Archive for the 'SharePoint 2007' Category

Last week I confessed my admiration of Chris Capossela and I linked to an interview where he details his career path.  This week, Shane pointed me to a podcast he participated in that is hosted on the IW Center site (which looks like a great resource for information too).

Shane and I were also discussing last week how cool it would be if Capossela had a blog.  Even if he posted once a month – I suspect it would be quite interesting.

Shane posted on this last week but it really is blowing my mind that so many good resources exist already for SharePoint 2007 compared to when we first started working on 2003 (and let’s not even go 2001).  Man those were some hard times.  I remember having to create EVERYTHING from scratch.  From the sales process to the development, deployment and training stages - there was absolutely nothing to go on except what we made ourselves. I swear I spent my first 12 months documenting and creating templates.  Some of which I still use so I guess it was a decent investment of effort.

When I first started with 2007, I admit I was a little thrown off by just how much new functionality existed.  I started wondering if there was anyway I’d ever master it all to the degree I did in 2003.  However between official Microsoft material supplied both as part of TAP and directly to the community and then the MASSIVE amount of awesome resources being provided BY the community – I have made some pretty awesome progress.  I really couldn’t be more excited.  The amount of knowledge sharing and enthusiasm over this new version of the product only reinforces for me what an excellent choice it has been to focus on this platform professionally. 

Here are some great listings of resources if you are just getting started yourself. 

Andrew’s Extensive WCM Resource List

Arno’s Listing of Records and Document Management Resources

Arpan’s Listing of SharePoint 2007 Training Steps and Resources

Heather’s SharePoint 2007 Resource Listing

Jan’s Series on New Features Available in SharePoint 2007

Joel’s List of SharePoint Planning, Configuration and Deployment Resources

Joris’s Massive WSS and MOSS Resource Listing Page

Liam’s Plethora of In-Depth Posts on Various Functions of SharePoint 2007

Mark’s MOSS 2007 Resource List

Shane’s Tips and Hidden Gems Postings on SharePoint Customization

Ted Pattison’s Screencast Series (Awesome Starting Point)

Technet’s Office System Webcast Series

Seriously can you believe that I can actually refer to THAT many awesome resource listings for a product that isn’t even released?  And that is just a drop in the bucket based on a quick reference to a listing I have stored on my personal MOSS site.

So in summary – keep up the great work everyone! 

I got an email from Shane earlier today with this link about how the pricing for Office 2007 should be available in November of this year.  This apparently also means that the product release is not too far behind.  Great news to my ears!!  Why you might ask? Well for starters:

1. I am working on active projects related to the platform which means that things are stabilizing and we are rocking out and ready for launch.  In fact, I am very much impressed at how much we are able to accomplish with working on a mere Beta 2 release of the product. 
2. The release of official pricing information and an official launch date is something I can share with customers.  I did a webcast today where one of the first questions was related to…when is 2007 coming and what are the licensing implications.  I love my customers and therefore look forward to a time when I am adequately able to answer their questions on such things.  Something feels false about saying…well by the way things are looking now…
3. I can start transitioning into 100% demos and projects on new platform.  I’m sorry but I love new technology and WSSv3 / MOSS 2007 is a dream to work with.  So you cannot blame me for wanting to move 100% into fulfulling it’s demand.  I loved v2 / 2003 (note: see the first 3 years of posts on this blog if you have any doubt) but I want to move ahead to the next version now.

The other cool thing about this post was the reference to Chris Capossela.  This is a man I have much respect for.  Not because he is the VP of a major business group within Microsoft and grand pubba of all that is information worker.  But what I appreciate the most is that he does his own demos of the applications he represents.  I have always been a believer in the Lead by Example practice and I think this is a perfect showcase. 

It is one thing for someone to say they believe in a set of applications that empower the information worker force.  It is a completely other thing to stand in front of thousands of people (see Tech Ed 2006) and conduct your own demonstrations because you have taken the time to learn the applications yourself and recognize how they benefit the real people they were intended for. 

My 2 biggest beefs come from those that a) consider themselves too technical to learn how to use the tools that enable us all to work together and communicate more efficiently and b) those that consider themselves too important to learn how to share information. 

Capossela obviously brought his ticket for the IW train and I am definitely onboard!  PS… the IW train comes approximately 5 minutes before the cluetrain at most major stations.  In case you were wondering…

Update: Here is an interesting 60 minute video on Capossela and his career path through Microsoft – very cool guy!

