Furuknap's SharePoint corner

SharePoint 2010 Developer Training – Now or Never?

2009-12-23T23:39:00.000+01:00

A little while ago, I posted an article on whether SharePoint development will boom or not. My conclusion is that, yes, SharePoint development will boom. In fact, it will boom so loud that it may very well take the attention away from many other platforms for enterprise collaboration and web development.

Microsoft predicts that there will be more than 1 million SharePoint developers in the next couple of years, according to Steve Ballmer at the keynote to the SharePoint Conference in 2009. That is a staggering amount of people, but it does say something about Microsoft’s dedication and expectations.

So, the question becomes, should you start learning SharePoint development now? To answer that question, let me rephrase my response to a very similar question I received by email recently. The question was: “My company may not upgrade to SharePoint 2010 for another year or more. Should I still begin learning SharePoint development for 2010?”

The answer to this is, as often is the case, it depends. This time, it depends on your current skill set, your current job situation, and what you want to do 3-5 years from now.

Developer Skill Set

If you have absolutely no idea about what development is, then don’t start developing for SharePoint. SharePoint is not a programming language, and you want to get a grasp of basic development before you start working on a specific platform.

In short, you will need to learn at least these technologies:

.NET development, preferably for .NET 3.5 or later
ASP.NET
XML
Web Services
JavaScript

If you do not yet possess at least a cursory knowledge of these fields of development, then you should start elsewhere. If you already have those skills, however, you may be a good candidate for beginning SharePoint developer training.

Of course, if you are already are a SharePoint developer, then you may wonder whether to go with SharePoint 2010 now or remain on the SharePoint 2007 developer platform. This leads to the second factor in determining what you should do with your SharePoint development career.

Job Situation

If you are in a permanent and safe job where you primarily work with SharePoint 2007 and your organization plan to remain on that platform for the next year or so, then don’t rush learning SharePoint 2010. Currently, very few training resources are available, and you’ll spend an disproportionate amount of time finding information, testing code that may not work, and walking the difficult path of first explorer.

In addition, you will need to maintain your SharePoint 2007 knowledge. Oh, and you’ll be very annoyed working with SharePoint 2007 when you see how much improvement Microsoft has made for the new version.

However, at some point, SharePoint 2007 will be obsolete, especially when organizations see the improvements that SharePoint 2010 offers to the enterprise. At that point, your investment in staying ahead of the crowd will pay off in the form of job security and value as an employee. Of course, in troubled times, no employee is safe, but those who possess up-to-date skills and can convert those skills into value for the company have an ace up their sleeve when the axe comes down.

If your organization has no SharePoint strategy, but plan to implement one, then you definitely want to get in the game as soon as possible. In fact, stop reading and start learning right now. Scroll down to the end of this article and I’ll give you some places to start.

The same applies if you are an independent developer. If you work with multiple client organizations, one of those may suddenly decide to go with SharePoint 2010, and they will look to you if you are a SharePoint 2010 developer guru.

SharePoint Development Career

The most important question, however, is what you want to do. If you want to spend the next 3-5 years as a developer, then there are few most exciting platforms than SharePoint these days. If you are an aspiring developer, for example, then staking out your course towards SharePoint gives you a magnificent developer experience and a community that are envied by many a platform.

It’s also a fairly safe bet from an economical point of view. With a global need for one million SharePoint developers the next few years, being good at what you do means you will be in high demand for many years to come. Microsoft will continue flooding your potential clients or employees with the need to invest in SharePoint solution development, further increasing your job security.

SharePoint is a vast platform and you will likely never learn even close to the whole system in one version incarnation. That means that you can explore new features all the time and if you are, as me, driven by a desire to learn, that spells years of interesting discoveries.

The thing is, if you are fairly certain that you will not be working with SharePoint for another year or so, you may consider skipping the entire 2010 version. For example, if you have a year or two left of your college education or if your company has just implemented SharePoint 2007 and plans to stay on that platform for a year or two, then by the time you are ready to begin, people may already be waiting for SharePoint 2013, or whatever the next version is called.

SharePoint 2010 isn’t really a major upgrade from 2007. It runs on the same platform as SharePoint 2007, most, if not all code will continue to run more or less unmodified, and even most of the design features can relatively easily be upgraded to SharePoint 2010 without the need to rewrite every master page and CSS file from scratch.

by the time the next version ships, however, you can expect a major upgrade to the entire platform. We’ll likely see a new server OS by then, and at least ASP.NET 4.0 will have been on the market long enough for Microsoft to base SharePoint off that.

That means that the investment you do in a year or two may only have a life span of months or a couple of years before you need to consider a major overhaul to your skill set.

So, it may not be as clear cut as ‘got on board now’. You may actually choose to say ‘never’ instead, at least for the next few years.

SharePoint Development Training

This begs the question: What should you do to learn SharePoint development if you so choose?

Well, Microsoft and others offer a wide variety of training resources at their SharePoint developer center on MSDN. You’ll find videos, documentation, walkthroughs, and tons of other content. The only downside is that it takes a massive amount of time and it isn’t necessarily clear exactly what you should choose from their broad offering for your particular situation.

Then, there are paid developer classes. I recommend staying away from the certification-oriented courses, as these tend to focus more on getting an exam than learning real-life development. The Microsoft curriculum courses are usually designed at the same time as they are developing the product, and few if anyone has any real experience using the product in a broad selection of scenarios. Thus, go for the custom made developer training courses, especially from vendors who can document real-life experience.

Speaking of which, USP Journal will launch a new SharePoint training site in 2010. I cannot say much at this point, but if you want to learn more, you can sign up for the Understanding SharePoint training mailing list at http://www.understandingsharepoint.com/training.

However, the best way to learn SharePoint application development, or any topic really, is to develop a healthy passion for learning and then start exploring. You can find plenty of starting points, for example Volume 1, Issue 5 of Understanding SharePoint Journal, titled Beginning SharePoint Development, or one of the video courses offered by Microsoft.

With that healthy passion for learning, you will find that understanding SharePoint development becomes a lot easier.

And it’s huge fun!

Good luck, and let me know if you have any comments or questions.

SharePoint 2010 Ribbon Locations

2009-12-23T00:16:00.001+01:00

Much for my own reference, here is a list of default Ribbon location values in SharePoint 2010 Beta 2.

Remember to append .Controls._children to the end of each, and use CommandUI.Ribbon as the location for the CustomAction.

