JOPX on SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2007 and Windows Phone 7

The surprising truth about using [Today] in SharePoint 2010 Filters–showing items from the last 7 days

2012-01-30T20:55:00.001+01:00

When you want to show the items created in the last 7 days in a specific SharePoint view you need to keep two things in mind:

Make sure that you remove spaces from the filter value – otherwise you will get “Filter value is not in a supported date format” – so “[Today]-7” works but “[Today] – 7” will not work
Apparently the “[Today]” parameter is MUI aware – so when you creating a formula with Dutch as language you have to use [Vandaag] (For more about MUI check out Multilingual User Interface (MUI) in SharePoint 2010 – Part I as well as Multilingual User Interface (MUI) in SharePoint 2010 – Part II)

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,MUI,views,microsoft

Microsoft Business Ready Security Trial Environment

2012-01-26T20:07:00.001+01:00

The Microsoft Business Ready Security trial environment contains an interesting set of VJDs that you can use to evaluate protection, access, management and identity technologies from Microsoft as a pre-configured set of VHDs and is using the following products:

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010
Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange/Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint/Forefront Protection for Server Management Console
Forefront Identity Manager 2010
Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010
Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010
Active Directory Rights Management Services

Download Details – Microsoft Business Ready Security Trial Environment

Tags van Technorati: Forefront,UAG,RMS,Microsoft,security,identity+management

Book Review–Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Power User Cookbook

2012-01-26T20:03:00.002+01:00

The Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Power User Cookbook is an excellent book which is aimed specifically at getting things done in SharePoint without requiring development or hardcore administration skills. And I must say I like it.

This book is a must have reference guide for business power users who use SharePoint in their daily job but don’t need to know all the background about how SharePoint exactly works from a system perspective.

It is however also very useful for SharePoint administrators who need to perform common SharePoint tasks as well as for SharePoint business analysts and project manager who need a more practical view on how to accomplish things in SharePoint.

It contains over 70 recipes going from very basic tasks such as creating site columns, securing objects, etc … to more complex tasks such as creating external content types, creating dashboards using PerformancePoint Dashboard designer. Each of these recipes contains a number of different sections:

Getting ready – explains for which version of SharePoint it works
How to do it – step by step guideline about how to configure things in SharePoint
How it works and There’s more – background information
See also – reference to related recipes.

Each recipe consists of a limited number of pages containing the bare essential for getting your SharePoint task done. Great job from the authors…

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,book+review,sharepoint+2010,microsoft

Outlook 2010 Quick Tip – Showing week numbers

2012-01-23T21:09:00.000+01:00

Just a reminder to myself – Outlook 2010 makes it possible to show week numbers in Calendar View. Go to the Outlook Backstage > Options > Calendar

and check Show Weeknumbers in the Month View and in the Date Navigator

Tags van Technorati: Outlook2010,microsoft

My favorite 5 sessions for TechDays 2012 Belgium

2012-01-23T21:03:00.001+01:00

You smell that? Do you smell that? New technologies, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of new technologies in the morning… (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now) .

Yep, TechDays 2012 is coming near, so don’t forget to register – there are still some seats available. If you don’t know what to choose, check out my list of favorite sessions below:

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,techdays2012,techdays+belgium,microsoft,development,ITPro,HTML5,Governance

Wondering how companies are using SharePoint?

2012-01-23T20:48:00.001+01:00

Are you wondering how other companies are using SharePoint Server 2010? Then you definitely need to take a look at these different surveys which were conducted in 2010 and 2011:

Tags van Technorati: SharePoint,user+adoption,sps2010,sharepoint+2010,microsoft,forrester,global360,colligo,quest

Final BIWUG Session for 2012 – SharePoint 2010 Variations (Level 400)

2011-12-13T20:59:00.001+01:00

In order to finalize the SharePoint multilingual sessions BIWUG ( the Belux Information Worker User Group) – www.biwug.be has a special evening planned.

This session will cover level 400 topics on SharePoint 2010 Variations. The following topics will be covered: concepts and internals of variations (page vs. site variations), concepts and internals of configuration, variation Timer Jobs internals, different flavors of variations (automatic, manual, different site templates, same site templates, …), the “famous relationships list”, stsadm and PowerShell commands which assist variations, changes between 2007 and 2010.

Demos will be performed while some coding aspects will be covered. It will be shown how variations can be used for other purposes than just implementing multilingual solutions

Pascal Benois is a SharePoint Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft.
He is into SharePoint technologies from the early days and has a strong focus on custom applications, ECM and multilingual deployments.

Date: 21/12/2011 at 18:00, you are welcome at 17:30
Location: Microsoft Belgium offices
Registration link: http://biwug2112-estwhdr.eventbrite.co.uk/

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,biwug,multilingual,variations,microsoft

How to install SharePoint Server 2010 Language Packs on Windows 7

2011-11-29T22:23:00.001+01:00

When trying to install SharePoint Server 2010 Language Packs on top of Windows 7 you might receive the following error – “Setup is enable to proceed due to the following errors: this product requires Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 …” – to work around this you can use the same procedure with the language pack installation files as the one outlined for the normal SharePoint installation on Windows 7 – a great walkthrough is Setting up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008. Listed below are the exact steps

Copy the language pack installation files to a folder on your computer where you are installing SharePoint and doing your development
Extract the installation files by opening a Command Prompt window, and then typing the following command at the directory location of the folder where you copied the installation files in the previous step.

For SharePoint Foundation 2010 - c:\SharePointFiles\SharePointLanguagePack.exe /extract:c:\LangPack
For SharePoint Server 2010 -c:\SharePointFiles\ServerLanguagePack.exe /extract:c:\LangPack

Using a text editor such as Notepad, open the installation configuration file, config.xml, located in the following path: c:\LangPack\files\Setup\config.xml and add <Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/> inside the <configuration> tag
Proceed with the installation using the normal way of working

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps+2010,windows+7,development

Quick Tip – Solving WP7 DatePicker and TimePicker missing icons problem

2011-11-11T14:41:00.001+01:00

To see the correct ApplicationBar icons in the DatePicker and TimePicker, you will need to create a folder in the root of your project called "Toolkit.Content" and put the icons in there. The toolkit provides the necessary icons, but you have to copy them from the PhoneToolkitSample project. They must be named "ApplicationBar.Cancel.png" and "ApplicationBar.Check.png" and the build action must be "Content"!

Source: WP7 DatePicker and TimePicker in depth | API and Customization

Technorati Tags: WP7,WP7BE,windows+phone,silverlight+toolkit,silverlight,development

BIWUG session about the SharePoint 2010 Multilingual User Interface on 30th of November

2011-11-10T20:37:00.002+01:00

Doing a SharePoint project in a multilingual environment can be tricky. In this BIWUG session we will focus on how the new MUI (Multilingual User Interface) allows for multilingual collaboration scenarios. We will show you how MUI and the SharePoint variations framework relate to each other. Next to showing the out of the box features we will do a deep dive for developers explaining how to use the MUI framework in SharePoint custom solutions. The session will wrap up with some best practices and pitfalls as well as a round the table discussion to exchange ideas.

Hope to see you there.

Agenda:

18:00-18:30 – Welcome and snacks

18:30-19:30 – SharePoint MUI – Part I (Speakers: Andy Van Steenbergen & Joris Poelmans)

19:30-19:45 – Break

19:45:20:45 – SharePoint MUI – Part II (Speakers: Andy Van Steenbergen & Joris Poelmans)

20:45 – … SharePint!

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sps2010,sharepoint+2010,MUI,BIWUG,community,microsoft

Presenting SharePoint 2010 - to pie or not to pie?

2011-11-07T20:46:00.001+01:00

I recently found an interesting discussion about the SharePoint pie – to pie or not to pie? Most of you have probably use the image depicted below in presentations to potential customers – but is that such a good idea?

Here are some of my ideas about this:

The SharePoint 2010 pie makes sense to talk to technical people who have worked with previous versions of SharePoint – also check out this one – Making sense of the SharePoint 2010 pie
It is probably not the pie that matters but the story behind it – the translation to the business context of a specific customer which makes a difference - an excellent article about this is Effectively communicate the power of SharePoint to a business audience
I haven’t found a comparable compelling graphic yet to explain such a diverse product (or platform) such as SharePoint – so I will probably still be using it for quite a while.
The terms used within the pie such as composites, insights are probably not known with business users but they are commonly used by all SharePoint professionals so it makes it for customers sometimes a little simpler to compare consultants and their sales pitch.

Please leave a comment with your idea about this or fill in this poll

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint2010,sps2010,microsoft

Supporting links for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Development training Part 2

2011-11-07T20:27:00.001+01:00

Module 8 – Sandboxed solutions

Module 9 – SharePoint Web Services

Module 10: LINQ and REST

Module 11: Building webparts

BIWUG on SharePoint Governance and the past, the present and the future

2011-09-28T22:01:00.001+02:00

BIWUG is announcing another session about SharePoint on Thursday October 27th 2011 in the Microsoft Belgium offices.

Agenda

18:00-19:00 Welcome with snacks

19:00-19:15 Introduction

19:15-20:15 SharePoint Governance (Speaker Patrick Sledz): Stop thinking about features features features when talking about governance.

When designing governance for a SharePoint implementation, a lot (not to say all) energy and words go out to technical stuff, SLA's and not to the things that define the business value. And the business value is not only a perfect technically tuned and performant SharePoint farm (if that even exists).

20:15-20:30 Break

20:30-21:00 The past, present and the future of BIWUG

During a seemingly quiet period, a lot has been going on behind the scenes. The result of all this secrecy will be revealed in the second part of the evening.

21:00-21:30 SharePint!

Of course there is also an opportunity to network, socialize and discuss the matter explained the previous hours... therefore SharePint!

