What can be done about the long URLs?

Question

I'm used to using wikis with short, predictable URLs: host+page name.

Suddenly with SharePoint 2010 I'm confronted with long, apparently unpredictable paths to files.

I was triggered on this today when I wanted to email a colleague a link to a file on our company intranet in SharePoint. I embedded the link in the text of the email (using Outlook 2007) and tested it, only to find out that Outlook had not included the last few characters of the URL. I can insert the URL as plain text, of course, but that looks ugly.

Is there any generic way for SharePoint 2010 URLs to be shortened? Ideally I'm looking for a client side solution (equivalent to TinyURL) so that I don't have to go via IT. But if that's the only way, I'd still like to hear about it.

Answer 1

There is no OOB features for this in SharePoint, but it's quite easy to build. If you Bingle it you will find tons of samples; for instance: http://spurlshortener.codeplex.com/

Answer 2

Joel Oleson wrote about SharePoint URL Shorteners some time ago.

One of his links point to a product I worked on so the usual disclaimers apply.