On Wednesday, October 21st at 10:30am in Lagoon H, I will be presenting a session with Jonathan Wynn from Del Monte Foods called Building A Great Intranet: Proven Principles & Best Practices.  This is a topic that I am pretty passionate about so I was thrilled when asked by Microsoft a few weeks back to present it.  My co-presenter, Jonathan, has a great wealth of knowledge and provides a very interesting real world element to the entire presentation.  I am definitely looking forward to this.

Official Description

This session will explore the principles and best practices for making any intranet a great intranet. Join us to learn what matters most to end users and decision makers (you will be surprised) and walk away with practical, simple ways you can increase user participation and drive satisfaction across any organization. Topics discussed will include requirement gathering, design and custom configuration, release, versioning, and ongoing maintenance and improvement.

Amanda’s Translation

Come join us for a jam packed session that will walk through the key things you need to know in order to build your Corporate Intranet on SharePoint effectively and in a way that will result in it being accepted by your users and your business.  This session covers a lot of what to do and what not to do so there won’t be much time for checking your watch or catching up on email. 

DEMO ALERT: Oh and we will even show you a cool demo of an Intranet on a certain upcoming release of a technology that I am not allowed to talk about yet.

Also on Thursday, October 22 at 9am, I will be joining some other UG peeps in Lagoon J for a panel discussion on running a successful SharePoint User Group.  Should be a great session and I am sure I will learn some great tips from my fellow panelists.

Otherwise you can expect to see me hanging about the conference and the various events for the remainder of the week.  Like many of you I am pretty stoked about some of the amazing content that is going to be presented and thrilled that we are finally going to be able to talk more about 2010. 

I spent some time today doing some work on a site whereby I needed to add a large amount of images to the style library of a SharePoint Site Collection.  To speed up the process of course I would select the Open with Windows Explorer option so I could just paste the required files in with ease. 

Instantly I would notice a significant freeze and then subsequently extremely low speeds when uploading.  Since this was my first time experiencing this, I immediately tried a different server to see if the problem had to do with network settings on the server.  I experienced the same thing on multiple servers. 

We then tried to replicate on other desktops and it turned out everything was fine on Vista running IE7 or IE8 connecting to the same document libraries.  Finally in the end, a little searching lead me to the forums where a user had pointed out that this issue can be resolved by going into your IE Settings and turning off Automatically Detect Settings.

So if you run into extremely slow speeds uploading to a SharePoint Document Library via Windows Explorer (Webdav), do the following from IE.

Select Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings and unselect the option for Automatically Detect Settings.

I was totally surprised that this was the fix so I had to provide some extra search engine love for the forum post that saved me…

 http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/600a9825-0ba1-4c15-93f6-fc99c64b4930

Don’t forget to register soon for the SharePoint Conference this fall in Las Vegas.  Apparently things are booking up fast and the conference may soon be selling out.  This is no surprise given to me this is looking to be the biggest / most anticipated SharePoint event ever and virtually EVERYONE I have been talking to is going to be there.  I am no exception as I will be there with bells on.

Today the SharePoint team also released some additional information on some of the sessions you will be able to check out while there.

This event will be extra special for me as not only will I be able to catch up with some old friends and meet some new connections but we are planning to host a virtual user group meeting there in person.  Consider it our way of bringing a little Vegas to all of you that are home and can’t make it out to the big show.  We are still finalizing exact timing as we do not want to interfere with (or miss!) any of the big events or sessions.  More details to come on this.

Also on a personal note, this trip to Vegas will be extra special as I will be checking out the U2 concert on Friday night after the conference! This is a big thrill for me as I have always been a huge fan of U2.  I had no idea they were playing there that week until Shane started scoping out the shows for me.

Join us on Tuesday, August 18th at 8pm EST as we welcome a developer panel featuring Ed Musters, Geoff Varosky, Paul Schaeflein, Paul Stork and Rebecca Isserman. These guys will be there to answer your questions as well as provide some of their own guidance on topics such as getting started with web part development and the proper implementation of user controls. This event will be hosted by Laura Rogers.

As with all previous meetings, come join us no matter where you are in the world as this meeting will be delivered virtually via Live Meeting. In order to hear audio for the event, you will need to download the Live Meeting client.

Update:

You can view the recording for this meeting (and others) via www.sharepointnation.org.  Stay tuned for upcoming meetings featuring Shane and I presenting on how to Customize the Look and Feel of a SharePoint site and a very special SharePoint Administrator Panel discussion, live from the SharePoint Conference in Vegas!

By now most people have heard about the Technical Preview for SharePoint 2010 and hopefully have seen the very cool sneek peek videos that the SharePoint Team has created outlining some of the great things that are coming down the pipe for us in vNext.  If you haven’t, then I suggest you check out the SharePoint Team Blog Post released earlier this week.

So some people might be thinking…sheesh I wish I could participate in a Technical Preview and try out cool new software.  Well guess what, according to the InfoPath team…you can! And you just may win an Xbox for doing so. 

Check out the details here and also you can get a preview of the new InfoPath designer interface!

Join us Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 8PM EST for our next virtual user group meeting for SharePoint Nation!

Shane Young (www.sharepoint911.com) will join us for a very special presentation as we resume regularly scheduled monthly meetings.

Session Overview:
In this session Shane will walk you through common mistakes made during the installation process of SharePoint and give you some tips on keeping your server running in tip-top shape. No death by PowerPoint but more of a hands on review of the server and Central Admin. He may also sneak in some nuggets to help you plan for the future….

PLEASE NOTE: This is a virtual event that is available live online so anyone can attend. It’s just like any other user group meeting but you can connect from anywhere and well…there is no free pizza at the end.

Updated June 8th, 2009

A big HUGE thank you to Shane Young for the presentation he delivered last week.  As always he did a superb job despite some annoying audio problems that we encountered in the beginning. We will have those ironed out in time for our next presentation.

In the meantime, for those looking to view the recording of his presentation, the information is below.

SharePoint Nation! - Virtual UG Meeting #3 - SharePoint Installations
Recording URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/view
Recording ID: WGTQ6D
Attendee Key: spn3 

After months of people adding their own best guess as to what the next version of SharePoint will be called and of course the announcement a couple of months back that it would not be released in 2009…the official naming is out. 

The next version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 will be Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.  No more Office in the name though as Tom Rizzo points out on the SharePoint blog, that has no reflection or impact on the platform’s ability to work with Office applications.  In my opinion, I think it shows how widely SharePoint is integrated with all aspects of a business and not just a productivity suite.

Check out more details here…

I will be presenting at a Free SharePoint event in Ottawa on April 30th at the Microsoft Office on 100 Queen Street.  The event is just one of several we will be doing as part of an upcoming tour.  Details on future dates / events to follow.

