Aggregated Feed: SharePoint MVP blogs (English)

Emailing Daily Task Reminders // Looping in SharePoint Designer Workflow

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:24:31 GMT

I wrote up a detailed article a few weeks ago describing how to create a SharePoint Designer workflow that sends a task reminder email on a daily basis. It's been published at the new SharePoint Magazine site. More generally, the article shows how to create a looping structure in SPD. The magazine has a wide variety of articles including, among other things, very technical stuff, interviews and industry news. I recommend you add it to your RSS feed. If you have a product or service to sell, I'd also consider advertising on the site. It's off to a strong start with several thousand pairs of eyes looking at it already. That's sure to grow. Lastly, if you've been itching to write something and get it out in front of a larger audience, this is a great time and place to scratch it. </end> Subscribe to my blog. Technorati Tags: SharePoint Magazine

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Speaking at the Annual Strategic Intranet Summit in Wellington New Zealand

Chandima Kulathilake — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:01:20 GMT

Body: I am presenting a session about SharePoint Planning and Governance at the 8th Annual Strategic Intranet Summit held on 21st and 22nd of August 2008 in Wellington, New Zealand. For details and agenda visit the Summit web site. My session is on the second day 22nd of August 2008. From Chaos to Corporate Governance with SharePoint 2007 Find out what comes out of the box with SharePoint 2007 and what you’ll need to create a successful deployment. In addition to architecture, this session will explore the roles, responsibilities, and what you need for a successful consolidated managed SharePoint deployment in your organisation. The major changes of the 2007 edition How to overcome common deployment issues with this version and the pitfalls to avoid Exploring the potential of SharePoint as an application platform Real world examples of deployments done using SharePoint to achieve business objectives Other speakers include Michael Sampson, Mike Riversdale, Cairo Walker from...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

The Ongoing Saga of WinMac – Back to Vista

Eric Shupps — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:39:40 GMT

Body: For about a month now I've been running Windows Server 2008 on a Macbook Pro. My initial theory was that Win2k8 + Hyper-V + Macbook Pro would beat the pants off of any Vista system in terms of virtual machine performance. My experience running this configuration validates that theory – Win2k8 on this machine is F-A-S-T. And running Hyper-V was fantastic; I could finally work with my virtual machines as if I was on a native desktop. But, alas, there were a few major issues that forced me to give up on this experience and retreat back to the uncomfortable confines of Windows Vista. To begin with, Win2k8 is simply *not* designed as a mobile OS. In fact, it's blatantly obvious that Microsoft went out of their way to cripple Win2k8 so that it could not run effectively on a mobile platform. Simple things, like the Windows Mobility Center and the Transient Multi-Monitor service (which enables dynamic connection of external displays), are completely disabled with no tweaks,...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Link to download the Lotus Notes C++ Toolkit

Mei Ying (noreply@blogger.com) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:20:00 GMT

I've received a few questions about where to get the lcppn30.dll file that is required by SharePoint to connect to Lotus Notes. Here's the link for reference: https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/reg/download.do?source=ESD-SUPPORT&S_PKG=CR3DNNA&S_TACT=104CBW71&lang=en_US&cp=UTF-8 You will have to register with IBM to download the file. The version that contains the file is Lotus C++ API Toolkit Release 3.0 for Windows English US.

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

My current playlist of codin’ Music

Keith Richie — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:29:21 GMT

Depending on how busy the day is, it’s always nice to do some deep coding (Rather than troubleshooting, being on the phone with support, and other distractions). When I do, I have to have some tunes playing. Just thought I’d share my current playlist I’m using while coding… Everthing from the following artists/albums 4 Strings - Believe 4 Strings - Mainline 4 Strings - Turn it Around Armin Van Buuren - 10 Years Disc 1 and Disc 2 Armin Van Buuren - Burned with Desire (Yeah, I know…It’s a remix CD of the same song, but I just dig that song too much :)) Otis Redding - The Very Best of Otis Redding (Ok, Kinda different from the above, but someone I know has been asking me to play Otis for her quite often, and well..I got hooked on this classic.) a-ha - Hunting High and Low a-ha - Scoundrel Days a-ha - Stay on These Roads a-ha - Minor Earth Major Sky The Cars - Complete Greatest Hits Christopher Franke - Pacific Coast HIghway (My...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Press seems to focus on two pages of Forrester's reports.

kitkai — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:13:00 GMT

Do a google on "Now Is The Time To Determine SharePoint’s Place In Your Application Development Strategy", you will find two links on top of the search results to buy the papers, and followed by many reports that says BEWARE, WARNING, followed by the word CHAOS... Friends who have access to the report told me that the short comings are only two pages out of the twenty two... Isn't this an overkill? Seems to me that competition is really scared about what SharePoint can do. Seems...(read more)

