SharePoint - It's all about making the right choices and decisions - When to use custom site definitions.

This is the third posting about making the correct design decisions when implementing SharePoint. It's about site definition vs site templates.

I strongly believe that there are a couple of  reasons for using custom site definitions:

1. Better overall performance of using site definitions instead of site templates for creating sites
2. More control and flexibility in building a specific solution. One thing to keep in mind though is to keep your custom site definitions as minimal as possible and to use the SharePoint Features framework to add functionality.
3. Site templates are basically black boxes where you have limited control over the way that they are working - so when you get into trouble you're stuck.
4. It is easier to add additional functionality to site which are developed using a site definition in contrast with these built using a site template.

The main reason for choosing site templates is that overall it takes less effort to create a site template. You can just click everything together and use the Save site as template option. Another reason would be that you can change a site template without affecting existing sites (allthough this might be a disadvantage as well).

Some extra info: Site definitions versus site templates and deciding on the correct customization approach . On a similar note this same post from  Eric - The great debate: SharePoint Designer vs custom site definitions.

Previous postings:

• SharePoint - it's all about making the right choices and decisions - Part I
• SharePoint - It's all about making the right choices and decisions - Part II - One or multiple site collections

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,moss+2007,moss,design,architecture,microsoft

Visio design templates for SharePoint 2007

Reminder:

• Free visio template and stencil for designing SharePoint 2007 sites.
• Visio Shapes for SharePoint (Commercial)

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,design,sharepoint+2007,visio,templates,microsoft,moss+2007,moss

List web part for Microsoft CRM 4.0

Another interesting one  to to integrate SharePoint and Microsoft CRM 4.0 is to use the List Web Part for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. (Released december 2008 - tip: there is a different web part for Dynamics CRM 3.0)

The List Web Part for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides a way to view and update Microsoft Dynamics CRM records using a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 Web site. Microsoft Dynamics CRM users can create shared or personal List Web Parts of Microsoft Dynamics CRM records from a SharePoint Web site, open records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 from the List Web Part, and create connected List Web Parts.

Tags van Technorati: dynamics+crm,sharepoint,crm,microsoft

Microsoft Dynamics Snap apps

If you want people to use the core applications you invested in (such as CRM and ERP), it is a good idea to integrate them into a familiar interface. Most people tend to use Office applications quite a lot in their daily job so why not integrate your CRM and ERP from within Office. Dynamics Snap applications show how information workers can work with data out of Dynamics CRM and Dynamics from within their Office applications (This is what Microsoft calls a Office Business Applications or OBA)

One that I tried out recently - Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Microsoft Dynamics AX on Codeplex – of which the current release supports Dynamics AX 2009. There are two different snaps available for Dynamics AX 2009:

• Offline Expense - This snap-in enables expenses to be entered in Excel while disconnected from the corporate network, and then posted to Dynamics AX at a later time. This snap-in uses WCF-based services and LINQ to retrieve data from Dynamics AX, and uses the Application Integration Framework, or AIF to send business documents to Dynamics AX.
• Business Data Lookup (BDL) - This snap-in enables information workers to access data from Dynamics AX from within Excel, Word and Outlook. This snap-in is an upgrade of the BDL snap-in that was distributed with Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0.

Unfortunately the Microsoft Dynamics Snap Team Blog doesn't show any activity since january 2007

References:

• Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics AX Integration Scenarios White Paper
• More about OBA and RAPs
• Office Business Applications – Crossing the chasm
• OBA Composition Reference Toolkit

Tags van Technorati: dynamics+ax,dynamics+crm,oba,microsoft,dynamics+snap,snap,codeplex

Troubleshooting Microsoft CRM

My colleague Koen has been writing some excellent blog posts about troubleshooting certain issues with Microsoft CRM:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 – enable tracing/logging
• MS CRM 4.0 VPC – remove the “crm” host header
• MS CRM 4.0 custom workflow activity assembly update not executing the new code

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,crm,mscrm,development,troubleshooting

Belgian Azure User Group launched …

Kurt Claeys just announced the birth of a new Belgian user group – www.azug.be

AZUG.BE is a Belgian user group with focus on development and architecture of the Microsoft Azure Services Platform. Azure is a cloud hosted development platform for internet oriented applications aimed at high scalability and based on .NET technology.

Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences with the .NET community in development and architecture in the Azure Services Platform and the .NET Services technology. As new programming skills and a new architectural approach are needed I’m inviting you to become member of this user group to prepare you for building this new style of applications.

We’ll have regular public meetings (free of charge) providing demos, training, presentations and discussions on the technology part of Azure. First public meeting is planned in september 09.

Interested in participating as boardmember ? Shoot a mail at board@azug.be.

Interested in the agenda of upcoming events, visit www.azug.be regularly or register for the newsletter at newsletter@azug.be with the word subscribe as subject. Hope to see you.