Ribbon.BDCAdmin.ActionManagement
Ribbon.BDCAdmin.ApplicationManagement
Ribbon.BDCAdmin.ApplicationModelManagement
Ribbon.BDCAdmin.PermissionManagement
Ribbon.BDCAdmin.ViewManagement
Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.Actions
Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.Aggregation
Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.CustomViews
Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.Expander
Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.Scope
Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.Selector
Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.Settings
Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.Share
Ribbon.Calendar.Events.Manage
Ribbon.Calendar.Events.New
Ribbon.Calendar.Events.Publishing
Ribbon.Calendar.Events.Share
Ribbon.Calendar.Events.Workflow
Ribbon.CustomCommands.Commands
Ribbon.DocLibListForm.Edit.Actions
Ribbon.DocLibListForm.Edit.Clipboard
Ribbon.DocLibListForm.Edit.Commit
Ribbon.Documents.Copies
Ribbon.Documents.EditCheckout
Ribbon.Documents.FormActions
Ribbon.Documents.Manage
Ribbon.Documents.New
Ribbon.Documents.Share
Ribbon.Documents.Workflow
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPEditTab.Clipboard
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPEditTab.EditAndCheckout
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPEditTab.Font
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPEditTab.Layout
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPEditTab.Markup
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPEditTab.Paragraph
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPEditTab.Styles
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPInsert.Links
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPInsert.Media
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPInsert.Tables
Ribbon.EditingTools.CPInsert.WebParts
Ribbon.Image.Image.Arrange
Ribbon.Image.Image.Edit
Ribbon.Image.Image.Properties
Ribbon.Image.Image.Size
Ribbon.Image.Image.Styles
Ribbon.Library.Actions
Ribbon.Library.CustomizeLibrary
Ribbon.Library.CustomViews
Ribbon.Library.Datasheet
Ribbon.Library.Settings
Ribbon.Library.Share
Ribbon.Library.ViewFormat
Ribbon.Link.Link.Behavior
Ribbon.Link.Link.Link
Ribbon.Link.Link.Properties
Ribbon.List.Actions
Ribbon.List.CustomizeList
Ribbon.List.CustomViews
Ribbon.List.Datasheet
Ribbon.List.GanttView
Ribbon.List.Settings
Ribbon.List.Share
Ribbon.List.ViewFormat
Ribbon.ListForm.Display.Actions
Ribbon.ListForm.Display.HealthActions
Ribbon.ListForm.Display.Manage
Ribbon.ListForm.Display.Solution
Ribbon.ListForm.Edit.Actions
Ribbon.ListForm.Edit.Clipboard
Ribbon.ListForm.Edit.Commit
Ribbon.ListItem.Actions
Ribbon.ListItem.Manage
Ribbon.ListItem.New
Ribbon.ListItem.Share
Ribbon.ListItem.Workflow
Ribbon.ManageTrust.Operations
Ribbon.Permission.Add
Ribbon.Permission.Check
Ribbon.Permission.Manage
Ribbon.Permission.Modify
Ribbon.Permission.Parent
Ribbon.PostListForm.Edit.Actions
Ribbon.PostListForm.Edit.Clipboard
Ribbon.PostListForm.Edit.Commit
Ribbon.PublishTab.Publishing
Ribbon.PublishTab.Workflow
Ribbon.SiteCollections.Contribute
Ribbon.SiteCollections.Manage
Ribbon.SiteCollections.Review
Ribbon.Solution.All
Ribbon.Solution.New
Ribbon.SvcApp.Create
Ribbon.SvcApp.Operations
Ribbon.SvcApp.Sharing
Ribbon.Table.Design.Style
Ribbon.Table.Design.StyleOptions
Ribbon.Table.Layout.Cells
Ribbon.Table.Layout.Properties
Ribbon.Table.Layout.RowsCols
Ribbon.Table.Layout.Summary
Ribbon.Table.Layout.Table
Ribbon.UsageReport.DateRange
Ribbon.UsageReport.Export
Ribbon.WebApp.Contribute
Ribbon.WebApp.Manage
Ribbon.WebApp.Policy
Ribbon.WebApp.Security
Ribbon.WebPartInsert.InsertRelatedDataToListForm
Ribbon.WebPartInsert.Media
Ribbon.WebPartInsert.Text
Ribbon.WebPartInsert.WebParts
Ribbon.WebPartOption.Arrange
Ribbon.WebPartOption.Commands
Ribbon.WebPartOption.InsertRelatedDataToListView
Ribbon.WebPartOption.Properties
Ribbon.WebPartPage.Actions
Ribbon.WebPartPage.Approval
Ribbon.WebPartPage.Edit
Ribbon.WebPartPage.Manage
Ribbon.WebPartPage.Share
Ribbon.WebPartPage.Workflow
Ribbon.WikiPageTab.EditAndCheckout
Ribbon.WikiPageTab.LibrarySettings
Ribbon.WikiPageTab.Manage
Ribbon.WikiPageTab.PageActions
Ribbon.WikiPageTab.Share

Will SharePoint Development Boom?

2009-12-20T21:17:00.001+01:00

ChannelWeb recently speculated that SharePoint development will boom in 2010. They say that, contrary to previous versions, SharePoint development is now as easy as eating pie, and that this will boost the number of SharePoint developers.

They are wrong.

However, before you fire your SharePoint development tutor, they are not wrong in their predictions, but rather in most everything else they write. So, as someone who spends most of his waking hours inside SharePoint, I thought I’d clarify.

ChannelWeb states that this is the first time that developers can use Visual Studio to create SharePoint applications. What a load of horse manure! People have been using Visual Studio to create complex and quite impressive applications, features, and solutions for as long as there have been build actions. Just take a look at CodePlex and the numerous Visual Studio based SharePoint projects there.

Second, ChannelWeb states that the current SharePoint development is ‘complex and non-intuitive’. Of course, this is a matter of opinion, but I quite like the current SP2007 development model. In fact, I plan to make that the third post in my I Love SharePoint, and Here’s Why series (part 1 and part 2).

Calling the SharePoint development experience complex and non-intuitive is either plain wrong or a tribute to 100,000 developers out there who develop on SharePoint already, even prior to 2010. Well, it can be both, come to thing of it.

So, the big question remains. Will SharePoint Development explode in 2010? I believe so.

A few years ago, at a Microsoft event in Oslo, the keynote speaker told the audience that with the introduction of .NET (yeah, it was that long ago), Microsoft now were sending supertankers loaded with cash towards developers. Almost ten years later, I know he was right, and I also see that their strategy, while initially dubbed Microsoft Not-Yet by the Java people due to its many delays, was successful.

Should you bet on SharePoint development then? That’s up to you, but I am betting huge that Microsoft will succeed this time as well. In fact, I’m working on a project right now that will blow your mind if you want to learn SharePoint. I’ll let you know more as soon as I know more myself :-)

SharePoint 2010 Solution Sandbox Overview from Sahil Malik

2009-12-20T14:01:00.001+01:00

If you haven’t noticed, my buddy Sahil Malik has published a great series of blog posts on sandbox solutions in SharePoint 2010. I thought I’d write a series myself, but now that he has done it, I guess it will have to wait for a USP Journal issue at some point.

Here’s the overview of the series, with links to his articles:

The definitive guide (Table of Contents)
The basics of a sandbox solution
Sandbox solution architecture and restrictions
Sandbox solution monitoring, management and deployment
Sandbox solution validations
Sandbox solutions full trust proxies

Whether you have absolutely no idea what sandbox solutions are or you want to know some specifics about what they can do, how to develop them, or how to use and administrate sandbox solutions, the series gives you a good overview without being too lengthy or geeky.

Thumbs up, Sahil, great work!

My Father-in-Law is a Superhero!

2009-12-11T14:06:00.001+01:00

This has absolutely nothing to do with SharePoint, but I’d like to mention it anyway: My father-in-law is a superhero. Here’s the story. Before you move on, however, know that there is some pretty graphic descriptions here, so if you have a weak stomach, or even a strong stomach, you may want to skip to another blog post.

On Monday, December 7, 2010, my father-in-law, Øyvind Johansen, was alone in his kitchen making donuts, or at least a fairly similar Norwegian thing called smultringer. Smultringer are cooked in hot oil, which is a dangerous thing, but Øyvind is a very good chef and extremely careful.

Before I tell the story, I’d like to tell you a bit about Øyvind. He is one of the toughest people I know, and he always does what is best for everyone else, as you will shortly learn. He is caring beyond belief and never asks anything for himself. He is one of those honest, hard-working, kind, and gentle people that far too few people are fortunate enough to know.

Now, for reasons you will realize shortly, the events that happened this day are not clear in detail. However, what we know is this.

At some point, the oil overheated without Øyvind noticing. Perhaps he had his back turned or was in the opposite part of the kitchen getting the raw dough for cooking. The hot oil burst into flames, and as hot oil usually do, it burned vigorously. From the fire damage we saw that it had to be an extremely hot fire.

Now, most people will then simply reach for the fire extinguisher or a fire blanket. For some reason, Øyvind was not able to do so. Perhaps the extinguisher, which was positioned just a few feet from the burning oil, was beyond reach, and he would have to run around the kitchen to reach it.

To make matters worse, the fan above the stove was pulling the flames up into the attic, increasing the chances of a full-blown fire.

I have no idea what went through Øyvind’s mind, but based on what I know of him, it might go something like this: “Hm… If the house burns down, we wont have any chance of celebrating Christmas here” So, without any kind of fear, but with a definite lack of rational thinking, he reached into the flames to get the pot with the burning oil away from the stove and also away from the fan.

Yeah, it’s real easy to say that it’s better to burn down a house than to risk your life trying to save Christmas, however, knowing what I know about Øyvind, that was never even once on his mind.

Somehow, and firefighters know this is difficult, he managed to put out the fire alone. At that point, the heat was so intense that the roof tiles had begin to boil. Quite literally, the tiles were boiling; we can see that from the damage to the roof. In addition, he had to do this while having third-degree burns on both of his arms up to the elbows in addition to first and second degree burns to his face and head. The pain must have been extreme, but at least the house was not ablaze.

This is where most people would be called heroes. After all, saving a house at the expense of extreme pain is a heroic act. However, that wasn’t enough for Øyvind. He probably thought that he was somehow to blame, so he wanted to clean up after himself.

Warning: This is where the graphic content begins.

First order of business, of course, is to call the insurance company, so with the melting skin dripping from his arms, he looked up the number for the insurance company and called them to say what had happened. He claims he didn’t use the computer to long on to the internet, and while that may be true, at least we know he sat in the chair in front of the computer because his oil-soaked foot-prints are all around that chair.

