Sharing My Point | Mark V Overdijk

Branding SharePoint and OneNote Canvas video

markoverdijk — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:13:00 GMT

First off; Thanks to Mike Gannotti for pointing these out in the first place.

Design & branding SharePoint

Sure, we are mostly keeping ourselves busy with "0" and "1"'s of SharePoint. Just get the technology to do what we (or the paying customer) want it to do and then we're done. Most of the time the design and branding of our SharePoint solutions can do a lot better.
And now there's a site that specializes in this department: BrandingSharepoint.com

Canvas for OneNote

I already posted a link to the Office Labs site via Twitter, but now there are videos from channel 10 and Office Labs about this great new add-on. Have fun!

Channel 10 - First Look: Canvas for OneNote

Canvas for OneNote Demo Video

Canvas for OneNote Add and Edit Video

Canvas for OneNote Browse, Organize, and Activity View Video

Application support through Twitter

markoverdijk — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:23:00 GMT

Just a quick blog on sunday about using Twitter to give user support.

After I downloaded the Mindjet Mindmanager 8 trial, I received an e-mail redirecting me to the Mindjet site, but also to the Mindjet Twitter account.
Why? Mindjet uses its Twitter account to bring Mindjet users + employees together. Have a question? Need a mindmap template? Can't find an option? Tweet it @mindjet!

This way I found the Mindmap template gallery, which I didn't while searching their site. What happend exactly?

@Salespratice asked about a mindmap for sales call scripts.

@Mindjet followers reacted that they would also like to see a similar template

@Mindjet responded with the link to their teamplate gallery

Question came in feb20th, 9:21pm and was resolved AND shared with the world at feb20th, 11:49pm. Nice.

I really like this kind of Twitter use. Direct support through Twitter by the "professional" support dept AND the community. I like it!

My First Master Page (2)

markoverdijk — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:31:00 GMT

I did some work during the weekend on my new Master Page for my company inhouse blog.

First thing I did, was throwing away the custom master page our IT department developed. I looks horrible <grin />

After this I started of with the base components. I used the excellent Base Master Page of Heather Solomon. Now my blog looks like the screenshot below.

This weekend I started hiding placeholders I wasn't going and/or didn't want to use [Visible="False"]. I placed these placeholoders at the bottom of the page, just before the </form> tag.

Next I moved some placeholders around and added a graphic on the top of the screen. After this I added a small "copyright" sentence and the bottom of the screen.

Next I changed the *.css files to get rid of horrible orange, red, purple color scheme. I made it worse. Now it's green :)

But I'm still pretty satisfied with progress (see screenshot below) so far. It's still a loooooong way before I'm completely done with the design.

Also check out MikeG's blog. He's been busy with re-designing his blog too! He's a lot quicker though...

My First Master Page

markoverdijk — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:11:00 GMT

In our company, INHolland University, I have a few blogs to which I publish articles through Word2007. It works amazingly well, and by switching accounts, I can publish the same article to several places. One of these places, is my personal employee blog on MySite.
The custom master page INHolland uses, is pretty lame (most awful color scheme you could imagine times two) and had been deployed while in Beta fase. So there are still some quirks. Thanks guys, great job!

So I decided to create my own little custom master page & css layout to spice things up and be a bit more original then the rest ;-)
I just started and the first thing is done > mvo_blog.master has been saved. For this I used the “How to create a minimal master page” post at MSDN.
Now off to re-arrange some stuff, throw away some stuff and embed new stuff. Keep you posted!

Next up: Twitter addiction?

markoverdijk — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:27:00 GMT

As one of the last Mohicans without a Twitter account, I finally gave up my resistance and gave it a try.
I didn't really see the benefits of having a Twitter account. I saw it as another social network thingy that I had to keep up to date. Why twitter when I have a Blog (several actually), can text/call people, have email, can update my "status" at several network sites (LinkedIn, Hyves, Plaxo, Hi5, Facebook, Friendster, Brightkite, Ping.fm, Konnects, etc.), and so on. Why would I need another account for feeding the rest of the world?

Well now I know why. It's fast, easy and powerful in its simplicity. It has almost replaced my RSS reader completely, because of the updates I receive (and sent) through Twitter. I sent messages to fellow twitters (is that the word?) for quick and easy interaction. The respond time is must faster than e-mail. And I can keep up with status "reports" to see if someone is in the neighborhood or working on something cool. Now I don't need to go to the several social networks/blogs to keep up with my or someone else's status. Great!
But there is a big PLUS in the use of Twitter and that's the API and the countless number of Twitter applications/gadgets/widgets. Because Twitter is extremely simple XML, the API is very easy to implement and to use in your way. That's also the reason why there are so many apps going around. My favs?