Tags van Technorati: user+group,community,belgium,azure,microsoft,cloud+computing

What’s in a name – SharePoint Online, BPOS and Microsoft Online Services

SharePoint Online, Microsoft Online Services or BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) are terms which you hear flying around when you look for information about Microsoft’s endeavors in the cloud. Here’s some more background information:

• SharePoint Online : is a collection of web-based collaboration tools built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and provided by Microsoft as a hosted service. For some more information check out Service Description for Microsoft Office SharePoint Online
• Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) : goes broader then SharePoint – it is a set of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft, and consists of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online.
• Microsoft Online Services: is the overall name of all services Microsoft will offer in a hosted environment – current focus for Belgium is BPOS but the offering will probably extend to also include Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in the coming months.

Before you rush in it is probably best to first take a look at what the trade offs are when you choose the SharePoint Online option instead of an on-premise deployment.  A good start is the SharePoint Online Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guide. Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides help you in making design decisions by looking at available options, taking into account cost, complexity and technical contstraints. They help you to align your business and IT more efficiently. There are already a number of IPD’s available (released versions)  - Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides

It is also important to note that the use of SharePoint Online is not mutually exclusive with a SharePoint installation on premise. These two forms can quite easily co-exist, it is however important that you define policies and rules for users when to use what. This is typically an important aspect of a SharePoint governance plan.

If you want to try it out – there is a 30-day free trial which you can use at the Microsoft Online Services – Customer Portal

More background info:

• Microsoft Online Services – Team Blog
• SharePoint Online (SAAS) review – what it is and what it isn’t
• Trial Guide for Microsoft Online Services
• Microsoft SharePoint Online Standard Developer Guide (133 pages) – the different sections already provide some guidance  about what is possible and what is not - Getting Started , Creating SharePoint Online Sites ,Customizing SharePoint Online Applications , Using a Data Form Web Part in SharePoint Online Applications, Using SharePoint Online Web Services , Integrating Microsoft Silverlight with a SharePoint Online Page , Workflows Using SharePoint Designer 
• Comment on Microsoft Online and the GSK Customer case (Bill Pray)

Tags van Technorati: bpos,microsoft,sharepoint+online,sharepoint+server,saas,cloud+computing

PDF Annotations

A common requirement for PDF files is the ability to add comments and annotations. Docutrack has an interesting tool called PDF-XChange viewer (which is free) which allows you to do just that.

Tags van Technorati: PDF,PDF+tool,annotations

Free Documentum Developer Edition available

On june 2d EMC announced  a free developer edition of EMC Documentum Content Server 6.5 which you can download from the ECM Developer Community.

To get you started take a look at the Content Server Developer Edition Install instructions. What’s a little bit weird is that Windows Server 2008 seems to be missing from the list of supported OS – I tried installing it anyway but it failed with this error -  DIWAOEMExecuteConfigurationscripts failed - "creating index agent" failed. Runtime execution failed with childprocess
launchftconfigurationprogram.bat

Too bad  … time to setup a new blank Windows Server 2003.

Technorati Tags: documentum,emc,content+server

Add some spice to your Powerpoint decks with PPtPlex

Last week somebody told me about Prezi.com – which seems to be some kind of Web 2.0 example of how you can build more interactive presentations with zoom effects and so on …

It kind of reminded me of something which I saw a couple of months ago – PptPlex from OfficeLabs

pptPlex uses Plex technology to give you the power to zoom in and out of slide sections and move directly between slides that are not sequential in your presentation. Watch the videos below to see how pptPlex can help you organize and present information in a non-linear fashion. Test drive pptPlex and wow your audience with your next presentation.

I just installed and I plan to use it for every a couple of weeks … see what it gives…

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,presentation,powerpoint,pptplex,office+labs

Web Testing (and load testing) SharePoint 2007 with Visual Studio 2008

Testing a SharePoint project is quite a tedious job – there are a lot of floating parts out there which make it complicated and time consuming. So everything which makes it a little easier is interesting. (Another reason for using it was to generate usage logs so that I could start working on my SharePoint extensions – Usage Statistics again) The last couple of days I have been looking at how I can use Visual Studio 2008 Test Edition to test SharePoint Server 2007 (this would also work with WSS 3.0).

To get you started there are some interesting sources out there on  Hello Its Liam:

• MOSS 2007 Testing Using Visual Studio Team System 2008 – shows how you can test uploading a document
• MOSS 2007 – Testing using Visual Studio Team System 2008 – Creating Team Sites
• MOSS 2007 – Visual Studio 2008 Testing (Search)
• MOSSS 2007 – Visual Studio 2008 Testing (Load Testing)

Some other usefull resources (SharePoint specific):

• Load Testen van SharePoint met VSTS 2008 en VSTT Load Agents – Deel 1 (Dutch only)
• Load testen van SharePoint met VSTS 2008 en VSTT Load Agents – Deel 2 (Dutch only)
• How to configure a stress test project for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 using Visual Studio Team Suite 2008
• Load Testing SharePoint (Lessons Learned) (Part 1)
• Load Testing SharePoint (Lessons Learned) (Part 2)

General information about VSTS 2008:

• Content Index for Web Tests and Load Tests (Ed Glas’s blog on VSTS load testing)
• SharePoint (Performance, Stress) Load Testing
• Web and Load Testing using Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition

