Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog

Enterprise Social Computing web site

sptblog — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:43:27 GMT

At #e2conf (tag name for Enterprise 2.0 Conference), we announced a new Microsoft mini-site dedicated to enterprise social computing. It’s running on the sharepoint.microsoft.com environment that hosts the primary SharePoint marketing site. On this social site, you will find content about using the social power of SharePoint to help your organization to collaborate and communicate. Plus, the site has a fresh new design and uses the blog feature that is built into SharePoint. So head over to the site and check it out:

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/social

Cheers!

Dave Pae
SharePoint Technical Product Manager

How We Did It: BDC Meta Man Web Edition

sptblog — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:26:22 GMT

For today’s guest post, I’d like to introduce Nick Swan and Phill Duffy. Nick founded Lightning Tools with Brett Lonsdale in 2006 and BDC Meta Man was a result of their efforts. Fast forward to 2009 and Phill Duffy is part of the team (Nick Swan, Brett Londsdale, Dmitry Kaloshin, Michael Gamza, Hrayr Diloyan, Ashot Brahamyan, Karen Khumaryan & Hrachya Bekverdyan) that built and launched BDC Meta Man Web Edition. This post gets into the decisions and components they used to build a custom SharePoint solution. Enjoy!

Introduction

BDC Meta Man Web Edition was born from the success of BDC Meta Man and from listening to our users about how they wanted to interact with SharePoint and the Business Data Catalog. We certainly had our work cut out for us as BDC Meta Man is hugely successful and a hard act to follow. One of the surveys conducted by Lightning Tools a short while ago showed that users were asking the question as to why, when SharePoint can communicate with their Line-of-Business Systems, they need to use a desktop application to create the Application Definition File to do so. The users wanted the functionality of BDC Meta Man but without the requirement of stepping outside of their SharePoint environment.

Our Goals

Allow users to create Application Definition File from within the browser (Figure 1 - BDC Meta Man Web Edition)
Give the ability to create Application Definition File to Site Collection Administrators
Give users functionality of BDC Meta Man from within the browser
Streamline the process of creating an Application Definition File
Imitate BDC Meta Man desktop application (Figure 2 - BDC Meta Man)

Figure 1 - BDC Meta Man Web Edition

Figure 2 - BDC Meta Man

How We Did It - Bringing the Application Definition File creation into SharePoint

We were lucky enough to be creating another version of a well received existing application so we did not need to worry too much about what it should be able to do, the functions that the desktop version could perform were listed and we made a comparative list of what we wanted to achieve from our browser version. Features such as generating web parts to write back to a data source were straight out as there was no way we would be able to offer this functionality, but the range of data sources and the method of creating associations we certainly going to be in. We were ready to begin…

We started off by creating test console applications which made use of our existing code, this was to make sure we could create and import an Application Definition File without user intervention. Once we had successfully managed to do this we carried on developing our Proof-of-Concept ideas using Web Parts to make sure again we were able to achieve the aspects of functionality which we would be requiring.

The next stage was to design our Web Services, we knew the methods we needed to implement from our desktop application, and we just need to adapt them for use in a WCF Service. The services were being called using AJAX.NET from within our JavaScript. The objects we were passing to and from our Service were JSON objects and are really easy to deal with. One of our tasks was trying to debug calls to and from our web service, we used a number of tools to do this:

Visual Studio – For Debugging the WCF Service

Fiddler – To check what was being passed to and from our UI and Service

Firebug and Firefox – We used this to inspect our objects and step through the JavaScript code

Once we had our methods configured we were ready to investigate the best way to deliver our UI. We have used jQuery in a couple of our existing products and favored it to run our UI. One of our considerations was that there would be no plug-ins required by the end users and also we can make use of existing in-house skills with the framework. We downloaded jQuery and the jQuery UI Library and began to replicate the UI of BDC Meta Man taking into consideration that we were now designing for the web rather than a WinForms application.

JQuery made the design a lot easier for us; we created our HTML page and also defined all of the dialog boxes we will be using in the HTML too. Using the Dialog function of the UI Library we were able to easily create dialog boxes to accept and work with user defined data related to our Application Definition File (Figure 3 - Creating a filter on an Entity). As well as allowing us to create the design in a more efficient manner we also found that the jQuery framework was more than powerful enough for anything we could through at it, especially the selectors which made so many of the small UI task so much easier than writing the native JavaScript.

Figure 3 - Creating a filter on an Entity

‘Draggable’ and ‘Droppable’ are two of my favorite words from the jQuery UI library; it makes dragging and dropping extremely easy and allowed us to build our concept of a design surface within the browser where users can drop tables onto the design surface to create entities. Once an entity is create it can then be moved around and using a ‘drag’ point on an entity it is possible to drag out a connection to another entity to create associations between two entities

The next thing we needed to do for BDC Meta Man Web Edition was to decide how would it be accessed and by whom. We decided that the best solution would be to create an application page which can be accessed by Site Collection Administrators and not just Farm Administrators. The reason behind this decision was that a lot of the time it was apparent that the people who want to use data presented by the Business Data Catalog are power users. By empowering Power Users with the control to create and configure their own Application Definition Files, it is more efficient as it eliminates time and resources required from IT to set it up, and also it allows them to adapt to Business needs as and when required rather than waiting on a 3^rd party each time. The Site Collection Administration column from the Site Settings page was perfect for our requirement as SharePoint will handle the security trimming for us; our only requirement is that if a user requires access to use BDC Meta Man Web Edition then they need to be a site collection administrator. The current SharePoint solution would be to set users up to access the Shared Services Provider but we wanted to remove this requirement.

