Using webservices in browser-enabled forms with InfoPath 2007 Forms Services

InfoPath 2007 in combination with either Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services allows you to create web-enabled InfoPath forms - this means that you don't need a full InfoPath client installation to let your users fill in a form.(For more info see InfoPath Forms in Office SharePoint Server 2007). To make a InfoPath 2007 form web-enabled - you simply publish it to a SharePoint forms library. Next you go to the Forms library Settings > Advanced Settings. Change Opening Browser-enabled documents to Display as a web page.

 

These web-enabled forms do have some limitations however as outlined in this post - Functionality lost in InfoPath 2007 "Web-Enabled" Forms. InfoPath has always been very strong at consuming web services and using data returned from these web services in the forms. If you want to use a web service as a datasource within an web-enabled InfoPath form there are some things you need to do to accomplish this - especially when you use a webservice which does not run within the context of SharePoint. When you access a webservice from an web-enabled InfoPath form, Internet Explorer will consider this as a cross-domain setup. So your InfoPath form may work correctly when opening it from your SharePoint with the full client but will give an error when opening in the web browser - "An error occurred accessing the data source in the browser" when not configured correctly.

So here are the steps that you need to complete to get it to work:

• First make sure that cross domain access is enabled for InfoPath Forms Services - Go to SharePoint Central Admin > Switch to the Application Management tab. Underneath InfoPath Forms Services - Choose Configure InfoPath Forms Services. Check "Allow cross domain access for user templates"
• Use the Data Connection Library to store the connection setttings to the web service. A Data Connection Library (DCL) is a new type of SharePoint document library which provides a place to store, manage and share connection files. For more info about DCLs - check out Excel Services part 10: Data Connection Libraries, or connecting to databases made easy, manageable, and secure .  Open your your locally saved InfoPath 2007 form in Design View. Select Tools - Data Connections. Select your web service connection and click the Convert button. For the name enter something like http://servername/DataConnectionLibName/WebService.udcx (Ignore the warning that you get ... this will be fixed in post beta2 builds) Once the connection has been converted to a data connection file, save the form locally again and  publish it to the SharePoint forms library.

Voila, and now you can use your webservice as well from an InfoPath form within the browser ... if you have questions, do no hesitate to add it to the comments ...

tags: infopath2007, wss30, sharepoint2007, infopath, microsoft, TechEd-Developers,Moss,Moss2007

Using Windows Live Writer

Another week – another blog writing tool – yesterday I downloaded Windows Live Writer Beta - this definitely seems to be an interesting software  and some guys are even writing plugins for Live Writer . I already installed the Syntax Highlighter which allows me to copy/paste C# code with the same highlighting as Visual Studio.  Also take a look at Jeftek list of LIve Writer plugins.
tags: blog, blogging, windowslive, livewriter

PRAjax - Open Source Ajax Helper Library for PHP

I just saw this blog posting from one of my co-workers – Maarten Balliauw about the open source Ajax Helper Library project he has started … interesting stuff – definitely check out the project on SourceForge .

InfoPath 2007 – solving XSN can not be used on server

With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 it is possible to use InfoPath forms to get feedback from users within a workflow A good starting point is the white paper – Walkthrough : Creating Office SharePoint Server 2007 workflows with Visual Studio but there are still some things you should really now before starting developing your own workflows on top of the SharePoint 2007 platform. This is the first of a series of postings about workflow in SharePoint 2007.

InfoPath 2007 is used in a couple of places in a SharePoint driven workflow:

• In the workflow initiation and association forms which are used to set workflow parameters before a workflow starts
  
• In a workflow modification form which enables users to alter the workflow while it is running
  
• In the workflow task forms which is opened when a user clicks the task link which is assigned within the workflow process.
  

When you want to develop a SharePoint workflow with Visual Studio 2005 you will first need to install the SharePoint workflow project templates. These Visual Studio project templates are installed when you install either the ECM Starter Kit (for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server ) or the Workflow Developer Starter Kit for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

When you start a new SharePoint workflow project, you will notice that the solution contains a number of files which are used to define the workflow solution – one of them is the workflow.xml file. In this file, you will need to specify the InfoPath forms you will be using by specifying the URNs. To find the URN of an InfoPath form, open the form in InfoPath in design mode and choose properties from the file menu.