Tags van Technorati: visualstudio2008,vsts,load+testing,web+testing,microsoft,visual+studio+2008,sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,moss+2007,moss

SharePoint Server 2010 – some random info on the web

More and more information starts to spread about SharePoint Server 2010 – here are some links to get you started. As with most information at this stage, it is not sure that it will be a 100% accurate – and a lot of speculation is going around - but still …

• Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 beta in two months - Microsoft will launch an invitation-only SharePoint Server 2010 beta test in July with a select group of customers and then follow the program up with a public testing phase ahead of the Office 2010 release in the first half of next year.
• Groove renamed to SharePoint Workspace - Microsoft claims that this is a natural progression since Groove is to SharePoint like Outlook is to Exchange. This definitely sounds interesting – can’t wait to get my hands on that one. I’m wondering how much overlap there will be with a tool such as Colligo Contributor for SharePoint. You should probably keep an eye out for more information on the Groove Development Team Blog or the newly created Working the spaces, sharing the point blog
• New Microsoft SharePoint 2010 details start to emerge  - some interesting quotes - SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64-bit only and require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 to run. It also will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005. - SharePoint 2010 will feature a “Web-enabled Ribbon control” and support greater use of Silverlight controls - A new version of FAST Search for SharePoint will be made available at a lower cost. Meanwhile, according to contractor and SharePoint blogger Lars Fastrup (whose blog entry is the source of a lot of this post), “the SharePoint team have scrapped their efforts to make the SharePoint search engine scale beyond 50 million documents in a single index. The argument will be to move to the FAST search engine instead.”
• New Gemini demo’s dissected -  0:40 The Sharepoint report centre. OK, so we can rate reports with stars, yeah that’s going to be useful… but other ‘social tools for collaboration’ might be interesting. 1:21 Seeing the report in a thin client. This is Excel Services, I think…? This will only make it harder to choose between Excel/Excel Services/Gemini on one hand and SSRS on the other. It would be nice if there was some kind of story linking the two.
• Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog available
• Office2010 the movie …
• Microsoft Office 2010 Discussion Forum

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

Community Day 2009 – don’t forget to register

Don’t miss the biggest Belgian Community event - Community Day 2009!  This year, Community Day will take place on Thursday 25th June 2009 in Utopolis, Mechelen.

The Community Day 2009 is supported by BESUG, BIWUG, IT-Talks, MVUG (Microsoft Virtualization User Group) , Pro-Exchange, SCUG, SQLUG, VBIB (Visual Basic in Belgium), Visug, WinSec, XNA-BUG.

Register now for free for this all day event on www.communityday.be !

Tags van Technorati: biwug,community,community+day,belgium,microsoft

PHP SDK for Windows Azure

Not really my cup of tea but still … http://phpazure.codeplex.com  - kudos to Maarten for another great initiative.

As part of Microsoft’s commitment to Interoperability, this open source project is an effort bridge PHP developers to Windows Azure. PHPAzure is an open source project to provide software development kit for Windows Azure and Windows Azure Storage – Blobs, Tables & Queues

PHP SDK for Windows Azure is an open source collaboration project driven by RealDolmen and Microsoft, based on a blog post of Maarten Balliauw.

Tags van Technorati: PHP,Azure,Microsoft,codeplex

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Microsoft Outlook

Since I need to work with Dynamics CRM quite a lot lately I decided to give Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Microsoft Outlook a spin. This is basically an addin which allows you to work with Dynamics CRM directly from within Outlook. Allthough I like the functionality a lot I’m under the impression that it slows down Outlook quite a lot and it definitely is a memory hog. I also noticed that when your CRM server has gone down, your CRM addin can completely lockup Outlook.

Anyone care to share tips and tricks about how to overcome these annoyances?

Tags van Technorati: CRM,Outlook,Microsoft

BIWUG presentations about SCOM, SharePoint and SharePoint Designer 2007 online

I just uploaded the presentations of yesterday’s BIWUG session to our site www.biwug.be (check out the Meeting presentations doclib). Thanks again to Alexandre from SCUG (System Center User Group) Belgium for the presentation. In case you missed it – the presentation should be available in the coming weeks on MSDN Chopsticks as well.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,scom,system+center,biwug,spd+2007,sharepoint+designer+2007

Tip of the week : search for documents in SharePoint Server 2007 from within Office or Internet Explorer

Sometimes small things make the difference between a good and a great platform. This is the first of a small tips which will make your daily interaction with SharePoint a lot more productive – let’s call it SharePoint Lifehacking

Exposing Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2007 by using Internet Explorer 7 and the Office Research Pane

If you have a tip you want to share   - leave a comment.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,sharepoint+hacking,microsoft

How to configure the SharePoint people picker to search for users in other domains

The people picker will by default show the users in the forest that the SharePoint farm is installed (that is, the resource forest). According to the documentation Peoplepicker-searchadforests: stsadm property (Office SharePoint Server) – it should also display users in all two way trusted domains and forests but you can still use the stsadm command to be sure.

For one way trusted domains (or forests) you will need to do some extra stuff.

