Matthew McDermott

Best of SharePoint 2010

Matthew McDermott — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:17:44 GMT

Well, we’re half way through our 5 city tour with Catapult Systems “Best of SharePoint 2010”. My colleagues and I have delivered this great day long SharePoint 2010 overview in Austin, TX and Tampa, FL. Today is Dallas then Houston on Thursday and Denver next Thursday. There is still time to register if you are in Houston and Denver. Just hit our Events page and get all of the details.

For those of you who did attend, thank you for all of the valuable feedback. The event is getting better as we go and we’re adding more demos at each event. (20 demos at last count.)

Here are the decks:

I am looking forward to Denver on the 19th!

Austin SharePoint User Group: SharePoint 2010 Preview

Matthew McDermott — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:08:30 GMT

Matthew McDermott, Microsoft MVP, and Brad Freels, Microsoft Senior Technology Specialist, will provide a 2 hour overview of the great new features of SharePoint 2010.

Including:

Sites: UI Changes, Mobility Support, Office Client Support
Communities: Social Improvements, My Sites, Activity Feeds
Content: Enterprise Content Types, Metadata, Video Content Types
Search: Phonetic Search, Navigation, Relevance
Insights: Visio Services, Web Analytics, PerformancePoint Services
Composites: BCS, External Lists, SharePoint Designer

We won't be able to cover EVERYTHING in two hours- there is just too much! We will do our best to cover the highlights and take questions from the audience to drive the conversation into the areas that impact you the most.

Come early, stay late! We'll answer your questions if we can.

Date/Time:

Wednesday, Nov. 11th:
Welcome Time: 5:45-6:00 Intro & Logistics: 6:00 - 6:05 Presentation: 6:05-8:00

Click here to RSVP.

Event Location:

Microsoft Office
9606 N. Mopac Expressway Suite 200
Austin, TX 78759

Life After SharePoint Conference 2009

Matthew McDermott — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:31:00 GMT

Wow, anyone in attendance at the 2009 SharePoint Conference will tell you, there was a LOT going on. I don’t want to rub your nose in it, it is a simple fact, being at the conference, experiencing the nerdy goodness of ITF collaboration and sharing, seeing the SharePoint Fairy (#SPFairy) granting geeky wishes and stealing the attention from the conference floor, or rubbing elbows with the folks who write (or manage the folks who write) one of Steve Balmer’s “favorite products”, cannot be duplicated on-line. You have to be there to participate.

OK, You missed it, what now?

There are tons of new resources that have been launched since SteveB addressed the crowds at SPC09. I will try to wrap them up in a list of links for you here:

Conference Key Notes and Highlights

Several of the key note addresses are available to the public. You can watch them on the SharePoint Conference 2009 site. These videos provide a high level overview of the workloads addressed by SharePoint 2010 and will guide your evaluation of the soon to be released beta.

SharePoint.Microsoft.com

If you call yourself a SharePoint expert and you don’t know about Microsoft’s investment in sharepoint2010.microsoft.com, crawl out from under that rock and have a browse around. Start with the sneak peek videos by Tom Rizzo, Paul Allen and Richard Riley. Then you have to check out all of the new video content: http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/Pages/videos.aspx there is a ton of demos to whet your appetite while you wait for Beta 2.

Technet

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee263917.aspx

Technet is your source for IT Pro content on SharePoint 2010. You can review system requirements and upgrade paths. You can view videos that will help you get up to speed on the new terminology for SharePoint 2010. There are tons of new features that support IT Pros for management, patching and upgrades built into SharePoint 2010. Get started here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee518660.aspx (I like the voice on the Security video…)

MSDN

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514561.aspx

MSDN is your source for Developer content. Like TechNet, the folks at MSDN have produced a wealth of content. This developer focused site highlights the significant improvements in the developer story for SharePoint. Get stated with “Getting Started” the center for developer videos: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514561.aspx You have a LOT to learn. SharePoint 2010 supports REST, XHTML, LINQ and Silverlight out of the box. Add to that the Client Object Model and direct integration from Visual Studio 2010 and true F5 deployment and debugging and it all adds up to a busy “rest of the year” for our developers to get up to speed on the new stuff.

Podcast Anyone?

My friends Rob Foster, Nick Swan and Bret Lonsdale conduct regular interviews of SharePoint professionals on a wide range of topics on the SharePoint Pod Show. You can follow their road trip from Seattle to Vegas last week and the interviews they held. I love the format because I can listen to them in traffic and learn a lot while I add to my carbon footprint. Check out 3 favorites on the Road2SPC

Interview with Tom Rizzo

Interview with Mike Fitzmaurice

Interview with Rob Lefferts

Sign up for Beta 2

SteveB announced that Beta 2 will be made publicly available in November, you can sign up to get the notification here : http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/try-it/Pages/Trial.aspx

Still have questions?