Then he went to begin the clean up, grabbing a bucket and a broomstick. He started filling it with water and pine-sol cleaner, and while doing so, tried getting some gloves on his hands, probably mostly to prevent the remainder of his skin contaminating the cleaning water. He didn’t succeed, however, as we saw when we looked at the water.

At that point, he decided that he might have to see a doctor, so he calls his wife, my mother-in-law, to tell her that he might have to take a drive. This was almost a full hour after he put out the fire, and he probably was in some kind of shock, because he was seriously contemplating driving to the hospital almost 20 minutes away. The fact that he, at this point, wore his skin lack a sack didn’t seem to bother him; he just didn’t want to be a burden to anyone.

My mother-in-law managed to convince him to at least let the neighbor drive, so he went over to them to ask for a ride. The neighbors later commented that ‘at least he had the sense to put a lot of skin cream on his wounds’ only to discover later that he had no cream on at all. You can probably figure out what that skin cream really was.

Øyvind was, of course, rushed into the hospital where he underwent treatment and surgery to save his arms. At present, we don’t know the fate of his arms, hands, or fingers, but at least he is alive, the house is saved, and it might be Christmas after all. He is awake and more or less back to his old, funny self, wearing bandages and plastic bags around his arms, and probably planning how he’s going to rebuild the kitchen himself, right after he is healthy enough to stand on his own.

What can we learn from this? Here’s what I learned. When, in the recipe, you reach the step where it says ‘Burn down your kitchen (optional)’, heed the ‘optional’. Oh, and don’t turn your back on heating oil either.

So Øyvind, next time, remember that you appear to be allergic to burning oil.

SharePoint 2010 Content Type Subscription Video Posted

2009-12-11T10:59:00.001+01:00

As part of the Introducing SharePoint 2010 subscription series, I’ve created a set of videos that are now available to subscribers. However, I’ve also posted one of the videos, related to my previous post on SharePoint 2010 Content Type Publishing, showing how to set up the service application and utilize this brilliant new feature.

While the video is included here, I highly recommend watching it as HD on the USP Journal YouTube channel.

Enjoy!

SharePoint 2010 Content Type Publishing

2009-12-07T10:32:00.001+01:00

The following is an excerpt from Issue 2 of the Introducing SharePoint 2010 series from Understanding SharePoint Journal.

SharePoint 2010 Content Type Subscriptions

Another nice feature of the metadata services in SharePoint 2010 is the option for centralized handling of content types. In short, you can now define a site collection to be a content type hub and then set up other site collections to subscribe to the content types published from that hub site collection.

This allows you to centrally manage all your content types and send updates to these content types from a single location. While third-party products have offered similar functionality for SharePoint 2007, it is nice to see Microsoft including this as part of the product.

Setting up content type publishing also takes a few steps, however.

Setting up Content Type Publishing

Start by going to the Central Administration web site and create a new Site Collection to hold the centralized content types. You’ll find the Create site collections link on the front page of the Central Administration web site. I have named mine HR (for Hub Repository) and placed it under the Sites managed path, so the full URL to my new content type hub is http://sp2010lab-01/Sites/HR.

Then, you need to enable a site collection feature of the newly created site collection. Open the HR site, go to the Site Settings page, and then follow the Site collection features link. Click to activate the Content Type Syndication Hub feature.

Next, you need to define that this will be the content type hub for the current Managed Metadata service application, and you need to do this back in Central Administration.

Go to the Manage Service Applications from the front page of the Central Administration web site and select the Managed Metadata Service application. With the Managed Metadata Service application selected, click the Properties button in the Ribbon, as shown below.

At the very end of the Properties popup dialog box, you will find the section for Content Type Hub. Enter the URL to your content type hub site collection, in my case, http://sp2010lab-01/Sites/HR.

Be aware, though, that there is no way to change this association afterwards, so if you want to use another content type hub, you need to create a new managed metadata service application.

Hit OK to save your settings.

There’s one more task you need to do while on the Manage Service Applications page. Select the Managed Metadata Service connection located just below the Managed Metadata Service application, as indicated above (Connection).

Then, click the properties button again and enable the Consumes content types from the Content Type Gallery at http://sp2010lab-01/Sites/HR option shown below before you hit OK to save your changes.

That’s it, your content type publishing is ready. Any web application connected to the Managed Metadata Service application now receives content types that you publish from the content type hub.

Let’s try that out.

Testing you Content Type Publishing

Go to the Site Settings page of your content type hub repository and then to the Site Content Types page. You can set up any content type to be published on the hub, however, for this exercise, create a new content type.

This is a nice chance to use that managed metadata term set we created earlier, so let’s create a product image content type. We’ll also use this content type later in this issue. Name the new content type Product Image and inherit from the Image content type in the Digital Assets Content Types group.

Then, on the content type settings page, add a new Managed Metadata column pointing to the Products term store, just like you did for the Tasks list earlier in this issue. Refer back to the previous exercise if you need a refresher.

Finally, notice that, on the Product Image content type settings page, you have a link to Manage publishing for this content type. Click that link now, and note that you have three options, only one of which is enabled, the Publish option. Hit OK to publish your new Product Image content type to the hub.

If you later want to retract your published content type, you do so from the same page.

The hub synchronization runs as a timer job every 15 minutes. If you want to speed up the publishing, you can run the Content Type Hub and Content Type Subscriber jobs manually from the Monitoring page of Central Administration.

After the synchronization jobs have completed, however, you can now go to any site collection in a web application connected to the Managed Metadata Service application and check out the Content Type Publishing link from the Site Settings page. In my site collection, the page looks like this:

Changes you make to the content type in the hub site collection are now automatically propagated to the site collections subscribing to that hub.

This is an excerpt from the second issue of the USP Journal Introducing SharePoint 2010 series. If you want the full issue, as well as the other five issues in the series, you can get that for $14.95 at http://www.sharepoint2010beta.com/.

View Multiple Calendars in SharePoint 2010

2009-12-04T13:16:00.001+01:00

The following is an excerpt, slightly modified, from issue 2 of the Introducing SharePoint 2010 subscription series of USP Journal.

SharePoint 2010 Calendar

The new SharePoint 2010 calendar has a couple of very nice new features. Click the Calendar link in your Team Site to enter the default view of the Calendar list and then click the Calendar tab in the Ribbon. You will see, among other useful tools, the Calendars Overlay button, shown below.

This button allows you to see events from multiple calendars in a single view, and immense improvement over the previous version of SharePoint. The overlay works across all sites in a site collection and even across different site collections.

Creating a Calendar Overlay

To test this feature, create a new sub site under the current site (hint: it’s available from the Site Actions menu). This will spawn the new Create dialog box, which I personally will need a bit of time before I like.
Once you have created your new site, add a few entries in the Calendar list of the new site and then return to the top site (hint again: you need to use the breadcrumb menu to navigate to the top site if you chose the default options when creating a new site).
Then, re-enter the Calendar list of the top Team Site and click the Calendars Overlay, found on the Calendar tab. Click the Add Calendar link, bringing up the Customize Calendar page shown below.

Enter the URL of the web site you just created and then select the new Calendar list and the default Calendar view.
Notice that you can also link to Exchange calendars using the Calendars Overlay function.
When you hit OK, SharePoint returns you to the Calendar list and shows the sub site events in your top site calendar.

Neat, eh? No more third party add-ons to aggregate calendars, and remember, this overlaying can span site collections as well.
I want to show you one more really nice thing about the new Calendar. If you hover your mouse pointer over the date in a calendar view, you will get an Add link, as shown here.

What makes this even cooler is that you can click and drag to select multiple days at once, and using the Add link you can then add an event spanning multiple days, as shown here.

These features are really useful and saves you from writing custom solutions or using third party add-ons.
If you want to learn even more tips and tricks, you can pick up an Introducing SharePoint 2010 subscription at http://www.sharepoint2010beta.com/
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6 Reasons Why Installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 is a Stupid Idea

2009-12-03T11:30:00.001+01:00

A new feature of SharePoint 2010 is that you can now install it on a client operating system. Don’t.

Installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7, or any other client OS, is a stupid idea, and I’ll tell you why, in simple bullet point items.

I’ll advance the conclusion to this post, so you know what the alternative is. Use a VM and install a proper server OS. There are absolutely no reasons why you shouldn’t. The software is free or has evaluation licenses, you need massive hardware to run SP2010 in any case, and the learning curve is about as gentle as the mountains of Denmark (which are, and this is absolutely true, no higher than 600 feet at their, well, peaks).

