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Tuesday, November 28, 2006

XML Notepad 2007

Just downloaded it - XML Notepad 2007 - handy little utility

tags: xml

Office 2007 - VSTO SE addins show errors

If you are doing VSTO development with Office 2007 - there is a very easy way to get some insight into your Ribbon XML syntax errors. Open you Word 2007, go to Word Options >Advanced - scroll all the way down untill you reach the General section and check the Show Add-in user interface errors checkbox.

Eric published another nice tip on his blog - Getting Ribbon XML intellisense in VSTO 2005 SE

tags: vsto, office2007, ribbonxml, office

Configuring incoming email settings in WSS and MOSS

The ability to couple an e-mail adress to a SharePoint list in both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and WSS 3.0 is a very interesting feature and it seems there are a number of posts out there which describe how to do this. Recently a Screen cast about how to configure a SharePoint Server 2007 site to receive e-mail appeared but the best explanation still remains the white paper which Steve wrote - you can find it http://www.combined-knowledge.com/Downloads%202007.htm , he recently updated it to reflect the changes for RTM.

It is however also possible to use e-mail enabled lists with a simple SMTP server setup on a standalone server - listed below are the different steps required:

1. Install SMTP Server and configure it to relay mail

a. Open the IIS MMC snapin

b. Right click on Properties of Default SMTP Virtual Server

c. Click the Access Tab, Relay. Add the IP address of the SharePoint server to the computers that can relay through this virtual server.

d. Click the Delivery tab, Advanced. For Masquerade Domain enter the netbios name of your web server, for Smart Host enter the netbios name of your server that you are using.

2. Configure the incoming e-mail settings in WSS/MOSS

a. Open the SharePoint Central Administration and navigate to the Operations tab

b. Underneath the Topologies and Services categories - you will find a link to Incoming e-mail settings

c. Enable incoming e-mail and use the advanced settings mode.

d. Leave the Directory Management Services defaults as they are (No)

e. Fill in the e-mail server display address

f. For the drop folder put c:\inetpub\mailroot\drop - if you are not using the default settings you will need to change this

3. Configure the e-mail settings for a specific list/library.

a. Click on list settings for a specif list/library

b. Under Communication settings, click Email settings

c. Check the Enable this list to receive e-mails.

d. Fill in an e-mail address for the list/library

tags: sharepoint+2007, sharepoint, moss, wss, wss3

Monday, November 27, 2006

Rosebud and Office 2007

When doing an Office 2007 installation - I noticed an installation folder with the mysterious name - Rosebud (I was pretty sure, it had nothing to do with Citizen Kane ...). After looking around a little bit I found some interesting comments on a posting by Scott Hanselman . Here is a quick rundown of the info about Rosebud:

Rosebud isn't new, actually I remember coding Exchange 2000 and SharePoint 2001 customisations using it around 6 years ago. As you correctly pointed out, it is the "codename" for the MSDAIPP component (Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider) an OLEDB provider for WebDAV, and it is used for client access to SharePoint. If you are really bored, this KB article talks about it all in more detail (2003 flavour of products) http://support.microsoft.com/?id=838028, things may have changed with the 2007 flavour.

And here is another one:

Rosebud (the ms data access internet publishing provider - msdaipp.dll) is not new - I wrote it in 1998 at MS. It is in fact an OLEDB provider that makes the Internet look like an OLE DB rowset. A row is an URL that represents a web resource (such as an html page), the columns of the row represent various properties of the resource such as size, mod date, etc. This page in turn may itself be viewed as a rowset which will be filled with all of the links on that page. In this way you can navigate the web by tunneling through rowsets. It supports FTP and HTTP protocols. It's smart about DAV if the server talks DAV. It even works with the local offline cache and will return resources from the cache if they exist there. Rosebud is the primary way that Office Web Folders and My Network Places get to the Internet, while being smart about offline files.

