SharePoint Tools Galore v6

Time for another update of the SharePoint and MCMS tools Galore list, version 6 here it comes.... I added some new sections (IFilters, CRM, SharePoint and Visual Studio 2005,...) and added some tools to existing sections as well.

SharePoint toolsuites

Coras workplace suiteSuite with
rollup webparts (for news,documents,tasks,...), navigation controls and full language localization (This is way cool...)

Syntergy Provide lots of modules such as
replication technologies for SharePoint, bulkloader, audit for SharePoint,...

Tools for SharePoint from SPSDev.com - contains Pocket Portal,
My Team OrgChart WebPart, Bulk upload

Search

Entopia K-Bus for SharePoint Portal Server: Adds extra information discovery capabilities, also allows
SharePoint to index Documentum, Opentext,...

WSS PowerSearch - The developers ofthis product also have
some other nice SharePoint tools, check out PowerRecycle and PowerNav

Behaviortracking from Mondosearch

Coveo SharePoint search

SharePoint Advanced Search Tools (Gotdotnet)

Ontolica - enhanced search interface for the SPS search engine

SharePoint word breaker update

IFilters

Adobe PDF iFilter

IFiltershop - Zip iFilter, CHM, DWF, Inventor,Mindmanager,Msg, MS Project,OpenOffice,Postscript,RAR,SHTML,StarOffice,vCard,WMV,XMP

JPEG iFilter

Audio/Video iFilter -WMA,WMV & MP3

SharePoint XML iFilter

Cadcompany Autocad DWG iFilter/li>

IFilter for CSF

Citeknet IFilters - free ifilters for cab,chm,exe,hlp, rar and zip

WordPerfect iFilter

MCMS (Microsoft Content Management Server)

MCMS Manager 3.0

Telerik RAD controls for MCMS

AchieveForms for CMS

CMS.Rapid

Metalogix migration manager

Smart language connector for CMS

Backup/Data Recovery/Antivirus

SharePoint document recovery tool : Free download from Stephane Cordonnier

McAfee Portal Shield Antivirus solution

AVG SharePoint Server Edition web site Antivirus solution

Sybari Antigen for SharePoint

TrendMicro PortalProtect Antivirus solution

Bitdefender for Sharepoint - Antivirus solutions

SharePoint Dynamic Site Collection backup (Webfox Inc.)

Workflow

NetPoint Solutions

Factiva:Search and workflow tools for Office 2003

Captaris Teamplate: This workflow toolset even adds a module for fax based workflow "RightFax Workflow wizard

Skelta workflow .Net

K2.Net

Nintex smartlibrary

Smart workflow from LMR Solutions

DataLan FlowBuilder

ActiveSPS Workflow Solutions

Biztalk adapter for SharePoint

Document, Records and Digital Assets Management

Meridio: .Net software which integrates seamlessly into SharePoint and provides records management
features needed to be compliant with standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley, US DOD 5015.2 records management standards,...

Towersoft

Wisdom

Mobius

Equilibrium MediaRich for SharePoint- digital asset management (DAM) solution to Microsoft Office Systems 2003.

Workshare Professional -Secure document compliance

Gigatrust

Hyper.Net (Coextant)- Cross-media content automation server

Retention Server for SharePoint from 80-20 - free solution for more info check out this recording

EntropySoft ECIGlobal document service bus

RSS Feeds & SharePoint

RSS Feed for SharePoint Lists (U2U)

PortalBuilder RSS Extensions for SharePoint- RSS XML feeds (and lists) are the building blocks for building live interfaces for SharePoint data using AJAX technologies. Deployed in the _layouts virtualized application, these feeds are available from server and client side code and can be used as an AJAX XML data source.

Syndication Generator for WSS (Bluedog Limited)

SharePoint Syndication Generator (Sig Weber)

RSS Feed Viewer webpart (Sig Weber) -RSS Viewer Web Part based on the built-in SharePoint XML Web Part and a custom XSLT transformation

SharePoint Syndication (DevHawk) -Extension for SharePoint (WSS and SPS) that exposes site information via standard XML syndication formats (RSS, OPML, etc)

Utilities & developer tools

SharePoint Explorer : another free tool which you can use to explore the SharePoint object model

Admin report kit for SPS 2003: configuration and usage reporting tool for SPS 2003

SharePoint site permission manager (Gotdotnet)

SharePoint explorer for VS.Net

BlueDogLimited Webpart Tool Kit

CAML Query Builder (U2U)