Location: Microsoft Belgium Corporate Village - Bayreuth Building, Leonardo Da Vincilaan 3, 1935 Zaventem

Registration is now opened on the BIWUG site www.biwug.be

Technorati Tags: biwug,sharepoint,community,sharepoint+2010

Supporting links for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Development training Part 1

2011-09-12T06:23:00.001+02:00

Module 3 – Object Model

Module 4 – Client Object Models

Module 5 – SharePoint Permissions

Granting a user or group permissions to SharePoint object is done using the SPRoleAssignment class
Trimming WebPart Output with SPSecurityTrimmedControl
Hide content or controls based on Permissions using SPSecurityTrimmedControl
Running SharePoint code with elevating privileges using SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges method

Module 6 – Authentication with Custom Claims

Module 7 – Features and Solutions

BIWUG Presentation about Office 365 but mainly SharePoint Online from a technical perspective available on Slideshare

2011-09-10T15:46:00.001+02:00

SharePoint 2010 Online from a technical perspective

View more presentations from Joris Poelmans

Attaching Virtual Hard Disks (VHD) in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

2011-09-09T22:03:00.000+02:00

Attaching VHDs in Windows 7 works quite easily – just go to Computer Management > Disk Management. Select the Attach VHD in the Actions menu.

Works like a charm.

Tags van Technorati: windows+7,vhd,microsoft

Solving failed to lock the file error in VMWare on booting of virtual machine

2011-08-24T21:01:00.001+02:00

Just delete the .lck files that you see in the VM folder and your virtual machine will boot up again nicely. Apparently these .lck files are used for locking the VM storage files (VMDK files) – in case that your virtual machine stopped unexpected – these files were not removed automatically – so it is safe to remove them manually.

Tags van Technorati: vmware,lock+error,lck

Next BIWUG session September 8th at RealDolmen

2011-08-23T06:58:00.001+02:00

BIWUG, the Belux Information Worker User Group – www.biwug.be - is announcing another session about SharePoint 2010 on Thursday September 8th 2011 in the RealDolmen Huizingen offices.

Agenda
18:00-18:30 Welcome with sandwich lunch
18:30-19:30 SQL Server for SharePoint Geeks (Speaker - Thomas Vochten – @Thomasvochten). Topics: which SQL Server editions to use, configuration best practices, common misconceptions and its impact on SharePoint.
19:30-19:45 Break
19:45-20:45 Office 365 – but mainly SharePoint Online - from a technical perspective (Speaker - Joris Poelmans – @jopxtwits) Topics: focus on SharePoint Online both from an administrator and developer standpoint.

Location: RealDolmen Industriezone Zenneveld, Vaucampslaan 42, 1654 Huizingen, Belgium (Roadmap in PDF format)

Entrance is free but registration is required on the BIWUG site – www.biwug.be . Hope to see you there.

Tags van Technorati: BIWUG,community,SharePoint,Office365,SQLServer,SharePoint+2010,administration

SharePoint 2010 Healthcare site templates freely available for download

2011-08-11T20:17:00.001+02:00

For SharePoint Server 2007 Microsoft made the Fabulous 40 stie templates available as sample site templates but decided not to upgrade the Fabulous 40 to 2010 although you could do it yourself.

Warning – it seems that Microsoft has removed these downloads – I will put them back when I find them again.

But apparently Microsoft released a new set of application templates for SharePoint in June called the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Templates for Health Organizations:

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Request for Proposal - The Request for Proposal application template helps manage the process of creating and releasing an initial RFP, collecting proposal submissions, and formally accepting the selected proposal from among those submitted.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Help Desk - The Help Desk application template helps departments such as IT, Facilities, and HR manage service requests
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Physical Asset Tracking and Management - The Physical Asset Tracking and Management application template helps departments such as Facilities, BioMedical, and Surgery manage requests and the tracking of physical assets.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Team Work Site- - The Team Work Site application template provides a place where clinical and business teams, such as Medical Management or Environment of Care committees, can upload background documents, track scheduled calendar events, initiate discussion topics, and submit action items.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Clinical Trial Initiation and Management - For those who work in academic medical centers, the Clinical Trial Initiation and Management application template helps teams track clinical trial protocols, set objectives, select subjects, and manage the budget.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Employee Training Scheduling and Materials - The Employee Training Scheduling and Materials application template helps nursing educators and other instructors manage courses and related materials.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Employee Activities Site - The Employee Activities Site application template helps departments such as HR and Marketing manage the creation of and attendance at employee events.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Case Management - The Case Management application template helps case managers track the status and tasks required to complete their work.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects - The Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects application template helps project teams track and budget multiple, interrelated sets of activities.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Business Performance Reporting - The Business Performance Reporting application template helps managers in healthcare organizations track the satisfaction of internal customers/patients through a combination of surveys and discussions.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Event Planning - The Event Planning application template helps teams organize events efficiently through the use of online registration, schedules, communication, and feedback.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Knowledgebase - The Knowledge Base application template helps teams manage the information that is resident within their organization.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Change Request Management - The Change Request Management application template helps users track risks associated with a design change.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Call Center - The Call Center application template helps departments such as Billing, HR, and IT manage customer service requests, from issue identification to cause analysis and resolution.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Discussion Database - The Discussion Database application template provides a location where team members can create and reply to discussion topics.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Document Library and Review - The Document Library and Review application template helps people manage the review cycle common to processes like publication, knowledge management, and project plan development.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations: Compliance Process Support Site - The Compliance Process Support Site application template helps both teams and executive sponsors manage compliance implementation endeavors, such as HIPAA.

If you want to try all of them out there is also a separate download containing of the different templates – check out Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Application Template for Health Organizations – All templates – single download

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,healthcare,sharepoint+server+2010,microsoft

Don’t forget service pack 1 for the SharePoint language packs

2011-08-09T20:52:00.001+02:00

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2010 has been released a couple of weeks ago – check out Update Center for Microsoft Office, Office Servers and Related Products for more details. Just don’t forget to install the service packs for the language packs as well - listed below are the ones for French (just switch language for the other languages:

So if you have language packs available you need to install in the following order:

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation
Language Pack Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010
Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2010
Language Pack Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2010

Important: Although the official page recommends that you install the June 2011 Cumulative Update after installing SP1 – I would not do this if you are not affected by one of the issues which is fixed in the Cumulative Update.

Solving the No User Profile Application available to service the request. Contact your farm administrator error when using Powershell to modify SharePoint 2010 user profiles

2011-08-09T20:06:00.001+02:00

SharePoint permissions can be quite tricky – yesterday I stumbled upon an error “No User Profile Application available to service the request. Contact your farm administrator." when trying to update SharePoint 2010 user profiles using Powershell – luckily Steve explained what was wrong “No User Profile Application Available” Mystery in SharePoint 2010.

You have to configure security in 2 different places:

Click the administrators button on the Service Applications page and add yourself with Full Control
On the same page you will also notice a permissions button to the far right – don’t forget to add your account here as well

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sps2010,Powershell,user+profiles,microsoft,sharepoint+2010

Installing Office Web Apps on Windows 7 not supported

2011-08-08T21:48:00.001+02:00

Don’t try to install Office Web Apps on Windows 7 – apparently it is not supported – check out KB2276219 – When Installing Office Web Apps you get a message “Windows Server Features or Role Services required by this product are not enabled”

Technorati Tags: office+web+apps,sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,windows+7,microsoft

SharePoint data visualization with the Silverlight Pivot Viewer

2011-08-08T21:34:00.001+02:00

A while ago I was looking for another way to visualize large dataset from within SharePoint – a cool way to do this is using the Microsoft Silverlight Pivot Viewer (check out The Silverlight Pivot Viewer Control documentation and videos for more background info how to use this) – a great example of this is the Top SharePoint Internet Sites liver pivot .

At first I thought about writing a generic webpart myself which would load the cxml file (this is basically a specific xml format for defining the Pivot collection which you want to display) – but then I found this great project on Codeplex from Xavier Vanneste called the Pivot Viewer for SharePoint.

The Pivot Viewer for SharePoint Codeplex project contains an HTTP handler to dynamically generate a cxml file for a specific list or library – it also handles the Deepzoom image generation using Office Web Apps - and a webpart which is used to render the cxml file created by the HTTP Handler.

Off course you can still build your own custom solution on top of the Silverlight Pivot Viewer – these are the tools that you need to install to get going:

Silverlight 4 Toolkit – April 2010 on Codeplex
Microsoft Silverlight Pivot Viewer SDK – after installing the SDK there’s a directory added with sample code - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\PivotViewer – unfortunately the Aug10 release did not work for me.
(Optional) Pivot Collection tool for Microsoft Excel – enables you to represent a PivotViewer collection in a spreadsheet, and then export that spreadsheet to a format understood by Pivot Viewer

Some other links which might get you started:

Excellent blog post explaining how to use the Silverlight Pivot Viewer control with data from the “Cricket World Cup 2011” – you will still need to rip the cricket players pictures to get it working though
PivotViewer – Collections – with MSDN Magazine example
Pivot, OData and Windows Azure: Visual Netflix

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,pivotviewer,silverlight+toolkit,silverlight,visualstudio2010,vs2010,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,microsoft,data+visualization

Setting up a Windows 7 with Boot from VHD option

2011-08-07T13:14:00.001+02:00

After finding out that VMWare and Windows Phone 7.1 beta emulator were not very likely to work together correctly – I decided to explore the Boot from VHD option in Windows 7 so that I would create a second “portable and bootable” partition using a VHD file which would contain a clean version of Windows 7.

There is a lot of interesting guidance out there but finally I decided to not go for this option give the fact that I did not want to “generalize” my own portable to build the custom Windows 7 wim image. It would be interesting if a Windows 7 “install.wim” would also be provided as a download on MSDN or TechNet.