Challenges

One of the hardest parts to recreate in the browser was to draw associations between two entities on the design surface, a colleague of mine, Hrayr, managed to use the RaphaelJS plug-in to great effect to allow users to drag and drop from a source entity to a destination entity and have a line drawn between them. Once we had managed to get a line drawn between the two points we had to add behavior to make sure the line always moved to the correct side of an entity as it moved around the design surface (see Figure 4 - Entities with Associations).

Figure 4 - Entities with Associations

Another challenge was to allow users to be able to re-open an existing Application Definition File, we essentially had to reverse our import process and from a completed Application Definition File which is imported into the Business Data Catalog we had to ‘bring it back to life’ and display the entities back on the design surface. We managed to achieve this in very much the same way we import Application Definition File’s we de-serialized the ADF XML back into our custom objects, this allowed us to re-establish connections back to the data sources and then parse the entities back onto the design surface and reload their configurations.

The final challenge was to license our new product, we had used a third party component for our desktop version but this was not suitable for our Application Page. We created a solution which would generate a unique id for each farm installation, once we had this ID we could create a key and using a console application the key can be applied to the users Farm to activate the license. The license works using a SPPersistedObject which can be read from any server in the Farm. This allows us to control behavior of the application by reading the license information when loading the page.

Conclusion

We set out to achieve creating a browser version of one of our most successful products and managed to achieve this using good research, careful planning, building proof of concept ideas and finally producing the end solution. The development has been significantly helped by using technologies such as WCF Services, ASP.NET Ajax and jQuery, and we look forward to working with them in the future.

Lightning Tools is proud of its SharePoint Tools and SharePoint Web Parts and hope that BDC Meta Man Web Edition is a well received new edition to our range and welcome any comments or feedback to support@lightningtools.com .

Try it out for yourself

A trial version is available from the BDC Meta Man Web Edition website; you can also view a couple of screen casts of it in action.

http://www.lightningtools.com/bdc-meta-man/web-edition.aspx.

Further information:

Lightning Tools: www.lightningtools.com

Lightning Tools Blog: http://www.lightningtools.com/blog/

Email: sales@lightningtools.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/lightningtools

Service Pack 2 Update.

sptblog — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:24:55 GMT

The public update for the Service Pack 2 expiration date issue is now available for download.

The update can be applied before or after Service Pack 2 installation. If the update is applied prior to installing Service Pack 2 it will prevent the expiration date from being improperly activated during installation of Service Pack 2, if it is applied after Service Pack 2 it will remove the expiration date incorrectly set during installation of Service Pack 2.

The update is applicable to all of the products that this issue affected (see the list in the KB linked below).

Installation instructions and download links for x86 and x64 are available in this KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971620

The direct download link for x86 is: http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/5/2F51AB71-1325-49D2-9CB9-18DEC4780E99/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x86-glb.exe

And for x64: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/B/5BBD34A9-C528-42B0-8A5F-9A8997B25C32/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x64-glb.exe

We will be updating the existing Service Pack 2 download package with a new package that includes this fix within the next 4-6 weeks.

Thank you for your patience.

FAQ

Q: How can I tell if the update has worked?
A: The License Type text on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration no longer contains the word “trial”.

Q: I applied the update and now I can’t enter anything in the Convert License Type page in Central Administration, is this right?
A: This is expected behavior if your license type is “Office SharePoint Server with Enterprise Client Access License”.

How We Did It: SharePoint.Microsoft.com

sptblog — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:53:00 GMT

I’d like to introduce this next post by congratulating Tony Tai (SharePoint Product Manager) and the team who worked on getting the SharePoint marketing site onto SharePoint. This was a very cool project and it set the foundation for all the future sites and content that we can now quickly manage and publish onto the Internet. I’d also like to give a special kudos to Tim McDaniel and Celina Baginski for all their contributions to the project. So let me get out of the way and hope you enjoy this excellent contribution to the “How We Did It” series.

Cheers!

Dave Pae
SharePoint Technical Product Manager

The Microsoft® Office SharePoint® product group teamed with Advaiya, Inc. to rebuild the SharePoint Web site using the SharePoint Server 2007 platform. Microsoft chose Advaiya, a consulting company in Kirkland, WA, to work with the SharePoint product group because Advaiya has a long history of working closely with many Microsoft teams to develop strategies to roll out new technologies, content, and solutions.

