Why bother with SharePoint?

Solving Internet Explorer crash when editing documents in SharePoint Server 2007

A while ago, a customer experienced some issues whenever he tried to edit a document or create a new document from withing SharePoint Server 2007. Apparently this was caused by using Office 2003, installing and removing beta versions of Office 2007 and afterwards performing a new install of Office 2007 RTM. This article - Internet Explorer crashing when launching documents Office documents from SharePoint Server and WSS suggested performing a reinstall of the "Windows SharePoint Services support" in Office 2007 but fortunately one of our SharePoint gurus found a quicker workaround:

1. Delete C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 12\OWSSUPP.DLL

2. Run the Microsoft Office Diagnostics tool (Start > All Programs > MS Office > MS Office Tools)

3. Reboot

This seemed to solve the issue.

Technorati tags: sharepoint, office, office+2007, sharepoint+2007, moss+2007, moss, wss

ROTFLOL - Agrarische implementatie van MOSS

Interesting quote from a Dutch page about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - translation on the edge - http://office.microsoft.com/nl-nl/sharepointserver/HA101945391043.aspx?pid=CL100626951043.

Voor agrarische implementaties is een verbindingssnelheid van 100 Mbps (megabits per seconde) vereist, voor de verbindingen tussen clients en servers is een verbindingssnelheid van 56 Kbps (kilobits per seconde) vereist. Voor meldingen per e-mail is met Internet Simple Mail Transfer Protocol/Post Office Protocol 3 (SMTP/POP3), Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4) of MAPI compatibele software voor e-mailcommunicatie vereist.

 

Sorry, only funny for dutch speaking people ...

Technorati tags: sharepoint, microsoft, fun

SharePoint Server 2007 VHD download

Personal reminder:  Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD download

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

InfoPath Processing Instructions - what are they good for ...

Did you ever wonder how InfoPath knows which template to use when you open an XML file in a form library?

Here's the answer:

If you download one of the filled-in InfoPath forms (these are just plain XML files) to your desktop and you open it with Notepad, you will notice that the file contains a number of specific statements at the beginning of your XML file. These statements, are called processing instructions, and will contain some lines with a similar syntax to the lines listed below:

<?mso-infoPathSolution solutionVersion="1.0.0.19" productVersion="12.0.0" PIVersion="1.0.0.0" href="http://moss/SiteDirectory/infopath/Expense%20Reports/Forms/template.xsn" name="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:infopath:Expense-Reports:-myXSD-2007-02-12T12-04-43" ?><?mso-application progid="InfoPath.Document" versionProgid="InfoPath.Document.2"?><?mso-infoPath-file-attachment-present?><my:myFields xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:my="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD/2007-02-12T12:04:43" xmlns:xd="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003" xml:lang="en-us">

The processing instructions are used to tell the calling application how to handle the data contained within the XML file. These processing instructions can be placed anywhere in a XML file outside of other mark-up. The processing instructions contain a href and name attributes that reference the form template that is used to load and edit the XML file. These processing instructions also allow forms that are based on a specific form template to be updated after you change the associated form template.

This means that you can actually create InfoPath forms using the System.XML namespace and by adding processing instructions you can link these automatically generated XML files to specific InfoPath form templates.

 

References:

• About processing instructions
• Working with XML processing instructions in C#

Technorati tags: infopath, infopath+2007, sharepoint, forms+server, forms+services, microsoft, office, office+2007

More about OBA's and RAPs

Not sure what OBA is all about - read the intro on  the Office Business Appplication Developer Portal  -

The 2007 Microsoft Office system provides a comprehensive set of servers, clients, and tools to make it easier for enterprises, software vendors and developers to build and deploy a new class of business applications called Office Business Applications (OBAs).

OBAs connect Line of Business (LOB) systems with the people that use them through the familiar user interface of Microsoft Office. OBAs enable businesses to extend the Microsoft Office clients and servers into business processes running in LOB applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Supply Chain Management (SCM). This enables enterprises to create new value from existing IT investments by combining them in innovative ways.

 

Still not satisfied with the available information - definitely take a look at the OBA Solution Framework Index - OBA Blogathon. To get you started there are also some sample solution packs available - and recently some new Reference Application Packs (RAP) were recently released:

• OBA RAP (Reference Application Pack) for Plant Floor Manufacturing Analytics - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb643797.aspx - This RAP contains a reference solution architecture and application that demonstrate materializing a BI centric OBA that integrates tightly with the Microsoft BI platform (Office and SQL Server) to realize the Analytics value chain of enabling operational monitoring, tactical analysis & decision making, and tactical analysis & decision making, and strategic insight.
• OBA RAP for E-Forms Processing in the Public Sector - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb643796.aspx - This RAP contains a reference solution architecture and solution that illustrate how an OBA (Office Business Application) can be built to automate and optimize forms processing in a Public Sector organization. The reference solution framework show cased in the RAP is generic and can be adapted to enable end-to-end processing of a number of forms in the public sector

 

Related postings:

• More about LOBi, SharePoint 2007 and Office Business Applications
• Office Business Applications - crossing the chasm
• OBA RAP for Supply Chain Management

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

Belgian community day slide decks available

Some of the slide decks of the Belgian community day are available online - here's a direct link to SharePoint Community Tools - some other presentations are available as well - take a look here - CommunityDay slidedecks.

 

Technorati tags: communityday, sharepoint+2007, sharepoint, biwug, visug, sqlug, pro-exchange

One fine day

... but quite busy. I had a lot of fun on Thursday  - I started the day with doing Exam 70-630: Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and passed it with a nice score. This exam seems to be a lot easier then the Application Development on MOSS exam, which I took earlier.

In the afternoon, the very first Belgian CommunityDay - where the different user groups BIWUG , Pro-Exchange, VISUG, SQLUG and IT-Talks. The thing we kind of missed was that the location was quite near Rock Werchter - so some people arrived a little bit late.

There were some quite sessions however and a nice informal "ambiance" ... - I also did a session about SharePoint Community Tools - in which I selected some of the tools listed in the SharePoint Tools Collection V2. Some things I unfortunately skipped but which are definitely way cool:

• LINQ To SharePoint - there is a new release availabe on Codeplex (v 0.2) which targets Orcas Beta1 - you might want to use the Orcas VPC since it's still beta soft. How cool is to make a CAML query on a  SharePoint custom list like this

var src = new SharePointDataSource<Customers>(new Uri“<http://mywss3.local>”));
var res = from c in src
orderby c.LastName, c.Age descending
where c.FirstName == “Bart” && c.Age >= 24 && c.FavoriteFood == FavoriteFood.Pizza
select new { Name = c.FirstName + “ “ + p.LastName, c.Age };

foreach (var c in res)
   Console.WriteLine(c);

More details about it on Bart's blog

• SharePoint Ajax Toolkit - I read about it in Inside Windows SharePoint Services (Great book - definitely a must read) - and I'm quite eager to try out some SharePoint-Ajax combinations.

 

After the sessions - great food and drinks and some time to meet with peers ... I guess that we will try to repeat this one next year and I hope to meet more of you guys at  Belgian CommunityDay 2008.

PS See what Katrien has to say about CommunityDay ...

Technorati tags: sharepoint+2007, communityday, microsoft, biwug, sqlug, pro-exchange, visug, it-talks, moss+2007, sharepoint, linq, csharp, ajax