SharePoint Configuration analyzer

CAMLViewer 1.0 (Stramit)

James Milne's SharePoint CSS Skinner

Office Web Components

SPS Portal 2003 Search Web Service Tester

Windows SharePoint Services: Usage Blob Parser

ViewPoint - SharePoint navigation and modeling tool

SharePoint Utility Suite Release 2 and SPSiteManager 1.1

SMove for SharePoint

SharePoint analyzer - Gathers information about a SharePoint configuration - Created by Mike McIntyre, an Escalation Engineer in PSS, and is used extensively by PSS in troubleshooting customer issues

SharePoint Explorer (IE Addin)

Admin Report Kit for SharePoint (ARKSP) -Configuration and usage reporting tool for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services. ARKSP presents information across virtual servers, portal sites, site collection and lists in SharePoint in simple report formats.

SharePoint Portal Area explorer

Portalbuilder application blocks

Cross-forest people picker-This picker requires and leverages the profiles in SPS for adding users to Windows SharePoint Services sites as a replacement to the Outlook address book button.

Reghost.Net- Reghost your unghosted SharePoint pages

SharePoint Database split (WSSSplit) -This tool automates splitting large Windows Sharepoint Services Databases into several smaller Databases. Based on an input, the process locks, backups, deletes and restores a SiteCollection.

Universal SharePoint Manager (IDevFactory)

SharePoint & Visual Studio 2005

Visual Studio 2005 Web Part code snippets (Gotdotnet)

Visual Studio 2005 Web Part project template(Carlos Segura)

Recycle bin solutions

Deleted Items Document Library Custom List Template

SharePoint Recycle BIN (Gotdotnet project)

Microsoft CRM integration

Displaying CRM business data in SharePoint web parts

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 List Web Part

InfoPath & Electronic Forms solutions

CaveDigital XML Form WebPreviewer Web Part- allows users without InfoPath to view the contents of forms on their web browser.

AchieveForms

InfoView 2.5

NetXPert InfoScope

InfoJet EditPart for SharePointEdit your InfoPath forms from within your browser

EasyForms Web Part: SharePoint: Community Beta

WebParts

Acar Learning Technologies - Poll webpart for SharePoint, Quiz webpart for SharePoint

CSEG Rollup webpart

FluidNature image webpart

Calendar webpart

My ChangePasswordControl Webpart for Sharepoint

Office Live meeting webparts

Cave Digtal XML Form webprevriewer webpart

SharePoint FAV 1.1

The Dot Net Factory - Active Directory WebManager Enterprise Edition

Easy tabs webpart

Windows Folder webpart- The Windows Folder web part allows users to store files within a standard Windows (NTFS) folder in a shared network location and display a list of those files in a SharePoint page via a consistent ‘document library’-style interface.

TraceInfo WebPart

Gant webchart

Brightwork Reporter - SharePoint web part to enable rollup reporting across multiple Microsoft SharePoint lists and sites

Flexlistviewer webpart - display lists of other sites without using SharePoint

Treeview webpart (Gotdotnet)

High availability & replication

Neverfail for SharePoint- Replication, switchover, failover and switchback for SharePoint

DoubleTake

Echo for SharePoint

Certeon - Microsoft SharePoint Application

Business Intelligence & Reporting

DSP Portal Edition : Adds webparts which can display information from OLAP cubes

Omnisys Power Gauge - displays measurements based on various types of data sources, using dynamic and configurable gauges.

Crystal Reports SPS integration kit

BI Portal

SQL Server 2000 report pack for SPS

Proclarity for SharePoint Portal Server

SharePoint Reports (Gotdotnet)

Miscellaneous

Brightwork: adds MSF (Microsoft Solution Framework) on top of SharePoint

Ratings & expert module for SharePoint

Factiva Modules to integrate news sources into your WSS/SPS (Factiva is a Dow Jones & Reuters company)

Advis site navigator Navigation and UI enhancements

Omnisys Probability Impact Matrix webpart - based on WSS risk list from Project Server 2003

KnowledgeLake Connect

Mindjet manager 6.0 with SharePoint support- Mindmanager - the famous mindmapping tool now has a free addin to support integration with SharePoint

Tam Tam WikiSharePoint version 1.0

Wikipoint - adds Wiki functionality to SharePoint

Offline/Mobile Portal capabilities

Digilink revelation Lets mobile users synchronise offline information with SPS and WSS - 15 day free trial