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Infrastructure Update Issues

Darrin Bishop — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:59:13 GMT

Microsoft's Infrastructure Updates have been out for about a week now. There does seem to be some potential big issues with the updates breaking third party products. Microsoft also has posted a KB article on Alternate Access Mappings issues associated with the Infrastructure updates. Here are a few key posts you should be looking at if you have installed or are considering installing the Infrastructure Updates: AAM issue with Infrastructure Update Description of the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: July 15, 2008 KB: When is the SPContext.Current available ? (SharePoint dev)

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

SharePoint MSDN Forums

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Bierman [MVP WSS]) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:46:42 GMT

SharePoint - Accessibility Topics about improving accessibility and usability for the physically challenged. SharePoint - Business Data Catalog Topics about the Business Data Catalog capabilities in Office SharePoint Server. SharePoint - Business Intelligence Topics about implementing SharePoint for business intelligence oriented solutions. SharePoint - Design and Customization Topics about site design (i.e. definitions, templates) and page customization (i.e. layouts) as well as SharePoint Designer and similar tools. SharePoint - Development and Programming Topics about development and programming (i.e. web parts, features, etc.), SDKs, and tools (i.e. Visual Studio). SharePoint - Enterprise Content Management Topics about document management, records management, and web content management capabilities in SharePoint products and technologies. SharePoint - Excel Services Topics about Excel Services capabilities in Office SharePoint Server. SharePoint -...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Wherefore Art Thou Author?

Keith Richie — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:41:48 GMT

Just discovered this and thought I would share Ever site (web) within a site collection has a property called Author which is set to the account that created the site (Wether it be via the SharePoint UI, or the OM). To the best of my knowledge, this is not exposed in the UI. So for example, if I’m logged in a “John Doe” to a site, and create a subsite, the Author property of the new subsite will be set to “John Doe”. The problem, is that if “John Doe” is ever removed from the site collection, accessing this property will result in a User not found exception such as the following: Unhandled Exception: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: User cannot be found. at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPUserCollection.GetByID(Int32 id) at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.get_Author() This doesn’t present itself as a problem by just using the SharePoint UI, but if you have custom code that inspects this property, be sure to add some additional exception...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

SharePoint Best Practices Conference

Spence — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:03:30 GMT

September 15th - 17th, Washington, DC. I'm pleased to be presenting a couple sessions at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference this September in Washington, DC. I hope to see some of you there. For more information, please check out the conference web site at http://www.sharepointbestpractices.com/. It promises to be a great event with some great speakers and excellent material from the real world of SharePoint deployments - not much marketing spin here is what I'm saying :). If you register before August 1st, you'll also get a copy of the recently released MS Press book, SharePoint Best Practices. My sessions are: Mythbusters - Debunking Server Farm Myths (ITP305, CIO305, PM305, IA305) This highly interactive, whiteboard session will dive into common SharePoint Farm Myths and discuss common misconceptions around Global Deployments, Farm Topologies, Shared Service Providers, High Availability, Security and more. Alongside best practices for each "myth", the...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Caparea.NET: WCF in SharePoint 2007

Sahil Malik — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:22:45 GMT

Advertisement: SharePoint 2007 Training by Sahil in Europe and United States (more information). August 26th, 7:00PM - 9:00PM Ladies and Gentlemen, mark your calendars – you probably don’t want to miss this. I intend on making this talk extra special with sprig of lemon on top. Next month, on August 26th, I will be presenting at the Caparea.net user group. Now, caparea.net is a pretty well established user group – I personally have had a relationship with them for many years now. In fact, that user group was the place I delivered my first public speaking gig. Read full article ....

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Teaching WCM in LA week of August 4th and Two User Group Talks in So Cal

Andrew Connell — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:59:01 GMT

I'm teaching my WCM401 Developing Publishing Sites with SharePoint Server 20007 WCM the week of August 4-7 at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Irvine, CA. There are still a few open seats available, so if you're interested, go here to get more info & register. There's a special 15% discount code available to people in the area on the SoCal .NET Events site that you can use when you register for the class. While in California I'll be speaking at two user groups in the area. First on Tuesday, August 5th I'll be doing my session Don't Be a Tool, Be a Better SharePoint Developer Through Tools! @ the LA C# user group in Manhattan Beach. Developers know all too well that development in a Microsoft SharePoint environment can be a challenging experience with so many moving parts. However, with the rights tools and shortcuts, you can mitigate the challenges and let the tools do most of the work so you can focus on the more challenging business requirements. In this session, we...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

