Taxonomy and the Managed Metadata service in SharePoint 2010 – great links

The managed metadata service in SharePoint 2010 provides a central store for keywords and a hierarchically organized metadata - think of lookup columns but then a lot better with hierarchy support and central management across site collections, web applications or even farms.  If you’re new to the concept of the managed metadata service, managed keywords and the managed metadata field I strongly suggest that you take a look at the following links:

• Stephen Cawood has some postings about how the new SharePoint 2010 managed metadata features works:
  • Introduction to SharePoint Managed Metadata – excellent introduction to why the Enterprise Metadata Management feature in SharePoint 2010 is so important and what you get out-of-the box.
  • Also check out SharePoint 2010 Taxonomy Hierarchy and using SharePoint Term stores
  • SharePoint managed metadata developer experience
• Some great stuff on Technet on Managed metadata planning in SharePoint 2010:
  • Plan managed metadata (SharePoint Server 2010)
  • Managed metadata overview (SharePoint Server 2010)
  • Managed metadata service application overview (SharePoint Server 2010)
  • Managed metadata roles (SharePoint Server 2010)
  • Plan terms and term sets (SharePoint Server 2010)
  • Plan to import managed metadata (SharePoint Server 2010)Plan to share terminology and content types (SharePoint Server 2010)
• Excellent series of blog posts by Chris O’Brien:
  • Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010 – a key ECM enhancement
  • Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010 – some notes on the “why”

Technorati Tags: managed+metadata,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,sharepoint,metadata,taxonomy

SharePoint 2010 and content organizers

Content organizers allow for content submitted to SharePoint to be rerouted to the correct location based on a number of routing rules which use both content types and it’s metadata to provide a certain routing logic. It’s actually an improved version of the routing logic which was available in the SharePoint 2007 records center. There are some excellent blog posts out there if you want to learn more:

• SharePoint 2010 Content Organizer Part 1 – A cool new feature for managing your content
• SharePoint 2010 Content Organizer Part 2 – The rules engine
• SharePoint 2010 Content Organizer Part 3  - The drop off library

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sps2010,sharepoint,content+organizers,ECM

Information Architecture, SharePoint and metadata – some theoretical background

Some interesting links that I found when preparing my chapter about the new metadata features in SharePoint 2010 – it is sometimes refreshing to take a step away from the product and look at some theoretical background postings and articles. Have fun.

• Origin of the phrase, “Information Architecture”
• White paper – Information Architecture in Office SharePoint Server 2007
• SharePoint Information Architecture and the Information Architect
• What is information architecture? 
• Metadata?Thesauri?Taxonomies? Topic maps! 
• The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
• Dr Tom Guides – Guides to metadata, taxonomies and their implementation.
• RDF Automation ushering in Semantic Web

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,metadata,information+architecture,taxonomy,thesauri

Folders and metadata – again ….

Anecdote about Subfolders versus Metadata – a story about resistance and changing jobs. Sounds familiar – take a look at these postings  - Follow up – Folders in SharePoint document libraries  - Why???

Luckily location based metadata in SharePoint 2010 will allow us to use the best of both worlds – keep the old school way of organizing information in folders while automatically assigning metadata linked to the folder location.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,metadata,metadata+folders,information+architecture

SharePoint Server 2010 – Social Data Statistics Web Part

Check out - http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/socialstatswebpart

This sample consists of a Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Visual Web part project. After you build and deploy this project on your Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 site, you can add this Web part to any page where you want to display statistics for the social tagging activities of your users. The Web part displays the following information in three tables:

1. Each URL that has been tagged, and the terms with which each URL has been tagged.
2. Each term that has been used in a social tag, and the number of times that term has been used.
3. Each user who has added a social tag, and the number of times that user has tagged URLs.

The sample demonstrates how to use the new Social Data object model in SharePoint Server 2010. It also takes advantage of the SharePoint Visual Web Part template, one of the new SharePoint templates that you can use in Visual Studio 2010.

Technorati Tags: sps2010,sharepoint+server+2010,socialdata,sharepoint+2010,development,vs2010

Looking for application data folder in Windows 7?

If you need to find the Application Data directory, just type %appdata% in the Run dialog box, the Start menu search box, or at the command prompt. This will open the correct folder.

Technorati Tags: windows7,windows,tip

Win free ticket for TechDays 2010 Belgium with BIWUG

BIWUG (The Belux Information Worker User Group) is giving away a free ticket for TechDays 2010. So how can you get this free ticket – very simple: please provide an answer to the following questions:

1.What is the coolest new feature in SharePoint 2010?

2. How many people will have send in their vote for the coolest feature by Friday 19th of February?

Send me an email at joris.poelmans@realdolmen.com and take your chance to win this ticket!