My presentation will center around SharePoint tips and tricks for usage on an Intranet.  As with most of my presentations, the goal isn’t just to show you WHAT SharePoint can do but how you should use certain features to gain better benefits for business.  I will be covering topics such as branding, electronic forms, workflow and reporting along with my usual advice around establishing governance and solid document management procedures.

Plus in addition to seeing my presentation, you can also check out another presentation by Mike Maadarani on Web Content Management and how SharePoint can be used to run your Internet site.

So if you are in Ottawa on April 30th, I invite you to come check us out.  You can read more details and sign up here!

Well the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in San Diego has come and gone.  I had the immense pleasure of attending and presenting twice to a very receptive and interactive audience.  I was blessed that both of my sessions were full and standing room only which makes for a much more exciting experience as a presenter.  Noone likes to travel 3000 miles to speak to an empty and disinterested room.

I had a fantastic time while there as it was great to meet up with old friends and make some new connections.  Plus the weather was an absolute treat since San Diego has a much nicer climate than Newfoundland this time of year (or any time of year for that matter). 

I was very grateful to the conference organizers for flying me out there and having me participate in such a great event.  The quality of the conference was top notch and I got the impression from speaking to attendees that they were very happy with the entire event.

As promised, linked below are my slidedecks from both sessions.  I hope those that attended will find these useful. For those that did not, you may not get the whole story from the slidedecks as there was a great deal of explanation and discussion around each slide and the demos but feel free to drop me a question on anything via the comments feature of this blog.

Session IA354 - Managing Documents the Right Way

Session IW233 - Using the Right Method to Collect Information

Once again, thanks to everyone that attended and hope to see you all again at a future event.

I will be speaking in a few weeks at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in San Diego.  I wasn’t able to attend the last one in Washington DC due to schedule conflicts so I am looking forward to being part of this one.  It promises to be a great event featuring some really top notch presenters and some great virtual friends of mine.

What is it?
This conference goes beyond the how-to’s of SharePoint and delves into real world issues facing successful SharePoint implementations. Learn how to:

• Make consistent, confident decisions at every level, across your enterprise.
• Break the cycle of avoidance, disagreement and ignorance that leads to subpar results.
• Eliminate design, deployment, organizational and administrative confusion.
• Apply effective SharePoint decision-making in any situation and in turn enhance enterprise communication, collaboration and efficiency - while significantly lowering cost.
• Replace disorder with clarity, direction and confidence.

Who should attend?
The conference sessions are divided into 6 tracks in order to accommodate topics for SharePoint professionals at every level:

• IT Pro
• Developers and Designers
• Information Worker
• Information Architect/Taxonomist
• Project Manager
• Chief Information Officer

My first session on Tuesday morning focuses on identifying the optimal method for collecting information from users based on your specific requirements.  I find this can often be any area where those starting out at designing solutions might take a wrong turn and select the wrong product / method to suit their situation.  Then I will be presenting again on Wednesday on a session geared around best practices for document management. 

If you are attending, please drop me a line or a comment.  It would be great to see you there!  I also plan on having a few extra copies of our book to hand out while we are there since a lot of what I will cover has already been covered in there.

Today is my birthday.  Normally I wouldn’t necessarily admit it (nor choose to write a post about it) but it provides a good foundation for this story.

My fiance, Shane had mentioned he had purchased a nice present for me this year.  I was intrigued but also felt I didn’t really need anything specific.  While we are not well off or rich by any means, we are extremely happy and have most things that we could ever want.  So when I woke up and went downstairs to get my coffee, I saw a birthday card and rose on the kitchen table.  Thinking that was a sweet gesture, I assumed that was everything and was happy to continue with my day.

Then Shane handed me a letter confirming the purchase of a holiday hamper of…2 goats, 8 chicks, 1 donkey and 1 pack of rice.  These objects are available for purchase (via donation) at www.chf-partners.ca and will be given to people in need all around the world in poverty stricken areas such as Ethiopia and Bangladesh.  For example, donkeys are provided to female headed households to assist with carrying of water, firewood and other challenging chores.  The goats provide a source of sustainable food and income to families in need.  In short, a simple birthday gift to me has the potential to help multiple people in a way unlike anything I have ever done before. 

Needless to say I was moved and feel strongly that this is by far the best present I could have ever received.  I feel so grateful that I have a fiance that is so thoughful and loving and also that we are lucky enough to be given an opportunity to help others with money that could have easily been spent on a video game, fancy meal or other insignificant item.

So my reason for posting this is to let others know about this program and hopefully enlighten someone else to offer a similar gift to a person they love.  I can assure you that it doesn’t take much to really make someone’s day and with the holidays approaching, it might be just the answer you are looking for.

More information available at:

http://www.chf-partners.ca/giftsthatmatter/main.html 

Join us Tonight (Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 8PM EST) for another virtual user group meeting for SharePoint Nation!
In this meeting, John Holliday (MOSS MVP) will speak to us on Records Management with respect to Document Retention.  John is an excellent speaker and very knowledgeable expert on SharePoint, so be sure not to miss this event.

Live Meeting Address: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=MNS7Q6&role=attend&pw=Tg%28f%7Eg5cM 

Add to Calendar

Session Information:
Document retention is an important part of content management.  SharePoint provides out-of-the-box support for managing document retention using the built-in expiration policy feature of the information management policy framework.  The built-in expiration policy feature includes the ability to define expiration formulas based on document metadata, but there are many scenarios in which the expiration date depends on conditions external to a given document.  In this session, we’ll explore the information management policy architecture in detail and learn how to extend the expiration policy feature by writing custom document expiration formulas that calculate the expiration date based on data pulled from elsewhere in the SharePoint farm.

A little background on SharePoint Nation!
User groups are a great way for getting out to meet peers, share information on past experiences related to a particular topic and to learn from subject matter experts on new concepts or best practices.  Many of us already are members of local user groups related to SharePoint, .NET and other topics.  However in some cases, it may be difficult to get out to meetings due to work commitments or even worse, impossible to coordinate a group due to regional limitations.  Enter SharePoint Nation…a virtual user group.
SharePoint Nation will operate as any other user group…except without the free Pizza.
We will meet, share information and network with one another.  Meetings will feature presentations from a variety of subject matter experts on a vast array of topics.  To accommodate people from all over the globe, a variety of time slots will be followed for meetings and all content will be made available online for on demand participation.  The website will be used for sharing information with one another between meetings.

How can you get involved…
Aside from presenting at meetings, we are looking for people to help host the meetings.  As a host you will take on responsibility for notifying attendees of meeting locations, introducing the speaker for the evening and collecting evaluations at the conclusion of the meeting.   Training will be provided on using Live Meeting and the various other tools associated with hosting and presenting at meetings. 
 

Join us Tonight (Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 8PM EST) for our first virtual user group meeting for SharePoint Nation!