Maybe something for when I have more time on my hands:

Technorati Tags: windows7,microsoft,administration,vhd,bootfromvh

Third Microsoft MVP at RealDolmen–congrats Thomas

2011-08-06T11:32:00.001+02:00

RealDolmen has another MVP – congrats to Thomas Vuylsteke for being awarded MVP for Identity Lifecycle Manager . Definitely check out his blog – http://setspn.blogspot.com

Tags van Technorati: MVP,RealDolmen,ILM,Identity+Lifecycle+Manager,Microsoft

How search suggestions work in SharePoint Server 2010

2011-08-06T11:23:00.001+02:00

A while ago I wrote about one of the new features for end users with SharePoint 2010 is that suggestions are provided while you are typing a search query which is commonly referred to as search suggestions in SharePoint 2010. The TechNet posting Manage query suggestions (SharePoint Server 2010) now explains how and when these suggestions are added:

Query suggestions are automatically created over time for any query that has a specified number of result click-throughs. By default, a query suggestion is created after users click through six times.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,search,sps2010,sharepoint+2010,microsoft

Listing features on SharePoint 2010 with Powershell

2011-08-04T21:18:00.001+02:00

The Get-SPFeature PowerShell cmdlet allows you to list all the features for a specific scope – to list all features installed on the farm sorted by DisplayName you use the following

   1:  Get-SPFeature | Sort - Property DisplayName

This will give you an enormous amount of information about the different features such as DisplayName, ReceiverAssembly, UIVersion, Scope, … basically all the properties which can be defined for a Feature Element.

You can also specify which fields you want displayed using the following syntax

   1:  Get-SPFeature | Select  DisplayName, Scope, ID

It is also quite easy to export the results to CSV format

   1:  Get-SPFeature | select DisplayName, Scope, ID | export-csv c:\features.csv

If you only need to list activated features for a specific site collection you can use the following

   1:  Get-SPFeature -Site http://url | Sort DisplayName

And similar for an individual SharePoint site

   1:  Get-SPFeature -Web http://url

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,powershell,sps2010,administration

Two little known facts about the thumbnail and PowerPoint preview feature in FAST Search Server 2010

2011-08-02T20:41:00.000+02:00

Two interesting facts you should be aware of with regards to the thumbnail and PowerPoint preview feature – for those of you don’t know this – take a look at the screenshot below.

For Word documents a preview will be generated of the first page – for PowerPoint files you get a scrolling view of your slides.

You can actually get the thumbnail and PowerPoint previews to work without having to install FAST Search Server 2010 - the API’s used for generating the thumbnails and the PowerPoint previews are the Office Mobile PowerPoint Web Handler Protocol and the Office Mobile Word Web Handler Protocol, both included with Office Web Apps, this API works for for doc, docx, ppt and pptx files (Office 97-2010 formats) – Mikael actually describes how to do this – Document Thumbnails and PowerPoint Preview for your search results without installing FAST for SharePoint
The thumbnail and Powerpoint preview feature only works for PowerPoint files and Word documents which are stored in SharePoint. If you are indexing external Office documents it will not work.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,fast,microsoft,sharepoint+2010

Help – Windows Phone 7.1 Emulator crashes my VMWare Workstation

2011-07-31T11:42:00.001+02:00

When reading about the Integrating SharePoint 2010 and Windows Phone 7 Training Course on MSDN – I decided to immediately start trying out some stuff.

Since I have some SharePoint 2010 VM instances already setup and I have the Windows Phone 7.1 Development tools installed (the training kit is still written for Windows Phone 7.0 though) – I thought about just using this setup. Remember that you can quite easily access your SharePoint running within the VM instance from your guest by using the VMWare Network Adapter VMNet1 (host only) – (see quick tip – accessing guest from host with VMWare Workstation)

Unfortunately as soon as I started the Windows Phone 7.1 Emulator - my VM just crashed – this seemed to be an issue with the beta release of Windows Phone 7 as well – check out Windows Mobile 7 Emulator kills VMWare – I tried the workaround outlined here – Round 1, fight! Windows Phone emulator x VMWare but unfortunately it did not work for me …

Anyone another workaround – please leave a comment….

Technorati Tags: windowsphone7,wp7,development,sharepoint,vmware,microsoft,visualstudio2010,vs2010,emulator,virtualization

Integrating SharePoint 2010 and Windows Phone 7 Training Courses available on MSDN

2011-07-30T12:16:00.001+02:00

This thing got me really excited – Microsoft has released a new training course on MSDN for building Windows Phone 7 apps for SharePoint 2010. The training kit is also available as an offline training kit – both the offline and online training kit contain a number of great modules and hands on labs. Enjoy …

Integrating SharePoint Data in Windows Phone 7 Applications

Advanced SharePoint Data access in Windows Phone 7 Applications

Security with SharePoint and Windows Phone 7 Applications

Integrating Push notifications with SharePoint data in Windows Phone 7 Applications

Integrating SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure

SharePoint and Windows Phone 7 Tips and Best Practices

Deploying Windows Phone 7 Applications

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,windows+phone,wp7,wp7dev,sps2010,development,microsoft,visualstudio2010,vs2010

Deploying farm based SharePoint solutions requires access to SharePoint databases

2011-07-28T19:57:00.001+02:00

Something you might overlook as a SharePoint developer is the fact that when you are using STSADM commands to deploy your solution you are running under your own account context. This in contrast with actions that you perform using SharePoint central admin which will typically run under the context of the farm service account.

So if you need to deploy/upgrade farm based solutions using stsadm I would typically do the following:

Add your account to the local Administrators group on the SharePoint server machine
Add the user with the public role and db_owner role on the SharePoint database in SQL Server

For more background information – check out You receive error messages when you try to use the stsadm.exe command line tool to perform administrative operations in Windows SharePoint Services – this support article is written for 2007 but is still valid for 2010.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,administration,development,stsadm

Introduction to FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

2011-07-25T16:58:00.000+02:00

MSDN Live Meeting - Introduction to FAST Search Server for SharePoint Server 2010

View more presentations from Joris Poelmans

Windows Phone 7 training resources for developers

2011-07-25T16:52:00.001+02:00

If you are new to Windows Phone 7 development – there are tons of resources out there – here’s just a small list to get you started (it did for me …)

Windows Phone Programming in C# – 8 different sections with labs,presentations, etc … about Windows Phone 7 on Faculty Resource.
Windows Phone 7 in 7 Minutes! (Beta)
Video recordings for first Windows Phone 7 Jumpstart event
Series of tutorials and example applications for Windows Phone 7 based on the 31 days of Apps
TekPub –Windows Phone 7 development videos
Windows Phone 7 Session Videos and Slides, Organized and Explained (MIX10)

Technorati Tags: windowsphone7,windows+phone,wp7,wp7dev

Windows Phone 7 link collection June 2011

2011-07-25T16:48:00.001+02:00

Technorati Tags: windows+phone,wp7,development,microsoft,mango,azure,community

MSDN Forum Assistant available for download

2011-07-23T16:59:00.001+02:00

You can now check out MSDN Forums and receive updates directly on your desktop with the MSDN Forum Assistant. Features include Ask a Question, Latest Post, Thread Updates, Priority Support, and Forum Q&A. You can download the MSDN Forum Assistant here: http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=822a3787-89e8-4c6d-8fc4-a413437d86e9

You can find more information here:

MSDN Forum Assistant Web Site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-sg/gg650455

Video Overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYrNemrjQc8

Technorati Tags: MSDN,microsoft,support

Claim Based Authentication in SharePoint 2010 for Community Day 2011 on slideshare

2011-07-06T21:31:00.001+02:00

Claim Based Authentication in SharePoint 2010 for Community Day 2011

View more presentations from Joris Poelmans

About collaboration, innovation and organizational success

2011-07-06T21:20:00.001+02:00

Next are a collection of links which I came across during my little stroll on the web when going through my RSS subscriptions which were tagged as interesting reads. Lots of with background information on collaboration, social software, organizational success … and off course SharePoint.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,social+computing,organizational+success,collaboration,social+intranet,knowledge+management,knowledge+sharing

Cleaning up a rogue SharePoint 2010 Shared Service Application

2011-06-25T11:23:00.001+02:00

A couple of weeks ago I run into problems with a SharePoint 2010 Search SSA which apparently did not work anymore. Nothing helped to get it working again so we decided to delete it. Unfortunately doing this through the UI did not work nor did using Powershell. So we decided to just delete the associated SQL database. Afterwards I needed to remove the reference in the SSA administration screen. Luckily there is a stsadm command to do this:

Stsadm -o deleteconfigurationobject -id “GUID identifying the Search SSA”

To get at the GUID for the Search SSA – you can use the Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication Powershell command.

This is probably not the recommended way of doing this but if nothing else helps you can still revert to this method.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,administration,troubleshooting,microsoft

Seven useful tips and tools for Windows Phone 7 developers

2011-06-07T21:35:00.001+02:00

In order to develop a Windows Phone 7 app you need to understand some design tips – definitely download the UI Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7 – before you start building you can also mock up the screens with Photoshop using the Design templates for Windows Phone 7
To easily make screenshots of your Windows Phone 7 application you can download this nifty Windows Phone Screenshot tool from Cory Smith.
You don’t want to build all of the controls for your Windows Phone 7 app from scratch – definitely with looking at the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit (Latest version is the February 2011 edition) – an interesting article to read about it is written in Microsoft .Net magazine (Dutch only) Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit – maakt het bouwen van applicaties een stuk eenvoudiger)
Build an app which is going to use geo data is a little bit more tricky if you are just using the emulator – there is a work around though – check out Simulate Geo Location in Windows Phone 7 emulator
Must see episode of Silverlight TV: Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Performance Tips
Releasing a successful app is not only about having great programming skills – broaden your horizon and check out these articles – 5 Pitfalls to avoid when developing a successful mobile app as well as 5 musts for Mobile App Marketing, 4 legal considerations for building a mobile app, What makes a WP7 app successful – there is probably more non-techie stuff you should know – leave a link if you think something is worthwhile knowing.
Don’t forget to look at the code samples on MSDN – check out Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango release) code samples on MSDN (pre release version) or download the Windows Phone 7.0 documentation

If you think I left something out – do not hesitate to leave a comment.

