The last SharePoint link collection ... for 2007

• MOSS 2007 site navigation - topical versus organizational.
• How to create intranet chaos
• SharePoint Disk allocation and disk I/O
• SharePoint Code Practices - Getting/setting values from/to lookup and hyperlink fields in SharePoint
• Data protection and recovery for Office SharePoint Server in small to medium deployments
• The legend of the single, multi-terabyte, replicating SharePoint Database
• What not to store in SharePoint
• SharePoint applied - search your legacy data
• SharePoint Performance in remote offices
• Database repartitoning with MergeContentDbs
• Announcing the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) 1.0
• Developer tips related to SharePoint List Performance (Must read ...)
• RSS Feed for SharePoint content on MSDN
• Create Bar Graphs in SharePoint using the dataview webpart
• SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard
• IBM scrambles to bridge great SharePoint divide
• Microsoft switching SharePoint to claims-based authentication
• SharePoint Monitoring Toolkit
• 10 things to optimize your SharePoint Server indexing
• White paper: Performance recommendations for storage planning and monitoring
• Learn to talk to your CFO in their language - SharePoint 2007 project costing, feasibility, planning and governance
• SharePoint Performance tuning using IIS overlapped recycing
• Microsoft Filter Pack 
• Microsoft SharePoint Developer Documentation Team Blog - official blog of the SharePoint Developer Documentation Team.
• Microsoft SharePoint moves into Enterprise Content Management.

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

Another Dolmen colleague blogging about SharePoint ...

Bart also started blogging - here are some of his first posts:

• Custom document libraries cannot be e-mail enabled
• The count of files and foldres in SharePoint 2007 is different then in SharePoint 2003
• Social networking in SharePoint 2007

P.S. If you want to join our team  - drop me a line at joris.poelmans@removemedolmen.be (Maybe that e-mail address will change to realdolmen ... :)  )

Technorati tags: sharepoint, sharepoint+2007, moss, dolmen, blogs

Microsoft Expression Blend Service Pack 1

For a full description of the service pack - check out KB944811 - Description of Expression Blend Service Pack 1 - but you will definitely need to install Expression Blend SP1 when you want projects created in Blend to open in Visual Studio 2008.

Download Expression Blend SP1

 

Technorati tags: expression, microsoft, vs2008, blend, silverlight

Gartner : SOA and BPM are better together

Interesting Gartner article about two hype terms : SOA and BPM.

Excerpt:

Although many user organizations have separate service-oriented architecture and business process management initiatives under way, both are more successful and the benefits are compounded when they are united.

Download Gartner: SOA and BPM are better together.

Technorati tags: soa, bpm, gartner

Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework (ParallelFX)

The closing general session of TechEd Europe this year was "The irrestible forces meet the moveable objects" from Pat Helland and it talked about how economic and technological forces will impact the way that we develop applications.

One of these technological forces is the shift to multi and many core processors. To take advantage of this massive rise in processing power, there is a now a community tech preview of Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework, a managed programming model for data parallelism, task parallelism and coordination on parallel hardware unified by a common work scheduler.

 

Download Microsoft Parallel extensions to .NET Framework 3.5, December 2007 Community Technology Preview

Technorati tags: visual+studio, vs2008, .net35, parallel, microsoft, development

Automating SharePoint development tasks using CodeRush

Take a look at these postings to speed up SharePoint development:

• Announcing Ac's VS Coderush/Refactor tools for SharePoint Devs (Part 1 of 5)
• Working with templates in Ac's VS Coderush/Refactor tools for SharePoint Devs (Part 2 of 5)
• Special templates in Ac's VS Coderush/Refactor tools for SharePoint Devs (Part 3 of 5)
• Use of stringproviders  in Ac's VS Coderush/Refactor tools for SharePoint Devs (Part 4 of 5)
• Creating custom refactorings for use in Refactor! Pro: the create web part definition refactoring

Technorati tags: sharepoint, microsoft, moss+2007, moss, refactoring

How to relocate your Groove 2007 files to another disk (when using Windows XP)

I actually had the same problem as the guy who wrote the original How to relocate your Groove 2007 files to another disk - my C-partition is only a couple of Gigabytes and most of my data resides on D-partition. Unfortunately Groove 2007 seems to keep it's user and system files on C-drive - so when you are using some big Groove workspaces, your C-drive simply gets swamped.

Luckily, there is a workaround in Vista called symbolic links where you basically redirect your folder to another location (this was the workaround from the original post).

Unfortunately I'm still running Windows XP so no full support for symbolic links. And then I stumbled onto something called junction points which are actually also directory symbolic links (already supported on Windows 2000 and higher.) You can create junction points using the linkd program which you can find in the Windows Resource Kit but there is also a program from Sysinternals called Junction so that you don't need to install the whole Windows Resource Kit.

