Introduction

As I’ve talked about before, I’m putting some energy into organizing the Sweden SharePoint User Group (SSUG) in the Skåne region. Yesterday we had our very first meeting (well, actually our second but the first one was about 4 years ago).

We had the pleasure to meet for food, drinks and sessions at Stretch Öresund AB where I had invited Carsten Keutmann (MVP) as a speaker, talking about the Model-View-Presenter pattern for SharePoint developers. Daniel Terborn from Stretch talked about Duet Enterprise and how SAP and SharePoint can be bridged together using Duet.

What went down

We had a pretty nice attendee-count and I’m hoping we can grow this awesome group as time progresses. We landed on around 35-40 people showing up for this first meeting:

Carsten Keutmann talked about Model-View-Presenter patterns when you create Web Parts in SharePoint 2010 development projects:

Daniel Terborn talked about Duet Enterprise:

What’s next

We’ll be planning a next meeting soon. Either we’ll have the meeting pre-summer or post-summer. Speakers and session-suggestions welcome, as always!

See you next time.

Introduction

The Sweden SharePoint User Group (SSUG) is finally kicking off in Malmö again after a long wait. My hope is that we can organize a meeting in Malmö every other month together with a bunch of awesome people in the region. It’s the perfect opportunity if you want to broaden your network and get to know more fellow SharePoint-folks in the region.

SSUG Malmö Meeting, May 2 – Details

This time we’re honored to be sponsored by Stretch Öresund AB who will sponsor with snacks, drinks and office space during the evening.

Agenda

• 17:30 – 18:00: Meetup and mingle at Stretch Öresund AB.
• 18:00 – 18:15: Tobias Zimmergren introduces SSUG and Stretch will present their company.
• 18:15 – 18:45: Carsten Keutman (Creator of WSPBuilder and SharePoint Manager) will talk about developing SharePoint-projects using the MVP-pattern (Model View Presenter)
• 18:45 – 19:00: Paus! Snacks, beer and mingle!
• 19:00 – 19:45: Increased productivity with Duet Enterprise. Daniel Terborn from Stretch talks about how SAP and SharePoint can play an important role with Duet Enterprise.

Location

The Stretch-office is located at "Stora Nygatan 61"

(Google Map: http://maps.google.se/maps?q=Stora+Nygatan+61,Malmö )

Sign up / Register

You will need to register your attendance for the event, and this can be done by visiting this EventBrite link: http://tz.nu/HVYAAx 

Questions about the event?

Do you have any questions or comments about the event or SSUG? Contact Tobias Zimmergren and he’ll assist.

Regards,

Tobias Zimmergren,
Sweden SharePoint User Group.

Introduction

A while back an announcement was made that TFSPreview.com had been made available for general testing. Various bloggers at Microsoft put an invitation token in their MSDN blogs so everyone can have a go at it.

In this article series we’ll take a very quick look at what the hosted TFS solution by Microsoft looks like.

Articles currently in the series:

Steps to hook up a project to your new build server

This article obviously assumes that you’ve already followed along with the previous articles and hooked up a build configuration for  your TFSpreview account. Now we’ll take a look at how we can get our projects hooking up in a CI/Automated Build scenario with Team Foundation Services.

The steps from this point onwards are basically the same as if it would be an on-premise TFS server in your own domain. Your build server is configured, your code is hosted in TFS and all you’ll need to do is connect your project to the actual TFS and then create a new build definition.

Create a new project (or connect an existing one) and connect to TFS

We’ll start from the beginning and create a new Visual Studio 2010 project (in my case it’ll be an Empty SharePoint Project), and remember to tick the Checkbox "Add to source control":

Make sure that the project is connected to your TFS server, check in the source and we can get started:

Create a new build definition

At this point (if you’ve followed the articles in this article series) you should have a TFS server, a connection from Team Explorer to your TFS server and also a new project hooked up in your repository. Now its time to create our first build definition so we can automate the builds and deployments.

