SharePoint Snacks – Episode 1 – Office 2010 integration with the backstage view

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,office+2010,office,microsoft,backstage,sharepoint+snacks

People you know and things you can do….

Excellent blogpost  - No man is an island – truer today than ever with a reference to this interesting survey – Informal networks linked to success of change initiatives.

The answer to the question about whether networking makes a difference: yes! The study showed a significant relationship between the success of a change initiative and the strength of the personal networks of the leader(s) managing the initiative.

93% of completely successful change initiatives were led by leaders with very strong or strong personal networks. Not one change initiatives described as less successful was led by leader(s) with strong or very strong personal networks.

On the other hand, the majority of less successful change initiatives (73%) were led by people described as having moderate or weak personal networks.

Technorati Tags: HR,networking,change+management

Getting Office 2010 to work on a single box SharePoint 2010 demo environment

Last week I finished installing a new SharePoint 2010 demo environment. As it is a demo environment I installed everything on one server – so Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008, SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010 on one single machine. Unfortunately when I tried the “Edit in word” option in SharePoint 2010 it gave me an error “Word has encountered an error”. Same if I tried the “New document” option in a SharePoint 2010 document library.

Thanks to Steven for providing the solution – go to File Options> Trust Center. Next click the Trust Center Settings button. On the new screen which pops up – go to the Protected View and unselect all the tree protected view options displayed on the top of this settings page

Close your Office 2010  and try the “Edit in word” option again – you will notice that it works like a charm.

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

Troubleshooting UserProfile import in SharePoint 2010

If you need to configure user profile synchronization in SharePoint Server 2010 – you definitely need to check out the Microsoft Technet Documentation on SharePoint Server 2010 – Manage Profile Synchronization – configure user profile synchronization.

There is one thing however which helped me out which isn’t mentionned in the documentation – when trying to start the user profile synchronization service it failed – after restarting the SharePoint timer service it started successfully.

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

Solving could not load type error with ListData.svc in SharePoint 2010 RTM

If you encounter the following error when you access the listdata.svc service in SharePoint Server 2010 RTM -

Could not load type 'System.Data.Services.Providers.IDataServiceUpdateProvider' from assembly 'System.Data.Services, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'

you are probably missing the latest update of ADO.NET Data Services for .Net Framework 3.5 SP1. There are two versions -

• ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
• ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Apparently this is not picked up by the prerequisites installer.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,sharepoint+2010,listdata.svc,adonetdataservices,astoria,odata,microsoft,development

Don’t forget to start the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service …

When you want to use sandboxed solutions in SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 you have to check that the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service is started. If it is not you will see the following errors:

• You will be able to upload sandboxed solutions to the solutions gallery but the Activate solution button will remain greyed out.
• When you try to deploy a sandboxed solution from within Visual Studio 2010 you will get the following error: Error occurred in deployment step 'Activate Features': Cannot start service SPUserCodeV4 on computer ''

To start it go to SharePoint 2010 Central Admin and select Manage services on server.


On the application page make sure that the Sandboxed Code Service is started.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,sandboxed+solutions,sharepoint+foundation,administration

Which Visio version to install?

There’s a great blog post on the Visio team blog – Visio 2010 versions overview which describes the differences between the standard, professional and premium edition. For integration with SharePoint and the new Visio Services you will at least need Visio Professional 2010. If you also want to design SharePoint workflows in Visio, you will need Visio Premium 2010.

Technorati Tags: visio,visio+2010,sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,visio+services,workflow

SharePoint 2010 Tools Extensibility

Visual Studio 2010 allows you to extend the SharePoint 2010 tool support by creating custom extensions, this way you can for example create custom SharePoint Project Items (SPI’s) which are not available out of the box.

There are already some interesting examples out there of theses extensions and what’s all possible

• Extend the functionality available on the SharePoint Explorer nodes and the available menus – Imtech Get SPMetal Definition extension – there’s a complete list of Imtech Visual Studio Extensions available on Visual Studio Gallery
• Create new SharePoint Project Templates – SharePoint 2010 Extensibility Projects with Silverlight and SharePoint project template, SharePoint Ribbon project template and OBA deployment project template.
• Extend the Visual Studio context menu’s for standard and custom SharePoint Project Items (SPIs)
• Provide extensibility enable access to the SharePoint Server API from within Visual Studio

A number of extensions are also grouped within the CKS:Development Tools Edition on Codeplex (Source code available on Codeplex) – these are currently being rewritten to work with Visual Studio 2010 RTM.