ISPA - For the community, by the community

Andrew Connell — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:38:01 GMT

Last week Bob Fox announced the International SharePoint Professionals Association (www.sharepointpros.org). Best explained on the homepage... The International SharePoint Professionals Association (“ISPA”) is the first independent, community-run, not-for-profit organization designed specifically for SharePoint Professionals. ISPA is a professional association dedicated to the promotion and global adoption of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. The Association provides support and guidance to the community by establishing connections between SharePoint professionals and groups, resources, education and information. Thanks to Bob, Darrin, Natalya & Chris for getting this up off the ground. Technorati Tags: sharepoint,ispa [Update 9:30a 7/24/2008] Fixed the URL... oops :)

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

SharePoint (WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007) Infrastructure Updates Available

Andrew Connell — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:34:18 GMT

In case you missed it, last week Microsoft released something they call the Infrastructure Update for WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007. This update adds some search features to SharePoint that were introduced in the Search Server products, fixes a lot of performance and scaling issues and content deployment fixes. The whole thing is outlined on the ECM team blog: » ECM Blog: Content Deployment & the Infrastructure Update The Infrastructure Update is not a service pack, but you could almost treat it as one. It includes previous hotfixes, including the ones for content deployment I blogged about previously. I've seen a few people screw up the install or get confused about it. Here's the deal: make sure you have SP1 installed for both WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007 (links to it here). Then install the WSS 3.0 Infrastructure Update, run the SharePoint SCA (the configuration wizard you ran when you installed SharePoint... available from the Office Server program group), then install MOSS 2007...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

New look SharePoint Forums

Andrew Woodward (noreply@blogger.com) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:54:00 GMT

All of the SharePoint forums have recently been migrated to new homes and are now hosted on the latest Microsoft forum platform. There has been a slight reorganisation but all have nice new URLs and I have included details below and split between TechNet and MSDN TechNet Forums SharePoint - Collaboration Topics about team sites, project tracking, document collaboration, extranets, etc. SharePoint - Community Advancement Topics about improving or expanding the worldwide SharePoint community through blogs, forums, social networking, conferences, user groups, code camps, etc. SharePoint - General Question and Answers and Discussion General (typically presales oriented) questions and discussions. SharePoint - Search Topics about Search capabilities in SharePoint. SharePoint - Setup, Upgrade, Administration and Operation Topics about installation/setup and upgrade/migration as well as administration and operation. SharePoint - Social Computing Topics...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

KB: When is the SPContext.Current available ? (SharePoint dev)

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:24:59 GMT

We always assumed wherever you have an HTTP Context (i.e., wherever SPContext.Current is not null), that you could access the SharePoint context through SPContext.Current. This was the case with MOSS 2007 RTM and SP1, but this changed with the recent Infrastructure Update. The following update to when SPContext is supported has been confirmed by Microsoft PSS. (Props to Nishand for confirming this behavior change.) Prior to the IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest method, the SharePoint application runtime is busy building an impersonation context of the calling user. This means that you CANNOT access SPContext.Current UNTIL the ProcessRequest method. This also means within the constructor of the handler OR from a factory pattern-- regardless of whether it's a Page or IHttpHandler endpoint. Note that this is a COMPLETE CHANGE OF BEHAVIOR (processing timeline) that the infrastructure update introduces. Bottom line-- this means that if you are implementing IHttpHandlerFactory instances, you...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Master Page Error from Exporting file from SharePoint Designer

Heather Solomon — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:11:07 GMT

If you are using SharePoint Designer (SPD) to create a master page file that will then be placed on the web server for use, such as with a custom site definition or custom Feature, you may run into the following error when viewing or creating a new site: Cannot convert type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.ScriptLink' to 'System.Web.UI.IAttributeAccessor' This may be caused by the method you used to get your custom master page file out of the content database. If you used the Export feature in SPD (File --> Export --> File), SPD will add in a bunch of code that only SPD knows how to properly read and process. For example, if you look at the HEAD area of your master page file in SPD, you will probably see something like: <SharePoint:ScriptLink language="javascript" name="core.js" Defer="true" runat="server"/> <SharePoint:CustomJSUrl runat="server"/> <SharePoint:SoapDiscoveryLink runat="server"/> <SharePoint:CssLink...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Will Silverlight take off in the Enterprise?