In this meeting, Robert Bogue (MOSS MVP) will speak to us on Governance. Robert is a definite expert in this area and will make this an event you will not want to miss!

Live Meeting Address: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=snug01&role=attend&pw=HzMS%284gPx

Session Information:

Are you having trouble getting folks interested in SharePoint? Is SharePoint out of control in your organization? Have you experienced SharePoint sprawl? In this session you’ll get a framework for governance on SharePoint. You’ll learn how to balance evangelism with economics. You’ll discover how guidance may be more effective at governance for creating a healthy ecosystem.

A little background on SharePoint Nation!

User groups are a great way for getting out to meet peers, sharing information on past experiences related to a particular topic and for learning from subject matter experts on new concepts or best practices.  Many of us already are members of local user groups related to SharePoint, .NET and other topics.  However in some cases, it may be difficult to get out to meetings due to work commitments or even worse, impossible to coordinate a group due to regional limitations.  Enter SharePoint Nation…a virtual user group.

SharePoint Nation will operate as any other user group…except without the free Pizza.

We will meet, share information and network with one another.  Meetings will feature presentations from a variety of subject matter experts on a vast array of topics.  To accommodate people from all over the globe, a variety of time slots will be followed for meetings and all content will be made available online for on demand participation.  The website will be used for sharing information with one another between meetings.

How can you get involved…

Aside from presenting at meetings, we are looking for people to help host the meetings.  As a host you will take on responsibility for notifying attendees of meeting locations, introducing the speaker for the evening and collecting evaluations at the conclusion of the meeting.   Training will be provided on using Live Meeting and the various other tools associated with hosting and presenting at meetings. 

I started blogging over 5 years ago.  At the time I was trying something new and just starting to share information on a technology I had grown to love and focus on greatly as a professional.  During that time there were not quite as many other SharePoint bloggers as there are today unfortunately.  Therefore when you found another, it was very exciting and you tended to become instant comrades.  One such blogger for which I developed a great amount of respect over the years was Patrick Tisseghem.  Patrick was smart, passionate and a definite master of the technology.  I always respected him for the way he was constantly challenging people to think about things from more than just one perspective and I feel his feedback has had an awesome impact on his peers, the community and in some ways I believe the product. 

Finding out that Patrick has passed away this morning was a complete blow and major disappointment.  While I had shared many emails over the years with him, I never had the opportunity to meet with him in person.  From what I gather from those that have, I missed out on a great thing.  

I wish his family, friends and colleagues all the best during this terribly difficult time.  I wish I could put into words how greatly Patrick was respected and moreso how tremendously he will be missed. 

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

Just posted on the SharePoint Team blog is a bunch of information and links to the newly released Infrastructure Updates for MOSS, WSS and Project Professional.

These updates include bug fixes, performance enhancements as well as new functionality and features around Search.  According to the blog post, it is recommended that all customers install these updates to take advantage of the improvements immediately.

Check out the details here.

I will be doing some updates over the next few days on my own machines as well I am sure we will be patching our many development environments at work.  I will post any personal findings and experiences as they become available.

Well last week I had the pleasure of attending Microsoft Tech Ed in Orlando for the IT Pro week.  It was my fourth Tech Ed in a row and I have to say the splitting of the Developer and IT weeks definitely put a different flavour on it.  I tended to miss my little developer friends and for the most part the event seemed a little quieter than I remember from previous years.

I spent the first 2 days of the conference hanging out in the Office / SharePoint TLC area and I met some really great people.  It absolutely blew my mind how many people I was talking to that were just getting into SharePoint in their orgs and are loving the tool.  It was a great opportunity to chat, share stories and answer some good questions with peers.  Most of all it was just great to meet some new people and of course see some familiar faces.  

I must admit I was also very happily surprised at the number of people that mentioned they have our book and are really enjoying it.  While I know that sort of thing isn’t supposed to matter to a “real” author, it always makes me feel good that people are finding it helpful and that those 8 months of writing our hearts out day and night were worth it. 

Unfortunately however I couldn’t spend as much time with my fellow SharePoint community friends as I had planned or would have liked.  I spent the first part of the week trying to catch up on work in the evenings and early mornings before the conference and then my week was cut short due to an unfortunate family tragedy that had me hanging low in my hotel room for a while and then out on the first possible flight home.  Sometimes there really is no better place than home and so while my trip was shorter than I had planned, it was definitely for the best.

So if I didn’t see you, hopefully we will catch up at the next big event.  In the meantime, I see that my fellow SharePoint Nation comrades did a great job at tearing up the town.  A major hat off (cowboy hat that is) to Eric Shupps for winning Speaker Idol during the Dev week.  Way to do us proud Eric.  I had planned on participating in Week 2 but ended up giving up my spot.  Maybe next year or else i will just wait till the Canadian version comes around. 

Last night a dream of mine came true. Shane and I got to see Bob Dylan in concert for the first time in our lives. We have both been fans for longer than we can each remember. It is a characteristic we share that dates back long before the 10 years we have been together as a couple. We had planned to go see him this summer no matter what it took or where we had to travel to see him. And then last night, we saw him at Mile One Centre here in our own hometown of St. John’s, NL. All I can say is WOW.

We had planned since he announced the concert to only attend tonight’s show which is the first show that was announced. Today is both Shane’s birthday as well as Dylan’s. So we figured what could be more fitting than seeing him play on the day they share as a milestone. Then last night came, we finished work and thought….what the heck are we doing going home when Bob Dylan is playing here in town on the same night. So we sped downtown, found some tickets (great seats too) and had just an amazing night of mind blowing music and a fantastic show.

When we first arrived, we were just both numb with excitement. Our seats were just 12 back from the stage and we could see him perfectly. The band sounded amazing. The second song was an all time favorite of mine, Girl From the North Country (also known as Girl of the North Country). I loved that song from the early album but also the version that he performed with Johnny Cash. I listen to it all the time and often watch the video of his appearance with Cash on YouTube. Then I watched last night’s performance and it completely blew my mind. Typically I am about as emotional as a frozen turnip, but my eyes actually filled up as the song played on and I was sure at that moment, there was nowhere else I wanted to be but there. The night continued with an amazing mix of oldies and songs from the Modern Times album including Beyond the Horizon which is a personal favorite of mine from that album.

We are getting ready now to continue on with our Dylan weekend. We have a room booked in the hotel that connects to Mile One and some friends joining us for a some birthday festivities. I feel pretty confident that tonight will be even more amazing and I truly cannot wait!

Shane and I both work at a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner company here in St. John’s, Newfoundland called Infotech.  The company has existed since 1994 and has evolved from a small web development shop to a highly focused SharePoint / .NET application development firm. We also have other arms of our business that focus on Infrastructure and IT resource placements.