In a one way trust you will probably need to specify a user name and a password. This requires you to run the setapppassword operation first (For more details see Select users from multiple forest domains) - STSADM.exe -o setapppassword -password key. The key you specify here is used to encrypt the password you will use to establish the people picker connection. Note: run this on every WFE of your farm.

Next you need to add the forests/domains you are going to query using the people picker.

stsadm –o setproperty –pn peoplepicker-searchadforests –pv <list of forests or domains> -url <WebApp>,<LoginName>, <Password>

where <list of forests or domains> can be something like this "forest:contoso.corp.com;domain:bar.contoso.corp.com".

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,moss+2007,moss,active+directory,microsoft

BIWUG on SharePoint, SCOM and SPD

Another BIWUG event is planned on the 20th of may in the RealDolmen Offices in Huizingen - doors open at 18:00.

Agenda:

• Introduction: 18:30 - 18:45
• SharePoint and SCOM: 18:45-19:45
  • System Center Operations Manager 2007 is THE end to end Monitoring Solution. In this session we will discuss what you, as SharePoint guys, find relevant to be monitored. System Center Operations Manager uses a SharePoint Monitoring toolkit for monitoring the SharePoint Environment. This toolkit consists of a set of System Center Operations Manager 2007 management packs designed to help IT pros monitor their WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 and 2007 SP1 environments. These newly released packs were engineered to take advantage of SCOM 2007’s features, including new and improved reporting, additional actions, new views, and integrate IIS and SQL health rollup for a better understanding of the system-level dependencies of the SharePoint environments.And last but not least: System Center Operations Manager can also emulate end user experience by monitoring a Web Application. We will show you how to monitor a Web Application, even if it is require credentials, and how to record a browser session. If you have a SharePoint environment and don’t have a monitoring solution at the moment then you can’t miss this session!
  • Speaker: Alexandre Verkinderen, SCOM MVP
• Break: 19:45-20:00
• SharePoint Designer 2007 – Things you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask: 20h00-21h00
  • This session will show different tips and tricks about how you can use SharePoint Designer 2007 to customize SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. There is room for questions so we will foresee 15 minutes for an whiteboard discussion about what to do and what not to do with SharePoint Designer.
  • Speaker: Joris Poelmans, SharePoint MVP

We will also give away 2 copies of SharePoint Server 2007, The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly) to attendees with the most interesting tip or trick to use SPD2007.

Location

RealDolmen
Industriezone Zenneveld
A. Vaucampslaan 42
1654 Huizingen
T +32 2 362 55 55
F +32 2 362 55 99

Download the directions.

Register for the next event

 

Tags van Technorati: biwug,sharepoint,sharepoint+designer+2007,spd+2007,scom,system+center

Price and value

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get." (Warren Buffett)

TaxOnWeb down …

It is that time of the year again …those dreaded brown enveloppes with tax forms just arrived in our mailbox. Just out of curiosity I decided to take a look at TaxOnWeb.be where Belgian citizens can submit their taxes online – unfortunately no luck – the site is down.

A Web 2.0 solution for dying plants

“Homegrown Terra-rists” Ignite Video - The Botanicalls system and applications use networked open source hardware and software to allow plants to communicate with people on people’s terms - using the telephone, text messages or twitter.

Tags van Technorati: LOL,fun,web2.0

Exploring Identity LifeCycle Manager 2007 R2

Update: see section about release data

A common issue in organisations is how to effectively and efficiently manage identities of users since data about users is maintained in a number of different systems (HR systems, AD,CRM, etc …) and needs to be pushed to a number of target systems such as SharePoint, Exchange, etc … Identity LifeCycle Manager 2007 is a product which provides an integrated and comprehensive solution for managing the entire lifecycle of user identities and their associated credentials.

The next version of Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager, Microsoft® Identity Lifecycle Manager "2" (ILM "2") is scheduled for release in the first quarter of calendar year 2009.

While the initial release was planned for first quarter of calendar year 2009 – I just found this blog post – ILM 2 Release Date put back a whole year.

I’m at TEC 2009 in Las Vegas at the moment, and it was officially announced by Microsoft today that the release date for ILM 2 is now Q1 2010, as opposed to the previously publicised date of “any day now”. We should be getting an RC1 version in Q3 this year.

Reasons why I wanted to explore ILM R2 (instead of sticking with the current version) - (For a detailed description take a look at Understanding ILM2 white paper)

• It provides a SharePoint-based user interface that enables system architects and IT administrators to create rules governing users and groups using natural language descriptors and easy-to-use menu-driven controls.
• ILM “2” provides powerful self-service capabilities for Office end-users, rich administrative tools and enhanced automation for IT professionals and .NET and WS-* based extensibility for developers.
• ILM "2" will also include a simplified configuration of synchronization with heterogeneous identity stores through synchronization rules. This will enable customized solutions to be delivered more cost effectively in less time as they require less specialized application knowledge or programming skills.
• New features in ILM "2" make it possible for users to manage their own identity information. IT can use ILM "2" to set policies to require workflows such as approvals for or notifications of these user-generated changes. For example, IT may choose to delegate management of mobile phone numbers to end users. Users would be able to use the ILM "2" portal to update this information. This helps keep identity data such as mobile phone numbers up to date so that users can be easily contacted in the process of doing business.
• ILM "2" includes rich, visual workflow management based on the Windows Workflow Foundation, which enables IT to quickly define, automate and enforce identity management policies. IT can use the integrated workflow in the approval / rejection process for actions such as creating accounts, or delegating tasks. For further extensibility and customization, ILM "2" will ship with WS-* based APIs that enable customization at both the platform and solution level. ILM "2" consumes Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) workflows, enabling organizations to import and reuse existing WF-based workflows in ILM "2".