Back to the matter at hand, the six reasons, in no particular order, why installing SharePoint 2010 in Windows 7 is a stupid idea.

SharePoint is a server technology, built to utilize server features that are not available on client operating systems.
While you may be able to get SharePoint up and running, you wont be able to evaluate or use many of the really cool features.
SharePoint installs services that opens security-sensitive features on your computer
In a server environment, security people know what’s going on and can prevent problems. On your laptop, you may not be as vigilant. A VM doesn’t need access to the Internet at all, and it’s very easy to prevent or limit such access.
For evaluation purposes or lab work, your environment will likely have to be rebuilt several times
Uninstalling SharePoint is a hassle, especially if you have a failed environment. Deleting a VM you’re no longer using takes about 5 seconds.
You cannot take snapshots of a physical machine
Prior to testing new features or making big changes to your environment, it is a good idea to back everything up. That takes another 10 seconds with a VM snapshot but backing up a physical machine takes far longer.
You cannot test multi-server features
Doing farm installations opens up new features that are not possible on a single server setup. For example, load balancing is not possible, nor is testing inter-server communications or distributing services on different servers.
You cannot move your SharePoint 2010 installation from a physical machine
A major benefit of VMs is that everything you need to run the server is stored in a single folder. This is a major advantage if you need to reinstall or change your physical host.

I think it was Jeremy Thake who said previously what best sums up the reasons for and against using SharePoint on a client operating system, and I paraphrase this from memory:

It’s been possible, while not supported, to install SharePoint 2007 on a client OS for a long time, but yet, very few developers are doing so.

If You’re Wondering Why I Haven’t Blogged This Week…

2009-12-03T09:52:00.001+01:00

There is so much new stuff in SharePoint 2010, and for someone who loves writing, staying quiet for that long with so much information to relay usually indicates that I’m dead. I’m not, at least not this time.

The thing is, I have this VM rig set up at home. I built it in 2007, it has 8 GB of RAM, quad-core Q6600 Xeon CPU, tons of hard drives, and I disassemble the whole thing once every quarter to clean and service fans, fasten cables, etc. I keep it in tip-top shape, and it continues to perform brilliantly.

On a typical day, I run at least 5 VMs off this computer. I run Windows 2003 R2 x64 as the host OS and have workstation VMs running preferably Windows XP, but more recently Windows 7, since I need SharePoint Designer 2010.

Two W2K3 R2 servers handle my home network infrastructure, including the domain services, DNS, DHCP, file server, source control, printers, etc. These require very little performance so they have only minimal amounts of RAM (384 Mb each). They run on the same disk, but separate from any other VMs.

Then I have my writing VM that I use for any kind of authoring, sans blogging. This is a SharePoint development lab really, and I set it up in a very specific manner to speed up writing and development testing. This is where I do most of my productive work, and it has the same setup as I described in Beginning SharePoint Development.

Finally, I quite often run one or more scenario lab servers for investigating a particular scenario that requires a specific setup and server configuration. This is usually either for a customer or for an Understanding SharePoint Journal issue. I’ve run up to four MOSS servers in such a scenario, in addition to all the other VMs I have mentioned.

I absolutely love my VM host, despite being almost three years old, it continues to churn out performance.

But it’s not enough. As I wrote in a previous post, SharePoint 2010 requires massive amounts of performance. In fact, to run SP2010 on my rig, I need to shut down everything but the 384 Mb primary domain controller and my writing lab, even though I’ve put the SP2010 VM on a separate and dedicated disk. I’ve tried reducing the RAM but that almost doubled request and response time and made the Windows interface as slow as James May.

That’s why I have no workstation VM on which to write blog posts if I’m going to run SharePoint 2010. I simply don’t have enough juice.

I tried booting my current workstation Windows 7 VM while the SP2010 server ran, and it took 12 minutes to boot and log in. In theory, there should be enough reserved RAM, and the hard disks are separate from the SP2010 disk, but still, it takes forever to get a fairly quick OS up and running. Close the SP2010 server, and it’s down to about 2 minutes.

So, since I have been writing on issue 2 of the Introducing SharePoint 2010 series for the last week or so, including creating up a full video walkthrough of setting up the SharePoint 2010 lab environment, that I sadly messed up, I couldn’t blog.

In any case, I’ve configured a new VM rig that is ready for order, this time with initially 24 GB of RAM, 14 TB of disks (9x2TB disks), dual quad-core Xeon 5520 CPUs, and I hope that will be enough to run at least one SP2010 server along with the rest of my setup.

But now, however, I’m going to write a couple of blog post for posting later this week, and then I’m off to Edinburgh to spend a nice weekend with my wife for the first time in many months.

SharePoint 2010: Unable to Create Profile Import Connection?

2009-11-25T10:24:00.001+01:00

I ran into this problem after rushing through the setup and installation of SharePoint 2010. In short, when trying to create a new import connection for user profiles in SharePoint 2010, nothing happened.

Literally, nothing happened. I filled in the nice form to create a new connection, chose the correct AD containers, but upon hitting OK, the import connections page just said that the query did not return any results, and no connection got created.

So, I ran through the logs (and by gods, I love the new logs) but sadly no help there either. Even when setting the entire SharePoint Foundation section to Medium in the Diagnostic Logging section, I only got a couple of “Entering monitored scope” for _layouts/EditDSServer.aspx when entering the page and right after submitting, the same message for _layouts/MgrDSServer.aspx, but nothing even close to an error message between.

I’ve seen several posts on error messages such as being unable to connect to the database, requiring an IIS Reset, but nothing explaining why I couldn’t even create a new connection.

However, after carefully following the most recent blog post from the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog and then doing a reverse engineering of the process, I slapped my forehead and delegated the AD “Replicate Directory Changes” permission to the SP Admin account used for setting up the profile connection, and thus solving the problem.

I strongly encourage you to follow the blog post. Well, except their encouragement not to test and play around, though :-)

Is It Time to Learn SharePoint 2010 Yet?

2009-11-24T18:04:00.001+01:00

Marc D Anderson posted an interesting tweet the other day and he made a blog post to sum up the answers. However, answering such a question in 140 characters is beyond me, so I thought I’d write a blog post in response to his.

I’ll answer his question real quick, though, not requiring 140 characters at all: YES!

I’m not just saying that because I make truckloads of money (not really) selling USPJ issues for those who want to prepare for SharePoint 2010. It makes sense to me on several levels.

Developers

Perhaps the most obvious SharePoint 2010 user group that would want to start learning SharePoint 2010 now is developers. Developers will be responsible for populating the SharePoint fauna prior and right after release of the production version, and thus, unless you’re some whiz kid who picks up everything new in a day and can transform that knowledge into solutions, you want to prepare as early as possible.

Companies are looking to make their investments in new solutions compatible with SharePoint 2010, and that means that you as a developer need to know what will work and what will not work in SharePoint 2010 even when you are developing solutions on the 2007 platform.

Administrators

So, when the developers are eager to test out their new solutions, who do you think they’ll call? Hint: It’s not Ghostbusters. It’s you, as an administrator. Just after the public release of SharePoint 2010, when the first new production deployments start hitting the proverbial streets, problems will arise. Developers will cite the usual ‘it works fine on my machine’ leaving you to prove them wrong.

How will you do that? Well, SharePoint 2010 offers tons of improvements for debugging and profiling solutions, and while developers may be gods at creating fancy bells and whistles, you as a SharePoint 2010 administrator will be responsible for making sure those bells ring and the whistles blow, or that the responsible developer gets a slap in the back of his or her head.

End Users

But you know, it’s really all about end users. Developers may prove Fermat's Last Theorem with a spinning button and administrator’s may make sure that the button is always available, come rain, snow, or a battalion of scorned women, but all of that is pointless unless you, as an end user, is there to click that button.

The sad thing, though, is that, as always, end users are the last to see these fancy new features. You see, the developers wont dare put their beta code in front of end users and administrators wont let end users onto their beta platform. This is really sad, because many of the problems arising right after launch of any platform could have been solved by end users being allowed to go medieval on the beta versions.

Chances are, as end users, you will be the last to know what you should have known months ago. SharePoint 2010 will offer sometime next year a lot of what you really, really need right now.

But for developers and administrator, it’s absolutely mandatory.

Introducing SharePoint 2010 Now Available

2009-11-23T13:16:00.001+01:00

I just released a new subscription series of Understanding SharePoint Journal, titled Introducing SharePoint 2010.