We have experienced considerable growth over the past 12 months and are looking for more talented people to come join our team. Right now all of the positions are based in St. John’s, NL so that would require you to be from this area or interested in relocating here. That’s right, while many complain that they must leave the Province and go West to get employment, we have been actually bringing people back East to Newfoundland.

Positions currently open include:

• Senior Project Manager (7-10+ years experience managing IT Projects)
• Business Analysts
• Sales Lead
• SharePoint Specialists
• Application Developers (ASP.NET, SharePoint)

If you are interested in coming to work for us and would like to submit a resume, you can do so by either going to our website at www.infotechsolutions.com or by sending an email with your resume attached to careers@infotechsolutions.com.

Shane was sick last week with the flu so I took it upon myself to do some much needed clean up and reconfiguration on our home network.  Over the past few months we have added a few extra client systems (Macs in fact - more on that later), we changed ISPs, set up a new media center and made some other minor changes that when all added up equaled a bit of a mess.   So I decided it was time to repave everything and build from scratch. 

I started by rebuilding our domain controller as the last one had been in service for a few years and the DNS configuration I had going on was a bit messed up and thus causing some pain and confusion on the internal network.  I also used this as an excuse to introduce Windows Server 2008 as the dc since it made sense to go with the latest and greatest. 

Overall I have to say it was a super simplistic setup and things are a million times better.  I completely ditched my ISP’s DNS and have an OpenDNS forwarding rule setup on the server which is much better for the external links.  Plus I removed the double DNS references on the internal network so everything is much faster now. 

Probably the thing that pleases me most is how well the Macs are responding to the new setup.  I was amazed at how easy it was to join them to the domain.  Things have significantly improved from a networking / integration perspective over the past 3-4 years since I had last been using a Mac on a regular basis.  The one thing that I did wrong that I forgot to do when first binding my laptop to the domain was select the option to create a mobile account.  Once I figured that out, it made my profile available even when the domain was not.  This is a necessity of course when one spends a large amount of time on the road or away from the house.

Since setting up the new DC, I have also repaved each of the client systems and upgraded to Vista SP1 which has resulted in a much better experience overall.  I even went as far as rebuilding our SharePoint server and a created a bunch of new base VMs.  The only system outstanding is my Media Center which I have been procrastinating on.  Hopefully I will get that one done tomorrow.

Productivity feels good!!

As a couple, Shane and I have a lot in common. We have some differences too but when it comes to music we are pretty much perfectly aligned. When it comes to Bob Dylan, we are HUGE fans and have been for years. In fact, I might even admit that Shane has a slight edge in the fact that he managed to be born on Bob Dylan’s birthday. I have always secretly thought that he managed to do that on purpose somehow given he was born about 3 months premature. But it is something he tends to remind me of whenever he can.

So one of our biggest goals this year (besides the wedding which is still in the planning stages), was to go see Bob play no matter where that was. If there was a show, we were buying plane tickets or hitching the trailer onto the truck for a road trip. But then out of the blue something strange and awesome happened. Though Bob Dylan had not yet added any other North American dates to his tour page, it was announced he was coming to Atlantic Canada!!! What is even more exciting is…Bob Dylan is going to be playing here on May 24th…Shane and Bob’s birthday.

Needless to say we got tickets and it is gonna be the BEST birthday party ever! I have even gone as far as creating a Facebook group for the night. If you are in Newfoundland and Labrador and are going to the Bob Dylan Concert (aka Shane and Bob’s birthday party), sign up.

Well as a followup to my post from earlier in the year regarding my need for some changes in order to achieve a more healthly work / life balance, I decided to start about a month ago by announcing my intent to step down as President of INETA NorAm.  This was a very difficult decision for me that took a large amount of careful thought and consideration.  While I was very excited to be in the position I was in, enjoyed the people I was working with and was passionate about the new activities we were getting ready to launch, I had to make a very challenging choice to put my personal and business life first and walk away. 

INETA is a volunteer run community organization that requires a large amount of time from those that run it.  In many ways the role as President had turned into a second full time job for me and that was having an impact on my ability to spend time with family, pursue new opportunities and focus on other projects and activities.  So while the decision was not an easy one, I feel confident it was the right one for me at this point in my life.  I still completely respect and support what INETA is all about and look forward to working with them again in the future after I have had some time to refocus and regroup.

Over the past month, I have been working at transitioning my duties to other board members and today we elected Daniel Egan as my replacement.  Daniel is a fantastic leader and all around great guy.  He is extremely passionate about the community will do a wonderful job in his new role.  I couldn’t be happier for both him and the organization.

Does this mean I am giving up on the community?  Not at all!  In fact it just means that I will be more focused over the next while and have more time available for doing other things that I have not been able to do for quite a while such as blogging and writing.  In addition, I will have more time focus on SharePoint specific projects over the next while that Shane and I have had sitting on a shelf.  The fun is really only yet beginning. 

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft announced the availability of their resource kit for the DoD 5015.2 Add On Pack for MOSS.  This add-on pack essentially is a set of features that gets added to the base Records Management features of MOSS for organizations that must run in a 5015.2 compliant state. 

While the functionality is broken into a set of features, I should note that these features are very interdependant so it’s not like you can turn on 1 and not the others to selectively choose what functionality you want to take advantage of.  However recognizing the desire that many would have for such an option, the Records Management team did note on their blog that they would be releasing code samples in the coming weeks that should allow developers to identify how they can accomplish certain individual portions of functionality.  You can view the announcement article here.

I personally have been diving deep in the area of Records Management over the past 3-4 months as it seems to be an area many of our customers that have previously deployed MOSS as an Intranet or Collaborative environment are now interested in.  It makes a lot of sense that organizations would eventually question investments into separate systems for producing, managing and sharing their content.  Providing a single environment and interface for the management and sharing of content throughout its entire lifecycle is a definite win / win for everyone in the organization.  I hope to post some helpful articles and posts over the next month or so in this area as it may be the easiest way for me to finally get back on the blogging train with something useful.

If you have any specific suggestions of posts you would like to see, then leave me a comment here and I will do my best to get to it.

Wow 2007 went by like a blur.  I look back on the year and see some interesting choices and developments.  Shane and I finally released our first book together.  That was an awesome experience and I am so glad I chose to work with WROX on it as they have proven to be a great team to work with.  I received a major promotion within my job that saw me shift from leading a team to focusing on the operations of the entire company.  I became President of INETA North America which threw me deeper into the fire of running a large community effort that reaches out to and impacts over 200,000 developers and professionals.  Along the way there were certifications received, big events attended and presented at, exciting new contracts won and approximately 30-35% growth in the size of our company.