Technorati Tags: windowsphone7,wp7,wp7dev,phone7,microsoft,silverlight+toolkit,silverlight,visualstudio2010,vs2010

Windows Phone 7 and the LongListSelector

2011-06-06T20:17:00.001+02:00

If you are using a Windows Phone 7 you have probably seen the elegant way that you can navigate across all of your contacts in the People Hub by using a jump list with the first letters of the names. If you are not using WP7 take a look at this YouTube video explaining the concept:

If you want to use something similar yourself in your own Windows Phone 7 apps, you should take a look the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit – one of the tools you will find in there is the LongListSelector – this control allows you to build a grouped list of items (basically you are grouping by first letter of the first name or last name).

Here are some links to get you started:

Technorati Tags: windowsphone7,wp7,wp7dev,microsoft,development,silverlight,silverlight+toolkit

Passing information across pages in Windows Phone 7 apps

2011-06-02T22:02:00.001+02:00

Probably the first thing I struggled with when building my first Windows Phone 7 app – how can I pass information from one page to another – here are some links which got me started:

Technorati Tags: wp7,wp7dev,windows+Phone+7,development,microsoft,silverlight

Recommended blogs for FAST Search 2010 for SharePoint

2011-06-02T11:38:00.000+02:00

If you want to learn something about Fast Search Server 2010 for SharePoint - these are the blogs I recommend to follow:

Technorati Tags: FAST,FS4SP,microsoft,enterprise+search,sharepoint,sharepoint+2010

Having problems with FAST and the Microsoft Information Worker virtual image , try creating a new certificate …

2011-05-26T07:02:00.001+02:00

If you want to try out FAST and SharePoint without having to do a complete install yourself you can use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM) image – which also includes FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. Don’t forget to update the certificate though because this image uses a self signed certificate which has expired – for a detailed description how to do this correctly check out remember to give your SharePoint 2010 Information Worker Virtual Machine a fresh certificate

Tags van Technorati: FAST,FS4SP,SharePoint,SharePoint+2010,SPS2010,Microsoft

Community Day 2011 registrations are open ….

2011-05-25T21:13:00.001+02:00

Registrations are open for Community Day 2011 - do not hesitate to register for this whole day of technical sessions – free of charge. Registrations will be handled on a first come first serve basis – so don’t wait. There are 2 SharePoint related sessions on the agenda as well …

Tags van Technorati: community+day,community,microsoft,biwug

Using the default property extractors in FAST and how it works with the search refinements

2011-05-25T21:09:00.001+02:00

Property extraction in Fast Search 2010 for SharePoint is a process that extracts information from the textual content of an item which is crawled and then adds this information into a number of crawled properties. Afterwards you map these crawled properties to SharePoint managed properties and use it in your search – within the search refiners, within the search results and even as input for sorting of your search results.

FAST has a number of standard extractors shipped with the product – all of these use a generic dictionary to recognize the different terms within a crawled document:

Companies – activated by default and present in the search refiners on the search result page
Locations – activated by default but not present in the search refiners on the search result page
Person names - this one is not activated by default. You will need to modify OptionalProcessing.xml which you can find in FASTSearch\etc\config_data\DocumentProcessor\ . Switch <processor name=”personnameextraction” active=”no”/> to <processor name=”personnameextraction” active=”yes”/>. Afterwards you will need to reset the processorserver using the FAST command line – psctrl –reset (For reference take a look at psctrl.exe reference on Technet). Afterwards you will need to do a full crawl.

Although these extractors use a generic dictionary you still have some control over the way that they work – by defining include and exclude lists of items within the FAST search administration screens – this is nicely explained in this article - Manage property extraction. You can off course also use PowerShell – to fill these include/exclude lists as explained in this blog post - Property extraction in FS4SP.

If you want to use information from the person names and locations extractors in the search refinemens you will need to modify them and add the following.

For the people refiner:

For the location refiner:

Tags van Technorati: FAST+search+2010,FS4SP,FAST,SharePoint+2010,SharePoint,Microsoft,enterprise+search

Introductory information about FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

2011-05-22T11:42:00.001+02:00

I will be presenting a MSDN live meeting on Tuesday the 24th of May about FAST Search Server 2010 from a development perspective. For those of you who want to attend – it might be useful to take a look at these links beforehand – since they present an overview of what FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint allows you to build as a developer:

If there are more must read articles or videos that you would recommended, just leave a link.

Technorati Tags: FAST,search,FAST+Search+Server,FS4SP,SharePoint,development,SPS2010,microsoft

BIWUG on Community Day 2011

2011-05-15T10:33:00.001+02:00

This year’s Microsoft Day will take place on Thursday 23th of June in Utopolis, Mechelen. Community Day is a joint effort of the 14 Belgian Microsoft user groups and brings a whole day of sessions about Microsoft technology … for free.

This year BIWUG (Belux Information Worker User Group) will bring two different sessions:

Claim Based Authentication in SharePoint Server 2010 Demystified. In this session we will explore how claim based authentication allows for new ways authentication, authorization and how it enables service oriented architecture in a heterogenous identity environment. This session targets both developers and IT pros and will explain the benefits as well as the caveats around claim based authentication. We will take a look at external identity providers (Windows Live), custom identity providers as well as how ADFS fits into the whole picture. Speaker: Joris Poelmans
SharePoint Governance - Stop thinking about features features features when talking about governance. When designing governance for a SharePoint implementation, a lot (not to say all) energy and words go out to technical stuff, SLA's and not to the things that define the business value. And the business value is not only a perfect technically tuned and performant SharePoint farm(if that even exists) – Speaker: Patrick Sledz

Keep an eye open for the Community Day site - http://www.communityday.be – registration will open soon.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+server+2010,governance,claim+based+authentication,biwug,community,microsoft

The difference between introvert and extrovert IT person?

2011-05-06T20:31:00.001+02:00

Heard on Wednesday on a seminar: What is the difference between an extrovert and an introvert IT person?

The extrovert IT person will be staring at your shoes instead of his own when talking to you….

Technorati Tags: fun,LOL,IT

MSDN Live Meeting - FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint: a developers walkthrough

2011-05-03T20:23:00.001+02:00

I will be presenting a MSDN live meeting on the 24th of May around at 14:00 (GMT+1) around FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint from a developers perspective.

Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint extends the SharePoint search functionality and provides an exceptional search experience by incorporating features such as an extensible content processing pipeline, contextual search, extensible
relevance models and an advanced query language.

This session will introduce the FAST search platform from a developer's perspective and will explore the different functionalities as well as talk about common developer tasks around Fast Search 2010 for SharePoint 2010 such as:
-     Configuration and extension of the FAST search webparts
-     Extending the content processing pipeline
-     Building search applications using the SharePoint object model combined with the capabilities of the FAST Query Language (FQL).

Click here to register for this MSDN Live Meeting.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,SPS2010,SharePoint+Server+2010,Search,FAST+Search+Server,FAST,MSDN,development

ECM Maturity Model and SharePoint

2011-05-02T22:17:00.001+02:00

If you don’t know the ECM Maturity Model – definitely take a look at http://ecm3.org/about/ – they are currently at version 2.0. The ECM Maturity Model provides a framework for creating a roadmap in the context of an overall ECM strategy. It categorizes an organization across 13 maturity dimensions into one of the 5 levels of ECM maturity:

Unmanaged
Incipient
Formative
Operational
Pro-active

I’m wondering if anyone has already applied this model to a typical SharePoint implementation. Please leave a comment if you have.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,ECM,maturity+model,roadmap

Windows Phone Developer Tools January 2011 Update

2011-05-02T22:08:00.001+02:00

Just finished installing the Windows Phone Developer Tools January 2011 update. Now off to finalize my WP7 app. Expect more news about this in the coming weeks.

Technorati Tags: windows+phone+7,wp7dev,visualstudio2010,development,microsoft

How to get SharePoint 2010 people search to work together with FAST Search 2010

2011-03-09T15:25:00.001+01:00

If you install FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint you will notice that you get some extra service applications – a FAST Query Search Service Application and a FAST Content Search Service Application. The people search is actually handled by the FAST Query Search Service Application – so this is where you need to do some extra configurations:

Go to Central Admin and click Manage Service Applications > Select the FAST Query Search Service App and click Manage in the Ribbon)
Create a new crawl rule:

Path http://[servername];sps3://[servername]
Crawl configuration : Include all items in this path - crawl SharePoint content as http pages
Specify authentication: Use the default content access account

Content sources - Make sure that both http://[servername] and sps3://[servername] are listed in the content source listing.
Configure security on the User Profile Service Application. Go to Central Admin and click Manage Service Applications > Select the User Profile Service Application and click Administrators in the ribbon. Make sure that you add the default content access account in this screen and give it at least permission to "Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers".

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,fast,fast+search+2010,search,microsoft

Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010 on a single box demo environment–the Excel file is corrupt using edit in Excel

2011-03-09T09:32:00.001+01:00

A typical SharePoint 2010 demo environment has everything installed on a single machine (Office 2010, SharePoint, etc…). Unfortunately this has some side effects – one of the things you might encounter is the fact that it seems that Excel integration does not work correctly anymore. Every time I uploaded an Excel document to SharePoint 2010 and tried opening it using the Edit in Excel option – I got an error stating that the file was corrupt.