This new six-part series will guide you through all you need to know to become familiar with SharePoint 2010, whether you are an end user, an administrator, or a developer. Each issue is 25-30 pages long and there will be a new issue every two to three weeks.

Here’s an overview of the issues:

SharePoint 2010 New Features
In this issue, you will get an overview of the new features of SharePoint 2010. In addition, I’ll walk you through installing SharePoint 2010 Beta 2.

Get Started with SharePoint 2010
This issue will get you started with SharePoint 2010 in record time.

SharePoint Designer 2010
SharePoint Designer 2010 offers massive improvements over the previous version. Get up to speed with what’s new.

Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint
Visual Studio 2010 completely changes the playing field for SharePoint development. Find out what features will benefit you.

The New SharePoint 2010 Developer
It’s time to learn what the new SharePoint 2010 development model means for you as a developer

SharePoint 2010 Administrator Update
The administrator’s job gets a whole lot easier in SharePoint 2010. Learn about the improvements.

You can also get the entire first issue as a free preview on the Introducing SharePoint 2010 website.

SharePoint Workflow – What You Need to Know

2009-11-19T08:56:00.000+01:00

The most powerful feature of SharePoint, at least the one most likely to cause a high return on investment (ROI), is the tight integration and high utilization of workflow.

In this short article, I will tell you what you need to know about SharePoint workflow in order to understand how to harness the power and potential economic benefit of business process management in SharePoint.

So, What Is a Workflow Anyway?

OK, you may have heard me use that exact phrase before, and you’d be right, as I explained this in a previous post on SharePoint Designer workflow. Rather than repeat what I wrote then, however, I’d like to offer a more descriptive… description.

A workflow is a formalized business process mapped to various executable activities on a computer. Think of a workflow as a highly adaptable and configurable program that performs a series of tasks. The program is adaptable in that it can be changed depending on business needs.

The ‘various’ part of the explanation is where you get the power of workflow. Compared to a traditional program, in which you often get a set of features and need to rewrite the program to extend that set of features, workflows allow you to pick and choose from activities.

In short, you get a ‘pick and choose’ program that you can change as your needs change. Workflow is the Lego of programming, in a manner of speaking.

Wait, Programs? That Sounds Complicated and Unstable?

Yes, which is why I say ‘in a manner of speaking’.

You see, at least in the Windows Workflow Foundation that SharePoint uses, the framework handles most of the nitty-gritty details for you, and enables you, more or less, to just say what you want to happen when during a process. The stability and flexibility is also handled by the framework so you don’t need to worry as much about your workflows as you would normal programs.

For example, if your server goes down, the framework will make sure that your workflow continues to run after the server comes back up. If you need to change your workflow, the framework and SharePoint will ensure that running workflows complete and that new instances of the workflow only use the new version of the workflow.

What Are Some Common SharePoint Workflow Examples?

Probably the most common example used is an approval workflow, in which some form of data requires approval from someone. The default SharePoint approval workflow is one such example, in which the author of the data requests approval for an item or document. This may be a request for expenses reimbursed, a vacation request, or any other request for which on user requires the approval of another user to complete some task.

Another common example is document management. Regardless of size, almost all organization have some form of document management, even if it’s as simple as telling a secretary to file a report in a certain file cabinet. Workflow can help automate document management, and the SharePoint document workflows offer some out-of-the-box functionality to cater to basic needs.

However, these are just two examples of scenarios in which workflow may help. The nature of workflow is that it can be customized to almost any business process, if nothing else than to track the progress of those processes or audit what happens during a process.

How Can I Create SharePoint Custom Workflows?

You have several options for creating and customizing workflow.

Out-of-the-box SharePoint Workflows

Granted, out-of-the-box doesn’t sound very customizable, but the truth is, many of these workflows are flexible enough to solve at least basic needs. For example, for the SharePoint approval workflow, you can customize who gets to approve an item or document, as well as deadlines for the approval tasks, and allow or disallow the approvers to reassign the workflow approval task.

If this still doesn’t meet your needs, you may want to take one step up.

SharePoint Designer Workflows

SharePoint Designer (SPD) offers a basic workflow authoring experience. With SharePoint Designer 2007, end users can create workflows without needing to learn complicated tools or adopt programming as a career.

Despite the perceived simplicity of SharePoint Designer workflows, however, you can accomplish fairly complex tasks using the built-in activities in SharePoint Designer. In addition, you can get or create additional activities to further customize your workflow and in essence create your own Lego pieces.

SharePoint Designer is often scoffed at by developers as being a FrontPage bastard child. However, for designing one-off workflows with a very gentle learning curve, SharePoint Designer workflow is the way to go.

In addition, several of the limitations of SharePoint Designer 2007 are improved in SharePoint Designer 2010, as I have written previously in the first and second look at SharePoint Designer 2010 as well as the SharePoint Designer 2010 workflow features article.

You can learn all about SharePoint Designer workflows in issue 4 of Understanding SharePoint Journal.

Visual Studio SharePoint Workflows

The limitations of SharePoint Designer workflows become apparent when your needs become a bit more complex. That is when you may want to turn to Visual Studio.

Visual Studio offers the maximum amount of flexibility and power at the cost of a longer and more complex learning curve. If you want complete control and maximum power, however, that is the price to pay.

However, while Visual Studio is traditionally considered a programmers tool, it is a myth that creating Visual Studio workflows require programming skills. You can get a lot more done if you do use some programming, but in essence, the same building-block paradigm is used in Visual Studio workflows as well.

You can get an introduction to Visual Studio workflows for SharePoint in issue 7 of Understanding SharePoint Journal.

Third-party Workflow Tools

If neither of these options are to your liking, you may want to turn to third-party workflow tools. Some well known tools are K2 BlackPoint and Nintex Workflow 2007.

Third-party tools offer both competing and complementary features to the already mentioned workflow tools. For example, Nintex Workflow 2007 offers a combination of the ease of SharePoint Designer workflows with some of the power of Visual Studio.

While a complete description of all the available tools is a bit beyond the scope of this article, you should know that these third-party alternatives exist.
You can also get the free Using Nintex Workflow 2007 issue of, you guess it, Understanding SharePoint Journal, if you want to explore that product more.

Anything Else?

Yeah, don’t forget to brush your teeth and floss. Seriously, everything I have said here is just my personal opinion, but brushing your teeth and using dental floss is recommended based on hard, scientific proof. Proper dental care leads to healthier teeth, prevents bad breath, and can improve the whiteness of your teeth without damaging chemicals.

I Love SharePoint – And Here’s Why (Part 2)

2009-11-17T22:36:00.000+01:00

By now, regular readers have read my “SharePoint Sucks – And Here’s Why” series that I wrote just prior to SPC09, detailing, and you’re clever enough to deduce this, why I think SharePoint sucks. As was revealed in the final part, however, I don’t hate SharePoint, I love it. Now, it’s time to show you why I love SharePoint.

I’m doing this in step-by-step mode. I’ll tell you, in no particular order, of one thing I absolutely love about SharePoint. I’ll tell you why, and if you disagree, let me know. Send me an email at furuknap<[at]>gmail.com or shoot off a comment to this or any other blog post.

So, without further ado, here’s the second thing I love about SharePoint.

Ready?

You!

I love you because you understand dear
Every single thing I try to do
You’re always there to lend a helping hand dear
I love you most of all because you’re you

With the king’s (I’m talking about Leon Payne here) words in mind, I’d like to draw attention to you, or more precisely the community of which you are a part.

The SharePoint community is absolutely brilliant. The amount of knowledge contained and shared is enormous and people genuinely seems to enjoy working together rather than being king of their own little hills.

Now, when you need to figure out something in SharePoint, you google it, right? You fire off some query and rely on Google to provide you with ignorance relief. In most cases you will likely find the answer right off the bat or at least get hints to where you should search further.

Here’s a thought to consider. It’s not SharePoint that provides you the answers. It is the community. Hundreds and thousands of people have dedicated their time and resources to tell you what you need to know to be a better SharePoint user, administrator, or developer. Even more people have added to the quality of that information with questions and answers.

Take EndUserSharePoint.com, Mark Miller’s project. There is a massive amount of information there that he and his fellow authors share without charging a dime. Granted, he does have several for-pay workshops as well, but he has to make a living too, right? Besides, running a site like that costs money and rather than charge for general access, he’s providing premium content and training for a small fee.

Then, take a look at what Jeremy Thake does with SharePoint Dev Wiki. Out of the goodness of his heart, he’s built a brilliant site that helps developers collaborate on making information available to everyone.