Overall it was a great year but it had its challenges.  Particularly in the work / life balance side of things.  Shane (my fiance, co-worker, housemate and pretty much complete partner of any thing important) had a similarly challenging and productive year.  As a result, we both decided to put off things such as home renovations, healthy living as well as planning our wedding and as a result still haven’t really made much progress.  A phenomenum most people around us cannot understand.  Looking back on things I am beginning to question our priorities.  It seems I always manage to have a fierce dedication to getting things done on the work side of things and then continuously put things off on the personal front. 

So as I head into 2008, I am acknowledging that at my current age, I am old enough to know better and young enough to make the changes that are necessary.  This is going to likely lead to some drastic changes but hopefully the type of changes that will allow me to continue steady progress in my professional life but equally or greater progress in my personal development and goals as well. 

Wish me luck!!

A good start was given to Shane and I by a special friend, that I am hoping might represent the next best step for getting things on track.  Thanks Dana!

Shane was recently profiled by the MVP program as part of their MVP Insider series.  I actually didn’t see his answers till I received an email about it via our MVP lead pointing to his responses.  You can check his responses out here.

Quote from article:

“What is the best thing that has happened since you have become an MVP?

I got engaged since becoming an Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), so that outranks all professional accomplishments.  In terms of big accomplishments professionally though, the release of my book with Amanda Murphy, “Beginning SharePoint 2007” is something I am pretty proud of.”

I was impressed to see that he considered our engagement the greatest accomplishment he has had in the past year and then it was the release of our book.  Good to see he has his priorities right.  =-)

Today I wrote and passed my first Microsoft Certification exam.  It was exam 70-630, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Configuring.  Overall it was a positive first experience and it feels good to finally get an official certification.  I guess I should probably now write the WSS one as well to complete the group. 

While being an MVP and book author for SharePoint provides me with some (limited) street cred when it comes to the technology, I figured it was a good idea to get the certification on a couple of fronts: 

• As a Microsoft Gold Partner, it helps us with specific programs and specializations. 

• As the Director of Operations for our company, I don’t need to feel like a hypocrite for telling other people to get their technical certifications. 

• A little extra logo bling never hurt anyone.  =-) 

It’s been a while since I have posted. The past 6-7 months have been pretty crazy for me in a lot of ways and as a result, this blog has been neglected far more than I had hoped.

For a while, I was feeling a little burned out from writing after the book project. It was a great experience but I found that it took it’s toll on my whole work / life balance. Basically for 8 months, Shane and I became accustomed to working our day jobs and then coming home and writing for anywhere between 4-8 hours a night. Sometimes after a long day, it can be very challenging to think clearly enough to write about a topic. To help we would often go to our favorite coffee shop for a couple of hours in between to write so that it didn’t seem so repetitive. Plus during the time I was traveling a lot for work so that made things even tougher. So needless to say when we were done, there was a serious need for some R&R.

So that is what we did…

We went out and brought a new truck and a camper and spent whatever moments we could outside under the stars and next to a camp fire. We finally got to spend some time kicking back and having fun together as a couple rather than merely being co-workers or book writing partners. It was an amazing summer and I may have even set a new record for number of hours spent offline. Well as offline as one can get with a Windows Mobile phone that is always connected but you get the idea.

Now that the ground is starting to freeze and preparing to turn a shade of white for the next 4-5 months, I will be spending more time inside and consequently writing. For a while I was having a hard time thinking of things to write since we covered so much in the book. Now I have collected a pile of topics that act as extensions or further details to those topics covered that I am looking forward to putting into something people can benefit here on my blog. As always if you have any requests for things you would like to see covered, please use my comments.

I often get questioned on how Reusable Content works in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 so I figured I would put together a quick little post to explain.

On the top level site of a Collaboration Portal publishing site, which is the site many of us use as a starting point for a Corporate Intranet, there is a list called Reusable Content.

From this list you can create list items that contain text that you can later insert into portal pages via the Publishing Content control. So the next question you might have is, why would I want to do that? The goal of reusable content really can be narrowed down to two main scenarios:

1. You may have text within your organization that is very standardized and should never change. Therefore whenever someone displays it on the portal, it should always look exactly the same. This might be a corporate mission statement, an executive bio, product description, corporate policy etc… This is also typically content that would be displayed in multiple locations so the goal would to minimize efforts associated with maintenance. Using the reusable content feature of MOSS 2007, the content owner can update the text or display of this content in a single list and it would push all changes out to each place in the portal where the content is displayed.
2. You may also have text that serves more as a template to demonstrate to portal managers how content should be formatted. Perhaps it is a welcome message to a divisional portal homepage or boilerplate description text for a product that will act as a starting point for more defined and relevant information. In this case, the goal is to have a text snippet or blurb that a site manager can insert onto their page and then modify to suit their specific needs. By having the snippet of starting text, you can help kickstart their content creation efforts and minimize the time it will take for someone to add content to the page.

So to get started with either of the above scenarios, you need to start by going to the Reusable Content list on the top level site of your publishing site collection. You can get there by select View All Site Content from the Quick Launch of your top level site’s home page. This will take you to the content listing page where you can then select your Reusable Content list.

From this list, you can select to create either an entry that is full rich HTML or simple standard text. For this example, let’s select HTML.

You can then proceed to create a new item in the list containing whatever content you wish to display. In this case, I have chosen to create a short snippet dedicated to displaying the bio of a very important individual in our organization. I want to display this bio in multiple locations in our portal so therefore I am selecting automatic update so that whenever I need to make a change, I can do it from the list and it will automatically update all pages that contain this information. If I did not select the automatic update option, I would have the ability to edit the text directly from whatever page I added it to.

When I am finished with my entry, I select OK and notice that the item now appears in my list. I can then go to any publishing page in the portal with the publishing HTML content control and add the reference to my Executive Bio. When you edit a publishing page and select inside a HTML content control, you will see the following toolbar appear. From this toolbar you can select the reusable content icon that is shown below.

When you select the reusable content icon, a new window will appear asking you to select which piece of content you would like to insert. In my example, I only have the one item but over time you could actually end up with many entries in this list. Therefore you may want to consider proper categorization and classification of these items to support custom views of this list to make selection easier for either yourself or your portal content managers.

Once you select your content item and click the OK button, it will be dropped into your page exactly as seen on the preview.

You will notice that if you selected the Automatic Update option, you will not be able to edit the content once it has been added to page. You will instead be required to return to your reusable content list to make an update.

If you are running Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) and have created a site from a collaborative template such as the Team Site template or Blank Site template, you may notice that by default you do not see the Advanced Search option to the right of your search box as you do when you create a Publishing Portal or Collaboration Portal. The screen shots below illustrate the difference.

Top Level Collaboration Portal Search Box

Top Level Team Site Search Box

A reader of our book asked a great question in our forums on how to add the link if you have a team site as the top level site in your site collection. I supplied a quick answer in forum but then realized it might be a good topic to post about in more detail here.

