Craig Bailey on Microsoft

Atlassian and Microsoft Office

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:10:26 -1300

The links between Atlassian and Microsoft Office grow stronger with Atlassian’s latest Connector between Confluence (their Wiki product) and Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. In this case the Connector allows content on the Confluence Wiki to be imported, edited and updated from Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Check out the super simple 3 and half minute video to gain a good understanding. The thing I like about the Atlassian offering is how damn simple it is!

(Note: This is different to their SharePoint connector beta that they released last October)

This is of particular interest to us at Elcom because we’ve recently started work on a Microsoft Word Connector for our Community Manager product. The result will be to allow editing/update of content (ie content management) directly from Word. (Note: not to be confused with document management eg how the Office suite does works with SharePoint – which is something else entirely, but something we are also looking at).

BTW if you are interested in Atlassian and Microsoft Office then make sure you’re at the Sydney Business & Technology User Group (SBTUG) next week (Wed 27 Aug) - we’ve got Mark Hetherington (from TileFile) talking about how he runs his whole software company on Atlassian JIRA & Confluence, and then Alistair Speirs talking about how to improve business processes using Forms in Microsoft Office. Well worth attending – details here.

(via Alistair Speirs)

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Atlassian,Elcom,SBTUG,Sydney Business & Technology User Group

What’s changed in Visual Studio 2008 SP1?

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:10:54 -1300

Maarten van Stam has a nice tip for isolating specific changes made in SP1. Check out his post here, or just run this search and you’ll see the list of 902 pages worth of doco changes.

You can then narrow that further by selecting one of the one of the Refinement options:

Refining by Visual Studio Tools for Office and Visual Studio 2008 for example gives us 306 results:

Speaking of VSTO related stuff specifically, Christin Boyd has a rundown of the VSTO SP1 enhancements here.

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2008 SP1,VSTO

VSTO: Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Outlook Add-in issues

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 18:12:00 -1300

By now I’m assuming most of you have downloaded and installed Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008. For those who haven’t here’s a few links you may want to note:

Before installation

If you’ve installed any hot fixes over the last few months you should clean them up first

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool (14 MB)

(note: this replaces the original Hotfix Cleanup utility for removing KB944899)

Service Pack 1

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 main installer

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 .iso file (831 MB)

.NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (note: this is included in the Visual Studio SP1 so you only need to download this for patching servers and non-Dev client machines).

After installing – VSTO problems

Something to note - a few things might go funny if you have any VSTO add-ins.

I’ve got a number of Outlook add-ins that I’ve been working on and when I started Outlook (after installing SP1) it would hang. Starting in Safe mode and then setting the Add-ins Inactive, allowed me to narrow it down to the offending modules. Some were fine, others caused problems.

(To get to this dialog in Outlook go –> Tools –> Trust Center –> Add-ins. Click on the Go… button at the bottom to set modules inactive)

[The funny thing was that I hadn’t had Outlook open all morning, and only opened it a few hours after SP1 was all installed. It took me a little while to realise that my own add-ins were causing the problem :-).]

Fixing the issue – just Rebuild

All that was required was a simple rebuild of the solutions and they are working fine again in Outlook.

Technorati Tags: VSTO,Service Pack 1,Outlook Add-ins

PERSONAL: Health and Fitness

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 18:09:09 -1300

Warning: personal ramblings about my health and fitness (or lack thereof) ahead – nothing technical here.

Back at the gym

I went back to the gym again yesterday after a month off (not by choice mind you, but due to being really sick for 2 weeks, and then visiting the hospital most nights for the last few weeks looking in on Michele’s father).

The gym confirmed what my clothes suggested - after a month of no exercise my pants are getting tight around the waist and my shirts loose around the shoulders – I’m out of condition…

Being at my worst physically in probably the last 18 months, it was good to get back into things.

You can eat whatever you like…

I find it both amusing and sometimes irritating when people tell me how lucky I am to be tall and skinny. ‘You can eat whatever you like’, ‘Where does it all go – you must have hollow legs’, etc.

Actually, it takes a little work. I eat reasonably well (not great, but not badly) and I exercise regularly. I know this because when Michele and I returned from 6 weeks in Minnesota over Christmas 2006 I had grown from my regular 34” pants up to 40” waist. Yep, 6 weeks of poor eating and no exercise will do that.

It took me about 6 months to get back to 34”.

6 months sounds like a long time right? Well, it’s about balance. I know myself well enough to know that if I launch into something at 110% (like a new fitness regime) then chances are I’ll have given up two weeks later. So, I set myself a reasonable goal, and worked at it a little each day.