Luckily I knew this had something to do with theTrust Center settings. Go to File Options > Trust Center. Next click the Trust Center Settings button. On the new screen which popups – go to Protected View and unselect all the three protected view options displayed on the top of this settings page.

Close Excel and try the “Edit in Excel” option again …

Tags van Technorati: office+2010,excel,sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,office,sps2010,microsoft,trust+center

Installing client side TFS certificate on Windows 7

2011-03-01T20:11:00.001+01:00

Apparently with Windows 7 you can’t simply use the wizard to import the client certificates for Team Foundation Server connections. You will need to do this manually.

Open Internet Explorer and go to Internet Options. Select Content and next the Certificates tab. Select Trusted Root Certification authorities when importing the certificate.

Tags van Technorati: windows+7,development,microsoft,visual+studio,TFS,team+foundation+server

Search suggestions in SharePoint 2010

2011-02-28T20:11:00.001+01:00

One of the new features for end users with SharePoint 2010 is that suggestions are provided while you are typing a search query - for a complete list of enhancements - check out – What’s new in Enterprise search(SharePoint Server 2010) . Now if you want to force these suggestions for demo scenario’s you can use some powershell scripts – the next code sample is meant to be used in a setup with Fast Search 2010:

$SearchApp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication "FAST Query SSA"
New-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase -SearchApplication $SearchApp -Language En-Us -Type QuerySuggestionAlwaysSuggest -Name "SharePoint"
New-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase -SearchApplication $SearchApp -Language En-Us -Type QuerySuggestionAlwaysSuggest -Name "SharePoint Server 2010"
Start-SPTimerJob -Identity "Prepare Query Suggestions"

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sps2010,fast,search,enterprise+search,microsoft,sharepoint

Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management NextGen and digital marketing

2011-01-10T21:21:00.001+01:00

One of my predictions for 2011 is that we will finally witness the boom or bust of social media apps within the enterprise for the Belux market. Here’s some background info that might get you thinking

This is one of my pet peeves about which I have written a couple of blog posts:

Technorati Tags: knowledge+management,enterprise2.0,social+apps,digital+marketing

Web Content Management in SharePoint 2010 – some random links

2011-01-10T21:15:00.001+01:00

Mental reminder – check out this collection of links about Web Content Management in SharePoint 2010

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sps2010,sharepoint,wcm,development

Porting oAuth with Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 to RTM version

2011-01-10T21:13:00.001+01:00

Recently I stumbled upon this interesting blog post Windows Phone 7 with Twitter which showed how to use oAuth on Windows Phone 7 but it was unfortunately built with the beta versions of Windows Phone 7. As an exercise I decided to upgrade the code to get it to work with the RTM release.

Some things which needed fixing or which bugged me during the upgrade

You will need to remove references to Microsoft.Phone.Controls, Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Navigation, Microsoft.Phone.Controls.WebBrowser, Microsoft.Controls.WebBrowser.interop. Don’t forget to to change the namespace declarations in the XAML files as well.

Add a reference to Microsoft.Phone assembly – all the previous dll’s have been combined into one dll.

Be carefull about some changes in the APIs - WebBrowser is now a sealed class. You cannot inherit from it. IsScriptEnabled, Source, and Base are now dependency properties. NavigatedEventArgs change to NavigationEventArgs.

Changes have been made to WMAppManifest.xml - http://10rem.net/blog/2010/09/16/announcing-the-windows-phone-7-release-wp7-silverlight-toolkit-and-xna-40 – you can find this xml underneath the properties folder in your project

This will probably get you going … have fun

Technorati Tags: windows+phone+7,wp7dev,microsoft,development,visualstudio2010

Tips to get the Social sample for SharePoint 2010 to work

2011-01-10T21:02:00.001+01:00

There’s an interesting code sample that you can download from MSDN called SharePoint to LinkedIn Connector which is part of the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SDK. Here’s a number of extra steps that I took to get it to work on my SharePoint 2010 dev box.

Some tips:

I needed to add a reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.dll assembly – you can find it underneath C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG\ADMINBIN.
It has a hard coded reference to http://mysite in the feature activated event receiver – don’t forget to change that.
During deployment I got an error stating - “No User Profile Application available to service the request. Contact your farm administrator.” – thankfully Steve to the rescue – “No User Profile Application Available Mystery” in SharePoint 2010

After that everything worked smoothly.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,linkedin,socialdata,microsoft,sharepoint,sps2010,development,sharepoint+sdk

Code profiler for Windows Phone 7

2010-12-31T15:37:00.001+01:00

EQATEC has recently release comes a code-profiler that can profile your WP7 Silverlight app on real phone hardware, as well as on the emulator. The profiler is free for single-assembly applications. You can download it now from www.eqatec.com.

For more info check out Channel 9 – World’s first profiler for Windows Phone 7 or the Eqatec profiler website.

Technorati Tags: Development,visualstudio2010,vs2010,c#,windows+phone+7,wp7,wp7dev,microsoft

Crop the webbrowser control in a Windows Phone 7 app

2010-12-30T15:44:00.001+01:00

When building my Windows Phone 7 app – I needed to login into LinkedIn – unfortunately the login page of LinkedIn does not seem to scale as well as the Twitter login page so I decided to only show a specific part of the page within the WebBrowser control for Windows Phone. I kind of got it working by using the Clip property (for reference see How to: Crop an object (Silverlight))

<phone:WebBrowser HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" 
Name="webBrowser1" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" Height="466" Width="480" 
IsScriptEnabled="True"  Visibility="Collapsed">
 <phone:WebBrowser.Clip>
        <RectangleGeometry Rect="0,0,400,300" />
   </phone:WebBrowser.Clip>            
 </phone:WebBrowser>

Technorati Tags: wp7,wp7dev,windows+phone+7,development,vs2010,silverlight,visualstudio2010

Windows Phone 7–Solving the missing dll issue in Training Kit Lab–Using Pivot and Panorama controls

2010-12-16T20:41:00.001+01:00

The lab Using Pivot And Panorama Controls seems to be missing file that supports the reference to the Syndication namespace - System.ServiceModel.Syndication.dll . You can copy that one over from the install directory of the Silverlight 3.0 SDK (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v3.0\Libraries\Client). You can ignore the warning message when adding the dll – everything will work correctly.

Technorati Tags: windows+phone+7,wp7,wp7dev,silverlight

Slidedecks BIWUG on SPS2010 WCM and FAST Search 2010 available

2010-12-09T18:45:00.001+01:00

Thanks to the people who showed up on the december 2th BIWUG session despite 600 km of traffic jams - the slide decks are now available only:

Also thanks to Sven and Pieter for delivering their presentation.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sps+2010,biwug,community,microsoft,sharepoint+server+2010

Which business books influenced you?

2010-11-22T21:11:00.001+01:00

A while ago I tagged – 36 best business books that influenced Microsoft leaders – here are the ones I read and definitely liked together with some extra books (the ones in bold come from the original list):

So which business books influenced you?

SharePoint Server 2010 Capacity Management– talking about software boundaries and limits

2010-11-15T20:44:00.001+01:00

Some interesting stuff about software boundaries and limits in SharePoint Server 2010 – take a look at the table below. You should make a distinction between hard limits (which you simply should not exceed) and soft limits – which are a sort of recommendation.

Soft limits
	2007	2010
Content DB Size	100 GB	200 GB
File Size	2 GB	2 GB
DB’s per web app	100	300
Site collection size	100 GB	100 GB
List items per view	2000	5000
Application Pools	8 per web server	10 per web server
Managed Paths	20 per web app	20 per web app
Documents in a library		30 million with nesting. Depends heavily on usage and size of the documents
Indexed items in search	50 million	100 million

There is also a Technet article – SharePoint Server 2010 Capacity Management: Software Boundaries and limits – which provides some additional guidance – this also puts the numbers listed above a little more in perspective.

Content database sizes up to 1 terabyte are supported only for large, single-site repositories and archives with non-collaborative I/O and usage patterns, such as Records Centers. Larger database sizes are supported for these scenarios because their I/O patterns and typical data structure formats have been designed for, and tested at, larger scales.

For a full overview of the different white papers - check out SharePoint Server 2010 performance and capacity test results and recommendations.

In general the new scale targets for 2010 go above and beyond the ones set in 2007 but design is still important although it becomes more difficult to bring a farm down by just putting millions of docs in one library – check out It looks like you’re building a large library. Would you like help? as well as Working with large lists in SharePoint 2010 – List Throttling .