Basically to get started, in order to use the Advanced Search, you need to have a page from which to perform your query and then another to display the search results. MOSS 2007 has page layouts / template for each of these as well as provides you with customizable web parts if you want to create everything completely from scratch to suit your specific requirements. However the quickest route would be for you to create a sub site on your team site using the Search Center template as this site template already contains the elements you require. This is the same template that is used for the search site in the Collaboration portal which many organizations use as the starting point for their Corporate Intranet. The steps for doing so are described below.

1. From the home page of your top level team site, select Create from the Site Actions menu.
2. Select Sites and Workspaces from the Web Pages category.
3. Fill in the details for your new site. Be sure to select the Search Center template under the Enterprise tab. Also it is a good idea to inherit permissions of your top level site since you would likely want to ensure all users of top level site will be able to access the advanced search interface.

    

   

    

4. Click the Create button to complete the creation of your new search site.
5. You will be redirected to the home page of your new search site. The page will be displaying a search box with a link to the Advanced Search page.

    

   

6. Click the Advanced Search link.
7. From the Advanced Search page, copy the url of the page.
8. Select Site Settings from the Site Actions menu.
9. Because you are on a sub site to your top level site where the majority of site collection settings exist, you need to then select Go to Top Level Site Settings.
10. Select Search Settings.

     

    

     

11. Select the top option and paste in the url that you copied in step 7. The url should end with /{the url name of your search site}/advanced.aspx.

     

    

     

12. Click OK.
13. When you return to the home page of your team site, you will now see the Advanced Search link and clicking it will bring you to the Advanced Search page.

Creating a basic Template Part in Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 is a simple process.  However the rewards that come along afterwards when you have a nice library of template parts is quite nice.  In this post I will give a high level walkthrough of the steps it takes so you can see yourself how easy they are to create and hopefully recognize a few of the benefits of possibly a little work upfront.

Creating a Template Part in InfoPath 2007

Open InfoPath 2007 and select to Design a Form Template

You are given a choice to create either a complete form or a template part.  Because the component you are going to create will be used in multiple forms, it makes sense to package it as a template part instead.  In this example, I will create a template part for contact information since it is contained in probably half the forms I make.  Even if some slight items change, using a template part will give me a good starting point.

By selecting template part, you are given a choice to create from a blank template or based on an XML document or schema.  In this case we will select Blank.

You design your form by adding the appropriate layout tables and controls to the form.  It is always a good idea to begin this step with a sketched out idea of what your form will look like on paper and the data the form will collect including any dependencies or connections identified.

Similar to a complete template, you can import data from other data sources such as SQL, web services or SharePoint.  In this case, I have a list of provinces contained on a centrally available SharePoint site so I will utilize that.  You never know when Canada could decide to recruit a new province or territory so its important to make it easy for this listing to stay up to date.  OK So maybe in this case I just hate typing so it’s easier for me to grab this information from a central listing somewhere.

After all my labels and controls have been added, I am ready to save my template part.

When you save the template part you will notice it has its own unique file extension (xtp) rather than the xsn you would see if you were saving a complete form.

Now whenever I want to create a form that contains contact information, I can simply add my template part instead of recreating every single field manually.  Who has time for manual recreation of common elements when there are Stanley Cup Finals or World Cup Soccer games to watch? 

Below the controls listing on the task pane select the link to “Add or Remove Custom Controls…”

Select Template Part from the wizard screen…

Browse to the location of your template part.  If you are working on a team, then it would be a good idea to store these in a central location so as to be a library for everyone to use.

And Voila you have a new custom control available to you in the task pane.

Just like any other control, click and drag it onto the form to make it appear.  

Depending on the complexity of your template part, you can evaluate the benefit of using template parts by comparing the length of time it takes to click and drag versus the length of time it took you to add all the controls and set up your data connection, then multiply it by the number of times you would typically have to add those fields to a form.

Well the moment has finally arrived where our book is now available for order on Amazon and is no longer considered a pre-order.  For those of you just getting started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and are looking for a way to learn about all the different features available out of the box, this should certainly help you out as it covers the use and customization of out of the box features related to lists, libraries, content types, workflow, publishing, Excel Services, InfoPath Form Services, web parts etc… 

If you do pick it up, I would love to hear what you think.  You can email me directly using the link on the side of this site.  Also if you are going to be at Tech Ed next week, definitely track me down as I would love to meet you.  There is a book signing at 3PM on Wednesday.

I am always a little slow to jump on the Tech Ed blogging wagon but I will be there once again this year.  Look for me hanging out at the INETA booth, Birds of a Feather sessions as well a variety of technical sessions.  Chances are if the word SharePoint is being said, I will probably be around somewhere.

I have also been invited to be a panelist for the Women in Technology Luncheon which is a HUGE honor for me and something I am very much looking forward to.  This luncheon (open to any attendee) is one of the highlights of the week and has become very popular over the past few years.  To be asked to participate as a panelist is very exciting for me.

We are also in the talks about possibly doing a book signing at the conference as it looks as though our book will be available during that week.  I will update more information on this as it becomes available. 

In any event, should be another exciting and action filled week in Orlando.  Drop me a line if you are going to be there.

—–

Update: For those that have been asking, the Women in Technology Luncheon is on Wednesday, June 6th from 11:30 A.M to 2:00 P.M at the Peabody Conference Room.  Also the book signing has been confirmed to be 3:00PM on Wednesday at the Bookstore.

Join INETA User Group Leaders from Florida and around the world at this special event. The goals of the event or to bring together those involved with the leadership activities involved in running a .Net Developer user group. Through interactive sessions we will share ideas and address common issues being experienced. 

I have had the pleasure of attending this event for the past two years at Tech Ed and strongly recommend that you attend if you are a user group leader or are interested in building a technology community in your area.

Taking Place: 

Saturday June 2, 2007
Orlando City Hall
400 S Orange Avenue
Orlando, FL 32801

For more information, visit the registration site located here. 

For those of you that don’t know…

About a month ago, the INETA Board of Directors for North America held an election and I was elected to be their next President.  It is a pretty awesome thing for me on a number of levels.  First I am completely honoured that the current board chose to nominate and elect me.  It has been a great experience serving with them for the past year and a half.  I have learned a lot and truly appreciated the opportunity I had to work with each of them.  Secondly those who know me well understand how much I love working with the community and I truly cannot wait to spend the next two years working with the rest of the board to deliver some really awesome new services and programs to our members.  The past couple of years have really been about INETA maturing as a large organization and redefining our processes so we can properly serve the fantastic community we represent.  Moving forward I am looking forward to a much greater level of direct interaction and involvement with our members as we roll out new programs and activites.

It seems like only yesterday, I was just getting my feet wet trying to start up a small user group here in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.  Julie Lerman reached out to show me the way and pretty much launched me on my path.  So I guess on some level, you all have her to blame. 

