Things that Should be Easy

Advanced SharePoint Document Management with Multi-file Documents, SharePoint Saturday, NH

2011-10-19T17:32:00.001-04:00

It was great speaking at SharePoint Saturday NH last month. My presentation on Advanced SharePoint Document Management with Multi-file Documents is now available.

This session focused on implementing advanced SharePoint document management systems with virtual and compound documents. We looked at why we would want to consider multi-file documents as part of our SharePoint document management system and some characteristics of a good implementation. We also investigated some usage scenarios that are made possible or practical through multi-file documents and looked at what it would take to implement a solution for your organization. The session is best suited to content managers and information architects.

Some Internet sites using Plumtree portal / BEA Aqualogic / Oracle Webcenter Interactions

2011-10-11T14:45:00.001-04:00

I was working on a project involving setting up a portal based on Oracle Webcenter Interactions. I wanted to see some examples of sites built using the technology. Oracle purchased Webcenter Interaction from BEA. where the product was called Aqualogic. BEA in turn purchased it from Plumtree. After doing a few searches, I could not find a nice list enumerating some sites based on any of these products.

After a bit of thought, I simply did an Internet search for "server.pt/community". That is a Url fragment common to most implementations of the Plumtree portal and descendant products. Here’s a sample search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22server.pt%2Fcommunity%22

I was pleasantly rewarded with 10+ pages of sites based on Plumtree portal, BEA Aqualogic, or Oracle Webcenter Interactions. Here’s a sample result:

Happy searching.

Installing Windows 8 on VMware

2011-09-16T01:46:00.001-04:00

If you've recently downloaded the Windows 8 Developer Preview and tried to install it on VMware Workstation, VMware player, or VMware Fusion, you may have received the error:

*** VMware Workstation internal monitor error ***
vcpu-0:NOT_IMPLEMENTED vmcore/vmm/intr/apic.c:1903
Please report this problem by selecting menu item Help > VMware on the Web > Request Support, or by going to the Web page …

I can’t confirm this, but some have speculated that the message means that the version of the VMware product you are using (including VMware Workstation 7) does not support ACPI 2.0 which is required for Windows 8.
Regardless, the solution is to upgrade to VMware Workstation 8 or VMware Fusion 4. Alternatively, you can install Windows 8 within Oracle (Sun) VirtualBox 4.1.2. Make sure to use at least version 4.1.2 as older versions of VirtualBox do not work. VirtualBox and VMware Workstation can coexist on the same host.

Watch BUILD Keynote – Amazing Windows 8 Info!

2011-09-14T01:10:00.001-04:00

Watch the BUILD keynote for amazing Windows 8 information. The keynote talks about the user experience including app-to-app communications, software development using Visual Studio and HTML 5, and incredible hardware coming to the Windows platform.

Download Windows 8 Right Now!

2011-09-13T21:16:00.001-04:00

Can’t wait to check out Windows 8? Then download the Windows 8 developer preview right now! Thanks to Engadget for releasing the news. Check out other Windows 8 info.

Use SharePoint for Business Process Management at ABPMP Boston

2011-09-10T15:56:00.001-04:00

I’m very excited to present at the September 14^th meeting of the Boston chapter of the Association of Business Process Management Professionals (ABPMP). This presentation is intended to give non-technical and semi-technical BPM professionals an overview of how SharePoint can be used to facilitate BPM usage scenarios.

Presentation topics will include:

General discussion of core SharePoint capabilities
Three mechanisms for implementing SharePoint solutions
What does process management mean to you?
Discussion of various aspects of process management and their implementations, with demos:
- Data capture and management
- Automation (workflow)
- System integration
- Reporting

When:
Wednesday September 14, 2011 at 5:30 PM EDT

Where:
MICROSOFT
201 Jones Road, 6th floor
Waltham, MA 02451

Register Now!