Start by navigating to your Team Explorer and right-click on Builds and then click the "New Build Definition…":

This will give you the following new dialog where you can specify details for your build:

Move on to the "Trigger" tab. In my case I want to enable CI (Continous Integration) for my project:

Move on to the "Workspace" tab. In my case I’ll leave the Source Control Folder as the default root as seen below. You can choose to specify a specific TFS project if you don’t want to include all.

Move on to the "Build Defaults" tab. You’ll need to specify a build controller (you should have one here since we created one in the previous article). You will also need to specify a drop folder, where your binaries are going to be delivered upon the build: 

Move on to the "Process" tab. This is where things get really interesting. You can from this dialog specify a variety of different variables for your project when it builds. I’m not going to dig into details here because my good mate Chris O’Brien have covered all of that in his article series about automated builds.

Save the build definition and validate that it appears in the Team Explorer:

Test the build configuration

In order to validate that our setup now works with TFSpreview.com and our own build server and to validate our newly created build definition, simply make some changes to your project and check it in and have it automatically schedule a new build (We chose Continuous Integration, which will build on each check in). You can see that the build is now scheduled and currently running:

And after a while you can validate that it is Completed:

The final validation is of course to see the drop folder that we specified and make sure that it now contains our newly built sources:

Voila. Build seems to be working.

Summary

This post was intended to give you an overview over the simplicity of creating a simple build definition and getting started with automated builds in TFSpreview (hosted Microsoft TFS). Pretty neat and it seems to be working just the way we want.

Obviously there’s some apparent questions like:

• What if I want to output my .wsp files as well?
• What if I want to execute a specific script upon the execution of the build so I can automate test-deployments?
• Etc. etc.

My first recommendation is to visit Chris O’Brien and read all the posts in his CI/automation series which is simply amazing.

Introduction

A while back an announcement was made that TFSPreview.com had been made available for general testing. Various bloggers at Microsoft put an invitation token in their MSDN blogs so everyone can have a go at it.

In this article series we’ll take a very quick look at what the hosted TFS solution by Microsoft looks like.

Articles currently in the series:

Getting your first scheduled build up and running

In order to get a scheduled build that talks to your TFSPreview repository, you’ll need to follow these steps and make sure the prerequisites are fulfilled.

Prerequisites

• Install the Build Service for the Team Foundation Server 2011 Developer Preview
  This download contains Visual Studio 2011 Developer Preview with TFS 2011 Developer Preview
• Preferably a separate machine aimed for builds.

Note: If you don’t have SharePoint 2010 installed, the installer have an option for installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 for you. In my case however, I’ve got SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise running already.

Installing the package

First of all, launch the ISO file that was extracted from the downloaded package and you should see this screen:

We want to install Team Foundation Server before we proceed, so choose the first option under the Install headline, which will bring you to this dialog:

You’ll need to accept the EULA and if you’re awesome you’ll keep the second checkbox checked so Microsoft can review any issues that may be encountered during the process so they can have a look at them pre-RTM. Click Continue and then click Install Now in the dialog that follows:

You may or may not need to reboot the computer while it’s performing the installation, depending on whether you’ve had some of the prerequisite artifacts installed prior to the installation or not.

Now just sit tight for a while as the installer takes care of the installation for you. Grab a newspaper, get a coffee, check some important stuff on Twitter or simply multitask with other things while you wait.

When it’s done, you’ll have a few options of what type of installation you want to do:

Please note: At this point you have several options for how to proceed with your installation. You can now choose one of the following installation options:

• Configure Team Foundation Application Server
• Configure Team Foundation Server Proxy
• Configure Team Foundation Build Service
• Configure Extensions for SharePoint Products

In my case I’ll be choosing the "Configure Team Foundation Build Service" since I only need the actual Build Agents and Build Service – the TFSpreview.com is hosting the actual TFS server.

Next step will present you with a dialog like the following, where you’ll have to choose what default team project collection to utilize for the build server. Since we don’t have TFS installed the box is currently empty, but fear not for your TFS server is hosted in the cloud (tfspreview.com, remember?) so we’ll just have to go and add that connection as well.