IORA Another solution for offline SharePoint usage

Groove - software firm that Microsoft acquired a couple of months ago, they sell amongst other Mobile workspace for SharePoint

BerryPoint - Adapts SharePoint for display on Blackberry

Colligo for SharePoint (currently in beta2)

BerryPoint Connect (Sourceforge) - SharePoint on Blackberry

Identity management and single sign on

Version3 - Simple Signon

Web Single sign on for SharePoint - Single sign on between Office and SharePoint in extranet scenario's

Collective Software FlexAuth - Single sign on on extranet

Migration tools

Casahl ecKnowledge

Tzunami deployer

SharePoint Import Export tools (Gotdotnet)

K-Wise - Migration tools

sharepoint

When You Click a Link to an Office Document on a Windows SharePoint Services Web Site, You Are Prompted for Authentication Many Times

I lost the link to the KB article on MSDN but I'm putting in this link for reference - When You Click a Link to an Office Document on a Windows SharePoint Services Web Site, You Are Prompted for Authentication Many Times
SharePoint

Free ASP.Net 2.0 hosting

I just found this Dutch hosting provider - which offers free ASP.Net 2.0 hosting for 3 months ...

Numbers in SharePoint Search and noise filtering

Whenever you try to search in SharePoint and you are trying to search for a number combination - e.g. you have a custom metadata field contain productid in format P123-980 - you will notice that the search will not return the results you are expecting. The reason why this happens is that SharePoint uses a couple of files containing noise words which are omitted from the search - this will remove things such as "the", "a", ... - numbers are also added in there. What you need to do:

Remove the numbers from noiseenu.txt which you will find at [Sharepoint Portal Server Install directory]/Applications/Guid/Config

Restart the SharePoint search service

Reset the indexes and perform a full build

For more info check out How to customize SharePoint Portal Server 2003 by using IFilters, noise words, and thesaurus files and also take a look at how SharePoint Search works in multilinguage scenarios
SharePoint

Want to know more about TechEd Europe 2006 - read Gerts blog

It seems that Gerd De Bruycker is blogging as well, he will be responsible for organizing TechEd Europe this year, so check it out...

Workflow Foundation Beta2 - a synopsis of the past 2 months

I did some work with the Workflow Beta1 and I definitely liked it - I'm trying to catch up with the things which have changed in Beta2 - so here comes my list of handy links. Also note that both WCF and WF Beta 2 come with a Go Live license.

Workflow Foundation Beta2 Installation instructions

WFPad application for WF beta 2 - Mark Schmidt has updated his WFPad application for beta 2, this app allows you to edit XAML in text view or with the workflow deisnger.

Workflow Foundation beta 2 download

Workflow foundation upgrade document

Using data driven workflow activities and repeated correlation

Long Running Activity example

Parameters into a workflow

Introduction to the Windows Workflow Foundation rules engine

Technical introduction to workflow foundation

Understanding the lifecycle of a workflow

Update: I noticed a new version of Workflow Foundation is available now, say welcome to Workflow Foundation 2.2

workflow

Microsoft Content Management Server - life after SP2

For people working with Microsoft Content Management Server - I can definitely recommended you to use ASP.Net 2.0 in combination with MCMS. ASP.Net 2.0 makes CMS development a lot easier. To enable your CMS sites to use ASP.Net 2.0 ( and also SQL 2005 for that matter) you will need to install MCMS SP2. To get things started also take a look at the upgraded Woodgrove ASP.Net 2.0 application.

After deploying MCMS SP2, you should also take a look at the blog postings about these post-SP2 hotfixes:

Site Deployment export does not work on databases created before SP2 and moved to SQL Server 2005 (KB 913401)

Clearing hyperlink does not work after installing SP2 (KB 913554)

Workaround for the "CMS" virtual directory problem with VS.NET 2005

Another hotfix for MCMS 2002 addressing two issues has been released today!