Getting started

I did need a little impetus to get things going so I set up a simple home gym in our garage (this was in February 2007). It’s just a weight bench, some dumbbells and an exercise bike. Yes, it cost about $1200 all up, so it needed to be a considered decision, but I figured that was about the same as an annual gym membership (and frankly I prefer the privacy of my own space). Incidentally, I broke the first exercise bike after a few months (note to self: don’t buy cheap stuff), and Michele bought me a much better one for my birthday last year (I’ve only included the second bike in the $1200 figure).

Here’s a photo of my gym (you can see the broken bike in the background).

When I use this I always refer to it as ‘going to the gym’ – it makes it more serious in my mind. It’s a mental thing I guess – similar to if you have a home based business, books usually recommended that you refer to it as ‘going to the office’. You (and others) will treat it with more respect.

Weekly schedule

In terms of my workout schedule I pseudo-follow the Body for Life method and try to exercise 4 times a week. 2 days are weights, 2 days are bike. 4 days a week might sound difficult, but it isn’t that hard. For example, my weights workouts are 45 minutes long (no 2 hours sessions here), and my bike ride is 22 minutes. Yep, only 22 minutes.

(But to be clear, when I’m working out I’m giving it my all – no meandering, half-hearted attempts or incomplete sets – after a 22 minute ride I’m really sweating for example.)

As I said, it’s about balance. So, while it would be nice to have an awesome bod that turned heads, that isn’t my priority (I don’t have the time). Rather, I just want to feel comfortable in my clothes. A schedule like this got me down from a 40” waist to 34” in 6 months. It also added some muscle, and improved my posture.

Music

Music is of course crucial to any workout – it’d be interesting to see a Google Trend-like comparison of iPod uptake versus gym membership – I’m guessing there’d be a close correlation.

So, like most people I listen to music, podcasts and audio books when working out. Yesterday for example it was Rihanna for bench pressing, Lamb of God for shoulders and Nightwish for arms. Today it was half a .NET Rocks episode for riding the bike.

Plus karate

I should also mention I’m in to karate – generally once week. Karate is probably the most difficult to commit to since it requires travel to the Dojo and training goes for 90 minutes. Once a month I train twice a week. Coming up to a grading I might go a little nuts and train 4 times a week (eg when I was training for my black belt in 2006). Once a week is barely enough to stay at my current standard, and ideally I’d be training twice a week, every week…

Karate certainly helps keep me fit (I’ve been training since 2000), but most of my time is concentrated on technique (as opposed to fighting – after a few too many injuries in recent years I’ve really cut back on the sparring).

I am lucky

I suppose being tall is an advantage when it comes to staying lean, but the thing I’m most thankful for is a having a mindset that isn’t focused on food. I generally eat to live, whereas many people (whether through upbringing or for pure enjoyment) tend to live to eat. This is fine of course, unless you lead a largely sedentary life (as most of us in IT do). Eating is fine, but if you ‘aint burning it up then you generally find your pants getting a big snugger by the day.

Portion sizes and frequency

When I talk about eating badly, I’m not really talking about quality. No, I’m talking about quantity.

Part of the reason I put on so much weight in the US was due to the large portion sizes. The food was good quality, but there was just so much of it! And believe me it doesn’t take long to form a habit of absent mindedly eating the whole plateful. Add in a lack of exercise and its easy to bulk up quick.

For the last year or so, I‘ve aimed to eat a number of snacks throughout the day (6 if possible). There’s nothing worse than coming home from work absolutely starving and then chowing down a huge double-sized meal. I generally find that if I’m snacking regularly (and properly! ie an apple here, some nuts there, a yoghurt in the afternoon) I’m never really hungry. If I find myself really hungry I usually end up eating badly (hello chippies!).

More on balance

In closing, I hope this hasn’t come across as a ‘look how good and healthy I can be’ kind of post. Rather its just a little diatribe about having some balance in my life to stay healthy. In the end there’s no secret – just eat sensibly and exercise regularly.

After a month of personal health FAIL I’m reminding myself (again!) that it just takes a bit of common sense and discipline. With my jeans currently sitting on a snug 36” I reckon it’ll take a month or two to get back to normal. Wish me luck.