SharePoint CommandAction {ListId} token doesn’t get replaced in CustomAction ribbon element

2011-07-20T15:55:00.001-04:00

I was working on upgrading a simple SharePoint application from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. One of the components was a CustomAction feature that placed a menu item on a list’s toolbar. So I needed to migrate the CustomAction Xml to place the menu item on the SharePoint 2010 ribbon.

No big deal I thought.After a bit of work, I had the button created and showing up on the correct lists’ ribbons. After a few tests, I discovered that the only issue with the button was that the {ListId} token in the CommandAction element was not getting replaced with the list’s ID as it had in SharePoint 2007 (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007) and as it was supposed to (according to all of the documentation and articles I could find).

After a lot of digging around, I found an updated MSDN document showing new replace tokens for the CommandAction element, one of which was the {SelectedListId} token. I changed the {ListId} token to the {SelectedListId} token, re-deployed my feature Xml, and presto, it worked!

The new tokens for the SharePoint 2010 CommandAction element of the CustomAction element shown in the MSDN article are:

{RecurrenceId} – ID of a recurrent item (RecurrenceID).
{ListUrlDir} – Server-relative URL of the site plus the list's folder.
{Source} – Fully qualified request URL.
{SelectedListId} – ID (GUID) of the list that is currently selected from a list view.
{SelectedItemId} – ID of the item that is currently selected from the list view.

I still don’t know why the {ListId} token did not work as it had with SharePoint 2007, but at least there seems to be a token that gives me the same information.If the {ListId} token is not working for you in SharePoint 2010, try changing it to the {SelectedListId} token.

SharePoint 2010 and Project Server 2010 Service Pack 1 Released!

2011-06-30T01:32:00.001-04:00

Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation, SharePoint Server 2010, and Project Server 2010. You can find them on the Microsoft Download Center or through these direct download links:

What fix am I looking forward to most in the service packs you ask? The ability to use browsers other than Internet Explorer with Project Server 2010. Yay.

Error saving SharePoint 2010 site as template or activating a site template

2011-06-27T15:42:00.001-04:00

If you receive the following error when saving a SharePoint 2010 site as a template or activating the site template in the site collection solution gallery:

Feature definition with Id 316e6f10-362c-4a52-943f-182dba32a876 failed validation, file ListInstances\ElementsFields.xml, line 321, character 325: The 'NoCrawl' attribute is not allowed. ...

Read full article

Project Server 2010 Status Report database schema

2011-06-23T13:21:00.001-04:00

Recently I needed to incorporate some status report data from Project Server 2010 into a custom report. No problem, I though, I just need to find the schema for the related tables. After a lot of searching online, I came up empty. So, after a little digging, here’s a picture of the schema I was able to reverse engineer. Note that the tables are in Project Server’s Published database, not in its Reporting database, so use caution when querying the data.

Extranet Topologies for SharePoint 2010

2011-06-15T12:41:00.001-04:00

Microsoft has posted a nice diagram of various extranet server farm topologies available for SharePoint 2010. The diagram includes advantages and disadvantages of each topology as well what the farm layout might look like. The included topologies are:

Edge firewall
Back-to-back perimeter
Back-to-back perimeter with cross-farm services
Back-to-back perimeter with content publishing
Split back-to-back
Split back-to-back optimized for content publishing

Download the document from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=EB4BFF25-BABA-4112-B518-F2FC442D5467&displaylang=en

No cross browser support in Project Server 2010, requires Internet Explorer

2011-06-10T09:47:00.001-04:00

I was really excited about the SharePoint 2010’s cross browser support. I even lauded Microsoft in this video clip. Well imagine my surprise when I tried to access a local Project Server 2010 Project Web Access site in my shiny new Firefox 4 browser, and I got the nasty error:

“Project Server 2010 requires at least Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0.”

I can’t believe this is the way the product was released, and after Microsoft made such a big deal about replacing the ActiveX grid that Project Server 2007 used with SharePoint Foundation’s JavaScript Grid, something else for which I applauded them. Oh well, I guess we’re back to 1990 with Internet Explorer-only web applications.

