Tom Resing's SharePoint Blog

Gannotti talks to MicroLink CTO Malcolm Hyson

Tom Resing — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:27:00 GMT

Check out The SharePoint Samurai talking up DiscoverPoint, a product I contributed to in a small part.

The samurai otherwise known as Michael Gannotti talks with MicroLink CTO Malcolm Hyson at Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference. Gannotti is excited about the new MicroLink product DiscoverPoint and it’s integration of SharePoint with dynamic content from FAST ESP.

Malcolm is a Microsoft SharePoint MVP award winner and contributor to Manning Press’ online book SharePoint Server 2007 Survival Guide. He leads MicroLink’s product team and shows his enthusiasm for helping organizations discover expertise through integration between Enterprise Search and SharePoint.

Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 Bookmarks

Tom Resing — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:59:00 GMT

Some of the New Features of SharePoint 2010 – from SPC09 » Springhouse Blog - Delivering Education to You

Wow! "no more SSP" and "Metadata Terms store"

The Forrester Blog For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

What was missing from the video interview.

Controlling SharePoint 2010 Deployment in VS 2010 - Eli Robillard's World of Blog.
Q&A: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer On Sharepoint 2010 -- Microsoft SharePoint 2010 -- InformationWeek

Long interview with detail

Microsoft Business Connectivity Services Team Blog : Overview of Business Connectivity Services

First post from the new BCS team blog

Developer Changes in SharePoint 2010 - SharePoint Development Blog by Jeremy Thake in Perth, Australia

Use VSeWSS…”to get used to VS2010 integration”

#SPC09 Fundamentals of Upgrading to SharePoint 2010
Paul Andrew : SharePoint 2010 Developer Content Published
Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : SharePoint 2010 Resources

view SharePoint 2010 in action
SharePoint 2010 forum- for SharePoint 2010 questions
SharePoint 2010 PressPass- for the SPC 2009 keynote video, a Q&A with Jeff Teper, and more
SharePoint 2010 Developer Center for developer info
http://www.mssharepointitpro.com - for IT Pro info
http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint - for more SharePoint information

New Event Handlers in SharePoint 2010
Part 1 - Improvements to the Core SharePoint Platform & How the Benefit SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management
SharePoint Help — Blog — Building a SharePoint Service Application to Provide Auto-completion Services for AJAX-enabled Rich User Controls – Part 1
Microsoft Showcase: Building Solutions on SharePoint

1 hour long SharePoint 2010 video.

Download details: SharePoint Products and Technologies: 2010 (Technical Preview) Developer Documentation
SharePoint 2010, A Business Collaboration Platform

First mention I've seen of SharePoint Designer integration with Business Connectivity Services, nee BDC.

What's coming in SharePoint Server 2010

Create a SharePoint Custom Action Feature with VSeWSS

Tom Resing — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:20:00 GMT

If you are a SharePoint Developer and are not using Visual Studio 2008 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services yet, please read Paul Andrew detail how VSeWSS 1.3 March 2009 CTP addresses all common SharePoint Developer requests.

When you are using the extensions, the first thing you might try to do after watching Kirk’s video is use the MOSS SDK Empty SharePoint template to create a very basic feature whose Element Manifest might look like this:

Download ElementManifest1.xml

Warning: Don’t User Add New Item to Create your Manifest!

When adding a new Element Manifest in VSeWSS, the method you use is very important.

Don’t use Add | New Item to create a new xml file and type in the above code manually.

You will be able to add the new xml file to the project, but WSP View will not pick it up when you add it this way. If you edit the feature.xml to refer to it, your change will be reverted automatically.

Method 1: WSP View Create New Feature

Step 1 is the same for both Methods. Create a new Visual Studio Project using the SharePoint SDK Empty template. This will give you an empty project with the correct SharePoint References and just a manifest.xml in WSP View.
Step 2: From WSP View, hit Refresh to show the Solution name in the window and expand the solution to see the Manifest.xml. Click the Create new feature button to open the create new feature dialog.
Step 3: For the simplest custom action feature, select Web scope and check “Add default element.xml file.”
Result: A new feature and a new element in your WSP View with the corresponding .xml files created. And, you will see a new Element1.xml file in your Solution Browser. Double click Element1.xml to open in the text editor to add your action. You can paste the code inside my ElementManifest1.xml CustomAction Element for a quick example of a new Site Action. Make sure that you don’t remove the Elements ID attribute that was generated by VSeWSS .