Happy SharePoint-ing

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,capacity+management,sps2010,sps+2010,microsoft,administration

BIWUG Session on SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search Server 2010 on December 1th

2010-11-10T08:25:00.001+01:00

Agenda

18:00-18:30 Welcome with sandwich lunch

18:30-19:30 Building a public website with SharePoint Server 2010 – a practical case – www.vib.eu

19:30-19:45 Break

19:45-20:45 Introduction to FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010

Location: RealDolmen, Industriezone Zenneveld, Vaucampslaan 42, 1654 Huizingen, Belgium

Registration is now opened on the BIWUG site www.biwug.be

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sps2010,fast,enterprise+search,biwug,community,microsoft

SharePoint 2010–Training videos overview

2010-11-09T12:52:00.001+01:00

SharePoint 2010 on Chopsticks Belux

SharePoint 2010 Connections event

KEYNOTE: The Evolution of SharePoint from Two Pet Projects to a Multi-Company Ecosystem – Mike FitzMaurice
MSC02: Overview of the SharePoint 2010 Developer Platform – Steve Fox
MSC03: Social Computing Overview – Daniel McPherson, Robin Meure, Mark van Lunenburg
MSC04: Web Content Management in SharePoint 2010 – Donald Hessing
MSC05: Silverlight and SharePoint 2010 Better Together – Jan Tielens
MSC06: Client Side Technologies in SharePoint 2010 – Jan Tielens
MSC08: Server Free Solutions: Sandboxed and Client-Only Solutions for SharePoint 2010 – Daniel McPherson
MSC09: FAST Search for SharePoint: Capabilities Deep Dive – Sam Hassani
MSC11: SharePoint 2010 Search – Richard Taylor
MSC16: SharePoint BI Overview – Mike Fitzmaurice
MSC17: Upgrading Your 2007 Solution to 2010 – Mirjan van Olst, Serge van den Oever
MSC18: Introduction to SharePoint Designer 2010: Top 5 Great Things to Know! – Asif Rehmani
MSC19: Overview: Creating Workflows with SharePoint Designer 2010, Infopath and Visio – Asif Rehmani
MSC20: Creating Data-Centric Composite Applications Using SharePoint Designer 2010 – Asif Rehmani
MSC21: What’s New in Office 2010? – Bart Wessels
MSC24: Managing and Sharing Rich Media in SharePoint 2010 – Donald Hessing
MSC26: Pex – Unit Testing of SharePoint Services that Rocks! – Peli de Halleux
MSC27: Claims-Based Identity in SharePoint 2010 – Spencer Harbar
MSC28: SharePoint 2010 Overview and What’s new for End Users – Matthijs Hoekstra
MSC30: Advanced Web Part Development – Jan Tielens
MSC31: SharePoint UI Customization – Marianne van Wanrooij
MSC35: Integrating Workflows into Backend Systems using External Data Exchange Services – Wouter van Vugt
MSC36: Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Tools Extensibility – Wouter van Vugt
Creating Code-Free Mashups with InfoPath and SharePoint Web Parts

SharePoint 2010 Advanced developer training

TechEd 2009 Videos

SharePoint Admins, the Reluctant DBAs. Todd Klindt of Solanite Consulting and Shane Young of SharePoint 911 discuss SQL Server for SharePoint admins.
Following Best Practices and Avoiding Common Errors with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Development. Eric Shupps, president of BinaryWave, presents proven methodologies and common API mistakes in SharePoint Server 2007 projects.
Building High Performance Features and Solutions on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Andrew Connell of Critical Path Training demonstrates proven publishing strategies for SharePoint developers.
Top Five Ways to Make Your End Users Heroes with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Asif Rehmani of SharePoint-eLearning.com shows how to instill best practices for your company and users with SharePoint Designer 2007.
Go Beyond with the Business Data Catalog. Todd Baginski, enterprise solution strategist at Advaiya Inc., provides a series of demos using BDC runtime APIs and custom Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services in Silverlight applications.
Social Networking and User Profiles for Business. Matthew McDermott, MVP with Catapult Systems Inc., explains social networking profile integration in SharePoint.
Saving the World, One Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Deployment at a Time: Backup and Disaster Recovery. Todd Klindt of Solanite Consulting, and Shane Young of SharePoint 911 discuss data protection and recoverability in SharePoint Server 2007.
Automate Business Processes Using InfoPath Forms with Integrated SharePoint Designer Workflows... All without Coding! Asif Rehmani, of SharePoint-eLearning.com, provides a deep dive into Office SharePoint Designer workflows, which let ordinary business users build and validate complex data-driven forms in InfoPath.
An Introduction to SharePoint Applications using InfoPath 2010
Building SharePoint Applications with InfoPath 2010
Form-Driven Mashups using InfoPath and SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 – Visual How to’s

Visual How To: Creating SharePoint 2010 List Definitions in Visual Studio 2010
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg276355.aspx
Visual How-to Video: Creating SharePoint 2010 List Definitions in Visual Studio 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/en-us/office/media/video/sharepoint.html?uuid=5dc5a521-3451-4445-a829-ad5a9339642c&from=mscomsharepoint
Visual How-to Sample: Creating SharePoint 2010 List Definitions in Visual Studio 2010
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=odcsp14h2&ReleaseId=5007
Visual How To: Creating SharePoint 2010 Site Definitions in Visual Studio 2010
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg276356.aspx
Visual How-to Video: Creating SharePoint 2010 Site Definitions in Visual Studio 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/en-us/office/media/video/sharepoint.html?uuid=efdb4d4d-1201-4a29-aa31-f63bfa1434b0&from=mscomsharepoint
Visual How-to Sample: Creating SharePoint 2010 Site Definitions in Visual Studio 2010
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/odcsp14h2/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=5008
Visual How To: Adding SharePoint Project Items to SharePoint 2010 in Visual Studio 2010
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg241249.aspx
Visual How-To Video: Adding SharePoint Project Items with Visual Studio 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/en-us/office/media/video/sharepoint.html?uuid=21665af4-e7fc-4574-b9f3-9d5a08fd22c5&from=mscomsharepoint
Visual How-To: Creating Custom Extensions for SharePoint 2010 Development Tools in Visual Studio 2010
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg241221.aspx
Visual How-To Video: Creating Custom Extensions for SharePoint 2010 Development Tools in Visual Studio 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/en-us/office/media/video/sharepoint.html?uuid=d8c70185-6fb2-4b64-b696-921a58a575d9&from=mscomsharepoint

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sps+2010,training+material,training,microsoft,videos,community

Big Bang Theory and Information Management videos

2010-11-09T12:12:00.001+01:00

MVP for another year

2010-11-09T12:10:00.001+01:00

About a month ago I found out that I have been renewed as SharePoint Server MVP. For people who don’t know what a MVP is– here’s Microsoft’s definition:

“This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in SharePoint Services technical communities during the past year.”

I became an MVP in 2005 and have been working with the Belgian SharePoint community ever since – it has been a great experience and I look forward to the next year.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,community,mvp,sps+2010

Rational Guide to Multi tenancy in SharePoint 2010

2010-11-09T12:08:00.001+01:00

Spence has an interesting series of articles about multi tenancy in SharePoint 2010 – a must read

Technorati Tags: sps2010,sharepoint+2010,multi+tenancy,administration,sharepoint,microsoft

Quick Tip–Accessing guest from host with VMWare Workstation

2010-11-08T15:02:00.001+01:00

Most SharePoint 2010 developers probably use VMWare workstation (or Virtualbox). But what if you needed to access your SharePoint 2010 environment running in a VM from your host environment? I actually needed this to write a Windows Phone 7 app for SharePoint Server 2010 and since I can’t install the Windows Phone Developer Tools on Windows Server 2008 – I decided to use the install on my Windows 7 host and access SharePoint 2010 from there.

Quite easy – just change network settings to use VMWare Network Adapter VMNet1 (Host only) - A private network shared with the host - this way you can access the host from on your guest OS.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,vmware,tip

Overview of SharePoint 2010 powershell cmdlets

2010-11-08T14:57:00.001+01:00

Ever wondered how you can quickly generate an overview of the available Powershell commandlets for SharePoint 2010? Try the next command:

Get-Command –PSSnapin “Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell” | select name, definition | format-list > C:\SP2010_PowerShell_Commands.txt

Technorati Tags: powershell,cmdlet,sps2010,sharepoint,sharepoint+2010

BIWUG Presentations september 2010 online

2010-10-05T05:19:00.001+02:00

The presentations from the BIWUG session in september 2010 are available on www.biwug.be in the meeting presentations document library :

I would like to thank the people from Quest for providing the excellent location as well as our two speakers – Fouad and Karine.

Technorati Tags: biwug,sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,upgrade,sharepoint+server+2010,quest,administration,community

SharePoint Server 2010 “System.ServiceModel.EndPointNotFoundException” in OWSTimer.exe

2010-09-23T12:31:00.001+02:00

If you get this error on your SharePoint Server 2010 development machine – ""System.ServiceModel.EndPointNotFoundException” in OWSTimer.exe – then you probably need to manually start the ForeFront Identity Manager Service – it did the trick for me …

SharePoint Stef provided the solution (and additional explanation) in his blogpost – SP2010 “System.ServiceModel.EndpointNotfoundException”.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint+server+2010,sharepoint,administration,sps2010

Building a claims viewer webpart for SharePoint 2010

2010-09-23T10:21:00.001+02:00

When running through the MSDN article – Claims Walkthrouhgh: writing claims providers for SharePoint 2010 – I noticed that it did not clearly showed how the webparts where build which showed the overview of the claims for a specific request. Reza pointed me in the correct direction by sending me the link to a post from Steve Peschka (a must read blog for people who work with SharePoint and claims) – Figuring out what claims you have in SharePoint 2010.

Some things you should know when you try to build a claims viewer webpart of your own:

First download the Windows Identity Foundation SDK
Read the basics about Claim Based Identity from the Microsoft Patterns & Practices group – A guide to Claims-based Identity and Access control

The code is actually pretty simple – you can use a Visual Web Part (new in 2010) or a standard webpart – here’s a snippet

IClaimsPrincipal cp = Page.User as IClaimsPrincipal;   
if (cp != null)  { 
  IClaimsIdentity ci = (IClaimsIdentity)cp.Identity;   
  foreach (Claim c in ci.Claims) {
       sb.Append(c.ClaimType + " " + c.Value + "<br>"); 
  }
}

Have fun ….

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint2010,sps2010,claims,CBA,WindowsIdentityFoundation,WIF,claims+based+authentication,sharepoint+server+2010

SharePoint 2010 Software Development Kit – august 2010 release

2010-09-22T14:00:00.001+02:00

On september 9th a new version of the SharePoint 2010 SDK (august 2010) was released – a must have for every developer.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sdk,sharepoint+2010,sps2010

Form Based Authentication in SharePoint 2010 and what it has to do with Claim Based Authentication.

2010-09-15T20:23:00.001+02:00

Starting from SharePoint Server 2007 it is possible to use the ASP.NET membership and role provider for authentication purposes (meaning you are not limited to pure windows authentication). SharePoint Server 2010 extends on this model by providing claim based authentication.