PS I will publish the results of this little survey afterwards ….

Technorati Tags: BIWUG,community

SharePoint 2010 – new developer training material including full virtual machine download

Lots of new SharePoint 2010 training material released in january:

• 2010 Information Worker Demonstration Virtual Machine (Beta) – fully functional virtual machines to demo Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.
• Free E-learning: What’s new in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for developers.
• Free E-learning: What’s new in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for IT Pros
• Learning snack for developers – developing solutions with SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint 2010 developer material on Channel 9
• SharePoint 2010 – Getting started with development on SharePoint 2010 – HOL in C# and Visual Basic
• SharePoint 2010 Beta Developer Training Kit
• Windows Powershell compiled help for SharePoint 2010

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

Corporate culture, not technology, drives collaboration

This post in Webworker daily about the significance of corporate culture on collaboration within your organization reminds me of some other blog posts which I wrote a while back:

• Web 2.0 please but in your own time (and budget)
•  Enterprise 2.0 and organizational culture
• Knowledge and talent in a people ready business
• Knowledge is power! So why share your knowledge?
• SharePoint and Web 2.0
• The value in social networks

The author clearly makes the statement that you first need a corporate culture which embraces a new work paradigm where you empower people to organize work in their own fashion. This is similar to what I wrote earlier:

I think that you will first need to create a mindset within your company which is ready to embrace collaboration and knowledge sharing before you can start thinking about Enterprise 2.0 - a view which is confirmed by this guy  - Enterprise 2.0 - Culture required?  But on the other hand for those people in your company who get it, you want to provide the necessary tools.

With a new web savvy generation entering the work force companies will need to provide the necessary tools and freedom to allow people to work in ways that you probably did not imagine. This will mainly require a shift in management style from command and control to collaborate and connect

Our CEO once wrote – the culture of an enterprise is largely determined by the behavior of its leaders (for the dutch text – see De cultuur van een onderneming wordt bepaald door het gedrag van zijn leiders) – a quote taken from Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy. I could not agree more.

Technorati Tags: collaboration,corporate+culture,web2.0,enterprise2.0,knowledge+management

BIWUG on SharePoint 2010

On Tuesday, the 9th of February 2010 BIWUG organizes the first sessions about SharePoint 2010 in the new Ordina offices in Mechelen. We have a great line up amongst which 3 Belgian SharePoint MVP's presenting.

Date and hours:

February 9th, 2010
(The event is free, but registration is required.)

Sessions:

• 18:00 - 18:30: Welcome
• 18:30 - 19:00: Introduction to SharePoint Server 2010 (Joris Poelmans – SharePoint MVP)
• 19:00 - 19:30: LINQ to SharePoint (Stephane Eyskens – SharePoint MVP)
• 19:30 - 20:00: Client Object Model (Jan Tielens – SharePoint MVP)
• 20:00 - 20:15: Break
• 20:15 - 20:45: Business Connectivity Services (Frank Cleynen)
• 20:45 - 21:15: Workflow (Peter Plessers)

Location:

Ordina HQ
Blarenberglaan 3B
2800 Mechelen

Route description to the Ordina HQ can be found here. Please print the itinerary, as most GPS devices have problems with finding this address.

Registration:

Click here to register for this event.

 

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,sps2010,biwug,community,belgian+community

User activity statistic in SharePoint Server 2007

Did you ever wonder what the User Activity value means in the SharePoint site statistics? Apparently this is the total number of times the user accessed the site (or site collection) over the past 30 days, divided by 30 to give daily average.

Great explanation on MOSS Usage Reports Explained

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,moss2007,moss+2007,usage+analysis

Office 2010 multiple upload with SharePoint Server 2007

The new user interface for uploading multiple documents to a document library is actually part of the Office 2010 clients – so if you install Word 2010 you will also be able to use the new “drag & drop” upload control together with SharePoint Server 2007.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2007,sharepoint,office+2010,office2010,moss2007,moss

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack v4 for Word, Excel and Powerpoint available

A new version of the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and Powerpoint formats has been released for download .

By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able to open, edit, and save files using the file formats in newer versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint . The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see 924074.

I’m wondering if this works for Office 2010 as well …

Technorati Tags: office,office+2007,microsoft

Bitnami – setups and virtual machines for open source web applications

If you want to try out some open source web applications but don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up everything up yourself – BitNami is the place to be.

Here you can download complete setup packages or even virtual machines with Alfresco, Joomla, Drupal, SugarCRM and lots more … check it out.

