Daniel | zevenseas | SharePoint Blog

#spc09 Notes: Introduction to Service Applications

Daniel McPherson — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:20:09 GMT

This is one in a series of notes I will be making while attending the SharePoint Conference in Vegas. These are not intended to be complete, polished, edited blog posts. Its simply the highlights, as I saw it, from the sessions I attended.

New, flexible, extensible services architecture that can be used by developers
Overview

What is a Services Application? An Application Server Tier feature that performs the useful function of providing data or processing resources to SharePoint features.
Search is a good example of a Services Application

Service Application

Configured logical instance of a service
Provides data or computing resources
Comes with a Administration interface

How is a Service Application used

Features, for example Web Parts use these application
You associate a web application with a service application
This is done via a proxy
Associations done by Admins, can be changed anytime
This a much like SSP’s, but this has been further simplified
Can be grouped for administrative reasons “Service Application Proxy Group”

Service Workflow

Brower –> Web Front End –> eg. Search Page –> (Software load balancer) –> Application Server –> returns

2007 versus 2010

SSP is where we were
The old services are still there BUT they are no longer grouped together in an SSP, they all operate independently
There are also a lot more services now, 20 or more.
The platform for building these services is now open
Services applications are supported in Foundation (WSS), though different SKU’s will come with different service applications

Whats new? Framework

There is no more SSP administration site, Central admin and Powershell
Greater flexibility, Services can been assigned to Web Apps
Software Load Balancer and fail over (load balancer can be replaced by a third party load balancer)
Cross Farm support

Share to anyone and consume from anywhere
WCF based communications

Whats new? Security

Everything is based on Claims based authentication
Intra server communications is based on WCF communications
Supports SSL
Each application uses its own database, and optionally own application pool

Multi-Tennancy

Application level security protects the information in one Service Application from another. So it adds an application security boundary within a database and within an application pool.

Application Directory and Load Balance Service Application

Responsible for sharing the list of available services to other applications
Discovery mechanism.
This is really seriously cool stuff. You can now effectively deploy farms that are dedicated to specific tasks. A search farm for example.

PowerShell is everywhere: “Can use PowerShell for pretty much everything”
By Default all service applications are associated with all web applications, associations are not direct but through a proxy. This can then be configured.
Farm Admins have access to all Service Application, but you can delegate permissions to a specific user for a specific service.
Building Service Applications (this is what I have been waiting for)

The OOB service applications have been built on the same API developers can use
You get:

Multi-Server Support
Fault Tolerant Round Robin Load Balancing

Timer Job Support
Even the Load Balancer is extensible, very cool
Settings can be stored in the configuration Database, and you can add your own databases and manage them through SharePoint (integrates then for example with Backup/Restore)
Can create your own Central Admin pages
Lots of controls that can be reused
Can create your own PowerShell Commandlets

Sample Topologies

Seems to me that there are many, many topologies
Flexibility of the model though should make it something you design specifically to suit
Services Farm. Seems to me that this makes a lot of sense.

#spc09 Notes: Sandboxed Solutions

Daniel McPherson — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:06:33 GMT

This is the first of a series of notes I will be making while attending the SharePoint Conference in Vegas. These are not intended to be complete, polished, edited blog posts. Its simply the highlights, as I saw it, from the sessions I attended.

Its all about balancing Security/Stability and Business Agility
Sandboxed solutions balance these two things out.
Sandboxed solutions should be the default approach to developing solutions on SharePoint. You build them this way UNTIL you hit a limitation you just cant get around.
Difficult to come up with a list that describe what you can do with Sandboxed Solutions:

Content Types, Site Columns
Custom Action
Declarative Workflows
Event Receivers
Feature receivers
List Definitions, non-visual web parts
Site Pages

What is the Sandbox?

Its a separate process where your solution runs
It works with a limited set of API, and have additional Code Access Security policies applied to it.
Solutions for the sandboxed are focused on the the Site Collection
All sandboxed solutions have detailed monitoring via the Central Administration

Puts the power back into the hands of the IT Admin.
Separate process:

UserCodeService – Runs on each server in the farm which is allowed to host the sandboxed solutions.
Sandbox Worker Process – This is where the solution runs
Sandbox Worker Process Proxy -

Sandboxed solutions use a subset of Microsoft.Sharepoint

Important: Missing Enterprise objects
I think there are some great solutions to be built, but this list did look quite limiting.
CAS Policy limits allow a solution assembly to load, use the SP OM. Cannot touch any external resources.

There is a Full Trust Proxy, this is possible but it is tightly controlled

Solution Gallery

Document Library for SharePoint Sandboxed Solutions
Empowers the Site Collection administrators to chose what solutions they need.
Resource quotas can lock down the amount of server resource a solution can use

The binaries are in 14\Usercode

Web.Config in this folder includes the reference to the CAS Policy

To Visual Studio there is no difference between a Sandbox solution and a Farm solution.

The actual changes to the files is minimised, just an AssemblyInfo.cs change
“AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers” is set for Sandboxed Solutions

Sandbox Architecture

Execution manager, runs on the front end and brokers requests through to the “Back End” systems which are hosting the Host Services. Host Services spins up the required worker processes, which then use the WorkerProcess proxy, which then makes the real calls to the OM
Wonder what the overall performance impact is of this?
The worker processes can be shut down if they start to do bad things, isolating the disaster

Code Access Security

Cannot access any resources out of the Sandbox
Uses an API Blocklist, this means the Farm Administrator can further lock down the API’s that can be used. This does not mean you can change the basic subset, this limit will always be there.

Full-Trust proxy is the way you break out to do more in your applications

It is a fully trusted piece of code you can call in your applications
Full Trust proxy does just a specific task, for example, read from ERP systems
Create a class that inherits from a SPProxyOperationsArgs (this just passes arguments) –> Goes in the GAC
Then another using SPProxyOperation, this does the job –> goes in the GAC.
From your sandboxed solution you then call it.
Once you have written these, then you need to register them with SharePoint
The idea here is to create a set of trusted API’s that can be leveraged by all SharePoint developers.

Sandbox solution execution can be load balanced across the farm.

You can also setup a dedicated set of servers whose job is to run the sandboxed solutions

Solution Validation

Administrators can block solutions
Can create a “Solution Validation” object which then interrogates the solutions.
Very interesting, this is pretty sophisticated stuff.
Solution Validators inherit from SPSolutionValidator
Could check things like:

location of files
can validate based on many properties of the package, and everything in it.