So what are the steps that you will need to do (based on the original How to relocate your Groove 2007 files to another disk )

1. Shutdown Groove
2. Create a new folder on the disk you want the files to move to. I created a folder called GrooveData on my D: drive
3. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Users\<username>\Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Office\Groove  (well on my machine it actually used another folder - C:\Documents and Settings\[loginid]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\OFFICE\Groove )
4. Select the ‘System’ and ‘User’ folder and move them to the directory on the other disk that you created in step 2.
5. Use the junction tool to  map the folders.

junction "C:\Documents and Settings\[loginid]\Local Settings\Application Data\
Microsoft\OFFICE\Groove" d:\groovedata

I restarted Groove and everything seemed to work fine.

Technorati tags: windows+xp, sysinternals, groove, office+2007, office, microsoft, groove+2007

Dolmen most innovative ICT company in Belgium

Well, this was kind of a surprise ... in a recent survey from DataNews amongst Belgian ICT managers Dolmen was chosen as the most innovative ICT company in Belgium. Here's the ranking:

1. Dolmen (28%)
2. Imec (10%)
3. Option (9%)
4. Zetes (7%)
5. Econocom (7%)
6. Iris (3%)

For the original article take a look at Dolmen meest innoverende Belgische ict-bedrijf (sorry Dutch or French only).

SharePoint 2007 : The definitive guide

It seems like ages ago when I wrote a chapter for this book. For those of you who want to delve a little deeper into SharePoint administration, go ahead and get your copy.



PS The chapter I wrote provides some insight to admins about the world of SharePoint development...

Browser support in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Interesting post for companies which are using different browsers as well as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 -  Plan browser support (Office SharePoint Server 2007) .

Technorati tags: microsoft, moss, moss+2007, browser+support

Getting started with Visual Studio 2008

The news first appeared on the blog of Scott Guttrie and later swarmed out across the blogosphere ... But how do you start because there are a a lot of new things out there - luckily there exists the Visual Studio 2008 RTM Training Kit which will get you started.

The Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit has been updated for the RTM and has been released on the Microsoft.com Download Center for anyone to download and use.

The Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit contains a full 5-days of technical content including 20hands-on labs, 28 presentations, and 20 scripted demos.   The technologies covered in the kit include:  LINQ, C# 3.0, VB 9, WCF, WF, WPF, Windows CardSpace, Silverlight, ASP.NET Ajax, .NET Compact Framework 3.5, VSTO 3.0, Visual Studio Team System, and Team Foundation Server. 

Originally developed for early adoption work with ISVs, it is now available to all. 

You can download the entire training kit from the download center here:  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7602397.  The kit is just over 120MB compressed.   After downloading the kit, simply run the installation program to extract the contents to your local machine.  Once the installation process is complete, you will see an HTML page that allows you to navigate through the contents of the kit. 

If you don't want to do a complete install immediately - you might want to take a look at one of MSDN Virtual Lab: Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008 . One of the advantages in the new version is the enhanced WPF support - for more info take a look at XAML Editor Preferences in Visual Studio 2008 Part 1 and  Part 2 as well. Here's some info which I picked up from Brad's blog:

1. VS 2008 fully supports multi-targeting... meaning you can use the new tool to work on your existing web applications and VS2005 projects

2. AJAX Development is first class.  The ASP.NET AJAX functionality is built into the framework and the IDE fully support JavaScript debugging and JavaScript Intellisense . There also exists an updated version of the AJAX Control Toolkit for Visual Studio 2008.

3. Linq, Linq and Linq...  Data access gets way easier with the LINQ support in VS 2008, C#, VB and the platform.   

4. Visual design experience in VS for building WPF based applications

5. Debug into the .NET Framework source code

For a full feature list of Visual Studio 2008 take a look at Jeff's blog  and I also recommend that you take a look at Top 10 things you should know about Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5  as well as Hidden gems in Visual Basic 2008. There is also a complete poster with the .NET Framework 3.5 commonly used types and namespaces.

With all the buzz surrounding the release of Visual Studio 2008, you might have missed these releases:

• Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework 2.0 SP1 - Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 provides cumulative roll-up updates for customer reported issues found after the release of Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. In addition, this release provides security improvements, and prerequisite feature support for .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1, and .NET Framework 3.5.
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 SP1 - Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 provides cumulative roll-up updates for customer reported issues found after the release of Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. In addition, this release provides security improvements, and prerequisite feature support for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.
• Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System (version 3.0 runtime)  - This download (VSTOR30.exe) installs the Visual Studio Tools for the Office system 3.0 Runtime, which is required to run VSTO solutions for the 2007 Microsoft Office system built using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.

Technorati tags: visual+studio, vs2008, .Net35, .Net30, microsoft, development

SharePoint random link collection

Just did a clean up of some blog post that I marked for follow up - some interesting stuff has been released lately, so if you are doing SharePoint development definitely take a look at these links:

Articles

• Disable size limits for wsp (cab) files
• Using the current page URL in the URLAction of a SharePoint feature
• Getting the associated page layouts from a SharePoint document library
• Set up SharePoint sites with user profiles and SSP correctly
• 5 shattering mistakes for MOSS 2007 Newbies
• MOSS 2007 Filter webparts part 1 - Create your own provider and consumer
• Going down the rabbit hole - the MOSS 2007 Publishing Site Definition.
• Customizing  Connection Information using the FilterInfoBar Class
• Displaying Custom Fields in Content Query Web Parts in Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Visual How to)
• Coding with SharePoint SSO, Part 1
• Having default web parts in new Pages based off page layouts in MOSS 2007 Publishing Sites
• Announcing the preview of the new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Training
• Using WebPartPage, WebPartManager and WebPart
• Dynamically creating a SharePoint web-service proxy instance
• MOSS Custom  search results page - add rank chart
• .NET Helper classes for SharePoint Server 2007 Search Query Web Service
• Working with large lists in Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Creating custom list actions - in the drop down menu for the item in SharePoint 2007
• Performance issues with a list in MOSS 2007
• Understanding site pages and application pages
• Meeting Workspace master page woes
• Policy for web applications
• Extracting data from a xml-mapped  document
• Using a web application feature to modify web.config
• Using the SharePoint people picker
• Using the SharePoint date picker in a web part
• Using .NET Reflection to create SharePoint features

SharePoint Tools and solutions

• SharePoint ROI Tool
• Custom User Site Provisioning Solution
• Generating test data with the SharePoint Work Acceleration Tookit
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 sizing and configuration tool by HP
• Announcing the Community Kit for SharePoint: Internet/Extranet Edition Forms-Based Authentication solution!
• Announcing Community Kit for SharePoint: Virtual Earth Maps on SharePoint
• SharePoint End User Training Kit available
• SharePoint skinner
• Content By Query Web Part Frustations - introducing Carburetur
• AC's WCM custom stsadm.exe commands
• SharePoint Logging Spy

Technorati tags: sharepoint, microsoft, moss, moss+2007, wss, wss3, sharepoint+features

Gartner Magic Quadrants about Information Worker solutions

So what are these Gartner Magic Quadrants all about - here's what I picked up from Wikipedia.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant is a proprietary research tool developed by Gartner Inc., a US based research and advisory firm. It is designed to provide an unbiased qualitative analysis of a “markets’ direction, maturity, and participants.”  Gartners rates vendors upon two criteria: completeness of vision and ability to execute. Using different qualifiers per criteria for the varying industries, the Magic Quadrant then rates the participants into one of four quadrants:

1. Leaders : score higher on both criteria; the ability to execute and completeness of vision. Typically larger industry developed businesses with vision and potential for expansion
2. Challengers : score higher the ability to execute and lower on the completeness of vision. Typically larger, settled businesses with minimal future plans for that industry
3. Visionaries : score lower on the ability to execute and higher on the completeness of vision. Typically smaller companies that are unloading their planned potential
4. Niche Players : score lower on both criteria: the ability to execute and completeness of vision. Typically market fledglings

Here's an overview of some Information Worker related Gartner quadrants:

• Unified Communications -  august 2007 - http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/article3/article3.html
• Team Collaboration and Social Software - october 2007 - http://64.45.25.194/clients/socialtext/quadrant/gartner_download.html
• Enterprise Content Management - september 2007 - http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/opentext/150426.html 

Technorati tags: gartner, magic+quadrant, unified+communication, collaboration, ECM, social+software, microsoft

SharePoint bloggers @ Dolmen

I'm actually proud to work at Dolmen ( www.dolmen.be ) - and one of the reasons why is because we have a great team of highly motivated people who will basically do "almost" everything to get the job done. And what is more - they are not afraid to share their experiences. If you want to see how they are coping with SharePoint projects, check out their  blogs:

• Sven Gillis -  definitely check out his postings about how you can write a custom field type in SharePoint with Ajax-driven autocomplete functionality. (Sven also pointed to a funny story about A day in the life of a SharePoint developer)
• Tom -  has an excellent series of postings about SharePoint branding issues  - check them out
  • SharePoint Branding issues -  ASP.NET flyout menus
  • SharePoint Branding issues - My Site Control
  • SharePoint Branding issues - Table of Contents WebPart
  • SharePoint Branding issues -  MOSS Search Center
  • SharePoint Branding issues - Breadcrumb
• Another Tom  (yes there are 4 of them in our SharePoint team ...) - will share info about SharePoint installation and all of the configuration stuff ..
• Every year, there are some SharePoint internship places available - this year, we have Cedric's - A journey into SharePoint.

 

For a complete listing of all bloggers @ Dolmen - check out the listing on the right hand side in the navigation...

 

P.S. 1 If you want to work with us ... you might want to come by for the Dolmen Jobbrunch on the 24th of november - for more info take a look at http://www.dolmen.be/jobbrunch/ . And don't worry we do not only do SharePoint development, ...

P.S. 2 If you are a student which needs to do an IT internship - leave a comment with your contact details. I will forward these to HR so that they can provide you with more details about our internship programs.

Technorati tags: sharepoint, dolmen, jobs, blogs, branding, microsoft, sharepoint+2007, moss, moss+2007

Introduction to Microsoft Search Server 2008 - formerly know as S2

OK, so the cat is out the box...  Microsoft just released the RC (Release Candidate - RTM is expected for march 2008) of Search Server 2008. So what is it? It actually is a rebranded and updated version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for Search. There are two versions Search Server 2008 Express which is completely free and Search Server. Hereunder what I picked up from the Search Server TechEd session.

