the custom ribbon xml using a feature.
• Buttons can be easily added or existing buttons replaced or hidden using XML declaratively to include custom ribbon actions.
• Ribbon can also be modified programmatically (SPUserCustomAction)