If you have some other interesting extensions – please add a comment.

Technorati Tags: vs2010,visualstudio2010,sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,microsoft,development

Office 2010 - default file format ballot OOXML or ODF

Something I missed in the Office 2010 beta’s – apparently Office will ask you for the default file format you want to use - Office Open XML format or OpenDocuments Format - the first time that you open it.

This is apparently part of an agreement of Microsoft to commit to more interoperable applications. In Office 2007 Microsoft supported ODF through a separate Sourceforge project but now you get it built in. In september 2008 Belgian government decided to standardize on ODF – so know they can use ODF and still use Office 2010.

Outlook 2010 is pretty smart …

I used to work with the Outlook Hotmail Connector for Hotmail during the beta tests of Outlook 2010 but I decided to remove all beta components – but one way or another Outlook seemed to remember that I used to have a connection using the Outlook Hotmail connector and provided me with guidance directly in my Outlook user interface

I'm just wondering if the version which was installed (14.0.4760.1000) is the final release.

Office 2010 64-bit or 32-bit that’s the question…

I now have to decide whether to install the 64-bit edition of Office 2010 or the 32-bit edition. There’s some guidance available on Technet – 64-bit editions of Office 2010

The recommendations for which edition of Office 2010 to install are as follows:

• If users in your organization depend on existing extensions to Office, such as ActiveX controls, third-party add-ins, in-house solutions built on previous versions of Office, or 32-bit versions of programs that interface directly with Office, we recommend that you install 32-bit Office 2010 (the default installation) on computers that are running both 32-bit and 64-bit supported Windows operating systems.
• If some users in your organization are Excel expert users who work with Excel spreadsheets that are larger than 2 gigabytes (GB), they can install the 64-bit edition of Office 2010. In addition, if you have in-house solution developers, we recommend that those developers have access to the 64-bit edition of Office 2010 so that they can test and update your in-house solutions on the 64-bit edition of Office 2010.

Since I’m using both SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2007 (which relies on some ActiveX controls) I will probably go for 32-bit.

Technorati Tags: office2010,32bit,64bit

Windows Phone 7 Intro video

Windows Phone 7 Development links

I just followed a great TechDays Belgium session about Windows Phone 7 and I must say this definitely rocks …. and it is really easy to get started as all the necessary Windows Phone 7 developer tools can be downloaded from http://developer.windowsphone.com. There are basically 2 models for building applications for Windows Phone 7 – either using the XNA model or using the Silverlight model.

If you download the developer tools you will notice that they can be added to an existing Visual Studio 2010 installation or if you don’t have Visual Studio installed it will add Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone. The download also contains the Windows Phone Emulator as well as XNA Game Studio 4.0 – check out the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit on MSDN and the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit direct download.

Some interesting tidbits:

• Currently C# is the only supported programming language
• Windows Phone is cloud-ready – you might for example want to integrate XBox Live
• Windows Phone will only support 2 resolutions – 480x800 and 320x480
• Your windows phone is orientation aware - in Silverlight you will have explicit orientation events which you can use to manipulate the UI in your apps.
• Since the Windows Phone has a built-in accelerometer you will be able to program against it – using a standard API
• Windows Phone 7 supports multi-touch, again a new way to handle input both in XNA as well as Silverlight.
• Navigation uses pages

Related links:

• CTP release of the OData Client Library for Windows Phone 7 series
• Tips for using the OData Client Library for Windows Phone 7
• Charles Petzold’s  ‘Programming Windows Phone 7 Series’ (Book preview chapter) http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/C/8/7C820C6F-C205-4ECF-B9F3-1505DD13F9BF/ProgWinPhonePreview.pdf
• Charlie Kindel’s blog (PM on the Windows Phone team) -http://blogs.msdn.com/ckindel/
• Windows Phone blog -  http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsphone/
• Windows Phone Developer blog - http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/wpdev/

Expect more info to come in the next days ….

Technorati Tags: windowsphone7,phone7,microsoft,silverlight,xna,development

SharePoint Saturday Belgium – 8th of may 2010

BIWUG is organizing the first ever SharePoint Saturday in Belgium.

When: Saturday 8th May 2010

Where: Hof Ter Helst, Kattenbroek 1, 2650 Edegem

We will welcome you as of 9 o'clock for a coffee and sessions will start at 9:30.