The product features are actually the same as those of MOSS (Standard Edition ...) but you will get a little bit extra (new features marked in bold):

• Search Center interface
• Customizable search experience through the use of Search webparts
• Best Bets support and hit Highlighting
• Crawl rules and  search proxy settings
• Search thesaurus support for synonyms and noise words
• Indexing and crawl support of different types of content sources such as SharePoint, web sites, file shares, Exchange public folders, Notes databases, ... These are the out of the box content sources you can get at extra content sources if you install extra protocol handlers.
• IFilter support which allow you to crawl different types of files. SharePoint ships with a number of iFilters out of the box for Office files, XML, HTML, Text files, etc ... If you need to crawl other types of content you can install extra iFilters (such as the free PDF iFilter)
• Search Connectors for Federated Search using the Open Search standard
• Ships with out-of-the box search connectors for FileNet and Documentum (free)
• Federated Search web parts
• Can be installed on top of WSS 3.0 to extend the search experience
• An easier installation process, they actually have a prerequisites checker tool which does some of the work for you ... :-).

 

Basically when you install Search Server you have two installation options:

• Basic install - this will install SQL Server Express and use this as a back end database. Since there is a size limit (4 GB) on SQL Server Express you will be limited to more or less 400.000 documents.
• Advanced install - this will allow you to use a back-end SQL Server. This option is both available for Search Server and Search Server Express.

So what happens if you install Search Server on a blank server? It will basically install WSS 3.0 and on top of that it will add the Search Server functionality.

So what is the difference between the Express edition and the full version. Both versions share the same search engine and the same functionality. There is however one major difference. Search Server Express is only possible in a single server install - so it will not scale out.

So what is the story with existing WSS 3.0 or MOSS installations:

• If you install it on WSS 3.0, it will extend it which will allow you to search across sites.
• You can NOT install it on MOSS for the moment. There will be an update for MOSS post Service Pack 1 which will give you the Federated Search capability.

 

Release timeline:

• MOSS SP1 release  (no date available yet)
• MSS RTM  (probably march 2008)
• Federation Patch for MOSS

A interesting summary is found in this great Search comparison table from Pierre his site (French only) - here under the translation:

 

Product Name	Technologies	Characteristics
Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express (MSSX 2008)	Windows 2003 Server WSS 3.0 SQL Server 2005 Express or SQL Server 2005	FREE No limit on the number of documents (except for the limit of the database) Single server support only Federated search
Microsoft Search Server 2008 (MSS 2008)	Windows 2003 Server SQL Server 2005 (or SQL Server 2000 SP3a) WSS 3.0	Not free No limit on the number of documents Multiple server/farm support Federated search
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007)		Not free People search Business Data Catalog (BDC) search

 

And now the most important thing - what is this Federated Search all about? Federated Search in Search Server uses Federated Search Connectors which allow you to pass search queries to a another system (such as Technorati, MSDN, Flickr, WikiPedia, your own custom applications or even Google :-) )  and accept and display results returned from that system.  The display of results from these other search engines or applications are displayed alongside the local results. If you want to learn more take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/connectors/federated.aspx  - here you can download sample Federated Search connectors (you package the settings in a file with extension FLD).

I will probably play around with this during the weekend ... so more news to follow.

References:

• http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/enterprisesearch/ 
• Microsoft readies free enterprise-search product
• Forrester : Microsoft the latest disruptor in Enterprise Search

Technorati tags: sharepoint, search, enterprise+search, search+server, mssx2008, mss2008, microsoft

Windows Live Writer goes live

I have been using Live Writer for quite a while and it is a great product ... I just upgraded to the RTM version of Live Writer.

 

Technorati tags: live+writer, windows+live, microsoft

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 for Search Code Name "S2" - What is it and what's new?

I just noticed this session in the TechEd session overview ... looks quite interesting. More news to follow later on.

Technorati tags: search, sharepoint+2007, moss+2007, moss, microsoft

Visual Studio 2008 available on MSDN by end of november 2007

Interesting news from TechEd Barcelona, Somasegar told us that Visual Studio 2008 will be already available by the end of this month on MSDN. (Also see Soma's blog post about TechEd Europe)

Some fun stuff in there:

• Multitargetting - which means that you can target the .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0 or .NET 3.5 framework. (You don't need a side by side installation of VS2005 and 2008)
• Better designer support (they took the design engine from Expression web or SharePoint Designer for that matter ... :)) - is used to provide better designer support for web developers
• Better support for javascript
• Visual Studio is now extensible for other platforms as well  - there was a great demo from Dan Fernandez where he showcased how he used Visual Studio 2008 to build a plugin for World of Warcraft.
• Builtin support for all the nifty new .NET 3.5 stuff such as LINQ, etc ...

Update: here are some other things that they announced:

• Popfly Explorer : an addin for Visual Studio to easily create and host Popfly websites.
• CTP download available of Sync framework - also take a look at Introduction to the Microsoft Sync Framework 

 

Greetings from Teched Europe Barcelona ...