Deployed as a Farm Level solution

Solution Monitoring

Resource points can be used to manage the resources on the server.
If a solution uses too many resources, then it is stopped for the day
Helps to identify expensive solutions
There are 14 measures in all, they have different units of measurement of course, these are boiled down to the resource points
You set points across the various measurements
This is done per site collection

#SPC09 Notes: Visual Studio Development Overview

Daniel McPherson — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:24:54 GMT

Tools are designed to make development for SharePoint a LOT easier and a LOT more productive

Supports Sandboxed and Farm solutions
Provides a number of Project and Item Templates
Provides a number of Visual Designers
Provides a number of Workflow improvements

Templates

You are going to generally start with an empty project and then add the items you need as you need them

Solution Types

Farm Solutions = What we have today
Sandboxed Solutions = Site Solutions
This can be changed whenever you like
When creating the project you specify a debug site
Intellisense filtering stops you seeing things you can use when in Sandboxed mode. HOT

Item Templates

These are not complete (wonder what is missing?)
Can use an empty template for those
Seems to include the most popular items

DEMO 1

Showed a workflow
This does look nice in the demo, hard to note it

Deployment

There is some logic in the deployment process which will detect any existing assets which might conflict with a new version. For example old web part files. This can be set to Automatic, or you can have it prompt you.

Event receivers

There is a template for these
Wizard based creation, builds our the xml files for you
Certainly makes things a little qucker,
F5 to deploy when done. Nice

BDC Designer

Looks sophisticated, and very graphical
You do not ever need to see the ADF XML file. Interesting.
Read/Write, full CRUD support
VS would be used over SPD because you cant write code in SPD
VS could support scenarios like pulling data into one list from multiple sources

Development Continuum

Slide that demonstrates that:

Visio and SPD and important and export between them
SPD –> VS occurs via the WSP
You can save your Site as a WSP file
Great for Functional designers to be working with the Developers
Great for Mock-ups. HOT
This includes workflows

Visio can be used to design the Workflows, but you need to get them into SPD to make them real workflows. From there they can go back and forth.
Once you send it to VS for coding, then you cannot go back again.

DEMO

Showing how a WSP can be imported
Created a SPD workflow in a site –> Saved it as a WSP.
Finds all the declarative artefacts for importing
This pulls in lots of stuff!
You can then pick and choose, so you are going to want to pull in only the custom bits, not all the standard content types and fields.
Identifies all your dependencies.
In the end the two custom lists that were created in the site that was saved to a WSP are transformed into new features. This could get seriously out of hand with Farm features, but I guess no big deal for Sandboxed solutions
Like the way this is going, think there is lots of potential here for increasing developer agility
You can actually set multiple startup projects! (I think with VS2008 even?)

Project System

This has been completely revamped in VS 2010

Server Explorer

Has SharePoint connections
Supports connections to multiple site collections

Feature Designer

Graphical way to build a feature

Add items that are available
Activation dependencies
Looks like this is how you can re-organise your projects

They have worked hard to ensure you dont have to get your hands dirty with XML.

Package Designer

Works in a similar way
Focused at the feature level
All drag and drop
Options for adding other assemblies

Packaging Explorer

Single view, tree view, of a single package
lets you drill into it
Each project in a solution gets one package

Mapped Folders

Provide a project folder where you can store images and layouts pages
Effectively this is just a nicer way to manage your images and layouts pages
Helps guide people down best practice for solution artefacts. HOT
DONT use 12 Hive use SharePointRoot instead.
Sandbox solutions dont have a filesystem of course.
You can create your own mapped folders, you get Images and Layouts by default.

Creating your own SharePoint Items for VS Projects could be fun
You will have the ability to define exactly what happens when you perform a deployment, this is slick too.
Visual Studio is very extensible, if anything is missing, you can code it in yourself
Worked hard to make GUID managing much easier, they use replaceable tokens in lots of places.

#SPC 09 Notes: Developer Overview

Daniel McPherson — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:58:00 GMT

Started with a review of the types of applications that are built on SharePoint.
SharePoint 2010 can be install on Windows 7 or Vista SP1

Both SharePoint Foundation Server (was WSS) or SharePoint 2010
Still requires you to be running 64bit
This is for development only, so single server, non-production, etc.
There is an Install Guide in the SDK (Beta coming in November) this replaces the Prereqs installer that works on the Server OS’s

Visual Studio 2010 integration is the tightest integration ever.

Lots of “SharePoint Aware” designers (Web Parts for example)
Package and Deploy
Can view SharePoint site via the Server Explorer
TFS integration
Sandbox support, WSP Import (nice)
BDC becomes BCD (Business Connectivity Services)

SharePoint Designer 2010

Will remain free
Looks to be seriously beefed up and also simplified. Seems to have removed or hidden many of the FrontPage functionality hangovers.
Workflow Designer

Developer Dashboard

Very hot
Is turned on by demand, and provides real time feedback on the performance of your code.
Beta 2 will require manual steps in order to activate it (STSADM/Powershell command)

DEMO 1

Visual Studio –> Build a Web Part
Farm Solution = To current approach to solution building
Site Solution is the new Sandboxed stuff.
Demo uses the VS Toolbox to graphically build a web part.

Uses a UserControl
I think this is nice, interesting to see how much I will actually use this

LINQ for SharePoint (Was almost expecting an applause on this one!)

SPMetal works like SQLMetal
LINQ looks hot

F5 kicks off the browser with “Add Web Part Page”
Web Part Page is going to be a depreciated, pretty much Wiki pages do it all now. (Wiki pages do have a Web Part Zone, but does not display it)
Dashboard provides LOTS of detail

Platform Services

BCS is the new name for Business Data Catalog
Read/Write access to data
Comes with SharePoint Foundation now, NICE.
Office clients can then take the data offline (wonder how conflicts are managed)
SQL, Web Services

DEMO 2

Connecting the BCS to a Web Service
SharePoint Designer is the primary place to do this, can also do it in Visual Studio
With VS you can connect it through to a .NET type
Generate the CRUD operations for you
Explorer that helps you define these objects, and then you can write any custom mechanisms for performing the CRUD operations
IISRESETS will not be going away (not that I was expecting it)
Connect it through to lists using “External Content Types”
the result is that the external data looks exactly like a list.

