SharePoint 2010 Configure Send To Connections

In my organization, Program Managers group from multiple departments wanted to collect documents from their department sites to a centralized location for brainstorming. Somehow they heard about/located send to connections in SharePoint!

What is Send to connections in SharePoint?
Send to connections in SharePoint is a great and flexible way to manage documents. Users can easily Move or Copy documents to a new location. Documents can be sent across sites, site collections, and even web applications. Its often used with the records center, But we can enable the “Content Organizer” feature to activate Custom Send To connections on any site. Let’s see how to configure Send To connections in SharePoint 2010.

Steps to Create New Send to Connection:

1. Activate Content Organizer in Target site where you want your documents to be collected.
2. Create a Custom Send To connection in Central Administration
3. Copy/Move documents by clicking “Send To >> Send to Location”

Step 1: Activate Content Organizer in Target site

Before proceeding with further steps, You must activate “Content Organizer” in the target site where you want your documents to be collected. or you will get an error message when you try to create a new send to connection.

Step 2: Create a Custom Send To connection in Central Administration

• Go to: Central Administration >> General Application Settings >> Click Configure send to connections under External Service Connections.

• Select the web application,  Allow manual submission from the Send To menu ,0Provide a Name for your custom send to connection,  and Most importantly, Provide the Send To URL:

• Verify the Send to URL by clicking “Click here to test”

• Allow manual submission from the Send To menu, Select the “Copy” action.
• In addition to copy documents, you can also choose to move &  move a document and leave a link in the current document library location that points to the new location of the document. 
• Finally, click on “Add Connection” to create new send to connection.

How to get SharePoint 2010 send to URL?
A typical Send to URL would be: https://sharepoint.com/<Site-collection>/<sub-Site>/_vti_bin/officialfile.asmx. You can get the Send to URL by going to the target site’s settings >> Content Organizer Settings

scroll down and make a note of Web Service URL under “Submission Points” column.

Step 3: Copy/Move documents by clicking “Send To >> Send to Location”
Once the Send To Connection is created, you should see it in the item context menu in the “Send To” category. “Send To” locations are applied to all documents in the web application. Go to any document library, from the items context menu (ECB Menu) click on “Send To” and you can find your custom send to connection there.  
When you click on “send to” and your send to location, you will be prompted to confirm your submission. Once you click “Ok”
 
The content organizer rule will apply and route the document to the right destination library.

Where All documents will go when I click on “Send to”? They’ll go and sit inside “Drop-off” Library of the site. It can be further customized with content organizer rules.

Send to connections between web applications
When you configure send to connections between web applications, make sure your source web application’s application pool account is in “Configure a group Records Center Web Service Submitters for <Site Name>” group under site permissions. SharePoint will error: The site could not be found or accessed, If you don’t do the above step!

SharePoint send to permissions required:

Configure Send To Connection with SSL
If you are configuring send to connections in SSL sites, You have to establish a Trust. Here is hot: Navigate to CA>> Security >> General Security >>Manage trust >> Create a New Trust Relationship. In “Trust Relationship” browse and locate the root authority certificate of the website (The issuer of SSL certificate). You can Ignore values for “Provide Trust Relationship”

Tail:
If Send To connection results, HTTP status 401: Unauthorized, It could be because of LoopBackCheck. Just disable it! 401 unauthorized issue in SharePoint – DisableLoopbackCheck