<MetaData>

<Instantiation_FormURN>urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:infopath:initform:-myXSD-2006-08-09T08-38-04</Instantiation_FormURN>

<Association_FormURN>urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:infopath:initform:-myXSD-2006-08-09T08-38-04</Association_FormURN>

<Task0_FormURN>urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:infopath:TaskEdit:-myXSD-2006-08-09T11-19-01</Task0_FormURN>

</MetaData>

Another location where you can find a reference to the InfoPath forms is in the feature.xml file – here you see the next section – make sure that you uncomment the <Property Key=”RegisterForms” Value=”*.xsn” /> line – this specifies that you will copy the InfoPath forms to the same directory as where you deploy the feature.xml file.

<Property Key="GloballyAvailable" Value="true" />

<Property Key="RegisterForms" Value="*.xsn" />

</Properties>

The last file that you need take a look at is install.bat - this will register your workflow solution, copy the necessary files and register the workflow assembly in the GAC.

Things you should watch out for:

• Design the InfoPath files in a directory separate from your solution and publish them to the same directory (Use publish to network location) in which you have your workflow solution – this way you can simply use the <Property Key=”RegisterForms” Value=”*xsn” /> and use the default line in install.bat - xcopy /s /Y *.xsn "%programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\YourCustomFeature\"
  
• Make sure that the Alternate access path is not filled in when publishing the InfoPath files – when publishing it to a network location, you should have received a warning – see screenshot listed below.
  

If something goes wrong, one of them the infamous “XSN can not be used on the server” error, you can troubleshoot the problem with the following steps:

• Navigate to a command prompt
  
• Navigate to this folder: %programfiles%\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin
  
• Execute this command on each of your XSN files: stsadm.exe -o verifyformtemplate -filename <complete path to your xsn including the name.xsn>
  

This will give a more detailed description - if you are not sure if the access path is filled in for the InfoPath form you have deployed – you can rename the xsn file in the features directory to a CAB file and extract manifest.xsf from this file in this file – you should see that accessPath=""

P.S. For some more tips, take a look at Blood, sweat and Windows Workflow in SharePoint

Using a contact selector control in InfoPath 2007

If you want to build electonic forms solutions, InfoPath is the way to go… However, lots of people have built a lot of Outlook Forms in the past, so if you need to replace these forms, you will need to find an easy way for people to select e-mail addresses. Luckily InfoPath 2007 has a new control that enables you to choose e-mail address from an address book – the Contact Selector control – for more info see Open your rolodex from InfoPath using the Contact Selector on the InfoPath Team blog.

But you can also use this Contact Selector control when deploying the InfoPath forms to SharePoint 2007 – this is especially handy when you need to use these InfoPath forms in a workflow scenario. When you publish an InfoPath form to a SharePoint site - it will validate the contacts against the SharePoint server – for more information on how you can do this, take a look at How to: Configure a Contact Selector Control on your InfoPath Workflow form.

MOSS 2007 and Exchange 2007

I saw Angus Logan his post about MOSS2007 and Exchange 2007 better together for compliance a while ago and I was very impressed with the functionality described. It is not so clear however where Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 actually comes in:

• Ability to capture messages between internal and external parties and between internal parties through the use of server side rules.
  
• Copy all messages to a central record store, and to journal emails in transit.  
  
• The ability for and administrator to search all email across accounts centrally to discover content (never used to be able to do this).
  
• Enforce Chinese walls within organisations, important in FSI.
  
• Remove the ability to have PST folders.
  
• Enforce retention limits on users.
  
• Allow users to easily promote emails as records and enforce policy through AD.
  
• Create one or more centrally managed record repositories to handle electronic and physical records as well as all email communication.
  
• The ability to expire content and define what action should take place once that content has expired.
  
• Easily promote documents as records and capture all their meta-data including versions, audit trail etc.
  
• Legal holds.
  

I’m definitely interested in seeing some more postings about these topics. If you have seen some information, please add the link to the comments.

Technorati : microsoft, moss 2007, office12, office2007, sharepoint, sharepoint2007, exchange2007 , exchange12

Add document properties to advanced search in SharePoint 2007

When looking for more information about how you can add your own document properties to the advanced search web part I first found this information from Ishai Sagi - Found it! How to add properties to advanced search in MOSS 2007 where he demonstrates how you can add a property from the user profile database to the advanced search web part. I was however looking for something different. I created a InfoPath forms library in which I added my own custom fields/properties and I wanted to add these to the advanced search webpart.

