Matthew McDermott

SharePoint 2010 Get your sneak peek right here!

Matthew McDermott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:41:23 GMT

Just in time for your summer viewing pleasure Microsoft is unveiling some of the new workloads for SharePoint 2010. Head over to the newly revamped Microsoft SharePoint Product site and catch Tom Rizzo, Paul Andrew and Richard Riley as they demonstrate just a few of the new capabilities of SharePoint 2010. Each video has a different audience. General information an technical overview from Tom, IT Pro and Administration from Richard and Developer considerations from Paul.

In addition to the videos Microsoft is releasing their workload vision with the new “pie” including Sites, Communities, Content, Search, Insights, and Composites.

The videos are a great way to whet your apatite for the new 2010 bells and whistles. October is right around the corner!

Azure Explanation for the Code Phobic

Matthew McDermott — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:44:25 GMT

I found this great video explaining Azure.

What is Windows Azure?

http://blog.smarx.com/posts/what-is-windows-azure-a-hand-drawn-video

I love the hand drawn approach to teaching. Just goes to show that the simplest teaching techniques are sometimes the most powerful. The key to his success IMO is the 5 hours he spent up front. Clear, concise and clever. Very memorable. Enjoy!

Windows Live Writer and Twitter

Matthew McDermott — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:30:04 GMT

I just found a plug-in for Windows Live Writer that posts updates to Twitter when you publish a new post to your blog. Twitter Notify lets you format the tweet and prompts you when you publish a post.

Book Review: Take Back Your Life

Matthew McDermott — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:01:00 GMT

I love BEING organized…I hate GETTING organized. I made a promise to myself (dare I say a resolution) in January that each month I would take one step closer to getting myself organized. Actually this was a good time for me because I have been planning on updating my home computer infrastructure so it made sense that I would also get my home office and electronic files all backed up and secure. My first step in this process was to read and really absorb the book Take Back Your Life! Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to get organized and stay organized.

The Challenge

Taking on a “Get Organized” task is much different from tackling a technical task like “Learn Silverlight”. I liken it to losing weight. You can read all the weight loss books, you can buy the sensible cook books, you can visit the support groups, buy the gym membership and deeply understand the concepts, but if you don’t practice the principles every day, without cheating or giving up, you will not be successful. The basic principles of getting organized have not changed since Hyrum Smith and Stephen Covey turned personal organization into a cult following with the Franklin Planner and the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, just like the basic tenants of loosing weight have not changed, eat less and/or exercise more.

Why is this book different?

Sally McGhee and John Wittry take a similar approach to walking the reader through the philosophy and fundamental mind set that must change for a disorganized person to become an organized person. What is different is that they teach you how to use Microsoft Outlook in a new way (rather than having to purchase software or a paper planner). The book demonstrates how to use Outlook to manage your information and the lessons are presented it in an easy to consume (I must be hungry with all of these food references!) manner that was easy for me to take a step at a time. Each step of the way I would change just enough of my “disorganized” behavior into my new “organized” behavior. The techniques they teach were new to me and I have used Outlook my whole life. My most favorite technique is creating an appointment for a task from an e-mail. I won’t tell you how to do it, you have to read the book. This single technique, coupled with the many other teachings has proved to be the biggest single change to boost my productivity and ACCOUNTABILITY for getting things done.

Things I Liked

There is a lot to like about this book..that said, it is a personal productivity book and not a Stephen King novel. You have to pace yourself or you risk missing the great tips in and around the productivity guidance. As I said, I gave myself 6 months to make the change. That means a couple chapters a month, with time set aside to review the best parts to be sure I was following through. I like the advice on keeping a single calendar and incorporating my work and home life on that single calendar. The book mentions using SharePoint in a few specific scenarios, mostly work and team related information. There is not a lot of detailed information about SharePoint, but this is not a SharePoint book.

What was missed

The book did not miss much. The book presents a very clear picture of using Outlook, OneNote and other Microsoft technologies in concert with one another to develop as few “Collecting” points for your information, appointments, obligations and tasks as possible. The book presents a very nimble approach to mobile information management as well, suggesting that the reader invest in a smart phone. The option presented in the book focuses on Windows Mobile. Since the books publication there have been many advances that are not covered, that’s the problem with books. I would love to see an update that discusses options for the iPhone and Windows Mobile 6. As I have an iPhone I will tell you how I adjusted the concepts in the book to work for me.

Mobile Tasks

I use an iPhone, there, I said it. I used to own a Windows Mobile phone. (2 actually) Sure, there are some things I cannot do with my iPhone that I was able to do with my Windows Mobile phone, but not many. There are TONS of things I can do with my iPhone that I could NEVER do with my Windows Mobile phone. For me, the iPhone just works better. So how do I manage my Outlook Tasks with my iPhone? I use a two part approach. The first part is the iPhone app and web site Toodledo. The second part is the Toodledo Outlook Sync. Once you have begun creating tasks in Outlook the Sync tool keeps the Toodledo site up to date. You can create new tasks in Outlook, iPhone or the web interface and everything stays in sync.