There seems to be some confusion on the difference between site collections and sites in MOSS2007.  Almost everyone I speak to that has experience with SPS 2003 stumble with this when they first start working with SharePoint 2007.  So for that reason…I shall write a quick post about it.

In SharePoint Portal Server 2003, whenever you went to the sites directory and clicked the Create Site link under the Actions menu, you were creating a site collection.  Every site collection has a top level site where things such as site templates, list templates, and cross site groups existed.  Within a site collection, additional sites could be created that would share certain things (such as the template galleries and potentially permissions) with the top level site.  In essence the site collection was it’s own unique hierarchy of SharePoint sites and for the most part completely independant of other site collections.  In a stand alone installation of WSS there was typically only one site collection.  In SPS, there could be hundreds which is why organizing them effectively in the Sites Directory and Areas (via listings) was very important and crucial.  In fact, the primary role of SharePoint Portal Server aside from the additional functionality it provided in enterprise features such as search, audiences and personal sites – was the ability to organize the massive amounts of data that exists across multiple site collections better. 

By default in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (if you are using the Corporate Intranet Portal template as your default site) when you go to the “Sites” link and click the Create site button…you are instead creating a site that is a member of the site collection your portal is in.  So instead of having a portal layer and then a large number of unique collaborative collections below – everything now exists in a single site collection by default.  This is great if within your organization, you want to “easily” share things such as templates, site columns, content types and navigational elements. Plus security and user management is much easier using this approach.

However some organizations will still require unique site collections since their business units are very unique and very little sharing is anticipated between groups. If that is the case, then you may instead wish to create site collections from the sites directory. To do this, you need to:

• Enable Self Service Site Creation in the Central Administration (Steps Below)
• Change the configuration settings under the Sites Directory (Steps Below)

So in essense, the new way is really much better since we no longer have to manage two completely separate levels however if you liked the old way better and want more unique site collections for your collaborative areas, you can have that too.

Enabling Self Service Site Creation

1. Log into the Central Administration Site (Note this is a unique site collection as well and if you have it located on a funny port number, it is usually a good idea to add it to your My Links)
2. Click Application Management
3. Click Self-service site management
4. Select the correct web application (that step is easy to miss) and select On for Enable Self-Service Site Creation
5. Click OK

 

Enable the creation of Site Collections in Sites Directory

1. From the portal, use the Site Actions menu, select Modify All Site Settings. If you are not on top level site you will need to go to Top Level Site Settings.
2. Under site collection administration, select Site Directory Settings.
3. Select the checkbox to create new site collections from sites directory.

If you are like me and work with clients from various cultures or who have requirements for multi-lingual environments, then you will welcome the information posted on the SharePoint team blog regarding the planned availability for Language Packs for both MOSS 2007 and WSSv3. 

Unfortunately I misread the chart when I first saw the article and thought the language pack for French was coming with the Beta 2 TR.  Our team has been looking for that one as we do quite a bit of work with clients who require both French and English.  But at least I can see that it will be available upon release which eases my mind a bit.

Now if only we could only get more detailed documentation on the use of resources and variations for creating multilingual environments with SharePoint 2007.

Also mega props to the SharePoint team for keeping their weblog up to date with regular and interesting posts on the new release.  It’s not an easy thing to do when struggling with bug fixes, documentation and major releases and it’s very much appreciated by those of us that eagerly watch for new information to be released as we continue to work our way through pre-release development projects.

Shane has been writing about quite a few tips and “hidden gems” over on his blog for the past couple of months.  What is really fun though is working with him on a shared server and discovering all his little “hidden gems” that he leaves behind.

He has always complained about how when a site is deleted, you have nowhere to go – so he went ahead and modified the file to provide a link.  Funny!

Between goofy customizations and dancing aliens (apparently he didn’t like the animated gif for creating site collections either) – it’s always entertaining at least. 

For some people, the transition of MCMS into the SharePoint platform is a positive move but also one that requires a fair amount of adjustment.

First and foremost, there is a significant change in terminology and features even though much of the functionality is the same (though improved).

There are two great sources that I recommend to those looking to get a handle on what some of the differences might be:

1. This MSDN Article targetted specifically at the MCMS2002 developer.
2. Andrew Connell’s MSDN webcast

Both of these have been around for a few months but chances are, still haven’t been found by those only beginning their journey to SharePoint 2007 so I shall point to them anyhow.