For authentication 2010 in SharePoint you can choose between 2 models:

Classic mode authentication
Claims based authentication mode

Classic mode is provided mostly for legacy purposes since claims is the way forward – take a look at Plan Authentication Methods (SharePoint 2010) on Technet for more details.

If you plan to use anything other then plain windows authentication you have to go for claims based authentication (CBA). Claims based authentication in 2010 supports the following underlying authentication mechanisms:

Windows claims (when you log on with NTLM or the Kerberos protocol)
Forms-based authentication claims (when you use an ASP.NET membership and role provider – so use a SQL Server or Oracle database as back-end store)
Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) claims -when you log on by using a security token service (STS), such as Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0.

Claims based authentication in 2010 is implemented on top of Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) – so I recommend that you take a look at this blog post to get you started with a number of resources – Windows Identity Foundation resources for SharePoint 2010 developers.

I wanted to try out Forms-based authentication claims using SQL Server as back-end store and I tried out a number of walkthroughs but this one worked like a charm – Configuring claims and form-based authentication for use with a SQL provider in SharePoint 2010 (Thanks you, Spence for pointing me in the correct direction)

Some additional remarks:

I first tried this article – How to:Forms Based Authentication(FBA) on SharePoint 2010 but it did not complete correctly – at least for me. It however provides an interesting alternative for managing your ASP.NET users using the IIS 7.0 MMC that I was not aware of. When I find the time I will probably try it again to see how this works.
It might be interesting to take a look at this Codeplex project – http://fba.codeplex.com
The steps outlined are mostly manual steps – in a production environment you would probably want to automate it more or less – take a look at SharePoint 2010 Forms Based Authentication Configuration Manager which provides a possible solution

References:

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+server+2010,sps2010,claims,CBA,authentication,security,WIF

BIWUG goes Facebook...

2010-09-14T21:06:00.001+02:00

I just started a BIWUG group on Facebook - join us if you are interested in sharing information around the Microsoft Information Worker Community in Belgium and Luxemburg

Powershell changes from SharePoint 2010 beta to RTM

2010-09-08T08:31:00.001+02:00

When testing some SharePoint 2010 Powershell scripts I noticed that there have been some changes in the naming from beta to RTM – for a good overview check out Changes in SharePoint 2010 powershell commandlets (Forums)

Update: Apparently there is also a Technet page which describes the changes – Updates to Windows PowerShell cmdlets (SharePoint Server 2010)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint2010,sharepoint,powershell,Microsoft,sps2010,administration

10 extra seats available for BIWUG september 2010 session

2010-09-07T23:55:00.001+02:00

The number of available seats for the BIWUG session of september 16h has been increased to 45 people (previously 30 people) so 10 people can still register – go quickly to www.biwug.be

Technorati Tags: biwug,sharepoint,community,sharepoint+2010

Free Microsoft training sessions available at MIC Belgium

2010-09-02T20:19:00.001+02:00

The Microsoft Innovation Center in Belgium organizes a number of interesting events:

SharePoint Developers Day - 15 september
Club des experts: BPOS & Office Online & Office Web App – 16 september
Testing Visual Studio 2010 – 21 september
Silverlight 4 – 7 october
Club des experts – SharePoint & gestion documentaire
Construire son Mock up en quelgues heurs – 4 november 4t

All sessions are in French – and registration is possible through – www.mic-belgique.be

Technorati Tags: MIC,microsoft,silverlight,sharepoint,BPOS,developers

BIWUG IT Pro session on september 16th

2010-09-01T22:36:00.001+02:00

BIWUG (www.biwug.be) is announcing another session about SharePoint on September 16th at the Quest offices in Diegem.

Agenda

18:00-18:30 Welcome
18:30-19:30 SharePoint administration and granular recovery (Speaker Quest)
19:30-19:45 Break
19:45-20:45 Upgrading from SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010 (Speaker – Karine Bosch)

More details and registration on the BIWUG site – www.biwug.be

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,community,biwug,sharepoint+administration,sps2010,upgrade

SharePoint 2010 Meeting Workspaces and Blogs are not MUI enabled

2010-07-27T22:40:00.001+02:00

A while ago I wrote about the new multilingual capabilities of SharePoint 2010 based on the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) – see Multilingual User Interface (MUI) in SharePoint 2010 – Part I and Multilingual User Interface (MUI) in SharePoint 2010 – Part II. But beware – apparently not all site definitions support the MUI.

If you try to enable alternate languages for a SharePoint 2010 meeting workspace you will get an error stating “this site is based on a template that does not not support alternate languages”.

Now if you want to find out which webtemplates support MUI you can run the following Powershell script:

$siteUrl = "http://hades/"
$site = get-spsite $siteurl

$site.GetWebTemplates("1033") |foreach {Write-Host $_.Title $_.Name $_.SupportsMultilingualUI;}

you will get a listing of all installed webtemplates within thesite collection specified by the url parameter. Notice the SupportsMultilingualUI property of the SPWebTemplate object – for the Meeting Workspaces and Blog site definitions this will return False.

Next is the complete listing returned on an install with SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition.

Global template GLOBAL#0 True
Team Site STS#0 True
Blank Site STS#1 True
Document Workspace STS#2 True
Basic Meeting Workspace MPS#0 False
Blank Meeting Workspace MPS#1 False
Decision Meeting Workspace MPS#2 False
Social Meeting Workspace MPS#3 False
Multipage Meeting Workspace MPS#4 False
Central Admin Site CENTRALADMIN#0 True
Wiki Site WIKI#0 True
Blog BLOG#0 False
Group Work Site SGS#0 True
Tenant Admin Site TENANTADMIN#0 True
Access Services Site ACCSRV#0 True
Assets Web Database ACCSRV#1 True
Charitable Contributions Web Database ACCSRV#3 True
Contacts Web Database ACCSRV#4 True
Issues Web Database ACCSRV#6 True
Projects Web Database ACCSRV#5 True
Document Center BDR#0 True
(obsolete) Records Center OFFILE#0 True
Records Center OFFILE#1 True
Shared Services Administration Site OSRV#0 True
PowerPoint Broadcast Site PowerPointBroadcast#0 True
PerformancePoint PPSMASite#0 True
Business Intelligence Center BICenterSite#0 True
SharePoint Portal Server Site SPS#0 True
SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space SPSPERS#0 True
Personalization Site SPSMSITE#0 True
Contents area Template SPSTOC#0 True
Topic area template SPSTOPIC#0 True
News Site SPSNEWS#0 True
Publishing Site CMSPUBLISHING#0 True
Publishing Site BLANKINTERNET#0 True
Press Releases Site BLANKINTERNET#1 True
Publishing Site with Workflow BLANKINTERNET#2 True
News Site SPSNHOME#0 True
Site Directory SPSSITES#0 True
Community area template SPSCOMMU#0 True
Report Center SPSREPORTCENTER#0 True
Collaboration Portal SPSPORTAL#0 True
Enterprise Search Center SRCHCEN#0 True
Profiles PROFILES#0 True
Publishing Portal BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER#0 True
My Site Host SPSMSITEHOST#0 True
Enterprise Wiki ENTERWIKI#0 True
Basic Search Center SRCHCENTERLITE#0 True
Basic Search Center SRCHCENTERLITE#1 True
FAST Search Center SRCHCENTERFAST#0 True
Visio Process Repository visprus#0 True

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,MUI,Multilingual,SPS2010,microsoft

CustomErrors setting in SharePoint 2010 for debugging purposes

2010-07-27T21:36:00.001+02:00

On a SharePoint 2010 development machine you typically want to see the full stack trace when an error occurs. In SharePoint 2010 you will need to modify 2 web.configs:

Underneath “[systemdrive]:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\virtualdirectories\<port>”
In the layouts directory underneath the SharePoint root directory or 14 hive – “[systemdrive]:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS

The settings that you need to change are still the same:

Change Debug=”true”
CallStack=”true”
CustomErrors=”Off”

Happy SharePointing …

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sps2010,microsoft,development,sharepoint

SharePoint 2010 training material for developers

2010-06-28T19:48:00.001+02:00

If you are a SharePoint developer and you are planning to start with SharePoint 2010 – definitely take a look at these links:

Download the SharePoint 2010 SDK
Sharepoint 2010 Developer Training Kit
SharePoint Server 2010: Advanced Developer Training Presentations
Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 (32-bit) – yes, even you as a developer should definitely take a look at SharePoint Designer. This a must have tool in your development toolkit.
SharePoint 2010: Getting Started with Development on SharePoint 2010 Hands-on Labs in C# and Visual Basic
SharePoint 2010: Professional Developer Evaluation Guide and Walkthroughs
Certification exams (availability 9/2010):

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,development,microsoft,sharepoint+server+2010,sps2010,SDK,training+material,certification

Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010

2010-06-22T20:32:00.001+02:00

In Access 2007 you were able to publish data to SharePoint 2007, Access 2010 – in combination with SharePoint Server 2010 extends this functionality by allowing you to publish full Access applications to SharePoint including forms, reports, queries, etc … This can be done without involvement of developers or server administrators. Once published, your Access application can be worked with from within the SharePoint native web interface.

The Access Show – Publish a Access 2007 database to SharePoint with Access 2010 and the related article – Build an Access database to share on the Web

PS Access Services is part of SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise edition – check out SharePoint 2010 edition comparison for more details

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,access+services,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,microsoft

Access Services: solving this report failed to load because session state is not turned on.

2010-06-21T21:36:00.001+02:00

I noticed the following error recently in one of the Access web databases driven by Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010.