Click the "Browse…" button to open the dialog for choosing your TFS connection

If you haven’t already connected to a TFS server, this dropdown will be empty. Click "Servers…":

Click the "Add…" button:

Finally enter the URL to your TFS collection and click "OK":

You will see a dialog that enables you to log in to the services (use the Login details you signed up with for tfspreview.com):

When the sign-in is completed you’ll see that you now have a list of TFS collections. Choose your DefaultCollection (or otherwise) and click "Connect":

It should hopefully say something like this, telling you there’s no build servers unless you’ve already configured it previously:

In the next dialog I’ll choose "Use the default setting" for my setup:

In the next dialog you’ll have to choose credentials for your build rig. I’m using a dedicated domain account called SHAREPOINTSPBuild:

Make sure you validate the configuration and then press "Next"

If awesomeness is found on your machine, it should look something like this:

Click the "Configure" button and let the installer have its way for a while. Hopefully all these fancy green icons will show you that things went smoothly:

With that done, in the next dialog you’ll see a nice "Success" message and you’re ready to start creating and work with your build agents:

Validate the Build Server

On your Start Menu, you should find the following new shortcut:

Clicking the "Team Foundation Server Administration Console" should bring you forth the following dialog where you can validate that your machine is properly up and running with a build server and agents. Click the "Build Configuration" option in the menu to the left and make sure your build agents are running under the controller:

Summary

If you’ve followed along with the steps in this post you’ll see how easy it is to get up and running with creating a build server (controllers+agents) for your TFS. In this case, I chose to do a connection to the TFSpreview-hosted TFS account.

In my next post in this series I’ll talk about how you can create a new build from Visual Studio 2010 from your dev-machine and have it automatically build on this build server. Gotta love automation!

Enjoy.

The Sweden SharePoint User Group (SSUG) is a non-profit organization where we continuously  provide meet-ups and presentations about SharePoint in Sweden.
There’s no doubt that everyone’s been very busy the last year and things aren’t about to change now. As we head deeper into 2012 I’m sure we’ll have plenty of awesome SharePoint-related meetings and conferences to attend!

The group started in Stockholm several years ago when Me (Tobias Zimmergren), Göran Husman, Wictor Wilén and Daniel Bugday decided to join our forces and provide a common ground for people in Sweden that are interested in SharePoint.

We’ve conducted several meetings in Stockholm, a few meetings in Gothenburg and unfortunately only one meeting in Malmö. Things are about to change!

With our new establishment of TOZIT AB in the region, I’ve decided to shorten down the long trips I’ve previously had and focus my attention to this region (Öresundsregionen – Helsingborg/Lund/Malmoe/Copenhagen etc.) – this means more time for the SSUG (Sweden SharePoint User Group) in Malmö as well.

Upcoming Event – Malmö

During late February or early March we’ll have our first meeting since 2008, when myself and Carsten Keutmann did presentations on SharePoint Online and WSPBuilder.

Upcoming Event – Stockholm

Update: The details for the SSUG Event in Stockholm have been published, and you can sign up and read more here: http://ssug.eventbrite.com/

Sponsors and Speakers

The routines for our meetings is that we’ve got a sponsor to host the meeting (provide meeting rooms, projectors and food/beverages) and we’ve had one or more speakers during an evening.

We’re currently looking for:

• Meeting Sponsors: Where you provide your offices or conference rooms for our meetings
• Speakers: Where you talk about whatever interests you in SharePoint. Here’s some of the popular focus areas we’ve had speakers talk about before:
  • Focus: Development
  • Focus: Architecture
  • Focus: End User Adoption
  • Focus: No-Code Solutions
  • Focus: Marketing
  • Focus: Show Cases / How-We-Did-It

See you soon at a local SSUG meeting!

Enjoy.

Introduction

A while back an announcement was made that TFSPreview.com had been made available for general testing. Various bloggers at Microsoft put an invitation token in their MSDN blogs so everyone can have a go at it.