Method 2: Add | Exisiting Item

Repeat Step 1 from Method 1, then download ElementManifest1.xml to your local hard drive.
Right click the project in Solution Explorer and select Add | Existing Item.
After you select ElementManifest1.xml, you will see it appear as in the results above for Method 1.
1. The ID Attribute will be generated by VSeWSS and inserted into Elements element of the file
2. A reference to the manifest will be added to feature.xml.

Result

Notes

Double click on the feature or element name in WSP View to rename the feature or solution.
Right click Deploy from the Solution explorer and your new solution will be added, deployed and your feature activated on localhost:80 by default.
VSeWSS 1.3 always deploys an assembly in the manifest.xml even in cases like this where it is not necessary

SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Conference Day 1 Highlights

Tom Resing — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:34:00 GMT

My colleague Rich Olivieri offers this summary of SharePoint 2010 Points live from the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas:

Support for developing on a client OS so long as it is 64bit Windows 7 or 64 bit Vista SP1.
API available through REST. You can call listdata.svc and get a strongly typed response vs a weakly typed response from lists.asmx. It is WCF REST combined with ADO Data Services.
You can link lists through a look up column and pull in multiple columns from the other list for display.
Sandboxed solutions - more a thing for IT...it limits the sandboxed solution access to the object model that is directly related to a specific site collection.
SharePoint Online 2010 now allows deployment of custom code.
SharePoint Designer 2010 has increased support for developing deployable workflows (deployed as wsp) and BDC entities.
Remote Blob Storage - now you can store those really large binary files some place other than SQL.
Performance enhancements - throttling and large list control. SP 2010 now supports 50 million items within a SP list, but you can configure per web application settings to limit max sizes of query results (default 5,000) and send warnings out when list reach a certain size (default is 3,000). Overrides are available for object model access and PowerShell commands.
New PowerShell CMDLETS (command-let) represent functions that can be used separately or combined with other cmdlets to script complex SP administration tasks.

Public beta is in November.
Upgrades: Existing 2007 should upgrade as is to the new infrastructure. Then by use of a visual upgrade tools IT/Dev/Users can decide to upgrade to the new UI.
REST Services: RSS feeds probably now second to REST Feedservices using AtomPub...this is down to item resources.
In page edting of things like Site Titles and Site Images....can use Wiki style editing tags for links like [[this document:document link]]
Offline editing and use of SP items via SharePoint Workspaces..the replacement for Grove.
CoEditing of documents...close to Google Docs.
Semantic Search...going to that session.

Other SharePoint related highlights from around the web, today:

Testers to get Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 this week; final by March 2010, Mary-Jo Foley, ZDNet
Improvements to the Core SharePoint Platform & How the Benefit SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management, Andrew Connell, SharePoint MVP
Describing SharePoint 2010 in 1 Sentence, 8 Categories and 40 Feature Areas, Jeff Teper, Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog

.Net SMTPClient Send Through Gmail

Tom Resing — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:05:52 GMT

To test a Mail application I’m working on, I decided to use GMail, but it wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. Luckily, I found this code snippet on TechNet Forums that worked for me:

MailMessage msgMail = new MailMessage("?????@gmail.com", ??????@gmail.com, "subject", "message body");
SmtpClient smtp = new SmtpClient("smtp.gmail.com", 587);
smtp.EnableSsl = true;
smtp.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network;
smtp.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("?????@gmail.com", "?????");
try
{
smtp.Send(msgMail);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
}

Just replace the question marks with your GMail credentials, and it should work for you too.

SharePoint Conference Keynote to be Live Streamed

Tom Resing — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:57:00 GMT

The keynote address Monday by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and VP of SharePoint Jeff Teper will be streamed live from the conference website www.mssharepointconference.com.

Follow the Conference RSS Feed for updates like these straight from the organizers.

Also note, if you are attending the conference in person, note that WiFi will be off during the keynote Monday. If you want to live blog or tweet, you’ll need a cellular modem.

Are you excited about the announcements at the Conference? I can’t wait to hear what Microsoft has in store for us.