SharePoint List Improvements (most interesting to me)

Can create relationships between lists, with cascades…(WOW)
This is piggy backing on SQL functionality
Validation support, Excel like formulas
Lookup to multiple columns, nice
Automatically create indexes where they make sense (for example on lookups)
Demonstrated a 220,000 item lists, (dont be afraid of large lists)…hmmmm I’m not sure this is really as big a deal as it is. Querying the data is still the important bit. Throttling will block queries that are made for large numbers of items (configurable)

XSLT for Views

Bit of CAML bashing, its not really that bad.
CAML does not go away, but views will now be done with XSLT
CAML mostly used for Queries (wonder where the LINQ/CAML overlap is)

DEMO 3

List definition obviously become more complex now, wonder how your average SharePoint user will feel about that.
Demonstrates the cascading functionality
Column validation looks hot, got an applause
Lists will indeed become much better for creating applications

Accessing Data in Lists

Lots of new options
Server OM (as we have now)
New: Client OM –> Runs on the desktop
New: REST API’s –> ATOM response
New: LINQ and all LINQ goodness

Supports Joins and Projections
Will dramatically reduce run time errors, moving them to compile time

Client Object Model

Different to the Server OM
Promotes the batching of commands, so different to Server OM, but will be familiar
Almost full access to site based functions, but not server operations (maybe some limited) you use this “ExecuteQuery” function to perform the operations you line up, nice.
.Net assembly, Silverlight and Javascript files (Very HOT)

REST API

Supports ADO.NET Data services
SP2010 also installed ADO.NET services as these are what the REST API’s are built on
SharePoint becomes an ADO data service. Thanks to REST. HOT
Seems to come in mostly on the LISTDATA service
Demonstrates querying by URL, smart stuff.

DEMO 4

Builds a Windows Forms application
Adds a data source, service reference –> connects to LISTDATA
Binds a Grid on to the SharePoint List

Event Improvements

Project Template
New After-Synchronous event
Site Scoped events
Web Creation Events
List Creation events

Workflow Improvements

This is a really long slide
SharePoint Designer has an improved design service
Integration between SPD – VS
Browser base visualisations, HOT
OOB workflows can be fully customised.

DEMO 5

Build a really quick workflow is VS
Creates a Sequential Workflow
Can create a “Site” or a “List” workflow, Site Workflows do not require a list.
VS has a very visual designer
Got your standard drag and drop workflow design, nice, but the devil is in the detail
Adds an “Initiation form”, this is just a web form

SharePoint Service Applications

If a job is too big for the Code Behind, make it a service application
SSP –> Service applications
Developers can create new services
WCF knowledge nice to know here
Includes:

WS/Database provisioning
Settings Store
and much more…

Ribbon and Dialog Framework

A number of elements available for use by developers:

Ribbon is context sensitive
Status bar
Notification area
Dialog Framework

These are all JS based, all AJAXy

Silverlight

Media Player – HOT
Beyond Media scenarios, I’m not really much of a Silverlight fan
Could be nice to smooth over the upload process
There is a client API for this

Flexible Deployment

Sandbox Solutions - HOT

Designed to strike a balance between business Agility and Security and Stability

Site Collection based
Limited API Access
Monitored
Deployed remotely to a solution gallery (a lot like a document library)
Does no end up anywhere on the server filesystem
Easy deployment
This has some pretty profound implications

DEMO 6

Sandbox solutions come with alternative VS deployment config
Create a web part –> Adds a label control which displays all the sites and all the lists
Tries to do some bad stuff in the code –> Creates a big loop
Packages it, and then goes to upload manually (very smart stuff)
Solution gallery lives in Site Settings
Adds the web part
When the loop goes for too long, then it hits a resource limitation
Resource monitoring which can set limits, and creates a series of metrics around the performance of various applications

eg. Resource Usage.
Clear this is functionality driven by Microsoft Online requirements

In my view this is the most significant new feature in the product

SharePoint Online

Supports Sandboxed solutions
Supports BCS
It becomes a development platform

Upgrade and Packaging

Upgrade callouts for features – HOT
Test your SP2007 code before running on a SP2010 server, SHOULD be ok, but needs to be tested
WSP is the unified packaging approach

Bit light on, will need to check out the specific session.

Get Your Demos While They Are Hot! Blog Central, Discussions Central, TunnelPoint and Produshare

Daniel McPherson — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:03:15 GMT

As mentioned before, next week, zevenseas is heading to Las Vegas for the SharePoint Conference. Given its a week of “Show and Tell” we are coming fully equipped to demonstrate any of the three product releases we made this year.

Blog Central
Discussions Central (released this week)
TunnelPoint – http://www.tunnelpoint.com
ProduShare

If you have an interest in any of the above, and have 5 minutes to spare, drop me an email daniel@zevenseas.com or send me a tweet @danmc and lets be sure to find some time. I’ll even pay for the beer or coffee!

Assembly Free solution Contest with Cash prize

Daniel McPherson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:12:00 GMT

Readers of this blog will know that we have been spending a lot of time recently exploring the potential of SharePoint solutions that can be installed without touching the server.

There are our two cloud based service:

And the solution we have released:

To encourage the development of more “Assembly Free Solutions” we have decided to kick off a little contest. If you have a good idea for an assembly free solution, and have ninja-like Javascript and Web Service skills then put something together and send it through to hans@zevenseas.com.

First prize is EUR 500 cash, and we promise to showcase each of the solutions here on our blogs.

To get started take a look at our existing solutions

Team Status
Timesheets

And take a look at the following JS libraries:

Darren Johnston's JS API
JQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services by Sympraxis Consulting LLC

There are obviously a whole stack of Terms and Conditions, Hans has these over on his blog here.

Web Page Thumbnails in Your SharePoint Lists

Daniel McPherson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:46:54 GMT

I have been slow in posting on a very cool new community solution Mark published a few weeks back. Its called “ScreenScraper” and when installed to a list it will:

Take in a URL
Go out to the web
Take a screen shot of the web page
Save it as an attachment to the original list item

Combined with our free Tagged Links solution, it means you will never lose that cool web site again.

Download ScreenScraper

Or Try it yourself (walkthrough here):
Tagged Links
Username: DemoUser
Password: DemoUser

I’ll Be At SharePoint Conference 2009

Daniel McPherson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:06:21 GMT

Along with the whole zevenseas team (Mark, Robin and Hans). Looking forward to seeing you there!

SharePoint Saturday Copenhagen

Daniel McPherson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:13:10 GMT

I will be heading over to Copenhagen next week for the SharePoint Saturday that is being hosted there by Isaac Stith (@MrIsaac) and Jens Nørgaard (@SharePointDK). I’m really looking forward to it as they have pulled together a great bunch of people including:

Tobias Zimmergren
Carsten Keutmann
Christopher Even
Henrik Nordtorp
Marianne van Wanrooij
Michael Noel
Mike Watson
Sarju Raja
Shikhar Agarwal
Toni Frankola
Wictor Wilen

I’m looking forward to presenting the following session: SharePoint, the Social Computing Platform

An in-depth look at using SharePoint to build “Social Applications”. Want to build YouTube for your organisation? Flickr? Delicious? Want to create your own Facebook style Newsfeed? This session will demonstrate how one company has done just that, and how you can do it inside your organisation.