Is SharePoint equipped to cope with complex line of business document management applications?

2011-03-29T07:00:00.000-04:00

I saw an interesting survey on LinkedIn asking,

“Is SharePoint equipped to cope with complex line of business document management applications?”

Unfortunately, I had to answer “No” to the question, but the simple answer and the nature of the question can be a bit misleading.

I make my living implementing SharePoint systems. SharePoint does very well as at providing a platform for implementing document management applications, but is not a great product for advanced document management.

To provide some context through an example, I have helped implement SharePoint for a government organizational unit with over 20,000 internal users. This organization has been using SharePoint as it primary knowledge management platform for over 4 years and has started developing applications on the platform. They're content repository is about 2TB now, and they anticipate growing that to about 6TB once they implement formal records management in SharePoint. 77M documents per year is not an issue if the system is architected properly (good storage and information architecture, and governance plans).

That is an enterprise-scale implementation by most definitions. That said, the scale of the implementation says absolutely nothing about SharePoint's capability for advanced document management; scale has nothing to do with complexity. I.e, I can easily dump 10TB of documents onto a network file share, but that doesn't give me a "complex document management application. Document storage is only a small part of creating a document management application.

The piece that SharePoint is missing is missing, and what we help customers implement, is the document processing component on top of the very scalable document storage infrastructure that SharePoint does offer. Microsoft has taken some steps to filling the gap with the introduction of Word Automation Services in SharePoint 2010, but there is clearly a long way to go.

Slides and Code for SharePoint Saturday–Hartford, CT Posted

2011-02-02T15:51:00.001-05:00

SharePoint Saturday Hartford, CT was a big success! I was privileged to deliver two sessions at this great event. I've posted the slides for my “Project Tracking with SharePoint - out of the box” and "Advanced Web Part Development in SharePoint 2010" sessions.

The slides and code for both sessions are available for download. Download powered by Black Blade’s SharePoint Zip

Slides Available for “Project Tracking with SharePoint - out of the box” at Boston Area SharePoint User Group

2011-01-27T07:21:00.001-05:00

Update: Missed this session or want to see it again? Join me at SharePoint Saturday Hartford, January 29th, 2011.

It was great to speak at the January 2011 meeting of the Boston Area SharePoint User Group. The presentation slides are now available for download.

Session Information
This session will cover how to quickly create a flexible, extensible, easy-to-use, project tracking system on SharePoint 2007 or 2010. We will look at how a usable project tracking system should behave, and implement a sample system on SharePoint. Attendees will receive all collateral from the presentation. The session agenda follows:

Why your previous attempts failed

System Requirements

SharePoint and Office Tools

Information Architecture

Implementation

Using the System

Join us at the next meeting of the Boston Area SharePoint User Group, where Bob German and Ryan Sockalosky will be presenting "Developing Web Content Management Sites with SharePoint 2010".

Presenting “Project Tracking with SharePoint - out of the box” at SharePoint Saturday – Hartford, CT

2011-01-27T07:00:00.000-05:00

Update: SharePoint Saturday Hartford is SOLD OUT! See a list of upcoming SharePoint Saturdays.

Join me at Saturday, January 29 in Hartford, where I will present my new session, “Project Tracking with SharePoint - out of the box”. This session is designed for regular users, no coding or administration knowledge is needed.

Why your previous attempts failed

System Requirements

SharePoint and Office Tools

Information Architecture

Implementation

Using the System

See you Saturday, January 29 in Hartford!

Presenting "Advanced Web Part development in SharePoint" at SharePoint Saturday – Hartford, CT

2011-01-24T15:44:00.000-05:00

Update: SharePoint Saturday Hartford is SOLD OUT! See a list of upcoming SharePoint Saturdays.