So as some of you may know 2 of my many passions relate to SharePoint and User Groups / Communities.  Therefore it should come as no surprise that I would be working on some things that might benefit and affect SharePoint User Groups and Communities. 

I know there has been a fantastic community building up out there over the past few years and now I want to get to meet more of you so I can identify better ways of supporting and delivering information to you.

So if you are a member or leader of a SharePoint related user group - please either drop me an email or leave a comment here.  I would really love to hear from you.  Also if you are interested in starting a user group or joining one but don’t know where to get started – let me know and I will do my best to help you out.

The month of June roared by me faster than I could possibly have expected.  Between INETA Projects, a couple of writing assignments, a vicious flu (still got it!), and catching up on a week out of the office – there wasn’t much time for creative posting. 

But for those of you that have been following the Beauty of SharePoint 2007 posts, have no fear.  This past month has only strengthened my love of the beautiful collaboration platform and I plan to be back online with a whole new set of posts this week.  I took the long weekend off for some much needed rest and relaxation but have no fear – there is a lot more beauty to come. 

SharePoint 2007 has been the most exciting piece of technology I have dealt with in years and I can’t wait to share it with everyone.

I am posting this link for my own reference as well as others since I have found myself checking back through old messages once again.

If you are installing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in stand alone mode on a domain controller (note this isn’t by any means a best practice but decent for testing) then you will have to run a workaround script or else you will receive an error when accessing portal.

The error message will be “The trial period for this product has expired.”

The workaround download is available on the Microsoft site here.

For those of us that grew up with SharePoint over the past 5 or so years, we know all too well the pains associated with the lack of resources early in the game.  That being said, I am continuously amazed at the excellent content being posted this early in the game on SharePoint 2007 and its associated features.

One perfect example comes from Harsh’s blog where he has written an excellent article on the details related to an SharePoint installation…Step by Step. 

Great use of screencaps and resource links. FANTASTIC Stuff!!  This is exactly the type of content the community needs to get more and more people running the latest bits, finding bugs and building enthusiasm over the new features.

 

Ted Pattison has posted a dozen or so screencasts on some common items related to Office and SharePoint 2007 such as:

Check the SharePoint 2007 Screencasts out here!

Mega props to Stephen Cummins for the cutest writeup on what is new in SharePoint…anything written in Seseme Street language gets my approval.  =-)

This will happen once and once only.  The RSS feed for this site was recently updated to use feedburner.  The new feed is located:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/funknstyle

Thanks!

One of my first steps when installing an OS on a new system is to go in afterwards and change the settings for documents that I would prefer to have opened in the application over the browser. This is fine for someone like myself that particularly cares about such things however from an organizational or process management stand point – at times the need may exist to force this setting based on a specific document library. SharePoint 2007 allows this to be configured under the Advanced Settings for a document library.

Sometimes in a document library you may not want users to have the ability to use folders. Maybe instead you will enforce the use of columns and document properties to provide a more dynamic and useful taxonomy.

In Windows SharePoint Services, you could turn off folders from a view. That would then disable someone from creating a folder via toolbar but you couldn’t disable the use of folders entirely from a document library. In SharePoint 2007 this is no longer the case. Under the Advanced Settings for a document library, you may opt to completely disable the use of folders for a particular document library.

A common requirement amongst users of Windows SharePoint Services in v2 was the ability to view information in a calendar type view. This was built into list templates such as the events list and could also be added to other lists by creating a “calendar view”.

A slight limitation I would often run into however would be the field(s) that would be displayed in the calendar view were fixed. If you were using an events list, the user could see the event title and location. If you were creating a custom view on another list type, only the title would be displayed. This wasn’t something that sent the world crashing to a halt but a slight inconvenience at times.

Well with SharePoint 2007, a list manager can create a calendar view and then select the column that should be displayed as the title and location for the event on each calendar view (day, week, month, etc?). This is great since you can point to all column types whereas in v2, not only were you limited to displaying title or location – both column types were text fields.

The date selector is much nicer as well for calendar views:

For the month calendar views, the ability to view all records for a single day has been improved by adding the ability to “expand all” rather than selecting a more link and changing your current view.

Maurice Prather has a nice post outlining some of the great improvements we will see in WSS v3 because it has been BUILT on ASP.NET 2.0. Unlike the previous version that merely UTILIZED ASP.NET 1.1, WSS v3 has much more potential for customization and integration utilizing the greatest development platform available for the web – ASP.NET 2.0.

Read more here.