nick — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:19:53 GMT

Body: We’ve been working on some stuff at Lightning Tools to create solutions using Silverlight 2.0 beta 2. To us the idea of Silverlight is great, rich internet applications, with zero javascript. Awesome! But we’re left with a few things we’re wondering over before we start pushing things out to get feedback. The two things that are pretty much ready for beta are the SharePoint Silverlight Forums which I’ve mentioned before and a Silverlight ToDo style list application also for SharePoint The points I’m currently pondering… 1, Will large corporations roll out Silverlight to their desktop PCs? Many places I go to have just upgraded from Office 97 to Office 2003 (which may have been a licensing-cost issue) so lots of places are slow to let clients install the latest new thing. How many places allow Flash to be installed? (I’m guessing this is pretty high?) Of course with Silverlight requiring a WCF layer to write data back this means we can easily swap out the Silverlight front...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

SharePoint Best Practices Conference Update

Bill English — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:20:00 GMT

Body: Our team at Mindsharp continues to work on conference and marketing plan for the SharePoint Best Practices conference. Ben Curry is in charge of the speakers and the overall presentation schedule. He decided to split up some of the Cabana 2-hour sessions into two one-hour sessions, so we've got some additional slots to fill with speakers. We are working on that now. You can submit session ideas to Ben Curry and they will be routed through our internal selection process. We've maxed out our current sponsor slots and are working on finding room at the hotel to host more sponsors. We have several on a waiting list who want to exhibit. So, who is exhibiting thus far? You can find them here. You might also note that in the next week or two, we'll be assigning speaking slots to certain sponsors to demonstrate their software/services via a Cabana session at the conference. If you look at the conference schedule, we've built into the conference a way for sponsors to showcase their...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

NJ SharePoint Users Group Meeting for July 23

Bob Fox — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:21:43 GMT

Body: Please join us on July 23rd for the monthly New Jersey SharePoint Users Group meeting. This month we will be looking at NewsGator's Social Networking capabilities. If your interested in bringing Social Networking into your environment then this session will be for you. Topic: “SharePoint Social Networking” Guest Speaker: Ashley Roach, Product Manager, NewsGator Technologies, Inc. Presentation: Enhancing SharePoint’s Social Networking Capabilities Description: Please join NewsGator’s Senior Sales Engineer John Worrell as he discusses and shows how NewsGator Social Sites extended Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with social feedback (i.e. bookmarking, tagging, commenting), social networking, and community functionality by leveraging the SharePoint platform and social computing services provided by NewsGator Enterprise Server. SharePoint is a great foundation for social computing application development and can be easily extended through web parts and web...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

LINQ4SP: Query Evaluation

aghy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:30:00 GMT

One of my colleagues, Daniel Leiszen is the lead developer of LINQ4SP project. He started to write a developer series about LINQ4SP. His first article is brand new, published a few minutes ago: LINQ4SP - Query Evaluation : "The evaluation of a Linq...(read more)

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Great Developers needed

nick — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:41:41 GMT

Body: My good friend Flemming Madsen runs a very successful company called Onalytica. He’s looking for a number of excellent .NET developers who have experience working with large database setups. If you’re looking for a new challenge at a great company check out his page here: http://www.onalytica.com/jobs.aspx I wouldn’t usually post this kind of thing but Flemmings a great guy and is doing some very exciting stuff. Published: 7/22/2008 1:41 PM BlogTitleForUrl: great-developers-needed

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Notes on the recently released Infrastructure Update for SharePoint

Chandima Kulathilake — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:22:09 GMT

Body: As previously mentioned here in my blog the infrastructure upgrade installation should be be planned since it will essentially take your SharePoint farm offline until the updates have been applied. The services that will be affected with this update include IIS, SharePoint Timer Service and the SharePoint Administration Service. These services will be stopped and started by the setup wizard during the update process. Things you *Must* do when updating an existing SharePoint deployment It is highly recommended that you have upgraded your server farm to WSS and MOSS Service Pack 1 level. (Honestly I think you must upgrade to SP1 before applying these updates) You have to first install the WSS V3.0 update before installing the MOSS update. Ensure that you use the correct version of each update on your farm. (Make sure to download the x86 update on x86 servers and x64 for the x64) Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (32-bit, 64-bit) Logon with the "Setup...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Free Custom Cross-Site Lookup Column Add-On for WSS v3

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Bierman [MVP WSS]) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:54:51 GMT