And of course, no tribute to the community is complete without the Danish hero Carsten Keutmann. Through his generous donation of WSPBuilder and SharePoint Manager 2007 (and now SharePoint Manager 2010) Carsten has single-handedly saved SharePoint developers years of development time. I’m serious. Up until I discovered WSPBuilder, I probably spent about twice the amount of time building, deploying, and debugging applications in SharePoint.

However, in addition to these mammoth contributors to the community, I want to commend you. You, the readers and commenters, the question-askers, the (sometimes) complaining and whining crowd, the live-bloggers, the emailers, the forum participants whether you post questions or answers, the bloggers, the tweeters, the webcast authors, the conference or user group speakers…

I’ve had people apologizing for asking questions. Stop that! Not asking questions, but thinking that you are disturbing or asking too much. Through your questions, people can learn, just as I do, every time someone asks something.

Whoever you are, as part of the SharePoint community, silent or audible, you are a great resource, and you are truly valuable.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

SharePoint Configuration vs. Development

2009-11-17T18:41:00.001+01:00

SharePoint’s greatest feature is the ease with which end users with little or no training can add or modify existing features to make SharePoint do what the user needs. However, there are downsides to this feature if you are not careful, and you cannot really expect to harness the full power of a platform such as SharePoint with nothing more than a cursory knowledge of clicking links on a web page.

In this short article, I’ll explain the differences between the configuration approach and the development approach. I’ll tell you about the benefits or each and also the downsides. This will help you understand the two approaches to making SharePoint do what you want.

Configuration

The first approach is where users through the web interface or other tools create content and organization themselves. The user simply adds or modifies lists, content types, pages, activates or deactivates features, makes configuration changes, and boom, you have a fully customized solution, tailored to the user’s need.

This method of development is called customization or configuration. You don’t actually create anything, you simply utilize what is already there and customize new lists, pages, or other artifacts to create a solution. End users love this method. They are themselves empowered to utilize SharePoint features, and offers them a chance to get just the functionality they need.

Taking everything up one notch, users can use SharePoint Designer to get even more power. With little or no training, users can create new pages and workflows, set permissions and options, customize forms for individual lists, libraries, or content types, and generally go bananas much to the concern of administrators and developers.

The true beauty, however, is that those who know how they need to work are the ones who are empowered to model SharePoint into exactly what they want. Department managers can create workflows that are unique to them, or set up reports to display exactly the kind of data that the department needs. End users can customize the workflow when it starts or tailor their own view of the reports, and no one needs to write a single line of code.

Regardless of how good a developer is, he or she cannot possibly know everything about how every employee wants or needs to work.

What’s the Downside?

First of all, it is very difficult to maintain a coherent solution in the long run if users are given free reigns to do whatever they please. Without control, many argue, it is impossible to support a SharePoint solution as you do not know what you will face when a user calls for help. If you’re a developer, ask yourself: How will you upgrade a solution if you have no idea what is in that solution?

Second, the options available for configuration are limited by nature. Someone has to create the lists that the user will then customize. True, SharePoint does offer a wide variety of lists, content types, and other elements out-of-the-box, but users more often than not end up wanting more. Something as simple as a customer list or a list of products does not come out of the box and will have to be created.

Third, changes made using the configuration method are not easily reproduced. If one department creates an excellent solution, you can’t just take those components and reuse in other parts of your SharePoint farm. To some extent, you can create templates as an end user, but these templates are ‘locked’ once you create them, and even if you can create new templates in a flash, there’s no way to affect existing sites or list when you update a template.

Paul Culmsee wrote a very nice article on SharePoint templates vs. definitions, by the way. I absolutely love that guy’s writing style.

Finally, some options are simply left out of the configuration method altogether. You cannot add new application pages using configuration, for example, nor can you add new functionality that requires the use of compiled .NET assemblies, such as web parts, event receivers, or some types of workflows.

Professional SharePoint developers and administrators often shun this configuration approach and as a result often attempt to reduce the number of options available for the end user. Some go as far as locking everything completely down, effectively killing one of SharePoint’s strongest features.

Development

This is where development comes in to save the day, at least from the point of view of the developer. The power developers have is far beyond that of configuration. Developers can do anything you can do with configuration and then far more. Want to add behavior to your solution using workflows and event receivers? No problem. Want to create new web parts or controls on a page? You can do that. Need to create a completely custom provider for the navigation of a solution? Well, with code you can, whereas for configuration, you can’t.

Not just can SharePoint developers do a wider array of tasks, but they can also affect entire SharePoint farms in a single swoop, where web interface or SharePoint Designer configuration may take days of manual work. With a few lines of code, a SharePoint developer can add a new column to every content type or list in a site collection, and just as easily change the name or configuration of a web part throughout the organization.

The maintenance and reuse aspect is also a breeze for the SharePoint developer. Not only can they easily reapply their solutions anywhere in the farm, they can also upgrade existing solutions so that they can fix minor issues rather than having to recreate everything. There are certain things that cannot be upgraded, but compared to configuration where you cannot widely upgrade almost anything, this is a major benefit.

With all that power, it is not strange that many developers feel a bit like gods; they have the power to do anything, and looking down on ‘mere end users’ is sadly an often practiced sport.

What’s the Downside?

However, developers trade time and ease for that power, for developing SharePoint solutions takes a lot more work than simply hitting Create every once in a while. Of course, with that added time and complexity, you may not want to do much development work at all, or at least the cost will be prohibitive for any small updates. There is always a certain overhead in starting a new development project, and you need to either employ or hire people with the right skill set.

Of course, if you have a lot of experience or use the right methodology, you can greatly decrease the effort of SharePoint solution development. The answer is 42, by the way, and in a later blog post, I’ll tell you more about the 42 lines of code that will save your SharePoint development projects.

Then, there is the battle of working around certain limitations of SharePoint. For example, if you have deployed a solution, you cannot add new features of files during an upgrade. This won’t change in SharePoint 2010 either, so in order to build on your solution, you need to deploy new solutions and ensure that you activate the features of that solution throughout the farm.

Neither can you change a site definition after you have made it the first time. This is a great problem for many; you may be working on a huge project in which there are dozens of site definitions. You need to get them all right the first time around or you need to maintain dozens of configuration files, two per site definition in fact. Regardless, you can make no mistakes, or you need to start over with a new site definition, even if you do something as simple as misspelling the name of a list.

Is There a Point to All This?

We seem to have two very powerful methods for making SharePoint behave, but they are seemingly incompatible. An end user wants a quick result with minimal effort using configuration and can whip up a new solution within minutes, while the developer wants to think ahead and make sure the changes are reusable and that they can be recreated or maintained using best-practices method for development, source-control, testing, and such.

The point here is that you need to find a balance between what power you afford the end users and what must be created using development to ensure reusability and upgradability.

The sad fact, though, is that if you are to have any chance of going beyond these limitations of SharePoint, you need to use code. Creativity using configuration will only get you so far.

Web-scoped Content Type and Field Features in SharePoint 2010

2009-11-17T18:14:00.000+01:00

One thing I discovered while I was dissecting one of these fancy new .WSP site templates was that the content type feature exported had web scope, rather than the mandatory site scope of SharePoint 2007.

Of course, since content types still need to reference only existing columns, this means that the fields or columns required by the content types also need to be web scoped. And lo and behold the exported feature.xml file from a WSP site template:

Now before you go out and celebrate with a fitting bottle of good champagne, let me pour some cold water into your bloodstream. If you think you can simply reuse the columns feature, take a look at the final few lines of the elements file of that feature.

Yeah, that’s right. From a basic team site, no customization to talk about, you get a 3557 line long elements.xml, just for the columns.

Seems there will still be a need for people who know how to hand-craft these files, even in 2010 :-)

SharePoint 2010 – Create Page

2009-11-17T01:58:00.001+01:00

Everyone has heard, SharePoint 2010 is out, and there is so much cool new stuff here, even from Beta 1.

For example, take a look at the incredibly cool new Create page.

No longer do you have to go to several different pages to create new content; everything is now easily available in one single page.

Also, not the filters on the left side. You can use those to narrow down what content you want to create, using the new refinements in SharePoint 2010:

Now, you may think this is cool, but what will make your eyes water is the fancy animations and visual effects. Take a look:

Note towards the end that there is an Office.com category as well :-)

Yeah!

Installing SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 – How to Completely Mess up Everything

2009-11-16T21:07:00.001+01:00

Update: If you want a free 35 page ebook, covering amongst other, installing the public Beta of SharePoint, just head over to the Introducing SharePoint 2010 website and download the free first issue.