The complete list of new board members was released in the April 2007 newsletter.  To highlight, we will have two women serving as President (myself) and Vice President (Morgan Baker).  Morgan was the one the recruited me into volunteering with the Community Activities division a few years back.  We also have two Canadians (Rob Zelt - VP of Community Activities) on the board this time around.  I really needed some support in that area as being the token Canadian was more than I could handle on my own. 

Anyhow I know this update has been slow but its only because I have been busy behind the scenes ramping up for some of our existing and new projects.  This includes some great things we will be doing at Tech Ed this year including the Birds of a Feather sessions, Community Leadership Summit and some other surprises.  Stay tuned for more!

Now that our book on SharePoint 2007 is complete, we have been getting quite a few people asking when it will be released and if any portions will be available before launch for review.  Unfortunately at this point, the book is out of our hands and going through the very final editing and printing process.  However apparently small portions of the book will be released in article format over the next few months on the WROX site to give people a chance to check out a few of the concepts ahead of time.  So if you go to the site now, you will be able to read a short article that will guide you through an explanation and the usage of the Approval workflow in MOSS 2007. 

For those of you out there that are just getting started with SharePoint or might be expected to become the next guru in your organization for using the out of the box features of SharePoint and customizing them to meet your specific organization’s goals - this book should help get you on your way.  One of the things I have always liked about this particular WROX series is the hands on learning style which is why I was thrilled to have the opportunity to write such a book for SharePoint.  Of course it helped that I had such a great writing partner too!   Anyhow for those of you wondering what the book covers, I have include the Table of Contents below.  As you will see we covered a little bit of everything.

1. Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
2. Working with SharePoint Lists.
3. Working with SharePoint Libraries.
4. Managing and Customizing Lists and Libraries.
5. Working with Workflow.
6. Working with Content Types.
7. Working with Web Parts.
8. Working with Sites and Workspaces.
9. User Management, Audiences and Profiles.
10. Working with Forms Services.
11. Working with Excel Services.
12. Working with the Business Data Catalog.
13. Getting Started with Web Content Management.
14. Understanding Search.
Appendix. Answers to Exercises. 
Also as Jim Minatel points out on the WROX blog, there are quite a few new books coming down the line for SharePoint.  It is really awesome to see such an awesome range of material coming available this early in the game.

I am sitting at the airport getting ready to head out to the West coast of our wonderful continent.  Coming from the most Eastern point in North America, such a journey can make for quite a day.  Basically I leave here in an hour or so and arrive in Seattle in about 14 hours thanks to a lengthy stopover in Toronto.  I would say I am well prepared for the journey with a few TV shows queued up on my phone, a charged up Nintendo DS and a half a dozen games and a laptop oozing with work to be done.  However it would seem a mere 30 minutes into my journey I may not be in as great shape as I would hope.  I left my passport at the ticket desk…then proceeded to security after leaving my purse in the coffee shop.  I could see the fear in Shane’s face as he sent me on my way.  I am normally fairly on the ball when travelling since I do it on a nearly weekly basis.  Perhaps the burning the candle at both ends is starting to show through and it is time for me to catch up on some Z’s.  Wish me luck!  Hopefully I will arrive in one piece with all my belongings.

Now that Shane and I have finished our book, I am hoping to get back on track with the blog series that I started back in the Beta cycle called The Beauty of SharePoint.  Back then everything was so new for me and I was truely learning as I was going.  Now nearly 12 months later, 20+ projects and 2 book projects later, I definitely have a lot to share with the growing base of SharePoint users and admins out there. 

I am travelling to Redmond on Monday to do some work out there but will hopefully have some time to get things kickstarted while I am there.  If you have anything you would like to see covered over the next few months, drop me a line here and I will do my best to get to it. 

Just a reminder to everyone that we are now accepting submissions for the Birds of a Feather sessions for Tech Ed 2007 in Orlando.  You can submit your topic here.

Last year’s sessions went really well and we are expecting that things will be even better this year.  For those of you wondering what a Birds of a Feather session is…

They are sessions that take place during Tech Ed that cover a variety of topics.  Last year we had fantastic sessions covering topics from geeks with serious diseases to technical sessions covering SharePoint, Visual Studio Team System or Community Server.  You can submit a topic and then moderate it.  The sessions are not intended to be lecture style which is more typical in the breakout sessions.  Instead they are discussions where a group of peers come together and share their ideas and questions around common topic. 

Last year I had the pleasure of hosting a number of these and the feedback was extremely positive and by far was one of my favorate aspects of the conference.  I strongly recommend that if you are going to Tech Ed this year you do one or all of the following:

• Submit a topic using link above
• Vote on a topic that you would like to see discussed
• Participate in a session

Found these SharePoint Designer 2007 demos from Mike Gannotti’s blog.  There are six video demos along with articles on using various features of SharePoint Designer such as Creating Page Layouts, workflows and basic UI Customiazations.  If you are trying to wrap your head around where and when (and how) you should use SharePoint DEsigner, these might be a good starting point.

Now that we are done our book (WaaaaHooooooo), I am hoping to get some more of this type of content created so I can post here and not be such a terrible blogger.  Especially related to some of the applications I have been neglecting lately including InfoPath, SharePoint Designer and Project Server and how they integrate with WSS & MOSS.

Wow it has been too long.  My brother reminded me this morning that it has been well over a month since my last post.  Time flies eh?

Well as Shane wrote this morning, we have been pretty deep on a few projects this past while.  Highest in priority of course being the book which is slowly but surely coming to a state ready for release.  I truely cannot wait for the point in time when we can sit back and enjoy our efforts and see it released.  I am confident it will be excellent handbook for those of you looking to get your feet wet and understand how to effectively use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to support your team and organization. The book is very much focused on understanding how to apply the out of the box features to common scenarios and offers a LOT of hands on examples.   I know for me this is a way I like to learn which is why I have always been a fan of the WROX Beginner series.

In addition to the book there has been an extremely hectic work and travel schedule to keep things moving at light speed pace.  I really look forward to having things calm down for a while after March so I can start looking ahead to the rest of the year and making some positive changes in multiple areas of my life…one of which includes getting married which I am looking forward to.  Others will be announced when appropriate.  Stay tuned!

Mike Gannotti has instructions posted on his blog for adding the PDF icon to SharePoint 2007 as well as the steps required to install the PDF iFilter and include the File Type in the content index. He even links to the correct places on the Adobe site where you can not only download the iFilter but also the correct 17 x 17 icon. Nice work!