NOTE: MY RSS FEED HAS MOVED - update your subscription here.The Cross-Site Lookup Column provides users with a simple means for adding Cross-Site Lookup fields to any List within the same WSS v3 Site Collection. To download and use this free add-on for WSS v3, follow this steps. 1. Download the zip archive 2. Unzip the archive and run the included install.bat. 3. From WSS v3, browse to any List and choose List Settings. 5. From the List Settings page, select Create Column. 6. On the Create Column page, choose the Cross-Site Lookup column type. 7. Select any Site in the Site-Collection to lookup data from. Then Pick the appropriate lookup list, and lookup column. To take a look at the new Cross-Site Lookup column in action, create a new item in your list. Here's the result: DISCLAIMER: My free software is not guaranteed or supported in any way. All software should be evaluated in a test environment before production use. By downloading my free software, you are implicitly...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Custom Feature: Link to WSS Central Admin from SharePoint Site Actions Menu

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Bierman [MVP WSS]) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:51:21 GMT

NOTE: MY RSS FEED HAS MOVED - update your subscription here.Would you like to have a link to WSS Central Administration from the Site Actions menu of any site in WSS v3? I finally got some time to throw together a custom Feature that provides this functionality. The WSS Solution Package containing this Custom Action can be downloaded below. The download includes an install.bat file to install and deploy the Feature automatically for you. After installing and deploying the WSS Solution Package, you can activate the Feature by clicking Site Actions->Site Settings->Site Features from any WSS v3 or MOSS 2007 site. Here's the download: CentralAdminLinkFeature.zipDISCLAIMER: My free software is not guaranteed or supported in any way. All software should be evaluated in a test environment before production use. By downloading my free software, you are implicitly agreeing to these terms and conditions. by Tony Bierman [MVP WSS] Quality, Commercial SharePoint Add-ons

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Quick Site Settings: Adding Sub Menus to Site Actions in SharePoint

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Bierman [MVP WSS]) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:51:08 GMT

NOTE: MY RSS FEED HAS MOVED - update your subscription here. In this post I'll illustrate how to programmatically add sub menus to the Site Actions menu. This post has an accompanying Visual Studio 2008 solution containing all source code for the Quick Site Settings Feature as discussed below. The source code can be downloaded from the link at the bottom of this post. The Quick Site Settings Feature adds much of the functionality found on the Site Settings page in WSS v3 to the Site Actions menu for quick access. Here's a screen shot: I'll keep the code walkthrough at a high level, assuming you have at least intermediate experience in developing solutions for WSS v3. You can download the Visual Studio 2008 solution below to take a closer look, and please feel free to leave comments on this post if you have any questions about how something works. Let's start by taking a look at the Feature declaration. This Feature definition is boilerplate, so I won't discuss it other that to...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Add user ratings and rich HTML comments to SharePoint pages

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Bierman [MVP WSS]) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:50:55 GMT

NOTE: MY RSS FEED HAS MOVED - update your subscription here. My Community Content web part and Top Rated Content web part allow user to quickly rate a page's content and easily add rich HTML comments to SharePoint 2007 pages. Using these web parts, your anonymous users can rate the page content's quality and logged-in users can submit their own comments using a rich HTML interface. Below are a few screen shots of the Community Content web part and the Top Rated Content web part. Installation is really easy. Download the package, unzip, and run the install.cmd file. You'll be prompted for the URL to your SharePoint 2007 site. Once installed, two web parts are added to SharePoint's web part gallery. In a most cases, you'll simply want to add the Community Content web part to your SharePoint Site's master page, and add the Top Rated Content web part to any page where you'd like the listing available to users. Of course, you could just add the Community Content web part to...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Using Generics and Anonymous Methods to your advantage - a recursive alternative

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:31:13 GMT

Awhile ago, I was conversing with someone about the features of the newer .Net Framework versions. One of the features mentioned was generics. My friend mentioned that he really liked the concept and recently started using them, but that he still couldn't quite see how generic collections could really be put to work. Ok... so that's the lead in for today's post - generics, collections, and 1 more "new" feature called anonymous methods. For starters, f you haven't looked at generics, shame on you. That is some seriously wicked stuff that will do nothing but help you in the long run. If you haven't checked out generic collections, that's ok... I think a lot of folks haven't really touched on that area because so much legacy code relies on the old way of working with collections. Anyways, if you need some help with generics and generic collections, open up a new browser session and read up on the topics. First, let's dive into how generic collections can be...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

IBM and FAST Search

aghy — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:05:00 GMT

FAST (part of Microsoft) announced at the end of last week, that IBM has signed Site Search Agreement with them: " Under an agreement signed between the two companies, IBM will license FAST Site Search and will be coupling FAST's product with...(read more)

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Windows 2008 Single Development Machine environment - A quick tip

Sahil Malik — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:05:47 GMT

Advertisement: SharePoint 2007 Training by Sahil in Europe and United States (more information). This will save you some hair. OOTB, with Win2k8, in a single machine environment, you won't be able to Save directly to a document library Map a document library See document libraries in windows explorer Create VS2008 workflow projects (which IMO suck anyway) Publish InfoPath forms directly to content types or document libraries. Bunch of other such scenarios How do you fix all this? Easy. Start server manager Add the "Desktop Experience" feature. Restart That's it - everything should work now. Damn, that was easy! Read full article ....