This MSDN article - Managing properties explains that the SharePoint 2007 search schema has 2 different types of properties: crawled properties and managed properties. So if you want to use a property in the Search web parts you will need to create a managed property.

Let’s see how you do this:

Open SharePoint Central Admin > Go to Shared Services Administration. Go to Search Settings. On the Configure Search Settings, you can see how many Managed properties are defined.

Click on the link behind Managed properties. This will open the Document Property Mappings page. Crawled properties are automatically extracted from crawled content. Users can however only perform queries over managed properties. After you map your crawled property on a managed property you can use it after the next full crawl.

Click New Managed Property – give a name and description and click on the Add Mapping to open the Crawled properties screen and to create the mapping. Let’s create a new managed property called Theme.

Perform a full crawl to make the new Managed Property available

As Ishai describes in his article, you can customize the Advanced Search Web Part by simply modifying the settings. You can also create your own custom search page. Liam also has a great posting about the different new available options to use the SharePoint Search web parts. Now let’s add the new Managed property called Theme :

Open a SharePoint 2007 team site and create a new web part page. Click on Site Actions > Edit Page. Click Add web part > Select Advanced Search Web Part.

Click Modify Shared Web Part - underneath the Properties section, you will see the Properties property – obvious no, ;-) …

This Properties web part property contains an XML string which defines what are the different options visible in the Advance Search web part. The main XML nodes are these:

• LangDefs: defines which languages can be used
  
• Languages: refers to the LangDefs XML node to actually define which languages are shown in the web part.
  
• PropertyDefs: defines which properties can be used, here you need to add your own new managed property - <PropertyDef Name=”Theme” DataType=”text” DisplayName=”Theme” />
  
• Underneath the ResultTypes node – you can find the different result types : documents, word documents, excel documents, presentations or All results. To make your own property visible underneath All Results you need to add the next string <PropertyRef Name=”Theme” /> underneath <ResultType DisplayName=”All Results” Name=”default” />
  

I think that this actually shows that the new SharePoint 2007 web parts already provide a lot of functionality out of the box which can be easily customized. The only thing I’m still waiting for is some more documentation on the subject.

Technorati : microsoft, moss 2007, office12, office2007, sharepoint, sharepoint2007, wssv3 , search

Retrieving data from Active Directory with System.DirectoryServices – the right way

I recently needed to retrieve to some data from Active Directory in an ASP.Net webservice. After looking around a bit, I stumbled upon this article – Accessing Global Address List via System.DirectoryServices namespace on CSharpCorner. The main piece of code shown is the one below – the object you should take a look at is the DirectorySearcher class.

public ArrayList returngal(){
DirectorySearcher objsearch = new DirectorySearcher();
string strrootdse = objsearch.SearchRoot.Path ; DirectoryEntry objdirentry = new DirectoryEntry(strrootdse);
objsearch.Filter = "(& (mailnickname=*)objectClass=user))";
objsearch.SearchScope = System.DirectoryServices.SearchScope.Subtree;
objsearch.PropertiesToLoad.Add("cn");
objsearch.PropertyNamesOnly = true ;
objsearch.Sort.Direction = System.DirectoryServices.SortDirection.Ascending;
objsearch.Sort.PropertyName = "cn";
SearchResultCollection colresults = objsearch.FindAll() ;
ArrayList arrGal = new ArrayList();
foreach(SearchResult objresult in colresults){
arrGal.Add(objresult.GetDirectoryEntry().Properties["cn"].Value);
}
objsearch.Dispose(); return arrGal ;}

Unfortunately, I noticed that it took quite a long time to retrieve more then 3000 usernames and e-mail addresses from AD. When you take a look at the documentation on MSDN about SearchResult.GetDirectoryEntry() it actually says that it can be slow. You should only need to call the GetDirectoryEntry method when you need to do updates, when you merely want to access/read properties - there are some things you should consider to optimize performance:

• Only load the properties, you need to use through PropertiesToLoad – if you need to access them directly change PropertyNamesOnly to false. Otherwise you will get nothing back when using the Properties collection directly to retrieve the values.
  