First thing to do is setting up a test environment to check it out - installation requirements for ILM R2 (I skipped the Exchange Server installation) – notice the 64-bit requirement…

• Windows Server 2008 64-bit Standard or Enterprise Editions
• Active Directory Certificate Services (Remember: that you will not be able to change your computer name or domain settings after you have installed Active Directory Certificate Services)
  
• SQL Server 2008 64-bit Standard or Enterprise Editions
• Web Server (Internet Information Server 7)
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0
• Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 Framework
• Exchange 2007 SP1 Management Console (if provisioning Exchange Server 2007 mailboxes)
• Microsoft Exchange 2007 SP1
  Note: Only needed when using ILM “2” add-in for Office 2007

Tags van Technorati: identity+management,ILM2,ILM,ILM+2007,Identity+lifecycle+manager+2007,microsoft

Ferrari.com powered by SharePoint Server 2007

This looks really look – Ferrari.com – for some more public SharePoint Server websites check out Ian’s Top SharePoint WCM Web sites (with thumbnails)

PS Would have been even cooler if they had added some Silverlight stuff in there …

SharePoint Designer 2007 available as free download

From April 1st onwards SharePoint Designer (SPD) 2007 is available for free, customers with Software Assurance (SA) who bought SPD 2007 are entitled to Expression Web. An interesting statement in Q&A on SharePoint Designer 2007 licensing changes is the following

SharePoint Designer “v-next” will be available simultaneously with the release of the next version of SharePoint, and it will also be a free download.

Related resources:

• Video – SharePoint Designer 2007 (April 2009 announcement) with Tom Rizzo (Sr. Director of Product Management for SharePoint) and J.R. Arredondo (Sr. Product Manager for SharePoint Platform and Tools)
• Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Training (standalone edition)
• SharePoint Designer 2007 free download
• Letter to SharePoint Designer Customers
• Professional Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (Wrox, Amazon) – excellent book and must read if you want to use SPD
• SharePoint Team Blog – SharePoint Designer available as a free download

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,sharepoint+designer+2007,spd+2007,microsoft

Try out Live Mesh

I must agree with Andrew – Get Hip to Mesh … it rocks  - I use it for synchronizing my Windows Live Writer Drafts folder on multiple computers – quite handy…

PS I haven’t tried Expanded Live Mesh for Mobile CTP but it definitely sounds cool as well.

Tags van Technorati: live+mesh,mesh,windows+live,blogging

SharePoint Server 2007, Office and Windows Server 2008

After 5 years of working with Windows Server 2003 and SharePoint using Windows Server 2008 is a little different – as well as the installation experience – for some interesting links – check out Installing SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008.

If you are setting it up as a demo machine on to which you also install Office 2007 remember that you will need to add the Desktop Experience feature without  it you will not be able to  save documents directly from your Microsoft Office application to a SharePoint Document Library.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,office+2007,windows+2008,moss+2007,moss,office,microsoft

BIWUG April 2009 – Change of agenda

Because of some unforeseen interference we needed to change our agenda. The session about System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) will be postponed to the next BIWUG session. Next week we will have a session from the guys of Ometa who will be talking about their experience with SharePoint and ERP integration and next a session about migrations with Tzunami. The BIWUG board apologizes for this last moment change – if you are interested you can still register.

Tags van Technorati: biwug,sharepoint,tzunami

Change keyboard layout during login on Windows 2008 Server to Dutch(Belgian)

The same trick as for Change keyboard layout during login on Windows 2003 Server apparently seems to work for Windows 2008 Server as well.

Tags van Technorati: windows+2008,w2008,keyboard,regional+settings

Running a 64-bit guest in 32-bit host

Just tried something new – I needed to setup a virtual image for a 64-bit Windows Server 2008 on my laptop which is still running 32-bit Windows XP as a guest host OS. Luckily VMWare Workstation 6.0 (or higher) to the rescue – which allows you to do just this. If you want to know if your hardware supports 64-bit, go to the VMWare Drivers & Tools section where you will find a processor check for 64-bit compatibility.

Then the next hurdle – you will need support for Intel Virtualization Technology. My portable a Lenovo T61 supports this but it is disabled by default. So you need to go into the BIOS and enable this – go to Config>CPU section in your BIOS Setup Utility to do this. Next power off your machine and boot it up again. Now it should work (a simple restart did not seem to do the trick)

PS To check if your Intel processor supports VT check out Compare the Intel Xeon Processor Family – you will see Intel Virtualization Technology listed next to Other Intel Technologies.