To use it just instantiate a provider with provider name = msdaipp.dso, data source=an url. More info at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/248501/.

tags: office, office+2007

WebParts, server controls, InfoPath and SharePoint 2007

It seems that Jeroen started blogging again - check out these postings:

Using CAML to filter a infopath published boolean field (from a sharepoint list)
SPListItem looses Property data type when publishing Infopath form to a sharepoint list (MOSS 2007 beta2TR)
System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebControl doesn't fire all events - for more background info on this check out Sam his posting -

How to take Control ... of your controls

List of SharePoint bloggers

Bob Mixon just published list of SharePoint bloggers .

tags: sharepoint, sharepoint+2007, blogs

Friday, November 24, 2006

Allow Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 users to open your Office 2007 documents

By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. 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 Knowledge Base article 923505.

Supported versions:

Microsoft Word 2000 with Service Pack 3, Microsoft Excel 2000 with Service Pack 3, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 with Service Pack 3

Microsoft Word 2002 with Service Pack 3, Microsoft Excel 2002 with Service Pack 3, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 with Service Pack 3

Microsoft Office Word 2003 with at least Service Pack 1, Microsoft Office Excel 2003 with at least Service Pack 1, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 with at least Service Pack 1

Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003

Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003

Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2003

tags: office, office2007

Thursday, November 23, 2006

SharePoint 2007 - Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) supported

I'm also giving a SharePoint 2007 for Administrators training and one of the things I talk about are the different backup/restore options available in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. One of the new features here is support for Volume Shadow Copy - VSS allows you to take snapshots of files while they're in use - for more info check out How Volume Shadow Copy Service works. This will allow third party vendors to build backup solutions for SharePoint with less effort.

For some more new stuff - take a look at What's new for IT Professionals in Office SharePoint Server 2007

tags: moss, moss2007, sharepoint+2007, sharepoint, moss+2007

Master Page Switcher for WSS 3.0

The ability to change a master page with out-of-the-box features is only available with MOSS as it is part of the WCM layer. WSS alone doesn’t provide any of these capabilitie.

The “Master Page” link in Site Settings is added when the Publishing Features are activated. It’s not an issue, it’s by design.

If you want the user to be able to change the master page through the WSS UI you will need to create a custom solution for that using an application page and a feature to add menuing options to that application page.

Check out Renaud’s master page switcher on codeplex.

http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=SPMasterPicker

tags: sharepoint, sharepoint+2007, wss, wss3

SharePoint 2007 IT Pro stuff

Some random IT Pro related SharePoint stuff

General documentation

Capacity planning

Within these docs you'll find data on servers, server topologies, system sizing, figuring out requests per second, understanding performance characteristics and guidance around features, etc ...

Security Best Practices - great posting

Security, Compliance, Server hardening and IP protection

Upgrade documentation

Upgrade to SharePoint Server 2007 (IT Pro)
Upgrade WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0 (IT Pro)
Upgrading to v3 - a rundown of the process ... Great posting from Maurice about the life experience of doing an upgrade
Run the pre-upgrade scan tool (MOSS) - very important
Perform a gradual upgrade

Other stuff

Which SharePoint Technology is right for you - Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 Edition Comparison + Windows SharePoint Services
WSS 3.0 SDK : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms441339.aspx
MOSS 2007 SDK : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms550992.aspx

tags: sharepoint, sharepoint+2007, moss+2007, moss2007, wss, wss3

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

DOD certification for MOSS

I saw the first mention about DOD 5015.2 certification for MOSS - in a comment on a posting about Content Types and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. A little bit later an official post arrived about DOD 5015.2 certification for Office SharePoint Server 2007 . Apparently Microsoft will release a Records Center addon to provide the additional functionality - the certification test is scheduled for may 2007.

tags: MOSS, sharepoint+2007, sharepoint, MOSS2007, MOSS+2007

Random thoughts about XAML, WFML and similar concepts

I have given a course about .Net 3.0 this week and I was quite impressed when going through the labs about what XAML actually can accomplish.