• Use this code instead to retrieve the property – objResult.Properties[“cn”][0]- this will work a lot faster
  
• If you need to retrieve more then 1000 records back from Active Directory – make sure that you specify the PageSize as well - thank you Michael for this posting – DirectorySearcher.FindAll() should have pagesize=1000
  

So the right way to write it, would be :

public ArrayList returngal(){
DirectorySearcher objsearch = new DirectorySearcher();
string strrootdse = objsearch.SearchRoot.Path ; DirectoryEntry objdirentry = new DirectoryEntry(strrootdse);
objsearch.Filter = "(& (mailnickname=*)(objectClass=user))";
objsearch.SearchScope = System.DirectoryServices.SearchScope.Subtree;
objsearch.PropertiesToLoad.Add("cn");
objsearch.PropertyNamesOnly = false ;
objsearch.Sort.Direction = System.DirectoryServices.SortDirection.Ascending;
objsearch.Sort.PropertyName = "cn";
objSearch.PageSize = 5000;

SearchResultCollection colresults = objsearch.FindAll() ;
ArrayList arrGal = new ArrayList();
foreach(SearchResult objresult in colresults){
arrGal.Add(objResult.Properties[“cn”][0]);

}
objsearch.Dispose();
return arrGal ;
}

Free Online Groove 2007 training

I just started working with Groove last week, so I thought it was time to get a head start with some Groove 2007 training – luckily Patrick, still had a link somewhere on his blog. Course 4698: Getting Started with Microsoft® Office Groove® 2007

 

In this online course, you will learn how to create and manage Workspaces with Office Groove 2007. You will also learn how to share files and project information using the Workspace, as well as enabling effective team communication and collecting information using forms. You will learn how to manage your team workspace using the Launchbar, Alerts, and managing member access to Workspace content. Finally, you will learn the tips and tricks to get up to speed quickly with this team collaboration environment from Microsoft..

CDO and Outlook 2007

Last week I wanted to develop a program on my PC which needed to use the Collaboration Data Objects 1.21. I thought I had the necessary libraries installed on my PC but one way or another they had disappeared. I quickly found the reason, it seems that after installing Outlook 2007 (and so deinstalling Outlook 2003), the necessary dlls had disappeared. Luckily there is a separate download available for Collaboration Data Objects 1.21 :

Beginning in Exchange 2007 Beta 2 and Outlook 2007 Beta 2, CDO 1.2.1 will no longer be provided as a part of the install of the product. As a result, there is functionality missing that many applications depend upon. CDO 1.2.1 is a package providing access to Outlook-compatible objects through a COM-based API.

There is also another download - Microsoft Exchange MAPI client and Collaboration Data Objects – this version will not install together with Outlook 2007. There also are great articles on MSDN which explain the new ways to access information in Outlook 2007 - What’s new for Developers in Outlook 2007 (Part 1 of 2) and off course Outlook 2007 – What’s new for Developers (Part 2 of 2).

Technorati : office2007, office2007

MOSS 2007, Office 2007 and WSS 3.0 Link Galore v6

It seems that the SharePoint blogging community is creating SharePoint 2007 posts at very high rate … So to keep up with all this new stuff coming out, I have created a new version of SharePoint 2007 links galore – this time updated with Word 2007 ( it seems that this posting contains over 6 pages of links) – to which I added some new categories as well as whole bunch of new links.

SharePoint 2007 - General information (Links added - last updated 08/15/2006)

• SharePoint Server 2007 - Hidden gems
  
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 ROI
  
• How to: Install Sharepoint 2007 Beta1TR on a single machine
  
• WSS v3 Notes Thursday September 15, 2005
  
• Performance, performance, performance - caching in SharePoint 2007
  
• SharePoint 2007 Product Guide
  
• [SharePoint 2007] What are Content Types?
  
• What are Content Types?
  
• SharePoint 2007-- Get Ready
  
• Naming guides for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
  
• 2007 Office system - and the new Office Services
  
• Rolling up information in SharePoint Sites
  
• Upgrade/Migration to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
  
• The Beauty of SharePoint 2007 - Improved Calendar Views
  
• Gates' memo -Beyond business intelligence
  
• New Microsoft Enterprise search products in the pipeline
  
• SharePoint, Microsoft's sleeper hit
  
• MOSS: cross-browser support, WCM XHTML compliance, and ASP.NET 2.0 vs. WSS v3 Web Parts
  
• UK information worker blog
  
• Office 2007 - Everything you know is Different?
  
• Office 2007 Beta 2 - It isn't all about the server SKUs...
  