Goals for Rebuilding the Web Site

When the SharePoint.Microsoft.com Web site project started, Microsoft and Advaiya identified several goals:

Introduce a fresh design to enhance the customer experience with SharePoint and showcase SharePoint independently of the Microsoft Office suite
Create an inviting environment and information structure to help the SharePoint audience find information more easily
Streamline the existing publishing processes to enable content authors at Microsoft to quickly publish new content and update existing content without third-party assistance
Provide dynamic, up-to-date content for a varied Microsoft Office SharePoint audience (customers, developers, and end users)
Use Microsoft Silverlight™ on the home page and throughout the site, and demonstrate that Silverlight and SharePoint work well together

To meet these goals, Advaiya created several custom components and integrated them with the SharePoint platform. This article describes some of the key components and how they were created and explains the design rationale behind each component.

New Graphical Design

To create a fresh new look and enhance the customer experience, a brand-new design was created for the Web site. Several designs were prototyped at the beginning of the project and design review sessions were held to determine which design elements would be incorporated into the new Web site.

The new design presents a clear information hierarchy that allows users to easily locate information on pages. After the new design was approved, Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007, Microsoft Windows Live™ ID, Microsoft Expression Blend™ 2, and Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 were used to implement the design inside the SharePoint framework.

New Information Architecture

After years of updates the previous Microsoft SharePoint Web site was rich in content, but it was getting difficult for the growing and increasingly varied user audience to find relevant content easily. To make the information in the Web site easier to locate, several working sessions were held to analyze content and create a new information architecture. These sessions defined the information taxonomy—including how the content is categorized, stored (lists and field controls), and laid out. Detailed documents capture all of the decisions made during the working sessions. Developers, content authors, and designers used these specifications throughout the project.

Custom Page Layouts and Style Sheets

To give content authors the ability to quickly create and update the content in the Web site, custom page layouts and cascading style sheets (CSS) were used throughout the site. The Related Technologies page layout (Figure 1) shows out-of-the-box SharePoint publishing capabilities combined with a custom page layout and CSS. Content authors do not have to spend time or effort formatting content entered into the field controls because the CSS embedded in the page layouts handles the formatting. This practice saves time and ensures a consistent appearance throughout the site.

Figure 1. Related Technologies page in edit mode

In building the site, Advaiya chose to use as many out-of-the-box components as possible for several reasons: to save time and money on development, to create an easy upgrade path, and to minimize training costs and ramp-up time for content authors. We also used custom CSS styles to provide a unique appearance for non-content portions of the site. The Quick Launch menu is an excellent example.

Figure 2. Custom CSS styles create a uniquely branded Quick Launch menu

Targeted Home Page Audience Content

Another interesting requirement was to display content for targeted audiences at the bottom of the home page. When users click tabs at the left side of the home page, relevant content is displayed without refreshing the page. Additionally, content authors needed to be able to update the content inside a Web browser without requiring Web site coding skills.

Figure 3. Targeted audience content on the home page

To implement this requirement, Advaiya created a custom content type and page layout to store information that corresponds to the audience content requirements, and to provide an interface for authoring. Based on the custom page layout, we created publishing pages that correspond to each audience tab on the home page. Content is stored in a page layout so authors can easily write and update it, track versions, and take advantage of the Web content management approval functionality that SharePoint provides. Content authors can create and edit the audience content with out-of-the box SharePoint publishing functionality. Only authenticated users have permission to create, edit, and delete content in these pages, and publishing approval workflows ensure that only approved content appears on the home page.

Figure 4. Content for the developer audience page in edit mode

In the home page layout, a Web server control queries pages based on the audience content page layout and returns the information stored in field controls on the pages. We used the SPQuery object to execute this query. The small size of the result set (six items), coupled with the fact this query is run against a single list with only eight items in it, makes this querying approach a perfect choice to meet this requirement. Additionally, we used page output caching functionality to ensure that queries do not overload the server and only execute once every three minutes.

After the Web server control retrieves the data, it applies XSL to the XML returned from the query to transform XML into the HTML that is needed to render the content. This transformation creates the tabbed navigation menu and associated content that changes without refreshing the page.

The XSL applied to the XML is stored in a XSL style sheet in the out-of-the-box Style Library. This approach allows designers to change the XSL style sheet in the Style Library so they can update the appearance of this portion of the home page, and it alleviates the need to recompile the Web server control.

Figure 5. The XSL style sheet is used to style targeted audience content

Originally we planned to hide the six pages that contain audience content from anonymous users. However, after the site went live, Microsoft learned that sending direct links to the pages provided additional value and eliminated the need for users to select one of the tab links on the home page to see targeted content. After this discovery, we changed the audience content page layout to look like the home page and included the home page Silverlight hero bar (graphical menu).

Figure 6. Targeted audience content components

Silverlight Home Page Hero Bar

You’ve probably seen graphical menus, also called hero bars, in other Web sites—typically they are used to highlight and link directly to new or time-sensitive content. Sometimes they are animated banners that cycle through new content. One of the goals for this project was to create a Silverlight hero bar on the home page. In addition to providing a good user experience and giving Web site visitors easy access to important information, the content had to be dynamic and easy to maintain by Microsoft content authors who do not have Silverlight development skills.

Figure 7. Silverlight home page hero bar

To meet this requirement, Advaiya created SharePoint lists to store data to display in the Silverlight hero bar. We created three lists: Customers, Events, and Downloads. This approach allows content authors to create and update content in the Silverlight hero bar by using the familiar list editing functionality SharePoint provides in basic Web pages. Content authors can choose the titles, descriptions, links, pictures, and background images that are displayed inside the Silverlight hero bar component.