9:30-9:45 Welcome and Introduction

9:45 - 10:30 Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint (Karine Bosch)

10:40 - 11:30 LINQ to SharePoint (Serge Luca)

11:40 - 12:30 Client Object Model (TBD)

12:30 - 13:40 Lunch break  with sandwiches and drinks

13:40 - 14:30 Sandboxed solutions (Steven Van De Craen) 

14:40 - 15:30 MetaData in SharePoint 2010 (Joris Poelmans)

15:40 - 16:30 SharePoint, WCF Services en REST (Stéphane Eyskens)

16:30 - Closing drink

Don't hesitate to register now as registrations are limitted to 100 participants.

We really hope to welcome you!

Don't forget to also take a look at the SharePoint Saturday Belgium event site...

 

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

Using MailServer for SharePoint 2010 development box

As you probably know SharePoint 2010 development is only possible on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 (all 64 bit versions). I still prefer using Windows Server 2008 so I need POP3 mail server functionality to test e-mail integration and so on…  I have used the POP3 extender from Visendo in the past for this but it did not work quite as fluent as expected.

I just finished installing a new SPS 2010 dev box so I decided to use SmarterMail – for a walkthrough about how to configure SmarterMail check out Reza’s blog.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,pop3,windows+server,w2008,development

Folksonomy and Taxonomy – do you have to choose?

With the introduction of SharePoint 2010 and the way that it supports free tagging (folksonomy) as well as a centrally managed controlled vocabulary (taxonomy) using the managed metadata column – the debate about taxonomy versus folksonomy will probably light up again. In my personal opinion – there is no need to choose between one of both. The way that SharePoint 2010 supports the notion of promoting free tags into a managed taxonomy demonstrates that a folksonomy can be used as a source to define a taxonomy as well.

Related links:

• Folksonomy versus Taxonomy
• Taxonomy driven folksonomy
• The holistic web – Taxonomy versus folksonomy
• Knowledge Management – Some thoughts on Folksonomy versus Taxonomy
• Ontology is overrated: Categories, Links and Tags
• About taxonomy, folksonomy and SharePoint
• Just enough taxonomy

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sps2010,taxonomy,folksonomy,knowledge+management,microsoft,sharepoint+server+2010

SharePoint 2010 – launch May 12th, RTM in April

Just picked this up from the SharePoint team blog – SharePoint 2010 & Office 2010 Launch:

Today, we officially announced that May 12th, 2010, is the launch date for SharePoint 2010 & Office 2010. In addition, we announced our intent to RTM (Release to Manufacturing) this April 2010. 

It’s an exciting time for us! We hope you can virtually join us on May 12th at 11am EST to listen to Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, announce the launch. You can register for the event @ http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/businessproductivity/proof/pages/2010-launch-events.aspx. 

Arpan Shah
Director, SharePoint

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

BIWUG on SharePoint 2010 revisited

I have just upload the presentations and the code sample from Stephane on SPLinq to the BIWUG site – if you want to see the sessions again – don’t forget to take a look at the BIWUG on SPS2010 recordings

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

Your favourite feature in SharePoint 2010?

(Click the image to see it bigger)
I did a little survey as part of the contest to win a free TechDays ticket - with the question: What is your favourite feature in SharePoint 2010 - here are the results


So what's your favourite feature - leave a comment.

SharePoint 2010 - the enterprise managed metadata (EMM)service, enterprise content types and content type syndication

Did you ever try to deploy content types across multiple site collections in SharePoint Server 2007 and keep them in sync afterwards? If so, you probably now that this is not that easy – there is not standard support for this in 2007. Some of you will have tried the SharePoint cross-site configurator on Codeplex. Luckily this issue has been solved with SharePoint 2010 which has built in support for central management of content types from a master site collection and afterwards pushing out the changes to other site collections – this commonly referred to as content type syndication and the content types within the master site collection hub are called enterprise content types. Another great feature enabled by the Enterprise Managed Metadata (EMM) service application.

• SharePoint 2010: Content type hubs – publish and subscribe to content types
• SharePoint 2010 content type subscriptions
• How to publish and subscribe to content types in SharePoint
• The basics on content type syndication in SharePoint 2010
• Using Enterprise Content Types and Managed Taxonomies in SharePoint 2010

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,microsoft,content+types,managed+metadata+service,EMM