And if you haven’t already heard, MicroLink is launching our DiscoverPoint for SharePoint product that integrates FAST and Autonomy Search into SharePoint and automatically discovers colleagues who are experts and documents related to you and your SharePoint content!

Come visit us at SPC09 Booth #626 and view a demo of DiscoverPoint, MicroLink’s new social computing product built for SharePoint.

SharePoint 2010 Browser and Server Changes

Tom Resing — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:01:00 GMT

SharePoint 2010 Requirements You Might Miss

SQL Server 2005 64bit is a supported platform for SharePoint 2010 deployments
Internet Explorer 6 receives support from Microsoft for Windows XP Service Pack 3 until April, 2014
Your current SharePoint 2007 migration to 64 bit can happen one machine at a time
1. Mixed 32bit and 64bit Farms are supported

Also True about SharePoint 2010

Windows Server 2003 is not supported
SQL Server 2000 is not supported
Your hardware, Operating System, SharePoint and SQL Server must all be 64-bit
Internet Explorer 6 is not a Tier 1 Browser in SharePoint 2010

Preparation Tips – Start Today!

Apply SharePoint 2007 Service Pack 2 for the bug fixes and the new upgrade check tool
Run stsadm –help preupgradecheck
Consider migrating from Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 if you are using them
Consider migrating to 64 bit OS and Database to get better performance and prepare for 2010
Create and use 64bit Virtual Machine SharePoint 2007 installs today
1. The scope of change is hard to grasp until experienced.

For more information

Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements, Microsoft SharePoint Product Team Blog
SharePoint Server 2010 Official Hardware and Software Requirements, SharePoint Joel's SharePoint Land
Can MOSS 32 bit and 64 bit exist in the same farm?, StackOverflow.com Thread
Prepare for the future: Windows 2008 and 64bit, Shane Young SharePoint Administration MVP
About performance and capacity planning (Office SharePoint Server), SharePoint 2007 Planning and Architecture, Microsoft TechNet, Updated: 2009-04-23

Update October 14th, 2009: Chad Schroeder pointed out one place where I wrote "SQL Server 2003", which isn't a real product. I corrected it above to "SQL Server 2000."

SharePoint 2007 ActiveX Controls List

Tom Resing — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:06:00 GMT

My colleague, Chris Alechko, has put together a great list of ActiveX controls and their use in SharePoint.

ActiveX Controls that must be allowed in the browser

MSCAL.OCX (Calendar control – included with Microsoft Office Professional or installed with Microsoft Access)
MSCOMCTL.OCX (Common Controls)
MSCOMCT2.OCX (Common Controls2)
OWSSUPP.DLL (ExportDatabase – To export a list to a Microsoft Office Access database, OpenDocuments – Launch Office applications to open documents)
STSLIST.DLL (ListNet – Edit list in Datasheet view)
NAME.DLL (Display presence information for people, integrate with Outlook and OCS)
OISCTRL.DLL (OISClientLauncher – Integrate with Office Picture Manager)
INLAUNCH.DLL (OpenXMLDocuments – Launch InfoPath to open forms)
MSHTMLED.DLL (RTEDialogHelper – Allows use of rich text editor)
OWSCLT.DLL (SpreadSheet Launcher – Integration with lists and Excel)
STSUPLD.DLL (Multiple File Upload – Gives the option for multiple files to be uploaded)

Some organizations, like financial institutions and the US Goverment, explicitly control which ActiveX controls are enabled Internet Explorer Add-ons. If you do not allow these ActiveX controls for use on your SharePoint Collaboration sites, you will lose at a minimum the functionality in parentheses following the name of the control in the list above.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Collaboration Requirements

Chris also suggests the following Minimum Requirements for full functionality in MOSS Collaboration Sites:

Memory: 1 GB Ram
Operating System: Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista
Web Browsers: IE 6.x/7.x/8.x
Valid E-Mail Address
JavaScript enabled
ActiveX enabled

Reference

Office SharePoint Server Web Browser Support [PDF], Microsoft Office Online
Plan browser support (Office SharePoint Server), Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Technet
Client-Side API Reference, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SDK, MSDN
Microsoft Solutions for Security: Recent Guides, Solution Accelerators Security Blog, Microsoft Technet Blogs

Update 10/08/2009: As Chad pointed out in the browser, Microsoft’s Level 1 browser support is for Internet Explorer 6 and above on Windows platforms. I’ve modified the minimum requirements for full functionality above. A functional but sub-optimal experience is provided in other browsers in the following list:

Operating System: Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 7, Linux/Unix, Mac OSX

Web Browsers: IE 6.x/7.x/8.x, Firefox 3.x, Safari 3.x

Word 2010 Technical Preview and SharePoint

Tom Resing — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:51:00 GMT

A warning for users of the Word 2010 Technical Preview and SharePoint. Following guidance from the Microsoft SharePoint Product Team Blog, do not use a "fake proxy" for any kind of workaround.