Its a free event, however if you are planning to attend it is recommended you sign up over here: http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/copenhagen/

See you there!

Keystrokes as a non-renewable Resource

Daniel McPherson — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:27:01 GMT

Next time you are writing a document, a report or replying to an email, stop! Stop and think about what you would do with those letters if you had only a limited number of keystrokes left in your fingers. Pretend for a second, that the keystrokes you type are a resource that will not be replenished, that we are running out, and when we do, they are gone forever.

Thinking like this will get you thinking in terms of maximising value. How can I maximise the impact of the knowledge I’m creating? How can I transmit it to the people who can benefit from it most? How can I save the non-renewable keystrokes of others who might be working on the same problems? How can I keep this knowledge working, perhaps even after I have stopped?

To me, this is a powerful way of thinking about the knowledge we are inevitably creating from the moment we sit in front of our computers, until the moment we turn them off. Of course it goes further than us as individuals. Capturing, organising and, most importantly, sharing the knowledge we create is one of the greatest challenges facing organisations today.

Being great at getting the right knowledge to the right people can be a significant competitive advantage.

I’ve seen an enormous number of attempts to solve this problem. In fact, my first role at Microsoft was the unenviable task of demonstrating how you can build collaborative applications using Outlook and Exchange that rivaled those created in Lotus Notes. Over the years it has been called “Knowledge Management”, “Collaboration”, “The New World Of Work” and “KM 2.0”. Throughout this, its always had the same goal, how do you move the knowledge and experience from one person to another.

For the first time in the 13 years or more I’ve been working in this area I’m seeing a new approach emerge, one that I think, might just work. Its an approach that starts from the bottom and works its way up. Its an approach which is informal, unstructured, decentralised and direct, but most importantly its an approach that people actually want to participate in.

Its Blogging, where the KM bus dropped us off.

I can already hear the skepticism, and make no mistake, I shared it when I started down this path now 18 months ago. It was a healthy skepticism though, one that was informed by the blogging experience I enjoyed at Microsoft. I learned then that there was a huge number of people who actually wanted to share their knowledge, all they were waiting for was an easy platform upon which to do it.

Looking back now its clear to me that a blogging platform for people inside the organisation would be just as valuable as the blogging platform I’m using to share this knowledge with you right now. Blogging has not only worked on the internet, but its informal, unstructured, decentralised and direct approach has undermined an entire industry. There just has to be something to it.

Ask yourself a question. Is it as easy for someone in my organisation to publish a page to the intranet as it is for them to reply to an email?

If your answer is “no” then with every minute that passes you are wasting a non-renewable resource, keystrokes, which are the currency of knowledge, are going a wasting.

Head over to http://demo.zevenseas.com and take a look at what an employee blogging platform built on SharePoint could look like. There are people in your organisation right now who want an easier way to share their knowledge, to grow their reputations and make deeper connections with their peer groups.

When you have taken the test drive, drop an email to hans@zevenseas.com for more information.

Employee Blogging Using SharePoint: Blog Central

Daniel McPherson — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:17:25 GMT

It gives me great pleasure to announce the release of our of first enterprise product for SharePoint.

Blog Central

I have had the great pleasure of working with a small group of early adopter customers on the functionality and feature-set and we have now matured it to the point where we have a V1.0.

While writing and designing software like this is obviously something I enjoy immensely, what I’ve enjoyed even more is watching blogging take off inside the enterprise. This experience has convinced me that providing people with a platform upon which they can share their knowledge, their experience and in the process grow their reputation, is where the real innovation in Knowledge Management is going to come from over the coming years.

If you are wondering if a blogging platform, built on SharePoint, could help people in your organisation share their knowledge more effectively, answer this one simple question:

Is it as easy today for people to publish a web page to the intranet as it is to write an email?

If the answer to that question is no, then 2009 is about time it became that easy. Email is the enemy, the ease of email is what is keeping knowledge locked away, and blogging is the alternative. It makes it easy for people to turn what through email, is an answer for one, to an answer for everyone.

For me, its useful to think of keystrokes as a non-renewable resource.

What would you do if the world were running out of keystrokes? How can you maximize the benefit of every word you write? The benefits should be clear to everyone. By sharing your knowledge you make others better, you make the organisation smarter, and of course, you are able to grow your own reputation.

Blog Central is the first in what will be a range of solutions designed to make SharePoint better at connecting knowledge and people. If you would like to know more, take a look at our demo site here:

Blog Central: http://demo.zevenseas.com
Or contact hans@zevenseas.com

Key Features

The following section describes the key features offered by Blog Central.

Post Aggregation

Blog Post Home Page page where people can see what people are posting across the entire organisation
Tag Cloud representing what people are blogging about and providing a quick filter
Ability to sort blog posts based on number of:

Comments
Views
Published Date

Support for RSS feeds

Provisioning and Directory

Provides a place where people can request a new blog (with approvals)
Blog directory supporting custom metadata
Ability to sort blogs based on total number of:

Posts
Comments
Views

Search

Specialised search page designed to make it easier to find blog posts

Blogs

Based on the Standard SharePoint Blog Template
One click email subscribe/unsubscribe
Information panel that displays the blog owners, posts, views and comments.
Included support for tags on blog Posts, and a blog specific Tag Cloud
Web parts that display “Most Recent”, “Most Discussed” and “Most Viewed” posts.
Detailed and customisable View tracking

Mark, Joel and TunnelPoint on “This Week In SharePoint”

Daniel McPherson — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:07:00 GMT

Mark Miller (of the End User SharePoint blog) and Joel Oleson have combined for a weekly “This Week In SharePoint” broadcast. We were really pleased to find a discussion of TunnelPoint in their latest show.

Head on over to view/listen to it here: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/?p=1770

Updated: Search Coder

Daniel McPherson — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:58:40 GMT

On a recent project we worked on, we leveraged search pretty heavily, using it to do all the cross-site aggregation heavy lifting. As a result we got a lot of use out of the SearchCoder tool we released last year. We are at the point now where we are looking at driving out additional performance improvements, and to do that we decided to extend the SearchCoder with some new features.

DOWNLOAD

Support For The Search Web Service

The initial support is pretty basic, with the intention being that it provides you with a quick way to execute a Full Text SQL query against the SharePoint Web Service.

The functionality that helps you build the query graphically still needs an OM connection to a SharePoint Site, but once you have that query you can issue it via the OM or the Web Service.