This is a 400-level development session targeted at mid-level to senior-level developers. Custom Web Parts development has been a staple of SharePoint application development since 2001. This session focuses on Visual Studio 2010 enhancements for SharePoint 2010 Web Part developers, such as Visual Web Parts, the Web Part Page Services, AJAX Web Parts, and web part connections. Advanced topics such as sandbox Web Parts, connections to Service Applications, and writing web parts that work on SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server 2010 will be discussed as well.

Here’s the session outline:

Visual Web Parts
Just about every developer’s first effort at SharePoint code is in the form of a Web Part. But Web Part development and deployment in SharePoint 2003 and 2007 was very involved with lots of code. We’ll look at the welcomed web part designer in Visual Studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010 and see how we can adapt the technique for creating visual web parts that work with SharePoint 2007.
AJAX Web Parts
SharePoint 2010 has full support ASP.Net AJAX turn on by default. Learn how your web parts can take advantage.
- ASP.Net AJAX
- Web Part Page Service
Sandbox Web Parts
Microsoft has made a big push in their 2010 product line to make the platforms more “cloud-friendly”. For SharePoint 2010, that means allowing owners of individual site collections more freedom in deploying web parts without impacting the stability and performance of the entire farm. We will look at how to create, package, and deploy Sandbox Web Parts, and learn what restrictions the sandbox solution model places on these web parts’ behavior.
Connections to Service Applications
MOSS 2007’s Shared Service Provider model has been completely revamped as the Service Application model and integrated into the SharePoint Foundation. Learn how to build web parts that communicate with Service Applications to initiate long-running operations that do not tie up the UI process or impact web server performance.
- Intro to Services Applications
- Service Application Architecture
Web Part Connections
- Connections Model Overview
- Connecting to out of the box SharePoint web parts
- AJAX Web Part Connections
Multi-platform Web Parts
There are 6 major SharePoint platform versions. Write code that will dynamically detect the SharePoint platform type and version, whether the code is running on the SharePoint farm or remotely.
Once you can detect on which of the 6 major SharePoint platform versions your web part is running, how do you make sure your web part will run without error, and without settling for “lowest common denominator” feature set? Of course we’ll want to do it all with a single code base.
- Platform Detection Mechanisms
  - Object Model
  - Registry
  - File System
  - HTTP Code
- Multi-platform Code
  - Object Model
  - HTTP Code

See you Saturday, January 29 in Hartford!

Webinar Posted: Things that Should be Easy in SharePoint Development

2011-01-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

If you missed my SharePoint Saturday Boston session on Things that Should be Easy in SharePoint Development, you’re in luck. You can see view the session right here.

Ever spend a day writing SharePoint code that should have taken an hour? We'll look at common SharePoint coding tasks that seem like they should easy but can quickly eat up time, and what we can do to mitigate them. This session is intended for application architects, project managers, and developers.

SharePoint Saturday Boston #3 Webinar Series - Things that should be easy in SharePoint Development from SPS Boston on Vimeo.

Don’t miss out on the other SharePoint Saturday Boston #3 webinars.

“Things that Should be Easy in SharePoint Development” Webinar

2011-01-06T12:22:00.001-05:00

Join me for an encore webinar of this my “Things that Should be easy in SharePoint Development” presentation, Friday, January 7, 2010 at 11:45 AM. Register today!

This is a 200-level session targeted at junior to mid-level developers. The goal of the session is to go through several SharePoint programming tasks that one would think would be fairly straight forward but are not. These gotchas can put off new SharePoint developers and cause project delays for even those experienced with the platform.