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

It's High Time for a Blog Makeover!

john.nospam@nospam.johnholliday.net (John Holliday) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:55:00 GMT

After running my blog for the past two years on Subtext, I finally decided to move everything over to the new BlogEngine 1.4 platform. What a great idea that was! Check out the new look! Marvel at the clean lines and smooth transitions! See how responsive the pages are? Nice. The main reason I'm excited about this product (other than the fact that it's free) is the elegant simplicity of the BlogEngine design, which makes it a breeze to customize and add your own extensions. Kudos to Mads Kristensen and the entire BlogEngine team for producing a truly great blogging platform. If you haven't heard of BlogEngine, and you host your own blog, then you should definitely check it out. It's based on ASP.NET 2.0, and therefore takes full advantage of all the latest .NET features, like master pages, page caching, etc. It also uses XML files to store the blog posts, which makes it much easier...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Off the grid

Bil Simser — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:02:43 GMT

I’m taking a bit of some downtime in the British Columbia for the next week so no blog or project updates. I’ll be on email/twitter/facebook intermittently via my CrackBerry (wherever there’s reception) otherwise I’ll be back sometime next week with new and exciting adventures in the digital land.

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Presenting @ DotNetWork.org: SharePoint WebParts development

marwan.tarek — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:55:00 GMT

Posted on SharePoint Blogs

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

ISPA – Doing it for the community

Ivan Wilson (noreply@blogger.com) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:41:00 GMT

The SharePoint Community around the world is made up of a lot of passionate, hard-working people. I've been lucky enough to meet my fair share of these people over the years. One of the most visible signs of this community are the various User Groups focussed on the SharePoint platform. Here in Australia you can find one in most State capitals at http://www.sharepointusers.org.au. Well, now there is a world-wide group set up to support and share experiences between these User Groups – the International SharePoint Professionals Association (ISPA). This will help strengthen and grow the existing groups here in Australia, and help any new SharePoint User Groups get up and running. If you'd like to read more about this organisation, drop by their website at http://www.sharepointpros.org. As a User Group leader, I'm looking forward to sharing experiences with others and learning what else we can do for our members. I've also signed up as an ISPA Regional Evangelist. This means that I'm...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Great SharePoint development book

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Bierman [MVP WSS]) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:45:37 GMT

I received a copy of Andrew Connell's new SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development book a few weeks ago. As expected, Andrew's new book is excellent - well written with a ton of substantial content. I particularly like chapter 10 on Field Types and Field Controls. SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development is a must have for any serious SharePoint developer. Seriously, buy this book today. by Tony Bierman [MVP WSS] Quality, Commercial SharePoint Add-ons

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

PowerShell for flexible, iterative SharePoint-based development

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Bierman [MVP WSS]) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:45:17 GMT

This post by David Mann is a good resource for 3rd-party and MS tools to help with SharePoint-based software development: Using Tools to make SharePoint Development Easier While we here at the SharePoint Solutions Software Division certainly use some of the tools mentioned in David’s post, I guess maybe our development requirements are a bit "heavier" than the typical IT project since we're developing packaged products for commercial redistribution. We need the fined-grained control of a flexible, highly re-usable tool-chain. Our developers use PowerShell extensively for various iterative "build and deploy" scenarios. For example, here's the usage menu from a PowerShell script called Deploy-ExCM which we use while working on our ExCM product: ---------- PS C:\usr\src\devteam\ExtranetCollaborationManager2009\Mainline\Dependencies> .\deploy-excm -u Deploy-ExCM Build and deploy utility script for Extranet Collaboration Manager Deploy-ExCM usage information. Arguments: -i Recycle...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Programmatically add custom field type to SharePoint list

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Bierman [MVP WSS]) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:44:13 GMT