 

Technorati tags: visual+studio, microsoft, linq, vs2008

Installing OneNote Mobile

I just got myself an interesting little toy - the E-Ten M700 Smartphone (for more info about E-Ten check out IntoMobile). One of the first thing I wanted to try out was OneNote Mobile. So how do you install it on your mobile device (well it did not install automatically for me):

• Start Office OneNote 2007 and connect your device.
• In OneNote, on the Tools menu, click Options.
• In the Options dialog box, in the Category list, click OneNote Mobile, and then click Install OneNote Mobile.
• Follow the instructions on your computer screen to complete the installation.  (It is going to ask you where to install OneNote Mobile)

So why did I want to install OneNote Mobile - well take a look at this info and you probably figure out that this is quite a handy tool to use:

• OneNote Mobile 2007 Quick Start Guide
• Out and about with OneNote Mobile
• Review of Microsoft OneNote Mobile on Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com!

Technorati tags: onenote, mobile, microsoft, office+2007

Random developer link collection

Once in a while I try to take a look at non-sharepoint stuff... here are some links which might be of interest to you :

• Free Expression Blend Training material
• Cool Silverlight charts from Chart FX
• Big changes for the Acropolis project
• Evidence based scheduling
• Silverlight, ASP.NET, Expression and Windows Server 2008
• Gartner's top 10 strategic technologies for 2008
• Positioning Silverlight, WPF, Ajax.NET, Windows Forms, Expression Suite.
• Silverlight VISUG presentation - powerpoint slides, demo's and code snippets
• Partial rendering misses AJAX architectural points
• Using the AJAX workflow monitor with .NET 3.5 Beta 2
• .NET 3.5 Roadshow sample code
• Slides/samples from MIX:UK - Building Silverlight apps with .Net and building ASP.NET apps with VS2008
• Programming Silverlight 1.0 with C# - Photo Carousel (Part 1)

Technorati tags: microsoft, visual+studio, silverlight, csharp, ajax

SharePoint - Branch deployment and WAN optimization

One of the choices you will have to make when setting up a SharePoint architecture where you have geopgraphically dispersed locations is  the decision between a "centralized farm setup" or "multiple farms setups" in different geopgraphic locations. If you choose for multiple farm setups you might want to take look at georeplication. I already talked about georeplication in SharePoint a couple of weeks ago but sometimes it is just more cost efficient to do a central deployment.  This will however imply that you will have sufficient network bandwidth so that you end-users in remote locations can still work efficiently.

So when you are faced with limited bandwith you want to use it as efficiently as possible. There are some different solutions out there to do network acceleration for SharePoint:

• Citrix Wanscaler  and Netscaler - WAN optimization of MOSS Trafic with Citrix Netscaler and WANScaler . This is a new product offering which Citrix acquired earlier from Orbital Data.
• Packeteer (Tacit) -  http://www.packeteer.com/products
• IOra - http://www.iora.com/products/sharepoint.asp
• Certeon - http://www.certeon.com  - has some interesting technology which understands patterns of packets from specific applications such as SharePoint.
• Cisco - check out their white paper - Cisco WAAS Software 4.0 optimizations for SharePoint (written for SPS2003 but the same principles will apply)
• F5  - http://www.f5.com - traditionally aimed at AFEs (application front end) to boost performance but now it will move into the WAN optimization area as well, where it will encounter traditional players such as Riverbed and Silver Peak

 

Other links:

• Microsoft SharePoint could be a challenge for WAN optimization.
• WAN optimization market overview
• WAN optimization and acceleration appliances tackle SSL trafic
• The next three big WAN optimization targets

 

Technorati tags: sharepoint+2007, moss+2007, moss, sharepoint, architecture, network, wan, microsoft

Creating a SharePoint state machine workflow

Most examples that you find on the web about SharePoint workflow development seem to use the sequential workflow type. Here's an example of a state machine workflow:

• Creating a MOSS state machine workflow - Part 1 of 4 : Concepts and planning
• Creating a MOSS state machine workflow - Part 2 of 4: Creating InfoPath forms
• Update to Creating a MOSS state machine workflow  Part 2 : Initiation and Association Form Trap
• Creating a MOSS state machine  workflow - Part 3 of 4 : workflow development

Happy SharePoint-ing ...

Porting SharePoint Designer Workflow to Visual Studio

Interesting post - Porting SharePoint Designer Workflows to Visual Studio. Has anyone tried this out?

Technorati tags: workflow, sharepoint+designer, sharepoint, moss+2007, moss, sharepoint+2007, visual+studio, microsoft

Integrating Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Dynamics AX

I recently took a look at how you can integrate MOSS 2007 and Dynamicx AX - here's a collection of links which might be of interest:

• Microsoft Dynamics Developer Center (MSDN)
• Using Dundas webparts and Enterprise Portal
• Axapta and SQL Server Reporting Services Integration (Partnersource)
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 SP1 - Role Based Business Intelligence (Partnersource)
• Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Dynamics AX (Codeplex) - Wave 2.0 Prerelease - This codeplex project contains the pre-release versions of Business Data Lookup, Customer Journal , Custom Report Generator, Timesheet Management and Vacation Management snaps. These snaps increase the productivity of information workers by allowing them to access and input relevant data where and when they need.
• Integrating Line of Business Applications with SharePoint (Jeremy Palmer - Microsoft) - this is one of the places where I actually found some information about using Business Data Catalog to integrate Dynamics with MOSS. I expected more info like this - if you have some examples about integrating SharePoint Server 2007 and Axapta using BDC - leave a comment on this blog.