The nice bit about using the Web Service is that it means that you can, with care, test various queries against the production Query Servers and Indexes. Important as often the only place you have such a big index is in production.

Performance Instrumentation

Included in the tool is a quick and dirty way to get an average query time for a specific query. Basically, you create your query, test that its working, specify over how many iterations you would like to average, and click a button. The result is something like this:

Its pretty basic, but it does the job. I’m going to do a write up on some of the very interesting results we have seen, so stay tuned (pun intended!)

Change Log Report

This version also includes a first step into providing a way to expose the SharePoint Search Change Log. The Change Log is the list used by the SharePoint indexer to determine just what work it should do. All you do is enter in a number of minutes, and it will tell you which items the indexer will think has changed in that period.

This need some serious extension to really be useful, but its a start!

See you at DevDays NL

Daniel McPherson — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:16:14 GMT

I’m lucky enough to be presenting at DevDays on Friday, my topic is:

Building a Social Computing platform with SharePoint

An in-depth, technical look, at using SharePoint to build highly scalable “Social Applications” for the Enterprise. Need a blogging solution? Want to build YouTube for your organisation? Flickr? Delicious? Like to create your own Facebook style Newsfeed? This session will case study how one organisation has done just that and the lesson they learned.

Please do drop by and say hello if you are attending as well. See you Friday.

New version of our “Assembly free” Timesheet Application

Daniel McPherson — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:40:37 GMT

I just a little more work into our original “Assembly Free” SharePoint solution designed to make it easy to complete Time Sheets in SharePoint.

Here are the additional features we have added:
1) Improved the overall look and feel
2) Selecting a client automatically pre-fills the client for the remaining days
3) Empty days are no longer posted to the Calendar
4) A check is now made to ensure you select a starting Monday in the Calendar
5) Basic validation is made before you can submit time

Install it now (remember, its only a Site Template):

Download the Site Template.
Open a site collection where you would like to create the Timesheet subsite.
Click on “Site Settings”
Click on “Site Templates” under the “Galleries” heading.
Click on the “Upload” button, and then select the previously downloaded “Timesheet.stp” file.
When you have done that, click on “Site Actions” –> “Create”
Click on “Sites and Workspaces”
Give the new site a “Title” and a “Description”, then from the “Select a Template” section click on the “Custom” Tab.
There you should find the new “Timesheet” site template, click on it an click on the “Create” button

Or we have also made an online version available for you to play with:

Demo Site: http://demo.zevenseas.com/sites/AssemblyFreeDemos/TimeSheet/default.aspx
Usernames: ZSHOSTED\teamstatus
Passwords: teamstatus

Feel free to enter in a timesheet yourself, add customers, go crazy, and don’t forget to let us know what you think!

Release version of our “Assembly free” Team status Template

Daniel McPherson — Sat, 09 May 2009 04:22:21 GMT

Finished adding a few more tweaks and bug fixes to our “Assembly Free” Team Status application. I think its solid enough to call it a V1.0, and the good news is that it now works on BPOS (Microsoft Online Services).

Remember, this is just a SharePoint Template, so anyone can install it on SharePoint anywhere! You DONT have to have access to the server.

Fixes and Enhancements:
1) Added the name of the person who made the update, and a link to reply.
2) Prevent empty status message by disabling the “Update” button if the message box is empty.
3) Supports installation on BPOS (Microsoft Online Services)
4) Added the current user to the top of the page
5) Now supports account names with a ‘.’ in them (Thanks Oskar!).

As always, you can try it out for yourself by following these instructions:

Demo Site: http://demo.zevenseas.com/sites/AssemblyFreeDemos/TeamStatus/default.aspx
Usernames: ZSHOSTED\teamstatus, ZSHOSTED\teamstatus2, ZSHOSTED\teamstatus3
Passwords: (passwords are the same as username, eg. teamstatus, teamstatus2, teamstatus3

Download the new version now. If you are interested in integrating our Team Status application with Twitter, take a look at my tutorial using TunnelPoint here.

Bringing TunnelPoint to the “Assembly Free” solution party

Daniel McPherson — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:15:41 GMT

As you may have noticed, zevenseas has been putting a lot of thought into building solutions that can be installed quickly and easily, by anyone, on SharePoint, anywhere!

Last week we released our “Assembly Free” Team Status application, thanks everyone for the feedback, there is a new version coming in the next few days with some minor tweaks. The most important of those is support for BPOS (Microsoft Online Services).

After releasing this solution I got thinking about how we could make it even better by integrating it with Twitter. I didn’t have to think for long, because this is where TunnelPoint, our “BDC for SharePoint in the Cloud”, comes in.

With TunnelPoint added to the solution I was able to publish any messages added to an instance of the Team Status application to a Twitter account, take a look at the result below:

On the left is Team Status in SharePoint, on the right is Twitter

How might this be useful? Well, imagine a team like zevenseas who wants to publish a stream of messages under a single unified Twitter account. You can use SharePoint to create your messages, and then TunnelPoint to send them over to Twitter. Nice.

The best bit of course is that the entire setup took me less than 5 minutes AND I didn’t have to go anywhere near my SharePoint server or ask anyone from the IT Department to help me! <grin>

Here is how I did it:
1) You must have an Internet Facing SharePoint site, and an account with Administrator privileges.
2) Download and Setup our “Assembly Free” twitter application, and start adding some messages.
3) Sign up for TunnelPoint here: http://account.tunnelpoint.com/Registration.aspx then activate your account.
4) Sign up for a new Twitter account, or have an existing one ready.

This is where the fun starts, you will now have a Team Status site that looks something like this:

After activating your account, Logging on to TunnelPoint and clicking on “My SharePoint” a screen that looks like this:

The next steps are (a) Telling TunnelPoint about our new Team Status site and then (b) Assigning the Twitter service to that site. Click on the “New” button to display the following screen:

After entering all the information and clicking “Save”, you will have your site registered with TunnelPoint and ready to have services assigned to it:

Click on the “MyServices” link at the top of the screen, this is where you specify the services you would like to assign:

As you can see, one of the services listed is “Sent Twitter Update from SP List”, select this service and then click on the “New” button.

Now, the standard “Team Status” list does not include all the columns you need to successfully run this service. Rather than making you do this manually, TunnelPoint can take care of it for you, click on the “Create additional fields in list for this service”. This will add two fields to the existing list “What are you doing?” and “Message Status”.

After entering in the Twitter account you want to publish to, select “Message” as the field that contains the message and “Message Status” as the field where you would like to store the Message Status.