• Microsoft goes social networking on SharePoint
  
• SharePoint 2007 ends the bucket nightmare - move those sites
  
• RSS in SharePoint 2007
  
• Office 12 and Web 2.0
  
• Configuring SharePoint 3.0 RSS reader web part to use a proxy
  
• Microsoft Office System for Architects
  

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Labs (New category – last updated 8/15/2006)

• Hands-on Labs for Windows Workflow Foundation Release Candidates
  
• What's New in Windows SharePoint Services Feature Walkthrough
  
• Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Installation and Configuration
  
• Introduction to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  
• Implementing and Administering Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  
• Clinic 5045: Inside Look at Developing with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  

Office 2007 Labs (New category – last updated 8/15/2006)

• Office 2007 Virtual Labs
  

Report Center and KPIs in MOSS 2007

Bill pointed to a nice background article about what KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) exactly are so I'm going to elaborate on this a little by specifying how you can use Key Performance Indicators (KPI) exactly in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. One of the new components in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is the Report Center which is the central place to store SQL Reporting Services and Analysis Services Reports, Excel spreadsheets (using Excel Services) as well as dashboards. Users can define personalized reports and dashboards, browse reports by category, or view a calendar of upcoming reports and subscribe to ones that are relevant.

The Report Center template contains a special type of list – called KPI List. This list is used to store metrics and allows you to store and track goals. This list allows you to create KPIs based on a number of content types:

• Indicator using data in SharePoint list
  
• Indicator using data in Excel workbook (this one uses the Excel Services public webservices APIs)
  
• Indicator using data in SQL Server Analysis Services
  
• Indicator using manually entered information.
  

There are also a couple of web parts that you can use to display data in the KPI list:

• Key Performance Indicators Shows a list of status indicators. Status indicators display important measures for your organization, and show how your organization is performing with respect to your goals. This webpart is linked to a KPI list. If you modify the web's part properties, there are a few different types of indicators you can use. Checkmarks, traffic lights and flat are the available types. There are also trends available if you choose to use Analysis Services KPIs.
  
• KPI Details Displays the details of a single status indicator. Status indicators display an important measure for an organization and may be obtained from other data sources including SharePoint lists, Excel workbooks, and SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services KPIs.
  

I haven’t found lots of information about KPIs in SharePoint 2007 yet – only one Building Permit Applications: KPIs . If somebody has some experience or found some more information, please let me know through the blog comments.

Technorati : moss 2007, sharepoint, sharepoint2007

Workaround installing MOSS 2007 in standalone mode

There is a patch available for installing MOSS 2007 on a domain controller in standalone mode (If you don't patch it, you will get a "trial period for this period has expired"). You can download it here

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/1/a/b1a6dceb-92a3-4808-8dac-b4e40c90ce00/StandaloneDCWorkaround.msi

Technorati : moss 2007, sharepoint, sharepoint2007

Workflow Designer Error Visual Studio 2005 - Getselectedcontextproperty in Microsoft.Workflow.VSDesigner.ExtendedUIService

I recently started working on workflow development in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. But when I created a new SharePoint sequential workflow project and tried to open the workflow designer in Visual Studio 2005, I immediately got the following error “'GetSelectedContextProperty' in type 'Microsoft.Workflow.VSDesigner.ExtendedUIService' from assembly 'Microsoft.Workflow.VSDesigner , Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,...' does not have an implementation.”

Apparently this was because the installed version Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Workflow Foundation did not match with the version used in the Microsoft® Visual Studio® project templates for workflow in Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 (Beta 2 version) from the ECM Starter Kit.

If you want to use the ECM Starter Kit – install the Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Workflow Foundation 2.2 . If you install version 2, you get the error mentioned above.If you need to check which version you have installed go to Add/Remove Programs - Select Workflow Extensions, Click on Support information - the version number should be 3.0.3807.7

 

 

Office Web Components (OWC) and SharePoint 2007

The Excel Team blog already hinted at the demise of Office Web Components (OWC) in the Office Web Components roadmap. Also see Chris Webbs his feedback who points to a feedback webform about Replace OWC with .Net pivot table controls for Analysis Services . He alsoo suggests that the OWC will be replaced by controls from the recently acquired Proclarity.

Technorati : bi, moss 2007, office2007, owc, wss30, wssv3

Having problems with MOSS 2007 in Virtual PC - use net stop sens

When you use a stand alone SharePoint server - both for SPS 2003 and MOSS 2007 - you will notice that some features do not work properly. e.g. publishing an InfoPath form to Forms Services, updating a list in datasheet view, etc...