Technorati Tags: alfresco,bitnami,drupal,joomla,sugarcrm

Windows 7 – Godmode folder

Create a folder with the magic name “GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}”. The folder's icon will change to resemble a control panel and will contain dozens of control options. Quite interesting but not really divine …

Technorati Tags: windows7,godmode,microsoft

Multilingual User Interface (MUI) in SharePoint 2010 Part II – Adding alternate languages with Powershell

Update: I updated the script to check whether a specific site support multilingual capabilities using the SupportsMultiLingualUI property of a webtemplate – see SharePoint 2010 Meeting Workspaces and Blogs are not MUI capable .

Yesterday I talked about how the SharePoint 2010 Multilingual User Interface feature allows for multilingual collaboration scenario’s without the need for additional third party addons. One of the things which bugged me though is that you need to enable the multilingual feature on a per site basis. So I wrote this little powershell script to activate the multilingual feature for all sites in a site collection and to add a specific alternate language (in my case French). You can use this as a starting point for your own powershell scripts…

   1:  if($args) {

   2:      $siteUrl = $args[0] 

   3:      

   4:      $snapin = Get-PSSnapin | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell'}

   5:      if ($snapin -eq $null)

   6:      {

   7:         Write-Host "Loading Microsoft SharePoint Powershell Snapin"

   8:         Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell"

   9:      }

  10:   

  11:      $cultureinfo = new-object system.globalization.cultureinfo("fr-FR")

  12:      

  13:      $site = get-spsite $siteurl

  14:      $site.allwebs | foreach { 

if ($_.WebTemplate.SupportsMultilingualUI){

           $_.IsMultiLingual= 'True' 

  15:             $_.AddSupportedUICulture($cultureinfo) 

  16:             $_.Update()

  17:                              }

  18:      }

  19:      $site = get-spsite $siteurl

  20:      $site.allwebs |foreach {Write-Host $_.Title + " " +  $_.IsMultiLingual}

  21:      

  22:  }

  23:  else

  24:  {

  25:      Write-Host "ERROR: You must supply SiteCollection URL as parameter when calling ActivateLanguages.ps1"

  26:  }

I also uploaded the powershell script to the SharePoint Extensions Codeplex project – SharePoint 2010 Powershell Snippets

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sps2010,sharepoint,MUI,multilingual,powershell

Installed programs on my Windows 7 PC

I finished reinstalling my portable with Windows 7 over the weekend and I must admit it was a smooth experience. So what do I install on my Windows 7:

• Windows Live Writer – my favorite blog writing tool – I also use the Insert Code for Windows Live Writer plugin. There are a whole bunch of other Windows Live Writer Extensions available online
• RSS Bandit – my RSS reading tool of choice
• Office 2010 Beta 2 – including the Hotmail connector so I can read my mails in Outlook 2010
• Thwirl – my twitter client
• VMWare Workstation – I know I can do SharePoint 2010 development on my Windows 7 but I still prefer to work virtually. Anyone care to comment about using Virtualbox as an alternative?
• Camtasia and Snagit – excellent software for creating screencasts and screenshots.
• Winrar – extraction and compression program
• Mindjet MindManager – great tool for creating mindmaps
• Adobe Reader
• Zune Client software – don’t forget to install Windows Media Player first
• Spacesniffer – interesting little utility for diagnosing disk usage

I have to admit that as a SharePoint guy I do most of my work within my virtual machines so all the dev tools are installed on these machines. Although SharePoint 2010 can be installed on my Windows 7 I still prefer to use virtual machines – see Setting up the Development environment for SharePoint Server 2010.

Any other tools you can’t live without on your machine?

Technorati Tags: windows7,microsoft

Multilingual User Interface (MUI) in SharePoint 2010 – Part I

SharePoint finally provides a decent out of the box multilingual user experience for collaboration scenario’s with the introduction of SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010. After you installed the necessary language packs you will have the option to enable the multilingual user interface (MUI) on a per site basis using site settings (this is also possible using the SharePoint Object Model – using SPWeb.AddSupportedUICulture).

Once you enable alternate languages, users will see a language picker control in the top right of the page where they can switch the site to the language of their choice - this is a huge improvement in comparison with 2007.

At the beta2 framework there are language packs available for German, English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Russian and Chinese (simplified) – see Language packs available for download 

Remember that for SharePoint Server 2010 you first need to install the SharePoint Foundation language packs and afterwards the ones for SharePoint Server 2010 – see Deploy Language Packs (SharePoint Server 2010) for additional details.

So what parts of the SharePoint user interface are actually impacted by the MUI:

• All the standard SharePoint user interface elements are translated
• Navigation menu’s also support multilingual scenario’s with the MUI – if you switch your language and translate specific menu nodes in your navigation – these changes are language specific
• The headings for list columns
• The managed metadata field type also supports multilingual scenario’s.