You can ask them here Microsoft SharePoint Forums

Don’t get left out next year!

It has not been announced yet, but I am sure the folks at Microsoft will start collecting e-mail addresses for the next conference. If it’s like last time the announcement will be on the Conference Site. Don’t get left out again.

SPC09 Be There Virtually

Matthew McDermott — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:51:02 GMT

By now the planet knows that the 2009 Microsoft SharePoint Conference is sold out. Does that mean that you are going to miss all the good stuff? Not at all. You can attend the keynote address by Steve Balmer and Jeff Teper virtually. The keynote address will be streamed live at 9:00 Vegas time and available for viewing later from the Conference Web site. Go to www.mssharepointconference.com for more info.

You can follow the conference on Twitter @spconf and #SPC09.

Catapult Webcast: Overview of Windows Server R2

Matthew McDermott — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:20:00 GMT

Join us for this technical webcast as we discuss the new features and improvements in Windows Server R2 and how it brings virtualization enhancements within Hyper-V including Live Migration.

We will also explore the management improvements such as:

Better Together with Windows 7 (Branch Cache & Direct Access)
Platform Scalability
Power Management
Built-in File Classification Engine

This session is geared towards IT Management and Windows Server Administration, with a focus on the updates and changes in 2008 R2.

Where can I get more info? From the Session Brochure

Can I attend? Sure, here is the RSVP Link.

All event/webcast information is always posted on our website.

Austin SPUG: Building Successful Solutions on SharePoint

Matthew McDermott — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:13:53 GMT

Building Successful Solutions on SharePoint

October 14th Program Description:

SharePoint is a great platform on which to build and deliver solutions. The question, however, quickly becomes what to build, how to build it, and most importantly, how to ensure that what I build is successful. In this presentation, we discuss the SharePoint “Solution Quadrant,” which addresses the many types of solutions you can build on SharePoint. We explore how to build your solution, keeping in mind the concepts of modularity and reusability. And finally, we address end user adoption challenges and how to overcome these by providing the information people need right to their fingertips. In short, how to get the most value out of your SharePoint investment!

Presenter Chris Kaveney has over 15 years aligning technology with business needs and IT experience. At CorasWorks, he advises SharePoint customers how to best architect and build business applications using the CorasWorks Modular Application Development System for SharePoint.

Date/Time:

Wednesday, Oct. 14th:
Welcome Time: 5:45-6:15 Intro & Logistics: 6:15 - 6:30 Stump the Panel: 6:30-7:00 Presentation: 7:00-8:00

Click here to RSVP.

Event Location:

Microsoft Office
9606 N. Mopac Expressway Suite 200
Austin, TX 78759

BackConnectionHostNames and DisableLoopbackCheck

Matthew McDermott — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:49:49 GMT

Not to beat a dead horse, but if you are working with SharePoint and don’t know what the title of this post relates to, you need to educate yourself. If you have not run into an issue yet, just wait, you will.

The usual scenario is “out of the blue” you can no longer browse your SharePoint site from the server desktop, though you can browse it fine from other machines on the network. You receive an access denied page.
Your search crawls of SharePoint content fail with Access Denied.
You begin to experience Access Denied errors in your custom code when you migrate the code from a single server (in my case a development server) to a multi server farm. The code runs perfectly in development and the permission in Dev are IDENTICAL to Production, the only difference is that production is a multi-server farm.

Of course I stated that this happens “out of the blue”, the reality is it happens after applying any Service Pack that implements the loopback check security feature in IIS. Once the update is applied and the server rebooted a long standing security hole is plugged and the result is any or all of the above. While the issue has been around for quite some time, I still run into folks who have not encountered it and are surprised that they are hit by it.

People Who Rock

Todd Klindt blogged about this quite a while ago along with the link to the related KB 896681 with two options to solve the problem. I suppose that would have been the end of it. The problem was that the “easy way” of solving the problem (disableloopbackcheck) is not the RIGHT way to solve the problem (BackConnectionHostNames). Spence Harbar wrote a detailed post on the reasons for the security feature and the correct way to resolve the issues. He also indicates that you can control the setting with Group Policy. Great! Now I know HOW and WHY. The problem as I have watched many times during installations is that edit the registry by hand is fraught with disaster, particularly when the Administrator has unusually long fingers or a short attention span. As you create new web applications you have to remember to keep all the web servers’ registry entries up to date. This requires communication and management between Network administrators and SharePoint administrators. Enter Gary LaPoint to close the loop for good. Gary (of STSADM admin fame) wrote an STSADM command that uses a timer job to keep the registry up-to-date based on your server configuration.