When you are happy, click “Save”, and you are done. Head over to your Twitter account and refresh your timeline. It should look something like this:

Before you go, try it out yourself:

Demo Site: http://demo.zevenseas.com/sites/AssemblyFreeDemos/TPConnected/default.aspx
Usernames: ZSHOSTED\teamstatus, ZSHOSTED\teamstatus2, ZSHOSTED\teamstatus3
Passwords: (passwords are the same as username, eg. teamstatus, teamstatus2, teamstatus3)
Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/assemblyfree (Note: it can take up to 15 mins to publish to Twitter)

Or check out some of the other services. It would be just as simple to set it up so that you received a text message with every new message added. Have Fun!

zevenseas Tools Recap

Daniel McPherson — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:39:57 GMT

Thought it might be a good time to put a short reminder post about some of the free tools we have released over the last 12 months or so, as it has been a while since we have written about some of them. Hopefully there is something in there for you!

CodePlex Projects

First up, there are our CodePlex projects, that come complete with source code.

Web Parts

http://www.codeplex.com/zevenseas/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=15157

Filter Web Parts

Choice Filter Web Part - The zevenseas Choice Column Filter web part does three simple things: 1) It pulls the choices from a choice column, 2) Displays them in either a list of option buttons or a drop down, 3) Passes the value you select to other web parts via a connection - More Information

Web Parts

Quick Alert Web Part - The zevenseas Quick Alert web part allows a user to create an alert, on a specific list with just a single click. - More Information

AD ChangePassword Web Part - The zevenseas AD ChangePassword webparts allows users to change their Active Directory passwords. This is comes in handy when using an extranet scenario where users cannot change their password the regular way.. . - More Information

QuickTask Web Part - The zevenseas Quick Task web part allows you to complete multiple tasks from a tasklist at once. Plus you can very quickly assign a task to someone by using the context menu. - More Information

CodePlex Statistics Web Part - Allows you to quickly display the download statistics for one or more CodePlex Releases - More Information

SearchCoder

http://www.codeplex.com/MOSSSearchCoder

Tools that helps you build, test and code solutions based around the SharePoint Search API. It includes a graphical tool, and an OM which abstracts SharePoint Search SQL.

Site Lifecycle Management

http://www.codeplex.com/zsLCM

The Lifecycle Management application is based on the original LCM tool of MS-IT but then slightly modified to be more '2007'ish ;)
So what does it do?

Captures sitedeletions and makes a backup first before deleting the site or web.
Gathers sites that are unused (using the Usage info, Last Content Modified Date and Last Security Modified Date)
Actions can be taken on this "unused" sites, such actions are
- Mail the siteowner and informing them that their site is being unused
- Lock the site after a given period of time
- Delete the site after a given period time

Feature Blocker

http://www.codeplex.com/zsfeatureblocker

This is a solution that SharePoint administrators can use to block certain features (site/web/webapplication/farm) from being activated or deactivated by the user that accesses the Managefeatures.aspx page.
It adds a bit of javascript runtime on the managefeature.aspx page and disables the buttons of selected features.

Free Solutions

Free and installable solutions.

Tagged Links

http://community.zevenseas.com/Blogs/Daniel/archive/2008/04/13/tagged-links-walkthrough.aspx

Social Bookmarking for SharePoint. It takes the standard “Links List” to a new level via browser integration, one-click tagging, advanced graphical views and global tags that allow you to define tags across an entire site collection. Take a look at the new “Walkthrough”.

The Link Conductor

http://community.zevenseas.com/Blogs/Daniel/archive/2008/12/02/free-solution-link-conductor-url-management-tool.aspx

Provides a centralised link redirection service with statistics. This way you can put links like: http://<Your Site URL>/go.aspx?<Category>=<Action> and ensure that they always go to the right place.

Tags Web Part

http://community.zevenseas.com/Blogs/Daniel/archive/2008/12/24/free-solution-the-zevenseas-tags-web-parts.aspx

Does what it says, but a picture says it better:

New version of our “Assembly free” Team status Application

Daniel McPherson — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:24:20 GMT

Just finished making some improvements to our "Team Status” application based on some feedback we received:

Performance has now been dramatically improved. Previously I would issue 2 web service calls, for each messages (once for the username, once for the picture). I know, disaster. Tonight I changed it so that all usernames and pictures are cached upfront. Thanks to those who pointed out the performance was slow, please do try again and let me know what you think.
I solved the issue that resulted in some manual steps during installation. So now, adding members to the site is as easy as, well, adding members to the site.
Also solved a couple of smaller issues:

Now works fine with HTTPS
Now works fine on Site Collections at the root of a Web Application

I have almost got it working on BPOS (Microsoft Online Services), will have an update in the next week or so. In the mean time try it out here:

Demo Site: http://demo.zevenseas.com/sites/AssemblyFreeDemos/TeamStatus/default.aspx
Domain for all accounts:
Usernames: ZSHOSTED\teamstatus, ZSHOSTED\teamstatus2, ZSHOSTED\teamstatus3
Passwords: (passwords are the same as username, eg. teamstatus, teamstatus2, teamstatus3

Or install it yourself:

Download it
Create a new site collection, log on as Site Collection Administrator, and upload this .STP file to the “Site Templates” gallery.
Under “Site Actions”, select “Create”, then chose “Sites and Workspaces”.
Give your site a Title, URL and a Description and then click on the “Custom” tab, select “TeamStatus” and click “Create”. Note: This version currently does not support unique permissions, so you must use parent permissions.
After a few moment you will be taken to the new site, and be able to create a send messages.

Taking Assembly Free Solutions To The next Next Level: Team Status Site (Twitter?)

Daniel McPherson — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:51:10 GMT

When I started coding the “Twitter for SharePoint” application that I wrote about last week, I had two ways I could go about it:

Use the traditional approach, being the SharePoint Solutions Framework, Visual Studio and C#.
Build it “Assembly Free” using SharePoint Designer, IE8 and Javascript

I started out trying to build it “Assembly Free”, but hit a couple of roadblocks, and because of timeframes, went back to what I knew. Last Sunday was a rainy day in Amsterdam, so I decided to dig up the “Team Status” application that I had started to write, and see if I couldn’t finish it off.

The good news is, I have, and better news is, I think it works. It’s probably a better example than my original “Assembly Free” solution, a Timesheet, and to my surprise it does nearly everything my traditional “Assembly Based” solution does. Of course, there are a couple of important differences (around scale, and some functionality) which means that both approaches will always have their place, but for people with no other choice it’s perfect!

The key advantage the “Assembly Free” approach offers, is that you can deploy the solution anywhere. All you need is a browser and Site Administrator access to a SharePoint site. This means it will work on sites running in your company, hosted with a application services provider, and, we’re working on it, Microsoft Online Services too.