This is one of many posts that I add to my blog to save me to trouble of looking for the link later since I am sure I will refer to it again. J

One of the neat new features of a SharePoint document library in SharePoint 2007 is the ability to send a document to another location. This feature is great for a couple of reasons. The first is that most teams have a collaborative area where they create content that will eventually be consumed and available for the remainder of the company. In many cases, this collaborative area is restricted to only those that belong to the team responsible for creating the content. However once the document is complete, it should be published out to a location where everyone has access. The problem with relocating the document to a less secured area is that it involves us either moving or copying it. Moving doesn’t seem like a good idea since it is likely that the team may wish to make further updates at a later time. If that is the case, then it would be most appropriate for them to make those updates in their collaborative area since that is where they do all their work. Copying involves duplicating a file and that typically introduces issues with synchronization of content. However using the Send to functionality of a document library, we can create a link from the source document to the published copy so that whenever the document is checked back in, the author will be prompted to update the published versions. Another great feature of this Send To option is the ability to create a custom location. This allows us to specify a common place that content may be published to. To do this you must go to the Advanced Settings of the document library, and specify the location of the document library you wish to publish to. Note: Make sure you specify the library url (example: http://server/sites/sitename/libraryname) and not a view of the library (example: http://server/sites/sitename/libraryname/allitems.aspx). Once you have your specified custom location, it will show up in context menu of documents in that library.

So on the odd chance there still exists someone in this world who doesn’t know yet, I figured I would announce it here…Shane and I are getting married. He popped the question last night and I have been grinning like a silly fool ever since.  Actually technically he handed me a little white box and I babbled and balled for several minutes but minus that momentary lapse in control, I am pretty excited and definitely thrilled.  He is an awesome guy and I can’t think of anyone else better to spend the rest of my life with.  It’s very cool when you are with someone that continuously encourages you to be stronger and better at what you aspire to do but always still remain 100% yourself at all times.

It’s been a long week and I am definitely feeling the strain of too much time on the road lately along with a seriously hectic schedule around the clock between work and the book.  So needless to say I enjoyed the opportunity to kick back in my hotel room tonight and laugh my butt off at this video done by Laura Foy from on10. 

Very cute though it does make me miss my Xbox.  Which apparently is also missing me during my latest gaming hiatus.

I realize its been a really long time since my last post.  Things have been crazy for Shane and I over the past month.  You can really see that if you look at the fact that even his blog as slowed down.  The fact is we are flat out working away on our book project and barely have enough time to breath.  The good news is we are making killer progress and are well on our way to having things done on schedule.  Woot!! 

It’s fun having this project together since it really highlights how well we work together.  I realize most couples can’t do the work together thing but I really think its great because it builds on the mutual respect you have for one another as both professionals and genuine partners.  Plus if one of us gets sick with a cold (ie me), its great that the other person can step it up (ie him) and cover their ass (ie mine). 

Of course by now everyone and their dog is aware of the release of the MOSS 2007 trial, WSS 3.0, Office 2007 and Vista on MSDN and in the case of the SharePoint components, Microsoft Downloads.  There has been an insane amount of useful information posted recently by the community.  In particular I’d like to point to some great content hosted on the SharePoint Product Team weblog such as:

The Actual RTW Announcement Along with Eval Links, Keys and Detailed Install and Upgrade Instructions from Some SharePoint MVPS as well as Microsoft.

An Announcement on the Availability of Volume Licensing for SharePoint Products and Technologies for 2007 releases.

A 3 Part Workflow Development Series of Articles.

The Announcement of the Beta of an Upgrade Toolkit for WSS 2.0 to 3.0 Sites.

And of course there was a great posting by Joel yesterday on some capacity and performance planning papers available on the MS site.  This is on my inflight reading list for my trip to Ottawa next week.

Keep watching the SharePoint blog site as well as other great community resources.  The amount of information available today for a product that is barely in its infant stages blows my mind.

Well my Ottawa trip has come to an end.  I was at the GTEC conference where I think I performed more consecutive SharePoint 2007 demos in a 3 day period than has ever been done before.  I even had my first experience of doing a demo while someone translated for me.  Very interesting…  Overall it was great though and I had a wonderful time meeting all the great people that dropped by the booth.  

I was amazed at how many people were seeing Vista, Office 2007 and SharePoint for the first time.  It obviously shows that its good for me to break out of my little world of early adopter geekdom once in a while since it was great to see the expressions on people’s faces as I walked them through some of the new features of each. 

All went really well.  However unfortunately not without a price.  It seems after I finished up at the conference on Wednesday my body decided to punish me for too many late evenings in a row and overall lack of sleep by delivering me a nasty headcold.  It made the flight home yesterday less than comfortable as I thought my ears were going to explode.  Though there was an adorable lady next to me on the plane that reminded me of my grandmother and spent the flight offering me treats such as chocolate bars and candy.  Very sweet lady!

I am on the road again this week.  This time I am in Ottawa for the GTEC 2006 conference.  If you are in town for the same, drop by the Microsoft booth and say hi.  I will be there demoing some of the work our team has done related to SharePoint 2007 and the RDP program.

Back in the day…you know way back before InfoPath 2007…I used InfoPath 2003 (and SharePoint) to address a lot of my needs as a Product Manager and consultant.  I created a custom CRM system for managing our customer opportunities, billing requests, and project initiation processes.  I created custom templates for project costing, team status reporting, leave requests, purchase requests and virtually anything else I encountered as part of our operations that resembled a repeatable process or information that had to be easily shared or merged for reporting purposes.  InfoPath provided a customizable UI that made many activities easy that would have previously required me to dedicate a team of developers to create…thereby taking them off important product development activities.

However those days as great as they were did have their pain points.  One in particular was related to managing the massive number of data connections many of my form templates were using.  Or more especially, managing multiple templates that linked to a common data source.  This situation only got more complex as I started working on applications and sites that had to move from development environments to production environments.

The InfoPath team blog has always been a favorite of mine due to their ability to write great summaries of the functionality of their product with excellent walkthroughs and examples.  Over the past month, they have continued this tradition by putting together some great articles on data connections and udc files that I have found very helpful. 

Check out all the recent articles on data connections from the InfoPath team blog here.

Just a quick post to break the silence.  It has been a difficult and long week.  As Shane has pointed out on his blog, we lost over dog this past week.  An event that has been far more difficult to deal with than I had even imagined it would be.  Given she had been very sick for a while, I had myself convinced that I would be able to take things much easier knowing that her suffering would be over and perhaps taking comfort in the fact that she lived a long good life.  Turns out I had no idea what I was talking about.  As it happens you cannot lose a significant part of your life and family for nearly a decade and just take it in stride. 

What makes it worse is that as hard as I am taking this, I know it has been even harder for Shane who loved Zhiva more than I have ever seen anyone love a pet.  She adored him as well and lived to receive all the attention and love she got from him.  So it was fitting that right up until her last moment he was there to assure her she was a good pup and that she was loved.

My heart is broken in two places this week.