Figure 8. Data in the Events list that appears in the Silverlight home page hero bar

When the site went live, the Silverlight hero bar received source data as initialization parameters. The initialization parameters were generated by a Web server control that queried the lists. This approach took advantage of page output caching to limit the number of times the lists were queried to only once every three minutes.

We redesigned the component by using a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service call to retrieve the information from the SharePoint lists. By taking this new approach, we significantly reduced the home page size, whether or not users’ Web browsers are enabled for Silverlight. To ensure that front-end Web servers are not overloaded with queries from each page load, we cached the query results inside the WCF service. Because the Web server control was no longer needed to provide the initialization parameters, we were able to eliminate it.

To accommodate Web browsers that do not support Silverlight, we used JavaScript to detect whether the browser supports Silverlight. If the browser does not support Silverlight, then the Silverlight control is hidden and a non-Silverlight version of the hero bar is rendered in the browser.

Figure 9. Silverlight home page hero bar components

Silverlight Main Menu Navigation

Another goal for the project was to use Silverlight for the main menu navigation. The Silverlight main menu navigation control had to be dynamic to allow content authors to change the links by using out-of-the-box features to modify the navigation.

Figure 10. Silverlight main menu navigation

To meet this requirement, we created a dynamic main menu navigation control in Silverlight. The out-of-the-box site map providers that come with SharePoint give Silverlight the navigation nodes that make up the menu. This approach allows content authors to modify the Silverlight main menu navigation by using out-of-the-box navigation editing functionality in SharePoint. In Figure 11, you can see that only the sub-sites are shown in the main menu navigation and the publishing pages for dynamic audience content, search results, and home page are hidden.

Figure 11. Out-of-the-box navigation settings

As with the Silverlight hero bar, we used a combination of initialization parameters and a WCF service to load the data and we designed the component to operate under a variety of bandwidth and display conditions.

Figure 12. Silverlight main menu navigation components

Search Engine Optimization

We did several things to optimize the Web site for search engines to find content. One of these optimizations included adding two field controls to each page layout. These field controls allow content authors to specify keywords and the descriptive title for each page in the Web site.

Figure 13. Field controls for keywords and page description

Visitor Tracking and Business Intelligence

To implement functionality that provides the SharePoint product group with details about Web site visitors and with other Business Intelligence information, Advaiya worked with the Webtrends team. Webtrends provides analytics and marketing intelligence solutions. First, we included Webtrends JavaScript functions in master pages to track each page view individually. To track how often the targeted audience content on the home page is viewed, we call a Webtrends JavaScript function each time a user clicks one of the audience links. The JavaScript functions make calls to the Webtrends server and report which audience tab is selected.

dcsMultiTrack('DCS.dcssip', 'sharepoint.microsoft.com', 'DCS.dcsuri', '/pages/highlight.aspx', 'WT.ti', 'Microsoft Office SharePoint Server – Connecting People, Process, and Information', 'WT.dl', '0');

Figure 14. Webtrends JavaScript function tracks when a user clicks the Highlight tab on the home page

We also enhanced the home page Silverlight hero bar to track how Web site visitors interact with it. We used the same JavaScript function inside the hero bar to capture which main tabs, sub-tabs, and downloads users click.

Packaging and Deployment

To ensure that the site followed best practices for deployment, all of the components that support the site were packaged in SharePoint solution packages (.wsp files). When we rolled out the site to the pre-production and production server farms, we ran a batch file (containing STSADM commands) that deployed the packages, installed and activated the features, and created the site collection. Finally, we moved the content database from our content authoring and staging environment to the pre-production and production server farms, set the site collection administrator, and enabled anonymous access. We were up and running without any issues.

Conclusion

In only three months we were able to understand the existing Web site content, create a new information taxonomy and Web site design, develop the components, move content, conduct performance tests, and roll out the site to production. Building on the SharePoint platform allowed us to meet or exceed all of the project goals in a short amount of time. The product group is already realizing the benefits of the improved content publishing model and the Web site is growing and improving every day.

Todd Baginski – Senior Enterprise Solutions Strategist, Advaiya, Inc.

Pratyush Mishra – Enterprise Technology Strategist, Advaiya, Inc.

Jomit Vaghela – Principal, Office Platform and Live Services, Advaiya, Inc.

Vivek Soni – Senior Associate, Advaiya, Inc.

Marshal Hagen – Software Developer, Advaiya, Inc.

Meeta Chopra – Consultant, Advaiya, Inc.

Ritu Mathur – Associate, Advaiya, Inc.

Raquel Mayer – Art Director, Advaiya, Inc.

How Microsoft IT Designs and Creates Enterprise Publishing Portals Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

sptblog — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:25:00 GMT

Kiley Williams and Martin Cai will be hosting this webcast on July 7. Kiley and Martin are program managers and part of Microsoft IT (internal business unit that manage the business systems that are used by all of Microsoft).