This is caused by the Office components checking the network status, the easiest way to solve is to open the command prompt (Click Start>Run) and typing "net stop sens" in the text box. This will disable the System Event Notification Service.

Technorati : moss 2007, office2007, sharepoint2007, virtualpc, wss30, wssv3

Code snippet manager in Visual Studio 2005 not visible

I recently downloaded the ECM Starter Kit - The Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Starter Kit for 2007 Office System Beta 2 contains ECM feature extension code samples, supplemental developer white papers, and Microsoft® Visual Studio® project templates for workflow in Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 Beta 2 version - and tried it out ...

One of the things which is in there are some code snippets for creating the workflow.xml file - Visual Studio 2005 provides a Code Snippet Manager for this. But unfortunately I didn't see it - now to make it visible you have to Go to Tools>Customize>Switch to command tab > Underneath "Tools" - you will see the Code Snippet Manager.

Technorati : .net, visualstudio2005, vs2005

HTTP 403 access denied on WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 beta2 - enable the Web Application Service

Typical steps in a SharePoint installation are these:

• Create a web site in IIS
• Create a web application through the SharePoint Central Admin for the web site created in the first
• Create a site collection and choose a team site template for the web application.

After this, you try to navigate to your newly created SharePoint 2007 site but you get an error message - "http 403, access denied". Make sure that you have enabled the Web Application Service under Central Administration > Operations> Services on Server. This service is actually used to create the SharePoint sites and is disabled by default.

Technorati : moss 2007, sharepoint, sharepoint2007, wssv3

Ruby on Rails in Visual Studio.Net

From Walt Ritscher:

It seems that a lot of my colleagues are intrigued with Ruby and it's web cousin Ruby on Rails.  I have to admit I'm intrigued with the language, I just haven't had the time to look into the benefits of Ruby first hand.

A couple of people/companies are working on .NET implementations for Ruby.  Last week at the Portland Code Camp I sat in on IronRuby session.  A very interesting look at how Wilco Bauwer is building a version of Ruby that runs on the .NET CLR.   Wilco is an intern on the ASP.NET team and still finds spare time to work on the Iron Ruby project.

Another interesting find is Ruby in Steel.  This is a Visual Studio implementation of Ruby on Rails from a company name SapphireSteel.  You can use all the tools you know and love from Visual Studio to build, modify and test Ruby on Rails code.  They're still in early beta releases but it looks very interesting to me.  According to their web site SapphireSteel will release a commercial version and a free standard edition.

I might be learning Ruby on Rails sooner than I thought.

 

Known issue lists with 2007 Office System, Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 beta

If you are experiencing problems with the Office 2007 betas, always take a look at the sites listed beneath, they provide guidance about possible issues (and workarounds):

• Office 2007 clients - http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517941033.aspx
• 2007 Microsoft Office Server - http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517541033.aspx
• Windows SharePoint Services - http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517981033.aspx

Blogging from Word 2007

I know I’m late to the game but I finally installed Office 2007 beta2 on my production portable … so here it goes my first posting from Word 2007

PS Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to post images directly from Word 2007 – for more information take a look at the Word Blog Help as well as Joe Friend : Microsoft Office World - Blogging from Word

Integration of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and SQL Server Reporting Services with SQL Server 2005 SP2

Patrick points to a great blog post about the upcoming integration of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and SQL Server Reporting Services with SQL Server 2005 SP2- here's a quote from some of the most interesting parts:

After installing SP2, you can run Reporting Services in "native mode" (what you do now), or "SharePoint integration mode".

... since your reports are now stored in MOSS, you get document versioning (hooray!) and other MOSS features such as workflow and collaboration.

Viewing reports while in integrated mode is really nice, and will be second nature to anyone already using the existing web parts. You'll be able to view reports in either a "full page" view or inside Web Part pages. (This next part is really cool). Our Web Part controls will support Row and Filter consumers for specifying parameter values via filter Web Parts. What this means to you is you could drop two (or more, I guess) SSRS report Web Parts on a page which each display a different report filtered by date, and then filter them both using the same filter dialog. Very cool! You could even display / filter an SSRS report and Excel workbook using the same filter. Nice.

Definitely read the full post.

Technorati : bi, microsoft, moss 2007, office2007, reportingservices, sharepoint, sharepoint2007