Specifically, if you encounter the issue where documents, including Word and Excel types, do not open when selected from a web browser, save the file locally before opening in Word 2010 or Excel 2010.

The fake proxy method, as also described in TechNet Forums, will allow you to open documents from a SharePoint site. However, the side effect is a very large security hole. As Lawrence said, "it will reduce the security for default Internet sites by interpreting them as intranet sites instead."

Update October 13^th, 2009: I have been testing a modified version of the "fake proxy" method that I am relatively comfortable with. It doesn't work when I connect to my work VPN, but I feel it is safe enough for me at other times. Microsoft Technet Forums User Rhett has this tip:

a better approach: by default IE is set to automatically detect what qualifies as the local intranet zone (LIZ) which seems to be the source of the proxy-workaround "problem". If you uncheck this option by: selecting Local intranet, clicking on Sites and clearing the checkbox "Automatically detect intranet network" public sites no longer show up in the LIZ. Then, to preserve any desired LIZ functionality, you can specify what networks, sites, etc should qualify as the LIZ either by checking the sub-checkboxes or by clicking the Advanced button.

A SharePoint Saturday Acknowledgement of B&R Solutions

Tom Resing — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:45:00 GMT

SharePoint Saturday events are a phenomenon touching many parts of the US and the world this year. The community and sharing I witnessed attending and presenting at my first event, Boston, impressed me. Boston’s organizer, Michael Lotter, implored me to host a local event. SharePoint Saturday DC convinced me we had to bring the format to San Antonio. Dallas and NY reinforced my commitment. I’m so happy that we can bring the power of this movement to our city November 14^th to finish the year.

Looking forward to November, I feel a debt of gratitude towards a group not acknowledged enough for their work in this movement. As I looked around Saturday’s venue, I realized I couldn’t find a single B&R Solutions logo. B&R is a New Jersey company focused on SharePoint Solutions. They are also the event co-organizer’s employer. I think Michael’s dedication has been noticed, but I see a pattern with this group that goes beyond the efforts of one person.

B&R SharePoint Team Lead and SharePoint MVP Bob Fox, led a talent-packed Ask the Experts panel Saturday. I can only imagine he provides a base of support and encouragement for Michael’s efforts. A co-worker, Becky Isserman, has contributed in person to so many SharePoint Saturdays that she must see the blue and red wave logo in her sleep. I hear consistently that Michael and Becky are not just emailing, tweeting and talking to me about organization of SharePoint Saturday, but to all of the other organizers, speakers, attendees and sponsors. Without the efforts of these three individuals who work for the same, small business, SharePoint Saturdays would not have come this far.

Will you join me in acknowledging B&R Solutions for their leadership in event organization? For a business that is not taking advantage of the opportunity to promote itself, I think we owe them community thanks.

To acknowledge B&R is not to diminish the efforts of the other individuals who have volunteered their time and companies which contributed their marketing dollars. I’m amazed at the friendly, engaging and selfless attitude of the many dozens of people I’ve gotten to know at these events. I know I engaged in this experience out of a desire to grow myself, but I never expected to get back so much in return for my few hours of preparation and travel.

Though I grew my confidence in public speaking through experience and learned from those I met this past weekend, some things were left for another day. I’m disappointed I didn’t have more time to spend with Mark Miller, who has shown me that being yourself is the best thing you can be. Or, Dan Usher, who taught me that another company, doing similar work in the same industry, is a partner, not a competitor. I wish I had had the time to meet Bob, who I’ve heard so much about.

I’m one voice, but I encourage you to join me

Do you think Bob, Michael and Becky get enough credit without this? Are there others who deserve even more credit and thanks? Please share your experiences in this blog’s comments, on twitter or by email.