Interestingly enough, as part of our Live From Redmond webcast series, we have a presentation coming up on the 10th of May that focuses on using ASP.NET 2.0 with WSS v3. You can add this presentation to your Outlook calendar by clicking here or visit our INETA Live! Website to see more information.

The content editor web part in SharePoint 2003 was very popular – especially for those that wanted to easily add custom static text, images or special scripts to a page. In SharePoint 2007 we see this web part has improved dramatically by addressing a couple of key pain points that existed with the previous version.

Tables

The support for tables has drastically improved by allowing for easier manipulations to a table after its creation as well as support for pre-defined styles and formatting. Overall inserting a table in the content editor is a much more enjoyable experience.

Images

Inserting an image in a content editor web part in 2003 was a little difficult for users that may not have been overly technical or comfortable with the concept of linking to pictures stored on the web or in their site. The new improved content editor, makes it much easier for a user to browse to an image stored on their SharePoint site (or site collection) or an alternate location. The ability to change image size on the fly is another positive move.

Copying Text

Remember the styling pains associated with copying text from a document to the content editor? Well the new improved editor makes this much nicer allowing for the on the fly removing of styles and undesired formatting.

Hyperlinks

You may also recall that inserting hyperlinks in your content editor that were to open in a new window was a task that had to be completed by going into the source editor and adding a target attribute to your link. This has been improved as well by allowing user to specify when creating a hyperlink whether it should open in a new window.

Have you ever used the lookup column in a list or library to point to the User Information list? Have you ever wished you could select an entire group of people or multiple individuals? Well in SharePoint 2007, there is a column type dedicated specifically to People. Which makes sense because aren’t we the reason that SharePoint sites exist in the first place.

What is great about this column type is that you can point to all users, specific users within a SharePoint group, an entire group, or just a couple of specific users. No more crazy tricks to assign a document or list item to more than one person.

Last Friday, the SharePoint Team had a great post outlining some of awesome security enhancements available in SharePoint 2007. My favorite items are 1, 2, and 5 but that may change depending a specific deployment projects where all of these will be sure to be important at some point or another for me. Being able to more easily use SSO will also be a bonus so let’s face it – all of these are real exciting!

From the SharePoint Team Blog:

SharePoint 2003 has a robust security model for grouping SharePoint rights into Site Groups and granting Permissions on sites, lists and libraries to users and/or these groups. Here’s my take on the “Top 5” about what’s new in Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Office SharePoint Server 2007:

1) Pluggable Authentication – We build on the new ASP.NET provider model so you can use another directory or database, which may be useful for a secure, large scale internet site with an existing customer database (e.g. CMS scenario). We are adding LDAP support to Office SharePoint Server 2007 both with an authentication provider and direct import into the user profile store for targeting, people search, etc. WSS and SPS SP2 added ADFS support for trust between independent organizations (e.g. a reseller trusting their suppliers’ directories on the extranet), and we’ll continue that.

2) Granular Security – You will be able to assign unique permissions to an individual document as well as inheriting from the parent directory or Document Library. This also lets us make the security and inheritance model in a complex site cleaner as part of unifying WSS webs with SPS areas and CMS channels. We are also providing an improved people and group picker throughout SharePoint that will make it easier to add users and groups from AD than in the past.

3) Server-Enforced Policy via Information Rights Management – If you are not familiar with Windows Rights Management Services, check out its integration with the Information Rights Management capabilities in Office 2003. It lets you put a digital envelope around an e-mail or Office document that limits what people can do with it (e.g. edit, copy, print, forward), when the document expires, whether the software needs to check back with the SharePoint server for the latest updates, etc. We utilize this functionality all the time inside Microsoft when sharing confidential training information with our salesforce with an expiration date targeted for when we’ll have public content available. In the next release of SharePoint Server 2007, we’ll have server integration with Windows RMS and the extensibility to integrate with other rights management systems so IRM policies you set on SharePoint Document Libraries on the server will be enforced even after the content has left the site (simplistically, the IRM envelope on the downloaded file will match the server-side ACLs).

4) Pluggable Single Sign-On – SPS 2003 shipped with a secure credential cache, so users would not be prompted for multiple passwords for different back-ends from a “composite application” web part page. While you could write custom code in your web parts to use this cache, general purpose tools like our Data View Web Part did this automatically, saving complexity. In SharePoint Server 2007, we’re making this pluggable, so you can use custom or 3rd-party credential caching systems in addition to the one we ship.