Have fun ...

Technorati tags: sharepoint, moss+2007, moss, sharepoint+2007, dynamics, axapta

Accessibility and MOSS 2007 - the story continues

A while ago, I already stated that building a WCAG compliant site on SharePoint Server 2007 is not an easy endevaour . Fortunately,  there is some good news, Microsoft is currently working together with HiSoftWare on a "Accessibility Kit for SharePoint". For more info take a look at the AKS Portal as well as Lawrence his post - Pre-Announcing the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint.

Technorati tags: sharepoint, wcag, accessibility, moss+2007, sharepoint+2007

Want to develop with SharePoint ... really?

I think that the recent flamings ( for an example take a look here) of SharePoint show you the success of this product.

I have been doing SharePoint development for over 7 years now and I must say that I'm impressed with the improvement since SPS2001.  But I must also confess that I think that the learning curve is quite steep. So what happens, those that don't make it, start to whine...

Come on whineres , listen to Eric (Flame and ye shall be flamed in return ), Tony ( I don't care if you don't want to develop on SharePoint, and neither does your boss ... ) and Bob  - take the blue pill.

Technorati tags: sharepoint, microsoft, trivia

MSDN Evening - Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Employee Portal in Microsoft Dynamics NAV

I just registered for a free MSDN evening about how you can integrate your Dynamics NAV solutions with MOSS 2007 using Business Data Catalog, E-Forms, Search and Workflow.

P.S. Hey Tom, exploring integration between Dynamics AX and MOSS 2007 would be also be interesting ... :)

Technorati tags: sharepoint, sharepoint+2007, moss+2007, moss, dynamics, microsoft

Great Halo3 videos on YouTube

ROTFLOL

• 10 ways to tell if you're a NOOB in Halo
• Halo Grid
• Halo FUN song

Technorati tags: Halo3, trivia, fun

Is God a farmer, gardener, architect or IT Guy?

I picked this joke up from an interesting discussion about SOA - Should IT deliberately create chaos:

A farmer, an architect, a gardener and an IT guy are talking about which is the oldest profession. Now these chaps are bible literalists so they think the Garden of Eden was the start of everything.

The farmer says "Mine is the oldest profession as Adam had to tend all the animals and get all the fruit from the trees, if he wasn't a farmer he would have starved."

The gardener jumped in saying "yes but someone had to design the garden of Eden and put all the plants in place, so God must be a gardener"

"No, no" said the architect "First God had to create order and structure out of the chaos and build the universe so he must have been an architect"

"Ahhh" said the IT guy "but where did you think the chaos came from?"

Technorati tags: architecture, soa, trivia

Trivia - Longest classname in SharePoint object model

I stumbled on this one when looking at the SharePoint publishing controls - SPSimpleFormattingEncodedResourceExpressionBuilder. Do you know of a SharePoint class with a longer name?

Technorati tags: sharepoint+2007, moss+2007, moss, trivia

Tip - Running Internet Explorer 7.0 with addons disabled

Sometimes you want to use Internet Explorer without any addons - to do this go to command prompt and use the next command "iexplore.exe -extoff"

 

Technorati tags: internet+explorer, IE7, microsoft

Slides september BIWUG meeting available

The  slidedecks are now available on the BIWUG site:

• Guidelines and best practices for a succesfull SharePoint deployment
• Preview Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server

If you missed a meeting, take a look at the overview of all previous presentations.

Technorati tags: sharepoint, biwug, performancepoint, microsoft, moss+2007, moss

Calculated fields in Windows SharePoint Services - common formulas

A question I got a couple of weeks ago - where can I find some examples of formulas used in SharePoint calculated fields? Well, here you go - Examples of common formulas - Windows SharePoint Services.

Technorati tags: sharepoint+2007, wssv3, microsoft, sharepoint

Reawarded MVP Windows SharePoint Services

I just got word that I got reawarded for another year as Microsoft MVP Windows SharePoint Services. For more info about the MVP Program, take a look at the MVP Executive Summary

Ultimate paintball gun

Check this out ... I want one of these next time that I try to score a paintball headshot ...

 

http://rap4.com/paintball/os/tippmann-phantom-grenade-launcher-long-p-3513.html

 

Technorati tags: fun, paintball, weapon

Service Pack 3 available for SharePoint Portal Server 2003

SP3 is basically a roll up of all fixes since the release of SPS - for a complete description of the fixes - see Description of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP3

Download SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP3

 

Technorati tags: microsoft, sps+2003, sharepoint, service+pack, sp3

Tafiti with Halo3 skin

Apparently they updated the skin of the Tafiti search experience (built using Silverlight) with a Halo3 theme.

 

PS Unfortunately I can't see it myself since I have a newer version of Silverlight installed and Tafiti needs the 1.0 version.