The slides and source code for the demos is now available for download. Download powered by Black Blade’s SharePoint Zip

Here’s the session outline:

Querying Data
What good is putting data into SharePoint if you can’t get it out when and how you need? We’ll look at some troublesome quirks that make it hard to get at the SharePoint information you need.
- Relational Data Queries
- Date Time Queries
- Site Context via HTTP
Workflow
The SharePoint workflow features are really good. Learn how to deal with the stumbling blocks to making them great.
- Creating Workflow Tasks
- Processing Task Changes
- Working with OOTB task forms
- Creating Custom Workflow Activities
User Interface
The SharePoint user interface framework is highly extensible. Learn how to get the most benefit out of the web part framework.
- AJAX
- Reusable Dataview Web Parts
- Web Part Connections with OOTB Web Parts
Platform
There are 6 major SharePoint platform versions. Write code that will dynamically detect the SharePoint platform type and version, whether the code is running on the SharePoint farm or remotely.
Once you can detect on which of the 6 major SharePoint platform versions your code is running, how do you make sure your code will run without error, and without settling for “lowest common denominator” feature set? Of course we’ll want to do it all with a single code base.
- Platform Detection Mechanisms
  - Object Model
  - Registry
  - File System
  - HTTP Code
- Multi-platform Code
  - Object Model
  - HTTP Code

The webinar is Friday, January 7, 2010 at 11:45 AM. Register today! The webinar will be recorded in case you miss it. The slides and source code for the demos is now available for download. Download powered by Black Blade’s SharePoint Zip

SharePoint Saturday 2010 Boston Session Videos

2010-10-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

SharePoint Saturday 2010 Boston was a huge success. Hundreds of attendees, world-class speakers, innovative vendors, and a sweet venue made for a great event.

You can now visit the SharePoint Saturday web site to view video web casts for many of the sessions, including those provided by the illustrious Boston Area SharePoint Users Group organizers. SharePoint Saturday will be hosting weekly lunchtime sessions on Mondays and Fridays, so you can kick back with your lunch and take in some great speakers and topics on SharePoint.

Agenda is as follows:

11:45 AM EST - 11:55 AM EST Welcome and Sign-In
11:55 AM EST - 12:00 PM EST Speaker Introduction
12:00 PM EST - 1:00 PM EST Presentation

Below are the list of sessions, dates and times they will be available. Follow the corresponding links below to register for each webinar. I’ve even highlighted my session so you can be sure to attend and heckle

Session	Presenter(s)	Date/Time	Register
SharePoint Development & Customization: Overcoming Hurdles and Avoiding Pain	Geoff Varosky & Mark Rackley	10/25/10 11:45 AM	Register
Things that should be easy in SharePoint Development	Eugene Rosenfeld	10/29/10 11:45 AM	Register
SharePoint in the Cloud	Matt Lathrop	11/1/10 11:45 AM	Register
The Seven Most Important (Non-Technical) SharePoint Success Factors	Richard Harbridge	11/5/10 11:45 AM	Register
See Beyond The Numbers: Data Visualization in SharePoint 2010	Sadalit Van Buren & Chris McNulty	11/8/10 11:45 AM	Register
Driving end user adoption for SharePoint 2010	Chris Bortlik	11/15/10 11:45 AM	Register
Sandboxed Solutions: Developing High-Powered Solutions with Low-Trust code	Bob German	11/19/10 11:45 AM	Register
Dashboards for SharePoint	Susan Lennon	11/22/10 11:45 AM	Register
SharePoint 2010: Service Applications	Jason Gallicchio	11/29/10 11:45 AM	Register
Governance Best Practices in SharePoint 2010	Scott Jamison	12/3/10 11:45 AM	Register
11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migration	Christian Buckley	12/6/10 11:45 AM	Register
Implementing SharePoint for Enterprise Search: Methodology and Mechanics	Nicholas Bisciotti	12/10/10 11:45 AM	Register
Project, Project Server, and SharePoint 2010: Which to Use When	Brittany Kwait	12/13/10 11:45 AM	Register
Advanced Development on the 2010 Ribbon	Shai Petel	12/17/10 11:45 AM	Register
Assuring Accessibility and Privacy Compliance in SharePoint Sites and Social Computing	Larry Concannon	1/3/2011 11:45 AM	Register
Get more Social with SharePoint	Jeff Willinger	1/10/11 11:45 AM	Register
SharePoint Security: Through the Looking Glass V2	David J Pileggi, Jr.	1/14/11 11:45 AM	Register
Automating SharePoint with PowerShell	Talbott Crowell	1/21/11 11:45 AM	Register
The Best of Both Worlds - Connecting SharePoint to the rest of the Enterprise using BizTalk	Andrew Babiec	1/24/11 11:45 AM	Register
Traversing The Term Store	Russ Edelman	1/28/11 11:45 AM	Register
SURVEY RESULTS: How is your company using SharePoint?	Mark Miller & Derek Weeks	1/31/11 11:45 AM	Register