5) Security Trimmed User Interface – In SPS 2003, users do not see search results (from not just SharePoint but Windows compatible file servers, Exchange, and Notes) that they did not have the rights to at least read. We have taken the model across the entire SharePoint interface – users will not see actions, links, content, etc. that they don’t have the rights to at least view. This will not only make the system more secure, but more convenient (no access denied when trying to do an operation on a list). In addition, we have added an explicit login/out link on the SharePoint chrome, which can be handy for developers and IT trying out multiple security contexts.

Another beautiful thing about SharePoint 2007 is without a doubt the availability of workflow straight out of the box via Windows Workflow Foundation.

In 2003, we were limited to utilizing document library event handlers or third party solutions when it came to workflow automation within the SharePoint environment. While this was fine, it was often a pain point for organizations that had a limited budget or resources for third party tools and add-ons.

SharePoint 2007 will provide many pre-built workflow solutions directly out of the box. However sometimes, within a specific site you may wish to create your own workflows through an easy to use designer. If you have SharePoint Designer 2007 and the latest CTP of WinFX?you can using the built in workflow designer.

 

Another great feature of SharePoint 2007 is the Send To Menu Item available in document libraries. Using this menu feature, it becomes very easy to share documents with others (by sending a link) and promote or publish a document out to other locations.

In addition to copying a document out to a different site / library – you can also choose to establish a link to that alternate location so that you can update it in the future if the source document is checked in.

The sites directory in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has greatly improved and provides enhancements in both functionality and navigation. One of my favorite features is the ability to scan the sites directory for broken links.

As a SharePoint adminstrator or manager, you will likely reach a point where many sites have been created however since their creation, some have been deleted or moved. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 made it very easy to organize your sites and create links to content. But like most traditional web sites, if you make a link and someone moves or deletes the content…your link is broken and you likely have no idea unless you go back and regularly check your links.

In SharePoint 2007, there is a built in tool that will scan for broken links on demand directly from the actions tab.

As well, if you are an administrator, you can schedule scans of the Site Directory views using the timer service.

View image

One of my favorite features of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 was the abily to target certain content types via audiences within the various areas. This allowed for me to include a large amount of content within a single page but have the experience very relevant and personalized for each user.

In SharePoint 2007, we will see the role of audiences expanded down into a special column type on lists that will allow you to filter content based on a person’s audience membership. This will open up many doors with respect to how one can organize and include content within a specific site.

If you are like me and work for a company where you spend a lot of your time testing features or web parts for users of different security levels – then you have likely found it to be a bit of a pain to switch user logins when logged into SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

However Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has a beautiful feature that allows you to log in as another user by just a couple of quick clicks on the actions menu.

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Note: This series of posts is designed to show some of the great new features of SharePoint 2007 that are currently in BETA. Therefore some of these items may change over time so in essence all of these post may have an expiry date.

I have been testing SharePoint 2007 for several months now and have compiled lots of goodies that I want to share. Over the next while I will be posting daily on a series of items that I have discovered in the new version of SharePoint that might be of interest to those of you who have not yet had a chance to see it.

This series will cover some very basic enhancements such as usability features to larger items such as workflow and templates.

Please note that all of the things I am pointing to are still in Beta are could very much change overtime. Therefore please don’t make any assumptions on functionality or features based on anything you see here as things could very much change between now and final release.

So now that the technical refresh of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Beta 1 (say it 5 times fast!) is out and I have had some fun kicking the tires in a virtual environment – I am finally ready to dedicate a server to it on our home network. Definitely a sign that things are heating up fast!

Shane and I had been talking about this for a couple of weeks now and decided today was the best day for it. However as luck would have it – this is also one of the nicest sunniest…beautiful days we have had in months. One could almost forget about the 50cm of snow that fell last week…if it wasn’t still in our yard.

But the fact is I really don’t mind dedicating the day to this since the excitement I am experiencing over this new version is something I haven’t felt in a while. I feel challenged in the sense that there is so much more functionality packed into this version and giddy because there are so many things I have been waiting forever to see in SharePoint.

Now I remember what it is like to be a geek again. Feels good. =-)

For those of you not part of the technical BETA of Office 2007, you can check out screenshots, demos, documents and other great stuff on the Office 2007 Preview site just launched by Microsoft. They even have a demo on SharePoint Server 2007 It’s pretty high level but good for anyone that has been feeling in the dark.

Found via Lawrence Liu