VS.Net 2003 no prerequisite for MCMS SP2

If you want to take a look at the (not so) distant future, you should also take a look at the posting from Mark Harrison about how concepts from MCMS map on the SharePoint Server 2007 platform since web content management will be made available on this platform. I will shortly post some more information about the future of Web Content Management on the Microsoft platform and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 role in this.
wcm

ASP.Net 2.0 learning resources

There are a lot of ASP.Net 2.0 learning resources available - I just stumbled on some new ones:

ASP.Net 2.0 multimedia resources on MSDN

ASP.Net Quickstart tutorials

Learn .Net from screencast videos

.NET Pet Shop 4: Migrating an ASP.NET 1.1 Application to 2.0

VS 2003->VS 2005 Web Application and VS 2005 Web Site->Web Application Migration Tutorials Live

ASP.Net 2.0 RSS Toolkit

Moving from ASP.Net 1.1 to 2.0 (Ppt)

aspnet20

WSRP - Web Services for Remote Portlets - do we really need it?

I already mentionned WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) a couple of times on this blog - see SharePoint integration scenarios with SAP and WSRP.Net framework and SharePoint and recently Mike also wrote some interesting stuff about WSRP - Time To Discusss WSRP.... Some interesting points:

WSRP defines how to use SOAP to request and receive blocks of HTML (as opposed to making a method request and getting back XML data, which is what we usually request/receive using SOAP

WSRP is not magic. Its also not a shortcut to good application design

I had a discussion about the benefits of WSRP a couple of months ago with a colleague and the thing which actually sparked the discussion was this other posting about WSRP - WSRP vs RSS? Game over. - my own short synopsis:

SharePoint v3 will provide OOB a WSRP consumer webpart

WSRP will never make it because of a couple of reasons: the user experience is not very good, the spec is too complex and RSS already provides a much simpler syndication protocol (although it is not really fair to compare the two)

For some more comments about WSRP check out this post as well - WSRP is really hot and WSRP and JSR168 Are Two Completely Different Things...

Security - a process based holistic approach

I have to say that I'm no different from other developers - so the first thing I thought when seeing that a presentation was scheduled about security was "YUK...". Fortunately, the presentation was done by Rafal Lukawiecki, and it definitely was worthwile - you can also see the session on Process based holistic security on MSDN Showtime - or download the presentation

We took a look at 3 different frameworks:

Octave and OctaveS

Simplified security risk analysis

Formal threat analysis

One interesting statement was definitely the one about the cost of security - "Security is very expensive, it will typically cost between 20 and 60% of development effort". To justify this kind of cost, there actually are some measurements you can use, one of them is ROSI (Return On Security Investment). There also is a way you can quantify risk which is pretty straightforward and which will work very nicely when you are working with customers in the financial or investment sector. Security implies a certain risk so as with any other risk you should look at the cost for getting an assurance to protect against the event in which the risk might occur.

Alas, going back to Oracle

If you ever need to convert a database from SQL Server to Oracle - one thing you will notice is that Oracle does not seem to have a GUID datatype - you actually need to store it in a RAW(16) column - here is some other stuff you have to watch:

Watch out for Oracle sequential guids

Oracle data provider for .Net

Oracle.DataAccess issues - some cautionary tales

Mapping .NET Framework Data Provider Data Types to .NET Framework Data Types

Office 2007 - New user interface

It seems that the Office 2007 has changed again since the first available pictures from PDC - check out the latest screenshots at Picture this : A new look for OfficeOffice2007

YASQ - AD Assistant field not correctly imported into SharePoint User Profile database

In Active Directory, a users Assistant attribute requires a Distinguished Name (DN) format, similar to the Manager field. If you import the Assistant field into SharePoint it does not resolve this to the user name. With the Manager field this works without a problem... Yet Another SharePoint Quirk
SharePoint

Data Migrator 2006 for Lotus Domino and SharePoint templates

Data Migrator 2006 for Lotus Domino is slated to ship in the second quarter of this year. It will enable organizations to migrate data from Lotus Domino template-based applications to Windows SharePoint Services Application Templates. Microsoft already released 3 new application templates for customers using similar Lotus Notes and Domino templates. he new templates support Discussion Database, Team Work Site and Document Library applications. Microsoft released an initial 30 templates last August.

Microsoft Application Analyzer 2006 for Lotus Domino released

The Microsoft Application Analyzer 2006 for Lotus Domino is a tool that helps organizations to analyze their Lotus Notes/Domino application environment. It generates reports based on a number of application properties such as last accessed/modified dates, template types and the presence of workflow. Based upon the reports generated by this tool, customers can quickly identify applications that should not be migrated (such as administration applications or unused applications), applications that can easily be migrated to Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) templates and applications that require additional analysis.

Download Microsoft Application Analyzer 2006 for Lotus Domino
Microsoft Application Analyzer for Lotus Domino white paper