For updates to session video casts, slide decks, blog posts, and code samples, click here: http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/boston

Make plans to attend the next SharePoint Saturday Boston tentatively scheduled for February or March of 2011.

Slides and Code for SharePoint Saturday 2010 Boston Posted

2010-09-29T10:40:00.001-04:00

SharePoint Saturday 2010 Boston was a huge success. Hundreds of attendees, world-class speakers, innovative vendors, and a sweet venue made for a great event.

You can now visit the SharePoint Saturday web site to download slides and code for many of the talks. Perhaps you could not make it to Waltham, or you did make it but you were torn between multiple different talks at the same time. Or if you simply want a recap of a talk you attended or reconnect with the speakers and sponsors, the slides and code samples can be a handy resource.

Slide decks, blog posts, and code samples, click here: http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/boston

Plan to attend the next SharePoint Saturday Boston tentatively scheduled for February or March of 2011.

SharePoint Zip 2.4 Released…Now Supports SharePoint 2010!

2010-09-27T14:04:00.001-04:00

Black Blade Associates has just released an updated version of the incredibly useful SharePoint Zip application. SharePoint Zip allows users to download multiple files and folders from SharePoint with as single click or to upload multiple files and folders to SharePoint as Zip files. SharePoint Zip is completely cross-browser capable, supports forms-based user authentication, and supports very large (even multi-gigabyte) files.

The new release of SharePoint Zip adds support for SharePoint 2010 ribbon interface and support for multiple item selection.

Stop wasting time and bandwidth download and uploading files to SharePoint one at a time. Try SharePoint Zip live right form the Black Blade web site.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,WSS,MOSS 2007,SharePoint Foundation,SharePoint 2010

Is Google Wave Dead?

2010-09-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

I recently had an interesting exchange on Facebook with SharePoint MVP Rob Foster about Google Wave. For those not familiar with Wave, Google touted Wave as the next step in the evolution of asynchronous collaboration. Wave allows people to create threaded discussions with richly formatted text, photos, videos and more. Participants in a Wave discussion could inject content into any portion of the discussion and replay any portion of the discussion to catch up to parts they’ve missed. The following video does a nice job of highlighting Wave’s capabilities:

Ok, back to the point. Google recently announced that Wave would cease to be a product. However, Google further announced that the technology in Wave would make it into other Google applications and services.

The status of Google Wave is and its prospects for the future was the subject of my discussion with Rob. I have met Rob on several occasions and regard him as a fairly intelligent person, usually. That’s why I could not understand how he could assert that Wave was dead, both as a product and technology. Here’s our discussion thread…

Rob Foster, SharePoint MVP: The failure of Google Wave still makes me giggle.

Eugene Rosenfeld [Me] Not sure it has failed yet. The product may have died but the tech will live on. I think it will become a pervasive component of many Google products and services.

‎Rob: @Eugene, and how many companies are buying that BS? hahaha!

Me: You're right. Probably only the companies that bought off on the notion that a search engine company could create a mobile device operating system to rival both Windows Mobile and iPhone OS. Oh wait, that happened

Chris B: I tried to like it but couldn't.

John R: Google leaves everything in beta in case this happens. Google Wave and Google Sites were "SharePoint Killers" - Weathermen are more accurate.