Well, it’s finally here. The first official beta of SharePoint 2010.

Warning! Before you pop the Champagne, you should pay careful attention, as the install process is somewhat tricky. In fact, you risk having to reinstall SharePoint completely, or even your entire server, if you do this like some did in SharePoint 2007. And it’s a big cleanup job.

DO NOT start installing anything until you have read this entire article.

Let me walk you through the steps until you’re screwed, pardon my language.

Of course, you’ll need the installer file (en_office_sharepoint_server_2010_beta_x64_x16-19249.exe in my case) that contains the nice setup splash screen you see above.

If you ready me previous post on installing SharePoint 2010 Beta 1, you may remember that I never go the prerequisites install to work. You’ll be happy to know that, this time, at least to me everything went smoothly. Hit the Install software prerequisites link and go through the steps:

The prerequisite installer will download any required file for you if you are connected to the internet, so just kick back and relax for a few moments.

After installing the required software and configuring everything, you can now hit Install SharePoint Server. However, this is where things get really tricky.

If you are like me, you’re used to setting up a local farm-configured machine and use local accounts for running services and connecting to the database.

DO NOT attempt this in SharePoint 2010 Beta 2.

Here’s the catch. SharePoint 2010 requires a domain account for any setup that is not Standalone setup. And you know what the Standalone is right? that’s the “I’m completely stupid” mode, in which you get a limited SQL Server Express.

That’s right, gone are the days of single server installs with SQL server and somewhat configurable setups. Either your SharePoint Server 2010 needs to be part of a domain or you are reduced to the “My brain went AWOL” mode.

So you need a domain controller. Don’t think it’s as easy as adding one to your SharePoint server, though, as adding an AD controller role after you have configured all your prerequisite services leads to… issues.

If you are too eager to start the install and have already run the prerequisite installer, well, it’s time to remove all the services and roles, add the AD controller, and then run everything from scratch.

OK, so in short, get your AD up and running prior to starting SharePoint install. If not, you’ll be very, very surprised and, like me, reinstall at least a couple of times.

SharePoint 2010 Site Creation Process Rollback

2009-11-16T13:38:00.001+01:00

Here’s one improvement that I like. When your site provisioning failed in SharePoint v3, you basically got a new site with failed provisioning, meaning you had to delete the site before you could attempt the creation again.
This is a nuisance most of the time, but when you start creating more complex solutions, having multiple child sites, perhaps some code changes, activating features outside web scope, or other goodies as part of a site creation process, things start getting complicated. With the method I’m using for development, deleting failed sites and resetting the environment takes a lot of time.

Oh, and before you start saying I should use a different method, you should know that I usually spend about one week creating a new portal solution, including prototyping, developing everything from scratch, testing, and deploying.

Now, I’ve been looking into the new WSP-based templates in SharePoint 2010. As you know, SharePoint 2010 leaves the STP-format behind, and good riddance. From now on you get WSP files instead. They’re not particularly useful or beautiful WSP files, but at least it’s WSP, a format far superior to STP, especially considering the ease with which you can import a WSP into Visual Studio.
So I did. I started with a basic SharePoint 2010 team site and exported it as a template and tried creating a new site from that template. Well, it failed:

So, prior to splitting the WSP up and trying to fix this problem, I went into Site Settings and then to Sites and Workspaces to delete the failed site. But what did I see? Nothing! The failed site didn’t show up.

I’ll dig more into how this happens, whether there is some kind of pre-creation sandbox or if SharePoint deletes any failed sites automatically afterwards. That will be important knowledge for anyone looking to develop custom site definitions in SharePoint 2010. If you know, however, don’t be shy; post a comment or send me an email :-)
.b

Using WSPBuilder for SharePoint 2010 Development

2009-11-16T11:06:00.001+01:00

I’m a huge, huge fan of Carsten Keutmann, the K-man and the author of WSPBuilder and SharePoint Manager 2007. That guy has saved me so much time that I have no idea how to repay him, except offer him whatever amount of free beer I can if he ever stops by Oslo.
Now, you all know that there are some great new tools coming for SharePoint 2010, including the fabulous Visual Studio 2010. I’m not convinced, and I damned well wont change my way of working, just because Microsoft again promises to create a great authoring experience. No thank you, I’ll stick to Visual Studio 2008 and I’ll continue to use WSPBuilder until the day I’m certain that the K-man wont be better than Microsoft at creating development tools for SharePoint.
However, I’m developing for SharePoint 2010 now, and because of Microsoft missing the SPC09 deadline for releasing SharePoint 2010, Carsten hasn’t released any WSPBuilder for 2010. Is that a problem? Yeah, but it’s one easily solved.
The only thing you need to do, in fact, is to replace the reference to the 12.0.0.0 version of Microsoft.SharePoint.dll with the new 14.0.0.0 version and you can use the current version of WSPBuilder for your SharePoint 2010 projects. You do not even need to rename the 12-folder in the Visual Studio project; WSPBuilder will use the contents of the 12-folder, not the 12-folder itself, as the basis for building a WSP.
The second thing you may want to do is to load the SharePoint 2010 wss.xsd schema reference in your project to get IntelliSense support for your CAML files.

This screenshot is taken from one of those fancy new WSP site templates. All I did was to crack open the WSP and move all the features from the CAB into a straight-forward WSPBuilder project. Then, I’ve added a new WSPBuilder item and attached the new wss.xsd as the schema.
And yes, I’ve tried this. And yes, it works like a charm.
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SharePoint Manager 2010 – Sort Of

2009-11-15T14:19:00.000+01:00

OK, I’ve gotten a few comments and questions on how to get SharePoint Manager 2007 to work with SharePoint 2010 after I posted the screenshot of SPM and a SharePoint 2010 server in the post on Upgrading Solutions in SharePoint 2010 earlier today.

By the way, if you’re wondering about the List Templates node on the web above, that’s a feature that the K-man added to the source code but not to the built releases. You’ll get that feature as part of your new SharePoint Manager now, though.

Now, I’m guessing that Carsten Keutmann will release a new official version of SharePoint Manager any day now, but until then, you can follow this recipe to get your own version up and running.

To get this running you need Visual Studio, either 2005, 2008, or 2010. The free Express editions should work just fine. Even if you are a Visual Studio newbie, you only need to perform two simple tasks, so anyone should be able to get this up and running.

Next, you need the beta of SharePoint 2010, or more correctly, you need the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll file from that release.

Then, grab a hold of the latest source release of SharePoint Manager 2007. Just go to the source code download page and grab the Latest Version from the right. I’m using change set 25421 from June 10.

Open the downloaded source project by double-clicking on the .sln file and convert the solution to your current version of Visual Studio if required (The K-man is doing this in Visual Studio 2005), and open the references node in the project. You will see Microsoft.SharePoint listed. Right-click and select Remove, as shown below.

Next, right-click the References node and select Add Reference. On the Browse tab, navigate to the SharePoint 2010 version of the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll file and hit OK. That’s the first thing you need to do.

The second task is to replace a value in a code file, but again, this is dead simple. Open the Library folder in the project and then the SPMPaths.cs file, shown below.

In that file, navigate to the method called GetSharePointDirectory(). It should be on line 53. Then, update the key string and change the 12.0 to 14.0 at the end of that string, as shown below.

And now, hit Build->Build Solution from the menu, and behold, in your project folder should manifest a new version of SharePoint Manager, ready to be put to good use on your SharePoint 2010 server.

To use this on the server, you’ll need to copy the contents of the Debug folder onto your SharePoint 2010 server. The Debug folder will appear in the same folder from which you opened the .sln file, under the bin directory. Once you have copied the folder to your SharePoint 2010 server, simply start the SharePoint Manager 2007 application and start managing :-)

Note: In case this is too much work for you and since SharePoint Manager 2007 is released under GPL, I’ve taken the liberty to upload my solution so you can download the entire shebang. Just run the application from the bin/debug folder and off go you. This download is under GPL. Please read the enclosed license.txt file.

That’s it. ~~I’ll update this post when the K-man releases the new official version.~~

Update: Within a few hours of posting this, Carsten Keutmann told me that he has now published the official SharePoint Manager 2010 to http://spm.codeplex.com/, so rather than use this version you should get the official one from him :-)

Upgrading Solutions in SharePoint 2010 – Visual Studio Projects

2009-11-14T21:13:00.000+01:00

Jeffrey Langdon asked me on Twitter the other day about how good the backwards compatibility was in SharePoint 2010. Actually, my boss also asked about 5 minutes after Jeffrey. In any case, I thought I’d comment on it.