Scenario: You've authored a custom field type and want to programmatically add it to your SharePoint list.In this example, we've created a custom SharePoint field type called ListColumnPicker. This custom field type's purpose is to allow a user to select one or more columns from another list, and also order the selected columns. Play the short video below for a brief demonstration of ListColumnPicker. For reference, the custom field type's definition is shown in Figure 1. Given the custom field type definition shown in Figure 1, Figure 2 illustrates how we can programmatically add this custom field to a SharePoint list. Walkthrough of C# code in Figure 2: Avoid an error by checking that the column title we'll be creating does not already exist in the target list.Call the target list's Fields property's CreateNewField() method, specifying the TypeName of our custom field type and also the name for the new list column to be created. Note that the TypeName is declared in our...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Microsoft offering FREE Support for users of Windows Vista SP1

Cornelius J. van Dyk — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:12:53 GMT

Body: For the next 8 months, Microsoft is offering FREE support to all users on Windows Vista SP1. If you've been thinking of moving to Vista, but you've been reluctant to make the jump, this could help make the transition easier. Later C Kick it Fave it Digg it Reddit Del.icio.us Published: 7/19/2008 5:12 AM

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

WSS FAQ additions and corrections CXIII - 13th - 19th July 2008

englantilainen@hotmail.com (Mike Walsh) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:37:58 GMT

Note: All of the addresses of the KB / Articles - 2007 Products / MS / Non-MS Articles below were valid at the time I added them to the WSS FAQ site and to this file. I can't guarantee that they still are. (This is also posted to the WSS newsgroup at microsoft.public.sharepoint.windowsservices - web access via http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/server/sharepoint.mspx) (Items are added to the WSS FAQ throughout the week so you will find new items more quickly by checking at wss.collutions.com or www.wssfaq.com daily.) From 13th - 19th July 2008 NOTE: Amendment to KB articles: Microsoft are not not amending the date of a KB article if the change made is marked as a version point change (so from 2.2 to 2.3 for instance). This ought to mean that the amendment made is cosmetic rather than important as important text changes ought to result in a...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

I wonder...

Andrew Connell — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:22:26 GMT

I wonder where Starbucks employees go when they need to "make a run" ? Everyone I know makes Starbucks Runs when they need a break or a boost in the afternoon. Wonder where Starbucks people go? One of the reasons for the "runs" is to get out of the office or just a break... so they have to get out. Maybe Dunkin Donuts? Have a great weekend all...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

International SharePoint Professionals Association: It's alive!

erobillard — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:05:00 GMT

On Wednesday Bob Fox announced the launch of the ISPA and its website at http://www.sharepointpros.org/. Bob's been putting this together for well over a year so first off, congratulations to Bob on launching and thank-you for all the hard work you do to help user groups world-wide. What does the ISPA do? Initially its goal is to support existing SharePoint user groups and help people kick-start new ones. There's a small board and a number of evangelists world-wide. Reza and I are the first two "Canadian Evangelists" and we can't wait to have counterparts in the West and East. Canada only has one SharePoint User Group (Toronto) but there is demand from coast-to-coast. If you've been wishing there was somewhere you could go to learn the latest about SharePoint, maybe the ISPA can bring out the user group leader in you. To learn more or to learn how to start a SharePoint user group in your area, you're welcome to contact me through this blog, or e-mail the ISPA at...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Moving Site Collections between Databases

Ivan Wilson (noreply@blogger.com) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:21:00 GMT

Microsoft has recently released an update to the Central Administration site that makes it easy to move a Site Collection between different Content Databases. The Batch Site Manager can be very handy if you need to break up your content across multiple Content Databases – possibly sitting on different SQL Servers. The same tool also allows you to lock and delete site collections: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc508852(TechNet.10).aspx

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Anyone know of SharePoint 2007 books in "interesting" languages ?

englantilainen@hotmail.com (Mike Walsh) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:07:33 GMT

One of the things that I'm especially pleased about with my SharePoint 2007 book page (http://wss.asaris.de/sites/walsh/Lists/WSSv3%20FAQ/V%20Books.aspx) is that I haven't just taken the easy way out and stuck to English language books, but that I also try to have all the French, German etc. books listed there as well - both original and translations. The French and German books aren't too much of a problem as there are Amazon sites for both France and Germany that naturally list books in those languages, but Spanish ones have been a problem that I've only solved by the occasional Google search or visits to bookshops when on holiday in the Canary Islands. (The visits to bookshops produced a single SharePoint 2007 in translation). I have been sure that there must be at least translations into many other languages but how to find them? In the WSS 2.0 timeframe someone told me of a book that he had written in Turkish but nothing similar has...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

An RSS feed for a View

Ivan Wilson (noreply@blogger.com) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:13:00 GMT