Rob: Google is the SharePoint/iPhone/whatever killer just like Delphi was the VB killer of the late 90's. One thing that will eventually catch up to them is that software companies are built by big businesses buying licenses for their products. Their business model isn't in line with that minor detail.
BTW...@Eugene, my 6 year old could do a better phone OS than Windows Mobile. Love it or hate it, Apple's closed model for software development (i.e. they approve every application) does aid in a high quality app store, whereas with an open model any shadetree programmer (aka "faker") can release an app into the wild. I have a love/hate relationship with Apple's model (speaking as an iPhone developer), but overall their apps are moderately stable in comparison to an open model.

Me: ‎@Rob: "..software companies are built by big businesses buying licenses..." I think that CEOs of Salesforce.com, Facebook, and oh yeah, Google would disagree. The fact of the matter is that the notion of a "software company" no longer has meaning in our world. There are companies that sell capability through IT. Those companies may do so through software, hardware, services, or some combination.
As for my mobile OS comment, the point was not to compare the merits of the various OSes. Rather, the point was that Google was able to take on the major players in the smartphone OS market and start winning in an extremely short time-frame; Android is only in version 2.2 while WinMo is in 7 and iOS is in 4. In fact, according to Gartner, Android OS has surpassed iOS in market share. Will Google target SharePoint with their Wave technology? I don't think Google has ever stated that publicly. Seems that the SharePoint community was the first to raise the idea. My gut is telling me that Google is going after Facebook, but that's just a hunch.

Thomas H: I never got the appeal of Wave to begin with. I mean, the only way it would be useful is if everyone simultaneously decided to make that their choice platform of communication. There was no ramp up or adoption strategy as far as I could tell.

Me: ‎@Thomas: I think you're right in that the main reason Wave hit a trough was due to the adoption process, or lack thereof. It seems that Google treated Wave as a technology test rather than a new product roll-out. Hence my previous statement that although the Wave product is dead, the technology will be rolled into other Google products and services. I'm guessing that GMail and Talk will be one of the early targets.

What’s your take o Google Wave? Is it really dead as Rob states? Or will the other Google products soon get Wave-like capabilities? Comments welcomed, even Rob’s .

“Things that Should be Easy in SharePoint Development” at SharePoint Saturday Boston

2010-09-15T16:12:00.001-04:00

Update: Join me for an encore webinar of this presentation Friday, January 7, 2010 at 11:45 AM. Register today!

Update: The slides and source code for the demos is now available for download. Download powered by Black Blade’s SharePoint Zip

I’m very excited to be speaking at SharePoint Saturday in Boston, MA on September 25, 2010. I was supposed to speak there last year as well but had a last-minute scheduling conflict. It was definitely my loss. I heard from speakers and attendees alike how good the conference was. There’s no way I’m missing it this year.

My session is “Things that Should be Easy in SharePoint Development”. This is a 200-level session targeted at junior to mid-level developers. The goal of the session is to go through several SharePoint programming tasks that one would think would be fairly straight forward but are not. These gotchas can put off new SharePoint developers and cause project delays for even those experienced with the platform.

Here’s the session outline:

Querying Data
What good is putting data into SharePoint if you can’t get it out when and how you need? We’ll look at some troublesome quirks that make it hard to get at the SharePoint information you need.
- Relational Data Queries
- Date Time Queries
- Site Context via HTTP
Workflow
The SharePoint workflow features are really good. Learn how to deal with the stumbling blocks to making them great.
- Creating Workflow Tasks
- Processing Task Changes
- Working with OOTB task forms
- Creating Custom Workflow Activities
User Interface
The SharePoint user interface framework is highly extensible. Learn how to get the most benefit out of the web part framework.
- AJAX
- Reusable Dataview Web Parts
- Web Part Connections with OOTB Web Parts
Platform
There are 6 major SharePoint platform versions. Write code that will dynamically detect the SharePoint platform type and version, whether the code is running on the SharePoint farm or remotely.
Once you can detect on which of the 6 major SharePoint platform versions your code is running, how do you make sure your code will run without error, and without settling for “lowest common denominator” feature set? Of course we’ll want to do it all with a single code base.
- Platform Detection Mechanisms
  - Object Model
  - Registry
  - File System
  - HTTP Code
- Multi-platform Code
  - Object Model
  - HTTP Code

Join me for in SharePoint Saturday in Boston, MA on September 25, 2010. This is going to be a great event. If you can’t make it, don’t worry; I’ll write up blog posts on the more popular topics from my session. Leave a comment on which topic you’d like to see a post.