Mobile Notes

A core concept in Take Back Your Life is minimizing “Collecting Points”, all those random scraps of information scattered in the debris of your wallet, purse, desk drawers, white boards, cork boards, etc. An easy way to decrease these collection points is to have a good mobile note taking application. I have found Evernote to be that application. Evernote is available for many platforms and serves as my single greatest collecting point. Even if I jot the note on paper I can snap a picture and store it in Evernote. THEN, I can search for it, from my desktop, even if it is a HANDWRITTEN note!

So jotting a note and taking a photo renders searchable results in Evernote. Here are my search results for the keywords “Buy Take Back”.

Bottom Line

Only you can change your life. No book, technology or device will change that. If you want to get organized this book can help you take a significant step in the right direction. Even if you don’t follow every single lesson in the book you will be more organized and a better Outlook user for having worked through the lessons. Choose what works for you and leave what doesn’t.

Get the book

Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized

Add “Click to Call” to SharePoint People Search

Matthew McDermott — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:56:17 GMT

At Catapult we recently implemented Unified Communications all the way to our phones. I love the functionality and reach provided by the UC solution. I love getting voice mail in my Inbox. I have to be more careful about my Communicator Status, but that is easy. We needed an easy way to enable calling and lookup inside the company. We already had People search so I decided to add the ability to click the displayed phone number to call the found person. It just requires adding a hyperlink with the TEL: prefix.

People Search

There are two web parts that display the people results, “Search High Confidence Results” and “People Search Core Results”. Both need to be edited but the changes are the same.

Begin by placing the page in edit mode. Site Actions | Edit Page.
Once in edit mode choose the Edit menu on the People Search Core Results web part and choose Edit Shared Web Part.
Click the XSL Editor button and copy the contents of the dialog into a new file in the site collections XSL Style Library. I describe this technique in detail in my post about image search.
Create a link to your new file and test that everything is wired up correctly. Note: if you get the following error you should not panic. This is a known defect in the PSC Web Part and I don’t expect it to be fixed any time soon as I pointed it out years ago. It usually resolves on it’s own after you publish the page.

System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added. at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentException(ExceptionResource resource) at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert(TKey key, TValue value, Boolean add) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.PeopleCoreResultsWebPart.SetSortedRefinementDataOnHiddenObject() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.PeopleCoreResultsWebPart.SortResultsIntoArrayLists(XmlNodeList resultsList, Hashtable colleagues, Hashtable colleaguesWCollOfColl, UserProfile currentUserProfile) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.PeopleCoreResultsWebPart.SortBySocialDistance() at...
Near the end of the style sheet locate the lines:

<xsl:if test='string-length($phone) > 0'> <xsl:value-of select="$phone" /> -</xsl:if>
Change the second line to:
<a href="tel:{$phone}" title="Call {preferredname}" ><xsl:value-of select="$phone" /></a>

(I know it’s bad form to use preferred name, and you should know better, in production add preferred name to the DisplayOfficeProfile template as a parameter and pass in preferred name. I took a short cut so I did not have to spend hours writing this post!)
Save your changes and check in your page your results should look like this:

Catapult Awards and Windows 7 Video Contest

Matthew McDermott — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:34:14 GMT

As Microsoft Gold Partner and National Systems Integrator (NSI) Catapult enters in all kinds of contests for recognition with Microsoft. Most recently we were awarded the Partner of the Year award for Custom Development Solutions, Web Development.

We are also competing in a Windows 7 video contest. You can bop over to Digital Forum TV and check us out. I love the pace and message of the video. Looks and feels like a Microsoft production, but we did it ourselves! If you like it, sign in with your Live ID and rate the video.

Pre or Post SP2 Hotfix for SharePoint

Matthew McDermott — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:58:20 GMT

The Trial Licensing issue that was introduced by SharePoint SP2 has been resolved by the product team. If you are affected (or wish to avoid the problem) you can install the fix before or after you deploy SharePoint SP2. The details are available on the SharePoint Team Blog.

Adventure Works Travel Site and Hands-on-Labs

Matthew McDermott — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:09:54 GMT

The Adventure Works Travel site and 10 Hands-On labs have been released to the SharePoint community. These developer oriented labs are available from The MSDN Code Gallery in the SharePoint on the Web Project. The kit comes with an installer for the AWT site with all the bells and whistles.

TechEd 2009 MVP Interview

Matthew McDermott — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:27:30 GMT

Heather Kostes, Business Group Lead from Microsoft interviewed me for the Microsoft MVP Program at Tech•Ed 2009. Of course I blathered on about Social Networking and Search. I love SharePoint because I enjoy showing clients how to use the tools they have to build business value. (I think that message came through…:)

Anyway, it was a fun interview. It’s posted on the Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog

Waiting for ODC? Wait no more!

Matthew McDermott — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:41:00 GMT

For those of you waiting for the Office Developer Conference you should stop waiting and sign up for the 2009 SharePoint Conference. The SharePoint Team posted a note that the content will be included in SPC and ODC will not take place this year.

Sign-up and be the first on your block to get the advanced look at Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.