To be clear, this is simply a Site Template. Nothing more, nothing less.

What does the application do?

Simple, it does pretty much everything I described in my previous post except for supporting the notion of “Followers” and the integration with My Site Colleagues. This application is focused more on the publishing side, and less on the subscription side. Here is what the home page looks like:

On the left hand side you can see a stream of messages from all the members of the team site. On the top right hand side you can see a “Send Message” box, this is where you can type and submit your status messages, up to a maximum of 140 characters.

On the bottom right you can see “My Messages”, these are any messages that mention you. People do this by using the “@<username>” syntax, where "<username>” is equal to your windows account name (without the domain).

Next to each of the status updates you will see a picture, this picture comes from your “My Site” if you have MOSS installed, or it comes from a column you can add to the User Information table (more information below).

The thing to keep in mind, and I know I’m being very repetitive here, is that there’s not a single line of C# code, and nothing has to be installed on the server. Everything, and I mean everything, has been done using a humble .STP file.

So how does it work then?

I created a new blank SharePoint site, and I added one new list called “Messages”. I renamed the “Title” field to be called “Message”, and I added a new Choice field called “Mentions”.
I then dropped into SharePoint Designer (I love it), opened the default.aspx page and created a “Message” box. This is just a standard input control, with a character counter, and a button that calls a Javascript function when you click on it.
The Javascript function does the following:
1. It uses a Regex to find all the people mentioned in the message using the @<username> syntax.
2. It calls one of the SharePoint Web Services and writes the message into the “Message” field, and the people mentioned in the message, into the “Mentions” choice field, one choice each.
I then refresh the page using two javascript functions:
1. One calls a SharePoint Web Service to retrieve the last 30 messages sorted by created date. It also retrieves a users picture and works out the relative date and time. This is the “Messages” stream on the left.
2. The second one calls a SharePoint Web Services to retrieve only those messages where the currently logged on user is listed as one of the “Mentions” choices (using a CAML query). It then sorts this by created date and renders it on the page.

All very simple really. There is of course a lot more going on behind the scenes, but it’s all there in Javascript for you to take a look at (and its a little bit neater than my last attempt, I’m learning!). The key thing to note here is that I couldn’t have done it without the amazing Javascript API for SharePoint created by Darren Johnstone. You can find more information about it here:

A javascript API for the SharePoint and Office Live Web Services

Would you Like to try it?

For those that are skeptical I thought I would do two things to convince you this approach can really work.

First, I have a live site you can play with, and some accounts you can log in with:

Try and mix it up a little bit so that it looks nice, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Secondly, you can download it and try it for yourself. This is a beta though, ~~and there are a couple of one-off manual steps that you need to perform in order to get it working for site members~~. I’m also not sure what sort of issues I might encounter on the various environments out there, so please give feedback.

Before I go into the installation, I’m going to repeat my call to action. If you think you can create nifty little solutions like this and are interested in hearing about how about an innovative new way to put them into the hands of customers, drop me an email daniel@zevenseas.com. We are announcing a new service within the coming weeks which will help you do just that.

Installing it Yourself

These steps just describe how to take a Site Template (.stp) file, upload it to a site collection, and then create a new site based on that template.

Download it
Create a new site collection, log on as Site Collection Administrator, and upload this .STP file to the “Site Templates” gallery.
Under “Site Actions”, select “Create”, then chose “Sites and Workspaces”.
Give your site a Title, URL and a Description and then click on the “Custom” tab, select “TeamStatus” and click “Create”. Note: This version currently does not support unique permissions, so you must use parent permissions.
After a few moment you will be taken to the new site, and, as Site Administrator, you should be able to create a send messages.

It’s that easy.

Adding Contributors

In a pevious version of this blog post I described some manual steps that you needed to perform due to an issue I had hit during development, the latest build (available via the download link on this post) now overcomes that issue. Adding members is as simple as, well, adding members!

Before you can add additional members, and let them contribute to the site, there is one small modification that needs to be made. Site members need to have “Read” access to the User Information table via the web service. Even though they have this via the UI, for some reason, this is restricted via the Web Services, but there is a simple solution. etc. etc.

Adding a picture to your messages

If you have only WSS, and want to let users add their own picture, you need to make the following adjustment. Note: If you are on MOSS, then you don’t have to do anything, it will just work.

1. Follow steps 1, 2, and 3 above, but then when presented with the “List Settings” page, click on “Create Column” instead:

2. Create the column exactly as it is shown below:

Now, all a site member needs to do, is logon to the site, and go to their “My Settings” page:

When presented with their profile, edit the item, and then enter the URL to a picture, in the new column. In fact, they could attach the picture directly onto their profile list item and reference it from there:

Finally, it seems I’m not the only one thinking about short messaging and SharePoint. Nick Boumans also published to Codeplex a nice solution. It takes the traditional Assembly Based approach, but works very nicely. Check it out: http://www.codeplex.com/SPMessaging

Twitter for SharePoint?

Daniel McPherson — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:33:37 GMT

UPDATE: Download Workgroup Twitter for SharePoint.

I was lucky enough to be able to participate in the successful and superbly organised SharePoint Best Practices Conference in the UK a couple of weeks back. Really big thanks to Steve and the team!

Anyway, my first session was all about demonstrating how SharePoint could be transformed from mild-mannered team collaboration server, into cutting edge super-social platform for next generation knowledge management applications. (phew!)

Now, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, SharePoint of course being born before the Social boom which is now upon us, but this is something I’ve long been interested in and something that I’ve been working hard on, with a large enterprise, for the last 18 months or more. So, I had a fair bit of experience under my belt, and could bring with me some solid real-world examples.

Our new blogging platform, which is available for demo here http://demo.zevenseas.com (and available for purchase, contact hans@zevenseas.com) was where I started. I’ve really enjoyed watching this solution grow at the customer I’m working with, and there is real business value to be gained by making publishing to your intranet as quick and easy as writing an email. But, I wanted to try and do something a little cooler.

Twitter is all the rage right now (even Oprah is on board now), and for good reason, its a great community tool. A great way to connect to people interested in the same things you are, great way to get questions answered and find links shared. While I’m sure there is a lot of skepticism out there, I’m convinced that there is a real place for a service like Twitter inside the firewall.

So, with that in mind, and given the similarities between Twitter (essentially a micro-blogging service) and our existing Blogging Platform, I decided the second part of my demo was going to be (Drum-Roll) “Twitter for SharePoint”!