Despite the new version of SharePoint containing tons of new functionality, most projects will upgrade as easily as replacing the reference to the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll. This will make upgrading extremely easy, but even more important, it makes it feasible to start developing for your upcoming SharePoint 2010 projects now and simply upgrade the solution once the RTM hits the shelves.

In fact, to demonstrate this and also show off the K-man’s genius (that’s Carsten Keutmann, if you don’t know), let me show you a screenshot that took about 10 minutes to create.

As you can see, this is, sort of, SharePoint Manager 2010. All I did was replace the DLL reference and then update one property in the code.

I am so happy. Thank you Carsten. Thank you a whole lot…

SharePoint Virtualization – A Response to Woody

2009-11-13T16:01:00.001+01:00

Woody Windischman, author of Professional SharePoint Designer 2007 and target of the We Want Woody campaign a couple of months back, just posted a blog post on SharePoint and virtualization.

I started writing a comment, but realized I had so much to say that I’d flood his comments field, so I will post my response as a blog post instead. I recommend that you read his post first so you know to what I’m responding.

Woody,

I'm a bit surprised about this article, as it seems your arguments are very straw man like, meaning you set up a set of perceived arguments for virtualization and then slash them down as if they were _the_ arguments for virtualization.

Performance

You say that performance is rarely a reason for virtualization. Granted, virtualization does not increase performance in any way, but it does allow you to balance performance utilization. You may have low-impact servers that are basically utilizing 5-10% of a physical machine, and putting all those onto a single host will save you cost.

This does not only affect SharePoint, but other server roles as well. Perhaps you need a DFS server or a configuration store, or something like that. Put those machines on a single metal box and you've utilized a lot more of that physical machine, saving power, money, and maintenance.

So, what about those high-impact servers? Well, you need more metal, but you'd need that in any case. The overhead of modern virtualization is negligible, so virtualizing on a single server still makes sense. For example, what happens when you physical machine no longer meets the performance requirements? You need a new physical machine including the overhead of installing, configuring, and migrating the existing machine to new hardware.

Resilience and Availability

Then you say that resilience is not as cool as people say, because if your host goes down, all your VMs go down. That is only the case if your VM setup is on a single virtual host, and that is hardly ever the case in well-engineered solutions. Of course, if you put all your functionality on a single server, whether that is a VM host or a SharePoint server, then you are screwed if that machine goes down anyway.

Virtualization allows you to spread your eggs on different physical hosts. In fact, as you say, VMWare and other vendors have long provided functionality for moving running VMs from one host to another, without a second of downtime. This allows you to, in real-time, reorganize your SharePoint farm, moving VMs to either lower- or higher-powered hosts as your needs change.

However, what about patching and updating? Having two WFEs even on a single VM, allows you to patch one at a time and maintain solution availability. In fact, for the sake of availability, I’d argue that it is much better to have two virtual WFEs of 2GB than to have a single physical 4 GB WFE.

Other Benefits of Virtualization

You also forget another major reason for virtualization; hardware independence. You may have sufficient hardware to run your SharePoint environment on physical machines now, and then you want to upgrade to SP2010, hitting you with eight times the RAM requirements as you have for MOSS.

How do you upgrade physical machines? You take them down, open them up, put new metal in them, and refire, hoping your new setup still works. If you want to upgrade even more, you'd better hope you have enough RAM slots or that your server supports the new CPU you desperately need. Or you reinstall the whole thing on new physical hardware.

How do you upgrade a virtual machine? You drag-and-drop it from one host to another. Worst case you may need to reboot to tell the VMHost that your VM now needs 32 GBs or RAM. You never need to exchange a CPU or be limited by what the hardware vendor thinks is enough room.

Want to add a new disk? Heck, just a few 10 GB disks to offload the pagefile would be nice, but where to go get physical spindles that are 10 GB these days? And does your metal have room for more disks at all?

You're getting a SAN, that's what you do, but then again, a VM can just as easily utilize the same thing so there's absolutely no benefit to physical machines at all, when it comes to hardware upgrade.

With the excellent comments by Brent Ozar, I’d even recommend that you virtualize your SQL server. Granted if your physical machine is already overloaded then adding virtualization will solve nothing. That is not an argument against virtualization however, it is an argument for better hardware, which in any case, virtual or not, will be the solution.

Brent’s arguments about single HBAs for individual VMs is a good one, but it is only really applicable when you are saturating a full HBA. Disk I/O, memory, or CPU limitations is not a usable argument against virtualization. At that stage, however, when your SQL server actually needs multiple HBAs, then you had better have some good hardware and network people available in any case, and you likely do as well.

So, in Short…

Use virtualization, but before that, use your brain.

I Love SharePoint – And Here’s Why (Part 1)

2009-11-11T19:42:00.001+01:00

OK, by now, regular readers have read my “SharePoint Sucks – And Here’s Why” series that I wrote just prior to SPC09, detailing, and you’re clever enough to deduce this, why I think SharePoint sucks. As was revealed in the final part, however, I don’t hate SharePoint, I love it. Now, it’s time to show you why I love SharePoint.

So, without further ado, here’s the first thing I love about SharePoint.

Ready?

SharePoint Documentation

If you have been reading this blog for a long time (which makes you a rare individual, but I thank you nonetheless) you may remember that I wrote a post just over a year ago, listing my 8 favorite SharePoint development features. Perhaps surprising, I listed the documentation as my single most favorite feature or SharePoint.

Why did I list the documentation as the most favorite feature? Well, the documentation sucks. In fact, I listed it in the previous series as one of those things I wouldn’t mention, but that still sucked. It sucks so bad, actually, that quite a lot of my book Building the SharePoint User Experience details errors, omissions, or problems in the documentation.

Note: Since then (August, 2008), the documentation has improved, by quite a lot, actually. Apparently, someone at Microsoft bought my book and learned to read, because many of the issues I mention in the book are now fixed. There still are issues, but all in all, it’s beginning to come together, just in time for a new version to appear.

So, will we be back to square one with SharePoint 2010? I don’t think so. The documentation at this point is still based on beta, but it’s looking good. Microsoft obviously saw how bad the lack of decent documentation was for the reputation of WSS3 and are now focusing on avoiding that for the next version. Does that mean it will be perfect or even good at launch? I don’t think so either, but I could be wrong, and even if I’m not, it doesn’t matter.

So, if the documentation is bad, or anything below good, why do I love SharePoint because of the documentation? It’s because of my inner child.

You see, the biggest benefit of the documentation is not that is is the end-all of all knowledge about SharePoint, but that it inspires and encourages exploration. I find myself wandering through the SDK, reading about classes and features, imagining how cool it would be to have endless time to write code to utilize these new discoveries. I can envision how I would have written a certain feature or an application page. I can see how Microsoft has been thinking, and I can explore new ways of improving on their ideas.

When I was writing BSUX, I spend hours every day, reading the documentation. I did so for several months. If you have not sat down for a few hours, just randomly opening SDK pages, you have no idea about all the hidden gems that lies within. I encourage you to download and begin reading today. Not the 2010 stuff; that’s still too incomplete to be awe-inspiring. Get the latest downloadable SharePoint 2007 SDK, and just jump in.

It’s like the Wikipedia curse, only for SharePoint geeks. You start out looking at how you can add new features to a solution upgrade (hint: you can’t) and end up having redesigned, in your mind, the entire content type management system. Then, I often fire up a SharePoint code test project in Visual Studio and explore objects using IntelliSense.

I have worked with software development for the better part of my life (meaning more or less continuously since I was 8 years old). I have worked with more platforms and software products than I care to remember.

Did I mention I did some rather heavy ASP.NET development in Perl? Ah, you didn’t know that Perl could do ASP.NET? Well, neither did most of the Perl community. I think, at most, about 10 people in the world really worked with Perl and ASP.NET at any point in time.

My point is, most of these platforms have been a chore, with no cohesion, no underlying philosophy, no clear goals. Working with these systems and platforms have been more of a burden than pure fun. That’s why I always used to have ‘pet’ projects that weren’t required to become anything as opposed to those projects that I had to do to put food on my table.

That all changed with SharePoint. Not since I started writing my first BASIC programs on my C64 have I had that child-like desire to learn and explore. I feel like a kid again, discovering a whole new world, so filled with wonders and new discoveries that I often stay awake until the wee hours of morning, trying to digest all the good stuff.

SharePoint has given me back that child-like joy, and that true desire to learn, and for that, I absolutely love SharePoint.