Microsoft runs a global intranet on SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) and over the years, Microsoft IT has collected valuable lessons and strategies based upon the implementation. Sign up for this webcast if you are interested in learning about:

Planning and development approaches for rich publishing portals
See customization and lessons learned
Walk away knowing how to more deeply leverage, customize and extend native MOSS functionality

You can find more details and registration here.

Enjoy!

Dave Pae
SharePoint Technical Product Manager

Updated list of conferences on the road to the SharePoint Conference 2009

sptblog — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:46:29 GMT

Crossed off 8 conferences on the list of SharePoint conferences and only 5 more conferences until the SharePoint Conference 2009! Awesome! Instead of redirecting back to the old post, here is the updated list:

SPTechCon
June 22-24, 2009: Boston, MA
For three exciting days, you'll be eating, drinking, sleeping, talking and living Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services. The first day at SPTechCon Boston is filled with intense full and half-day workshops, half in the morning, half in the afternoon. The next two days are filled with more than 50 break-out classes to choose from.

New Zealand Community SharePoint Conference
July 2-3, 2009: Wellington, NZ
This will be the New Zealand conference to learn about SharePoint 2007 with expert local and international speakers presenting on topics that will help you understand and succeed with your SharePoint implementations and add real value to your organization and businesses.

Worldwide Partner Conference 2009
July 13-16, 2009: New Orleans, LA
The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) is an annual gathering that provides the partner community with a forum to learn about the latest Microsoft programs, strategies, and cutting-edge technologies.

Learning Gateway Conference
15th July 2009: The Belfry, Birmingham
We are proud to announce that the first conference dedicated to the Microsoft Learning Gateway is to be held on 15 July 2009 in Birmingham, UK. It is promising to be the best education SharePoint event this year for both technical and non-technical staff.

Best Practices Conference
August 24-26, 2009: Washington, D.C.
The Best Practices Conference is where you'll find the smartest ideas, activities and techniques in practice today featuring top experts and industry leaders in both SharePoint and SQL Server, for even greater value. Attend tracks from one or both - at no additional cost.

SharePoint Conference 2009
October 19-22, 2009: Las Vegas, NV
Microsoft is delighted to announce the SharePoint Conference 2009 - the premier worldwide conference dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies. This year’s conference will be looking towards the future with a broad array of deep content centered on the next version of SharePoint, codenamed SharePoint “14” and at the same time be firmly planted in the present, sharing real world experience and guidance to help you maximize your investment in SharePoint Server 2007.

Microsoft Tech Ed Europe 2009
9-13 November 2009: Berlin, Germany
Tech·Ed Europe 2009 will be focused into a single week for both the developer and IT professional communities. Sessions and events are presented by Microsoft product team members and industry experts. This conference is hosted by Microsoft.

TechNet Launches New Interactive Silverlight Application for STSADM Technical Reference

sptblog — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:37:38 GMT

The vision was to plan, design, develop, test and publish a high quality SilverLight application that would improve the overall customer experience with the current downloadable Visio diagram for the Stsadm SharePoint command line admin tool. We have delivered; our application provides a fully browsable interface, in-depth information from the TechNet TOC and library, and links to specific topics for each Stsadm command line operation and property. By using separate XML data files, the SilverLight application is instantly updatable and localizable!

To view our Stsadm SilverLight application on TechNet:

Stsadm Technical Reference for SharePoint Server 2007:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/cc948709.aspx

Stsadm Technical Reference for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/dd418924.aspx

Congratulations to the Office UA Content Engineering team and especially to Randy Lewandowski, Kirk Stark, Derrick Nguyen, Theano Petersen, Eling Voon, Emily Schroeder, Kiran Annamraju and Varun Shandilya. You can also join their Facebook site.

Office Developer Conference moving to SharePoint Conference 2009

sptblog — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:02:49 GMT

Want to get an in-depth look at Office 2010 for Developers? Want to see what 64-bit Office looks like?

As you may have seen at PDC, TechEd or elsewhere, Office 2010 is on its way. To help you get ready, Office 2010 for Developers will be highlighted at the upcoming SharePoint Conference (October 2009, Las Vegas, NV) and TechEd conferences around the world in 2009 and 2010.

NET: Office Developer Conference will not take place this year; instead we are including the Office Developer Conference content within the SharePoint Conference. If you are an attendee of Office Developer Conference in the past, we strongly recommend you come see us at the SharePoint Conference in October, where we’ll cover Office client development in depth. Be sure to sign up for the Technical Preview as well!

We are optimizing our show presence for developers seeking opportunities to build on the Office platform, which includes Office client applications, SharePoint, Exchange and Communicator. By adding the ODC track to the 2009 SharePoint conference, we can provide better exposure to those seeking to develop solutions across the platform.

For more information on the SharePoint Conference contact spc@microsoft.com.

Attention: Important Information on Service Pack 2

sptblog — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:51:00 GMT

** 06/25/09 Update: Please see this post for links to download the Public Update that addresses this issue. **

We take product quality seriously and make every effort to avoid and resolve issues that adversely impact our customers. Unfortunately, we have recently discovered a bug with Service Pack 2 (SP2) that affects all customers that have deployed it for SharePoint Server 2007.

During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes. Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users.

We are working to release a hotfix to automatically fix this issue. A manual work-around is currently available and involves customers re-entering their Product ID number (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration. For more information and detailed steps please read this KB article.