In a next post I will delve a little deeper into the multilingual experience and take a look at some powershell scripts to work with the multilingual settings.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,sps2010,spf2010,sharepoint+foundation,multilingual

Troubleshooting Zune software installation error

When I tried installing my Zune software on my new Windows 7 PC I got this interesting error stating:

Operation error failed with 0x8007047F: The specified program is not a Windows or MS-DOS program. Can't find the media for installation package 'Windows Media Format SDK.' It might be incomplete or corrupt. Error Code: 0x80070002

Apparently this was caused by the fact that I did not have Windows Media Player installed on my Windows 7 Ultimate N edition…. . After installing WMP 12 – the installation of Zune went ahead without issues.

Technorati Tags: zune,microsoft,troubleshooting,installation

Windows 7 Ultimate N and Windows Media Player 12

For those of you living in Europe – you will probably notice that when installing Windows 7 there are some versions with a “N” behind the name such as Windows 7 Ultimate N. Apparently this is a version of Windows 7 without Windows Media Player.Apparently we have the European Union to thank for this – see Windows 7 N Explained. Fortunately there is a separate download called Media Feature Pack for Windows 7 N and Windows 7 KN – which contains Windows Media Player 12 and related technologies – which you can install afterwards.

Technorati Tags: windows7,windows+media,wmp12,microsoft

Last chance to register for BIWUG on SharePoint 2010

Today is the last chance to register for the BIWUG session about SharePoint 2010 – with 90 people registered there are only 10 seats available….

PS I will do the Introduction to SharePoint 2010 …

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sps2010,community,biwug

Solving ThreadOptions error in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell

I noticed that when I tried to open the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell on my machine I got an error stating:

Exception setting "ThreadOptions": "This property cannot be changed after the Runspace has been opened." At C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG\POWERSHELL\Registration\SharePoint.ps1:2 char:48
+ if ($ver.Version.Major -gt 1)  {$Host.Runspace. <<<< ThreadOptions = "ReuseThread"}    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (:) [], RuntimeException    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PropertyAssignmentException

Thanks to Bill Baer for providing me with a solution in the SharePoint 2010 forums –installing Update KB968930 which contains the Windows Management Framework Core package fixed the error.

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

SharePoint 2010 – Client Object Model

The SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model feature is definitely in my top 10 list of SharePoint developer enhancements. It basically provides an abstraction layer so that client apps can interact with SharePoint – there are basically 3 flavors of Client Object Models:

1. For .Net managed clients – uses the Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll in the “14\ISAPI” folder
2. For Silverlight clients – uses the Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Silverlight.dll from the “14\LAYOUTS\ClientBin” folder.
3. For Javascript client code – using the SP.js file from the “14\LAYOUTS” folder.

These 3 client models all talk with SharePoint through the client.svc WCF service and all provide complete access to SharePoint artifacts such as site collections, sites, lists, items, files, folders, webparts, security, content types, etc …

If you need to retrieve data you will typically have 3 steps you need to perform:

1. Create a connection using the ClientContext object
2. Create a select statement and provide it to the ClientContext.Load method – you might want to take a look at how to create LINQ queries with Lambda expressions since you will need this in more advanced scenarios e.g. ctx.Load(w.Lists, lists => lists.Include(prop => prop.Title, prop => prop.Id, prop => prop.Hidden));
3. Execute the query using ClientContext.ExecuteQuery

There is a great series of blog postings from Steve Peschka about practical use of the Client OM:

• Using the SharePoint Client Object Model Part 1 – Introduction
• Using the SharePoint Client Object Model Part 2 – Retrieving data from a list
• Using the SharePoint Client Object Model Part 3 – Creating and using filters when querying for data via het client OM
• Using the SharePoint Client Object Model Part 4 – Creating a list and managing fields
• Using the SharePoint Client Object Model Part 5 – creating additional ECM menu items

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

SharePoint 2010 development – don’t forget to change the target platform

This is something which will probably bite you in the **s, when you start developing against SharePoint 2010. Don't forget to change the “Platform target” to x64 or AnyCPU
SharePoint 2010 only support 64-bit OS so your apps should do the same. So if you don't change it you will see some strange errors – even something as simple as creating a new SPSite object will throw an error stating:

"The Web application at http://intranet.contoso.com could not be found. Verify that you have typed the URL correctly. If the URL should be serving existing content, the system administrator may need to add a new request URL mapping to the intended application."

So the error message is not very helpfull in this case ...