Technorati Tags: Health,Fitness,FAIL

VSTO: Harry Miller and the VSTO glasses

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:28:32 -1300

When I first started viewing this video by Harry Miller (on the Microsoft VSTO team) I started to cringe. It seemed a little over the top (and probably clashed with my general sense of Australian humour – sadly to be funny in Australia you usually need to be crude, critical or self-deprecating – just saying…)

But by the time it had finished he’d won me over. The reason I really like it is because 1. It’s short – less than 2 minutes, and 2. It makes a really useful point (how to avoid automatic upgrade of Office 2003 VSTO solutions to your version (ie 2007) of office.

And there’s another reason: it’s a reminder of the power of video: not only does it convey concepts well, but you remember stuff. So, whilst I love reading Sara Ford’s tips, I have to admit that a day or so later I’ve forgotten most of them (aside: that’s reason alone why her new book is on my must-buy list). But with Harry’s tip, I reckon there’s a good chance I’ll have remembered this one in a week or so. (Btw watch this latest video of his and then check out the ‘related’ videos that Soapbox recommends – there’s an algorithm needs tweaking…)

For those of you who won’t be watching the 1 min 49 sec video, it basically shows why you need to know about this setting:

Now, where’s my VSTO glasses…

(via Beth Massi)

Technorati Tags: Harry Miller,VSTO,Glasses

Visual Studio Gallery

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:26:06 -1300

Thanks to Deepak Kapoor for alerting me to this one – the Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery – a list of add-ins and extensions for Visual Studio. It’s been around for a little while now, so you may already know about it. But if not, start here with the list of Highest Rated add-ins for Visual Studio.

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio Gallery

SQL 2008 Support in VS2008 SP1

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:06:31 -1300

A nice little interview with Milind Lele by Beth Massi, uncovering some of the nice data sync enhancements coming in SP1 (especially if you are connecting to SQL Server 2008). If you haven’t seen this stuff covered before, then this 15 minute overview is worth watching.

But treat this as a ‘what’s possible’ not a ‘how to do it’ video. It covers the functionality nicely, but I’m a little concerned when I see Microsoft endorsed videos having demos that involve putting fundamental code in the click events of toolbar buttons. Developers with a few years of experience under their belts know this is just example code for the sake of brevity, but sadly we’re seeing more and more code these days from newbie developers that feature all these bad practices (click event code, pasted in javascript, code copied and pasted repeatedly instead of in classes, the list goes on). This video would have been a stand out if Milind had taken a few extra minutes to demonstrate how the code could have been better organised.

I’m really looking forward to SP1 though.

SQL 2008 & Occasionally Connected Client Support in Visual Studio SP1

Technorati Tags: SQL Server 2008,Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Internet hairdressers

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:41:18 -1300

I’m sure this must be available already, but I haven’t seen it anywhere (leave me a comment if you know of one)…

As I was getting my hair cut this morning I really wished I could have been surfing the net (my hair dresser isn’t very chatty and I kinda get uncomfortable looking at myself in the mirror the whole time).

Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to have a little LCD screen at each booth and a special (hair-proof) keyboard with in-built trackball. Obviously there’d be some advertising tie-in with the browser showing ads, but in all other respects you’d have free reign to surf the web. And the tie-ins wouldn’t end there… After all, how many other business models have the customer sitting there captive in a seat for 20 mins or more? Members could join the hair-dressing club, get special benefits, be upsold to, etc.

All the internet cafes around Chatswood (where I live) are usually pretty busy, so I’d see this as a simple extension to that.

Anyone seen this in action already?

Technorati Tags: Internet haircut

Advice for would-be CIOs

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:11:38 -1300

I don’t know if you read CIO magazine. I do because I plan on being a CIO in the next 5 years.

Of course, I realise that reading a magazine won’t make you into a CIO, but it sure does highlight the skills you need to work on. Take last month’s edition for example. In the Generation Tech article, the following advice popped up (p37 June/July edition):

“In part CIOs of the future will achieve alignment by securing explicit support for appropriate separation of concerns, ensuring that disruptive 'burst through' between IT and business domains does not occur outside control.”

Concerned that I was reading a different language I copied the text into Google translator, converted to Russian, and then converted that to English. Here’s the result:

“CIOs in part in the future be able to achieve consistency in providing unequivocal support for appropriate division of problems, providing subversive "broke through" between IT and business domains does not occur outside the control of”

I think it may have actually improved the message.

But I digress. My point is, the article highlighted a few things for me to work on, on my journey to CIO-hood: Firstly, I need to be able to understand what that guff means. Then I need to be able to deliver it. However, the real success, and the sign that I’ve made it, will be when I can pump out that kind of tosh in management meetings and keep a straight face.