Tags van Technorati: vmware,64bit,virtualization

P.S. Thanks Cassy for pointing out the mistake …

Web 2.0: Please, but in your own time (and budget)?

I picked  up this title from an intriguing blogpost (in Dutch) -  Web 2.0: Graag, maar in eigen tijd ?! This posting will retake some quotes from this post (in italic) on to which I will add my own thoughts about this. I think this is an interesting topic so do add your own comment if you have another point of view.

“We need to share knowledge, innovate, bind talent and be open. So we need a platform to support this,… so' let’s define a publication protocol and add it to our quality handbook. Oh, and by the way on which project do I need to register these hours.”

This might sound familiar to you especially when you are working for a consulting firm which is typically generating revenue by charging customers by the hour. This means that if the organization you work for does not provide the room to invest in non-direct billable projects – basically investment projects – it probably will not have the ability to fully take advantage of the enablers of web 2.0 to innovate their business offerings. I look with admiration at Google’s 20% percent time rule and I’m wondering how many company are following this example especially now given the tight economic climate.

Related postings:

• Enterprise 2.0 and organization culture
• Knowledge is power! So why share your knowledge!?

Tags van Technorati: web2.0,work,corporate+culture

Sixth sense devices – Surface vNext

SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0 – The good, the bad and the ugly

Interesting post – SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0 – The good, the bad and the ugly – written with a lot more nuance then a number of other readings out there about SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0.

Related posts:

• The problem is bigger than SharePoint

Typealyzer – What personality is behind that blog?

Apparently the writing style of my blog reflects that I’m a guardian.

Guardians: The organizing and efficient type. They are especially attuned to setting goals and managing available resources to get the job done. Once they have made up their mind on something, it can be quite difficult to convince otherwise. They listen to hard facts and can have a hard time accepting new or innovative ways of doing things.
The Guardians are often happy working in highly structured work environments where everyone knows the rules of the job. They respect authority and are loyal team players.

Analyze your own blog at Typealyzer

Architects?

Kind of sad – if you read this – I guess this is just another case of overinflated expectations surrounding another personae in the software industry – Architect is a swear word.

BIWUG April 2009 - SharePoint, SCOM and Tzunami

Another BIWUG session is planned on april 7th  - here are some more details about the agenda:

• 18:30-18:45 Introduction
• 18:45-19:45 Using System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to monitor a SharePoint environment:  System Center Operations Manager 2007 is THE end to end Monitoring Solution. In this session we will discuss what you, as SharePoint guys, find relevant to be monitored. System Center Operations Manager uses a SharePoint Monitoring toolkit for monitoring the SharePoint Environment. This toolkit consists of a set of System Center Operations Manager 2007 management packs designed to help IT pros monitor their WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 and 2007 SP1 environments. These newly released packs were engineered to take advantage of SCOM 2007’s features, including new and improved reporting, additional actions, new views, and integrate IIS and SQL health rollup for a better understanding of the system-level dependencies of the SharePoint environments.And last but not least: System Center Operations Manager can also emulate end user experience by monitoring a Web Application. We will show you how to monitor a Web Application, even if it is require credentials, and how to record a browser session. If you have a SharePoint environment and don’t have a monitoring solution at the moment then you can’t miss this session!  Speaker: Alexandre Verkinderen
• 20:00-21:00 - Tzunami for SharePoint migrations – More details to follow Speakers: Frank Cleynen and Silvana Carrasco Cordero

We forgot to give away the free Visual Studio 2008 copies last time  - an innocent hand picked some random numbers and so we have the following winners which we picked from the list of attendees from last session. If you don't show up to pick your copy we will draw another winner amongs the attendees.

The winners are:

• Francis Goeminne
• Tom Nys
• Steve Luys
• Rifat Rugovaj
• Ward Noppe

Don’t forget to register for this session.

Tags van Technorati: biwug,community,scom,sharepoint,moss+2007,moss,system+center,microsoft,sharepoint+2007

TechDays 2009 - Enhancing the SharePoint developer experience - Supporting links

There were a number of resources I mentionned in my talk which were not listed in the slidedeck. I promised to add them to my blog so here you go:

• Adding intellisense when editing XML files in WSS v3/MOSS 2007 (using the core schemas) and using CAML.Net Intellisense for SharePoint (using the extended schemas)
• SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3.0 Dispose Patterns by Example
• Caching in Office SharePoint Server 2007 - used by CBQ web part
• Right-click  a .WSP to add solution
• Test Driven development and SharePoint - The final conclusions (SharePoint Pod Show) - LOL

I'll put on some of the Powershell examples on my blog in the next days.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,caml,caml+2007,moss,moss+2007,TDD,sharepoint+podshow,fun

Changing the hyperlink color in a Powerpoint slide deck

Kind of frustrating that such a simple task as changing the color of a hyperlink in a Powerpoint 2007 can be so complex. Finally found it in this video - Powerpoint 2007 Demo: Change the color of hyperlink

So Navigate to the Design Tab, in the Themes section click on Colors and next click Create new Theme Colors in the collapsed menu. This will open a dialog window in which you can select the color for a Hyperlink and a Followed Hyperlink.