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

Solving UI problems with Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 in VMWare

I’m using VS2010 Beta2 on Windows Server 2008 R2 within VMWare Workstation and noticed that some parts of Visual Studio were not rendering or rendered in the wrong location – see for example the “New project dialog” which seemed to be missing some stuff.

This KB provided the solution for these issues – Disable SVGA drivers installed with VMWare Tools on Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2…

Technorati Tags: visual+studio,vs2010,windows+server,w2008R2,vmware,troubleshooting,microsoft

Installing SharePoint Server 2010 Dev Box

I finished installing my new SharePoint Server 2010 Dev box a couple of weeks ago … and forgot to publish this post. So here it goes. Installing a SharePoint Server 2010 is not that difficult since there is a lot of guidance out there. It’s really amazing how detailed the documentation is – especially since we are only at Beta 2. So what documentation did I use:

• Determine hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2010 – it has a list of the prerequisites (also listed below)
• Deploy a single server with SQL Server (SharePoint 2010)

So here’s my software configuration:

• Using VMWare Workstation on Windows Vista SP1
• Windows Server 2008 SP2 – I downloaded Service Pack 2 Windows Server 2008 separately although the SharePoint preparation tool would have installed it for me. Don’t forget  FIX: A hotfix that provides a method to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (KB971831)
• Before installing SQL Server 2008 – I needed to install .NET Framework 3.5 and a hotfix for Windows Installer 4.5
• SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 – again don’t forget the Cumulative Update Package 2 for Service Pack
• All the other prerequisites
  • Microsoft Server Speech Platform
  • Speech recognition language for English
  • Microsoft "Geneva" Framework
  • Microsoft Sync Framework v1.0 
  • Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=166504)
  • Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
  • Windows Powershell V2 CTP3
  • Silverlight 3 download
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client – if you install SQL Server 2008 with client integration you can skip this one
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET – not required  for SharePoint Foundation
  • ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2 for Windows Server 2008 SP2

All the above prerequisites are the same for SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 (except for the ADOMD.NET which is used for Excel Services and PerformancePoint Services – thanks Spence for the clarification). So if you plan to create both – this is the moment to create a snapshot. Next just follow the steps as outlined in Deploy a single server with SQL Server (SharePoint 2010)

On to the installation of language packs – I definitely want to check out the new MUI experience. For documentation take a look at Deploy language packs (SharePoint Server 2010) – same applies as for SharePoint Server 2007 - you must first install the SharePoint Foundation 2010 language packs before you install the SharePoint Server 2010 language packs. However I did not see the step with “On the Modify Server Farm Settings page, click Do not disconnect from this server farm, and then click Next.”

Afterwards I installed Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 as well as the Visual Studio 2010 SDK – this is something which you should probably install before installing SharePoint because the first time everything froze during install and I had to restart.

PS I’m using a Dell Precision M4400 with 8 GB RAM and SSD hard disk to run this stuff … works like a charm.

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

Activating the SharePoint 2010 Developer Dashboard

The Developer Dashboard is a great feature for developers in SharePoint 2010 which enables us to troubleshoot and debug SharePoint pages – take a look at Using the Developer Dashboard in SharePoint 2010 for some great info.

So you can activate the Developer Dashboard in 3 ways:

• Using stsadm: stsadm -o setproperty -pn developer-dashboard -pv On or stsadm –o setproperty –pn developerdashboard -pv  OnDemand. You should probably use the OnDemand mode which will add a VERY LITTLE icon in the top right corner of your pages where you can switch the Developer Dashboard on and off




• Using Powershell

$snapin = Get-PSSnapin | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell'}
if ($snapin -eq $null)
{
    Write-Host "Loading Microsoft SharePoint Powershell Snapin"
    Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell"
}
$dash = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService.DeveloperDashboardSettings;
$dash.DisplayLevel = 'OnDemand';
$dash.TraceEnabled = $true;
$dash.Update()

• Using the SharePoint Object Model

SPWebService.ContentService.DeveloperDashboardSettings.DisplayLevel = SPDeveloperDashboardLevel.Off;
       SPWebService.ContentService.DeveloperDashboardSettings.Update();

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

Office 2003 Service Pack3 fixes problem with SharePoint content types in combination with a central document library of templates

It is considered best practice to create a central document library with all of the document templates you are using in your different SharePoint content types in SharePoint Server 2007. This way you can easily update your document template without the need to redeploy or change your SharePoint content type. Unfortunately this caused problems with Office which did not seem to be able to find the centrally located template. Fortunately installing Office 2003 Service Pack 3 fixed the problem.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,office+2003,content+types,sharepoint+2007,moss+2007,moss,microsoft

Solution for converting virtual image files between Hyper-V and VMWare

I just converted a Hyper-V image back to a VMDK to use it in VMWare Workstation using StarWind V2V Convertor. Works like a charm and it is free …

