B@rney's Blog

Update: Foxit PDF iFilter on SharePoint 2010

Bjarne L. Gram — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:25:51 GMT

Jie Li has updated, or posted an updated, article on comparing Adobe, TET and Foxit PDF iFilters. And Foxit is still numero uno!

Check this out:

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010

Outlook 2010 – SMS

Bjarne L. Gram — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:28:24 GMT

If you’re using:

· Exchange 2010

· Outlook 2010

· Windows Mobile 6.5

You can configure ActiveSync on Windows Mobile to sync text messages with Exchange! What happens is that incoming text messages end up in your Exchange/Outlook Inbox. When you send SMS from Outlook:

It looks like this:

This message is then synchronized to your cell phone’s Outbox and sent by your phone using your mobile operator!

A great feature! This even works in OWA! (As long as your phone is switched on and sync’ing…)

To set it up you first need to sync your WinMo 6.5 once with Exchange. Then you open ActiveSync on your cell and check the box to sync Text Messages – that’s it!

Avanade-Disclaimer

Bjarne L. Gram — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:10:00 GMT

This summer I joined Avanade as a SharePoint Solutions Architect, and being employed by such a great company I need to make one thing perfectly clear:

The views expressed in this blog are mine only and do not necessarily reflect the views of Avanade.

RESOLVED: Exception: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: User cannot be found

Bjarne L. Gram — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:51:00 GMT

I got this exception trying to install SharePoint 2010 on my laptop. Reading through the log files provided little more proof.

I suspected (after a while) that it could be that I was sitting at home, not on my corporate network (and my laptop is joined to the domain).

[Next day @ the office]:

So I got past that error, just to get:

System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: The data is invalid

Now what?

Trying a couple of different approaches led me to suspect this might be done in command line.

I found this:

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112

And tried this:

PSCONFIG.EXE -cmd configdb -create -server SERVERNAME -database sharepoint_2010_config -passphrase ******* -admincontentdatabase sharepoint2010_admincontent

I've installed stand-alone, but have a full SQL 2008 installed as well, running the above script created the databases on the main SQL instance, not SQLExpress.

After running this I started the Configuration Wizard again, and now it worked!

Setting up SharePoint 2010 on my Windows 7 laptop

Bjarne L. Gram — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:43:00 GMT

Yes, it's true!

One of the great new features of SharePoint Server (and Foundation) 2010 is that you can install on a workstation!

You can find the guide here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx

Read it carefully so that you'll install the appropriate components for your operating system...

This can be installed on Vista x64 as well!

One thing to note is regarding the hotfix required for SQL 2008 that should be installed after SharePoint and before running the SharePoint Configuration Wizard; start the download at once, don't wait, it took me forever (and I have a 20 Mb link...)!

But I got an error running the Configuration Wizard...

Now @ Avanade Inc.!

Bjarne L. Gram — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:24:00 GMT

OK, I know, I've been rather quiet for a while - OK, for a long time!

First I was busy working on a couple of projects for a major Norwegian insurance company, then I started talking with Avanade about a possible switch...

Which I ended up doing!

Now I'm employed by Avanade in Oslo, Norway as Manager Application & Integration. I'll still be doing a lot of SharePoint/MOSS stuff, and I'll still be involved in the Norwegian SharePoint Community.

Eating Bamboo

Bjarne L. Gram — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:18:00 GMT

Or: Evaluating Bamboo Solutions Project Management Suite…

Today I was given the task to evaluate the Bamboo Solutions Project Management Suite for a customer of ours.

For this task I created a separate Web Application and Site Collection on my Virtual Dev Server.

I got a link to download a bunch of stuff from their FTP server – and started installing.

First I installed all the modules I downloaded. All installations (except one) went without any glitches. One package had to be added to the solution store with stsadm, and deployed manually.

A couple of the modules required ASP.NET Ajax Extensions, but the first one with this requirement also helped to install it automagically.

All modules (except one) were installed using the SharePoint Solution Installer by Danish Lars Fastrup.

After installing all the modules I had quite a list of Solutions on my server!:

I’ll be posting my findings about these in separate blog-post – one for each module:

	Alert Plus Web Part	HW05.R2.4.SL
	Alerts Administrator	HW39.R1.1.SL
	Calendar Plus Web Part	HW20.R3.SL
	Chart Plus Web Part	HW27.R2.2.SL
	Cross List Web Part	HW09.R1.2.SL
	Data Viewer Web Part	HW37.R2.5.SL
	Group Email Web Part	HW14.R1.4.SL
	List Integrity	HW01.R2.1.SL
	List Print	HW50.R1.1.SL
	List Rollup	HW24.R3.4.SPV3.SL
	Mini-Calendar Web Part	HW22.R2.4.SL
	My Alerts Organizer	HW40.R1.1.SL
	SharePoint Custom Column Pack	HW41.CPL
	SharePoint In/Out Schedule Board	SA06.R1.SL
	SharePoint Task Master	HW45.R1.SL
	SharePoint Team Calendar	HW34.R1.1.SL
	SharePoint Site Creation Plus	HW28.R1.1SL
	Tree View Web Part	HW03.R1.4.SL
	Virtual Map View Web Part	HW31.R1.6.SL
	SharePoint Project Portfolio Dashboard	HW35.R1.SL

Bamboo: SharePoint Team Calendar

Bjarne L. Gram — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:57:02 GMT

One other of the Web Parts in the Bamboo Solutions SharePoint Project Portfolio Dashboard is the SharePoint Team Calendar.

After adding this Web Part to a page it looks like this:

On the top right hand side there are a few buttons:

The Web Part has to be configured before use. One of the options is where to store the events: Exchange, SharePoint or both! And you can even show multiple persons Exchange calendars in the same view – this is great!

I haven’t got an Exchange Server to play with, but here’s an image from the documentation:

Clicking New Appointment pops up a window:

This really looks great!

Bamboo: SharePoint Project Portfolio Dashboard

Bjarne L. Gram — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:30:41 GMT

From Bamboo Solutions web page:

The SharePoint Project Portfolio Dashboard gives you a simple view of the progress, health, and risk level of a single project, or the projects in your entire project portfolio.

I created a Team Site, deleted everything from the front page, and added the Project Portofolio Dashboard.

What I got was rather messy:

So I created a new Web Part Page to give the Dashboard more real estate on the page:

The Dashboard consists of several charts.

A Gant View:

Active Projects Health:

Overall Health of Active Projects:

At Risk Projects:

Planned vs. Actual Effort for Active Projects:

Types of Active Projects:

Phases of Active Projects:

Active Project Budgets:

The data the Web Part builds on lives in the Portfolio DashBoard List:

Each list item consist of a lot of information:

And the Web Part itself has a lot of configuration options!

Each of these categories have a lot of options – this was very confusing. My opinion is that they should have divided this up into several Web Parts – instead they’re using the term Widget about each of the areas of the Web Part.

ChartPart for SharePoint

Bjarne L. Gram — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

I just found ChartPart for SharePoint on CodePlex. This uses the Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET 3.5! You can use any list as data for a chart. Looks great!