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,powerpoint+2007

My SharePoint developer toolkit

Every SharePoint developer should invest some time in building up his own toolkit to make the development experience a more fluid and efficient one. This is a preliminary list of SharePoint tools aimed at SharePoint developers. I will update this list quite regularly to keep it up to date with new releases. If you think there is something missing  in this toolkit - just leave a comment.

Build and Packaging Tools

• STSDEV
• AppPool Recycle Utility
• Solution Installer
• WSPBuilder
• AC's Project Utility
• Visual Studio Extensions for WSS (VSEWSS) 1.1 and VSEWSS 1.2 and VSEWSS 1.3 CTP Feb 2009

CAML/Search Tools

• U2U Query Builder
• YACQT
• Search Service Tool
• SharePoint Search Coder
• CAML.NET
• LINQ to SharePoint
• Search Community Toolkit
• CAML.NET Intellisense for SharePoint 

Visual Studio Optimisations

• AC's CodeRush Tools
• SPDevMod
• Imtech Fields Explorer for Visual Studio 2008

Content/Config Replication

• Content Deploy Wizard
• CMP Package Explorer
• Cross Site Configurator
• SPS Tips Utility Pack

SharePoint Extensions

• SP Features
• Smart Tools
• SP Config Store
• Enhanced CQWP

Testing Tools

• Test Data Population
• Imtech Test Content

Inspection Tools

• SharePoint Manager
• SharePoint Inspector
• SP Explorer Client (IE)

Governance/Manageabilty

• SP Governance Tools
• Reporting Framework
• MS Asset Inventory
• MS Monitoring Kit: Only usefull if you are also using System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
• SP Admin Toolkit v3 (incl SPDiagnostics)

STSADM and Powershell Tools

• AC’s STSADM
• Imtech STSADM
• Gary LP’s STSADM
• STSADM Win
• SP Powershell Extensions

Planning/Design Tools

• MS Capacity Planning
• Visio Shapes

Other tools

• SP Logging Spy
• SPTraceView
• SharePoint Toolbox
• SharePoint SUSHI
• TraceInfo WebPart

.NET Essentials

• Fiddler
• Reflector
• Sysinternals
• IE Developer Toolbar

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,sharepoint,codeplex,sharepoint+2007,tools,community,moss,moss+2007,wss,wss3

Microsoft's vision of the future

Cool video

Update: since the original video disappeared I added a link to the YouTube vid ...

SharePoint Diagnostics Tool

The latest release of the SharePoint Administration Toolkit now also includes the SharePoint Diagnostic tool (SPDiag) version 1.0 which allows ot create a unified view of data about SharePoint from ULS logs, IIS logs, performance counters, WMI instrumentation data and event logs. This way you can identify possible issues with SharePoint environment in a more efficient fashion by defining your own specific reports.

Make sure that you also download the SharePoint Diagnostics Tool user guide to get you started since you will need to do some extra installations such as the Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,administration,microsoft,moss,moss+2007

SharePoint unit testing

Update 8/3/2009: I updated some statements to avoid misunderstandings ...

As the kind of solutions we built on SharePoint become increasingly more complex it might be an interesting idea to take a look at creating unit tests for your solutions (although some people might tell you that it is not always worth the effort - see Peter Seale - SharePoint: not unit testing ). There are some challenges when trying to create unit tests for SharePoint development  as outlined in Unit Testing SharePoint 2007 Applications.  An interesting approach is using Isolator for SharePoint which allows unit testing sharepoint code without needing SharePoint installed (You would typically run your unit tests on your build server so this is quite handy). If you look at  the SharePoint Guidance of the Patterns&Practices group you will notice that they are using the same approach.

A good resource to get you started is the great series of whitepapers about unit testing and SharePoint written by Andrew Woodward:

• Unit Testing SharePoint Solutions - The basics  (White paper - Andrew Woodward) and the codesamples which go along
• Unit Testing SharePoint Solutions -  Getting into the object model (White paper - Andrew Woodward) and the codesamples which go along

Related resources:

• Shared Points for SharePoint - Unit testing SharePoint code
• Shared Points for SharePoint - Unit testing MOSS part 1 (of 2)
• Shared Points for SharePoint - Unit testing MOSS part 2 (of 2)
• SPTDD: SharePoint and Test Driven Development Part One
• More thoughts on Test Driven Development with SharePoint 2007

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,tdd,development,microsoft,unit+testing,sharepoint+2007

Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint

This is not new - there was already some information released at TechEd Europe  about VS2010 and SharePoint - but still some interesting info which show the continued investment of Microsoft in enhancing the SharePoint developer experience.

Somasegar's weblog: SharePoint tools support in Visual Studio 2010

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,visual+studio,vs2010,office+14,microsoft,development

Office 14 = Office 2010?