Technorati tags: silverlight, tafiti, search, halo3, xbox360

SharePoint at Dolmen

Nice picture :-) ....

Technorati tags: sharepoint, moss+2007, microsoft, dolmen, moss

Blog post series about the SharePoint Content Deployment API and framework

Nice series from Stefan about the Content Migration API (formerly known as PRIME) for SharePoint (both WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007). As suggested previously in a posting, you can actually use this framework to start writing your own SharePoint GeoReplication Solution.

• Deep Dive Into the SharePoint Content Deployment and Migration API - Part 1
• Deep Dive into the SharePoint Content Deployment and Migration API - Part 2
• Deep Dive into the SharePoint Content Deployment and Migration API - Part 3
• Deep Dive into the SharePoint Content Deployment and Migration API - Part 4

Technorati tags: sharepoint+2007, sharepoint, moss+2007, wssv3, microsoft

Ten things you should know about SharePoint master pages

Here are some random interesting notes about master pages in SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:

1. The first thing you should know about how master pages work in SharePoint is how the "default.master" is used. Default.master is found in the 12 Hive underneath TEMPLATE\GLOBAL\default.master. An instance of this file is created everytime a new site is created in SharePoint.
2. Content pages are referring to a master page using 2 different types of tokens: dynamic tokens and static tokens. About dynamic tokens: developers can modify variables in code that change the location of the master page - by changing the MasterUrl (~masterurl/default.master) or CustomMasterurl (~masterurl/custom.master) property. Static tokens point to a certain location where you master page should be found - ~site/custom.master - points to the master page gallery of the current website. ~sitecollection/custom.master - points to the master page gallery of the current site collection. For more info take a look at Customizing master pages in Windows SharePoint Services.
3. Administration pages such as  viewlsts.aspx, create.aspx etc ...  use  a different masterpage called application.master which resides in the _layouts folder and so therefore occurs once per installation of SharePoint. So, you will not be able to modify this one on a per site basis
4. When you need to create a new master page, start off from one of the minimal master pages - remember though that  there is a difference  between the master pages for publishing sites and collaboration sites (they have different placeholders- use the Minimal or Base Master Pages guide from Heather Solomon or  How to: Create a minimal master page)
5. There are a number of ways you can add your own master pages to MOSS - the most modular and flexible approach is by using feature. The nice thing here is that you can create a feature callout event which allows you to change the SPWeb.MasterUrl property from default.master to your custom master page. 
6. The master page for a Meeting Workspace is a little different then the one for other WSS sites - it uses 3 special controls which are used to display the tab controls.
7. Did you know that you can link a master page to a specific site definition? You can do this by specify the MasterUrl property of the Configuration node in ONET.XML  e.g. <Configuration ID="1" Name="Blank" MasterUrl="_catalogs/masterpage/custom.master">. Remember that you will also need to provision the master page at site creation by using the Modules section in ONET.XML -  <Module Name="CustomMasterPage" List="116" Url="_catalogs/masterpage" RootWebOnly="FALSE"> <File Url="custom.master" Type="GhostableInLibrary" IgnoreIfAlreadyExists="TRUE" /> </Module>
8. Be carefull of using inline code blocks in master pages. The code blocks will work fine as long as your masterpage does not get customized. Once it gets customized (e.g. by using SharePoint Designer) it will run in safemode which does not allow inline code. You can override this setting by altering the web.config and adding an extra PageParserPath - <PageParserPath VirtualPath="/sitedirectory/marketing/_catalog/masterpage/*" IncludeSubFolders="true" CompilationMode="Always" AllowServerSideScript="true" />
9. Have you seen the mysterious SharePoint DelegateControl in a lot of master pages? These define regions in your master page for which you can substitute the content with your own controls. You can replace what is shown in a delegate control by define a Control element within a feature for more info take a look at Use your ASP.NET webcontrol in MOSS 2007 with SharePoint delegate control.
10. There is a feature for WSS 3.0 which you can download from CodePlex to manage your Master Page as well - take a look at Stramit SharePoint 2007 Master Picker.
    

Some extra white papers and reference material

• Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 1 of 3): Understanding Web Content Management and the Default Features - This article discusses topics that you should understand before you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create sites that support Web content management (WCM) and gives a general overview of the various artifacts that are available in the product. (11 printed pages)
• Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 2 of 3): Extending WCM - This article explains the structure of master pages, the steps to create a custom master page, the underlying mechanisms of navigation in WCM-enabled sites, the creation of custom field controls, and how to customize the Page Editing toolbar.
• Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 3 of 3): Creating and Configuring WCM-Enabled Sites - This article examines the Web content management (WCM) features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 from an administrative perspective: creating a Publishing Portal site, configuring a site for anonymous access and forms authentication, and using site variations. (9 printed pages)
• ASP.NET Master Pages Overview  
• Building tylerbutler.com, Part 1: Planning and Basic Branding
• Building tylerbutler.com, Part 2: Building Content Types and Page Layouts
• Building tylerbutler.com, Part 3: Customizing Content Query Styles
• MOSS2007 - Rebuild Corporate Website
• MOSS2007 – Rebuild Corporate Website (Part 2)
• MOSS2007 – Rebuild Corporate Website (Part 3)
• MOSS2007 – Rebuild Corporate Website (Part 4)
• Customizing the Look and Feel of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 - Custom Chrome / Branding
• How to: Create a Minimal Master Page 
• How to Create and Store Master Pages on the Server for Use with Site Collections
• Create a Feature: Master Pages for Site Collections
• CSS Options with Master Pages
• Customizing Sharepoint 2007: Customizing using SharePoint Designer 2007