XAML is basically an XML-based markup “language” that allows you to build up objects using a declarative syntax. When looking for more info I suddenly stumbled upon this article by Joe Stegman which demonstrates something similar called Windows Forms Markup Language (WFML - a 2005 article). Which again led me to this blogpost which talks about Glade and the GTK# UI in Linux - and basically says that the idea of using XML markup for representing UI is not quite new. For more info about Glad - a free interface builder for GTK+ and GNOME - take a look at http://glade.gnome.org/

Again from here, you are not very far away from similar things such as MyXAML (Also a project which started in 2004) .

I guess I completely missed all these geeky little frameworks - probably serves me right for being so SharePoint focussed :) ...

tags: wfml, myxaml, xaml, glade

Should you blog? Sure ...

Nice posting from Hans with some tips for people who start blogging ...

tags: blog, blogging

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Reminder - take a look at SharePoint Utility Suite

Mental note - take a look at the SharePoint Utility Suite - this tool kit is currently being migrate from Microsoft.com to Codeplex . For more info about the latest release take a look at the blog from Keith Richie -

SPSiteManager 2.2 complete

Hey! Where can I get SPSiteManager 2.2???

There will also be a version for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007.

tags: sharepoint+2007, sharepoint, moss, wss, sharepoint2007

SharePoint and Powershell

Found this one Arno Nels blog - after seeing Bart in action at TechEd I was wondering where I could use Powershell in combination with SharePoint - well here it is :

Now this is interesting. On the "Adventures in SPWonderland" Blog, there is a series on how to use Powershell with Sharepoint. Check out these posts:

For those that dont know what Powershell is, check out these sites:

tags: powershell, sharepoint, sharepoint+2007

InfoPath/SharePoint blog worthwhile reading

One of the guys on the InfoPath team pointed to the blog of one of my co-workers - Kristof De Causemaeker.

Shoutout to Kristof De Causemaeker - his blog has interesting articles on both InfoPath and SharePoint; couple particularly cool posts:

1) Great walkthrough on template parts, new InfoPath 2007 feature that allows you to modularize components of your form templates.

2) Cool trick on how to make picture buttons in InfoPath 2003 and 2007. It won't work in browser forms, but it can make your smart client forms prettier.

Alex Weinstein
Program Manager

Kristof is also teaching our InfoPath 2007 course - IFP010 - Forms solutions with InfoPath 2007(English description). If you want subscribe to this course just go to www.dolmen.be - underneath the Education tab you will find both an online calendar or one in PDF format. (The course is located underneath the Office development category).

tags: infopath, infopath+2007, sharepoint+2007, blog

Info about NTLM, Kerberos and MOSS 2007

I recently stumbled upon this very interesting blog from Chris Gideon - definitely check out these postings:

NTLM authentication with SharePoint - hardcore posting about how SharePoint addresses the authentication process
NTLM authentication with SharePoint - implications of multiple domains in 2 different scenarios with NTLM authentication and SharePoint
#50070: Unable to connect to the database - More info about how to troubleshoot this dreaded error. Hint : in the majority of cases this is not a WSS problem.
Focus on WSSv3/MOSS upgrade ... keeping Kerberos in mind

tags: kerberos, ntlm, sharepoint, sharepoint+2007, MOSS, WSS3

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Ms. Dewey - next generation search ;-) ...

Definitely, check this one out - http://www.msdewey.com - it uses Live Search but the interface is so much better ;-) ....

PS Thanks Patrick for providing the link ...

tags: search

Release to Web of MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0

Take a look at the post from Joel Oleson - Announcing the RTW of WSS and Office SharePoint Server 2007 One thing you should watch out for, is that you use the eval key for the edition that you will ultimately deploy because downgrading from Enterprise to Standard Edition will not be supported.

tags: sharepoint+2007, moss2007, moss, wss3, moss+2007