In this article series we’ll take a very quick look at what the hosted TFS solution by Microsoft looks like.

Articles currently in the series:

Connect Visual Studio 2010 to your new hosted team project

In order to be able to connect to the hosted TFSPreview team project, you’ll need to comply with the prerequisites I’m listing here.

Prerequisites

• Make sure you’re running Visual Studio 2010 SP1
• Install KB2581206 – (KB2581206 – Visual Studio 2010 SP1 TFS Compatibility GDR)

Hook up Visual Studio to your new repository/project

Alright, if you’ve downloaded and installed KB2581206 (which means you’re spinning VS2010 SP1 already) you are read to connect. The procedure to connect to the hosted TFS service is basically the same as if you were to connect to any other TFS repository, which is easy and awesome.

In Visual Studio 2010 SP1, simply make these smooth ninja moves and you’re done:

Make sure to fetch the URL of your account (As seen in your dashboard, like depicted below):

Enter this URL in the Visual Studio 2010 dialogs and we’re ready to kick off:

It’ll ask you for your credentials which you need to use to verify your account details:

You should now be authenticated and your repository should be available:

You’ll go ahead as you normally do and choose the projects that interests you and then you’re basically done:

Your Team Explorer should contain your TFS project and you should be able to work with it as you normally would from Visual Studio 2010:

This means you’ve got all of your standard tasks and operations available straight from VS 2010 (So you don’t have to go to the website to make changes …):

Summary

Easy enough. As soon as you’ve downloaded the required tooling to get connected, you can hook up your new cloud-hosted team project in Visual Studio 2010 without any problems. Give it a spin, it flows quite nicely!

Enjoy.

Introduction

Sometimes when you’re in a development project you can feel the pain of debugging. If there’s a lot of code floating around it may be hard to sort out the method calls and how the depend on each other if it’s a very complex solution. To ease the task of debugging there’s a great VS 2010 plugin called Debugger Canvas, which will help you to sort out a lot of the hassle while debugging.

In this article we’ll just take a quick look at what Debugger Canvas is and how it can assist us in our daily debugging adventures.

Getting Started with Debugger Canvas

Firstly, you obviously need to download the extension for Visual Studio 2010, which can be done HERE.

Debugger Canvas in Action

When you’ve installed the extension, there’s a few new opportunities presented when debugging. Your new “F5” experience will be based on the new Debugger Canvas UI instead of the traditional debugging experience which means you’ll be able to more easily follow the calls within your code, like this:

When you step into the code deeper, you’ll see how the calls were made quite easily:

Summary

You should definitely take a look at Debugger Canvas if you haven’t already as it’ll be most helpful for you in your development adventures.

Get a better overview here and watch the introductory video!

Enjoy.

Introduction

In most of my recent projects I’ve been required to hook up some custom functionality and add custom forms, pages and Web Parts. Some of the forms and pages I designed needed to be launched from the Ribbon menu, which of course is contextual. This basically means that when you visit a specific list which inherits from a specific content type, we can choose to display our custom Ribbon controls. One of the most common requirements I bumped into was having some kind of conditional check whether to enable or disable the button based on a set of conditions.

In your Ribbon XML for the CommandUIHandler there’s a property called “EnabledScript” which is a tag that enables you to enter a validation script to determine whether or not the ribbon button should be enabled. In my case I need to disable the custom Ribbon-controls if one item is selected, but otherwise always disable it.

Use the following snippet from the SP.ListOperation, which contains the Selection.getSelectedItems method:

<CommandUIHandler
Command=”Ribbon.Awesome.NavButton_CMD”
CommandAction=”javascript:Alert(‘My Awesome Button Was Clicked’);
          EnabledScript=”javascript:SP.ListOperation.Selection.getSelectedItems().length == 1;” />

It’s really only the last line that is of interest here since that’s where the script magic happens to determine if the control should be enabled or not.

MSDN have some nice samples in one of their articles over here.

