Create and Manage Newsletters with SharePoint

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UPDATE – Jan 22, 2008: I realise now that the site template linked to in my original post only works with MOSS and not with WSS (I can’t explain why but will keep looking into it). So, for WSS users I have uploaded the key features of the Newsletter site as List Templates that work in WSS. WSS please download the 3 list templates from this .zip file and create the lists in a WSS site.

Sorry for any confusion/hassle.
Ian

Recently I’ve put together some material about how to create and manage internal Newsletters for your organisation using Office System – both the Clients and Office SharePoint Server.  The nice thing is that you do not need to have IT involvement in setting imageup this process.  If you are the site Owner of a SharePoint MOSS site then you can stimplement this process easily, and have my sample Newsletter up and running in 15 minutes.

I have created a number of assets that you can download below that describe a process to create and manage a newsletter with Office tools.  In fact, this process is the one that Microsoft Australia uses for our internal Newsletter for approximately 800 employees and contractors.

The material I provide guide you through:

  1. Creating (or having somebody create) an HTML Newsletter template
  2. Setting up a SharePoint site to manage the content and process
  3. Managing a SharePoint list of News Articles
  4. Creating and editing the Newsletter with SharePoint Designer
  5. Publishing the Newsletter in SharePoint Document Libraries
  6. Publishing the same Newsletter in Outlook 2007 Email
  7. A lot of documentation about how to set it up, and why.

To create a Newsletter such as this one below and have it all managed in SharePoint …. check out the downloads.

image

Available files for download:

1) SharePoint Newsletter Site Template (*.stp file) – from here.  This site contains the Instructions of how to manage the Newsletter process.  The instructions are available in both OneNote 2007 format and also PDF.

2)  For those of you who want to evaluate the process before setting up a site from a .stp template, you can download the full description and instructions:

Let me know if you find this approach of managing Newsletters with Out of the Box functionality of Office System useful at all, of any successes and also of any failures!

By the way… the complete set of tools used to create and manage this Newsletter process are:

  • Windows SharePoint Services v3 or Office SharePoint Server 2007
  • SharePoint Designer 2007
  • Outlook 2007
  • Internet Explorer