“This report failed to load because session state is not turned on. Contact your SharePoint farm administrator. Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation. Correlation ID: 6968e6db-d139-4b88-bf5a-7c39c2e4a6be Date and Time: 6/16/2010 7:37:01 AM”

The strange thing was that the State Service was in running state (within SharePoint Central Admin > Manage Service Applications). Underlying Access Services seems to use a ReportViewer Control so this article – Using Access Services with SQL Reporting Services provided the solution:

Enable the Session State for the farm by opening the SharePoint Management Shell. Enter the command [Enable-SPSessionStateService –DatabaseName “foobar”] — The DatabaseName value is the database that will be created on the computer that is running SQL Server. Perform an IIS reset.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,access+services,sharepoint+2010,sharepoint+server+2010,microsoft

Selling ECM,WCMS, BPM ….

2010-06-03T20:31:00.001+02:00

Funny video - a fictional discussion between a business software salesperson and an IT Manager. …

Technorati Tags: fun,ECM,BPM,Acronyms

Dear CEO , why you should really consider moving to Windows 7 from Windows XP

2010-06-03T20:19:00.001+02:00

Dear CEO, yes it is time to move away from Windows XP – here are some reasons why:

Mainstream support for Windows XP has already ended last year and extended support is available until 2014 – so you probably won’t be able to wait until Windows 8. You can only hold off for so long …
You might want to take a look at Windows 7 Business Value Analysis – depending on the type of organization you will have a different ROI and cost structure. “I haven’t heard about possible advantages” seems like a lame excuse for just sticking with what you know.
There are some great improvements – maybe you will not notice a lot of difference but believe me – when your workforce will adopt it Windows 7 in their home environment – they will notice these differences and might be disappointed for the lack of these features in their work environment. Yuo can even guide them using the new Enterprise Learning Framework My favorite improvements:

Performance improvements – yes even with older hardware I see that it just boots faster and that the settings screens load faster as well.
Support for 64 bit – I’m a SharePoint dev so …
Search desktop and programs (my personal favorite)
Better wireless support – I haven’t had any issues since I moved to Windows 7 – both Windows XP and Vista gave me severe headaches when using it in combination with my wireless network.
Productivity enhancement due to the new UI
DirectAccess – accessing networks without the need to VPN – I can’t wait for this one.
Boot from VHD option (yep probably not a typical end user operation)

Use the Windows 7 refresh to assess your desktop environments and try to rationalize the application portfolio you currently need to support. A migration is not only a technical operation – if you approach it intelligently you might create extra value while migrating.
Although the standalone user operating system becomes less relevant in a corporate environment – I do think that IT consultancy and services firms should typically lead the pack in migrations. Consider an account manager (or consultant for that matter) trying to sell the value of Windows 7 when giving a presentation with Office 2003 and Windows XP – must be a hard sell in my opinion.

If you agree or disagree … just leave a comment

Technorati Tags: windows7,upgrade,microsoft

SharePoint Saturday Belgium Presentations and code samples

2010-06-02T21:18:00.001+02:00

I finally collected all the presentations and code samples from the different sessions about SharePoint 2010 at our first SharePoint Saturday here in Belgium. Enjoy

Demos and slide decks of Stephane’s sessions about REST and WCF in SharePoint 2010
Serge Luca did a presentation about SPLinq – download the SPLinq at SharePoint Saturday pptx.
Steven explained about Sandboxed solutions – more about it here – BIWUG SPSaturday – wrap up
Karine’s intro about SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010
My presentation about Metadata in SharePoint 2010

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,wcf,sharepoint+2010,biwug,community,sharepoint+saturday,vs2010,metadata+folders,rest,splinq

SharePoint 2010 development random links

2010-05-26T20:11:00.001+02:00

Mental note – need to check links listed below about SharePoint 2010 – some interesting stuff in there. Probably something to do during the summer holidays…

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,silverlight,visualstudio2010,sharepoint+server+2010,sps2010,development,microsoft

Download links for SharePoint Foundation 2010 (WSS 4.0) and SharePoint Designer 2010

2010-05-26T20:08:00.001+02:00

Did you know that there’s a great way to learn to work with the SharePoint 2010 platform. Just download SharePoint Foundation 2010 - if you would follow the logic of naming from the previous versions, this would have been Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 – together with SharePoint Designer 2010. These tools do not have any additional license cost. So why not try them out…

SharePoint Foundation 2010
SharePoint Designer 2010 (32-bit)
SharePoint Designer 2010 (64-bit) – Note: This is the 64-bit version of SharePoint Designer. SharePoint Designer 2010 only connects to SharePoint 2010. To connect to SharePoint 2007 and earlier sites you must continue to use SharePoint Designer 2007. If you elect to install both applications side-by-side, you must download the 32-bit version of SharePoint Designer 2010, and install it after installing SharePoint Designer 2007. Please also note that 64 bit Office applications will not run if SharePoint Designer 2007 is installed; 64-bit Office 2010 applications should only be used if not connecting to SharePoint 2007 servers.
Search Server 2010 Express -If you’re using SharePoint Foundation, you can easily add search capabilities to your collaboration environment across SharePoint sites, file shares, web sites, Exchange Public Folders, and third party repositories using Microsoft Search Server 2010 Express

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+foundation,spf2010,spd2010,sharepoint+designer2010,sharepoint,microsoft

PowerPivot is the analysts/managers killer app

2010-05-19T22:37:00.001+02:00

I did some demos recently at a SharePoint event @RealDolmen last week and one of the things I demoed was PowerPivot – a technology not specifically linked to SharePoint but it can be integrated. So here goes my PowerPivot elevator pitch:

PowerPivot is a separate add-in for Excel which adds an in-memory cube which allows you import enormous quantities of data with incredible speed into Excel from different data sources. You can define relationships between these data sources and parse through this data using pivot tables, pivot charts or using the new Data Analysis Expressions (DAX).

If you want to learn more about PowerPivot definitely take a look at PowerPivot Component Architecture which is an excerpt from the Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot Planning and Deployment technical white paper.

Technorati Tags: powerpivot,business+intelligence,excel,microsoft,office

Business intelligence in SharePoint 2010

2010-05-19T16:18:00.001+02:00

As I already mentioned in one of the SharePoint 2010 practice sessions here at RealDolmen – Business Intelligence on the Microsoft platform is a great value proposition. With SharePoint as front end visualization plaform you can create amazing looking dashboards – here are a collection of links which came through in the RSS feeds I follow but I’m still surprised by how people still seem to ignore this great feature set.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,microsoft,sql+server,powerpivot,sqlserver2008r2,analysis+services,SSAS,SSRS,excel

Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2010 and FAST Search 2010

2010-05-18T19:40:00.001+02:00

Here’s a collection of links which will help you get started with Enterprise Search on the 2010 platform. With the addition of Fast to the Microsoft Enterprise gamma the functional spectrum which is covered has broadened enormously. Have fun …

Starting points:

Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products Visio schema

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Evaluation Guide

SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Search Evaluation Guide

Getting started with Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010

Guide for IT Pros for Microsoft Search Server 2010 Beta

Learning material:

Microsoft Partner Training – Developer training – Advanced Fast Search for Developers

Microsoft Partner Training – IT Pro Training – Advanced Fast Search for IT Pros

Technical articles:

Background info:

Technorati Tags: enterprise+search,enterprisesearch,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,sharepoint,fast,fast2010,fastsearch2010,microsoft

Microsoft free e-books – Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2

2010-05-18T18:56:00.002+02:00

Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 : The book is not a language primer, a language reference, or a single technology book. It’s a book that will help professional developers move from previous versions of Visual Studio (starting with 2003 and on up). It will cover the features of Visual Studio 2010 through an application. It will go through a lot of the exciting new language features and new versions of the most popular technologies without putting the emphasis on the technologies themselves. It will instead put the emphasis on how you would get to those new tools and features from Visual Studio 2010
Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 : Part I, “Database Administration,” is written with the DBA in mind and introduces
readers to the numerous innovations in SQL Server 2008 R2. In Part II, “Business Intelligence Development,” readers discover components new to the SQL Server data platform, as well as significant enhancements to the reporting component.

Technorati Tags: visualstudio2010,vs2010,sql+server,sql2008r2,ebook,free,microsoft,mspress

SharePoint Snacks – Episode 2 – Multi user co-authoring

2010-05-16T10:32:00.001+02:00

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,office,office2010,sharepoint+snacks,microsoft,coauthoring

SharePoint Snacks – Episode 1 – Office 2010 integration with the backstage view

2010-05-16T10:30:00.001+02:00

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,office+2010,office,microsoft,backstage,sharepoint+snacks

People you know and things you can do….

2010-05-15T14:50:00.001+02:00

Excellent blogpost - No man is an island – truer today than ever with a reference to this interesting survey – Informal networks linked to success of change initiatives.

The answer to the question about whether networking makes a difference: yes! The study showed a significant relationship between the success of a change initiative and the strength of the personal networks of the leader(s) managing the initiative.

93% of completely successful change initiatives were led by leaders with very strong or strong personal networks. Not one change initiatives described as less successful was led by leader(s) with strong or very strong personal networks.

On the other hand, the majority of less successful change initiatives (73%) were led by people described as having moderate or weak personal networks.

Technorati Tags: HR,networking,change+management

Getting Office 2010 to work on a single box SharePoint 2010 demo environment

2010-05-10T21:21:00.006+02:00

Last week I finished installing a new SharePoint 2010 demo environment. As it is a demo environment I installed everything on one server – so Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008, SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010 on one single machine. Unfortunately when I tried the “Edit in word” option in SharePoint 2010 it gave me an error “Word has encountered an error”. Same if I tried the “New document” option in a SharePoint 2010 document library.

Thanks to Steven for providing the solution – go to File Options> Trust Center. Next click the Trust Center Settings button. On the new screen which pops up – go to the Protected View and unselect all the tree protected view options displayed on the top of this settings page

Close your Office 2010 and try the “Edit in word” option again – you will notice that it works like a charm.

Technorati Tags: office+2010,sharepoint+2010,office,sps2010,sharepoint,microsoft