We want to assure our customers that this issue does not impact data integrity or their SharePoint deployment in any other way.

For your convenience, below are some answers to questions that you may have and we will update this blog post with a link to the hotfix as soon as it’s available.

We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may cause you.

Jeff Teper
Corporate Vice President
SharePoint.

Q&A

Which products are affected by this?
Applying Service Pack 2 to any of the following products will result in this issue: Office SharePoint Server 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites, Project Server 2007, Form Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is not affected by this issue.

What can I do to fix it?
To work around this issue customers will need to re-enter their Product ID numbers (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration. Please see this KB article for detailed steps.

Customers can also wait for the hotfix (available for free from http://support.microsoft.com) to resolve this issue.

Product ID numbers (PIDs) can be retrieved by logging into the Volume Licensing Service Center.

Note: For Search Server 2008 Express the only way to resolve this issue is to apply the hotfix.

What is Microsoft doing to fix it?
Microsoft is working on a hotfix and public update for the product. We will update this blog post with details and a link to the hotfix as soon as it is available.

Do I need to update all of the servers in my farm?
No. The Product ID number only needs to be entered once.

What if I haven’t installed SP2 yet but want to? What should I do?
You can continue to plan for and install Service Pack 2 for SharePoint Server 2007 with the additional step of re-entering your Product ID number after the installation is complete by following the instructions in this KB article.

Does this issue impact anything else?
The issue only activates the product expiration date. The activation of the expiration date does not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes, at which point SharePoint will be inaccessible for end-users. This issue does not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code.

I can’t find/don’t know my original PID, where can I find it?
Product ID numbers (PIDs) can be retrieved by logging into the Volume Licensing Service Center.

SharePoint on SharePoint: Launch of new website

sptblog — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:12:00 GMT

Lights… Camera… Action!

Today, we launched the SharePoint marketing website on SharePoint Server 2007. First the home page, it is brand new and we’re using Silverlight enabled web parts to keep the interface simple, elegant and dynamic thus enhancing the overall usability of it. You can watch customer videos, learn about events, download trial versions of the software and a lot more on the home page now. Since the site is powered by MOSS, we are taking advantage of the publishing feature and list driven content. This allows the SharePoint team to more quickly publish news, events, demos, webcasts and a whole lot more. But wait… There’s more! We also invested time to make sure the site was optimized for search engines. We’re really excited about all the possibilities that are in front of us now that SharePoint is running on SharePoint. :)

Check it out and let us know what you think! I’ll conclude with a special *CONGRATS* to Tony Tai, SharePoint Product Manager, and the team who completed this very important project.

Here’s the URL: http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/

Enjoy!

Enter to win a free pass to the SharePoint Conference 2009!

sptblog — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:10:00 GMT

Do you think of yourself as someone with a flair for web design? How would you like a free pass to the SharePoint conference & ultimate bragging rights with your friends?

Here is what you need to do. Dream up what you think the homepage of the SharePoint conference should look and feel like. Don’t worry about the content; we are most interested in the look and feel, colors & layout. Will you go wild or will you go conservative? You decide!

The competition is open now & ends on June 19, 2009.

Full competition details & Official Rules

Follow the conference on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SPConf

Update on SharePoint forms based authentication(FBA) and Office client

sptblog — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:29:00 GMT

Hi folks,

It’s Steve Peschka from the SharePoint Ranger team again. I wanted to update everyone on some changes with the level of support and integration in the Microsoft Office client applications (hereafter referred to simply as “Office”) and SharePoint sites that are secured with forms based authentication (FBA). For those of you who have read part 3 of the FBA whitepapers (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb977430.aspx), you know that at the time Office and SharePoint 2007 was released, there was not a strong level of integration between the two. In fact, as some of you may have seen, if you had Enable Client Integration turned on for a zone secured with FBA, and then you tried to edit an item in that zone using the Edit in Microsoft Word command from the menu for example, instead of opening the document up, Word actually opened the login page for the site. It resulted in something that looks like this:

For the rest of this blog, I’m going to share with you a sneak of an update to part 3 of the FBA whitepaper that describes changes we’ve made to the Office client to enable much better integration with SharePoint sites secured with FBA. These changes allow Office applications to display whatever forms login page is being used for the site in a pop up dialog box. The Office application renders the HTML from that login page and allows the user to enter credentials. The credentials are sent back to the server and if the server returns a redirect response for the document that was originally requested, the Office application assumes that the identity has been successfully established. It is then able to use the authorization cookie it was given to retrieve the document and any associated metadata, and open the item up.

This approach allows you to use whatever forms authentication login page the site uses – whether it’s the login page that comes with SharePoint, a custom login page, or even a multi-factor login page. Below is an example of what the login dialog looks like when opening an item on a SharePoint site that uses the standard forms login page:

The steps necessary to implement this support are as follows:

On the Client

1. Download the hotfix for KB 960499 from the December 2008 Cumulative Update for the Office client applications; you can find this download at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960499/. Please note that even though the documentation primarily describes fixes for the InfoPath client, this is the correct patch to enable support in Microsoft Office applications for FBA.