Technorati tags: sharepoint, sharepoint+2007, moss+2007, moss, microsoft, wss3, wssv3, masterpage

TechNet evening - How to deploy the next generation Office and Windows Client using the Microsoft Solution Accelerator

Arlindo just reminded about this next session - definitely something for IT Pros:

TechNet Evening: How to deploy the next generation Office and Windows Client using the Microsoft Solution Accelerator Tools

 

When & Where : Wednesday, October 03, 2007 6:00 PM at Utopolis Mechelen

Language(s):  English. 
Product(s):  Office and Windows Vista. 
Audience(s):  IT Professionals, Partner and Technology Decision Maker. 

Event Overview

Are you facing challenges in your desktop deployment planning and deployment projects?
In this session you will learn about the different tools available to help you during the Assesment & Deployment process. Johan Loos will demonstrate the latest Business Desktop Deployment Kit and the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tools. You will learn all about WIM files, the System Image Manager and answer files.

Click here to register.

Technorati tags: vista, office+2007, technet, event, community+tools, solution+accelerators, microsoft, microsoft+belux

OBA Link love

If you don't know about OBAs (Office Business Applications) take a look at www.obacentral.com - there's a nice video. Here's the excerpt which describes OBA's.

Office Business Applications are an emerging class of applications that helps business unlock the value of their line-of-business (LOB) systems and turn document-based  processes into real applications.

OBACentral groups different solutions which are currently being built by Microsoft partners which are defined as OBAs.

 

Other posts about OBA:

• More about OBA's and RAP's
• Office Business Applications - Crossing the chasm
• Microsoft Office Business Applications and LOBi for SharePoint Server 2007

External Links:

• Office Business Application/VSTO Starter Kit: Integrating 2007 Office System with SAP Using VSTO 2005 SE (Part 1 of 2) - learn how to install the Office Business Application Starter Kit for SAP, including where to download the files and how to set up the environment.
• Office Business Application/VSTO Starter Kit: Integrating 2007 Office System with SAP Using VSTO 2005 SE (Part 2 of 2)
• OBA/VSTO Starter Kit v. 1.0 Source Code: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=120AAAA8-0A0C-4A0B-B605-4E08FFE7A786&displaylang=en . This is the source code that shows how yo can build customized Office Business Applications (OBAs) using VSTO that integrate with SAP. It accompanies the previous two articles.
• Getting started with Office Business Applications (Part 1) 
• OBA application patterns - Getting started with Office Business Applications (Part 2)

Technorati tags: sharepoint, sharepoint+2007, wss3, moss+2007, moss, oba, office+2007, office, microsoft

Microsoft Hotfix request web submission form

Just a mental note - if you need to request a hotfix, this is an easy way - http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2007/07/27/eway-to-request-hotfixes-from-microsoft-support.aspx

Technorati tags: hotfix, microsoft, support

BIWUG session about guidelines and best practices for SharePoint deployment

A new year has started for BIWUG and starting from September we are organizing again our monthly meetings. We are happy to announce the first one on September 25th in the U2U offices with the following agenda:

18:00 – 18:30 Registration and Welcome

18:30 – 20:15 Session 1: Guidelines and Best Practices for a Successful SharePoint Deployment within Your Organization

Join this session if you are looking for answers to questions like ‘When is it appropriate to use SharePoint within the organization?’, ‘What are the weak and strong points of SharePoint?’, ‘What are the pitfalls?’, ‘What kind of resources do I need the level of infrastructure but also people (both admins as well as designers and devs)?’, ‘What are the options to make SharePoint do what why business wants it to do? And what effort is that going to take?’. There are of course plenty of other related questions that can be discussed during this session. Patrick Tisseghem and other BIWUG board members will be more than happy to share their experience during an interactive discussion. The session is planned to be high-level and especially interesting for project managers, technical sales, architect and design folks.

20:15 – 20:30 Break

20:30 – 21:15 Session 2: Overview of Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 - (Speaker: Nico Verheire, Dolmen)

This session will give you an overview of how Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 can help you in your organization to help improve performance by integrating monitoring, analysis, and planning into a single application (of course based on WSS 3.0 and integrated with MOSS 2007). As with the first session, the level will be 100-200 with plenty of demonstrations of the product capabilities.

Register for this event

 

Important: I have 5 copies to give away from the book "First Look 2007 Microsoft Office System" by Katherine Murray - if you want one - register for the BIWUG event and add a comment to this blogpost about a topic which you want to talk about at one of the next BIWUG events.

 

Technorati tags: biwug, communityday, office+2007, sharepoint+2007, moss+2007, microsoft, performancepoint, business+intelligence