Results

If you select one (and only one) item in the list, your custom command will be enabled:

If you didn’t select or selected more than one item, the command will be disabled as such:

Summary

I know many people have been struggling with the Ribbon and making it behave. In this article I simply wanted to highlight one of the very common tasks I’ve seen developers looking for and trying to achieve in some of the last few projects I’ve been involved.

Since my awesome mate Wictor covered a bunch of awesome posts about the Ribbon, I’m not going to dive into any more details than so

Enjoy.

Introduction

A while back an announcement was made that TFSPreview.com had been made available for general testing. Various bloggers at Microsoft put an invitation token in their MSDN blogs so everyone can have a go at it.

In this article series we’ll take a very quick look at what the hosted TFS solution by Microsoft looks like.

Articles currently in the series:

What we need to know before getting started…

Firstly you’ll need to get an invitation token from someone who already have an account on tfspreview.com and then you’re good to go. In this post I’ll assume that you’ve got that already.

Sign in to the TFSpreview account you just acquired:

This should give you access to the Team Foundation Service Preview console:

From here you have a few options for proceeding:

• Create a team project – The first step to create a new TFS site and project
• Download software – You’ll want to visit this link so you can download the required software for connecting from VS 2010, if you haven’t already.

To guide you through the process of getting up and running, I’ll create a new project and call it "TOZIT AB Project 42" so you can follow the sample this article through.

Getting Started – Step by step

Right, so you’ve got your account set up and want to create a project. Follow along and I’ll take you through the entire process. Hang on.

Click "Create a team project":

Next you’ll get a dialog telling you the progress of setting the new project up:

When this is done you can navigate directly to the project or click close. I pressed close and made sure I could see the team project in my project list when I press "Browse all…":

Simply click on the "Navigate" button to navigate to the project and you should see your team project dashboard, similar to this:

What you get here is the intro to your Project. You can see in the top menu that you’ve got options for these things:

• Home (This is what you see above)
• Work
• Source
• Build

HOME

As depicted in the screenshot above, this is the welcome screen of the currently selected project. From here you can control your Product Backlog, Product Backlog Items, Sprints, Work Items and so on. Think of this as your online control panel for the Scrum project. Pretty neat, if you ask me.

WORK

Under the "backlog" tab:

You’ll get a more detailed overview over you current situation in the project including the Product Backlog, Sprints and Work Items with an overview as well as detailed information about each item you select. From here you can control, create and modify your current project quite easily from the Web Browser.

For example, you can create a new PBI (Product Backlog Item) from here:

and it’ll immediately appear in the list below, and you can start working with it:

I’m obviously not going to walk you through each and every button on these pages, that’s for you yourself to try out, but this should give you an overview and idea of what’s available.

Under the "board" tab, you can easily get a really awesome overview of your current status in the project with all your Product Backlog Items in the selected sprint. You can easily drag and drop these items from one to the other section:

(Pretty awesome…)

Of course you can edit everything from the browser UI here as well:

Under the "work items" tab you can get a more familiar overview of the current work items, and even create you own queries in the section to the left – much like you would do from Visual Studio otherwise:

SOURCE

Under the Source tab you can see (perhaps one of the most important things) the source code of your project including the history, changesets, shelvesets and so on:

BUILD

An overview of your current build configurations. In this post I haven’t set up any build configurations yet, but keep your eyes out for that soon enough.

Summary

This was intended to be a short introduction of what capabilities and features you’ll see in the hosted Team Foundation Services 2010 hosted service. More on this subject to follow!

Enjoy.

A new blog platform means…

I finally migrated from WSS 3.0 as a blogging platform to WordPress. Obviously WordPress contains tons of awesome utilities and functions for SEO and general blogging tasks. The SharePoint platform was pretty descent to have the blog hosted on, but in reality it doesn’t beat WordPress when it comes to just the blogging.

This also means I’ve got a new RSS Feed Url (http://feeds.feedburner.com/tobiaszimmergren). I’m looking forward to posting some more awesome content during 2012.