Twadget: Win7/Vista desktop gadget for your Twitter account and posting/replying to tweets.
Tiny Twitter (Windows Mobile): posting tweets, keeping track of tweets, direct messages and has a fun GPS locator.
Tweetdeck: powerful application with everything you could want to keep your account and the tweets under control.

The only thing I'm waiting for at the moment, is the first case of Twitter Addiction. And I'm not alone, regarding the cartoon I posted below. When you add too many Twitter users, you can go crazy on keeping track of each and every tweet. Information overflow is the result and you die. Well, maybe not die, but definitely get stressed out. So who's first?

Back online!

markoverdijk — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:38:00 GMT

As few of you noticed, my blog was inactive for a while. Big thanks to Daniel (server admin Openzeas) for getting me back online! There were some technical problems which mostly involved authentication caused by an update. And without having permission to log-in and post, you can understand the inactivity. J

But the big problems have been resolved and I'm back! I already posted the "Plug-and-Play Tag cloud" post, which was ready since december'08. Together with the new postings I also made a few modifications to the site. I started Twittering (yes, I've hopped on the hype-train), so I added the "Follow me on twitter" banner. But it's also possible to update your twitter status while reading this post! Just click on the Twitter icon below a post, or the link "Share that you're reading this post on Twitter!", just below the title of a post. Nice isn't it? I got the idea from EndUserSharepoint.com, thanks dudes!

Next up? Implementing a workflow which updates my Twitter status automatically when I've posted a new blog through Ping.fm. Minor detail is the face that for some reason I can't create a new workflow in SP Designer (???).

So keep an eye on your RSS feed reader or Twitter account, because the posting has started again @ Sharing My Point!

Plug-and-Play Tagcloud

markoverdijk — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:19:00 GMT

Sure, the Tag clouds have moved beyond the "hype". But why are the solutions offered all server-side installs? I can imagine there are many users with hosted SharePoint sites who don't have the ability to perform these installs. The IT department for the company I work for, doesn't let me near the server (and probably for a good reason <grin/>). So why isn't there an uPnP-like solution for getting a Tag cloud up and running for your SharePoint blog? Well, now there is!

I was surfing the net and stumbled upon this blog from iwkid, that was based upon this blog from the SP Designer Team Blog. He created a Tag Cloud "simply" by creating a linked data source between the lists Categories & Posts, which results in a lists of categories and the number of posts that are in each category. He created a few XSL templates, assigned variables and used stored local variables for this Tag cloud formula;

And the result is a Tag cloud webpart (see image), that can be imported into a page and works instantly!
Great stuff!

I found one "fault" with it. It sorted the categories upon the ID column and that's not the way you would like to see the Tag cloud being build up. So what I did is, I changed the sorting to the column Title. Now a newly created/added category won't be placed at the bottom of the Tag cloud, but placed within the cloud based upon the name.

I created a new category called "MTO", which (as you can see in the image to the left) is automatically placed after the "M…" and the before the "O.." categories in the cloud!

Requirements for importing the webpart;
- Categories list is called Categories (default)
- Posts list is called Posts (default)
- THAT'S IT!

Get the webpart, import it and have fun!

Employee Blogging Solution: the Anatomy

CORAL\markoverdijk — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 06:12:00 GMT

Daniel from ZevenSeas is posting a blog series concerning his work at a client concerning the development of an Employee Blogging Platform. He has been creating a great solution and (if it all works :-D ) looks great! Truly powerful stuff!

RfL form functionality in overview

CORAL\markoverdijk — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 06:23:00 GMT

A few days agon I reported on a little idea I worked out using InfoPath 2007 and SharePoint WSS > Fooling around with InfoPath.

Daniel was very kind plugging the post just slightly and have a few minor remarks about me personally ;) Thanks mate!

I promissed to get a video out on how the combination InfoPath+SharePoint actually works and here it is. Unfortunatly no sound, because the PC at work can't record it. So for now it's just a demo overview. It's just me creating a new request form and showing the different options and slightly show you how it works. Also the workflows and created tasks are looked at. The quality isn't that great, but I wanted to get this first video out before the weekend (which is packed, so no time there).

Have fun watching and hopefully I can create a full-lenght + commentary video out next week.

View my video by visiting my weblog

Photosynth promo and how to

CORAL\markoverdijk — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:56:00 GMT

For this friday afternoon a quick post about Photosynth. As you must know by now, the Live Labs team has released the Photosynth 1.0 product. It's also possible to have your "synth" shown in your SharePoint site by using the page viewer webpart or embed it using the instructing from my Embedding it All! post.

You can check it out at www.photosynth.net.

I saw the following video from channel 10 and I had to share it, because it shows how to use photosynth and get the best results. And off course the usual plugging will be done ;)

Visit my blog to view this video

Have a great weekend!