One of my clients came across this neat trick while we were figuring out the easiest way to extract an XML representation of some list data. The default URL for the RSS feed on a list is in the format: http://<ServerName>/<SitePath>/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List=<guid> Where <guid> is a unique identifier for the list or library that you are interested in. How do you find this value? Easy – if you access the site settings page for the list, you will see the appropriate value in the web address in your web browser. Our issue was that this didn't return the set of records that we wanted. The client noticed some other URLs that I was using (based on using the owssvr.dll url protocol) had a View parameter, so he added it to the ListFeed.aspx link – and it worked! So you can target a specific view in the list to get your RSS feed from. This makes your URL...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Italian SharePoint Conference 2008

Patrick Tisseghem — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:26:49 GMT

Body: Just had a wonderful four-day city trip in Rome with the girls. It was warm, busy with all of the tourists but the buildings and sights were awesome. Was my first trip to Rome and it is definitely a city to visit in your life time. My oldest daughter studies Latin so she really enjoyed all of it. The next two weeks I'll be at home in Cyprus enjoying the very hot weather here. Just want to remind all of the readers from Italy that there is a great SharePoint conference in October in the beautiful city of Milan. I was there last year, had a great time (with the Bamboo guys) and could not resist the question to go back and deliver a couple of sessions. Ted P. will also be there to be part of the show. Have a look at their site and the list of sessions. Most of them are in Italian. Ciao! Published: 18/07/2008 6:26

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

book buying spree

nick — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:35:03 GMT

Body: I’m just sitting in the airport lounge in Seattle waiting for my flight back to London. Made a ‘flying’ visit out here for a few meetings yesterday so the trip has only been for 3 days. Not enough time to get over jetlag! Anyway I’ve been buying a few too many books, I think I’m addicted to it! Very strange as when I was at school I hated reading. I guess it’s because they make you read their boring crap back then ;-) So here’s what has been purchased this trip! Getting to Yes The design of everyday things The non-designers design book Influence: the psychology of persuasion Only available in the US so I had to get here: What your customers want to know Bought on a whim at the airport: Leaving Microsoft to change the world Microsoft 2.0 Little black book of Connections Little red book of Selling The first batch were ones Joel mentioned in the Stack Overflow podcast (a great podcast to listen to btw) Luckily just before I left the UK I bought a...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

SharePoint RPC part 2 - creating a subsite

Ton Stegeman — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:59:49 GMT

Body: In a previous article I showed how you can create MOSS publishing pages using SharePoint's FP-RPC. In this post I will describe how you can create a sub site using RPC. In this case we're using a combination of Frontpage RPC and WSS RPC. The first step is to create the site using RPC. After this, the site needs to be provisioned. In this step we will use WSS RPC to apply the site template. I am running the sample code below in a WinForms application. In the UI I can enter the URL for the parent site, the new url of the sub site, and the name of the site template. The UI looks like this: You will find the code in this zip file. This zip also contains the sample code for the first article about RPC. Step 1 - Create the site (FP RPC) In the code snippet below you will find the code to create the site. After initializing the variables, the rpcString is encoded (in GetRPCCall) before posting the RPC command using a WebClient. private string CreateSite(string siteUrl, string...

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Free Windows Vista SP1 Support

Bob Mixon — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:56:00 GMT

Having difficulties with Windows Vista SP1? Microsoft is offering free support to all customers until March 18, 2009. Telephone support is available worldwide; chat and e-mail support is available in the US and Canada. For more information, visit the Microsoft Help & Support site.

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

SharePoint 2007 - Site Groups and Permission Levels Explained

Amanda Murphy — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:20:45 GMT

Sometimes it can be difficult to explain in just a few short sentences how permissions are defined in SharePoint 2007. Especially since so much has changed since 2003 / v2. Shane and I covered a fair bit of the detail on this stuff in our book Beginning SharePoint 2007 however I just (re)discovered a fantastic article by Joel Oleson from last year that I will be referencing when trying to explain to people as well. I highly recommend anyone that is responsible for managing their SharePoint environment (whether MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0) to grab a coffee and sit down and review this line by line. Joel Oleson’s SharePoint Groups, Permissions, Site Security, and Depreciated Site Groups

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****

Free Vista SP1 Support

Rob Foster — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:20:09 GMT

Free, unlimited installation and compatibility support is now available for all worldwide customers using Windows Vista SP1, until March 18, 2009. Telephone support is available worldwide. Chat and Email support in US and Canada only. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Effective dates From now until 18 March 2009. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Location Find out more and access the service at http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx?rdpath=1&prid=11274&gprid=500921 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

***** This is a content summary only. Click on the title link above or the "More..." link below (if shown) to view the full content. *****