IMPORTANT: This patch can only be used with Office 2007 running on the Windows XP operating system. A patch that enables this support for Office 2007 running on the Windows Vista operating system is available in the April 2009 cumulative update for the Microsoft Office client. It also requires that Service Pack 2 for Vista be applied.

2. Install this patch on each client computer running Windows XP and Office 2007 from which you wish to use the Office client to open documents in an FBA-secured site.

3. Configure the appropriate set of registry values on each client computer to enable the Office client applications to use the FBA integration features. At a minimum, the FormsAuthEnabled value needs to be created and set 1. More details on the registry values, their location and function are described below.

NOTE: If you are using Internet Explorer, these new features require at least version 7.0 or higher.

On the SharePoint Farm

1. Go to Central Administration, click on the Application Management tab, then click on the Authentication Providers link.

2. In the Web Applications drop down, select the web application that contains an FBA zone and then click on the link for the zone that is configured to use FBA.

3. On the settings page for the zone, check the Enable anonymous access checkbox, and change the Enable Client Integration? setting to Yes.

NOTE: Checking the Enable anonymous access checkbox does not, by itself, grant anonymous access to any content in the web application. It is however, necessary to enable the Office client applications to gather enough information about the site to display the login dialog window.

The authentication settings for the web application should appear like this:

Registry Values

There are several registry values that can be used to help control how and when the Office client applications will attempt to use the FBA to authenticate a request. All registry values are stored under the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Internet\FormsBasedAuthSettings.

As described above, the FormsAuthEnabled value is required at a minimum for these new features to work. It is a DWORD value and must be set to 1 in order for the Office client to utilize these new FBA features. There are other registry values available for further fine-tuning your implementation that will be explained more fully in the update to the FBA whitepaper. They include settings for things like not allowing cross domain redirects for login, require SSL with the login page, enabling scripts, behaviors, and ActiveX in the login page, etc.

Other Things To Know

There are a few other things to know about the support described here. First, not every Office application will be able to take advantage of these new features. More may come online over time, but for now you should count on the core Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) to support this. Second, adding this feature to the Office client enables some other scenarios that weren’t previously possible. For example, we can also potentially integrate with SharePoint sites secured with ADFS much better than we have previously. After all, ADFS is just FBA with a remote login page. We hope to address the ADFS scenario more specifically in the update to part 3 of the FBA whitepaper, so make sure you download it and take a look when it’s released.

That’s all for this entry, hope you find the information useful.

Steve

April Cumulative Update Packages Ready for Download

sptblog — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:18:00 GMT

You may already read from blogs about April Cumulative Update for separate components in SharePoint. Now, the server-packages (also known as “Uber” packages) of April Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are ready for download.

Download Information

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968850

Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968851

Detail Description

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968850

Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968851 (Link not live yet)

Installation Recommendation for a fresh SharePoint Server

To keep all files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following sequence is recommended.

Please note: Start from April Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates.

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.

The version of content databases should be 12.0.6504.5000 after successfully applying these updates.

For more in-depth guidance for the update process, we recommend that customers refer to the following articles. These articles provide a correct way to deploy updates, identify known issues (and resolutions), and provide information about creating slipstream builds.

Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx

Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx

Create an installation source that includes software updates (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287882.aspx

Create an installation source that includes software updates (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261890.aspx

FAQ

Q: What’s the difference between April CU and SP2?
A: Office Sustained Engineering team explained the difference on their blog: FAQ concerning Service Pack 2 and the Cumulative Updates for April 2009 for the 2007 Microsoft® Office System and Microsoft Office Servers. To be simple: April CU contains fixes that are not part of SP2. But it includes only a subset of all the files. So if you want to get everything in your farm up-to-date, you need to apply SP2 first, then apply April CU.

Q: Do you have a timeline on the updates? I’m confused.
A: Here’s an example timeline to help you understand the update schedule during 2007~2009. Cumulative Updates are released every two months. Start from April 2009, cumulative updates cannot be applied directly on RTM version of SharePoint installations. SP1 is the minimum requirement, while SP2 is recommended.

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements

rriley — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

We’ve heard loud and clear that you want system requirements information as early as possible to assist in your budgeting and planning, so today we’re happy to announce (and confirm) some preliminary system requirements for SharePoint Server 2010:

SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64-bit only.
SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2.
SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005.

In addition to the requirements listed above we also wanted to share with you some preliminary detail about SharePoint Server 2010 browser compatibility.

To ensure the best possible experience across multiple browsers we’re focusing our SharePoint 2010 engineering efforts on targeting standards based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) including Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.x. running on Windows Operating Systems. In addition we’re planning on an increased level of compatibility with Firefox 3.x and Safari 3.x on non-Windows Operating Systems. Due to this focus Internet Explorer 6 will not be a supported browser for SharePoint Server 2010.

So, what can you do today to get into the best shape for SharePoint Server 2010?