Technorati Tags: vmware,hyper-v,microsoft,vmdk

SharePoint 2010 Partner Ignite training for developers (Belgium)

I will be teaching the SharePoint 2010 Partner Ignite training for Developers from December 14th to December 16th. Topics I will be covering:

• SharePoint 2010 Developer Roadmap
• SharePoint Development with Visual Studio 10
• SharePoint UI Advancements
• Designing Lists and Schemas
• LINQ to SharePoint
• Client Object Model
• SharePoint 2010 Workflow
• The SharePoint 2010 Services Architecture
• External Data in SharePoint (BCS)
• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
• Extending Search
• BI Solutions

This is a Classroom Training session for Microsoft Partners. You can subscribe for this event if you are as an individual associated to a Company registered in the Microsoft Partner Program. Go to the Phttps://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/LMS_ActDetails.aspx?UserMode=0&ActivityId=559841artner Learning Center to register

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

BIWUG on SharePoint 2010

BIWUG is back with our first session about SharePoint 2010. Our next session is the 17th of december in the new Ordina offices in Mechelen. We have a great line up amongst which 3 Belgian SharePoint MVPs presenting. Here’s the agenda:

• 18:00 - 18:30: Welcome
• 18:30 - 19:00: Introduction to SharePoint Server 2010 (Karine Bosch – SharePoint MVP)
• 19:00 - 19:30: LINQ to SharePoint (Stephane Eyskens – SharePoint MVP)
• 19:30 - 20:00: Client Object Model (Jan Tielens – SharePoint MVP)
• 20:00 - 20:15: Break
• 20:15 - 20:45: Business Connectivity Services (Frank Cleynen
• 20:45 - 21:15: Workflow (Peter Plessers)

Please register on the BIWUG site.

Technorati Tags: sps2010,sharepoint,biwug,community

Installation order for SharePoint Service Packs and Language packs

To get up to speed with the latest version of SharePoint Server 2007 (English version) including the Dutch language pack you should follow this installation order:

1. Start with MOSS 2007 including SP1
2. Install Service Pack 2 for WSS 3.0(English)
3. Install Service Pack 2 for MOSS 2007(English)
4. Install Language Pack Dutch for WSS 3.0
5. Install Language Pack Dutch for MOSS 2007
6. Install Language Pack Service Pack 2 for WSS
7. Install Language Pack Service Pack 2 for MOSS 2007

Afterwards you need to start the SharePoint Configuration Wizard. It will probably ask you to run the Wizard a couple of times but you can cancel this and run the wizard after installing all the binaries.

PS I recommend going 64-bit for fresh installs of SharePoint Server 2007 given the fact that SharePoint Server 2010 will be  x64 only …

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2007,sharepoint,installation,language+packs,microsoft

Office 2010 beta publicly available

Yep, Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, Office Web Apps for businesses and Office Mobile 2010 – are all available for download from this start location - microsoft.com/2010 – for direct downloads:

• Office 2010 beta
• SharePoint Server 2010 beta – take a look at Software and hardware requirements before starting your installation
• SharePoint Foundation 2010
• Microsoft Office Web Apps

MSDN subscribers already got their hands on the downloads a couple of days ago.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sps2010,office2010,office+2010

Troubleshooting .NET Framework 3.5 installation failure

When trying to install Visual Studio 2008 on a development SharePoint box yesterday, I got an error stating that the .NET 3.5 framework could not be installed - "Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0a: [2] Error: Installation failed for component Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0a. MSI returned error code 1603". But apparently this seems to be a very general error message - luckily I found out this post from Aaron Stebner - How to locate the cause of error 1603 in a verbose MSI log file - which showed me that there was an error when trying to install .Net 3.0 SP1 - apparently .NET 3.5 will install this first.

Next, I needed to check if there were some problems with .NET 3.0 - again Aaron Stebner to the rescue who has built a .NET framework Setup Verification Tool. Unfortunately this did not provide a lot of extra information - everything seemed OK.

Next my quest lead me to this post - Steps I use to diagnose .NET Framework 3.0 installation failures related to the ServiceModelReg.exe custom action and indeed in the application event logs there was an error regarding WCF. The suggested workaround about disabling the IISAdmin service(uninstalling IIS was not an option - since this is a complete sharepoint dev box and I did not want to rebuild it) did not work.

But the last tip did work - installing .NET 3.5 SP1 instead of .NET 3.5. : "The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installs the .NET Framework 3.0 SP2 as a prerequisite behind the scenes. The .NET Framework 3.0 SP2 setup is configured to allow installation to complete even if the ServiceModelReg custom action fails. That means that you won't see the errors described in this blog post if you install the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 on your system."