Sweet!

Easier Silverlight Development against SharePoint

Matthew McDermott — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:55:36 GMT

I have been spending quite a bit of time lately working with Silverlight 3 and SharePoint. One of the first big shifts for me is that Silverlight Development is Client development. Silverlight runs in the browser, but it runs on the client, so no SharePoint Object Model code. You have to access all of the goodness that is SharePoint through its web services.

Once you get started on your project you add a Service Reference and point at your desired SharePoint Web service. You will immediately run into the Visual Studio Warning:

Could not locate cross-domain policy at 'intranet.doghousetoys.com': Web services might not be accessible at runtime by your Silverlight application.

This is the desired behavior for a production Silverlight app. You don’t want a Silverlight application running on one domain calling malicious code from another domain. Yet in development that means that to run against (under, whatever) SharePoint you need to host your whole test harness inside of a SharePoint application. Ask a designer to do that and their head will pop off. Go ahead, ask ‘em! You’ll see. That means that it can take hours (or days) to get a designer rolling with Silverlight against SharePoint.

There is hope

Then I found this post by Tim Heuer about his Client-Access Policy helper for Visual Studio. This cool little helper lets you configure a client-access policy file for you web server. Then all you have to do is drag and drop it from your project into the root of your SharePoint site.

Visual Studio will still complain about the file missing, but when you run you project locally you will be able to hit the SharePoint web services without a problem.

Disclaimer

The file I use in my production environment is “wide open”. I don’t recommend this for Production implementation for security reasons. That said, here is the file I use.

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>      
<access-policy>       
    <cross-domain-access>       
        <policy>       
            <allow-from http-request-headers="*">       
                <domain uri="*"/>       
            </allow-from>       
            <grant-to>       
                <resource include-subpaths="true" path="/"/>       
            </grant-to>       
        </policy>       
    </cross-domain-access>       
</access-policy>

Speaking at SharePoint Conference 2009

Matthew McDermott — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:38:53 GMT

I will be speaking at the 2009 SharePoint Conference in October. I cannot publish all the details but my topic is:

Developing Social Applications with SharePoint 2010

This lecture focuses on the developer interfaces for the API and Web services for SharePoint 2010. Social Computing with SharePoint involves creating people aware applications that take advantage of User Profiles, People oriented data, and Personalization built into SharePoint. This session will demonstrate development techniques for:

Using SharePoint 2010 User Profiles
Working with the SharePoint User Profile and New Web Services
Taking action on User Profile Changes
Using People oriented data in Custom Applications

I am excited that this will be a 400 level session. I finally get to dive deeply into some fun code and features that I know can help organizations build great applications.

If you have not signed up you should do so quickly. The conference is nearly sold out.

Central Texas SharePoint User Group: "Building Scalable Enterprise Applications with MOSS 2007"

Matthew McDermott — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:25:11 GMT

Central Texas SharePoint User Group: "Building Scalable Enterprise Applications with MOSS 2007"

September Program Description:

There are techniques that organizations with experienced .NET developers should use to develop scalable, distributed, high performance applications for SharePoint Server 2007. Successfully delivering SharePoint applications should involve programming techniques that focus on optimal code execution and efficient application delivery. We will discover proven methodologies for eliminating performance bottlenecks, reducing resource utilization, preventing memory leaks, improving render times, making efficient use of caching mechanisms, and avoiding common API mistakes that can negatively impact performance. We will also discuss tools and techniques that are available to measure application performance, isolate under-performing objects and enforce optimal programming practices. Presented by Eric Shupps.

Matthew McDermott

Best of SharePoint 2010

Austin SharePoint User Group: SharePoint 2010 Preview

Life After SharePoint Conference 2009

OK, You missed it, what now?

Conference Key Notes and Highlights

SharePoint.Microsoft.com

Technet

MSDN

Podcast Anyone?

Sign up for Beta 2

Still have questions?

Don’t get left out next year!

SPC09 Be There Virtually

Catapult Webcast: Overview of Windows Server R2

Austin SPUG: Building Successful Solutions on SharePoint

Building Successful Solutions on SharePoint

BackConnectionHostNames and DisableLoopbackCheck

People Who Rock

Easier Silverlight Development against SharePoint

There is hope

Disclaimer

Speaking at SharePoint Conference 2009

Developing Social Applications with SharePoint 2010

Central Texas SharePoint User Group: "Building Scalable Enterprise Applications with MOSS 2007"

Central Texas SharePoint User Group: "Building Scalable Enterprise Applications with MOSS 2007"

Location

Web Site

Registration