(Jokes aside, it’s actually a very good publication – but snippets like this are a nice little distraction on a Friday afternoon)

Technorati Tags: CIO,Advice

CLARITY: Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)

blog.nospam@nospam.craigbailey.net (craig bailey) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:51:47 -1300

After chatting with a few people about Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) recently, it’s clear that the technology is not that well understood (even though, in my opinion, Microsoft have done a pretty good job of articulating it – much better than say OBA for example). So in this post I’m aiming to give a high level overview of VSTO and clear up some misconceptions.

As usual this is covered under my ‘well duh’ disclaimer, and I apologise in advance for ‘reworking’ some of my content from earlier in the year, including this one from January and my general VSTO page. For a comparison of VSTO to VSTA see this page.

VSTO – What?

VSTO is Microsoft's tool set for building applications that run on Microsoft Office (eg Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint).

I deliberately choose the word ‘on’ because part of understanding VSTO is to view Office as a platform.

VSTO - A brief history…

Originally a replacement for VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) that was delivered in Excel and Word, VSTO was made available in its first version approximately around the start of 2004, targeting the Office 2003 platform. Development was performed in Visual Studio 2003 but was referred to as VSTO 2003 (or sometimes VSTO 1.0). It was an add-on to VS.NET 2003 and wasn't free (costing around $450).

The second version, referred to as V2 or VSTO 2005 was a big update that added numerous advances and enhancements (eg support for Outlook). It was delivered as a special SKU of VS 2005 (my understanding is it was not available as a separate download, but I could be wrong).

The third version, confusingly titled VSTO 2005 Second Edition (VSTO 2005 SE) was delivered in 2007 and focused on targeting the Office 2007 platform. It was a freely downloadable add-on for VS 2005.

This SE version was tweaked significantly and released in November 2007 as part of Visual Studio 2008 (Professional and above – it is not available in the Standard edition), and is referred to as VSTO V3 (even though it is the fourth version of the product). VSTO 2008 overcomes many of the deployment and security hurdles found in previous versions, and adds a number of design helpers (eg visual editing of Office 2007 toolbars, support for SharePoint 3.0 Workflow, etc). SP1 for VSTO V3 is to be released shortly and further improves deployment abilities (as well as bug fixes, enhancement, etc).

[The reason the version numbers are confusing is because in Vx terms they refer to the runtime used, not so much the tooling released. So, technically speaking VSTO 2005 and VSTO 2005 SE both use the same V2 runtime. VSTO in Visual Studio 2008 is using V3 of the runtime, even though it is the fourth release of the product. For more information Andrew Whitechapel has a excellent overview.]

The aim of VSTO is to provide tools for developers to build on top of Office as a platform. Using VB.NET and/or C#, developers can use Visual Studio to build add-ins for most of the Office 2003 and 2007 applications, including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, InfoPath and Visio. SharePoint and Groove development is also possible, although not directly targeted.

VSTO – How?

So, how to get working with VSTO?

In a nutshell VSTO is a set of Visual Studio project templates that allow you to write add-ins for Microsoft Office applications (eg an add-in for Outlook, or Word, etc).

(Don’t worry) I’m not going into any code in this post, but I think screen shot from File –> New –> Project… in Visual Studio 2008 helps explain the scope:

As a developer you can build add-ins for most of the Office programs. Start by choosing a particular template (eg an Outlook 2007 Add-in) and Visual Studio will setup the skeleton and initial hooks.

Application level versus Document level

VSTO supports four types of add-in. The two main ones are:

Application level add-ins - are those that reside in the program itself. Example: you add a toolbar in Word that has functionality that can run regardless of which document you have open. Application level add-ins can be written for just about all Office apps including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project and Visio (all in both 2003 and 2007 versions) and InfoPath 2007.
Document level add-ins (or customisations) - are delivered within a specific document. Example: you include functions in a specific Excel workbook. The functions are only available when you open that workbook. Document level add-ins are only relevant to Word and Excel. (You could think of Document level customisations as the VSTO equivalent of VBA macros in Word and Excel).