 

Technorati Tags: microsoft,troubleshooting,.Net35,netframework

Solving the “Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.WorkItemTypeDeniedOrNotExitsException” error

A while ago – I got this interesting error when trying to add workitems in Visual Studio 2008 - “Could not load type Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.WorkItemTypeDeniedOrNotExist"Exception from assembly Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client …”

Apparently I broke my Visual Studio 2008 by installing Team Explorer and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 in the wrong order – see Visual Studio 2008 with TFS Explorer broken with SP1 – reinstalling SP1 did the trick.

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InfoPath Forms and attachments

In InfoPath, you can use a control called “File attachments” – this might be interesting to use when you want to allow a user to add files to a filled in InfoPath form. But beware when you store these file within an InfoPath form they will be stored as Base64 encoded strings within the  InfoPath form. This causes the included files not to be crawled by standard SharePoint search.

Here’s some sample code to extract these attachments and make them crawleable – InfoPath 2007 – Extracting those pesky binary attachments

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,infopath,development,microsoft

Enterprise Content Types in SharePoint 2010

SharePoint Server 2010 supports the notion of Enterprise Content Types and Content Type syndication.

This concept allows for consistent content type schema’s across SharePoint over multiple site collections. Enterprise Content Types are basically content types which are published from a central Site Content Type gallery -called the Content Type Hub - to content type galleries on other site collections (even on other web applications or across farms).

This is implemented using a Managed Metadata Service Application. If you are new to the concept of Service Applications in SharePoint 2010 - take a look at these articles - SharePoint 2010: Service Applications Part One: Model Overview and The New Service Application Architecture in SharePoint 2010.

In the configuration options for the Managed Metadata Service you can specify a certain site collection to act as a central repository of content types. This central repository is called the Content Type hub. Other site collection can then consume the content types from this content type hub.  There is a maximum of 1 hub per Managed Metadata Application Service but it is possible to create multiple Managed Metadata Applications each with a corresponding site collection hub.

For content types which you define on the site collection content type hub - you get an extra configuration option - Manage publishing for this content type.



Here you can publish this content type to other site collections. You can also decide to unpublish a content type or republish it if you have made changes to the content type.


In the background this is actually accomplished using the Content Type Subscriber SharePoint Timer Job.

If you go to Site Settings on a top level site of a site collection level which does not act as a content type hub - you will notice an entry called Content Type Publishing where you get an overview of Enterprise Content Types you can consume as well as the Managed Metadata Service Application from which you consume them. The consumed content types will be marked as read-only. You will see in the screenshot that it is possible to define multiple managed metadata service applications and thus also multiple content type hubs.



Make sure that you design this carefully since it is not possible to change the content type hub location afterwards on the Managed Metadata Service application

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,sps2010,microsoft,document+management

Document Management features in SharePoint 2010 – the series

I will be publishing a number of postings about Document Management improvements in SharePoint 2010 in the coming weeks – here’s an outline – to get your appetite going:

• Enterprise Content Types – central management of content types of  content types across multiple site collections.
• Using Document Sets for multi-document work products
• Enhanced metadata support with managed keywords and taxonomies
• Creating unique DocumentIds using the DocID service

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,sps2010,microsoft,document+management

SharePoint List Features Framework

The SharePoint List Features Framework is an open source project driven by RealDolmen which will allow you to create features at SharePoint list level. Those familiar to SharePoint probably know that the SharePoint features framework provides a pluggable mechanism for adding or modifying functionality at site level, site collection level, web application or farm level.  The SharePoint List Features Framework extends this functionality by providing a mechanism to add features for one specific document library or list within a SharePoint site. For more information check out the new Codeplex site - http://listfeatures.codeplex.com/ .

The current build is targeted at SharePoint 2007 but we will be providing an update shortly after the release of the 2010 beta release.

Again congrats to Tom for building this great extension …

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,codeplex,community,sharepoint+2007,moss+2007,moss,list+features

BIWUG 19th of november cancelled

Due to circumstances the BIWUG session of the 19th of november is cancelled – the next BIWUG session will be on the 17th of december.