Escape Clauses

Before we get into it, there are a couple of things I would like to point out:

This is a proof of concept, not working live production code.
I’m not sure this will ever “get into the wild” as I’m still not convinced SharePoint can handle it. Remember, be careful of the “If you are a hammer, then everything looks like a nail” syndrome.
It does work. I demoed it live on stage, and even under those bright lights, it did actually send little messages.

I’m going to spend time in a follow-up post talking about some of the possible business benefits that a solution like this could deliver, but for now, I’m just going to share some screenshots.

How it works

It integrates with the “My Colleagues” functionality which you can find on your MOSS “My site”. This integration means that you “Follow” anyone you make your “Colleague”.
When you want to send someone a message you use the normal “@<person>” syntax. The current version defaults to using your Windows Account Name (without the domain)
Its a “Site” based feature which you can activate wherever you like. So it could be part of your “My Site” or it could sit on a “Twitter hub” in its own dedicated Web Application.

This is what it looks like

Long time readers will already know I’m not much of a designer, but here is what it looks like:

The pictures come from your “My Site” profile, replies are any messages that contain an “@<your account name>” and the “Colleagues” view show all the messages posted by anyone listed in your colleagues list.

Writing a new message is as simple as entering it into the “Chatbox” and clicking “Send Message”, of course you are restricted to just 140 characters.

To reply to someone you just need to click on their picture to have their “Address” automatically entered into the text box.

And that’s it! All pretty simple really, although there are a number of technical challenges under the covers. If you think this solution looks interesting drop me an email, daniel@zevenseas.com and I will keep you informed of our progress.

Sample App Download: Taking Assembly Free Solutions to the Next Level

Daniel McPherson — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:22:01 GMT

It took me a little longer than planned, but as a promised in my previous post, you can now download the “Proof of Concept” timesheet application that demonstrates an assembly free solution that perform both read AND write operations with SharePoint. All using the magic of Javascript and Web Services.

This solution will work anywhere SharePoint does, even, if you are running SharePoint in a hosted environment (for example Microsoft Online Services (BPOS)). “Installation” is done entirely through your browser, and you don’t have to ask anyone for permission.

DOWNLOAD

How can you install it?

That is my favourite question. It’s just a Site Template. This means all you need to do is upload it to your site template gallery, and then create a new site. Just like this:

Download the Site Template.
Open a site collection where you would like to create the Timesheet subsite.
Click on “Site Settings”
Click on “Site Templates” under the “Galleries” heading.
Click on the “Upload” button, and then select the previously downloaded “Timesheet.stp” file.
When you have done that, click on “Site Actions” –> “Create”
Click on “Sites and Workspaces”
Give the new site a “Title” and a “Description”, then from the “Select a Template” section click on the “Custom” Tab.
There you should find the new “Timesheet” site template, click on it an click on the “Create” button.

You are done!

Call To Action

If you look at the code, and I recommend you do, please be aware that….I’m totally embarrassed by it. Remember two things: (a) This really is JUST a cool little proof of concept and (b) that I have done very, very little javascript programming in the past. The whole application took me 5 hours to put together, and I’m open to anyone who wants to improve it! Criticism is welcome!

As I mentioned in my previous post, we are working on an innovative new service which launches very soon and makes solutions just like this even more accessible to people who want to do more with SharePoint but who don’t have the technical know-how or luxury of installing assembly based solutions.

If you are interested in building small, focused solutions with SharePoint, just like this one, then drop me an email at daniel@zevenseas.com. We are looking for partners who want to participate in a revolution!

TunnelPoint gets its first review!

Daniel McPherson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:19:57 GMT

I’m sitting in an Edinburgh Hotel with Mark and Robin right now, in our post-UK Best Practices road trip. I have lots to write about the conference (it was fantastic) but before I do, I just wanted to get this up on my blog.

We were lucky enough to randomly run into, and have dinner with Jaap Vossers, and we spent just a little time with him talking about our new TunnelPoint solution. Well, he was kind enough to take a look at it, and today blogged his thoughts.

If that bores you though, at least head over to checkout his unique way of explaining things!

TunnelPoint: A BDC for SharePoint in the Cloud

Daniel McPherson — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:45:00 GMT

After a long period of research and development, this week, Hans announced the official launch (really worth a read) of our first ever hosted solution, TunnelPoint. We are pretty excited about it.

So what is it? Well, if I were to summarise for an audience like the one that reads this blog, then I would say that its the BDC for SharePoint in the Cloud.

What does that mean? Well, it means that through the TunnelPoint service you can connect internet based Web Services to SharePoint lists. For example, you can connect a Stock Quote service to a list that stores stock tickers, and automatically have the price updated for you, on a schedule. We have SMS, Stock Quotes, Twitter, Currency, Driving Directions, ShortURLs, and more, with more coming!

Its been designed with simplicity in mind (though we know we have a way to go) with the whole process taking less than 5 clicks. You tell us about your site (must be internet accessible, for example Microsoft Online (BPOS) sites), you select which service you want, TunnelPoint will configure the site with the necessary list and columns, and then after saving, do all rest for you!

Here’s a screenshot of a TunnelPoint enabled site, you can take a look yourself here: http://demo.zevenseas.com/sites/tunnelpoint/stockquote/default.aspx

I have highlighted the bits that TunnelPoint is busily updating for us (note the modified date), but what we also show is other functionality built on this Live update. For example a Twitter message if the price drops too far (could also be an SMS).

All this is built on a platform (we are calling SP-RIF, SharePoint Remote Integration Framework) designed to make really creative use of the power of SharePoint web services. Its incredible just how much you can achieve without having to go anywhere near the server.

Anyway, we are really keen to get feedback.

Head over and Try TunnelPoint.

The service is in Beta, and I mean REALLY beta (not as in Gmail beta). So please have a play, and let us know what you think! I’m always here: daniel@zevenseas.com

Pint2Share in Amsterdam on Friday

Daniel McPherson — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 06:04:14 GMT

I’m pleased to be able to announce the first ever Pint2Share (ok, ok, SharePint) in Amsterdam this Friday, details as follows:

De Veranda
Amstelveenseweg 764
Amsterdam
http://www.deveranda.nl/ (in Dutch)

Sponsorship is provided by Sparked, SDN and zevenseas.

There will be an excellent crowd coming along, including Joel Oleson, Mike Watson, Robin Meuré and Ton Stegeman (MOSS MVP) and Waldek Mastykarz

This will follow a great day of SharePoint sessions at the “SharePoint Day with the Experts: Amsterdam” which has a new venue and some really good numbers.

NOTE: You need to register for this event.

Congrescentrum Amstelveen
Sandbergplein 24
1181 ZX Amstelveen
(map)

See you there!