Interesting quote:

"From a strategy perspective, the next big innovation milestone is Office 14, our next Office release, which will not be this year," Ballmer told the Wall Street crowd. "There's a version of SharePoint. There's a version of Exchange. There's a new version of Office Live."

Source: Office 14: worth a wait?

Tags van Technorati: office+14,office,sharepoint,microsoft

Boy bands - how to understand the site definition/template debate ...

LOL - quite geeky  - Boy bands - how to understand the site definition/template debate.

Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) 2.0 planned for release

Interesting announcement on the HiSoftware site - two new releases to expect around accessibility and SharePoint in the coming weeks:

• AKS 2.0:  Monday, March 9, 2009
• HiSoftware aRTE for SharePoint v1.0:  Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Related links:

• SharePoint accessibility - alternatives to AKS
• Accessibility and SharePoint - the story continues

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,accessibility,sharepoint+2007,microsoft

Presenting @ TechDays 2009 - Enhancing the SharePoint Developer Experience

It's kind of becoming a tradition - I'm presenting a session about SharePoint at this year's TechDays on th 11th of march at 14:30 PM.

The session will focus on best practices for SharePoint development based on lessons learnt. You will learn how to approach SharePoint development to build solutions in an effective way. This is not only about knowing the right tools and techniques to speed up the SharePoint development process but also about how to avoid mistakes and making the correct design decisions.

I'm still tweaking my presentation so if you think there is some wicked tool or technique out which should not be missing in the SharePoint developer toolset - leave a comment.

Hope to see you at TechDays 2009...

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,development,microsoft,sharepoint+2007,techdays+2009,techdays,moss,wss

Congrats to winner of the free TechDays 2009 ticket

As you might have read - BIWUG - thanks to Microsoft has given away a free ticket for TechDays 2009. Congrats to Miro for guessing the correct number of replies ...

Hope to see you guys at the BIWUG booth at TechDays 2009.

Tags van Technorati: techdays+2009,microsoft,biwug

SharePoint logs - Tracing Service lost trace events

When troubleshooting problems with SharePoint one of the first places to look is the SharePoint ULS logs (also see Troubleshooting errors for InfoPath forms deployed on SharePoint). Last week I noticed something weird in the ULS logs - the only thing which seemed to be logged was "Tracing service lost trace events" log entries. The first thing to try to solve this is restarting the Windows SharePoint Service Tracing service. It definitely did the trick for me ....

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,development,troubleshooting,microsoft,sharepoint+2007

Free TechDays 2009 ticket

BIWUG is giving away a free ticket for the TechDays 2009. This year it is organized on march 11th and 12th in Metropolis Antwerp. For more details check out biwug.be .

Technorati Tags: biwug,community,techdays,microsoft,sharepoint

Maturity of the IT industry

A fellow SharePoint geek pointed me to this transcript of the Inquiry into Identity Cards - the next part is sadly enough quite recognizable...

Q373 Mr Cameron:

The question I would like to ask all of you, to which a yes or no answer is sufficient, is: do you see the public procurement difficulties as insuperable?

Professor Thomas:

Yes, I do. I would like to tell you something that you will not believe but which I think it is important that you hear, and that is that almost every IT supplier in the world today is incompetent. I have worked in the IT industry almost all my working life for large and small organisations, and I know what I speak. For example, the typical rate of delivered faults after full user acceptance testing from the maker suppliers in the industry over many years has been steady at around 20 faults per thousand lines of code. We know how to deliver software with a fault rate that is down around 0.1 faults per thousand lines of code and the industry does not adopt these techniques. We are as an industry very much in the early stages. The industry is only 50 years old. If you compare that with civil engineering, which is several thousand years old, we are tackling some of the most complex engineering designs and building some of the most complex engineering systems that the world has ever seen, essentially using craft technology. If you looked at the methods that are employed in most companies you would come to the conclusion that actually IT system development is a fashion business, not an engineering business, because they jump from one methodology to another year after year so long as it has a whizzy name, "Agile this" or "Intensive that". The underlying engineering disciplines that every mature engineering discipline has learnt it needs to use in order to be able to show that the system it is building has the required properties have not yet been employed in software and systems engineering, and that is at the heart of why these things do not work.

What's your opinion? Leave a comment...

Tags van Technorati: IT+industry,transcript

Top SharePoint Blogs - Joel's list

Check it out  -  Back by popular demand ... the top SharePoint blogs

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,microsoft,blogs,sharepoint+2007

Creating custom SharePoint alert handlers

If you need to create your own custom alert e-mails in SharePoint - definitely take a look at this one - Custom Alert Handlers: part 1 of 2 (Unfortunately part 2 was never written but part 1 will get you started just fine)

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,microsoft,alerts,development

Reminder - Pet project idea

This has been on my radar for quite a while - Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Sample : Using Excel 2003 to Manage Project Sites with Windows SharePoint Services 2003 . If I find the time I would like to upgrade this concept to Excel 2007 and WSS 3.0 ... or maybe some of you have already tried this? Leave a comment if you did...

Update : Here's the MSDN article which accompanies the source code.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,excel,pet+project,microsoft,vsto,visual+studio,wssv3,wss,sharepoint+2007