Start by ensuring new hardware is 64-bit. Deploying 64-bit is our current best practice recommendation for SharePoint 2007.
Deploy Service Pack 2 and take a good look at the SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Checker that’s shipped as part of the update. The Upgrade Checker will scan your SharePoint Server 2007 deployment for many issues that could affect a future upgrade to SharePoint 2010.
Get to know Windows Server 2008 with SharePoint 2007, this post is a great starting point.
Consider your desktop browser strategy if you have large population of Internet Explorer 6 users.
Continue to follow the Best Practices guidance for SharePoint Server 2007.
Keep an eye on this blog for updates and more details in the coming months.

Below are a few common Q&A’s (which we’ll add to as required)

Q: What about Internet Explorer 6 and SharePoint 2010 publishing sites?
A: The Web Content Management features built into SharePoint 2010 will provide a deep level of control over the markup and styling of the reader experience. These features will enable customers to design pages that are compatible with additional browsers for viewing content, including Internet Explorer 6. A standards based browser such as Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 or Firefox 3.x will be required to author content.

Q: Is Internet Explorer 6 officially supported by Microsoft?
A: Official Microsoft Product Support for Internet Explorer 6 follows the lifecycle of the Operating System with which it was shipped. In order for customers to receive product support through the Mainstream Support and Extended Support phases, they need to have installed a supported Service Pack. For example, customers who are using Windows XP must transition to Service Pack 3 by July, 2010 and are eligible to receive support for Internet Explorer 6 until April, 2014.

You can find additional information on Microsoft’s Support Lifecycle Policy including specific dates, product information and support offerings here: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy.

Q: Why are you only supporting the 64-bit versions of SQL Server 2005 or 2008 for SharePoint Server 2010?
A: This decision was based on our current test data for SharePoint Server 2010 and real world experience from customers running SharePoint Server 2007 with 32-bit SQL Server. SharePoint performance and scalability can benefit significantly from 64-bit SQL Server and the throughput increases are significant enough for us to make the difficult decision to only support SharePoint Server 2010 on 64-bit SQL Server 2005 or 2008. It has been our strong recommendation for some time that SharePoint Server 2007 customers take advantage of 64-bit SQL Server due to the inherent performance and scale benefits it can provide.

Q: Where can I find more information on the advantages of 64-bit hardware and guidance on how to migrate SharePoint from 32-bit to 64-bit.
A: These two TechNet articles are a good starting point;

Advantages of 64-bit hardware and software (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Migrate an existing server farm to a 64-bit environment (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Congratulations to the First Microsoft Certified SharePoint Masters!

sptblog — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:22:00 GMT

James Petrosky, the program manager for the SharePoint Master and MCA programs, notified me that his blog post went live on the Master blog.

You might be asking what is a Microsoft Certified SharePoint Master? Here’s how I see it: a candidate spends 3 weeks at Microsoft to be educated, challenged, tested and then at the very end – if they pass all the labs and written exams, then they receive the Master certification. I know the trainers and many of the candidates from both classes and I can tell you that they are some of the best SharePoint experts in the world even before the start of the program. After the program, they are truly SharePoint Masters!

I recommend reading James’ post to understand the make up of the program: http://blogs.technet.com/themasterblog/archive/2009/04/29/introducing-the-sharepoint-mcm-program-and-the-first-microsoft-certified-sharepoint-masters.aspx

(DRUM ROLL) The SharePoint product team would like to CONGRATULATE the SharePoint Masters:

· Aku Heikkerö: Aku is the Lead IW Architect for Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) in Europe and is based in Helsinki, Finland.

· Ali Mazaheri: Ali is a Senior Consultant with MCS and is based in the West region of North America.

· Bill Baer: Bill is a Technology Architect with Microsoft Online and is based in Redmond, Washington.

· Brett Geoffroy: Brett Geoffroy is a Principal Consultant for Microsoft Consulting Services in the Netherlands. He originally hails from the US – most recently the San Francisco Bay Area - and currently resides in Amsterdam.

· Ingeborg Struijk: Ingeborg is a member of Microsoft Services in the Netherlands and works as Information Worker Consultant.

· Kimmo Forss: Kimmo Forss is an Architect in the Microsoft Online Services Group, with particular focus on SharePoint. Previously, Kimmo served as a Lead Architect for Microsoft Enterprise Services and is based in Helsinki, Finland.

· Maurice Prather: Maurice is an enterprise architect, SharePoint MVP, and serves as the Lead Architect for ShareSquared, Inc. (http://www.sharesquared.com).

· Mitch Prince: Mitch is a Principal Consultant and Delivery Architect with Microsoft Consulting Services based out of New York City.

· Nakul Joshi: Nakul is a Consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services and is based in India.

· Peter Williams: Peter is a Senior Consultant for Microsoft based in Sweden.

· Scott Jamison: Scott is a Director of Enterprise Architecture with the Enterprise Product Group at Microsoft.

· Spencer Harbar: Spencer is an independent SharePoint consultant, trainer, and SharePoint MVP based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

· Todd Carter: Todd is a Principal Premier Field Engineer with Microsoft and is based in Las Colinas, Texas.

· Vesa Juvonen: Vesa is a Senior Consultant for Microsoft Consulting Services and is based in Helsinki, Finland.

And of course, I left the best for last – I know many in the SharePoint community and team want to thank Michal Gideoni who as the SharePoint technical product manager makes readiness programs like this work!

Dave Pae
SharePoint TPM