VSTO also support two lesser known types:

SharePoint 2007 Workflow templates
InfoPath 2007 Form Templates

VSTO - Some misconceptions

There’s a few common misconceptions I’ve come across talking with people about VSTO. Here’s the clarifications:

Yes, VSTO V3 requires Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 – I mention this because it is a common question on the forums. So, if you don’t have Visual Studio 2008, or can’t be certain your users will have .NET 3.5 then you’ll need to work with a previous version.
Yes, you can target both Office 2003 and Office 2007 apps using VSTO V3, but no, you can’t target them both in the same add-in (eg you can’t write a single add-in that will work in both Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007).
Yes, VSTO and VBA are friends. Whilst VSTO may have started out as a replacement for VBA, it soon became apparent that Interop with VBA is much better for all concerned. VBA is going to be around for a while, and with interop the huge body of VBA code can be used in VSTO apps (see this post for more VBA and VSTO details).
Yes, VSTO is a part of OBA – you may run into the term Office Business Applications (OBA) and think OBA and VSTO are synonymous. But that’d be missing the huge scope of OBA. OBA covers a whole enterprise architecture with LOB apps and Servers as well as Office. VSTO is just part of the tooling for building OBAs (see here for a full overview of OBA).

VSTO – Why?

Question: Why exactly would you want to consider VSTO?

Answer: so you can build on a platform.

And not just any platform. But a platform that is now in its twelfth version, covers almost every imaginable business and home user scenario, and is installed on more 500M PCs worldwide… The Office platform.

Now, to be fair, not all of those users are using Visual Studio 2003 or 2007, but the majority certainly are, and growing. (For example, in a recent OBA webcast I watched, around the 3:09 mark there were figures from Forester Research - dated 31 Mar 2008 - detailing that 62% of surveyed enterprises not yet on Office 2007 were moving to Office 2007 in the next 12 months.)

So then the question becomes – why build on a platform? I think Andrew Coates answered this beautifully in his Standing on the Shoulders of Giants post a year ago. If you haven’t already, read it. [Aside: Initially, you’ll wonder why he goes into such detailed history… but later, perhaps pondering it while stuck in line at the local supermarket, or caught in a boring meeting, it’ll suddenly fall into place, and you’ll understand the necessity of working with a platform.]

With VSTO, you get to build on top of the Office platform, using the vast functionality of the .NET framework.

VSTO – Hurdles

VSTO isn’t without its problems. For one, you’ve got a whole lot of extra weight you need to ship with your app (including a bunch of extra DLLs called Primary Interop Assemblies – I’ll be explaining those things in a later post - plus the VSTO runtime, and of course the .NET Framework). But that isn’t the main thing…

Deployment has been the biggest hurdle to VSTO adoption. Getting your add-in out there and easy to install isn’t the simple task it should be. V3 has certainly improved the process, but there’s still work to be done. And as mentioned in an earlier post, a big focus of the upcoming VS2008 SP1 enhancements has been to make VSTO deployment even easier. Andrew Coates links to a number of good resources on VSTO deployment.

[Assuming those issues are resolved shortly, there is really only one further hurdle: mindset. I’ve mentioned this previously, and I think it still stands, but since it isn’t really to do with understanding VSTO itself I won’t go into details here.]

VSTO – Where are the examples?

One of the frustrations I’ve found with VSTO is finding some good real-world examples. Sure, there’s plenty of code samples, and the odd Code Gallery post, but there’s nothing detailing commercial applications that I can find (I’m hoping someone corrects me on this). There’s nothing on the Microsoft case studies site (the closest I could find were some OBA case studies that mention VSTO), and there’s nothing in any blogs that I can find pointing to cool VSTO apps available for download.

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of add-ins for Outlook, Word, Excel, etc out there, it’s just that I can’t be certain if they were built using VSTO or not. For example, Xobni is a nice little Outlook add-in, but doesn’t appear to use VSTO. Hopefully I can add some examples to this section soon.

VSTO - Resources

I’ll be linking to a full list of VSTO resources in a future post, but for now start here: VSTO Portal on MSDN. Then go here for a Getting Started with VSTO guide. For hands on detail, take a look at this helpful forum post by the awesome Cindy Meister and these How Do I Videos on the Office Dev Center. For blogs and articles head over to OfficeZealot and of course the official VSTO blog. I’ve also listed some other resources on my VSTO page.

Also, if you’re interested I have a separate feed for my VSTO related posts: VSTO

VSTO – Summary

Visual Studio Tools for Office is a set of Visual Studio project templates and runtimes for building add-ins for Microsoft Office programs.
VSTO is mature (now in its fourth version) and easy to use. It has overcome many of the deployment hurdles it had in the past, but still has a few to resolve.
The latest version uses Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 and can create add-ins for just about any Office 2003 or Office 2007 app.

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio for Office,VSTO