Technorati Tags: biwug,community,belgium,microsoft,sharepoint

SharePoint – Quick links reminder

With all the buzz about SharePoint 2010, you might forget that there are still are quite a lot SharePoint 2007 deployments out there. Here are some interesting links I recently picked up with regards to SharePoint 2007:

• SharePoint trending with Google Visualization API
• Quark + SharePoint = New Multi-Channel Publishing Solution
• Engineering SharePoint – interesting perspective about the teams and people behind SharePoint.
• SharePoint Meeting Manager – Complete Life Cycle Management Solution for SharePoint
• Avoid Newbie Mistakes: 10 steps to successful SharePoint deployments
• Why isn’t my SharePoint environment social?
• SharePoint: Implementation without insight is a dangerous thing
• SharePoint 2007 – Improving the relevancy of search results
• Are SharePoint developers unable to be real craftsmen? Especially take a look at the comments …
• SharePoint in plain english
• Metalogix Archiving Express for SharePoint – Metalogix Archiving Express for SharePoint is a free version of our robust version 4 product.  This is not a free trial but a fully functional version of the product that you can download at no cost.
• My checklist for optimizing SharePoint
• User Profiles and User Information List Synchronization
• SharePoint’s Role in an ECM world

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,microsoft,sharepoint+2007,moss+2007,moss

SharePoint 2010 – Adding new buttons to the SharePoint 2010 ribbon

Update: I just found this excellent training video – Module 10: Creating Dialogs and Ribbon Controls for SharePoint 2010. Would have saved us some trouble if we saw it beforehand.

We had a blast today at the SharePoint Ignite training as Koen already blogged in– Howto: Add a button to the ribbon in SharePoint. Fortunately Wouter (the trainer at the Ignite training) provided excellent background info and put us on the right track to get a working button.

I’m not going to elaborate about the exact syntax for adding buttons to the Ribbon – since this might change from Tech Preview to Beta2 but would like to provide some additional background info about how the new Ribbon works in SharePoint 2010:

• The ribbon is actually rendered by a http handler which you find at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\commandui.ashx
• This http handler picks up the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\GLOBAL\XML\CMDUI.XML file up and merges it with the different features which define additional customactions.
• The different portions of the ribbon are cached in your temporary internet files – so you will some files in there which look like this commandui.ashx?ver=881443720&id=Ribbon.DocLibListForm.Edit&lcid=1033&qt=ribbonvisibletabdeep. Especially the id is important to identify the relevant parts in CMDUI.xml to take a look at. If you are deploying new customactions it might be safe to delete your tempfiles…
• The ribbon is divided in Tabs which contains Groups of controls. A Group is rendered using a GroupTemplate. A Group can contain a number of controls such as Buttons, ToggleButtons, etc … it is easiest to just take a look at CMDUI.xml
• You will not be able to modify the Ribbon arbitrarily – some groups in the ribbon have fixed controls which you should not modify (and to which you will not be able to add additional controls)– other groups can be modified.  You can add controls to groups which are using a so called flexible layout – such as Ribbon.Templates.Flexible. It is also possible to add additional groups.
• The logic for the Ribbon can be found in the Microsoft.Web.CommandUI dll within the GAC (notice that there is no SharePoint in the naming…it might be possible that we see this dll appearing in other platforms as well). It can be quite interesting to take a closer look at this assembly using Reflector.
• You will probably also notice a Scaling section within CMDUI.xml for each tab – this defines how the tab will render when you resize your browser…

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Interview Andrew Connell about SharePoint 2010

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SharePoint Server 2010 – Getting Started link guide for developers

Updated 5/11/2009 – added some addditional links

SharePoint Developer – General info

• http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/Pages/default.aspx – Make sure you watch the videos
• SharePoint Conference KeyNotes
• SharePoint 2010 (Beta) Developer Center
• Get Started Developing on SharePoint 2010 (part of the Developer Center) – series of 10 workshops accompanied with great videos
• Describing SharePoint 2010 in 1 sentence, 8 categories and 40 Feature areas
• SharePoint Products and Technologies 2010 (Technical Preview) – Developer Documentation download
• SharePoint 2010: Developer Platform White Paper
• SharePoint 2010: SharePoint Developer Platform Wall Poster
• SharePoint 2010- Developer and IT Professional Learning Plan
• SharePoint 2010: Professional Developer Evaluation Guide and Walkthroughs
• Getting started with development on SharePoint 2010 Hands on Labs in C# and VB.Net
• SharePoint 2010 Top 10 Features (Joel Oleson)
• SharePoint 2010 MSDN Forums
• SharePoint 2010 Community
• SharePoint 2010 SDK

 

SharePoint Developer – Specific topics

Web Content Management in SharePoint Server 2010

Part 1 - Improvements to the Core SharePoint Platform & How the Benefit SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management

Part 2 – What’s Improved with SharePoint Server 2010 Web Content Management

Part 3 – What’s New with SharePoint Server 2010 Web Content Management

SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed solutions

Background info

• Getting started with SharePoint 2010 (TechNet)
• SharePoint 2010 – Technical Diagrams (TechNet)

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,development,microsoft