How good is SharePoint as a Document Management System? - response

2010-08-11T07:00:00.000-04:00

This is in response to “How good is SharePoint as Document Management System?” by Toni Frankola. In the post, Toni scored SharePoint’s Document Management (DM) capabilities on a 5-star scale using the following criteria:

Metadata – 5 stars
Integration - 3stars
Capture – 1 star
Indexing – 5 stars
Storage – 3 stars
Retrieval – 3.5 stars
Security – 3 stars
Workflow – 4 stars
Collaboration – 4 stars
Versioning – 4.5 stars

SharePoint Document Management Needs Multi-file Documents

I liked the post overall and agreed with most of the ratings. However, I would lower SharePoint's marks for versioning, workflow, and security. The reason is that SharePoint supports only single-file documents. I.e. a logical document is stored as a single file in SharePoint. In order for SharePoint to truly excel as a DM system, SharePoint needs to support multi-file documents. When I say "multi-file" document, I mean something like a compound document or virtual document. Yes, SharePoint Server 2010 has document sets, but they are more like the SharePoint version of Office Briefcase rather than true multi-file documents.

SharePoint’s Single-file Document Limitation

SharePoint’s single-file document limitation manifests itself in these ways:

Versioning: The version information is not very granular. You can only tell when the entire document has changed, but you can not tell which part of the document has changed. For example, your 3-person team is creating a proposal with introduction, technical approach, and pricing sections. The entire proposal has 100 versions over its lifespan. How can you tell when the pricing section was changed without going through each version? The difficulty clearly stems from the fact that SharePoint stores the entire proposal document as a single file. If the proposal were stored as a compound or virtual document with the pricing section as a separate file, it would be very easy to see exactly when the section were changed and by whom independently of the entire proposal's version history. Let me reiterate that the proposal document is logically a single document not a set of documents grouped together, so it is not quite right to represent the proposal document as a document set.

Workflow: To extend the example of the proposal document, the 3-person team has grown to a 6-person team, with different members focusing on different aspects of the proposal. The proposal is about 400 pages now, and the team has just published a major version. The approval workflow takes a long time, because the approval workflow can only be run at the granularity of the entire proposal document. That means that there are lots of reviewers for each workflow, even when the section in which a particular reviewer is interested has not changed since the last time the approval workflow was run (see above comment on versioning). This means that the reviewer is wasting his/her time needlessly looking over a 400-page document. Additionally since the workflow is running at the scope of the entire 400-page proposal, it is difficult to focus the reviewers' comments on particular sections or even to make it clear to the reviewers which sections have actually changed since the last review. If each section were a separate file, you could easily run smaller, focused workflows on just the sections that have significant changes, before running one final workflow on the completed proposal.

Security: Extending the example of the proposal even further, let's say you now have two sub contractors helping to create the proposal. You want the subs to help create portions of the technical approach. However, you do not want either of the subs to see the other’s work as it contains competitive information. Further, you don't want either of the subs to see the pricing section, since that contains your markup over their rates. There is no way to give each sub contractor access to their proper proposal sections without also granting them access to the entire proposal, as all of the sections are stored in the same file. A content manager could easily secure each section of the proposal individually if the proposal were stored in a multi-file format.

What else can Multi-file Documents Do?

These are just some quick notes. We have a white paper that talks about many usage scenarios made possible with multi-file documents here:

http://www.blackbladeinc.com/en-us/products/docBlock/Pages/UsageScenarios.aspx